An Autumn War (54 page)

Every one of them had a mother. Every mother who had not had the luck to die was trapped in the quiet desperation that imprisoned her now. Liat thought of all these other grieving women, held them up in her mind as proof that she was being stupid and weak. Mothers lost their sons all the time, all across the world. In every nation, in every city, in every age. Her suffering wasn't so much compared with all of them.

And then she would hear someone cough in Nayiit's voice, or she'd mistake the shape of a man's back, and her idiot, traitor heart would sing for a moment. Even as her mind told her no it wasn't, her heart would soar before it fell.

The scratch at her door was so faint and tentative, Liat thought a first it was only a rat tricked by the darkness into believing the room empty. But the sound came again, the intentional rhythm of a hand against wood.

Likely it was Otah, coming again to hold her hand and sit quietly. I le had done so several times, when he could free himself from the rigors of peace and war and Empire. They spoke little because there was too much to say, and no words adequate. Or perhaps one of his physicians, come to look in on her health. Or a servant sent to declaim poems or sing. Someone to distract her in the name of comfort. She wished they wouldn't come.

The scratch repeated itself, more loudly.

"Who?" Liat managed to ask. For answer, the door slid open, and Kiyan stood framed in the doorway, a lantern in her hand. The expression on the woman's fox-thin face seemed equally pity and unease.

"Liat-kya," she said. "May I cone in?"

"If you like," Liat said.

The lantern cast a thousand broken shadows as Kiyan moved across the room. The tapestries on the wall, hidden so long in darkness, seemed to breathe. Hat considered the space in which she had been for so many days without seeing it. It was small. The furnishings were costly and exquisite. It didn't matter. Kiyan went to the wall sconces, taking down the pale wax candles, touching them to the lantern flame, putting them back in their places glowing. The soft light slowly filled the air, the shadows smoothed away.

"I heard you had missed your breakfast," Kiyan said, her voice cheerful and forced, as she lit the last of the candles.

"And my dinner," Liat said.

"Yes, I heard that too."

The lantern made a clunking sound-iron on wood-as Kiyan set it on the bedside table. She sat on the mattress at Liat's side. Otah's wife looked weary and drawn. Perhaps the andat's price had been worse for her than it had for Hat. Perhaps it was something else.

"'They've put the Galts in the southern tunnels," Kiyan said. ""There's almost no room. I don't know how it will he when the worst of the cold comes. And spring ... we'll have to start sending people south and east as soon as it's safe to travel."

"Good that so many died," Liat said, and saw the other woman flinch. Now that she'd said it, the words did seem pointed. Liat hadn't meant them to he; she only couldn't he bothered to weigh the effect of her actions just now. Kiyan fumbled in her sleeve and drew out a small package wrapped in waxed cloth. Liat could smell the raisins and honey. She knew it should have been appetizing. Without speaking, Kiyan placed the little cake on the bedside table and rose to leave.

"Stop it," Liat said, sitting up on her bed.

Otah's wife, the mother of his children, turned hack, her hands in a pose of query.

"Stop moving around me like I'm made of eggshell," Liat said. "It's not in your power to keep me from breaking. I've broken. Move on."

"I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"Didn't what? Didn't mean to throw your boy and mine onto a company of Galtic swords? Didn't mean to have your daughter play findme-find-you until it wasn't safe to flee? Well, there's a relief. And here I thought you wanted both our children dead instead of just mine."

Kivan's face hardened. Liat felt the rage billow in her like she was a sheet thrown over a fire. It ate her and it held her up.

"I didn't mean to treat you as if you were fragile," Kiyan said. "\Ve both know I didn't mean for Nayiit-"

"Didn't mean for him to be a threat to your precious Danat? Didn't mean to let him he a threat to your family? I Ic wasn't. Ile never was. I offered to have him take the brand."

"I know," Kiyan said. "Otah told me."

But she might as well not have spoken. Liar could no more stop the words now than will the blood to stop flowing from a wound.

"I offered to take him away. I didn't want him fighting to he the Khai any more than you did. I wouldn't have put him in danger, and he would never have hurt I)anat. IIe would never have hurt your boy. Ide wouldn't have hurt anyone. It's your mewling halfdead son that's caused this. If he'd been able to fight off a cough, Otah would never have kept Nayiit from the brand. Nayiit would never have fought, never have hurt rin hods' children. Ile was ... he was ..."

The tears came again. She couldn't say what would have come. She couldn't say that Danat and Nayiit would never have come to face one another as custom demanded. perhaps in the years ahead the gods would have pitted them against each other. If the world was what it had been. If things hadn't changed. Sobs as violent as sickness racked her, and she found Kiyan's arms around her, her own fists full of the soft wool of the woman's robe, her screams echoing as if by will alone she could pull the stones down and bury then all.

Time changed its nature. The sorrow and rage and the physical ache of her heart went on forever and only a moment. The only measure was that the candles had burned a quarter of their length before the fit passed, and exhaustion reclaimed her again. She was embarrassed to see the damp spot she had left on Kiyan's shoulder, but when she tried to smooth it away, Kiyan only took her hand, lacing their fingers together like half-grown girls trading gossip at a dance. Liat allowed it.

"Thu know you can stay here," Kiyan said.

"You know I can't."

"I only meant you'd be welcome," Kiyan said. "Then a moment later, "What will you do when the thaw comes?"

"Go south," Liat said. "Go to Saraykeht. See what's left. I may still have a grandson. I can hope it. And better that he not lose a father and grandmother both."

"Navilt was a good man," Kiyan said.

"He was nothing of the sort. He was a charming bastard who fled his own family and slept with half the women between here and Saraykeht. But I loved him."

"lie died saving my son," Kiyan said. "He's a hero."

"That doesn't help me."

"I know it," Kiyan said, and with a distant surprise, Liat found herself smiling.

"Aren't you going to tell me it will pass?" Liat asked.

"Will it?"

The tunnels below Nlachi had their own weather-a system of warm winds and cold; dry and damp. Sometimes, if no one was speaking, if there were no words to say, Liat could hear it like a breath. Like a long, low, endless exhalation.

"I will never stop missing him," Liat said. "I want him back."

Kiyan nodded, and sat there with her, keeping the vigil for another night as outside autumn fell into winter and winter crawled toward spring. The world slowly changing.

"I UNI)ERSTANI) YOUR SON HAS FALLEN ILL?"

Otah's first impulse, unthinking as a reflex, was to deny it. Balasar Gice was a small-framed man, unimposing until he spoke, and then charming and warm enough to fill a room with his ironic half-smile. He was the man who had brought down everything. "Thousands of people who were alive in the spring were now dead or enslaved through this man's ambition. Otah's first impulse was to keep anything about Danat away from the man, because he was a Galt and the enemy.

His second impulse, as unreasoned as the first, was to tell Balasar the truth, because in the few days since the surrender, he'd begun to like the man.

"It's a cough," Otah said. "He's always had it, but it had been less recently. We'd hoped it was gone, but ..."

He took a pose expressing regret and powerlessness before the gods. Balasar seemed to take the sense of it.

"I have medics with me," the Galt said, gesturing over his back at the wide, dark stone arch that led from the great vaulted chamber in which they now met toward the south and the tunnels given over to the Galtic army. "They have more experience with sewing men's fingers back on, but they might he of use. If you'd accept them."

Otah hesitated, his unease washing back over him, then forced himself to smile.

""That's very kind of you," he said, neither agreeing to anything nor refusing. The Galt shrugged.

"And Sinja?" he asked.

"He sends his regards," Otah said, "hut he thought it best to withdraw from company. Fear of reprisal."

"Ile's not wrong," Balasar said. "'T'hat man was many things, but he wasn't stupid."

"I'm told your men have found places in the tunnels."

"It's a tight fit," the Galt said. "And there are going to he problems. You can't make a peace just by saying it. People are angry. Yours and mine both. They're grieving, and grieving people aren't sane. There haven't been any fights yet, but there will he."

"I know it," Otah said. "We'll keep them apart as best we can. I've given orders."

"I have too. As long as we're both clear, we can keep it from growing out of control. At least before the thaw."

"And after that?"

The Galt sighed and nodded, as if agreeing with the question. His gaze traveled up the walls, tracing the blue tile and the gold. Utah gestured, and a servant boy scuttled forward from the shadows and poured them each more tea. The Galt smiled at him, and the boy smiled back. Balasar took his bowl of tea and blew across it before he spoke.

"I can't stop the High Council from coming back," Balasar said. "I'm their general for this season. I don't own the army. And ... and since this campaign ended with the gelding of every man who would cast the vote, I doubt my voice will carry much with them."

Otah took a pose that accepted this statement.

"'There's an age of war coming for you," Balasar said. "You still have some of the richest cities in the world, and you're still ripe for plunder. Even if we don't come, there's Eymond, Eddensea, the Westlands. 'T'here will he pirates from Bakta and Ohar State."

"I'll address those problems. And the others," Otah said with a confidence lie didn't feel. Balasar let the issue drop. After a moment's silence, Otah felt himself moved to ask the question he had intended to leave be. "What will you do? Go back to Galt?"

"Yes," Balasar said. "I'II go hack, but I don't think it would he wise for me to stay. I don't know, Most High. I had plans, but none of them involved being hated and disgraced. So I suppose I'll have to make others. What do you do when you've finished your life's work and haven't died?"

"I don't know," Otah said, and Balasar laughed.

"With the things still ahead of you, Lord Emperor, you likely never will. "That's your fate." Balasar's gaze seemed to soften-melancholy creeping in at the corners of his eyes. "'There are worse, though."

Otah sipped his tea. The leaves were perfectly brewed, neither weak nor bitter. Balasar raised his own cup in a wordless salute.

"Shall we do this thing?" Otah asked.

"1 was wondering," Balasar said. "I was afraid you might reconsider. Burning a library's a terrible thing."

For a moment, Otah saw the cold eyes of Sterile, its feminine smile, heard its voice. The memory of the physicians' cots filled with row upon row of women in pain possessed him for the length of a heartbeat and was gone.

""There are worse," lie said.

Otah rose, and the general rose with him. From the servants' niches and from beyond the great archway to the south, their respective people appeared. Hard soldiers from the South, amen of the utkhaiem in flowing robes from the North. Otah raised his hands in a pose of command, and let the servants go forward to prepare their way.

The furnaces were near the surface where they could be blocked off from the rest of the city if the fires ever should escape their cells. The air near them was thick with the scent of smoke and oppressive with heat. The noise of the flames was like a waterfall. Otah led Balasar and his men to the huge grates where the scrolls and codices and books were stacked. Generations of history. Philosophic essays composed by minds gone to dust a thousand years before. Maps that predated the First Empire. The surviving scraps of war records from before the first andat. Otah looked upon his culture, his history, the record of all that had cone before and that had made the world what it was. The flames licked and leapt.

If only it could have been just the poets' books and treatises on the andat ... but the Gait had insisted, and Otah had understood. Each his tory was a footprint in the path, each collection of court poems might contain a hint or reference. With time and attention, someone might put together again what had been torn apart, and it was a chance the Galt had refused to accept. Their tenuous peace required sacrifices, and sacrifice without loss didn't deserve the name.

"Forgive this," Utah said, to no one. He walked forward, coming to the first pile. The hook was leather-hound and worn from years of loving care. Utah let it fall open and looked on Heshai's careful handwriting for the last time. With a sense of sorrow, Utah cast the book into the flames, then raised his hands again, and the sen'ants began to throw the pages into the fire. parchment darkened and curled in the suddenly white flame. "Piny embers flew out into the air, glowing and going dark, fireflies at sunset. The horror of it all closed his throat, and with it came a strange elation.

A hand touched his arm, and Utah looked at the Galtic general. 't'here were tears in his eyes too.

"It was necessary," he said.

The night candles were burned down past their first quarter before Utah found his way hack to his rooms. Kivan was already asleep, her face smooth and peaceful. He resisted the urge to touch her, to pull her awake and hope that some of that calm might come with her. It wouldn't. Ile knew that. Instead he watched the subtle rise and fall of her breath, listened to the small sounds the tunnels made in the darkness, the soft flow of air. Ile thought of crawling in beside her, still in his robes, pressing his eyes closed until forgetfulness took him as well. But he needed to perform one last errand. He rose quietly and left by the hack passage, down deeper into the earth.