Seasons Of War Part 17

And he wouldn't be there for it.

'The southern legions are ready, sir,' Eustin said. 'Eight thousand for Shosheyn-Tan, Lachi, and Saraykeht. My legion's two thousand strong. Should be enough for Pathai and that school out on the plains. That'll leave you a full half of the forces for the river cities. Udun and Utani and Tan-Sadar.'

Balasar struggled with the impulse to send more of the men with Eustin. It was the illusion he always suffered when tactics required that he split his forces. He would make do with less in order to keep his best men safe. Pathai was only half the size of Nantani, but Eustin was taking only a tenth of the men. It was unlikely that word had traveled fast enough for the Khai Pathai to hire some fleet-footed mercenary company out of the Westlands, but unlikely wasn't impossible. Two thousand more men might make the difference if something went wrong.

But he had the longest journey ahead of him - Nantani to Udun, and some of it over plains where there were no good roads and the steam wagons would have to be pulled. On rough ground, the boilers were too likely to explode. The journey would take time, and so Udun and Utani and Tan-Sadar would have the longest time to prepare. They would be the hardest to capture or destroy. It was why he had chosen them for himself. Except, of course, for what he had tasked to Coal. Five thousand men to take six cities. Five cities, now. Four and a half.

'We'll get there in time to help him if he needs us, sir,' Eustin said, reading his face. 'And keep in mind, there's not a fighting force anywhere in the Khaiem. Coal's in more danger of tripping on his spear than of facing an enemy worth sneezing at.'

Balasar laughed. Two armsmen busy folding a tent looked up, saw him and Eustin, and grinned.

'It's like me, isn't it?' Balasar said. 'Here we have just made the greatest sack of a city in living history, captured enough gold to keep us both fed the best food and housed in the best brothels for the rest of our lives, and I can't bring myself to enjoy a minute of it.'

'You do tend to worry most when things are going well, sir.'

They reached a place where the mud path split, one way to the west, the other to the north. Balasar put out his hand, and Eustin took it. For a moment, they weren't general and captain. They were friends and conspirators in the plot to save the world. Balasar found his anxiety ebbing, felt the grin on his face and saw it mirrored in his man's.

'Meet me in Tan-Sadar before the leaves turn,' Balasar said. 'We'll see then whether Coal has use for us or if it's time to go home.'

'I'll be there, sir,' Eustin said. 'Rely on it. And as a favor to me? Keep an eye on Ajutani.'

'Both, when I can spare them,' Balasar promised. And then they parted. Balasar walked through the thin mud and low gra.s.s to the camp at the head of the first legion. His groom stood waiting, a fresh horse munching contentedly at the roadside weeds. A second horse stood beside it, a rider in the saddle looking out bemused at the men and the rolling hills and the horizon beyond.

'Captain Ajutani,' Balasar said, and the rider turned and saluted. 'You're ready for the march?'

'At your command, General.'

Balasar swung himself up onto the horse and accepted the reins from his groom.

'Then let's begin,' he said. 'We've got a war to finish.'

It had taken a few lengths of copper to convince the keepers of the wide platforms to unhook their chains and haul her skyward, but Liat didn't care. The dread in her belly made small considerations like money seem trivial. Money or food or sleep. She stood now at the open sky doors and looked out to the south and east, where the men of Machi made their way through the high green gra.s.ses of summer. From this distance, they looked like a single long black mark on the landscape. She could no more make out an individual wagon or rider than she could take to the air and fly. And still she strained her eyes, because one part of that distant mark was her only son.

He had only told her when it was already done. She had been in her apartments - the apartments given her by the man who had once been her lover. She had been thinking of how a merchant or tradesman who took in an old lover so casually would have been the subject of gossip - even a member of the utkhaiem would have had answers to make - but the Khai was above that. She had gone as far as wondering, not for the first time, what Kiyan-cha thought and felt on the matter, when Nayiit had scratched at her door and let himself in.

She knew when she saw his face that something had happened. There was a light in his eyes brighter than candles, but his smile was the too-charming one he always employed when he'd done something he feared she'd fault him for. Her first thought was that he'd offered to marry some local girl. She took a pose that asked the question even before he could speak.

'Sit with me,' he said and took her by the hand.

They sat on a low stone bench near the window. The shutters were opened, and the evening breeze had smelled of forge smoke. He kept her hand in his as he spoke.

'I've been to see the Khai,' Nayiit said. 'You know he believes what Maati-cha . . . what Father said. About the Galts.'

'Yes,' Liat said. She still hadn't understood what she was seeing. His next words came like a blow.

'He's taking men, all the men he can find. They're going overland to the Dai-kvo. I've asked to go with them, and he's accepted me. He's finding me a sword and something like armor. He says we'll leave before the week's out,' he said, then paused. 'I'm sorry.'

She knew that her grip on his hand had gone hard because he winced, but not because she felt it. This hadn't been their plan. This had never been their plan.

'Why?' she managed, but she already knew.

He was young and he was trapped in a life he more than half regretted. He was finding what it meant to him to be a man. Riding out to war was an adventure, and a statement - oh, by all the G.o.ds - it was a statement that he had faith in Maati's guess. It was a way to show that he believed in his father. Nayiit only kissed her hand.

'I know the Dai-kvo's village,' he said. 'I can ride. I'm at least good enough with a bow to catch rabbits along the way. And someone has to go, Mother. There's no reason that I shouldn't.'

You have a wife, she didn't say. You have a child. You have a city to defend, and it's Saraykeht. You'll be killed, and I cannot lose you. The Galts have terrorized every nation in the world that didn't have the andat for protection, and Otah has a few armsmen barely competent to chase down thieves and brawl in the alleys outside comfort houses.

'Are you sure?' she said.

She sat now, looking out over the wide, empty air as the mark grew slowly smaller. As her son left her. Otah had managed more men than she'd imagined he would. At the last moment, the utkhaiem had rallied to him. Three thousand men, the first army fielded in the cities of the Khaiem in generations. Untried, untested. Armed with whatever had come to hand, armored with leather smith's ap.r.o.ns. And her little boy was among them.

She wiped her eyes with the cloth of her sleeve.

'Hurry,' she said, pressing the word out to the distant men. Get the Dai-kvo, retrieve the poets and their books, and come back to me. Before they find you, come back to me.

The sun had traveled the width of two hands together before she stepped out onto the platform and signaled the men far below her to bring her down. The chains clattered and the platform lurched, but Liat only held the rail and waited for it to steady in its descent. She knew she would not fall. That would have been too easy.

She had done a poor job of telling Maati. Perhaps she'd a.s.sumed Nayiit would already have told him. Perhaps she'd been trying to punish Maati for beginning it all. It had been the next night, and she had accepted Maati's invitation to dinner in the high pavilion. Goose in honey lacquer, almonds with cinnamon and raisin sauce, rice wine. Not far away, a dance had begun - silk streamers and the glow of torches, the trilling of pipes and the laughter of girls drunk with flirtation. She remembered it all from the days after Saraykeht had fallen. There was only so long that the shock of losing the andat could restrain the festivals of youth.

The young are blind and stupid, she'd said, and their b.r.e.a.s.t.s don't sag. It's the nearest thing they've got to a blessing.

Maati had chuckled and tried to take her hand, but she couldn't stand the touch. She'd seen the surprise in his expression, and the hurt. That was when she'd told him. She'd said it lightly, acidly, fueled by her anger and her despair. She had been too wrapped up in herself to pay attention to Maati's shock and horror. It was only later, when he'd excused himself and she was walking alone in the dim paths at the edge of the dance, that she understood she'd as much as accused him of sending Nayiit to his death.

She had gone by Maati's apartments that night and again the next day, but he had gone and no one seemed to know where. By the time she found him, he had spoken with Otah and Nayiit. He accepted her apology, he cradled her while they both confessed their fears, but the damage had been done. He was as haunted as she was, and there was nothing to be done about it.

Liat realized she'd almost reached the ground, startled to have come so far so quickly. Her mind, she supposed, had been elsewhere.

Machi in the height of summer might almost have been a southern city. The sun made its slow, stately way across the sky. The nights had grown so short, she could fall asleep with a glow still bright over the mountains to the west and wake in daylight, unrested. The streets were full of vendors at their carts selling fresh honey bread almost too hot to eat or sausages with blackened skins or bits of lamb over rice with a red sauce spicy enough to burn her tongue. Merchants pa.s.sed over the black-cobbled streets, wagon wheels clattering. Beggars sang before their lacquered boxes. Firekeepers tended their kilns and saw to the small business of the tradesmen - accepting taxes, witnessing contracts, and a hundred other small duties. Liat pulled her hands into her sleeves and walked without knowing her destination.

It might only have been her imagination that there were fewer men in the streets. Surely there were still laborers and warehouse guards and smiths at their forges. The force marching to the west could account for no more than one man in fifteen. The sense that Machi had become a city of women and old men and boys could only be her mind playing tricks. And still, there was something hollow about the city. A sense of loss and of uncertainty. The city itself seemed to know that the world had changed, and held its breath in dread antic.i.p.ation, waiting to see whether this transformed reality had a place for Machi in it.

She found herself back at her apartments - feet sore, back aching - before the sun had touched the peaks to the west. As she approached her door, a young man rose from the step. For a moment, her mind tricked her into thinking Nayiit had returned. But no, this boy was too thin through the shoulders, his hair too long, his robes the black of a palace servant. He took a pose of greeting as she approached, and Liat made a brief response.

'Liat Chokavi?'

'Yes.'

'Kiyan Machi, first wife of the Khai Machi, extends her invitation. If you would be so kind, I will take you to her.'

'Now?' Liat asked, but of course it was now. She waved away the question even before the servant boy could recover from the surprise of being asked in so sharp a tone. When he turned, spine straight and stiff with indignation, she followed him.

They found Otah's wife standing on a balcony overlooking a great hall. Her robes were delicate pink and yellow, and they suited her skin. Her head was turned down, looking at the wide fountain that took up the hall below, the sprays of water reaching up almost to the high domed ceiling above. The servant boy took a pose of obeisance before her, and she replied with one that both thanked and dismissed him. Her greeting of Liat was only a nod and a smile, and then Kiyan's attention turned back to the fountain.

There were children playing in the pool - splas.h.i.+ng one another or running, bandy-legged, through water that reached above their knees and would only have dampened half of Liat's own calves. Some wore robes of cotton that clung to their tiny bodies. Some wore loose canvas trousers like a common laborer's. They were, Liat thought, too young to be utkhaiem yet. They were still children, and free from the bindings that would hold them when there was less fat in their cheeks, less joy in their movement. But that was only sentiment. The children of privilege knew when they were faced with a child of the lower orders. These dancing and shouting in the clean, clear water could dress as they saw fit because they were all of the same ranks. These were the children of the great houses, brought to play with the one boy, there, in the robe. The one deep in disagreement with the petulant-looking girl. The one who had eyes and mouth the same shape as Otah's.

Liat looked up and found Kiyan considering her. The woman's expression was unreadable.

'Thank you for coming,' Kiyan said over the sounds of falling water and shrieking children.

'Of course,' Liat said. She nodded down at the boy. 'That's Danat-cha?'

'Yes. He's having a good day,' she said. Then, 'Please, come this way.'

Liat followed her through a doorway at the balcony's rear and into a small resting room where Kiyan sat on a low couch and motioned Liat to do the same. The sounds of play were m.u.f.fled enough to speak over, but they weren't absent. Liat found them oddly comforting.

'I heard that Nayiit-cha chose to go with the men,' Kiyan said.

'Yes,' Liat said, and then stopped, because she didn't know what more there was to say.

'I can't imagine that,' Kiyan said. 'It's hard enough imagining Otah going, but he's my husband. He's not my son.'

'I understand why he went. Nayiit, I mean. But his father asked the Khai to take care of him.'

Kiyan looked up, confused for a moment, then nodded.

'Maati, you mean?'

'Of course,' Liat said.

'Do we have to keep up that pretense?'

'I think we do, Kiyan-cha.'

'I suppose,' she said. And then a moment later, 'No. You're right. You're quite right. I don't know what I was thinking.'

Liat considered Otah's wife - thin face, black hair shot with threads of white, so little paint on her cheeks that Liat could see where the lines that came with age had been etched by pain and laughter. There was an intelligence in her face and, Liat thought, a sorrow. Kiyan took a deep breath and seemed to pull herself back from whatever place her mind had gone. She smiled.

'Otah has left the city with a problem,' she said. 'With so many men gone, the business of things is bound to suffer. There are crops that need bringing in and others that need planting. Roofs need the tiles repaired before autumn comes. There are still parts of the winter quarters that haven't been cleaned out since we've all resurfaced. And the men who coordinate those things or else who oversee the men who do are all off with Otah playing at war.'

'That is a problem,' Liat agreed, unsure why Kiyan had brought her here to tell her this.

'I'm calling a Council of wives,' Kiyan said. 'I think we're referring to it as an afternoon banquet, but I mean it to be more than light gossip and sweet breads. I'm going to take care of Machi until Otah comes back. I'll see to it that we have food and coal to see us through the winter.'

If, Kiyan didn't need to say, we all live that long. Liat looked at her hands and pressed the dark thoughts away.

'That seems wise,' she said.

'I want you to come to the Council, Liat-cha. I want your help.'

Liat looked up. Kiyan's whole attention was on her. It made her feel awkward, but also oddly flattered.

'I don't know what I could do-'

'You're a woman of business. You understand schedules and how to coordinate different teams in different tasks so that the whole of a thing comes together the way it should. I understand that too, but frankly most of these women would be totally lost. They've bent their minds to face paints and robes and trading gossip and bedroom tricks,' Kiyan said, and then immediately took a pose that asked forgiveness. 'I don't mean to make them sound dim. They aren't. But they're the product of a Khai's court, and the things that matter there aren't things that matter, if you see what I mean?'

'Quite well,' Liat said with a chuckle.

Kiyan leaned forward and scooped up Liat's hand as if it were the most natural thing to do.

'You helped Otah when he asked it of you. Will you help me now?'

The a.s.sent came as far as Liat's lips and then died there. She saw the distress in Kiyan's eyes, but she couldn't say it.

'Why?' Liat whispered. 'Why me? Why, when we are what we are to each other.'

'When we're what to each other?'

'Women who've loved the same man,' Liat said. 'Mothers of . . . of our sons. How can you put that aside, even only for a little while?'

Kiyan smiled. It was a hard expression. Determined. She did not let go of Liat's hand, but neither did she hold it captive.

'I want you with me because we can't have other enemies now,' she said. 'And because you and I aren't so different. And because I think perhaps the distraction is something you need as badly as I do. There's war enough coming. I want there to be peace between us.'

'I have a price,' Liat said.

Kiyan nodded that she continue.

'When Nayiit comes back, spend time with him. Talk with him. Find out who he is. Know him.'

'Because?'

'Because if you're going to have me fall in love with your boy, you owe it to fall a little in love with mine.'

Kiyan grinned, tears glistening in her eyes. Her hand squeezed Liat's. Liat closed her grip, fierce as a drowning man holding to a rope. She hadn't understood until this moment how deep her fear ran or the loneliness that even Maati couldn't a.s.suage. She couldn't say whether she had pulled Kiyan to her or if she herself had been pulled, but she found herself sobbing into the other woman's shoulder. Otah's wife wrapped fierce arms around her, embracing her as if she would protect Liat from the world.

'They would never understand this,' Liat managed when her breath was her own again.

'They're men,' Kiyan said. 'They're simpler.'

13.

For years, Otah had been a traveler by profession. He had worked the gentleman's trade, traveling as a courier for a merchant house with business in half the cities of the Khaiem. He had spent days on horseback or hunkered down in the backs of wagons or walking. He remembered with fondness the feeling of resting at the end of a day, his limbs warm and weary, sinking into the woolen blanket that only half protected him from the ticks. He remembered looking up at the wide sky with something like contentment. It seemed fourteen years sleeping in the best bed in Machi had made a difference.

'Is there something I can bring you, Most High?' the servant boy asked from the doorway of the tent. Otah pulled open the netting and turned over in his cot, twisting his head to look at him. The boy was perhaps eighteen summers old, long hair pulled back and bound by a length of leather.

'Do I seem like I need something?'

The boy looked down, abashed.

'You were moaning again, Most High.'

Otah let himself lie back on the cot. The stretched canvas creaked under him like a s.h.i.+p in a storm. He closed his eyes and cataloged quietly all his reasons for moaning. His back ached like someone had kicked him. His thighs were chafed half raw. They were hardly ten days out from Machi, and it was becoming profoundly clear that he didn't know how to march a military column across the rolling, forested hills that stretched from Machi almost to the mountains north of the Dai-kvo. The great Galtic army that had ma.s.sed in the South was no doubt well advanced, and the Dai-kvo was in deadly danger, if he hadn't been killed already. Otah closed his eyes. Right now, the throbbing sting of his abused thighs bothered him most.