An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) Read online

  He sat in the black chair his father had sat in, and his father before him, and on back through the generations to when the Empire had still stood, and the name Khai had meant honored servant. Before him, seated on soft red cushions and intricately woven rugs, were the heads of the highest families of the utkhaiem. Vaunani, Radaani, Kamau, Daikani, Dun, Isadan, and half a dozen others. For each of these, there were ten more families. Twenty more. But these were the highest, the richest, the most powerful men of Machi. And they were the ones who had just suffered the worst loss. Otah waited while his news sank in, watched the blood drain from their faces. Otah kept his visage stern and his posture formal and rigid. His robes were simple, pale, and severe. His first impulse—a ceremonial black shot with red and long, flexible bone sewn in to give it shape—had been too gaudy; he would have seemed to be taking refuge in the cloth. The important things now were that they know he was in control and that they put trust in him. It would be too easy for the city to fall into panic, and here, now, through the force of his own will, he could hold it back. If these men left the room unsure, it would be too late. He could hold a stone, but he couldn’t stop a rockslide.

  “C-Can we get it back?” Wetai Dun asked, his voice shaking. “There are andat that poets have caught three, four times. Water-Moving-Down was…”

  Otah took a deep breath. “There is a chance,” he said. “It has been done, but it will be harder than it was the first time. The poet who does will have to create a binding sufficiently different from the original. Or it could be that the Dai-kvo will be able to give us an andat that is different, but that still speeds the mining trades.”

  “How long will it take?” Ashua Radaani asked. The Radaani were the richest family in the city, with more silver and gold in their coffers than even Otah himself could command.

  “We can’t know until we hear from the Dai-kvo,” Otah said. “I’ve sent my best courier with enough gold in his sleeve to buy a fresh horse every time he needs one. We will hear back as soon as it is possible to know. Until that happens, we will work as we always have. Stone-Made-Soft made the mines here and in the North the most productive in the world, that’s true. But it didn’t run the forges. It didn’t smelt the ore. The stone potters will have to go back to working clay, that’s true, but—”

  “How did this happen?” Caiin Dun cried. His voice was as anguished as if he’d lost a son. There was a stirring in the air. Fear. Without thinking, Otah rose, his hands flowing into a pose of censure.

  “Dun-cha,” he said, his voice cold as stone and harder. “You are not here to shout me down. I have brought you here as a courtesy. Do you understand that?”

  The man took an apologetic pose, but Otah pressed.

  “I asked whether you understood, not whether you were regretful.”

  “I understand, Most High,” the man muttered.

  “The potters will have to work clay until some other accommodation can be made,” Otah said. “With proper control, this will be an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. The city is wounded, yes. We all know that, and I won’t have that made worse by panic. I expect each of you to stand with your Khai, and make your people know that there is nothing to fear. The contracts directly affected by this loss will be brought to me personally. I will see to it that any losses are recompensed so that no one family or house carries more of this burden than its share. And any contracts not directly affected by the andat’s absence are still in force. Do each of you understand that?”

  A low chorus of affirmation rose. They sounded as reluctant as boys before a tutor.

  “Also I have put armsmen on the bridge. Any house who chooses this time to relocate its wealth to some other city will forfeit their holdings here. Any silver over a hundred lengths that leaves Machi at one time must be allowed by me.”

  Ashua Radaani took a pose that begged permission to speak. It was proper etiquette, and Otah felt the tightness in his chest release by half a turn. At least they were now respecting forms.

  “Most High,” Radaani said, “this may not be the best time to put restrictions on trade. Machi will need to keep its ties to the other cities strong if we’re to weather this tragedy.”

  “If the smaller houses see carts of gold rolling away to Cetani and Udun, they’ll start talking of how the rats all run when the house catches fire,” Otah said. “My house hasn’t caught fire.”

  Radaani pursed his lips, his eyes shifting as if reading some invisible text as he reconsidered some internal plan that Otah had just ruined, but he said nothing more.

  “Machi needs your loyalty and your obedience,” Otah said. “You are all good men, and the leaders of respected families. Understand that I value each of you, and your efforts to keep the peace in this time will be remembered and honored.”

  And the first of you to bolt, I will destroy and sow your lands with salt, Otah thought but didn’t say. He let his eyes carry that part of the message, and from the unease in the men before him, he knew that they had understood. For over a decade, they had thought themselves ruled by a softhearted man, an upstart put in his father’s chair by strange fortune and likely less suited to the role than his lady wife, the innkeep. And as terrible as this day was, Otah found he felt some small joy in suggesting they might have been mistaken.

  Once they had been dismissed, Otah waved away his servants and walked to his private apartments. Kiyan came to him, taking his hand in her own. Cehmai sat on the edge of a low couch, his face still empty with shock. He had been weeping openly when Otah left.

  “How did it go?” Kiyan asked.

  “Well, I think. Strangely, it’s much easier than dealing with Eiah.”

  “You don’t love them,” Kiyan said.

  “Ah, is that the difference?”

  A plate of fresh apples stood on a copper table, a short, wicked knife beside it. Otah sliced a bit of the white flesh and chewed thoughtfully.

  “They’ll still move their wealth away, you know,” Kiyan said. “Blocking the bridge won’t stop a ferry crossing in the night with its lanterns shuttered or wagons looping up north and crossing the water someplace in the mountains.”

  “I know it. But if I can keep the thing down to a few ferries and wagons, that will do. I’ll also need to send messages to the Khaiem,” Otah said. “Cetani and Amnat-Tan to start.”

  “Better they hear the bad news from you,” she agreed. “Should I call for a scribe?”

  “No. Just paper and a fresh ink brick. I’ll do the thing myself.”

  “I’m sorry, Most High,” Cehmai said again. “I don’t know…I don’t know how it happened. He was there, and then…he just wasn’t. There wasn’t even a struggle. He just…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Otah said. “It’s gone, and so it’s gone. We’ll move forward from that.”

  “It does matter, though,” the poet said, and his voice was a cry of despair. Otah wondered what it would feel like, dedicating a life to one singular thing and then in an instant, losing it. He himself had led a half-dozen lives—laborer, fisherman, midwife’s assistant, courier, father, Khai—but Cehmai had never been anything besides a poet. Exalted above all other men, honored, envied. And now, suddenly, he was only a man in a brown robe. Otah put a hand to the man’s shoulder, and saw a moment’s passing shame in Cehmai’s expression. It was, perhaps, too early still for comfort.

  A scratch came at the door and a servant boy entered, took a formal pose, and announced the poet Maati Vaupathai and Liat Chokavi. A moment later, Maati rushed in, his cheeks an alarming red, his breath hard, his belly heaving. Liat was no more than a step behind. He could see the alarm in her expression. Kiyan stepped forward and helped Maati to a seat. The two women met each other’s gaze, and there was a moment’s tension before Otah stepped forward.

  “Liat-cha,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I came as soon as Maati asked me. Is something wrong? Have we heard from the Dai-kvo?”

  “No,” Maati said b
etween gasps. “Not that.”

  Otah took a questioning pose, and Maati shook his head.

  “Didn’t say. People around. Would have been heard,” Maati said. Then, “Gods, I need to eat less. I’m too fat to run anymore.”

  Otah took Liat’s elbow and guided her to a chair, then sat beside Cehmai. Only Kiyan remained standing.

  “Liat-cha, you worked with Amat Kyaan,” Otah said. “You’ve taken over the house she founded. She must have spoken with you about how those first years were. After Heshai-kvo died and Seedless escaped.”

  “Of course,” Liat said.

  “I need you to tell us about that,” Otah said. “I need to know what she did to keep Saraykeht together. What she tried that worked, what failed. What she wished the Khai Saraykeht had done in response, what she would have preferred he had not. Everything.”

  Liat’s gaze went to Maati and then Cehmai and then back to Otah. There was still a deep confusion in her expression.

  “It’s happened again,” Otah said.

  Given a half-decent road, the armies of Galt could travel faster than any in the world. It was the steam wagons, Balasar reflected, that made the difference. As long as there was wood or coal to burn and water for the boilers, the carts could keep their pace at a fast walk. In addition to the supplies they carried—food, armor, weapons that the men were then spared—a tenth of the infantry could climb aboard the rough slats, rest themselves, and eat. Rotated properly, his men could spend a full day at fast march, make camp, and be rested enough by morning to do the whole thing again. Balasar sat astride his horse—a nameless mare Eustin had procured for him—and looked back over the valley; the sun dropping at their back stretched their shadows to the east. Hundreds of plumes of dark smoke and pale steam rose from the green silk banners rippling above and beside them. The plain behind him was a single, ordered mass of the army stretching back, it seemed, to the horizon. Boots crushed the grasses, steam wagons consumed the trees, horses tramped the ground to mud. Their passing alone would scar these fields and meadows for a generation.

  And the whole of it was his. Balasar’s will had gathered it and would direct it, and despite all his late-night sufferings, in this moment he could not imagine failure. Eustin cleared his throat.

  “If they had found some andat to do this,” Balasar said, “do you know what would have happened?”

  “Sir?” Eustin said.

  “If the andat had done this—Wagon-That-Pulls-Itself or Horse-Doesn’t-Tire, something like that—no one would ever have designed a steam wagon. The merchants would have paid some price to the Khai, the poet would have been set to it, and it would have worked until the poet fell down stairs or failed to pass the andat on.”

  “Or until we came around,” Eustin said, but Balasar wasn’t ready to leave his chain of thought for self-congratulations yet.

  “And if someone had made the thing, had seen a way that any decent smith could do what the Khai charged good silver for, he’d either keep it quiet or find himself facedown in the river,” Balasar said and then spat. “It’s no way to run a culture.”

  Eustin’s mount whickered and shifted. Balasar sighed and shifted his gaze forward to the rolling hills and grasslands where the first and farthest-flung of Nantani’s low towns dotted the landscape. Another day, perhaps two, and he would be there. He was more than half tempted to press on; night marches weren’t unheard-of and the anticipation of what lay before them sang to him, the hours pressing at him. But the summer was hardly begun. Better not to suffer surprises too early in the campaign. He moved a practiced gaze over the road ahead, considered the distance between the reddening orb of the sun and the horizon, and made his decision.

  “When the first wagon reaches that stand of trees, call the halt,” he said. “That will still give the men half a hand to forage before sunset.”

  “Yes, sir,” Eustin said. “And that other matter, sir?”

  “After dinner,” Balasar said. “You can bring Captain Ajutani to my tent after dinner.”

  His impulse had been to kill the poet as soon as the signal arrived. The binding had worked, the cities of the Khaiem lay open before him. Riaan had outlived his use.

  Eustin had been the one to counsel against it, and Sinja Ajutani had been the issue. Balasar had known there was something less than trust between the two men; that was to be expected. He hadn’t understood how deeply Eustin suspected the Khaiate mercenary. He had tracked the man—his visits to the poet, the organization of his men, how Riaan’s unease had seemed to rise after a meeting with Sinja and fall again after he spoke with Balasar. It was nothing like an accusation; even Eustin agreed there wasn’t proof of treachery. The mercenary had done nothing to show that he wasn’t staying bought. And yet Eustin was more and more certain with each day that Sinja was plotting to steal Riaan back to the Khaiem, to reveal what it was he had done and, just possibly, find a way to undo it.

  The problem, Balasar thought, was a simple failure of imagination. Eustin had followed Balasar through more than one campaign, had walked through the haunted desert with him, had stood at his side through the long political struggle that had brought this army to this place on this supreme errand. Loyalty was the way Eustin understood the world. The thought of a man who served first one cause and then another made no more sense to him than stone floating on water. Balasar had agreed to his scheme to prove Captain Ajutani’s standing, though he himself had little doubt. He took the exercise seriously for Eustin’s sake if nothing else. Balasar would be ready for them when they came.

  His pavilion was in place before the last light of the sun had vanished in the west: couches made from wood and canvas that could be broken down flat and carried on muleback, flat cushions embroidered with the Galtic Tree, a small writing table. A low iron brazier took the edge from the night’s chill, and half a hundred lemon candles filled the air with their scent and drove away the midges. He’d had it set on the top of a rise, looking down over the valley where the light of cook fires dotted the land like stars in the sky. A firefly had found its way through the gossamer folds of his tent, shining and then vanishing as it searched for a way out. A thousand of its fellows glittered in the darkness between camps. It was like something from a children’s story, where the Good Neighbors had breached the division between the worlds to join his army. He saw the three of them coming toward him, and he knew each long before he could make out their faces.

  Eustin’s stride was long, low, and deceptively casual. Captain Ajutani moved carefully, each step provisional, the weight always held on his back foot until he chose to shift it. Riaan’s was an unbalanced, civilian strut. Balasar rose, opened the flap for them to enter, and rolled down the woven-grass mats to give them a level of visual privacy, false walls that shifted and muttered in the lightest of breezes.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Balasar said in the tongue of the Khaiem.

  Sinja and Riaan took poses, the forms a study in status; Sinja accepted the greeting of a superior, Riaan condescended to acknowledge an honored servant. Eustin only nodded. In the corner of the pavilion, the firefly burst into sudden brilliance and then vanished again. Balasar led the three men to cushions on a wide woven rug, seating himself to face Sinja. When they had all folded their legs beneath them, Balasar leaned forward.

  “When I began this campaign,” he said, “it was not my intention to continue the rule of the poets and their andat over the rest of humanity. In the course of my political life, I allowed certain people to misunderstand me. But it is not my intention that Riaan-cha should be burdened by another andat. Or that anyone should. Ever.”

  The poet’s jaw dropped. His face went white, and his hands fluttered toward poses they never reached. Sinja only nodded, accepting the new information as if it were news of the weather.

  “That leaves me with an unpleasant task,” Balasar said, and he drew a blade from his vest. It was a thick-bladed dagger with a grip of worked leather. He tossed it to the floor. The metal glittered in
the candlelight. Riaan didn’t understand; his confusion was written on his brow and proclaimed by his silence. If he’d understood, Balasar thought, he’d be begging by now.

  Sinja glanced at the knife, then up at Balasar and then Eustin. He sighed.

  “And you’ve chosen me to see if I’d do it,” the mercenary said with a tone both weary and amused.

  “I don’t…“Riaan said.” You…you can’t mean that…Sinja-kya, you wouldn’t—”

  The motion was casual and efficient as swatting at a fly. Sinja leaned over, plucked the knife from the rug, and tossed it into the poet’s neck. It sounded like a melon being cleaved. The poet rose half to his feet, clawing at the handle already slick with his blood, then slowly folded, lying forward as if asleep or drunk. The scent of blood filled the air. The poet’s body twitched, heaved once, and went still.

  “Not your best rug, I assume,” Sinja said in Galtic.

  “Not my best rug,” Balasar agreed.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “Not now,” Balasar said. “Thank you.”

  The mercenary captain nodded to Balasar, and then to Eustin. His gait as he walked out was the same as when he’d walked in. Balasar stood and stepped back, kicking the old, flat cushion onto the corpse. Eustin also stood, shaking his head.

  “Not what you’d expected, then?” Balasar asked,

  “He didn’t even try to talk you out of it,” Eustin said. “I thought he’d at least play you for time. Another day.”

  “You’re convinced, then?”

  Eustin hesitated, then stooped to roll the rug over the corpse. Balasar sat at the writing desk, watching as Eustin finished covering the poor, arrogant, pathetic man in his ignominious shroud and called in two soldiers to haul him away. Riaan Vaudathat, the world’s last poet if Balasar had his way, would rest in an unmarked grave in this no-man’s-land between the Westlands and Nantani. It took more time than throwing him into a ditch, and there were times that Balasar had been tempted. But treating the body with respect said more about the living than the dead, and it was a dignity with only the smallest price. A few men, a little work.