An Autumn War

dangers arrayed before them, hers had been that she might he sent away.

He took her hand and kissed it.

"Go sit by the stairs," he said. "Don't interrupt me, and if Cehmai- cha

tells you to do something, you do it. No asking why, no arguing him out

of it. You understand me?"

Eiah flung her hands into a pose of acceptance.

"And Eiah-kya. Understand what I'm doing has risks to it. If I die

here-hush, now, let me finish. If I fail the binding and my little

protection doesn't do what we think it will, I'll pay the price. If that

happens, you have to remember that I love you very deeply, and I've done

this because it was worth the risk if it meant keeping you safe."

Eiah swallowed and her eyes shone with tears. Maati smiled at her, stood

again, and waved her back toward the stairs. Cehmai came close, frowning.

"I'm not sure that was a kind thing to tell her," he said, but a sudden

outburst of trumpet calls sounded before Maati could reply. Maati

thought could hear the distant tattoo of drums echoing against the city

walls. He gestured to Cehmai.

"Come on. "['here isn't time. Finish drawing those, then light the

candles and close that blasted door. We'll all freeze to death before

the andat can have its crack at us."

"Or we'll have it all in place just in time for the Galts to take it."

Maati scribbled out the rest of the binding. He'd wanted time to think

on each word, each phrase; if he'd had time to paint each word like the

portrait of a thought, it would have been better. "There wasn't time. He

finished just as Cehmai lit the final lantern and walked up the stone

steps to the snow door. Before he closed it, the younger poet looked

out, peering into the city.

"What do you see?"

"Smoke," Cehmai said. 't'hen, "Nothing."

"Come back down,,, laati said. "V'here are the robes for it?"

"In the back corner," Cehmai said, pulling the wide wooden doors shut.

"I'll get them."

Nlaati went to the cushion in the middle of the room, lowered himself

with a grunt, and considered. The wall before him looked more like the

scrihhlings of low-town vandals than a poet's lifework. But the words

and phrases, the images and metaphors all shone brighter in his mind

than the lanterns could account for. Cehmai passed before him briefly,

laying robes of blue shot with black on the floor where, with luck, the

next hands to hold them wouldn't be human.

laati glanced over his shoulder. Eiah was sitting against the back

wall, her hands held in fists even with her heart. I Ic smiled at her.

Reassuringly, he hoped. And then he turned to the words he had written,

took five deep breaths to clear his mind, and began to chant.

O'EMI STOOD ON T11E 1.11' OF"17IF. ROOF AND LOOKE1) DOWN XI' 1NIACIII AS

IF IT were a map. The great streets were marked by the lines of

rooftops. Only those streets that led directly to I louse Siyanti's

warehouses were at an angle that permitted him to see the black cobbles

turning white beneath the snow. To the south, the army of the Galts was

marching forward. The trumpet calls from the high towers told him that

much. "I'hey had worked out short signals for some eventualities-short

melodies that signaled some part of the plans he had worked with Sinja

and Ashua Radaani and the others. But in addition there was a code that

let him phrase questions as if they were spoken words, and hear answers

in the replies from the towers far above.

The trumpeter was a young man with a vast barrel chest and lips blue

with cold. Whenever Otah had the man blow, the wide brass hell of the

trumpet seemed as if it would deafen them all. And yet the responses

were sometimes nearly too faint to hear. 'l'imes like now.

"What's he saying?" the Khai Cetani asked, and (bah held tip a hand to

stop him, straining to hear the last trailing notes.

"The Galts are taking the bridge," Otah said. "I don't think they trust

the ice."

"That'll mean they're longer reaching us," the Khai Cetani said.

""That's good. If we can keep them out of the warmth until sundown ..."

Otah took a pose of agreement, but didn't truly believe it. If they were

able to trap the Galts above ground when night came, the invaders would

take over the houses and burn whatever they could break small enough to

fit in the fire grates. If the cold air moved in-a storm or the frigid

winds that ended the gentle snows of autumn-then the Galts would be in

trouble, but the snow graying the distance now wasn't prelude to a

storm. Otah didn't say it, but he couldn't imagine keeping an army so

close and still at bay long enough for the weather to change. The Galts

would he defeated here in the streets, or they wouldn't he defeated.

Ile paced the length of the rooftop, his eyes tracing the routes that he

had hoped to guide them toward-the palaces and the forges. Behind him,

his servants shivered from the cold and the need to remain respectfully

still. The great iron fire grate that they'd hauled up and loaded with

logs was burning merrily, but somehow the heat from it seemed to go out

no more than a foot or two from the flames. The Khai Cetani stood near

it, and the trumpeter. Otah couldn't imagine standing still. Not now.

The southern reaches of the city were essentially Galtic already; there

was no way to make them safe against the coming army. The battle would

he nearer the center, in the shadows of the towers, in the narrower ways

where Otah's men could appear all along the Galtic line at once as they

had in the forest. Another trumpet call came. The Galts had finished

crossing the river. The march had begun on Nlachi itself.

I should he down there, Otah thought. I should get a sword or an axe and

go down there.

It was an idiotic idea, and he knew it. One more blade or how in the

streets wouldn't matter now, and getting himself killed would achieve

nothing.

Trumpets sounded-half a dozen of them at once. And Galtic drums.

Everyone sending signals, none of them listening. Otah squatted at the

roof's edge with his eyes closed, trying to make out one message from

another. Frustration built in his spine and neck. Something was

happening-several things, and all at the same moment, and he couldn't

hear what they were.

"Most high!" one the servants called. ""There!"

Otah and the Khai Cctani both looked to where the servant boy was

pointing. A ru

streets that led toward the forges. A great pillar of smoke was rising

from the south. Something there, then. Otah felt the first small surge

of hope; it was near where he had hoped the (;alts would go. The