Seasons Of War Part 6

'He was accepted by the Dai-kvo and taken to the village to be trained,' Liat said. 'That was eight years ago. He was talented, well liked, and respected. The Dai-kvo chose him to study for the binding of a fresh andat.'

Kiyan, sitting at Otah's side, leaned forward in a pose of query. 'Don't all the poets train to hold andat?'

'We all try our hands at preparing a binding,' Maati said. 'We all study enough to know how it works and what it is. But only a few apply the knowledge. If the Dai-kvo thinks you have the temperament to take on one that's already bound, he'll send you there to study and prepare yourself to take over control when the poet grows too old. If you're bright and talented, he'll set you to working through a fresh binding. It can take years to be ready. Your work is read by other poets and the Dai-kvo, and attacked, and torn apart and redone perhaps a dozen times. Perhaps more.'

'Because of the consequences of failing?' Kiyan asked. Maati nodded.

'Riaan was one of the best,' Liat said. 'And then three years ago, he was sent back to Nantani. To his family. Fallen from favor. No one knew why, he just appeared one day with a letter for his father, and after that he was living in apartments in the Vaudathat holdings. It was a small scandal. And it wasn't the last of them. Riaan was sending letters every week back to the Dai-kvo. Asking to be taken back, everyone supposed. He drank too much, and sometimes fought in the streets. By the end, he was practically living in the comfort houses by the seafront. The story was that he'd bet he could bed every wh.o.r.e in the city in a summer. His family never spoke of it, but they lost standing in the court. There were rumors of father and son fighting, not just arguing, but taking up arms.

'And then, one night, he disappeared. Vanished. His family said that he'd been summoned on secret business. The Dai-kvo had a mission for him, and he'd gone the same day the letter had come. But there wasn't a courier who'd admit to carrying any letter like it.'

'They might not have said it,' Otah said. 'They call it the gentleman's trade for a reason.'

'We thought of that,' Nayiit replied. He had a strong voice; not loud, but powerful. 'Later, when we went to the Dai-kvo, I took a list of the couriers who'd come to Nantani in the right weeks. None of them had been to the Dai-kvo's village at the right time. The Daikvo wouldn't speak to me. But of the men who would, none believed that Riaan had been sent for.'

Otah could still think of several objections to that, but he held them back, gesturing instead for Liat to go on.

'No one connected the disappearance with a Galtic merchant ship that left that night with half her cargo still waiting to be loaded,' Liat said. 'Except me, and I wouldn't have if I hadn't made it my business to track all things Galtic.'

'You think he was on that ship?' Otah said.

'I'm certain of it.'

'Why?' he asked.

'The wealth of coincidences,' Liat said. 'The captain - Arnau Fentin - was the second brother of a family on the Galtic High Council. A servant in the Vaudathat household saw Riaan's father burning papers. Letters, he said. And in a foreign script.' 'Any trade cipher could look like a foreign script,' Otah said, but Liat wouldn't be stopped.

'The ship had been bound for Chaburi-Tan and then Bakta. But it headed west instead - back to Galt.'

'Or Eddensea, or Eymond.'

'Otah-kya,' Kiyan said, her voice gentle, 'let her finish.'

He saw Liat's gaze flicker toward her, and her hands take a pose of thanks. He leaned back, his palms flat on his thighs, and silently nodded for Liat to continue.

'There were stories of Riaan having met a new woman in the weeks before he left. That was what his family thought, at least. He'd spent several evenings every week at a comfort house whose back wall was shared with the compound of House Fentin. The captain's family. I have statements that confirm all of this.'

'I went to the comfort house myself,' Nayiit said. 'I asked after the lady Riaan had described. There wasn't anyone like her.'

'It was a clumsy lie,' Liat said. 'All of it from beginning to end. And, Itani, it's the Galts.'

Whether she had used his old, a.s.sumed name in error or as a ploy to make him recall the days of his youth, the effect was the same. Otah drew a deep breath, and felt a sick weight descend to his belly as he exhaled. He had spent so many years wary of the schemes of Galt that her evidence, thin as it was, almost had the power to convince him. He felt the gazes of the others upon him. Maati leaned forward in his seat, fingers knotted together in his lap. Kiyan's rueful half-smile was sympathetic and considering both. The silence stretched.

'Is there any reason to think he would have . . . done this?' Otah asked. 'The poet. Why would he agree to this?'

Liat turned and nodded to her son. The man licked his lips before he spoke.

'I went to the Dai-kvo's village,' Nayiit said. 'My mother, of course, couldn't. There were stories that Riaan had suffered a fever the winter before he was sent away. A serious one. Apparently he came close to death. Afterward, his skin peeled like he'd been too long in the sun. They say it changed him. He became more p.r.o.ne to anger. He wouldn't think before he acted or spoke. The Dai-kvo sat with him for weeks, training him like he was fresh from the school. It did no good. Riaan wasn't the man he'd been when the Dai-kvo accepted him. So . . .'

'So the Dai-kvo sent him away in disgrace for something that wasn't his fault,' Otah said.

'No, not at first,' Nayiit said. 'The Dai-kvo only told him that he wasn't to continue with his binding. That it was too great a risk. They say Riaan took it poorly. There were fights and drunken rants. One man said Riaan snuck a woman into the village to share his bed, but I never heard anyone confirm that. Whatever the details, the Dai-kvo lost patience. He sent him away.'

'You learned quite a lot,' Otah said. 'I'd have thought the poets would be closer with their disgraces.'

'Once Riaan left, it wasn't their disgrace. It was his,' Nayiit said. 'And they knew I had come from Nantani. I traded stories for stories. It wasn't hard.'

'The Dai-kvo wouldn't meet with us,' Liat said. 'I sent five pet.i.tions, and for two of them his secretaries didn't even bother to send refusals. It's why we came here.'

'Because you wanted me to make this argument? I'm not in the Dai-kvo's best graces myself just now. He seems to think I blame the Galts when I cough,' Otah said. 'Maati might be the better man to make the case.'

Maati took a pose that disagreed.

'I would hardly be considered disinterested,' Maati said. His words were calm and controlled despite their depth. 'I may have done some interesting work, but no one will have forgotten that I defied the last Dai-kvo by not abandoning these precise two people.'

The rest of the thought hung in the air, just beyond speech. She abandoned me. It was true enough. Liat had taken the child and made her own way in the world. She had never answered Maati's letters until now, when she had need of him. There was something almost like shame in Liat's downcast eyes. Nayiit shifted his weight, as if to interpose himself between the two of them - between his mother and the man who had wanted badly to be his father and had been denied.

'We could also ask Cehmai,' Kiyan said. 'He's a poet of enough prestige and ability to hold Stone-Made-Soft, and his reputation hasn't been compromised.'

'That might be wise,' Otah said, grabbing for the chance to take the conversation away from the complexities of the past. 'But let's go over the evidence you have, Liat-cha. All of it. From the start.'

It took the better part of the day. Otah listened to the full story; he read the statements of the missing poet's slaves and servants, the contracts broken by the fleeing Galtic trade ship, the logs of couriers whose whereabouts Nayiit had compiled. Whatever objections he raised, Liat countered. He could see the fatigue in her face and hear the impatience in her voice. This matter was important to her. Important enough to bring her here. That she had come was proof enough of her conviction, if not of the truth of her claim. The girl he had known had been clever enough, competent enough, and still had been used as a stone in other people's games. Perhaps he was harsh in still thinking of her in that light. The years had changed him. They certainly could have changed her as well.

And, as the sun shifted slowly toward the western peaks, Otah found his heart growing heavy. The case she made was not complete, but it was evocative as a monster tale told to children. Galt might well have taken in this mad poet. There was no way to know what they might do with him, or what he might do with their help. The histories of the Empire murmured in the back of Otah's mind: wars fought with the power of G.o.ds, the nature of s.p.a.ce itself broken, and the greatest empire the world had ever known laid waste. And yes, if all Liat suspected proved true, it might happen again.

But if they acted on their fears, if the Dai-kvo mandated the use of the andat to remove the possibility of a Galtic poet, thousands would die who knew nothing of the plots that had brought down their doom. Children not old enough to speak, men and women who led simple, honest lives. Galt would be made a wasteland to rival the ruins of the Empire. Otah wondered how certain they would all have to be in order to take that step. How certain or else how frightened.

'Let me sit with this,' he said at last, nodding to Liat and her son. 'I'll have apartments cleared for you. You'll stay here at the palaces.'

'There may not be much time,' Maati said softly.

'I know it,' Otah said. 'Tomorrow I'll decide what to do. If Cehmai's the right bearer, we can do this all again with him in the room. And then . . . and then we'll see what shape the world's taken and do whatever needs doing.'

Liat took a pose of grat.i.tude, and a heartbeat later Nayiit mirrored her. Otah waved the gestures away. He was too tired for ceremony. Too troubled.

When Maati and the two visitors had left, Otah rose and stood beside Kiyan at the railing, looking out over the city as it fell into its early, sudden twilight. Plumes of smoke rose from among the green copper roofs of the forges. The great stone towers thrust toward the sky as if they supported the deepening blue. Kiyan tossed an almond out into the wide air, and a black-winged bird swooped down to catch it before it reached the distant ground. Otah touched her shoulder; she turned to him smiling as if half-surprised to find him there.

'How are you, love?' he asked.

'I should be the one asking,' she said. 'Those two . . . that's more than one lifetime's trouble they're carrying.'

'I know it. And Maati's still in love with her.'

'With both of them,' Kiyan said. 'One way and another, with both of them.'

Otah took a pose that agreed with her.

'You know her well enough,' Kiyan said. 'Does she love him, do you think?'

'She did once,' Otah said. 'But now? It's too many years. We've all become other people.'

The breeze smelled of smoke and distant rain. The first chill of evening raised gooseflesh on Kiyan's arm. He wanted to turn her toward him, to taste her mouth and lose himself for a while in simple pleasure. He wanted badly to forget the world. As if hearing his thought, she smiled, but he didn't touch her again and she didn't move nearer to him.

'What are you going to do?' she asked.

'Tell Cehmai, send out couriers west to see what we can divine about the situation in Galt, appeal to the Dai-kvo. What else can I do? A mad poet, p.r.o.ne to fits of temper and working for the Galtic High Council? There's not a story worse than that.'

'Will the Dai-kvo do what she asks, do you think?'

'I don't know,' Otah said. 'He'll know this Riaan better than any of us. If he's certain that the man's not capable of a proper binding, perhaps we'll let him try and pay the price of it. One simple death is the best we can hope for, sometimes. If it saves the world.'

'And if the Dai-kvo isn't sure?'

'Then he'll spin a coin or throw tiles or whatever it is he does to make a decision, and we'll do that and hope it was right.'

Kiyan nodded, crossing her arms and leaning forward, gazing out into the distance as if by considering carefully, she could see Galt from here. Otah's belly growled, but he ignored it.

'He'll destroy them, won't he?' she asked. 'The Dai-kvo will use the andat against the Galts.'

'Likely.'

'Good,' Kiyan said with a certainty that surprised him. 'If it's going to happen, let it happen there. At least Eiah and Danat are safe from it.'

Otah swallowed. He wanted to rise to the defense of the innocent in Galt, wanted to say the sort of high-minded words that he'd held as comfort many years ago when he had been moved to kill in the name of mercy. But the years had taken that man. The years he had lived, and the dark, liquid eyes of his children. If black chaos was to be loosed, he had to side with Kiyan. Better that it was loosed elsewhere. Better a thousand thousand Galtic children die than one of his own. It was what his heart said, but it made him feel lessened and sad.

'And the other problem?' Kiyan asked. Her voice was low, but there was a hardness to it almost like anger. Otah took a querying pose. Kiyan turned to him. He hadn't expected to see fear in her eyes, and the surprise of it filled him with dread as deep as any he had suffered.

'What is it?' he asked.

She looked at him, part in surprise, part accusation.

'Nayiit,' she said. 'No one would think that man was Maati's child. Not for a heartbeat. You have two sons, Otah-kya.'

5.

Balasar was quickly coming to resent the late-spring storms of the Westlands. Each morning seemed to promise a bright day in which his masters of supply could make their inventories, his captains could train their men. Before midday, great white clouds would hulk up in the south and advance upon him. The middle afternoon had been roaring rain and vicious lightning for the past six days. The training fields were churned mud, the wood for the steam wagons was soaked, and the men were beginning to mirror Balasar's own impatience.

They had been guests of the Warden of Aren for two weeks now, the troops in their tents outside the city walls, Balasar and his captains sleeping in the high keep. The Warden was an old man, fat and boisterous, who understood as well as Balasar the dangers of an army grown restless, even an army still only half a.s.sembled. The Warden put a pleasant face on things - he'd agreed to allow a Galtic army on his lands, after all. There was little enough to do now besides be pleasant and hope they'd go away again.

He had even been so kind as to offer Balasar the use of his library. It was a small room overlooking a courtyard, less grand than Balasar's own home in Galt, less than the smallest apartments of the least of the Khaiate n.o.bility. But it was serviceable, and it had the effect each man desired. Balasar had a place to brood, and the Westlanders had a convenient way to keep clear of him.

The afternoon rains pecked at the windows. The pot of black tea had grown tepid and bitter, ignored on a corner of the wide, oaken table. Balasar looked again at the maps. Nantani would be the first, and the easiest. The western forces would be undivided - five full legions with support of the mercenaries hired with the High Council's gold and promises of plunder. The city wouldn't stand for a morning. Then one legion would turn North, going overland to Pathai while two others took the mercenaries to Shosheyn-Tan, Lachi, and Saraykeht. That left him two legions to go upriver to Udun, Utani, and Tan-Sadar, less whatever men he left behind to occupy the conquered. Eight of the cities. Over half, but the least important.

Coal and his men were already in place, waiting in the low towns and smugglers' camps outside Chaburi-Tan. When the andat failed, they would sack the city, and take ships North to Yalakeht. The pieces for steam-driven boats were already in the warehouses of the Galtic tradesmen, ready to be pegged onto rafts and sped upriver to the village of the Dai-kvo. And then there was only the race to the North to put Amnat-Tan, Cetani, and Machi to the torch before winter came.

Balasar wished again that he had been able to lead the force in Chaburi-Tan. The fate of the world would rest on that sprint to the libraries and catacombs of the poets. If only he had had time to sail out there . . . but days were precious, and Coal had been preparing his men all the time Balasar had played politics in Acton. It was better this way. And still . . .

He traced a finger across the western plains - Pathai to Utani. He wished he knew better how the roads were. The school for the young poets wasn't far from Pathai. That wouldn't be a pleasant duty either. And he couldn't trust the slaughter of children to mercenaries, not with the stakes so high. This wasn't a war that had room for moments of compa.s.sion.

A soft knock came at the door, and Eustin stepped in. He wore the deep blue and red of a captain's uniform. Balasar acknowledged him with a nod.

'Has the third legion arrived, then?' Balasar asked.

'No, sir,' Eustin said. 'We've had a runner from them. They'll be here by the week's end, sir.'

'Too long.'

'Yes, sir. But there's another problem.'

Balasar rose, hands clasped behind him. He could feel his mind straining back toward the plans and maps almost as if it were a physical force, but he believed that battles were won or lost long before they were fought. If Eustin had thought something worth interrupting him, it would likely need his whole attention.

'Go ahead,' he said.

'The poet. He's refusing to pay for his wh.o.r.es again, sir. Been saying the honor of being with him should be enough. One of the girls took offense and poured a cup of hot tea in his lap. Scalded his little poet like a boiled sausage.'

Balasar didn't smile, nor did Eustin. The moment between them was enough.

'Will he be able to ride?' Balasar asked.

'Given a few days, sir, he'll be fine. But he's demanding the girl be killed. Half the houses in the city have threatened to raise their rates, and they're talking to their local clients too. I've had two letters today that didn't quite say the grain would cost more than expected.'

Balasar felt a brief flush of anger.

'They're aware that the majority of the Galtic armies are either in the ward now or will be here shortly?'

'Yes, sir. And they've not said it's final that they'll stick it to us for more silver. But they're proud folks. It's just a wh.o.r.e he wants killed, but she's a Westlands wh.o.r.e, if you see what I mean. She's one of their own.'

This was a mess. He didn't want to start the campaign by fighting the Ward of Aren. He didn't yet have all his men a.s.sembled. Balasar looked out the windows, casting his gaze over the courtyard below without truly seeing it.

'I suppose I'd best speak with him, then,' Balasar said.

'He's in his rooms, sir. Should I bring him here?'

'No,' Balasar said. 'I'll face the beast in its lair.'

'Yessir.'

The central city of Aren was a squat affair. Thick stone walls covered with mud and washed white were the order of the day. The constant wars of the Westlands and the occasional attack by Galt had kept the ward cropped low as a rabbit-haunted garden. The highest houses rose no more than four stories above ground, and the streets, even near the palaces of the Warden, smelled of sewage and old food. Balasar reached the building where he and his captains were housed, shook the rain from his cloak, and gestured for Eustin to wait for him. He took the stairs three at a time up to the anteroom of the poet's apartments. The men guarding the door bowed as he entered, then stood aside as he announced himself.

Riaan sat on a low couch, his robes propped up above his lap like a tent, the hem rising halfway up his shins. The awareness of his indignity shone in the poet's face - lips pressed thin, jaw set forward. Even as Balasar made his half-bow, he could tell the man had been working himself into a rage. If any of his captains had acted this way, Balasar would have a.s.signed them to patrolling on horseback until the wounds had healed. Idiocy should carry a price. Instead he lowered himself to a couch across from the poet and spoke gently.

'I heard about your misfortune,' Balasar said in the tongue of the Khaiate cities. 'I wanted to come and offer my sympathies. Is there anything I can do to be of service?'