'It's still autumn,' Dustin said. 'Winter's not come quite yet.'
'It's a Northern autumn,' Sinja said. 'You're thinking it's like Eddensea, but I'll tell you it's not. There's no ocean nearby to hold the heat in. General, Machi isn't going anywhere between now and the first thaw. The Dal- kvo's meat on a stick. Your man burned his books. 'I'hev have the same chance of binding a fresh andat before spring that I have of growing wings and flying. And you have every chance of killing more of your men than have died since we left the Vestlands if you go out there now.'
'' ou've always given me good advice, Captain Ajutani,' Balasar said. 'I appreciate your wisdom on this.'
'I wouldn't call it wisdom particularly,' Sinja said. 'Just a common interest in not turning into ice sculpture in a bean field somewhere be- twwwecn here and there.'
'Thank you,' Balasar said, his tone making it clear that the meeting had ended. Sinja saluted Balasar, nodded to Eustin, and made his way out. The door closed with a click. F, ustin coughed.
'Do you think he's lying?' Balasar said. 'I le'd been living in lachi. If there were a place he didn't rant captured, it would be there.'
Eustin frowned, arms folded across his chest. lie looked older, Balasar thought. The grief of losing Coal was heavy on his shoulders too. In a sense, they were the last. 'T'here were other men who had taken part in the campaign, but only the two of them had been there from the beginning. Only they had been to the desert. And so there was no one else who could have this conversation and truly understand it.
'I le's not lying,' Eustin said. I lis voice was thick. Balasar could hear how much it had cost him to agree with Sinja. 'h, verything I've heard says the cold up there is deadly. It's not a pleasant day out now, and the season's milder here.'
'And Nlachi's army?'
Eustin shrugged.
'It wasn't an honorable fight,' he said. 'If we empty t'tani and 'lan- Sadar, we've got something near three times the men Coal had at the end.'
It would take them weeks to reach Nlachi, even if they started now. A bad storm would be worse than a battle. 'Ian-Sadar, on the other hand, was a safe place to winter, and when the spring came, they could overwhelm Machi in safety. They could revenge Coal a thousand times over. 'T'here was no army that could come to lachi's aid. Meaningful defenses for the city couldn't be built in that time.
Snow was the only armor the enemy had, and the turning seasons would he enough to remove it. Every strategist in Galt would counsel that he wait, plan, prepare, rest. But there were poets in Machi, and all the world to lose if he failed.
He looked up from the maps. His gaze met Eustin's, and they stood together in silence, the only two men in the world who would look at these facts, these odds, these stakes, and have no need to debate them.
'I'll break it to the men,' Eustin said.
20
'`And quietly, one foot sliding behind the other, for the parapet was too narrow to walk along, the half-Bakta boy went from his own prison chamber around to the bars of the Empress's cell.'' Utah paused, letting the half- Bakta boy hang in the air outside the prison tower. And this time I)anat failed to object. I lis eyes were closed, his breathing heavy and regular. Utah sat for a moment, watching his boy sleep, then closed the hook, tucked it in its place by the door, and put out the lantern. [)gnat murmured and snuggled more deeply into his blankets as Utah carefully opened the door and stepped out into the tunnel.
The physician set to watch over I)anat took a pose of obeisance to Otah, and Otah replied with one of thanks before walking to the North, and to the broad spiral stairway that led tip to the higher chambers of the underground palace or else down to Otah's own rooms and the women's quarters. Small brass lanterns filled the air with their warmth and the scent of oil. The walls were lighter than sandstone and shone brighter than the Hanes seemed to warrant. At the stairway, he hesitated.
Above him, Nlachi was beginning its descent into the other city, washing down into the rooms and corridors reserved for the deep, long winter that was almost upon them. The bathhouses far above had emptied their pipes, shunting the water from their kilns down to lower pools. The towers were being filled with goods of summer, the great platforms crawling tip their tracks in the unforgiving stone, and then down again. In the wide, vaulted corridors that would become the main roads and public squares of the winter, beggars sang and food carts filled the air with rich, warm scents: beef soup and peppered pork, fish on hot rice, almond milk and honey cakes. The men and women pulling the carts would he calling, luring the curious and the hungry and the almost-hungry.
Only, of course, they wouldn't he there this winter. Food was no longer an item available for trade. It was being rationed out by the utkhaiem and by the exquisite mechanisms that Kiyan had put in place. The men and women of Cetani had been housed there or in the mines along the plain even before Otah and his army had returned with the news that the Galts had been turned back. Now, with the quarters being shared, there were two and sometimes three families sharing the space meant for one.
There was a part of him that wanted badly to take the stairs leading up, to go out of the palaces, and into the webwork of passages and tunnels one layered upon another that were his city. He knew it was an illusion to think that seeing things would improve them, make them easier to control and make right. But it was a powerful illusion.
Ile sighed and took the descending stairs. ']'he women's quartersdesigned to accommodate a Khai's dozen or more wives-had been changed over to smaller, more private rooms by the addition of a few planks of wood and tapestries taken from the palaces above. The utkhaiem of Cetani-husbands and wives together-found some accommodations there. It had seemed an obvious choice, and Kiyan had never particularly made use of her rooms there. And still it seemed odd to have people so close. Late in the night, he could sometimes hear the voices of people passing by.
The great blue and gold doors to his private apartments stood closed, two guards on either side. Otah noticed as he accepted their salutes how quickly he had come to think of these men as guards where before they had only been servants. 'Their duties were no different, their robes just the same. It wasn't the world that had changed. It was him.
I IC found Kiyan sitting at a low table, combing her hair with a widetoothed comb. Wordless, he took it from her, sitting beside and behind her, and did the little task himself. Her hair was coarser than it had been once, and so shot with white that it seemed almost as much silver as black. I le saw the subtle curve in the shape of her cheek as she smiled.
'I heard the Khai Cetani speaking today,' she said.
'Really?'
'l le was in one of the teahouses. And, honestly, not one of the best ones.
'I won't ask what you were doing in a third-rate tea house,' Otah said, and Kiyan chuckled.
'Nothing more scandalous than listening to the Khai,' she said. 'But that might be enough. Ile thinks quite highly of you.'
'Oh gods,' Otah said. 'Did the term come up again?'
'Yes, the word emperor figured highly in the conversation. He seems to think the sun shines brighter when you tell it to.'
'Ile seems to forget that first battle where I got everyone killed. And that I didn't manage to keep the [)ai- kvo from being slaughtered.'
'Ile doesn't forget. But lie does say you were the only man who tried to stop the Galts, who banded cities together instead of letting them fall one at a time, and in the end the only man who put them to flight.'
'He should stop that,' Utah said, and sighed. 'Ile seemed so reasonable when I first met him. Who'd have guessed he was so easily wooed.'
'He may not he wrong, you know. We'll need to do something when this is over. An emperor or a way to choose new families to act as Khaiem. A I)ai-kvo. That would have to be ylaati or Cehmai, wouldn't it:'
It was how all the conversations went now-how to rebuild, how to remake. The polite fiction that the poets were sure to succeed was the tissue that seemed to hold people together, and Utah couldn't bring himself to break
