There wouldn't be the pain or the fever. There wouldn't be the torture of trekking back to the city just to have the physicians fill him with poppy and leave him to dream himself away. It was a better death than those. Sinja told himself it was a better death than those.
The blood stopped flowing from the wound, and still Sinja sat. A terrible weariness crept into him, and he told himself it was only the cold. It wasn't that he'd traveled a season with men he'd come to respect and still been willing to kill. It wasn't watching some young idiot die badly in the snow with only a habitual traitor to care for him. It wasn't the sickness that came over him sometimes after battles. It was only the cold. He gently put Nayiit's head on the ground, and pushed himself up. Between the chill and his wounds, his body was starting to stiffen. The chill and his wounds and age. War and death and glory were younger men's games. But he still had work to do.
He heard the cry before he saw the child. It was a small sound, like the squeak of a hinge. Sinja turned. Either Danat had snuck back, preferring a known danger to an uncertain world, or else he'd never gone out of sight of the cart. His hair was wet from melted snow, plastered back against his head. His lips were pulled back, baring teeth in horror as he stared at Nayiit's motionless body. Sinja tried to think how old he'd been when he saw his first man die by violence. Older than this.
I)anat's shocked, empty eyes turned to him, and the child took a step hack, as if to flee. Sinja only looked at him, waiting, until the boy's weight shifted forward again. Then Sinja raised his sword, pommel to the sky, blade toward the ground in a mercenary's salute.
'Welcome to the world, Danat-cha,' Sinja said. 'I wish it were a better place.'
The boy didn't speak, but slowly his hands rose to take a pose that accepted the greeting. It was the training of some court nurse. Nothing more than that. And still, Sinja thought he saw a sorrow in the child's eyes and a depth of understanding greater than anyone so small should have to bear. Sinja sheathed his sword.
'Come on, now,' he said. 'Let's get you someplace warm and dry. If I save you from the Galts and then let a fever kill you, Kiyan will have me flayed alive. I know a tunnel not far from here that should suffice.'
The runners came at last, staggering from the streets below, and every report echoed the trumpet calls. The Galts had aimed for the tunnels that Sinja had directed them toward, but come in wider than Otah had planned. 'There would be no grand ambush from the windows and alleyways, only a long, bloody struggle. One small slaughter after another as the Galts pushed their way through the city, looking for a way down.
Otah stared out at the city, watching the tiny dots of stones drift down from the towers, hearing the clatter of men and horses echoing against the high stone walls. I le wondered how long it would take ten thousand men to kill two full cities. I IC should have met them on the plain. He could have armed everyone; man, woman, and child. Able or infirm. They could have swarmed over them, ten and fifteen for every Galt. He sighed. He could as well have tossed babies on their sword in hopes of slowing their advance. 'I'he Galts would have slaughtered them on the plain or in the city. I Ie'd tried his trick, and he'd failed. 'There was nothing to gain from regretting the strategies he hadn't chosen.
What he wanted now was a sword and someone to swing it at. He wanted to be part of the fight if only to keep from feeling so powerless.
'Another runner,' the Khai Cetani said, taking a pose that commanded Otah's attention. 'From the palaces.'
Otah nodded and stepped back from the roof edge. The runner was a pale-skinned boy with a constellation of moles across his nose and cheeks. (bah could see him try not to pant as the two Khaicm drew near. Ile took a pose of obeisance.
'What's happening?' Otah demanded.
'The Galts, Most High. 'They're sending messengers. 'They're abandoning the palace. It looks as if they're forming a single group.'
'Where?'
'l'he old market square,' he said.
'Three streets south of the main entrance to the tunnels. So they knew. Utah felt his belly sink. He waved the trumpeter over. The man was exhausted; Utah could see it in the flesh below his eves and in the angle of his shoulders. His lips were cracked and blood}, from the cold and his work. Utah put a hand on the man's shoulder.
'One last time,' he said. 'Call them all to fall back to the tunnel's entrance. 'There's nothing more we can do on the surface.'
The trumpeter took an acknowledging pose and walked away, warming the instrument's mouthpiece with his hand before lifting it to his bruised mouth. Utah waited as the melody sang out in the snowy air, listened to the echoes of it fade and he replaced by acknowledging calls.
'We should surrender,' Otah said. The Khai Cetani blinked at him. Beneath the red ice-pinched cheeks, the man grew pale. (bah pressed on. 'We're going to lose, Most Iligh. We don't have soldiers to stop them. All we'll gain is a few more hours. And we'll pay for it with lives that don't need to end today.'
'We were planning to spend those lives before,' the Khai Cetani said, though Utah could see in the man's eves that he knew the argument was sound. They were two dead men, fathers of dead families, the last of their kind in the world. ' V'e always knew there would be deaths.'
''T'hat was when we had hope,' Utah said.
One of the servants cried out and fell to her knees. Otah turned to her, thinking first that she had overheard him and been overcome by grief, and then-seeing her face-that some miraculous arrow had found its way through the air to their roof. The men around her looked at the Khaiem, embarrassed at the interruption, or else knelt by the girl to comfort her. She shrieked, and the stones themselves seemed to take up her voice. A sound rose from the city in a long, rolling unending moan. 'T'housands of voices, calling out in pain. Otah's skin seemed to retreat from it, and a chill that had nothing to do with the still-falling snow ran down his sides. For a moment, the towers themselves seemed about to twist with agony. This, he thought, was what gods sounded like when they died.
Around him, men looked nervously at the air, gazes darting into the gray and white sky. Utah caught the runner by his sleeve.
'Go,' he said. 'Go, and tell me what's happened.'
Dread widened the boy's eyes, but he took an acknowledging pose before retreating. The Khai Cetani seemed poised to ask something, but only turned away, walking to the roof's edge himself. Utah went to the servant girl. I Ier face was white with pain.
'What's the matter?' Otah asked her, gently. 'Where does it hurt?'
She couldn't take a formal pose, but her gesture and the shame in her eyes told Otah everything he needed to know. He'd spent several seasons as a midwife's assistant in the eastern islands. If the girl was lucky, she had been pregnant and was miscarrying. If she hadn't been carrying a child, then something worse was happening. He had already ordered the other servants to carry her down to the physicians when Cehmai appeared, red-faced and wide-eyed. Before he could speak, it fell into place. The girl, the unearthly shriek, the poet.
'Something's gone wrong with the binding,' Otah said. Cehmai took a pose of confirmation.
'Please,' the poet said. 'Come now. I furry.'
Otah didn't pause to think; he went to the stairs, lifting the hem of his robes, and dropping down three steps at a time. It was four stories from the top of the warehouse to its bottom floor. Otah felt that he could hardly have gone there faster if he'd jumped over the building's side.
The space was eerie; shadows seemed to hang in the corners of the huge, empty room and the distant sound of voices in pain murmured and shrieked. Great symbols were chalked on the walls, and an ugly, disjointed script in Nlaati's handwriting spelled out the binding. Otah knew little enough of the old grammars, but he picked out the words for womb, seed, and corruption. Three people stood in tableau at the top of the stair that led down to the tunnels. NIaati stood, his hands at his sides, his expression blank. Otah's belly went tight as sickness as he saw that the girl at Nlaati's feet was Eiah. And the thing that cradled his daughter's head turned to look at him. After a long moment, it drew breath and spoke.
'Otah-kya,' it said. Its voice was low and beautiful, heavy with amusement and contempt. The familiarity of it was dizzying.
'Seedless?'
'It isn't,' Nlaati said. 'It's not him.'
'What's happened?' Otah asked. When Maati didn't answer, Otah shook the man's sleeve. ' Nlaati. What's
