Seasons Of War Part 14

10.

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 ma.s.s of the army stretching back, it seemed, to the horizon. Boots crushed the gra.s.ses, steam wagons consumed the trees, horses tramped the ground to mud. Their pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+fted. Balasar sighed and s.h.i.+fted his gaze forward to the rolling hills and gra.s.slands 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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, s.h.i.+ning and then vanis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ft it. Riaan's was an unbalanced, civilian strut. Balasar rose, opened the flap for them to enter, and rolled down the woven-gra.s.s mats to give them a level of visual privacy, false walls that s.h.i.+fted 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 a.s.sume,' 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 cus.h.i.+on 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.

A new rug was brought in, new pillows, and a plate of curried chicken and raisins, a flagon of wine. The servants all left, and Eustin still hadn't spoken.

'When you brought this to me,' Balasar said, 'you said his hesitation would be proof of his guilt. Now you're thinking his lack of hesitation might be just as d.a.m.ning.'

'Seemed like he might be trying to keep the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d from saying something,' Eustin said, his gaze cast down. Balasar laughed.

'There's no winning with you. You know that.'

'I suppose not, sir.'

Balasar took a knife and cut a slice from the chicken. It smelled lovely, sweet and hot and rich. But beneath it and the lemon candles, there was still a whiff of death and human blood. Balasar ate the food anyway. It tasted fine.

'Keep watch on him,' Balasar said. 'Be polite about it. Nothing obvious. I don't want the men thinking I don't believe in him. If you don't see him plotting against us by the time we reach Nantani, perhaps you'll sleep better.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'It's nothing. Some chicken?'

Eustin glanced at the plate, and then his eyes flickered toward the tent flap behind him.

'Or,' Balasar said, 'would you rather go set someone to shadow Captain Ajutani.'

'If it's all the same, sir,' Eustin said.

Balasar nodded and waved the man away. In the s.p.a.ce of two breaths, he was alone. He ate slowly. When the meal was almost done - chicken gone, flagon still over half full - a chorus of crickets suddenly burst out. Balasar listened. The poet was dead.

There was no turning back now. The High Council back in Acton would be desperately angry with him when they heard the news, but there wasn't a great deal they could do to breathe life back into a corpse. And if his work went well, by the time winter silenced these crickets, there would no longer be a man alive in the world who could take Riaan's place. And yet, his night's work was not complete.

He wiped his hands clean, savored a last sip of wine, and took the leather satchel from under his cot. He put the books on his writing table, side by side by side. The ancient pages seemed alive with memory. He still bore the scars on his shoulder from hauling these four books out of the desert. He still felt the ghosts of his men at his back, watching in silence, waiting to see whether their deaths had been n.o.ble or foolish. And beyond that - beyond himself and his life and struggles - the worn paper and pale ink knew of ages. The hand that had copied these words had been dust for at least ten generations. The minds that first conceived these words had fallen into forgetfulness long before that. The emperor whose greater glory they had been offered to was forgotten, his palaces ruins. The lush forests and jungles of the Empire were dune-swept. Balasar put his hand on the cool metallic binding of the first of the volumes.

Killing the man was nothing. Killing the books was more difficult. The poet, like any man, was born to die. Moving his transition from flesh to spirit forward by a few decades was hardly worth considering, and Balasar was a soldier and a leader of soldiers. Killing men was his work. It would have been as well to ask a farmer to regret the fate of his wheat. But to take these words which had lasted longer than the civilization that created them, to slaughter history was a task best done by the ignorant. Only a man who did not understand his actions would be callous enough to destroy these without qualm.

And yet what must be done, must be done. And it was time.

Carefully, Balasar laid the books open in the brazier. The pages s.h.i.+fted in the breeze, scratching one on another like dry hands. He ran his fingers along one line, translating as best he could, reading the words for the last time. The lemon candle spilled its wax across his knuckles as he carried it, and the flame leapt to twice its height. He touched the open leaves with the burning wick as a priest might give a blessing, and the books seemed to embrace the fire. He sat, watching the pages blacken and curl, bits of cinder rise and dance in the air. A pale smoke filled the air, and Balasar rose, opening the flap of the pavilion to the wide night air.

The firefly darted past him, glowing. Balasar watched it fly out to freedom and the company of its fellows until it went dark and vanished. The cook fires were fewer, the stars hanging in the sky bright and steady. A strange elation pa.s.sed through him, as if he had taken off a burden or been freed himself. He grinned like an idiot at the darkness and had to fight himself not to dance a little jig. If he'd been certain that none of his men were near, that no one would see, he would have allowed himself. But he was a commander and not a child. Dignity had its price.

When he returned to the brazier, nothing was left but blackened hinges, split leather, gray ash. Balasar stirred the ruins with a stick, making sure no text had survived, and then, satisfied, turned to his cot. The day before him would be long.

As he lay in the darkness, half asleep, he felt the ghosts again. The men he had left in the desert. The men still alive whom he would leave in the field. Riaan, books cradled in his arms. Balasar's sacrifices filled the pavilion, and their presence and expectation comforted him until a small voice came from the back of his mind.

Kya, it said. Sinja-kya, he called him. Sinja-cha would have been the proper form, wouldn't it? Kya is used for a lover or a brother. Why would Riaan have thought of Sinja as a brother?

And then, as if Eustin were seated beside the cot, his voice whispered, Seemed like he might be trying to keep the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d from saying something.

Liat walked through darkness between the Khai's palaces and the library where Maati, she hoped, was still awake and waiting for her. She felt like a washrag wrung out, soaked, and wrung out again. It was seven days now since Stone-Made-Soft had escaped, and she'd spent the time either meeting with the Khai Machi or waiting to do so. Long days spent in the gilded halls and corridors of the palaces were, she found, more tiring than travel. Her back ached, her legs were sore, and she couldn't even think what she had done to earn the pain. Sitting shouldn't carry such a price. If she'd lifted something heavy, there would at least be a reason . . .

The city seemed darker now than when she'd arrived. It might be only her imagination, but there seemed fewer lanterns lit on the paths, fewer torches at the doorways. The windows of the palaces that shone with light seemed dimmed. No slaves sang in the gardens, the members of the utkhaiem that she saw throughout her day all shared a tension that she understood too well.

Candles flickered behind Maati's closed shutters, a thin line of light where the wooden frames had warped over the years. Liat found herself more grateful than she had expected to be as she took the last steps down the path that led to his door.

Maati sat on the low couch, a bowl of wine cradled in his fingers. A bottle less than half full sat on the floor at his feet. He smiled as she let herself in, but she saw at once that something wasn't well. She took a pose of query, and he looked away.

'Maati-kya?'

'I've had a letter from the Dai-kvo,' Maati said. 'The timing of all this isn't what I'd hoped, you know. I've spent years puttering through the library here, looking for nothing in particular, and only stumbled on my little insight now. Just when the Galts have gotten out of hand. And now Cehmai. And . . . forgive me, love, and you. And our boy.'

'I don't understand,' Liat said. 'The Dai-kvo. What did he say?'

'He said that I should come.' Maati sighed. 'There's nothing in the letter about the Galts or the missing poet. There's nothing about Stone-Made-Soft, of course. The courier won't be there with that sorry news for days yet. It's only about me. It's the thing I'd always hoped for. It's my absolution, Liat-kya. I have been out of favor since before Nayiit was born. After I took Otah's cause in the succession, they almost forbade me from wearing the robes, you know. The old Daikvo made it very clear he didn't consider me a poet.'

Liat leaned against the cool stone wall. Her pains were forgotten. She watched Maati raise his brows, shake his head. His lips s.h.i.+fted as if he were having some silent conversation to which she was only half welcome. A familiar heaviness touched her heart.

'You must have hoped for this,' she said.

'Dreamed of it, when I dared to. I'm welcomed back with honor and dignity. I'm saved.'

'That's a bitter tone for a saved man,' she said.

'I've only just met you again. I've only just started to know Nayiit. And Otah-kvo's in need. And the Galts are stirring trouble again. My s.h.i.+ning hour has come to call me away from everyone who actually matters.'

'You can't refuse the Dai-kvo,' Liat said softly. 'You have to go.'

'Do I?'

The air between them grew still. Half a hundred other conversations echoed in their words. Liat closed her eyes, weariness dragging her like rain-heavy robes.

'It's all happening again, isn't it?' she said. 'It's all the things we've suffered before, coming back at once. The Galts. Stone-Made-Soft set free. Cehmai lost and mourning the way Heshai was that summer, after Seedless killed the baby. And then us. You and I.'

'You and I, ending again,' Maati said. 'All of history pressed into one season. It doesn't seem fair.'

'How is Cehmai?' she asked, turning the conversation to safer ground, if only for a moment. 'Has he been eating?'

'A little. Not enough.'

'Does he know yet what happened? How Stone-Made-Soft slipped free?'

'No, but . . . but he suspects. And I do, too.'

Liat moved forward, sat beside Maati, took the bowl from his hands and drank the wine. Her throat and chest warmed and relaxed. Maati took a bottle from the floor.

'Not every poet is made for slaughter,' Maati said as he tipped rice wine clear as water into the bowl. 'There was a part of him that rebelled at the prospect of turning the andat against the Galts. I know he struggled with it, and he and I both believed he'd made his peace with it.'

'But now you think not?'

'Now I think perhaps he wasn't as certain as he told himself he was. He may not even have known what he meant to do. It would take so little, in a way. The decision of a moment, and then gone beyond retrieval. If he regretted it in the next breath, it would already be too late. But it can't be a coincidence, the Galts and Stone-Made-Soft. '

Liat sipped now, just enough to maintain the warmth in her body but not so much as to make her drunk. Maati drank directly from the bottle, wiping it with his sleeve after.

'There's another explanation,' she said. 'The Galts could have done it.'

'How? They can't unmake a binding.'

'They could have bought him.'

Maati shook his head, frowning. 'Not Cehmai. There's not a man in the world less likely to turn against the Khaiem.'

'You're sure of that?'

'Yes. I'm sure,' Maati said. 'He was happy. He had his life and his place in the world, and he was happy.'

'So much the worse for him,' Liat said. 'At least we don't have that to suffer, eh?'

'And now who sounds bitter?'

Liat chuckled and took a pose accepting the point that was made awkward by the bowl in one hand.

'How are things with Otah-kvo?' Maati asked.

'He's like the wind on legs,' Liat said. 'He wants to know everything at once, control all of it, and I think he's driving the court half mad. And . . . don't say I said it, but it's almost as if he's enjoying it. Everything's falling apart except him. If simple force of will can hold a city together, I think Machi will be fine.'

'It can't, though.'

'No,' she agreed. 'It can't.'

The back of Maati's hand brushed against her arm. It was a small, tentative gesture, familiar as breath. It was something he had always done when he was uncertain and in need of comfort. There had been times when she'd found it powerfully annoying and times when she'd found herself doing it too. Now, she s.h.i.+fted the wine bowl to her other hand, and resolutely laced her fingers with his.

'I haven't written back to the Dai-kvo,' Maati said. His voice was as low as a confession. 'I'm not sure what I should . . . I haven't been back to Saraykeht, you know. I could . . . I mean . . . G.o.ds, I'm saying this badly. If you want it, Liat-kya, I could come back with you. You and Nayiit.'