An Autumn War Read online

  The musicians ended their song and stood to a roar of approving voices and bowls of wine bought by their admirers. One of the old men walked through the house with a lacquer begging box in his hand. Maati fumbled in his sleeve, came out with two lengths of copper, and tossed them into the box with a satisfying click.

  "And then, I also wasn't in the Dai-kvo's best graces," Maati continued. "After Saraykeht ... Well, I suppose it's poor etiquette to let your master die and the andat escape. I wasn't blamed outright, but it was always hanging there. The memory of it."

  "It can't have helped that you brought back a lover and a child," Nayiit said.

  "No, it didn't. But I was very young and very full of myself. It's not easy, being told that you are of the handful of men in the world who might be able to control one of the andat. "lends to create a sense of being more than you are. I thought I could do anything. And maybe I could have, but I tried to do everything, and that isn't the same." He sighed and ate a pea pod. Its flesh was crisp and sweet and tasted of spring. When he spoke again, he tried to make his voice light and joking. "I didn't wind up doing a particularly good job of either endeavor."

  "It seems to me you've done well enough," Nayiit said as he waved at the serving boy for more wine. "You've made yourself a place in the court here, you've been able to study in the libraries here, and from what Mother says, you've found something no one else ever has. That alone is more than most men manage in a lifetime."

  "I suppose," Maati said. He wanted to go on, wanted to say that most men had children, raised them up, watched them become women and men. He wanted to tell this charming boy who stood now where Maati himself once had that he regretted that he had not been able to enjoy those simple pleasures. Instead, he took another handful of pea pods. He could tell that Nayiit sensed his reservations, heard the longing in the brevity of his reply. When the boy spoke, his tone was light.

  "I've spent all my life-well, since I've been old enough to think of it as really mine and not something Mother's let me borrow-with House Kyaan. Running errands, delivering contracts. That's how I started, at least. Mother always told me I had to do better than the other boys who worked for the house because I was her son, and if people thought I was getting favors because of it, they wouldn't respect her or me. She was right. I can see that. At the time it all seemed monstrously unfair, though."

  "Do you like the work?" Maati asked.

  The girl with the drum began tapping a low tattoo, her voice droning in a lament. Maati shifted to look at Nayiit. The boy's gaze was fixed on the singer, his expression melancholy. The urge to put his hand to Nayiit's shoulder, to offer some comfort, however powerless, moved through Maati and faded. He sat still and quiet as the chant rose, the anguish in the singer's voice growing until the air of the teahouse hummed with it, and then it faded into despair. The man with the lacquer box came past again, but Maati didn't put in any copper this time.

  "You and Mother. You're lovers again?"

  "I suppose so," Maati said, surprised to feel a blush in his cheeks. "It happens sometimes."

  "What happens when you're called away to the Dai-kvo?"

  "Are we walking the same path a second time, you mean? We're waiting to hear two things from the Dal-kvo-whether he thinks my speculations about avoiding the price of a failed binding are worth looking into and whether to act against Galt. Either one puts me someplace away from Liat. But we aren't who we were then. I don't pretend that we can be. And anyway, I have all the habits of being without her. I've missed her for more years than I spent in her company."

  I have missed you, he thought but didn't say. I have missed you, and it's too late now for anything more than awkward conversations and late nights getting drunk together. Nothing will ever make that right.

  "Do you regret that?" Nayiit asked. "If you could go hack and do things again, would you want to love her less? Would you want to have gone to the Dai-kvo and been able to leave that ... that longing behind you?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  Nayiit looked up.

  "I would hate her, if I were you. I would think she'd taken my chance to be what I was supposed to be, to do what I could have done. "There you were, a poet, and favored enough that you were expected to hold the andat, and because of her you fell into disfavor. Because of her, and because of me." Nayiit's jaw clenched, his eyes only a half shade darker than the pale brown of his mother's staring at something that wasn't there, his attention turned inward. "I don't know how you stand the sight of us."

  "It wasn't like that," Maati said. "It was never like that. If it were all mine again, I would have followed her."

  The words struck the boy hard. His gaze lost its focus; his mouth tightened like that of a man in pain.

  "What is it, Nayiit-kya?"

  Nayiit seemed to snap back to the room, an embarrassed grin on his face. He took a pose of apology, but Maati shook his head.

  "Something's bothering you," Maati said.

  "It's nothing. I've only ... It's not worth talking about."

  "Something's bothering you, son."

  He had never said the word aloud. Son. Nayiit had never heard it from his lips, not since he'd been too young for it to mean anything. Maati felt his heart leap and race like a startled deer, and he saw the shock on the boy's face. This was the moment, then, that he'd feared and longed for. Fie waited to hear what Nayiit would say. Maati dreaded the polite deflection, the retreat back into the roles of a pair of strangers in a tearoom, the way a man falling from a cliff might dread the ground.

  Nayiit opened his mouth, closed it, and then said, almost too low to hear over the music and the crowd, "I'm trying to choose between what I am and what I want to be. I'm trying to want what I'm supposed to want. And I'm failing."

  "I see."

  "I want to be a good man, Father. I want to love my wife and my son. I want to want them. And I don't. I don't know whether to walk away from them or from myself. I thought you had made that decision, but. . ."

  Maati settled hack on the bench, put down his howl still half full of wine, and took Naviit's hand in his own. Father. Nayiit had said Father.

  "Tell me," Maati said. "Tell me all of it."

  "It would take all night," the boy said with a rueful chuckle. But he didn't pull hack his hand.

  "Let it," Maati said. "There's nothing more important than this."

  BALASAR HADN'T SLEPT. THE NIGHT HAD COME, A LATE RAIN SHOWER FILLing the air with the scent of water and murmur of distant thunder, and he had lain in his bed, willing himself to a forgetfulness that wouldn't come.

  The orders waited in stacks on his desk in the library, commands to he issued to each of his captains, outlining the first stage of his campaign. There were two sets, of course, just as the Khaiate mercenary captain had surmised. 'T'hose he'd sealed in green would lead the army to the North, laying waste to the Westlands and sending the thin stream of gold and silver that could be wrung from them back to the coffers of the High Council. Those he'd sealed in red would wheel the army-twenty thousand armsmcn, three hundred steam wagons, six thousand horses, and God only knew how many servants and camp followers-to the east and the most glorious act of conquest the world had ever known.

  If he succeeded, he would he remembered as the greatest general in history, at least in his audacity. The battles themselves he expected to he simple enough. The Khaiem had no experience in tactics and no armies to protect them. Balasar would he remembered for two things only: the unimaginable wealth he was about to pour into Galt and the ceremony that would come with the dawn. The plot that stripped the andat from the world.

  As the dark hours passed, the thought pricked at him. He had put everything in place. The poet, the books that concerned FreedomFrom-Bondage, the army, the arms. There was nothing he would ever do that would match this season. Succeed or fail, this was the highwater mark of his life. He imagined himself an old man, sitting at a street cafe in Kirinton. He wondered what those years would be like, reaching from
here to the grave. He wondered what it would he like to have his greatness behind him. He told himself that he would retire. "There would he enough wealth to acquire anything he wanted. A reasonable estate of his own, a wife, children; that seemed enough. If he could not regain this season, he could at least not humiliate himself by trying. He thought of the war leaders who haunted the corridors and wineshops of Acton reliving triumphs the world had forgotten. He would not he one of those. He would he the great General who had done his work and then stepped hack to let the world he had made safe follow its path.

  At heart, he was not a conqueror. Only a man who saw what needed doing, and then did it.

  Or else he would fail and he and every Galtic man and woman would be a corpse or a refugee.

  I Ic twisted in his sheets. The stars shone where the clouds were thin enough to permit it. Framed in the opened shutters, they glittered. The stars wouldn't care what happened here. And yet by the next time their light silvered these stones, the fate of the world would have turned one way or the other.

  Once, he came near to sleep. His eyes grew heavy, his mind began to wander into the half-sense of dreams. And then, irrationally, he became certain that he had mixed one of the orders. The memory, at first vague but clearer as he struggled to capture it, of sealing a packet with red that should have been green swam through his mind. He thought he might have noted at the time that it would need changing. And yet he hadn't done it. The wrong orders would go out. A legion would start to the North while the others moved cast. They would lose time finding the error, correcting it. Or the poet would fail, and some stray company of armsmen would find its way to Nantani and reveal him to the Khaiem. Half a thousand stories plagued him, each less likely than the last. His sense of dread grew.

  At last, half in distress and half in disgust, he rose, pulled on a heavy cotton shirt and light trousers, and walked barefoot from his room toward the library. He would have to open them all, check them, reseal them, and keep a careful tally so that the crazed monkey that had taken possession of his mind could be calmed. He wondered, as he passed through hallways lit only by his single candle, whether Uther Redcape had ever rechecked his own plans in the dead night like an old, fearful merchant rattling his own shutters to be sure they were latched. Perhaps these indignities were part of what any man suffered when the weight of so many lives was on his back.

  The guards outside his library door stood at attention as he passed them, whatever gossip or complaint they had been using to pass the dark hours of the night forgotten at the first sight of him. Balasar nodded to them gravely before passing through the door. With the stub of his bedside candle, he lit the lanterns in the library until the soft glow filled the air. The orders lay where he had left them. With a sigh, he took out the bricks of colored wax and his private seal. 'T'hen he began the long, tedious task of cracking each seal, reviewing his commands, and putting the packets back in order again. The candle stub had fizzled to nothing and the lanterns' oil visibly dropped before he was finished. The memory had been a lie. Everything had been in place. Balasar stood, stretched, and went to the window. When he opened the shutters, the cool breeze felt fresh as a bath. Birds were singing, though there was no light yet in the east. The full moon was near to setting. The dawn was coming. "There would be no sleep for him. Not now.

  A soft scratch came at the door, and after Balasar called his permission, Eustin entered. There were dark pouches under the man's eyes, but that was the only sign that he had managed no better with his sleep. His uniform was crisp and freshly laundered, the marks of rank on his back and breast, his hair was tied back and fastened with a thick silver ceremonial bead, and there was an energy in all his movements that Balasar understood. Eustin was dressed to witness the change of the world. Balasar was suddenly aware of his rough clothes and bare feet.

  "What news?" Balasar said.

  "He's been up all through the night, sir. Meditating, reading, preparing. Truth is I don't know that half of what he's done is needed, but he's been doing it all the same."

  "Almost none of it's strictly called for," Balasar said. "But if it makes him feel better, let him."

  "Yes, sir. I've called for his breakfast. He says that he'll want to wait a half a hand for his food to go down, and then it's time. Says that dawn's a symbolic moment, and that it'll help."

  "I suppose I'll be getting prepared, then," Balasar said. "If this isn't a full-dress occasion, I don't know what is."

  "I've sent men to wait for the signal. We should know by nightfall."

  Balasar nodded. All along the highest hills from Nantani to Aren, bonfires were set. If all worked as they hoped, there would be a signal from the agents he had placed in the city, and they would be lit, each in turn. A thin line of fire would reach from the Khaiem to his own door.

  "Have a mug of kafe and some bread sent to my rooms," Balasar said. "I'll meet you before the ceremony."

  "Not more than that, sir? The bacon's good here...."

  "After," Balasar said. "I'll eat a decent meal after."

  The room given them by the Warden had been in its time a warehouse, a meeting hall, and a temple, the last being the most recent. Tapestries of the Four Gods the Warden worshipped had been taken down, rolled up, and stacked in the corner like carpet. The smooth stone walls were marked with symbols, some familiar to Balasar, others obscure. The eastern wall was covered with the flowing script of the fallen Empire, like a page from a book of poetry. A single pillow rested in the center of the room, and beside it a stack of books, two with covers of ruined leather, one whose cover had been ripped from it, and one last closed in bright metal. It had been years since Balasar had carried those books out of the desert wastes. He nodded to them when he saw them, as if they were old friends or perhaps enemies.

  Riaan himself was walking around the room with long, slow strides. He breathed in audibly with one step, blew the air out on the next. His face was deeply relaxed; his arms were swinging free at his sides. To look at the two of them, Balasar guessed he would look more like the man about to face death. He took a pose of respect and greeting. The poet came slowly to a halt, and returned the gesture.

  "I trust all is well with you," Balasar said in the tongue of the Khaiem.

  "I am ready," Riaan said, with a smile that made him seem almost gentle. "I wanted to thank you, Balasar-cha, for this opportunity. 't'hese are strange times that men such as you and I should find common cause. The structures of the I)ai-kvo have caused good men to suffer for too many generations. I honor you for the role you have played in bringing me here."

  Balasar bowed his head. Over the years he had known many men whose minds had been touched by wounds-blows from swords or stones, or fevers like the one that had prompted Riaan's fall from favor. Balasar knew how impulsive and unreliable a man could become after such an injury. But he also knew that with many there was also a candor and honesty, if only because they lacked the ability they had once had to dissemble. Against his own will, he found himself touched by the man's words.

  "We all do what fate calls us to," he said. "It's no particular virtue of mine.

  The poet smiled because he didn't understand what Balasar meant. And that was just as well. Eustin arrived moments later and made formal greeting to them both.

  "There's breakfast waiting for us, when we're done here," Eustin said, and even such mundane words carried a depth.

  "Well then," Balasar said, turning to Riaan. The poet nodded and took a pose more complex than Balasar could parse, but that seemed to be a farewell from a superior to someone of a lower class. Then Riaan dropped his pose and walked with a studied grace to the cushion in the room's center. Balasar stood against the back wall and nodded for Eustin to join him. He was careful not to obscure the symbols painted there, though Riaan wasn't looking back toward them.

  For what seemed half a day and was likely no more than two dozen breaths together, the poet was silent, and then he began, nearly under his breath, to chant. Balasar knew the basi
c form of a binding, though the grammars that were used for the deepest work were beyond him. It was thought, really. Like a translation-a thought held that became something like a man as a song in a Westlands tongue might take new words in Galt but hold the same meaning. The chant was a device of memory and focus, and Balasar remained silent.

  Slowly, the sound of the poet's voice grew, filling the space with words that seemed on the edge of comprehension. The sound began to echo, as if the room were much larger than the walls that Balasar could see, and something like a wind that somehow did not stir the air began to twist through the space. For a moment, he was in the desert again, feeling the air change, hearing Little Ott's shriek. Balasar put his arm back, palm pressed against the stone wall. He was here, he was in Aren. The chanting grew, and it was as if there were other voices now. Beside him, Eustin had gone pale. Sweat stood on the man's lip.

  Under Balasar's fingertips, the wall seemed to shift. The stone hummed, dancing with the words of the chant. The script on the front wall shifted restlessly until Balasar squinted and the letters remained in their places. The air was thick.

  "Sir," Eustin whispered, "I think it might he best if we stepped out, left him to-"

  "No," Balasar said. "Watch this. It's the last time it's ever going to happen."

  lr,ustin nodded curtly and turned with what seemed physical strain to look ahead. Riaan had risen, standing where the cushion had been, or perhaps he was floating. Or perhaps he was sitting just as he had been. Something had happened to the nature of the space between them. And then, like seven flutes moving from chaos to harmony, the world itself chimed, a note as deep as oceans and pure as dawn. Balasar felt his heart grow light for a moment, a profound joy filling him that had nothing to do with triumph, and there, standing before the seated poet, was a naked man, bald as a baby, with eyes white as salt.