Seasons Of War Part 36

'I've heard that too.'

'Maybe next winter,' Cehmai said.

'Maybe,' Maati agreed. The last icy island of snow melted and vanished. Maati dropped another handful in.

'What part of the day is it, do you think?' Maati asked.

'After morning, I'd think. Maybe a hand or two either side of midday.'

'You think so? I'd have thought later.'

'Could be later,' Cehmai said. 'I lose track down here.'

'I'm going to the bolt-hole again. Get more supplies.'

They didn't need them, but Cehmai only raised his hands in a pose of agreement, then curled into himself and shut his eyes. Maati pulled the thick leather straps of the sled harness over his shoulders, lit a lantern, and began the long walk through the starless dark. The wood and metal flat-bottomed sled sc.r.a.ped and ground along the stone and dust of the mine floor. It was light now. It would be heavier coming back. But at least Maati was alone for a time, and the effort of pulling kept his mind clear.

An instrument of slaughter, made in fear. Sterile had called herself that. Maati could still hear her voice, could still feel the bite of her words. He had destroyed Galt, but he had destroyed his own people as well. He'd failed, and every doubt he had ever had of his own ability, or his worthiness to be among the poets, stood justified. He would be the most hated man in generations. And he'd earned it. The sled dragging behind him, the straps pulling back at his shoulders - they were the simplest burden he carried. They were nothing.

Cehmai had marked the turnings to take with piles of stone. Hunters searching the mines would be unlikely to notice the marks, but they were easy enough for Maati to follow. He turned left at a crossing, and then bore right where the tunnel forked, one pa.s.sage leading up into darkness, the other down into air just as black.

The only comfort that the andat had offered - the only faint sliver of grace - was that Maati was not wholly at fault. Otah-kvo bore some measure of this guilt as well. He was the one who had come to Maati, all those years ago. He was the one who had hinted to Maati that the school to which they had both been sent had a hidden structure. If he hadn't, Maati might never have been a poet. Never have known Seedless or Heshai, Liat or Cehmai. Nayiit might never have been born. Even if the Galts had come, even if the world had fallen, it wouldn't have fallen on Maati's shoulders. Cehmai was right; the binding of Sterile had been a decision they had all made - Otah-kvo more than any of the rest. But it was Maati who was cast out to live in the dark and the cold. The sense of betrayal was as comforting as a candle in the darkness, and as he walked, Maati found himself indulging it.

The fault wasn't his alone, and the punishment was. There was nothing fair in that. Nothing right. The terrible thing that had happened seemed nearly inevitable now that he looked back on it. He'd been given hardly any books, not half the time he'd been promised, and the threat of death at the end of a Galtic sword unless he succeeded. It would have been astounding it he hadn't failed.

And for the price, that wasn't something he'd chosen. That had been Sterile. Once the binding had failed, he'd had no control over it. He would never have hurt Eiah if he'd had the choice. It had simply happened. And still, he felt it in the back of his mind - the shape of the andat, the place in the realm of ideas that it had pressed down in him, like the flattened gra.s.s where a hunting cat has slept. Sterile came from him, was him, and even if she had only been brief, she had still learned her voice from him and visited her price upon the world through his mind and fears. The clever trick of pus.h.i.+ng the price away from himself and onto the world had been his. The way in which the world had broken was his shadow - not him, not even truly shaped like him. But connected.

The tunnel before him came to a sudden end, and Maati had to follow his own track back to the turn he'd missed, angling up a steep slope and into the first breath of fresh, cold air, the first glimmer of daylight. Maati stood still a moment to catch his breath, then fastened all the ties on his cloak, pulled the furred hood up over his head, and began the long last climb.

The bolt-hole was perhaps half a hand's walk from the entrance to the mines in which the poets hid. The snow was dry as sand, and the icy breeze from the North would be enough to conceal what traces of his footsteps the sled didn't smooth over. Maati trudged through the world of snow and stone, his breath pluming out before him, his face stung and numbed. It was h.e.l.lish. His feet first burned then went numb, and frost began to form on the fur around his hood's mouth. Maati dragged himself and his sled. The numbness and the pain felt a bit like penance, and he was so caught up in them he nearly failed to notice the horse at the mouth of the bolt-hole.

It was a small animal, fit with heavy blankets and riding tack. Maati blinked at it, stunned by its presence, then scurried quickly behind a boulder, his heart in his mouth. Someone had come looking for them. Someone had found them. He turned to look back at the path he'd walked, certain that the footsteps in the snow were visible as blood on a wedding dress.

He waited for what seemed half a day but couldn't have been more than half a hand's width in the arc of the fast winter sun. A figure emerged from the tunnels - thick black cloak, and wide, heavy hood. Maati was torn between poking his head out to watch it and pulling back to hide behind his boulder. In the end caution won out, and he waited blind while the sound of horse's hooves on snow began and then grew faint. He chanced a look, and the rider had its back to him, heading back south to Machi, a twig of black on the wide field of mourning white. Maati waited until he judged the risk of being seen no greater than the risk of frostbite if he stayed still, then forced himself - all his limbs aching with the cold - to scramble the last stretch into the tunnel.

The bolt-hole was empty. He was surprised to find that he'd half-expected it to be filled with men bearing swords, ready to take their vengeance out against him. He pulled off his gloves and lit a small fire to warm himself, and when his hands could move again without pain, he made an inventory of the place. Nothing seemed to be missing, nothing disturbed. Except this: a small wicker basket with two low stone wax-sealed jars where none had been before. Maati squatted over them, lifting them carefully. They were heavy - packed with something. And a length of scroll, curled like a leaf, had been nestled between them. Maati blew on his fingers and unfurled the sc.r.a.p of parchment.

Maati-cha- I thought you might be out in the hiding place where we were supposed to go when the Galts came, but you aren't here, so I'm not sure anymore. I'm leaving this for you just in case. It's peaches from the gardens. They were going to give them to the Galts, so I stole them.

Loya-cha says I'm not supposed to ride yet, so I don't know when I'll be able to get out again. If you find this, take it so I'll know you were there.

It's going to be all right.

It was signed with Eiah's wide, uncontrolled hand. Maati felt himself weeping. He broke the seal of one jar and with numb fingers drew out a slice of the deep orange fruit, sweet and rich and thick with the suns.h.i.+ne of the autumn days that had pa.s.sed.

The world changes. Sometimes slowly, sometimes all of an instant. But the world changes, and it doesn't change back. A rockslide s.h.i.+fts the face of a mountain, and the stones never go back up to take their old places. War scatters the people of a city, and not all will return. If any.

A child cherished as a babe, clung to as a man, dies; a mother's one last journey with her son at her side proves to be truly the last. The world has changed. And no matter how painful this new world is, it doesn't change back.

Liat lay in the darkened room, as she had for days. Her belly didn't bother her any longer. Even when it had, the pain hadn't been deep. It was only flesh. The news of Nayiit's death had been a more profound wound than anything the andat could do. Her boy had followed her on this last desperate adventure. He had left his own wife and child. And she had brought him here to die for a boy he hadn't even known to be his brother.

Or perhaps he had known. Perhaps that was what had given him the courage to attack the Galtic soldiers and be cut down. She would have asked him; she still intended to ask him, when she saw him next. Even knowing that she never could, even trying consciously to force the impulse away, she found she could not stop intending it. When I see him again still felt like the future. A time would come when it would feel like the past. When he was here, when I could touch him, when he would smile at me and make me laugh, when I worried for him. When my boy lived. Back then. Before I lost him.

Before the world changed.

She sighed in the darkness, and didn't bother to wipe away the tears. They were meaningless - her body responding without her. They couldn't undo what had been done, and so they didn't matter. Voices echoed in the hall outside her apartments here in the tunnels, and she ignored them. If they had been shouting warnings of fire, she would have ignored those too.

Sometimes she would think of all the people who had died. The amateur soldiers that Otah had led into battle outside the village of the Dai-kvo, the Galts dead on the road from Cetani. The sad rogue poet Riaan, slaughtered by the men he thought his friends. The innocent, naive men and women and children in Nantani and Utani and Chaburi-Tan and all the other sacked cities. The children at the poets' school.

Every one of them had a mother. Every mother who had not had the luck to die was trapped in the quiet desperation that imprisoned her now. Liat thought of all these other grieving women, held them up in her mind as proof that she was being stupid and weak. Mothers lost their sons all the time, all across the world. In every nation, in every city, in every age. Her suffering wasn't so much compared with all of them.

And then she would hear someone cough in Nayiit's voice, or she'd mistake the shape of a man's back, and her idiot, traitor heart would sing for a moment. Even as her mind told her no it wasn't, her heart would soar before it fell.

The scratch at her door was so faint and tentative, Liat thought at first it was only a rat tricked by the darkness into believing the room empty. But the sound came again, the intentional rhythm of a hand against wood.

Likely it was Otah, coming again to hold her hand and sit quietly. He had done so several times, when he could free himself from the rigors of peace and war and Empire. They spoke little because there was too much to say, and no words adequate. Or perhaps one of his physicians, come to look in on her health. Or a servant sent to declaim poems or sing. Someone to distract her in the name of comfort. She wished they wouldn't come.

The scratch repeated itself, more loudly.

'Who?' Liat managed to ask. For answer, the door slid open, and Kiyan stood framed in the doorway, a lantern in her hand. The expression on the woman's fox-thin face seemed equally pity and unease.

'Liat-kya,' she said. 'May I come in?'

'If you like,' Liat said.

The lantern cast a thousand broken shadows as Kiyan moved across the room. The tapestries on the wall, hidden so long in darkness, seemed to breathe. Liat considered the s.p.a.ce in which she had been for so many days without seeing it. It was small. The furnis.h.i.+ngs were costly and exquisite. It didn't matter. Kiyan went to the wall sconces, taking down the pale wax candles, touching them to the lantern flame, putting them back in their places glowing. The soft light slowly filled the air, the shadows smoothed away.

'I heard you had missed your breakfast,' Kiyan said, her voice cheerful and forced, as she lit the last of the candles.

'And my dinner,' Liat said.

'Yes, I heard that too.'

The lantern made a clunking sound - iron on wood - as Kiyan set it on the bedside table. She sat on the mattress at Liat's side. Otah's wife looked weary and drawn. Perhaps the andat's price had been worse for her than it had for Liat. Perhaps it was something else.

'They've put the Galts in the southern tunnels,' Kiyan said. 'There's almost no room. I don't know how it will be when the worst of the cold comes. And spring . . . we'll have to start sending people south and east as soon as it's safe to travel.'

'Good that so many died,' Liat said, and saw the other woman flinch. Now that she'd said it, the words did seem pointed. Liat hadn't meant them to be; she only couldn't be bothered to weigh the effect of her actions just now. Kiyan fumbled in her sleeve and drew out a small package wrapped in waxed cloth. Liat could smell the raisins and honey. She knew it should have been appetizing. Without speaking, Kiyan placed the little cake on the bedside table and rose to leave.

'Stop it,' Liat said, sitting up on her bed.

Otah's wife, the mother of his children, turned back, her hands in a pose of query.

'Stop moving around me like I'm made of eggsh.e.l.l,' Liat said. 'It's not in your power to keep me from breaking. I've broken. Move on.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't-'

'Didn't what? Didn't mean to throw your boy and mine onto a company of Galtic swords? Didn't mean to have your daughter play find-me-find-you until it wasn't safe to flee? Well, there's a relief. And here I thought you wanted both our children dead instead of just mine.'

Kiyan's face hardened. Liat felt the rage billow in her like she was a sheet thrown over a fire. It ate her and it held her up.

'I didn't mean to treat you as if you were fragile,' Kiyan said. 'We both know I didn't mean for Nayiit-'

'Didn't mean for him to be a threat to your precious Danat? Didn't mean to let him be a threat to your family? He wasn't. He never was. I offered to have him take the brand.'

'I know,' Kiyan said. 'Otah told me.'

But she might as well not have spoken. Liat could no more stop the words now than will the blood to stop flowing from a wound.

'I offered to take him away. I didn't want him fighting to be the Khai any more than you did. I wouldn't have put him in danger, and he would never have hurt Danat. He would never have hurt your boy. He wouldn't have hurt anyone. It's your mewling half-dead son that's caused this. If he'd been able to fight off a cough, Otah would never have kept Nayiit from the brand. Nayiit would never have fought, never have hurt anybody's children. He was . . . he was . . .'

The tears came again. She couldn't say what would have come. She couldn't say that Danat and Nayiit would never have come to face one another as custom demanded. Perhaps in the years ahead the G.o.ds would have pitted them against each other. If the world was what it had been. If things hadn't changed. Sobs as violent as sickness racked her, and she found Kiyan's arms around her, her own fists full of the soft wool of the woman's robe, her screams echoing as if by will alone she could pull the stones down and bury them all.

Time changed its nature. The sorrow and rage and the physical ache of her heart went on forever and only a moment. The only measure was that the candles had burned a quarter of their length before the fit pa.s.sed, and exhaustion reclaimed her again. She was embarra.s.sed to see the damp spot she had left on Kiyan's shoulder, but when she tried to smooth it away, Kiyan only took her hand, lacing their fingers together like half-grown girls trading gossip at a dance. Liat allowed it.

'You know you can stay here,' Kiyan said.

'You know I can't.'

'I only meant you'd be welcome,' Kiyan said. Then a moment later, 'What will you do when the thaw comes?'

'Go south,' Liat said. 'Go to Saraykeht. See what's left. I may still have a grandson. I can hope it. And better that he not lose a father and grandmother both.'

'Nayiit was a good man,' Kiyan said.

'He was nothing of the sort. He was a charming b.a.s.t.a.r.d who fled his own family and slept with half the women between here and Saraykeht. But I loved him.'

'He died saving my son,' Kiyan said. 'He's a hero.'

'That doesn't help me.'

'I know it,' Kiyan said, and with a distant surprise, Liat found herself smiling.

'Aren't you going to tell me it will pa.s.s?' Liat asked.

'Will it?'

The tunnels below Machi had their own weather - a system of warm winds and cold; dry and damp. Sometimes, if no one was speaking, if there were no words to say, Liat could hear it like a breath. Like a long, low, endless exhalation.

'I will never stop missing him,' Liat said. 'I want him back.'

Kiyan nodded, and sat there with her, keeping the vigil for another night as outside autumn fell into winter and winter crawled toward spring. The world slowly changing.

'I understand your son has fallen ill?'

Otah's first impulse, unthinking as a reflex, was to deny it. Balasar Gice was a small-framed man, unimposing until he spoke, and then charming and warm enough to fill a room with his ironic half-smile. He was the man who had brought down everything. Thousands of people who were alive in the spring were now dead or enslaved through this man's ambition. Otah's first impulse was to keep anything about Danat away from the man, because he was a Galt and the enemy.

His second impulse, as unreasoned as the first, was to tell Balasar the truth, because in the few days since the surrender, he'd begun to like the man.

'It's a cough,' Otah said. 'He's always had it, but it had been less recently. We'd hoped it was gone, but . . .'

He took a pose expressing regret and powerlessness before the G.o.ds. Balasar seemed to take the sense of it.

'I have medics with me,' the Galt said, gesturing over his back at the wide, dark stone arch that led from the great vaulted chamber in which they now met toward the south and the tunnels given over to the Galtic army. 'They have more experience with sewing men's fingers back on, but they might be of use. If you'd accept them.'

Otah hesitated, his unease was.h.i.+ng back over him, then forced himself to smile.

'That's very kind of you,' he said, neither agreeing to anything nor refusing. The Galt shrugged.

'And Sinja?' he asked.

'He sends his regards,' Otah said, 'but he thought it best to withdraw from company. Fear of reprisal.'

'He's not wrong,' Balasar said. 'That man was many things, but he wasn't stupid.'

'I'm told your men have found places in the tunnels.'

'It's a tight fit,' the Galt said. 'And there are going to be problems. You can't make a peace just by saying it. People are angry. Yours and mine both. They're grieving, and grieving people aren't sane. There haven't been any fights yet, but there will be.'

'I know it,' Otah said. 'We'll keep them apart as best we can. I've given orders.'

'I have too. As long as we're both clear, we can keep it from growing out of control. At least before the thaw.'

'And after that?'

The Galt sighed and nodded, as if agreeing with the question. His gaze traveled up the walls, tracing the blue tile and the gold. Otah gestured, and a servant boy scuttled forward from the shadows and poured them each more tea. The Galt smiled at him, and the boy smiled back. Balasar took his bowl of tea and blew across it before he spoke.

'I can't stop the High Council from coming back,' Balasar said. 'I'm their general for this season. I don't own the army. And . . . and since this campaign ended with the gelding of every man who would cast the vote, I doubt my voice will carry much with them.'

Otah took a pose that accepted this statement.

'There's an age of war coming for you,' Balasar said. 'You still have some of the richest cities in the world, and you're still ripe for plunder. Even if we don't come, there's Eymond, Eddensea, the Westlands. There will be pirates from Bakta and Obar State.'

'I'll address those problems. And the others,' Otah said with a confidence he didn't feel. Balasar let the issue drop. After a moment's silence, Otah felt himself moved to ask the question he had intended to leave be. 'What will you do? Go back to Galt?'

'Yes,' Balasar said. 'I'll go back, but I don't think it would be wise for me to stay. I don't know, Most High. I had plans, but none of them involved being hated and disgraced. So I suppose I'll have to make others. What do you do when you've finished your life's work and haven't died?'

'I don't know,' Otah said, and Balasar laughed.

'With the things still ahead of you, Lord Emperor, you likely never will. That's your fate.' Balasar's gaze seemed to soften - melancholy creeping in at the corners of his eyes. 'There are worse, though.'

Otah sipped his tea. The leaves were perfectly brewed, neither weak nor bitter. Balasar raised his own cup in a wordless salute.

'Shall we do this thing?' Otah asked.

'I was wondering,' Balasar said. 'I was afraid you might reconsider. Burning a library's a terrible thing.'

For a moment, Otah saw the cold eyes of Sterile, its feminine smile, heard its voice. The memory of the physicians' cots filled with row upon row of women in pain possessed him for the length of a heartbeat and was gone.