An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) Page 11

  “I suppose not,” Maati agreed.

  The three of them walked along the wooded path that led to the palaces of the Khai. The stone towers of Machi rose high above the city, bright with the light of morning, and the smoke of the forges plumed up from the metalworkers’ district in the south. Maati kept company with Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft as far as the compound of House Radaani, where a litter and donkeys were waiting. They took poses of farewell, even the andat, and Maati sat on the steps of the compound to watch them lumber away to the North.

  In the days since he, Otah, and Liat had broken the news to Cehmai, Maati had found himself less and less able to do his work. The familiar stacks and shelves and galleries of the library were uncomforting. The songs of the singing slaves in the gardens seemed to pull at him when he caught a phrase of their melodies. He found himself seeking out food when he wasn’t hungry, wine when he had no thirst. He walked the streets of the city and the paths of the palaces more than he had in living memory, and even when his knees ached, he found himself unconsciously rising to pace the rooms of his apartments. Restless. He had become restless.

  In part it was the knowledge that Liat and Nayiit were in the city, in the palaces even. At any time, he could seek them out, invite them to eat with him or talk with him. Nayiit, whom he had not known since the boy was shorter than little Danat was now. Liat, whose breath and body he had once said he would never be whole without. They were here at last.

  In part it was the anticipation of a courier from the Dai-kvo, whether about his own work or Liat’s case against the Galts. And of the two, he found the Galtic issue the lesser. Liat’s argument was enough to convince him that they did have a rogue poet, but the chances that he would bind a new andat seemed remote. There in the middle of Galt without references, without the Dai-kvo or his fellow poets to work through the fine points of the binding, the most likely thing was that the man would try, fail, and die badly. It was a problem that would solve itself. And if the Dai-kvo took Liat’s view and turned the andat loose against Galt, the chances of tragedy coming to the cities of the Khaiem was even less.

  No, his unease came more from the prospect of his own success. He had lived so long as a failure that the prospect of success disturbed him. He knew that his heart should have been singing. He should have been drunk with pride.

  And yet he found himself waking in the night, knotted with anger. In the darkness of his room, he would wake with the night candle over half burned, and stare at the netting above his bed as it shifted in barely felt drafts. The targets of his rage seemed to shift; one night he might wake with a list of the wrongs done him by Liat, the next with the conviction that he had suffered insult at the hands of Otah or the Dai-kvo. With the coming of dawn, the fit would pass, insubstantial as a dream, the complaints that had haunted him in darkness thin as cheesecloth in the light.

  And still, he was restless.

  He made his way slowly through the palaces and out to the city itself. The black-cobbled streets were alive with people. Carts of vegetables and early berries wound from the low towns toward the markets in the center of the city. Lambs on rough hemp leads trotted in ignorance toward the butchers’ stalls. And wherever he went, a path was made for him, people took poses of respect and welcome and he returned them by habit. He paused at a cart and bought a meal of hot peppered beef and sweet onions wrapped in waxed paper. The young man running the cart refused to accept his lengths of copper. Another small amenity granted to the other poet of Machi. Maati took a pose of thanks as best he could with one hand full of the food.

  The towers of Machi seemed to touch the lowest clouds. It had been years since Maati had gone up one of the great towers. He remembered the platform swaying, its great arm-thick chains clanking against the stones as he rose. That far above the city, he had felt he was looking out from a mountain peak—the valley spread below so vast he’d imagined he could almost see the ocean. Not remotely truth, but what it felt like all the same. Looking at the towers now, he remembered what Cehmai had said. If there were an earthquake, the towers would certainly fall. For an instant, he imagined the stones pattering down in a deadly rain, the long, slumped piles of rabble that would lie where they fell. The corpses of giants.

  He shook himself, pushing the darkness away, and turned back toward the palaces. He wondered, as he trundled toward the library, where Nayiit was today. He had seen the boy—a man old enough to have a child of his own, and still in Maati’s mind a boy—several times since his arrival. Dinners, dances, formal meetings. They had not yet had a conversation as father and son. Maati wondered whether he wanted them to, or if the reminder of what might have been would be too uncomfortable for them both. Perhaps he could track the boy down, show him through the city for a day. Or through the tunnels. There were a few teahouses still in business down in their winter quarters. That was the sort of thing only a local would know. Maybe the boy would be interested.…

  He paused as he rounded the slow curving path toward the library. Two forms were sitting on its wide stone steps, but neither of them was Nayiit. The older, rounder woman wore robes of seafoam green embroidered with yellow. Liat’s hair was still as dark as when she’d been a girl sitting beside him on a cart leaving Saraykeht behind them. Her head still took the same just-off angle when she was speaking to someone to whom she was trying especially to be kind.

  The younger looked thin and coltish beside her. Her robes were deep blue shot with white, and Eiah had her hair up, held in place with thick silvered pins that glittered even from here. She was the first to catch sight of him, and her thin arm rose, waving him nearer. He was too thick about the belly these days to trot or he would have.

  “We’ve been waiting for you,” Eiah said as he drew near. Her tone was accusing. Liat glanced up at him, amused.

  “I was seeing Cehmai off on his journey,” Maati said. “He’s going to the Radaani mines in the North. A new vein, I think. But I did take the longer way back. If I’d known you were waiting, I’d have been here sooner.”

  Eiah considered this, and then without word or gesture visibly accepted the apology.

  “We’ve been talking about marriage,” Liat said.

  “Did you know that Liat-cha never got married to anyone? Nayiit’s her son. She had a baby, but she’s never been wed?”

  “Well, the two things aren’t perfectly related, you know,” Maati began, but Eiah rolled her eyes and took a pose that unasked the question.

  “Eiah-cha and I were going to the high gardens. I’ve packed some bread and cheese. We thought you might care to join us?”

  “You’ve already eaten,” Eiah said, pointing to the waxed paper in his hand.

  “This?” Maati said. “No, I was feeding this to the pigeons. Wait a moment, I’ll get a jug of wine and some bowls.…”

  “I’m old enough to drink wine,” Eiah said.

  “Three bowls, then,” Maati said. “Just give me a moment.”

  He walked back to his apartments, feeling something very much like relief. The afternoon trapped with old scrolls and codices, books and frail maps was banished. He was saved from it. He threw the waxed paper with the remaining onions into a corner where the servants would clean it, took a thick earthenware jug of wine off his shelves, and dropped three small wine bowls into his sleeve. On his way back out to the steps, where he was certain no one could see him, he trotted.

  DANAT’S COUGH had returned.

  Otah had filled his day playing Khai Machi. He had reviewed the preparations for the Grand Audience he was already past due holding. There was an angry letter from the Khai Tan-Sadar asking for an explanation of Otah’s decision not to take his youngest daughter as one of his wives that he responded to with as much aplomb as he could muster. His Master of Stone—responsible for keeping the books of the city—had discovered that two of the forms from which silver lengths were struck had been tampered with and reported the progress of his investigation into the matter. The widow of Adaiit Kamau demanded an audi
ence, insisting again that her husband had been murdered and demanding justice in his name. The priests asked for money for the temple and the procession of the beasts. A young playwright, son of Oiad How of House How, had composed an epic in the honor to the Khai Machi, and asked permission to perform it. Permission and funding. The representative of the tinsmiths petitioned for a just distribution of coal, as the ironworkers had been taking more than their share. The ironworkers’ explaining that they worked iron, not—sneering and smiling as if Otah would understand—tin. And on and on and on until Otah was more than half tempted to grab a passing servant, put him on the black lacquer chair, and let the city take its chances. And at the end, with all the weight of the city and the impending death of Galt besides, the thing that he could not face was that Danat’s cough had returned.

  The nursery glowed by the light of the candles. Kiyan sat on the raised bed, talking softly to their son. Great iron statues of strange, imagined beasts had been kept in the fire grates all day and pulled out when night fell, and as he quietly walked forward, Otah could feel the heat radiating from them. The physician’s assistant—a young man with a serious expression—took a respectful pose and walked quietly from the room, leaving the family alone.

  Otah stepped up to the bedside. Danat’s eyes, half closed in drowse, shifted toward him and a smile touched Otah’s mouth.

  “I got sick again, Papa-kya,” he said. His voice was rough and low; the familiar sign of a hard day.

  “Don’t talk, sweet,” Kiyan said, smoothing Danat’s forehead with the tips of her fingers. “You’ll start it again.”

  “Yes,” Otah said, sitting across from his wife, taking his son’s hand. “I heard. But you’ve been sick before, and you’ve gotten better. You’ll get better again. It’s good for boys to be a bit ill when they’re young. It gets all the hardest parts out of the way early. Then they can be strong old men.”

  “Tell me a story?” Danat asked.

  Otah took a breath, his mind grasping for a children’s story. He tried to recall being in this room himself or one like it. He had been, when he’d been Danat’s age. Someone had held him when he’d been ill, had told him stories to distract him. But everything in his life before he’d been disowned and sent to the school existed in the blur of half-memory and dream.

  “Papa-kya’s tired, sweet,” Kiyan said. “Let Mama tell you about…”

  “No!” Danat cried, his face pulling in—mouth tight, brows thunderously low. “I want Papa-kya—”

  “It’s all right,” Otah said. “I’m not so tired I can’t tell my own boy a story.”

  Kiyan smiled at him, her eyes amused and apologetic both. I tried to spare you.

  “Once, back before the Empire, when the world was very new,” Otah said, then paused. “There, ah. There was a goat.”

  The goat—whose name was coincidentally also Danat—went on to meet a variety of magical creatures and have long, circuitous conversations to no apparent point or end until Otah saw his son’s eyes shut and his breath grow deep and steady. Kiyan rose and silently snuffed all but the night candle. The room filled with the scent of spent wicks. Otah let go of his son’s hand and quietly pulled the netting closed. In the near-darkness, Danat’s eyelids seemed darker, smudged with kohl. His skin was smooth and brown as eggshell. Kiyan touched Otah’s shoulder and motioned with her gaze to the door. He laced his fingers in hers and together they walked to the hallway.

  The physician’s assistant sat on a low stool, a bowl of rice and fish in his hands.

  “I will be here for the night, Most High,” the assistant said as Otah paused before him. “My teacher expects that the boy will sleep soundly, but if he wakes, I will be here.”

  Otah took a pose expressing gratitude. It was a humbling thing for a Khai to do before a servant, even one as skilled as this. The physician’s assistant bowed deeply in response. The walk to their own rooms was a short one—down one hallway, up a wide flight of stairs worked in marble and silver, and then the gauntlet of their own servants. The evening’s meal was set out for them—quail glazed with pork fat and honey, pale bread with herbed butter, fresh trout, iced apples. More food than any two people could eat.

  “It isn’t in his chest,” Kiyan said as she lifted the trout’s pale flesh from delicate, translucent bones. “His color is always good. His lips never blue at all. The physician didn’t hear any water when he breathes, and he can blow up a pig’s bladder as well as I could.”

  “And all that’s good?” Otah said. “He can’t run across a room without coughing until his head aches.”

  “All that’s better than the alternative,” Kiyan said. “They don’t know what it is. They give him teas that make him sleep, and hope that his body’s wise enough to mend itself.”

  “This has been going on too long. It’s been almost a year since he was really well.”

  “I know it,” Kiyan said, and the weariness in her voice checked Otah’s frustration. “Really, love, I’m quite clear.”

  “I’m sorry, Kiyan-kya,” he said. “It’s just…”

  He shook his head.

  “Hard feeling powerless?” she said gently. Otah nodded. Kiyan sighed softly, a sympathy for his pain. Then, “A goat?”

  “It was what came to mind.”

  After the meal, after their hands had been washed for them in silver bowls, after Otah had suffered yet another change of robes, Kiyan kissed him and retreated to her rooms. Otah stepped down from his palace, instructed the retinue of servants that he wished to be left alone, and made his way west, toward the library. The sun had long since slipped behind the mountains, but the sky remained a bright gray, the clouds touched with rose and gold. Spring would soon give way to summer, the long, bright days and brief nights. Still, it was not so early in the season that lanterns didn’t glow from the windows that he passed. Stars glittered in the east as the night rose. The library itself was dark, but candles burned in Maati’s apartments, and Otah made his way down the path.

  Voices came to him, raised in laughter. A man’s and a woman’s, and both familiar as memory. They sat on chairs set close together. In the yellow candlelight, Maati’s cheeks looked rosy. Liat’s hair had escaped its bun, locks of it tumbling across her brow, down the curve of her neck. The air smelled of mulling spices and wine, and Eiah lay on a couch, one long, thin arm cast over her eyes. Liat’s eyes went wide when she caught sight of him, and Maati turned toward the door to see what had startled her.

  “Otah-kvo!” he said, waving him forward. “Come in. Come in. It’s my fault. I’ve kept your daughter too long. I should have sent her home sooner. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Not at all,” Otah said, stepping in. “I’ve come for your help actually.”

  Maati took a pose of query. His hands were not perfectly steady, and Liat stifled a giggle. Both of them were more than a little drunk. A bowl of warmed wine sat on the edge of the brazier, a silver serving cup hooked to the rim. Otah glanced at it, and Maati waved him on. There were no bowls, so Otah drank from the serving cup.

  “What can I do, Most High?” Maati asked with a grin that was for the most part friendly.

  “I need a book. Something with children’s stories in it. Fables, or light epics. History, if it’s well enough written. Danat’s asking me to tell stories, and I don’t really know any.”

  Liat chuckled and shook her head, but Maati nodded in understanding. Otah sat beside his sleeping daughter while Maati considered. The wine was rich and deep, and the spices alone made Otah’s head swim a little.

  “What about the one from the Dancer’s Court?” Liat said. “The one with the stories about the half-Bakta boy who intrigued for the Emperor.”

  Maati pursed his lips.

  “They’re a bit bloody, some of them,” he said.

  “Danat’s a boy. He’ll love them. Besides, you read them to Nayiit without any lasting damage,” Liat said. “Those and the green book. The one that was all political allegories where people turned in
to light or sank into the ground.”

  “The Silk Hunter’s Dreams,” Maati said. “That’s a thought. I have a copy of that one too, where I can put my hand on it. Only, Otah-kvo, don’t tell him the one with the crocodile. Nayiit-kya wouldn’t sleep for days after I told him that one.”

  “I’ll trust you,” Otah said.

  “Wait,” Maati said, and with a grunt he pulled himself to standing. “You two stay here. I’ll be back with it in three heartbeats.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell on Otah and Liat. Otah turned to consider Eiah’s sleeping face. Liat shifted in her chair.

  “She’s a lovely girl,” Liat said softly. “We spent the day together, the three of us, and I was sure she’d wear us thin by the end of it. Still, we’re the ones that lasted longest, eh?”

  “She doesn’t have a head for wine yet,” Otah said.

  “We didn’t give her wine,” Liat said, then chuckled. “Well, not much anyway.”

  “If the worst she does is sneak away to drink with the pair of you, I’ll be the luckiest man alive,” Otah said. As if hearing him, Eiah sighed in her sleep and shifted away, pressing her face to the cushions.

  “She looks like her mother,” Liat said. “Her face is that same shape. The eyes are your color, though. She’ll be stunning when she’s older. She’ll break hearts. But I suppose they all do. Ours if no one else’s.”

  Otah looked up. Liat’s expression had darkened, the shadows of lanternlight gathering on the curves of her face. It had been another lifetime, it seemed, when Otah had first known her. Only four years older than Eiah was now. And he’d been younger than Nayiit. Babies, it seemed. Too young to know what they were doing, or how precarious the world truly was. It hadn’t seemed that way at the time, though. Otah remembered it all with a terrible clarity.

  “You’re thinking of Saraykeht,” she said.