An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) Read online

  “He’ll probably dismiss it out of hand,” Maati said, but he smiled as he spoke.

  Cehmai had been the first one he’d shown his theories to, even before he’d known for certain what they were. It had been a curiosity more than anything else. It was only as they’d talked about it that Maati had understood the depths he’d touched upon. And Cehmai had also been the one to encourage bringing the work to the Dai-kvo’s attention. All Athai’s enthusiasm and hyperbole paled beside a few thoughtful words from Cehmai.

  Maati stayed awhile, talking and laughing, comparing impressions of Athai now that he’d left. And then he took his leave, walking slowly enough that he didn’t become short of breath. Fourteen, almost fifteen years ago, he’d come to Machi. The black stone roadways, the constant scent of the coal smoke billowing up from the forges, the grandeur of the palaces and the hidden city far beneath his feet had become his home as no other place ever had before. He strode down pathways of crushed marble, under archways that flowed with silken banners. A singing slave called from the gardens, a simple melody of amazing clarity and longing. He turned down a smaller way that would take him to his apartments behind the library.

  Maati found himself wondering what he would do if the Dai-kvo truly thought his discovery had merit. It was an odd thought. He had spent so many years now in disgrace, first tainted by the death of his master Heshai, then by his choice to divide his loyalty between his lover and son on the one hand and the Dai-kvo on the other. And then at last his entrance into the politics of the court, wearing the robes of the poet and supporting Otah Machi, his old friend and enemy, to become Khai Machi. It had been simple enough to believe that his promotion to the ranks of the poets had been a mistake. He had, after all, been gifted certain insights by an older boy who had walked away from the school: Otah, before he’d been a laborer or a courier or a Khai. Maati had reconciled himself to a smaller life: the library, the companionship of a few friends and those lovers who would bed a disgraced poet halfway to fat with rich foods and long, inactive hours.

  After so many years of failure, the thought that he might shake off that reputation was unreal. It was like a dream from which he could only hope never to wake, too pleasant to trust in.

  Eiah was sitting on the steps when he arrived, frowning intently at a moth that had lighted on the back of her hand. Her face was such a clear mix of her parents—Kiyan’s high cheeks, Otah’s dark eyes and easy smile. Maati took a pose of greeting as he walked up, and when Eiah moved to reply, the moth took wing, chuffing softly through the air and away. In flight, the wings that had been simple brown shone black and orange.

  “Athai’s gone then?” she asked as Maati unlocked the doors to his apartments.

  “He’s likely just over the bridge by now.”

  Maati stepped in, Eiah following him without asking or being asked. It was a wide room, not so grand as the palaces or so comfortable as the poet’s house. A librarian’s room, ink blocks stacked beside a low desk, chairs with wine-stained cloth on the arms and back, a small bronze brazier dusted with old ash. Maati waved Eiah off as she started to close the door.

  “Let the place air out a bit,” he said. “It’s warm enough for it now. And what’s your day been, Eiah-kya?”

  “Father,” she said. “He was in a mood to have a family, so I had to stay in the palaces all morning. He fell asleep after midday, and Mother said I could leave.”

  “I’m surprised. I wasn’t under the impression Otah slept anymore. He always seems hip-deep in running the city.”

  Eiah shrugged, neither agreeing nor voicing her denial. She paced the length of the room, squinting out the door at nothing. Maati folded his hands together on his belly, considering her.

  “Something’s bothering you,” he said.

  The girl shook her head, but the frown deepened. Maati waited until, with a quick, birdlike motion, Eiah turned to face him. She began to speak, stopped, and gathered herself visibly.

  “I want to be married,” she said.

  Maati blinked, coughed to give himself a moment to think, and leaned forward in his chair. The wood and cloth creaked slightly beneath him. Eiah stood, her arms crossed, her gaze on him in something almost like accusation.

  “Who is the boy?” Maati said, regretting the word boy as soon as it left his mouth. If they were speaking of marriage, the least he could do was say man. But Eiah’s impatient snort dismissed the question.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Whoever.”

  “Anyone would do?”

  “Not just anyone. I don’t want to be tied to some low town firekeeper. I want someone good. And I should be able to. Father doesn’t have any other daughters, and I know people have talked with him. But nothing ever happens. How long am I supposed to wait?”

  Maati rubbed a palm across his cheeks. This was hardly a conversation he’d imagined himself having. He turned through half a hundred things he might say, approaches he might take, and felt a blush rising in his cheeks.

  “You’re young, Eiah-kya. I mean…I suppose it’s natural enough for a young woman to…be interested in men. Your body is changing, and if I recall the age, there are certain feelings that it’s…”

  Eiah looked at him as if he’d coughed up a rat.

  “Or perhaps I’ve misunderstood the issue,” he said.

  “It’s not that,” she said. “I’ve kissed lots of boys.”

  The blush wasn’t growing less, but Maati resolved to ignore it.

  “Ah,” he said. “Well, then. If it’s that you want apartments of your own, something outside the women’s quarters, you could always—”

  “Talit Radaani’s being married to the third son of the Khai Pathai,” Eiah said, and then a heartbeat later, “She’s half a year younger than I am.”

  It was like feeling a puzzle box click open in his fingers. He understood precisely what was happening, what it meant and didn’t mean. He rubbed his palms against his knees and sighed.

  “And she gloats about that, I’d bet,” he said. Eiah swiped at her betraying eyes with the back of a hand. “After all, she’s younger and lower in the courts. She must think that she’s got proof that she’s terribly special.”

  Eiah shrugged.

  “Or that you aren’t,” Maati continued, keeping his voice gentle to lessen the sting of the words. “That’s what she thinks, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what she thinks.”

  “Well, then tell me what you think.”

  “I don’t know why he can’t find me a husband. It isn’t as if I’d have to leave. There’s marriages that go on for years before anyone does anything. But it’s understood. It’s arranged. I don’t see why he can’t do that much for me.”

  “Have you asked him?”

  “He should know this,” Eiah snapped, pacing between the open door and the fire grate. “He’s the Khai Machi. He isn’t stupid.”

  “He also isn’t…” Maati said and then bit down on the words a child. The woman Eiah thought she was would never stand for the name. “He isn’t fourteen summers old. It’s not so hard for men like me and your father to forget what it was like to be young. And I’m sure he doesn’t want to see you married yet, or even promised. You’re his daughter, and…it’s hard, Eiah-kya. It’s hard losing your child.”

  She stopped, her brow furrowed. In the trees just outside his door, a bird sang shrill and high and took flight. Maati could hear the fluttering of its wings.

  “It’s not losing me,” she said, but her voice was less certain than it had been. “I don’t die.”

  “No. You don’t, but you’ll likely leave to be in your husband’s city. There’s couriers to carry messages back and forth, but once you’ve left, it’s not likely you’ll return in Otah’s life, or Kiyan’s. Or mine. It’s not death, but it is still loss, dear. And we’ve all lost so much already, it’s hard to look forward to another.”

  “You could come with me,” Eiah said. “My husband would take you in. He wouldn’t be worth m
arrying if he wouldn’t, so you could come with me.”

  Maati allowed himself to chuckle as he rose from his seat.

  “It’s too big a world to plan for all that just yet,” he said, mussing Eiah’s hair as he had when she’d been younger. “When we come nearer, we’ll see where things stand. I may not be staying here at all, depending on what the Dai-kvo thinks. I might be able to go back to his village and use his libraries.”

  “Could I go there with you?”

  “No, Eiah-kya. Women aren’t allowed in the village. I know, I know. It isn’t fair. But it isn’t happening today, so why don’t we walk to the kitchens and see if we can’t talk them out of some sugar bread.”

  They left his door open, leaving the spring air and sunlight to freshen the apartments. The path to the kitchens led them through great, arching halls and across pavilions being prepared for a night’s dancing; great silken banners celebrated the warmth and light. In the gardens, men and women lay back, eyes closed, faces to the sky like flowers. Outside the palaces, Maati knew, the city was still alive with commerce—the forges and metalworkers toiling through the night, as they always did, preparing to ship the works of Machi. There was bronze, iron, silver and gold, and steel. And the hand-shaped stonework that could be created only here, under the inhuman power of Stone-Made-Soft. None of that work was apparent in the palaces. The utkhaiem seemed carefree as cats. Maati wondered again how much of that was the studied casualness of court life and how much was simple sloth.

  At the kitchens, it was simple enough for the Khai’s daughter and his permanent guest to get thick slices of sugar bread wrapped in stiff cotton cloth and a stone flask of cold tea. He told Eiah all of what had happened with Athai since she’d last come to the library, and about the Dai-kvo, and the andat, and the world as Maati had known it in the years before he’d come to Machi. It was a pleasure to spend the time with the girl, flattering that she enjoyed his own company enough to seek him out, and perhaps just the slightest bit gratifying that she would speak to him of things that Otah-kvo never heard from her.

  They parted company as the quick spring sun came within a hand’s width of the western mountains. Maati stopped at a fountain, washing his fingers in the cool waters, and considered the evening that lay ahead. He’d heard that one of the winter choirs was performing at a teahouse not far from the palaces—the long, dark season’s work brought out at last to the light. The thought tempted, but perhaps not more than a book, a flask of wine, and a bed with thick wool blankets.

  He was so wrapped up by the petty choice of pleasures that he didn’t notice that the lanterns had been lit in his apartments or that a woman was sitting on his couch until she spoke.

  “Maati,” Liat said, and the man startled like a rabbit. For a long moment, his face was a blank confusion as he struggled to make sense of what he saw. Slowly, she watched him recognize her.

  In all fairness, she might not have known him either, had she not sought him out. Time had changed him: thickened his body and thinned his hair. Even his face had changed shape, the smooth chin and jaw giving way to jowls, the eyes going narrower and darker. The lines around his mouth spoke of sadness and isolation. And anger, she thought.

  She had known when she arrived that she’d found the right apartments. It hadn’t been difficult to get directions to Machi’s extra poet, and the door had been open. She’d scratched at the doorframe, called out his name, and when she’d stepped in, it was the scent that had been familiar. Certainly there had been other things—the way the scrolls were laid out, the ink stains on the arms of the chairs—that gave evidence to Maati’s presence. The faintest hint, a wisp of musk slight as pale smoke, was the thing that had brought back the flood of memory. For a powerful moment, she saw again the small house she’d lived in after she and Maati had left Saraykeht; the yellow walls and rough, wooden floor, the dog who had lived in the street and only ever been half tamed by her offerings of sausage ends from the kitchen window, the gray spiders that had built their webs in the corners. The particular scent of her old lover’s body brought back those rooms. She knew him better by that than to see him again in the flesh.

  But perhaps that wasn’t true. When he blinked fast and uncertainly, when his head leaned just slightly forward and a smile just began to bloom on his lips, she could see him there, beneath that flesh. The man she had known and loved. The man she’d left behind.

  “Liat?” he said. “You…you’re here?”

  She took a pose of affirmation, surprised to find her hands trembling. Maati stepped forward slowly, as if afraid a sudden movement might startle her into flight. Liat swallowed to loosen the knot in her throat and smiled.

  “I would have written to warn you I was coming,” she said, “but by the time I knew I was, I’d have raced the letter. I’m…I’m sorry if…”

  But he touched her arm, his fingers on the cloth just above her elbow. His eyes were wide and amazed. As if it were natural, as if it had been a week or a day and not a third of their lives, Liat put her arms around him and felt him enclose her. She had told herself that she would hold back, be careful. She was the head of House Kyaan, a woman of business and politics. She knew how to be hardhearted and cool. There was no reason to think that she would be safe here in the farthest city from her home and facing again the two lovers of her childhood. The years had worked changes on them all, and she had parted with neither of them on good terms.

  And yet the tears in her eyes were simple and sincere and as much joy as sorrow, and the touch of Maati’s body against her own—strange and familiar both—wasn’t awkward or unwelcome. She kissed his cheek and drew back enough to see his still wonder-filled face.

  “Well,” she said at last. “It’s been a while. It’s good to see you again, Maati-kya. I wasn’t sure it would be, but it is.”

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” he said. “I thought, after all this time…My letters…”

  “I got them, yes. And it’s not as if court gossip didn’t tell everyone in the world where you were. The last succession of Machi was the favorite scandal of the season. I even saw an epic made from it. The boy who took your part didn’t look a thing like you,” she said, and then, in a lower voice, “I meant to write back to you, even if it was only to tell you that I’d heard. That I knew. But somehow I never managed. I regret that. I’ve always regretted that. It only seemed so…complex.”

  “I thought perhaps…I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought.”

  She stood silently in his arms the space of another breath, part of her wishing that this moment might suffice; that the relief she felt at Maati’s simple, unconsidered acceptance might stand in for all that she had still to do. He sensed the change in her thoughts and stepped back, his hands moving restlessly. She smoothed her hair, suddenly aware of the streaks of gray at her temple.

  “Can I get something for you?” Maati said. “It’s simple enough to call a servant in from the palaces. Or I have some distilled wine here.”

  “Wine will do,” she said, and sat.

  He went to a low cabinet beside the fire grate, sliding the wooden panel back and taking out two small porcelain bowls and a stoppered bottle as he spoke.

  “I’ve had company recently. He’s only just left. I don’t usually live in this disorder.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” she said, wryly. Maati chuckled and shrugged.

  “Oh, I don’t clean it myself. It would be a hundred times worse than this. Otah-kvo’s been very kind in loaning me servants. He has more than he has places for.”

  The name was like a cold breath, but Liat only smiled and accepted the bowl that Maati held out to her. She sipped the wine—strong, peppery, and warm in her throat—to give herself a moment. She wasn’t ready yet for the pleasure to end.

  “The world’s changed on us,” she said. It was a platitude, but Maati seemed to take some deeper meaning from it.

  “It has,” he said. “And it’ll keep on changing, I think. When
I was a boy, I never imagined myself here, and I can’t say for certain what I’ll be doing when next summer comes. The new Dai-kvo…”

  He shook his head slowly and sipped his wine for what Liat guessed was much the same reason she had. The silence between them grew. Maati cleared his throat.

  “How is Nayiit?” he asked, careful, Liat noticed, to use the boy’s name. Not our son, but Nayiit.

  She told him about the work of House Kyaan, and Nayiit’s role as an overseer. The stories of how he had made the transition from the child of the head of the house to an overseer in his own right. His courtship, his marriage, the child. Maati closed the door, lit a fire in the grate, and listened.

  It was odd that of all the subjects she had to bring to the table, Nayiit should be the easiest. And Maati listened to it all, laughing or rapt, delighted and also sorrowful, longing to have been part of something that was already gone. Her words were like rain in a desert; he absorbed them, cherished them. She found herself searching for more—anecdotes of Nayiit and his friends, his early lovers, the city, anything. She searched for them and offered them up, part apology, part sacrifice. The candles had grown visibly shorter before he asked whether Nayiit had stayed in Saraykeht, and Liat reluctantly shook her head.

  “I’ve left him at the wayhouse,” she said. “I wasn’t certain how this would go, between us. I didn’t want him to be here if it was bad.”

  Maati’s hands started to move toward some pose—a denial, perhaps—then faltered. His eyes locked on hers. There were decades in them. She felt tears welling up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “If that’s worth anything, I am sorry, Maati-kya.”

  “For what?” he asked, and his tone said that he could imagine a number of answers.

  “That you weren’t a part of his life until now.”

  “It was my choice as much as yours. And it will be good to see him again.”

  He heaved a sigh and pressed the stopper back into the bottle’s neck. The sun was long gone, and a cold breeze, thick with the perfume of night-flowering gardens, raised bumps on her arms. Only the air. Not dread.