An Autumn War Read online

  The scene in the belly of the ship was calmer than he'd expected. Eustin sat on a bench. He had the dog by a rope looped around the thing's chest and a field dagger in his other hand. Ten sailors were standing in silence either in the room or just outside it, armed with blades and cudgels. Balasar ignored them, taking a low stool and setting it squarely in front of Eustin before he sat.

  "General," Eustin said. His voice was low and flat, like a man halfdead from a wound.

  "I hear there's some issue with the animal."

  "He ate my soup."

  One of the sailors coughed meaningfully, and Eustin's eyes narrowed and flickered toward the sound. Balasar spoke again quickly.

  "I've seen Coal sneak half a bottle of wine away from you. It hardly seems a killing offense."

  "He didn't steal my soup, General. I gave it to him."

  "You gave it to him?"

  "Yessir."

  The room seemed close as a coffin, and hot. If only there weren't so many men around, if the bodies were not so thick, the air not so heavy with their breath, Balasar thought he might have been able to think clearly. He sucked his teeth, struggling to find something wise or useful to say, some way to disarm the situation and bring Eustin back from his madness. In the end, his silence was enough.

  "He deserves better, General," Eustin said. "He's broken. He's a sick, broken thing. He shouldn't have to live like that. There ought to he some dignity at least. If there's nothing else, there should at least he some dignity."

  The dog whined and craned its neck toward Eustin. Balasar could see distress in the animal's eyes, but not fear. The dog could hear the pain in Eustin's voice, even if the sailors couldn't. The bodies around him were wound tight, ready for violence, all of them except for Eustin. He held the knife weakly. The tension in his body wasn't the hot, loose energy of battle; he was knotted, like a boy tensed against a blow; like a man facing the gallows.

  "Leave us alone. All of you," Balasar said.

  "Not without Tripod!" one of the sailors said.

  Balasar met Eustin's eyes. With a small shock he realized it was the first time he'd truly looked at the man since they'd emerged from the desert. Perhaps he'd been ashamed of what he might see reflected there. And perhaps his shame had some part in this. Eustin was his man, and so the pain he bore was Balasar's responsibility. He'd been weak and stupid to shy away from that. And weakness and stupidity always carried a price.

  "Let the dog go. There's no call to involve him, or these men," Balasar said. "Sit with me awhile, and if you still need killing, I'll be the one to do it."

  Eustin's gaze flickered over his face, searching for something. To see whether it was a ruse, to see whether Balasar would actually kill his own man. When he saw the answer, Eustin's wide shoulders eased. He dropped the rope, freeing the animal. It hopped in a circle, uncertain and confused.

  "You have the dog," Balasar said to the sailors without looking at them. "Now go."

  They filed out, none of them taking their eyes from Eustin and the knife still in his hand. Balasar waited until they had all left, the low door pulled shut behind them. Distant voices shouted over the creaking timbers, the oil lamp swung gently on its chain. This time, Balasar used the silence intentionally, waiting. At first, Eustin looked at him, anticipation in his eyes. And then his gaze passed into the distance, seeing something beyond the room, beyond them both. And then silently, Eustin wept. Balasar shifted his stool nearer and put his hand on the man's shoulder.

  "I keep seeing them, sir."

  "I know."

  "I've seen a thousand men die one way or the other. But ... but that was on a field. That was in a fight."

  "It isn't the same," Balasar said. "Is that why you wanted those men to throw you in the sea?"

  Eustin turned the blade slowly, catching the light. He was still weeping, his face now slack and empty. Balasar wondered which of them he was seeing now, which of their number haunted him in that moment, and he felt the eyes of the dead upon him. They were in the room, invisibly crowding it as the sailors had.

  "Can you tell me they died with honor?" Eustin breathed.

  "I'm not sure what honor is," Balasar said. "We did what we did because it was needed, and we were the men to do it. The price was too high for us to bear, you and I and Coal. But we aren't finished, so we have to carry it a hit farther. "That's all."

  "It wasn't needed, General. I'm sorry, but it wasn't. We take a few more cities, we gain a few more slaves. Yes, they're the richest cities in the world. I know it. Sacking even one of the cities of the Khaiem would put more gold in the High Council's coffers than a season in the Westlands. But how much do they need to buy Little Ott back from hell?" Eustin asked. "And why shouldn't I go there and get him myself, sir?"

  "It's not about gold. I have enough gold of my own to live well and die old. Gold's a tool we use-a tool I use-to make men do what must be done."

  "And honor?"

  "And glory. Tools, all of them. We're men, Eustin. We've no reason to lie to each other."

  lie had the man's attention now. Eustin was looking only at him, and there was confusion in his eyes-confusion and pain-but the ghosts weren't inside him now.

  "\'h-,, then, sir? Why are we doing this?"

  Balasar sat back. He hadn't said these words before, he had never explained himself to anyone. Pride again. He was haunted by his pride. The pride that had made him take this on as his task, the work he owed to the world because no one else had the stomach for it.

  ""I'he ruins of the Empire were made," he said. "God didn't write it that the world should have something like that in it. Men created it. Men with little gods in their sleeves. And men like that still live. The cities of the Khaiem each have one, and they look on them like plow horses. 'Fools to feed their power and their arrogance. If it suited them, they could turn their andat loose on us. Hold our crops in permanent winter or sink our lands into the sea or whatever else they could devise. They could turn the world itself against us the way you or I might hold a knife. And do you know why they haven't?"

  F,ustin blinked, unnerved, Balasar thought, by the anger in his voice.

  "No, sir."

  "Because they haven't yet chosen to. That's all. They might. Or they might turn against each other. They could make everything into wastelands just like those. Acton, Kirinton, Marsh. Every city, every town. It hasn't happened yet because we've been lucky. But someday, one of them will grow ambitious or mad. And then all the rest of us are ants on a battlefield, trampled into the mud. That's what I mean when I say this is needed. You and I are seeing that it never happens," he said, and his words made his own blood hot. He was no longer uncertain or touched by shame. Balasar grinned wide and wolfish. If it was pride, then let him be proud. No man could do what he intended without it. "When I've finished, the god-ghosts of the Khaiem will be a story women tell their babes to scare them at night, and nothing more than that. That's what Little Ott died for. Not for money or conquest or glory.

  "I'm saving the world," Balasar said. "So, now. Say you'd rather drown than help me."

  1

  It had rained for a week, the cold gray clouds seeming to drape themselves between the mountain ranges to the east and west of the city like a wet canopy. The mornings were foggy, the afternoons chill. With the snowdrifts of winter almost all melted, the land around hlachi became a soupy mud whose only virtue was the spring crop of wheat and snow peas it would bring forth. Travel was harder now even than in the deadly cold of deep winter.

  And still, the travelers came.

  "With all respect, this exercise, as you call it, is ill-advised," the envoy said. His hands still held a pose of deference though the conversation had long since parted from civility. "I am sure your intentions are entirely honorable, however it is the place of the I)ai-kvo-"

  "If the I)ai-kvo wants to rule hfachi, tell him to come north," the Khai NIachi snapped. "He can pull my puppet strings from the next room. I'll make a bed for him."

&nbs
p; The envoy's eyes went wide. He was a young man, and hadn't mastered the art of keeping his mind from showing on his face. Utah, the Khai Machi, waved away his own words and sighed. He had gone too far, and he knew it. Another few steps and they'd he pointing at each other and yelling about which of them wanted to create the 'T'hird Enr pire. The truth was that he had ruled hlachi these last fourteen years only by necessity. The prospect of uniting the cities of the Khaiem under his rule was about as enticing as scraping his skin off with a rock.

  The audience was a private one, in a small room lined with richly carved hlackwood, lit by candles that smelled like rich earth and vanilla, and set well away from the corridors and open gardens where servants and members of the utkhaiem might unintentionally overhear them. This wasn't business he cared to have shared over the dances and dinners of the court. Otah rose from his chair and walked to the window, forcing his temper back down. He opened the shutters, and the city stretched out before him, grand towers of stone stretching up toward the sky, and beyond them the wide plain to the south, green with the first crops of the spring. He pressed his frustration back into yoke.

  "I didn't mean that," he said. "I know that the Dai-kvo doesn't intend to dictate to me. Or any of the Khaiem. I appreciate your concern, but the creation of the guard isn't a threat. It's hardly an army, you know. A few hundred men trained up to maybe half the level of a Westlands garrison could hardly topple the world."

  "We are concerned for the stability of all the cities," the envoy said. "When one of the Khaiem begins to study war, it puts all the others on edge."

  "It's hardly studying war to hand a few men knives and remind them which end's the handle."

  "It's more than any of the Khaiem have done in the past hundred years. And you must see that you haven't made it your policy to ally yourself with ... well, with anyone."

  Vell, this is going just as poorly as I expected, Otah thought.

  "I have a wife, thank you," Otah said, his manner cool. But the envoy had clearly reached the end of his patience. Hearing him stand, Otah turned. The young man's face was flushed, his hands folded into the sleeves of his brown poet's robes.

  "And if you were a shopkeeper, having a single woman would be admirable," the envoy said. "But as the Khai Machi, turning away every woman who's offered to you is a pattern of insult. I can't be the first one to point this out. From the time you took the chair, you've isolated yourself from the rest of the Khaiem, the great houses of the utkhaiem, the merchant houses. Everyone."

  Otah ran through the thousand arguments and responses-the treaties and trade agreements, the acceptance of servants and slaves, all of the ways in which he'd tried to bind himself and Machi to the other cities. They wouldn't convince the envoy or his master, the Dai-kvo. They wanted blood-his blood flowing in the veins of some boy child whose mother had come from south or east or west. They wanted to know that the Khai Yalakeht or Pathai or 'Ian-Sadar might be able to hope for a grandson on the black chair in Machi once Otah had died. His wife Kiyan was past the age to bear another child, but men could get children on younger women. For one of the Khaiem to have only two children, and both by the same woman-and her a wayhouse keeper from Udun.. They wanted sons from him, fathered on women who embodied wise political alliances. They wanted to preserve tradition, and they had two empires and nine generations of the Khaiate court life to back them. Despair settled on him like a thick winter cloak.

  There was nothing to be gained. He knew all the reasons for all the choices he had made, and he could as easily explain them to a mine dog as to this proud young man who'd traveled weeks for the privilege of taking him to task. Otah sighed, turned, and took a deeply formal pose of apology.

  "I have distracted you from your task, Athai-cha. That was not my intention. What was it again the Dai-kvo wished of me?"

  The envoy pressed his lips bloodless. They both knew the answer to the question, but Otah's feigned ignorance would force him to restate it. And the simple fact that Otah's bed habits were not mentioned would make his point for him. Etiquette was a terrible game.

  "The militia you have formed," the envoy said. ""I'he Dai-kvo would know your intention in creating it."

  "I intend to send it to the Westlands. I intend it to take contracts with whatever forces there are acting in the best interests of all the cities of the Khaiem. I will he pleased to draft a letter saying so."

  Otah smiled. The young poet's eyes flickered. As insults went, this was mild enough. Eventually, the poet's hands rose in a pose of gratitude.

  ""There is one other thing, Most High," the envoy said. "If you take any aggressive act against the interests of another of the Khaiem, the Dal-kvo will recall Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft. If you take arms against them, he will allow the Khaiem to use their poets against you and your city."

  "Yes," Otah said. "I understood that when I heard you'd come. I am not acting against the Khaiem, but thank you for your time, Athai-cha. I will have a letter sewn and sealed for you by morning."

  After the envoy had left, Otah sank into a chair and pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. Around him, the palace was quiet. He counted fifty breaths, then rose again, closed and latched the door, and turned hack to the apparently empty room.

  "Well?" he asked, and one of the panels in the corner swung open, exposing a tiny hidden chamber brilliantly designed for eavesdropping.

  The man who sat in the listener's chair seemed both at ease and out of place. At ease because it was Sinja's nature to take the world lightly, and out of place because his suntanned skin and rough, stained leathers made him seem like a gardener on a chair of deep red velvet and silver pins fit for the head of a merchant house or a member of the utkhaiem. He rose and closed the panel behind him.

  "He seems a decent man," Sinja said. "I wouldn't want him on my side of a fight, though. Overconfident."

  "I'm hoping it won't come to that," Otah said.

  "For a man who's convinced the world he's bent on war, you're a bit squeamish about violence."

  Otah chuckled.

  "I think sending the Dai-kvo his messenger's head might not be the most convincing argument for my commitment to peace," he said.

  "Excellent point," Sinja agreed as he poured himself a bowl of wine. "But then you are training men to fight. It's a hard thing to preach peace and stability and also pay men to think what's the best way to disembowel someone with a spear."

  "I know it," Otah said, his voice dark as wet slate. "Gods. You'd think having total power over a city would give you more options, wouldn't you?"

  Otah sipped the wine. It was rich and astringent and fragrant of late summer, and it swirled in the bowl like a dark river. He felt old. Fourteen years he'd spent trying to be what Machi needed him to besteward, manager, ruler, half-god, fuel for the gossip and backbiting of the court. Most of the time, he did well enough, but then something like this would happen, and he would be sure again that the work was beyond him.

  "You could disband it," Sinja said. "It's not as though you need the extra trade."

  "It's not about getting more silver," Otah said.

  "Then what's it about? You aren't actually planning to invade Cetani, are you? Because I don't think that's a good idea."

  Otah coughed out a laugh.

  "It's about being ready," he said.

  "Ready?"

  "Every generation finds it harder to bind fresh andat. Every one that slips away becomes more difficult to capture. It can't go on forever. There will come a time that the poets fail, and we have to rely on something else."

  "So," Sinja said. "You're starting a militia so that someday, genera- bons from now, when some Dai-kvo that hasn't been born yet doesn't manage to keep up to the standards of his forebears-"

  "There will also he generations of soldiers ready to keep the cities safe."

  Sinja scratched his belly and nodded.

  "You think I'm wrong?"

  "Yes. I think you're wrong," Sinja said. "I think you saw Seedless esca
pe. I think you saw Saraykeht stiffer the loss. You know that the Galts have ambitions, and that they've put their hands into the affairs of the Khaiem more than once."

  "That doesn't make me wrong," Otah said, unable to keep the sudden anger from his voice. So many years had passed, and the memory of Saraykeht had not dimmed. "You weren't there, Sinja-cha. You don't know how had it was. "That's mine. And if it lets me see farther than the Dai-kvo or the Khaiem-"

  "It's possible to look at the horizon so hard you trip over your feet," Sinja said, unfazed by Otah's heat. "You aren't responsible for everything tinder the sky."

  But I am responsible for that, Utah thought. He had never confessed his role in the fall of Saraykeht to Sinja, never told the story of the time he had killed a helpless man, of sparing an enemy and saving a friend. The danger and complexity and sorrow of that time had never entirely left him, but he could not call it regret.

  "You want to keep the future safe," Sinja said, breaking the silence, "and I respect that. But you can't do it by shitting on the table right now. Alienating the Dai-kvo gains you nothing."

  "What would you do, Sinja? If you were in my place, what would you do?"

  "Take as much gold as I could put on a fast cart, and live out my life in a beach hut on Bakta. But then I'm not particularly reliable." He drained his bowl and put it down on the table, porcelain clicking softly on lacquered wood. "What you should do is send us west."

  "But the men aren't ready-"

  "They're near enough. Without real experience, these poor bastards would protect you from a real army about as well as sending out all the dancing girls you could find. And now that I've said it, girls might even slow them down longer."

  Utah coughed a mirthless laugh. Sinja leaned forward, his eyes calm and steady.