Seasons of War

and arming men, and then not giving them any outlet.’
    Otah looked up, meeting Sinja’s grim expression.
    ‘More trouble?’ Otah asked.
    ‘I’ve whipped the men involved and paid reparations,’ Sinja said, ‘but if the Dai-kvo doesn’t like you putting together a militia, the fine people of Machi are getting impatient with having them. We’re paying them to play at soldiers while everybody else’s taxes buy their food and clothes.’
    Otah took a simple pose that acknowledged what Sinja said as truth.
    ‘Where would you take them?’
    ‘Annaster and Notting were on the edge of fighting last autumn. Something about the Warden of Annaster’s son getting killed in a hunt. It’s a long way south, but we’re a small enough group to travel fast, and the passes cleared early this year. Even if nothing comes of it, there’ll be keeps down there that want a garrison.’
    ‘How long before you could go?’
    ‘I can have the men ready in two days if you’ll send food carts out after us. A week if I have to stay to make the arrangements for the supplies.’
    Otah looked into Sinja’s eyes. The years had whitened Sinja’s temples but had made him no easier to read.
    ‘That seems fast,’ Otah said.
    ‘It’s already under way,’ Sinja replied, then seeing Otah’s reaction, shrugged. ‘It seemed likely.’
    ‘Two days, then,’ Otah said. Sinja smiled, stood, took a rough pose that accepted the order, and turned to go. As he lifted the door’s latch, Otah spoke again. ‘Try not to get killed. Kiyan would take it amiss if I sent you off to die.’
    The captain paused in the open door. What had happened between Kiyan and Sinja - the Khai Machi’s first and only wife and the captain of his private armsmen - had found its resolution on a snow-covered field ten years before. Sinja had done as Kiyan had asked him and the issue had ended there. Otah found that the anger and feelings of betrayal had thinned with time, leaving him more embarrassed than wrathful. That they were two men who loved the same woman was understood and unspoken. It wasn’t comfortable ground for either of them.
    ‘I’ll keep breathing, Otah-cha. You do the same.’
    The door closed softly behind him, and Otah took another sip of wine. It was fewer than a dozen breaths before a quiet scratching came at the door. Rising and straightening the folds of his robes, Otah prepared himself for the next appearance, the next performance in his ongoing, unending mummer’s show. He pressed down a twinge of envy for Sinja and the men who would be slogging through cold mud and dirty snow. He told himself the journey only looked liberating to someone who was staying near a fire grate. He adopted a somber expression, held his body with the rigid grace expected of him, and called out for the servant to enter.
    There was a meeting to take with House Daikani over a new mine they were proposing in the South. Mikah Radaani had also put a petition with the Master of Tides to schedule a meeting with the Khai Machi to discuss the prospect of resurrecting the summer fair in Amnat-Tan. And there was the letter to the Dai-kvo to compose, and a ceremony at the temple at moonrise at which his presence was required, and so on through the day and into the night. Otah listened patiently to the list of duties and obligations and tried not to feel haunted by the thought that sending the guard away had been the wrong thing to do.
     
    Eiah took a bite of the almond cake, wiping honey from her mouth with the back of her hand, and Maati was amazed again by how tall she’d grown. He still thought of her as hardly standing high as his knees, and here she was - thin as a stick and awkward, but tall as her mother. She’d even taken to wearing a woman’s jewelry - necklace of gold and silver, armbands of lacework silver and gems, and rings on half her fingers. She still looked like a girl playing dress-up in her mother’s things, but even that would pass soon.
    ‘And how did he die?’ she asked.
    ‘I never said he did,’ Maati said.
    Eiah’s lips bent in a frown. Her dark eyes narrowed.
    ‘You don’t tell stories where they live, Uncle Maati. You like the dead ones.’
    Maati chuckled. It was a fair enough criticism, and her exasperation was as amusing as her interest. Since she’d been old enough to read, Eiah had haunted the library of Machi, poking here and there, reading and being frustrated. And now that she’d reached her fourteenth summer, the time