An Autumn War (37 page)

"My counselors have told me of your suggestion, my good friend Nlachi," the Khai Cetani said. "I must say I was ... surprised. You can't truly expect us to abandon Cetani without a fight."

"You'll lose," Otah said.

"We are a city of fifty thousand people. These invaders of yours are at most five."

`They're soldiers. They know what they're doing. You might slow them, but you won't stop them."

The Khai Cetani sat, crossing his legs. His smile was almost a sneer.

"You think because you failed, no one else can succeed?"

"I think if we had a season, perhaps two, to build an army, we might withstand them. Hire mercenaries to train the men, drill them, build walls around at least the inner reaches of the cities, and we might stand a chance. As it is, we don't. I've seen what they did to the village of the [tai-kvo. I've had reports from Yalakeht. AmnatTan will fall if it hasn't already. They will come here next. You have fifty thousand, including the infirm and the aged and children too young to hold a sword. You don't have weapons enough or armor or experience. My proposal is our best hope."

It was an argument he had wrestled with through many of the long nights of his journey to the North. Force of arms would not stop the Gaits. Slowing them, letting the winter come and protect them for the long, dark months in which no attacking force would survive the fields of ice and brutally cold nights, winning time for the poets to work a little miracle, bind one of the andat and save them all-it was a thin hope but it was the best they had. And slowly, during the days swaying on horseback and nights sitting by smoldering braziers, Otah had found the plan that he believed would win him this respite. Now If the Khai Cetani would simply see the need of it.

"If you bring your people to Machi, we will have twice as many people who can take the field against the Galts. And if you will do what I've suggested with the coal and food, the Galts will be much worse for the travel than we will he."

"And Cetani will fall without resistance. We will roll over like a soft quarter whore," the Khai Cetani said. "It's simple enough for you to sacrifice my city, isn't it?"

"None of this is easy. But simple? Yes, it's simple. Bring your people to Machi. Bring all the food you can carry and burn what you can't. Mix hard coal in with the soft, so that what we leave behind for the (;alts will burn too hot in their steam wagons, and give me the loan of five hundred of your best men. I'll give you a winter and the library of Machi. Between your poet and the two at my court-"

"I have no poet."

Otah took a pose of query.

"Ile died half a month ago, trying to regain his andat," the Khai Cetani said. "His skin went black as a new bruise and his bones all shattered. I have no poet. All I have is a city, and I won't give it away for nothing!"

The Khai Cetani's words ended in a shout. His face was red with fury. And with fear. There was no more that Otah could say now that would sway him, but years in the gentleman's trade had taught Otah something about negotiations that the Khaiem had never known. lie nodded and took a pose that formally withdrew him from the conversation.

"You and your men will stay here," the Khai Cetani said, continuing to speak despite Otah's gesture. "We will make our stand here, at Cetani. We will not fall."

"You will," Otah said. "And my men will leave in the morning, with me.

The Khai Cetani was breathing fast, as if he had run a race. Otah took a pose of farewell, then turned and strode from the garden. To the east, clouds darkened the horizon. The scent of coming rain touched the air. Otah's armsmen and servants fell in with him. The eyes of Cetani's utkhaiem were on the little procession as Otah walked to the apartments granted him by the Khai. He was a curiosity-one of the Khaiem walking with the swagger of a man who'd sat too long on a horse, his retinue looking more like a mercenary captain's crew than courtiers. And Otah suspected that martial air, however undeserved, would serve him. He scowled the way he imagined Sinja might have in his place.

Ashua Radaani was sitting at the fire grate deep in conversation with Saya the blacksmith when Otah entered the wide hall that served as the center of the visitors' palace. Battle and loss and the common enemy of Galt had mixed with the shared recognition of competence to make the two men something like friends. They stood and took poses of respect and welcome that Otah waved away. He sat on a low cushion by the fire and sent his servant boy to find them tea and something to eat.

"It didn't go well, I take it," Radaani said.

"It didn't go well and it didn't go badly," Otah said. "He's smart enough to be frightened. "That's good. I was afraid he'd be certain of himself. But his poet's dead. "Tried to recapture his andat and paid its price."

Radaani sighed.

"Did he agree to your plan, Most High?" Saya asked.

"No," Otah said. "tie's determined that Cetani not fall without a fight. I've told him we're leaving with him or without him. How was your hunting, Ashua-cha?"

Radaani leaned forward. His features were thinner than they had been in Machi, and the ring he turned on his finger wasn't so snug as it had once been.

"The court's frightened," he said. "There are a few people who came here from Yalakeht, and the stories ... well, either they've grown in the telling, or it wasn't pretty there. And the couriers from Amnat- 'l an haven't come the last two days."

""I'hat's bad," Otah said. "Will we have time, do you think?"

"I don't know," Ashua said. He seemed to search for more words, but in the end only shook his head.

"Get the men ready," Otah said. "We'll give Cetani tomorrow to join us. After that, we'll head home. With enough time, we might be able to tear up some sections of the road behind us. Slow down the Galts, even if we can't do all we hoped against them."

"What about the hooks?" Saya asked. "If their poet's dead, it isn't as if they'll have need of them. Perhaps ours would make something of them."

"I can ask," Otah said. "With luck, we'll have the books and the people and the food stores."

"But the Khai refused you, Most High," Sava said.

Otah smiled and shook his head. Only now that he found himself a moment to rest did the weariness drag at him. He tried to think how many days he'd been riding from first light to last. A lifetime, it felt like. He remembered the man who'd left Machi to save the I)ai-kvo, but it no longer felt like something he'd done himself. He was changing. Ills heart still ached at the thought of Kiyan and F,iah and I)anat. His apprehension at the struggle still before him was no less. And still, he was not the man he had once been, and to his surprise and unease, the man he was becoming seemed quite natural.

"Most High?" Saya repeated.

"Walking away from a negotiation isn't the same as ending it," Otah said. "Cetani's proud and he's lost, but he's not a fool. He wants to do what we're asking of him. He just hasn't found the way to say yes."

"\ou sound sure of that," Saya said.

Otah chose his words carefully.

"If someone had come to me after that battle and said that they knew what to do, that they would take the responsibility, I would have given it to them. And that's just what I've offered him," Utah said. "The Khai Cetani will call for me. Tonight."

He was wrong. The Khai Cetani didn't send for him until the next morning.

The man's eyes were bloodshot, his face slack from worry and exhaustion. Utah doubted the Khai Cetani had slept since they had spoken, and perhaps not for days before that. Through the wide, unshuttered windows, the morning was cold and gray, low clouds seeming to bring the sky no higher than a sparrow might fly. Utah sat on the divan set for him-rich velvet cloth studded with tiny pearls and silver thread, but smelling of dust and age. The most powerful man in Cetani sat across from him on an identical seat. That alone was a concession, and Utah noted it without giving sign one way or the other.

The Khai Cetani motioned the servants to leave them. From the hesitation and surprised glances, Otah took it that he'd rarely done so before. Some men, he supposed, were more comfortable with the constant attention.

"Convince me," the Khai Cetani said when the doors were pulled closed and they were alone.

Otah took a pose of query.

"That you're right," the Khai said. "Convince me that you're right."

"There was a hunger in the request, almost a need. Otah took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The fire in the grate popped and shifted while he gathered his thoughts. He had turned his plans over in his mind since he'd left the ruin of the I)ai-kvo's village. He'd honed them and tested them and stayed up late into the night despairing at their improbability only to wake in the morning convinced once more. The simplest answer was the best here, and he knew that, but still it was a struggle to find the words that made his mind clear.

"On the field, we can't match them," he said. "If we stay here and face them, we'll lose outright. There's nothing that can keep Cetani from falling to them. But they have two weaknesses. First, the steam wagons. They let them move faster than any group their size should be able to, but they're dangerous. It's a price they're prepared to pay, but they have underestimated the risks. If we start by breaking those-"

"The coal?"

Otah took a confirming pose.

"'l'hey aren't built for forge coal," he said. "And the men we're facing? "They're soldiers, not smiths and ironmongers. "Where's no reason for them to look too closely at what they raid out of your stocks. Especially when they're pushing to get to Machi before the winter comes. If we leave them mixed coal, it'll burn too hot. The seams of their metalwork will soften, if the grates don't simply melt out from underneath."

"And so they have to come on foot or by horse?"

Otah remembered the twisted metal from the I)ai-kvo's village and allowed himself a smile.

"When those wagons break, it's more than only stopping. "They'll lose men just from that, and if we play it well, we can use the confusion to make things worse for them. And there's the other thing. They know we're going to lose. They have the strength, and we're unprepared. The only time we've faced them head-on, we were slaughtered. They know that we can't effectively fight them."

""IThat's a weakness?" the Khai Cetani asked.

"l'es. It keeps them from paying attention. To them, it's already over. Everything's certain but the details. That something else might happen isn't likely to occur to them. Why should it?"

The Khai Cetani looked into the fire. "I'he flames seemed to glitter in his dark eyes. When he spoke, his voice was grim.

"'They've made all the same mistakes we did."

Otah considered that for a moment before nodding.

""I'he Galts understand war," he said. "They're the best teachers I have. And so I'll do to them what they did to us."

"And to do that, you would have rne-Khai of my own cityabandon Cetani to follow your lead?"

"Yes," Otah said.

The Khai sat in silence for a long time, then rose. The rustle of his robes as he walked to the window was the only sound. Otah waited as the man looked out over the city. Over Cetani, the city for which this man had killed his brothers, for which he had given up his name. Otah felt the tension in his own hack and neck. Ile was asking this man to abandon everything, to walk away from the only role he had played in his life. Cetani would fall. It would be sacked. Even if everything went perfectly, there might he nothing to rebuild. And what would a Khai he if there was no city left him?

Many years before, Otah had asked another man to do the right thing, even though it would cost him his honor and prestige and the only place he had in the world. Heshai-kvo had refused, and he had died for the decision.

"Most High," Otah began, but the Khai Cetani held up a hand to stop him without even so much as looking back. Otah could see it in the man's shoulders in the moment the decision was made; they lifted as if a burden had been taken from him.

Chapter 18

Even the winter she had passed in Yalakeht had not prepared Liat for the fickleness of seasons in the North. Each day now was noticeably shorter than the one before, and even when the afternoons were warm, the sun pressing down benignly on her face, the nights were suddenly hitter. In the gardens, the leaves all lost their green at once, as if by conspiracy. It was unlike the near-imperceptible changes in the summer cities. In Saraykeht, autumn was a slow, lingering thing; the warmth of the world made a long good-bye. Things came faster here, and Liat found the pace disturbing. She was a woman of the South, and abrupt change uneased her.

For instance, she thought as she sipped smoky tea in her apartments, she still imagined herself a businesswoman of Saraykeht. Had anyone asked of her work, she would have spoken of the combing rooms, the warehouses. I lad anyone asked of her home, she would have described the seafront of Saraykeht, the scent of the ocean, the babble of a hundred languages. She would have pictured the brick-built house she'd taken over when Amat Kyaan had died, and the little bedroom with its window half-choked with vines. She hadn't seen that city in over a year, and wouldn't go back now before the spring at best.

At best.

At worst, Saraykeht itself might be gone. Or she might not live to see summer again.

The city in which she now passed her days was suffering from change as well. Small shrines with images of the vanished andat had begun to appear in the niches between buildings, as if a few flowers and candles could coax them back. The temples had been filled every day by men and women who might not have sat before a priest in years. The beggars singing with boxes at their feet all chose songs about redemption and the return of things lost.

She sipped her tea. It was no longer hot enough to scald her lips, but it felt good drinking it. It warmed her throat like wine, only without the casing in her muscles or the softness in her mind. The morning before her was full-coordinating the movement of food and fuel into the tunnels below Machi, the raising of stores into the high towers where they would wait out the cold of winter. "There wasn't time for dark thoughts. And yet the darkness came whether she courted it or not.