An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) Page 14

  Eustin was waiting for him in the entrance hall.

  “There’s someone wants a word with you, sir.”

  Balasar paused.

  “The Khaiate captain. He wanted to speak about fallback plans for his men.”

  Eustin nodded to a side room. There was distrust in his expression, and Balasar waited a long moment for him to speak. Eustin added nothing. Balasar went to the wide, dark oaken door, knocked once, and went in. It was a preparation room for servants—muddy boots cast beside benches and waiting to be scraped clean, cloaks of all weights and colors hung from pegs. It smelled of wet dog, though there was no animal present. The captain sat on a stool tilted back against the wall, cleaning his nails with a knife.

  “Captain Ajutani,” Balasar said.

  The stool came down, and the captain rose, sheathing his blade and bowing in the same motion.

  “I appreciate the time, General,” he said. “I know you’ve a great deal on your mind just now.”

  “I’m always available,” Balasar said. “Though the surroundings are…”

  “Yes. Your man Eustin seemed to think it more appropriate for me to wait here. I’m not sure he likes me.” The captain was more amused than offended, so Balasar also smiled and shrugged.

  “Your men are in place?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes. Broken into groups of three or four, each assigned to one of your sergeants. Except for myself, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Only I wanted to ask something of you, General. A favor of sorts.”

  Balasar crossed his arms and nodded for the man to continue.

  “If it fails—if our friend Riaan doesn’t do his magic trick well enough—don’t kill them. My boys. Don’t have them killed.”

  “Why would I do that?” Balasar asked.

  “Because it’s the right thing,” Sinja said. The amusement was gone from the man’s eyes. He was in earnest now. “I’m not an idiot, General. If it happens that the binding fails, you’ll be standing here in Aren with an army the size of a modest city. People have already noticed it, and the curiosity of the Khaiem is the last thing you’d want. They’d still have their andat, and all you’d have is explanations to give. You’ll turn North and make all those stories about conquering the whole of the Westlands to the border with Eddensea true just to make all this—” The captain gestured to the door at Balasar’s back. “—seem plausible. All I ask is, let us go with you. If it happens that you have to keep to this coast and not the cities of the Khaiem, I’ll re-form the group and lead them wherever you like.”

  “I wouldn’t kill them,” Balasar said.

  “It would be dangerous, letting them go back home. Stories about how they were set to be interpreters and guides? Not one of them knows the Westlands except the part we walked through to get here. If the Khaiem are wondering whether you had some other plan to start with…”

  Sinja raised his hands, palms up as if he were offering Balasar the truth resting there. Balasar stepped close, putting his own hands below the captain’s and curling the other man’s fingers closed.

  “I won’t kill them,” Balasar said. “They’re my men now, and I don’t kill my own. You can tell them that if you’d like. And that aside, Riaan isn’t going to fail us.”

  Sinja looked down, his head shifting as if he were weighing something.

  “I can be sure,” Balasar said, answering the unasked question.

  “I’ve never seen one of these before,” Sinja said. “Have you? I mean, I assume there’s some ceremony, and he’ll do something. If there was an andat beside him at the end, you’d have proof, but this thing you’re doing…there’s nothing to show, is there? So how will you know?”

  “It would be embarrassing to walk into Nantani and have the andat waiting to greet us,” Balasar agreed. “But don’t let it concern you. Riaan isn’t going to mumble into the air and send us all off to die. I’ll be certain of that.”

  “You have a runner in Nantani? Someone who can bring word when the andat’s vanished?”

  “Don’t concern yourself, Sinja,” Balasar said. “Just be ready to move when I say and in the direction I choose.”

  “Yes, General.”

  Balasar turned and strode to the door. He could see Eustin standing close, his hand on his sword. It was a reassuring sight.

  “Captain Ajutani,” Balasar said over his shoulder. “What were you speaking to Riaan about before we came?”

  “Himself mostly,” the captain said. “Is there another subject he’s interested in?”

  “He was concerned when I spoke with him. Concerned with things that never seemed to occur to him before. You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?”

  “No, General,” Sinja said. “Wouldn’t be any profit in it.”

  Balasar nodded and resumed the path to his rooms. Eustin fell in beside him.

  “I don’t like that man,” Eustin said under his breath. “I don’t trust him.”

  “I do,” Balasar said. “I trust him to be and to have always been my staunchest supporter just as soon as he’s sure we’re going to win. He’s a mercenary, but he isn’t a spy. And his men will be useful.”

  “Still.”

  “It will be fine.”

  Balasar didn’t give his uncertainties and fears free rein until he was safely alone in the borrowed library, and then his mind rioted. Perhaps Sinja was right—the poet could fail, the Khaiem could divine his purpose, the destruction he’d dedicated himself to preventing might be brought about by his miscalculation. Everything might still fail. A thousand threats and errors clamored.

  He took out his maps again for the thousandth time. Each road was marked on the thin sheepskin. Each bridge and ford. Each city. Fourteen cities in a single season. They would take Nantani and then scatter. The other forces would come in from the sea. It was nearing summer, and he told himself again and again as if hoping to convince himself that after the sun rose tomorrow, it would be a question only of speed.

  In the first battle he’d fought, Balasar had been a crossbowman. He and a dozen like him were supposed to loose their bolts into the packed, charging bodies of the warriors of Eymond and then pull back, letting the men with swords and axes and flails—men like his father—move in and take up the melee. He’d hardly been a boy at the time, much less a man. He had done as he was told, as had the others, but once they were safely over the rise of the hill, out of sight of the enemy and the battle, Balasar had been stupid. The grunts and shrieks and noise of bodies in conflict were like a peal of thunder that never faded. The sound called to him. With each shriek from the battle, he imagined that it had been his father. The nightmare images of the violence happening just over the rise chewed at him. He’d had to see it. He had gone back over. It had almost cost him his life.

  One of the soldiers of Eymond had spotted him. He’d been a large man, tall as a tree it had seemed at the time. He’d broken away from the fight and rushed up the hill, axe raised and blood on his mind. Balasar remembered the panic when he understood that his own death was rushing up the hill toward him. The wise thing would have been to flee; if he could have gotten back to the other bowmen, they might have killed the soldier. But instead, without thought, he started to bend back the leaves of the crossbow, fumbling the bolt with fingers that had seemed numb as sausages. Though only one of them was running, it had been a race.

  When he’d raised the bow and loosed the bolt, the man had been fewer than ten feet from him. He could still feel the thrum of the string and feel the sinking certainty that he had missed, that his life was forfeit. In point of fact, the bolt had sunk so deep into the man it only seemed to have vanished. The breaths between when he’d fired and when the soldier sank to the ground were the longest he had ever known.

  And here he was again. Only this time he was the one in motion. The poets of the Khaiem would have a chance to call up another of the andat—and the measure of that hope was his speed in finding them, killing them, and
burning their books.

  It was a terrible wager, and more than his own life was in the balance. Balasar was not a religious man. Questions of gods and heavens had always seemed too abstract to him. But now, putting aside the maps, the plans, all the work of his life prepared to find its fruition or else its ruin, he walked to the window, watched the full moon rising over this last night of the world as it had been, and put his hand to his heart, praying to all the gods he knew with a single word.

  Please.

  Twilight came after the long sunset, staining red the high clouds in the west. A light wind had come from the North, carrying the chill of mountaintop glaciers with it, though there was little snow left on even the highest peaks that could be seen from the city. It grabbed at the loose shutters, banging them open and closed like an idiot child in love with the noise. Banners rippled and trees nodded like old men. It was as if an errant breath of winter had stolen into the warm nights. Otah sat in his private chambers, still in his formal robes. He felt no drafts, but the candles flickered in sympathy with the wind.

  The letters unfolded before him were in a simple cipher. The years he had spent in the gentleman’s trade, carrying letters and contracts and information on the long roads between the cities of the Khaiem, returned to him, and he read the enciphered text as easily as if it had been written plainly. It was as Maati and Cehmai had said. The Wards of the Westlands were united in a state of panic. The doom of the world seemed about to fall upon them.

  Since the letters had arrived, Otah’s world had centered on the news. He had sent another runner to the Dai-kvo with a pouch so heavy with lengths of silver, the man could have bought a fresh horse at every low town he passed through if it would get him there faster. Otah had sat up long nights with Maati and Cehmai, even with Liat and Nayiit. Here was the plan, then. With the threat of an andat of their own, the Galts would roll through the Westlands, perhaps Eddensea as well. In a year, perhaps two, they might own Bakta and Eymond too. The cities of the Khaiem would find themselves cut off from trade, and perhaps the rogue poet would even become a kind of Galtic Dai-kvo in time. The conquest of the Westlands was the first campaign in a new war that might make the destruction of the Old Empire seem minor.

  And still, Otah read the letters again, his mind unquiet. There was something there, something more, that he had overlooked. The certainty of the Galts, their willingness to show their power. Whenever they tired of trade or felt themselves losing at the negotiating tables, Galt had been pleased to play raider and pirate. It had been that way for as long as Otah could remember. The Galtic High Council had schemed and conspired. It shouldn’t have been odd that, emboldened by success, they would take to the field. And yet …

  Otah turned the pages with a sound as dry as autumn leaves. They couldn’t be attacking the Khaiem; even with an andat in their possession, they would be overwhelmed. The cities might have their rivalries and disputes, but an attack on one would unite them against their common foe. Thirteen cities each with its own poet added to whatever the Dai-kvo held in reserve in his village. At worst, more than a dozen to one, and each of them capable of destruction on a scale almost impossible to imagine. The Galts wouldn’t dare attack the Khaiem. It was posturing. Negotiation. It might even be a bluff; the poet might have tried his binding, paid the price of failure, and left the Galts with nothing but bluster to defend themselves.

  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 Galts, and these scraps of paper and pale ink were all that Otah had to work out what that might mean.

  He 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 back 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 back. And there’s the towers. Really, we’re a city of petty miracles.”

  “You sound bitter,” 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 bowl. 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 back. “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 back 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 now—showering 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 Nayiit-kya 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.”

  “That 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 die, 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 Machi.”

  “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.”

  “There’s always the descent into decadence and self-absorption,” Liat said, smiling. It was only half a joke. “They say the Khai Chaburi-Tan only gets sober long enough to bed his latest wife.”