An Autumn War Read online

  "It's still the same," he said. "Nurat is modified by the fourth case of a(/at, and then it's exactly the same logical structure as the one Fleshai used."

  "No, it isn't," laati said, slapping the table with an open palm. "It's differ r ut. "

  Cchmai took a long, slow breath, raising his hands palms-out. It wasn't a formal gesture, but laati understood it all the same. They were both worn raw. I Ic sat hack in his chair, feeling the knots in his back and neck. The brazier in the corner made the wide room smell warm without seeming to actually heat it.

  "Look," laati said. "Let's put it aside for the day. We need to move the library underground soon anyway. It's going to he too cold tip here to do more than watch our fingers turn blue."

  Cehmai nodded, then looked around at the disarray. Nlaati could read the despair in his face.

  "I'll put it hack together," MIaati said. ""Then a dozen slaves with strong hacks, and I'll put it all together in the winter quarters in two days' time."

  "I should move the poet's house down too," Cehmai said. "I feel like I haven't been there in weeks."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. The place seems too big without Stone-Made-Soft anyway. "loo quiet. It reminds me of ... well, of everything."

  Nlaati rose, his knees aching. His feet tingled with the pins and needles that long motionlessness brought him these days. lie clapped his hand on Cehmai's Shoulder.

  "Meet me in three days," he said. "I'll have the hooks in order. We'll start again fresh."

  Cehmai took a pose of agreement, but he looked exhausted. Worn thin. The younger poet began snuffing the lanterns as %Iaati walked back toward his apartments, placing his feet carefully until normal feeling returned to them. Stepping the wrong way and breaking his ankle would he just the thing to make the winter even more miserable than it already promised to he.

  The rooms in which he spent his summers were already bare. The fire grate was empty of everything but old soot. The tapestries were gone, the couches, the tables, the cabinets. Everything had been moved to the lower city. Winter are the middle of things in the North. The snows would come soon, blocking the doors and windows. The second-story snow doors would open out for anyone who needed to travel into the world. Below, in the warmth of the ground, all the citizens of Machi, and now of Cetani too, would huddle and talk and fight and sing and play at tiles and stones until winter lost its grip and the snows turned to meltwater and washed the black-cobbled streets. Only the metalworkers remained at the ground level, the green copper roofs of the forges free of snow and ice, the plumes of coal smoke rising almost as high as the towers all through the winter.

  At least all through this winter. This one last winter before the Galts came and butchered them all.

  If only there was some other way to phrase the idea of removing. Seedless's true name would have been better translated Removing-the- Part-"That-Continues. Continuity was a fairly simple problem. The old grammars had several ways to conceptualize continuance. It was removal ...

  Nlaati reached the thin red doorway at the back of the rooms, and started down the stairs. It was dark as night. Darker. He would need to talk with the palace servant masters about seeing that lanterns were lit here. With as many people as there were filling every available niche in the tunnels and, from what he heard, the mines as well, it seemed unlikely that no one could he spared to be sure there was a little light on his path.

  Or they might be rationing lamp oil already. There was a depressing thought.

  He descended, one hand on the smooth, cool stone of the wall to keep him steady. He moved slowly because going quickly would get him winded, and it was dark enough that he wanted to stay sure of his footing. His mind was only half concerned with walking anyway. Cehmai was right. The logical structure was the same whether he used nurat or something else. So that was another dead end.

  Removal.

  It was a concept of relative motion. "faking something enclosed and producing a distance between it and its-now previous-enclosure. Plucking out a seed, or a baby. A gemstone from its setting. A man from his bed or his home. Removing. Heshai's work in framing Seedless was so elegant, so simple, that it seemed inevitable. That was the curse of second and third bindings of the same andat. Finding something equally graceful, but utterly different. It made his jaw ache just thinking about it.

  I is reached the bottom of the stairs and the wide upper chamber of his winter quarters. The night candle burning there was hardly to its first quarter mark, which given the lengthening nights of autumn meant the city beneath him would likely still he awake and active. Rest for him, though. His day had been full already. He took up the candle, passed down a short, close corridor, and reached the second stairway, which led down to the bedchambers.

  The air was noticeably warmer here than in the library-in part from the heat of ten thousand people in the earth below him rising up, and in part from its stillness. Servants had prepared his bed with blankets and furs. A light meal of rice and spiced pork in one of the bowls of handthick iron that could hold the heat for the better part of a day waited on his writing table. Maati sat, ate slowly, not tasting the food, drinking rice wine as if it were water. Even as he sucked the pepper sauce off the last bit of pork, his feet and fingers were still cold. Removing-the-ChillFrom-the-Old-Man's-Flesh. There was an andat.

  Nlaati closed the lid of the great iron bowl, slipped out of his robes, hefted himself into his bed, and willed himself to sleep. For a time, he lay watching the candle burn, smelling the wax as it melted and dripped, and could not get comfortable. IIe couldn't get the cold out of his toes and knuckles, couldn't make his mind stop moving. He couldn't avoid the growing fear that when he closed his eyes, the nightmares that had begun plaguing him would return.

  The images his mind held when his eyes were closed had become more violent, more anxious. Fathers weeping for sons who were also sacks of bloodied grain and dead mice; long, sleeping hours spent searching through bodies in a charnel house hoping to find his child still living and only finding Otah's children again and again and again; the recurring dream of a tunnel that led down past the city, deeper than the mines, and into the earth until the stone itself grew fleshy and angry and bled. And the cry that woke him-a man's voice shouting from a great distance that demanded to know whose child this was. Whose (hil<1.?

  With this mind, Maati thought as he watched the single flame of the night candle, I'm intended to hind an andat. It's like driving nails with rotten meat.

  The night candle had burned through three of its smallest marks when he abandoned his bed, pulled on his robes, and left his private chambers for the wide, arched galleries of the tunnels below the palaces. The bathhouses were at least warm. If he wasn't to sleep, he could at least be miserable in comfort.

  The public spaces were surprisingly full with men and women in the glorious robes of the utkhaiem. It made sense, he supposed. Cetani had not only brought its merchants and craftsmen. There would be two courts living tinder the palaces this winter. And so twice the social intrigue. Who precisely was sleeping with whom would he even more complex, and even the threat of their death at the hands of a Galtic army wouldn't stop the courtiers playing for rank.

  As he passed, the utkhaiem took poses of respect and welcome, the servants and slaves ones of abasement. hlaati repressed a swelling hatred of all of them. It wasn't their fault, after all, that he had to save them. And himself. And Liat and Nayiit and Otah and all the people he had ever known, all the cities he had ever seen. His world, and everything in it.

  It was the Galts who deserved his anger. And they would feel it, by Al the gods. Failed crops, gelded men, and barren women until they rebuilt everything they'd broken and given back everything they took. If he could only think of a better way to say removing.

  I Ic brooded his way along the dim galleries and through the great chambers until the air began to thicken with the first presentiment of steam, and the prospect of hot water, and of finally warming his chilled fee
t, intruded on him.

  Ic found his way into the men's changing rooms, where he shrugged off his robes and hoots and let the servant offer him a howl of clear, cold water to drink before he went into the public baths and sweated it all out again. When he passed through the inner door, Maati shivered at the warmth. Voiccs filled the dim, gray space-conversations between people made invisible by the steam rising from the water. "There had been a time, Maati considered as he stepped gingerly down the submerged stairs and waded toward a low bench, when the idea of strangers wandering naked in the baths-men and women together-had held some erotic frisson. "Truth often disappoints.

  Ic lowered himself to the thick, water-logged wood of the bench, the hot water rising past his belly, past his chest, until the small warm waves danced against the hollow of his throat. At last, his feet felt warm, and he leaned back against the warm stone, sighing with a purely physical contentment. He resolved to move down toward the warmer end before he went back to his rooms. If he boiled himself thoroughly enough, he might even carry the heat back to his bed.

  Across the bath, hidden in the mist, two men talked of grain supplies and how best to address the problem of rats. Far away toward the hotter end of the bath, someone shouted, and there was a sound of splashing. Children, Nlaati supposed, and then fell into a long, gnawing plan for how best to move the volumes in the library. His concentration was so profound he didn't notice v%-hen the children approached.

  "t'nclc Nlaati?"

  F,iah was practically at his side, crouched low in the water to preserve her modesty. A gaggle of children of the utkhaiem behind her at what Maati supposed must be a respectful distance. He raised hands from the water and took a pose of greeting, somewhat cramped by being held high enough to be seen.

  "I haven't seen you in ages, I?iah-kya," he said. "What's been keeping you?"

  The girl shrugged, sending ripples.

  "'T'here are a lot of new people from Cetani," she said. ""There's a whole other Radaani family here now. And I've been studying with Loya-cha about how to fix broken bones. And ... and 'Mama-kva said you were htisy and that I shouldn't bother you."

  "You should always bother me," laati said with a grin. "Is it going well%"

  "It's a complicated thing," laati said. "But it's a long wait until spring. We'll have time."

  "Complicated's hard," Eiah said. "Loya-cha says it's always easy to fix things when there's only one thing wrong. It's when there's two or three things at once that it's hardest."

  "Smart man, Lova-cha," Nlaati said.

  Flah shrugged again.

  "I Ie's a servant," she said. "If you can't recapture Seedless, we can't heat the Galts can we?"

  "lour father did once," laati said. "IIe's a very clever man."

  "Rut we might not."

  " WVe might not," laati allowed.

  F,iah nodded to herself, her forehead crinkling as she came to some decision. When she spoke, her voice had a seriousness that seemed out of place from a girl still so young, hardly half-grown.

  "If we're all going to die, I wanted you to know that I think you were a very good father to Nayiit-cha."

  laati almost coughed from surprise, and then he understood. She knew. A warm sorrow filled him. She knew that Nayiit was Utah's son. That Nlaati loved the boy. 't'hat it mattered to him deeply that Nayiit love him hack. And the worst of it, she knew that he hadn't been a very good father.

  "You're kind, love," he said, his voice thick.

  She nodded sharply, embarrassed, perhaps, to have completed her task. One of her companions yelped and dropped under the water only to come back up spitting and shaking his head. Eiah turned toward them.

  "heave him he!" Eiah shouted, then turned to Nlaati with an apologetic pose. lie smiled and waved her away. She went back to her group with the squared shoulders of an overseer facing a recalcitrant hand of laborers. Nlaati let his smile fade.

  A good father to Nayiit. And to he told so by Otah's daughter. Perhaps binding the andat wasn't so complex after all. Not when compared with other things. Fathers and sons, lovers and mother and daughters. And the war. Saraykcht and Seedless. All of it touched one edge against another, like tilework. None of it existed alone. And how could anyone expect him to solve the thing when half of everything seemed to he broken, and half of what was broken was still beautiful.

  The physician was right. It would he easy to fix one thing, if there were only one thing wrong. But there were so many was to break something so delicate and so complex. Even the act of making one thing right seemed destined to undo something else. And he was too tired and too confused to say whether one way of being wounded was better than another.

  There were so many ways to be wrong.

  There were so many ways to break things.

  hlaati felt the thought fall into place as if it were something physical. It was the moment he was supposed to shout, to stand tip and wave his hands about, possessed by insight as if by a demon. But instead, he sat with it quietly, as if it was a gem only he of all mankind had ever seen.

  He'd spent too much time with Heshai's binding. Removing-thePart-That-Continues had been made for the cotton trade-pulling seeds from the fiber and speeding it on its way to the spinners and the weavers and feeding all of the needle trades. But there was no reason for h Iaati to he restricted by that. He only needed a way to break Galt. To starve them. To see that no other generation of Galtic children ever saw the world.

  It wasn't Seedless he needed. It was only Sterile. And there were any number of ways to say that.

  He sank lower into the water as the sense of relief and peace consumed him. Destroying-the-Part- That-Continues, he thought as the little waves touched his lips. Shattering-the-Part-"That-Continues. Crushing it. Rotting it. Corroding it.

  Corrupting it.

  In his mind, Galt died. And he, Maati Vaupathai, killed it. What, he asked himself, was victory in a single battle compared with that? Otah had saved the city. Nlaati saw now how he could save everything.

  21

  Sinja woke, stiff with cold, to the sound of chopping. Outside the tent, someone with a hand axe was breaking the ice at the top of the barrels. It was still dark, but morning was always dark these days. He kicked off his blankets and rose. The undyed wool of his inner robes held a hit of the heat as he pulled on first one outer robe and then another with a wide leather cloak over the top that creaked when he fastened the wide hone broochwork.

  Outside his tent, the army was already breaking camp. Columns of smoke and steam rose from the wagons. Horses snorted, their breath pluming white in the light of a falling moon. In the southeast, the dawn was still only a lighter shade of black. Sinja walked to the cook fire and squatted down beside it, a howl of barley gruel sweetened with winepacked prunes in his hands. The heat of it was better than the taste. Wine could do strange things to prunes.

  The army had been marching for two and a half weeks. At a guess, there were another three before they reached Machi. If there was no storm, Sinja guessed they would lose a thousand men to frostbite, most of those in the last ten days. He squinted into the dark, implacable sky and watched the faintest stars begin to fade. 't'here would still be over nine thousand men. And every man among them would know that this battle wasn't for money or glory. Or even for love of the general. If by some miracle Otah turned the Galts back from the city, they would die scattered in the frozen plains of the North.

  This battle would be the only time in the whole benighted war that the Galts would go in knowing they were fighting for their lives.

  "You want more?" the cook asked, and Sinja shook his head. Around him, the members of his personal guard were moving at last. Sinja didn't help them break down the camp. He'd left most of the company behind in Tan-Sadar. They were, after all, on a deadly stupid march that, with luck, would end with them sacking their own hones. It wasn't duty that could be asked of a green recruit of his first campaign. Sinja had taken time handpicking this dozen to accompany him. 't'here wasn't a
man among them he liked.

  The last tent was folded, poles bound together with their leather thongs, and put on the steam wagon. The fires were all stamped out, and the stin made its tardy appearance. Sinja wrapped the leather cloak closer around his shoulders and sighed. This was a younger man's game. If he'd been as wise as the average rat, he'd be someplace warm and close now, with a good mulled wine and a plate of venison in mint sauce. The call sounded, and he began the walk north. Cold numbed his face and made his cars ache. The air smelled of dust and smoke and horse dung-the miasma of the moving army. Sinja kept his eyes to the horizon, but the only clouds were the high white lace that did little but leach blue from the sky; there was no storm coming today. And still the dusting of snow that had fallen in the last weeks hadn't melted and wouldn't before spring. The world was pale except where a stone or patch of ground stood free of snow. "There it was black.

  Ile put one foot in front of the other, his mind growing empty with the rhythm. His muscles slowly warmed. The pain retreated from his ears. With enough effort, the air became almost comfortable. The sun rose quickly behind him, as if in a hurry to finish its day's passage and return the world to darkness.

  When he paused to relieve himself on a tree-his piss steaming in its puddle-he took off the leather cloak. If he got too warm, he'd start to sweat. Soaking through his inner robes was an invitation to death. He wondered how many of Balasar's men knew that. With his sad luck, all of them.

  They wouldn't see a low town today. They had overrun one yesterday-the locals surprised to find themselves surrounded by horsemen intent on keeping any word from slipping out to the North. 'T'here would he another town in a day or two. If Sinja was lucky, it might mean fresh meat for dinner. The rations set aside by the townsmen to see them through the winter might feed the army for as much as half a day.