seen many campaigns.'
It was a softening of these poor bastards hardly know which end's thesharp one but the meaning was much the same. The general waved the concern aside, which was fascinating. Balasar Gice wasn't interested in their field prowess. Which meant he either wanted them to lead the charges and soak up a few enemy spears and arrows- hardly a role that asked the general's presence at the negotiation-or there was something more, something that Sinja was still missing.
'How many of them speak Galt?'
'A third,' Sinja said, inventing the number on the spot.
'I may have use for them. How loyal are they to you?'
'How loyal do they need to be?'
The general smiled. 'There was a touch of sorrow in his eyes and a long, thoughtful pause. Sinja felt a decision being made, though he couldn't say what the issue was.
'Enough to go against their own kind. Not in the field, but I'll want them as translators and agents. And whatever you can tell me of the winter cities. I'll want that as well.'
Sinja smiled knowingly to cover his racing mind. Gice wasn't taking his army North. He was going east, into the cities of the Khaiem, with something close to every able-bodied man in (; air behind him. Sinja chuckled to hide a rush of fear.
'They'll follow you any place you care to go, so long as they're on the winning side,' Sinja said. 'Are you sure that's going to be you?'
'Yes,' the general said, and the bare confidence in his voice was more persuasive than any reasoned argument he might have given. If the man had been trying to convince himself, he would have had a speech ready-why this insanity would work, how the army could overpower the andat, something. But Balasar was certain. The general sipped his water, waiting the space of five long breaths together. 'T'hen he spoke again. 'You're thinking something?'
'You're not stupid,' Sinja said. 'So you're either barking mad, or you know something I don't. No one can take on the Khaiem.'
'You mean no one can face the andat.'
'Yes,' Sinja agreed. ''That's what I mean.'
'I can.'
'Forgive me if I keep my doubts about me,' Sinja said.
The general nodded, considered Sinja for a long moment, then gestured toward the table. Sinja put down his howl and stepped over as the general unrolled a long cloth scroll with a map of the cities of the Khaiem on it. Sinja stepped back from it as if there were an asp on it.
'General,' he said, 'if you're about to tell me your plans for this campaign, I think we might be ahead of where we should be.'
Balasar put a hand on Sinja's arm. The Gait's gaze was firm and steady, his voice low and strangely intimate. Sinja saw how a personality like his own could command an army or a nation. Possibly, he thought, a world.
'Captain Ajutani, I don't share these plans with every mercenary captain who walks through my door. I don't trust them. I don't show them to my own captains, barring the ones in my small Council. The others I expect to trust me. But we're men of the world, you and I. You have something I think I could use.'
'And you have nothing to lose by telling me,' Sinja said, slowly. 'Because I'm not leaving this building, am I?'
'Not even to go speak to your men,' the general said. 'You're here as my ally or my prisoner.'
Sinja shook his head.
''That's a brave thing to say, General. It's only the two of us in here.'
'If you attacked me, I'd kill you where you stood,' Balasar said in the same tone of voice he'd used before, and Sinja believed him. Balasar smiled gently and nudged him forward, toward the table.
'Let me show you why ally would he the better choice.'
Still, Sinja held hack.
'I'm not an idiot,' he said. 'If you tell me you plan to take over the Khaicm by flying through the sky on winged dogs, I'll still clap you on the back and swear I'm your ally.'
'Of course you will. You'll say you're my dearest friend and solidly behind me. I'll thank you and distrust you and keep you unarmed and under guard. We'll each avoid turning our backs on the other. I think we can take that all as given,' Balasar said with a dismissive wave. 'I don't care what you say or do, Captain. I care what you think.'
Sinja felt a genuine smile blooming on his lips. When he laughed, Balasar laughed with him.
'Well,' Sinja said. 'As long as we're agreed on all that. Go ahead. Convince me that you're going to prevail against the poets.'
'They talked for what seemed like the better part of the evening. Outside, the storm slackened, the clouds broke. By the time a servant boy came to light the lanterns, a moon so full it seemed too heavy to rise glowed in the indigo sky. Gnats and midges buzzed through the open windows, ignored by both men as they discussed Balasar's intentions and strategies. The general was open and forthcoming and honest, and with every unfolding scheme, Sinja understood that his life was worth whatever Balasar Gice said it was worth. It was up to him to convince the general that letting him live after he'd heard all this wouldn't be a mistake. It was a clever tactic, all the more so because once Sinja understood the trick, it lost none of its power.
Afterward, armsmen escorted him to a small, well-appointed bedchamber with windows too narrow to crawl out and a bar on the outside of the door. Sinja lay in the bed, listening to the nearly inaudible hiss and tick of the candle flame. His body felt poorly attached, likely to slip free of his mind at any moment. Light-headed, he washed his face in cold water, cracked his knuckles, anything to bring his mind to something real and immediate. Something the Galtic general had not just torn away.
It was as if he had fallen into a nightmare, or woken to something worse than one. He felt as if he'd just watched a man he knew well die by violence. The Galt's plan would end the world he had known. If it worked. And in his bones, he knew it would.
The hours passed, the night seeming to stretch on without end. Sinja paced his room or sat or lay sleepless on the bed, remembering the illness he had felt after his first battle. This was the same disease, back again. But the more he thought about it, the more his mind tracked across the maps he and the general had considered, the more his conviction grew.
The turncoat poet and the army were only a part of it-in some ways the least. It was the general's audacity and certainty and caution. It was the force of his personality. Sinja had seen commanders and wardens and kings, and he could tell the sort that fated themselves to lose. Balasar Gice was going to win.
And so, Sinja supposed with a sense of genuine regret, the right thing was to work for him.
6
The poet's house was warm, the scent of trees thick in the air. The false dawn, prolonged by the mountains to the east, had just come, the sun making its way above the peaks to bathe the world in light. Through the opened door, N9aati could hear the songs of birds deep in the yearly quest to draw mates to their nests. The dances and parties of the utkhaiem were much the same-who had the loveliest plumage, the more enticing song. There were fewer differences between men and birds than men liked to confess.
He sat on a couch, watching Cehmai at one side of the small table and Stone-Made-Soft at the other. Between them was the game hoard with its worn lines and stones. The game had been central to the binding Manat [)oru had performed generations ago that first brought Stone-blade-Soft into existence, and as part of the legacy he bore, Cehmai had to play the game again-white stones moving forward against the black-as a reaffirmation of his control over the spirit. Fortunately, Nlanat Doru had also made Stone-Made-Soft a terrible player. Cehmai tapped his fingertips against the wood and shifted a black stone in the center of the hoard toward the left. Stone-Made-Soft frowned, its wide face twisted in concentration.
'No word yet,' Cehmai said. 'It's early days, though.'
