An Autumn War

Maatikvo, I think this is likely to work. It's just ..."

"Just?„

Cehmai's frown deepened. His fingertips tapped cautiously on the pages,

as if he were testing an iron pot, afraid it would be hot enough to

burn. He sighed.

"I've never seen an andat fashioned to be a weapon," he said. There was

a hook that the Dal-kvo had that dated from the fall of the Second

Empire, but he never let anyone look at it. I don't know."

"There's a war, Cehmai-kya," Maati said. "They killed the Dai-kvo and

everyone in the village. The gods only know how many other men they've

slaughtered. How many women they're raped. What's on those pages,

they've earned."

"I know," Cehmai said. "I do know that. It's just I keep thinking of

Stone-:Made-Soft. It was capable of terrible things. I can't count the

times I had to hold it hack from collapsing a mine or a building. It had

no respect for the lives of men. But there was no particular malice in

it either. This ... Sterile ... it seems different."

Nlaati clamped his jaw. He was tired, that was all. "They both were. It

was no reason to be a

binding was something less than useful. Nlaati smiled the way he

imagined a teacher at the school smiling. Or the I)ai-kvo. lie took a

pose that offered instruction.

"Cutting shears and swords are both sharp. Before the war, you and I and

the men like us? We made cutting shears," he said, and gestured to the

papers. ""That's our first sword. It's only natural that you'd feel

uneasy with it; we aren't men of violence. If we were, the I)ai-kvo

would never have chosen us, would he? But the world's a different place

now, and so we have to be willing to do things that we wouldn't have

before."

""Then it makes you uneasy too?" Cehmai asked. Nlaati smiled. It didn't

make him uneasy at all, but he could see it was what the man needed to hear.

"Of course it does," he said. "But I can't allow that to stop me. The

stakes are too high."

Cehmai seemed to collapse on himself. The dark eyes flickered,

searching, Iaati thought, for some other path. But in the end, the man

only sighed.

"I think you've found the thing, laati-kvo. There are some passages I'd

want to think about. 'T'here might be ways we can refine it. But I think

we'll he ready to try it well before the thaw."

A tension that Nlaati hadn't known he was carrying released, and he

gri

only andat in the world. He and Cehmai would become the new teachers,

and under their protection, they would raise up a new generation of

poets to hind more of the andat. The cities would be safe again. Nlaati

could feel it in his bones.

The rest of the meeting went quickly, as if Cehmai wanted to be away

from the library as quickly as lie could. laati supposed the prospect

of binding Sterile was more disturbing to Cehmai than to him. lie hoped,

as he walked back tip the stairways and corridors to his rooms, that

Cchmai would be able to adjust to the new way of things. It couldn't be

easy for him. lie was at heart a gentle man, and the world was a darker

place than it had been.

Iaati's mind was still involved in its contemplation of darkness when

he stepped into his room. At first, he didn't notice that Liat was

there, seated on his bed. She coughed-a wet, close sound close to a sob.

lie looked up.

"What's the matter, sweet?" he asked, hurrying to her. "What's happened?"

In the steady glow of the lantern, Liat's face seemed veiled by shadows.

Her eyes were reddened and swollen, her skin flushed with recent tears.

She attempted a smile.

"I need something, Nlaati-kya. I need you to speak with Nayiit."

"Of course. Of course. What's happened?"

"He's ..." Liat stopped, took a deep breath, and began again. "He isn't

leaving with me. Whatever happens, he's decided to stay here and guard

her children."

"What?"

"Kiyan," Liat said. "She set him to watch over Danat and Eiah, and now

he's decided to keep to it. To stay in the North and watch over them

instead of going home with me. He has a wife and a child, and Otah's

family is more important to him than his own. And what if they see that

he's ... what if they see whose blood he is? What if he and Danat have

to kill each other?"

Maati sat beside Liat and folded her hand in his. The corners of her

mouth twitched down, a mask of sorrow. lie kissed her palm.

"He's said this? That tic's staying in Iachi?"

"I Ic doesn't have to," Liat said. "I've seen the way he looks at them.

Whenever I talk about the spring and the South, he smiles that false,

charming way he always smiles and changes the subject."

Nlaati nodded. The lantern flame hissed and shuddered, setting the

shadows to sway.

"What is this really?" he asked, gently as he could. Liat pulled back

her hand and took a pose that asked clarification. There was anger in

her eyes. Maati chewed his lower lip, raised his eyebrows.

"He enjoys a duty that was designed, from what you told me, to he

enjoyable for him. To give him the sense of redeeming himself. He's made

friends with Otah's children-"

"I lis otherchildren," Liat said, but Nlaati had known her too long and

too well to let the barb turn him aside.

"And they're very easy to make friends with. Danat and Eiah are charming

in their ways. And Nayiit doesn't want to talk about plans he can't

really make. About his own child who might already he dead. About a wife

he doesn't love and a city that's fallen to the Galts. Why would he want

to talk about that? What is there in any of that to cause him anything

but pain?"

You think I'm an idiot," Hat said.

"I think he hasn't told you that he's staying. That's something you've

decided, and you don't reach conclusions that wild unless there's

something more going on," he said. "What it is, sweet?"

Hat's face squeezed tight, her brows and mouth and eyes seeming to hull

in together like those of a fighter bracing to take a blow.

"I'm frightened. Is that what you want to hear? All right, then. I'm

frightened."

"For him."

"For all of us!" I fiat stood and began to pace. "For the people I knew

in Saraykeht. For the people I've met here. And the ones I haven't met.

Do you know how many people the Galts have killed?"