An Autumn War (18 page)

Otah had heard all these arguments, had made more than one of them himself. And still night found him here, reading the letters and searching for the thoughts behind them. It was like hearing a new voice in a choir. Somewhere, someone new had entered the strategies of the Gaits, and these scraps of paper and pale ink were all that Otah had to work out what that might mean.

Ile could as well have looked for words written in the air.

A scratching came at the door, followed by a servant boy. The boy took a pose of obeisance and Otah replied automatically.

"The woman you sent for, Most High. Liat Chokavi."

"Bring her in. And bring some wine and two bowls, then see we aren't disturbed."

"But, Most High-"

"We'll pour our own wine," Otah snapped, and regretted it instantly as the boy's face went pale. Otah pressed down the impulse to apologize. It was beneath the dignity of the Khai Machi to apologize for rudeness-one of the thousand things he'd learned when he first took his father's chair. One of the thousand missteps he had made. The boy backed out of the room, and Otah turned to the letters, folding them hack in their order and slipping them into his sleeve. The boy preceded Liat into the room, a tray with a silver carafe and two hand-molded bowls of granite in his hands. Liat sat on the low divan, her eyes on the floor in something that looked like respect but might only have been fear.

The door closed, and Otah poured a generous portion of wine into each bowl. Liat took the one he proffered.

"It's lovely work," Liat said, considering the stone.

"It's the andat," Otah said. "He turns the quarry rock into something like clay, and the potters shape it. One of the many wonders of Machi. Have you seen the bridge that spans the river? A single stone poured over molds and shaped by hand five generations hack. And there's the towers. Really, we're a city of petty miracles."

"You sound hitter," she said, looking up at last. Her eyes were the same tea-and-milk color he remembered. Otah sighed as he sat across from her. Outside, the wind murmured.

"I'm not," he said. "Only tired."

"I knew you wouldn't end as a seafront laborer," she said.

"Yes, well . . ." Otah shook his head and sipped from the howl. It was strong wine, and it left his mouth feeling clean and his chest warm. "It's time we spoke about Nayiit."

Liat nodded, took a long drink, and held the cup out for more. Otah poured.

"It's all my fault," she said as she sat hack. "I should never have brought him here. I never saw it. I never saw you in him. He was always just himself. If I'd known that ... that he resembled you quite so closely, I wouldn't have."

"Late for that," Otah said.

Liat sighed her agreement and looked up at him. It was hard to believe that they had been lovers once. The girl he had known hack then hadn't had gray in her hair, weariness in her eyes. And the boy he'd been was as distant as snow in summer. Yes, two people had kissed once, had touched each other, had created a child who had grown to manhood. And Otah remembered some of those moments nowshowering at the barracks while she spoke to him, the ink blocks at the desk in her cell at the compound of House Wilsin, the feel of a young body pressed against his own, when his flesh had also been new and unmarked. If those days long past had been foolish or wrong, the only evidence was the price they both paid now. It hadn't seemed so at the time.

"I've been thinking of it," Liat said. "I haven't told him. I wasn't sure how you wanted to address the problem. But I think the wisest thing to do is to speak with him and with Maati, and then have Nayiitkya take the brand. I know it's not something done with firstborn sons, but it's still a repudiation of his right to become Khai. It will make it clear to the world that he doesn't have designs on your chair."

"'T'hat isn't what I'd choose," Otah said. His words were slow and careful. "I'm afraid my son may die."

She caught her breath. It was hardly there, no more than a tremor in the air she took in, but he heard it.

"Itani," she said, using the name of the boy he'd been in Saraykeht, "please. I'll swear on anything you choose. Nayiit's no threat to Danat. It was only the Galts that brought us here. I'm not looking to put my son in your chair...."

Otah put down his bowl and took a pose that asked for her silence. Her face pale, she went quiet.

"I don't mean that," he said softly. "I mean that I don't ... Gods. I don't know how to say this. Danat's not well. His lungs are fragile, and the winters here are bad. We lose people to the cold every year. Not just the old or the weak. Young people. Healthy ones. I'm afraid that Danat may dic, and there'll be no one to take my place. The city would tear itself apart."

"But ... you want ..."

"I haven't done a good job as Khai. I haven't been able to put the houses of the utkhaiem together except in their distrust of me and resentment of Kiyan. There's been twice it came near violence, and I only held the city in place by luck. But keeping Machi safe is my responsibility. I want Nayiit unbranded, in case ... in case he becomes my successor.

Liat's mouth hung open, her eyes were wide. A stray lock of hair hung down the side of her face, three white hairs dancing in and out among the black. He felt the faint urge-echo of a habit long forgotten-to brush it back.

"'There," Otah said and picked up his wine bowl. "There, I've said it."

"I'm sorry," Liat said, and Otah took a pose accepting her sympathy without knowing quite why she was offering it. She looked down at her hands. The silence between them was profound but not uncomfortable; he felt no need to speak, to fill the void with words. Liat drank her wine, Otah his. The wind muttered to itself and to the stones of the city.

"It's not a job I'd want," Liat said. "Khai NIachi."

"It's all power and no freedom," Otah said. "If Nayiit were to have it, he'd likely curse my name. There are a thousand different things to attend to, and every one of them as serious as bone to someone. You can't do it all."

"I know how it feels," Liat said. "I only have a trading house to look after, and there's days I wish that it would all go away. Granted, I have men who work the books and the negotiations and appeals before the low judges and the utkhaiem ..

"I have all the low judges and the utkhaiem appealing to me," Otah said. "It's never enough."

""I'here's always the descent into decadence and self-absorption," Liat said, smiling. It was only half a joke. "They say the Khai Chaburi- 'Ian only gets sober long enough to bed his latest wife."

"Tcnipting," Otah said, "but somewhere between taking the chair to protect Kiyan and tonight, it became my city. I came from here, and even if I'm not much good at what I do, I'm what they have."

""That makes sense," Liat said.

"Does it? It doesn't to me."

Liat put down her bowl and rose. He thought her gaze spoke of determination and melancholy, but perhaps the latter was only his own. She stepped close and kissed him on the check, a firm peck like an aunt greeting a favorite nephew.

"Amat Kyaan would have understood," she said. "I won't tell Nayiit about this. If anyone asks, I'll deny it unless I hear differently from you."

""I'hank you, Liatcha."

She stepped back. Otah felt a terrible weariness bearing him down, but forced a charming smile. She shook her head.

""Thank you, Most High."

"I don't think I've done anything worth thanking me."

"You let my son live," Liat said. "That was one of the decisions you had to make, wasn't it?"

She took his silence as an answer, smiled again, and left him alone. Otah poured the last of the wine from carafe to howl, and then watched the light die in the west as he finished it; watched the stars come out, and the full moon rise. With every day, the light lasted longer. It would not always. High summer would come, and even when the days were at their warmest, when the trees and vines grew heavy with fruit, the nights would already have started their slow expansion. He wondered whether Danat would get to play outside in the autumn, whether the boy would be able to spend a long afternoon lying in the sunlight before the snows came and drove them all down to the tunnels. He was raising a child to live in darkness and planning for his death.

There had been a time Otah had been young and sure enough of himself to kill. He had taken the life of a good man because they both had known the price that would have to be paid if he lived. He had been able to do that.

But he had seen forty-eight summers now. There were likely fewer seasons before him than there were behind. He'd fathered three children and raised two. He could no longer hold himself apart from the world. It was his to see that the city was a place that Danat and Eiah and children like them could live safe and cared for until they too grew old and uncertain.

He looked at the swirl of red at the bottom of his bowl. Too much wine, and too much memory. It was making him maudlin. He stopped at his private chambers and allowed the servants to switch his robes to something less formal. Kiyan lay on a couch, her eyes closed, her breath deep and regular. Otah didn't wake her, only slid one of the books from his bedside table into the sleeve of his robe and kissed her temple as he left.

The physician's assistant was seated outside Danat's door. The man took a pose of greeting. Otah responded in kind and then nodded to the closed door.

"Is he asleep?" he whispered.

"He's been waiting for you."

Otah slipped into the room. Candles flickered above two great iron statues that flanked the bed-hunting cats with the wings of hawks. Soot darkened their wings from a day spent in the fire grates, and they radiated the warmth that kept the cool night breeze at bay. Danat sat up in his bed, pulling aside the netting.

"Papa-kya!" he said. He didn't cough, didn't sound frail. It was a good day, then. Otah felt a tightness he had not known he carried loosen its grip on his heart. He pulled his robes up around his knees and sat on his son's bed. "Did you bring it?" Danat asked.

Otah drew the book from his sleeve, and the boy's face lit so bright, he might have almost read by him.

"Now, you lie back," Otah said. "I've come to help you sleep, not keep you up all night."

I)anat plopped down onto his pillow, looking like the farthest thing from sleep. Otah opened the book, turning through the ancient pages until he found his place.

"In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Bch, there came to court a boy whose blood was half Bakta, his skin the color of soot, and his mind as clever as any man who has ever lived...."

"THIS IS SPRING?" NAYIIT SAID AS THEY WALKED. THE WIND HAD BLOWN away even the constant scent of forge smoke, and brought in a mild chill. Mild, at least, to Maati. Nayiit wore woolen robes, thick enough that they had hardly rippled. Maati's own were made for summer, and pressed against him, leaving, he was sure, no doubt to the shape of his legs and belly. He wished he'd thought to wear something heavier too.

"It's always like this," Maati said. "There's one last death throe, and then the heat will come on. Still nothing like the summer cities, even at its worst. I remember in Saraykeht, I had a trail of sweat down my hack for weeks at a time."

"We call that pleasantly warm," Nayiit said, and Maati chuckled.

In truth, the chill, moonless night was hardly anything to him now. For over a decade, he'd lived through the bone-cracking cold of Machi winters. He'd seen snowdrifts so high that even the second-story doors couldn't be opened. He'd been out on days so cold the men coated their faces with thick-rendered fat to keep their skin from freezing. "There was no way to describe those brief, bitter days to someone who had never seen them. So instead, he told Nayiit of the life below ground, the tunnels of Machi, the bathhouses hidden deep below the surface, the streets and apartments and warehouses, the glitter of winter dew turning to frost on the stone of the higher passages. He spoke of the choirs who took the long, empty weeks to compose new songs and practice old ones-weeks spent in the flickering, buttery light of oil lamps surrounded by music.

"I'm amazed people don't stay down there," Nayiit said as they turned a corner and left the white and silver paths of the palaces behind for the black-cobbled streets of the city proper. "It sounds like one huge, warm bed."

"It has its pleasures," Maati agreed. "But people get thirsty for sunlight. As soon as they can stand it, people start making treks up to the streets. "They'll go up and lie naked on an ice sheet sometimes just to drink in a little more light. And the river freezes, so the children will go skating on it. There's only about seven weeks when no one comes up. Here. This street. There's a sweet wine they serve at this place that's like nothing you've ever tasted."

It was less awkward than he'd expected, spending the evening with Nayiit. The first time the boy had come to the library alone-tentative and uncertain-Maati had been acutely aware of Liat's absence. She had always been there, even in the ancient days before they had parted. Maati knew how to speak with Liat whether she was alone or with their son, and Nlaati had discovered quickly how much he'd relied upon her to mediate between him and the boy. The silences had been awkward, the conversations forced. Nlaati had said something of how pleased he was that Nayiit had come to Machi and felt in the end that he'd only managed to embarrass them both.

It was going to the teahouses and bathhouses and epics that let them speak at last. Once there was a hit of shared experience, a toehold, Maati was able to make conversation, and Nayiit was an expert listener to stories. For several nights in a row, Maati found himself telling tales of the Dai-kvo and the school, the history of Machi and the perils he had faced years ago when he'd been sent to hunt Otah-kvo down. In the telling, he discovered that, to his profound surprise, his life had been interesting.

The platform rested at the base of one of the lower towers, chains thick as a man's arm clanking against it and against the stone as they rose up into the sky like smoke. Nayiit paused to stare up at it, and Maati followed his gaze. The looming, inhuman bulk of the tower, and beyond it the full moon hanging like a lantern of rice paper in the black sky.