Seasons of War

last to weep. He felt Nayiit’s arms around him, felt the boy soften in their shared grief, and then pull away. Maati forced himself to step back. Nayiit’s expression was grim.
    ‘Come in,’ Maati said. ‘Then tell me.’
    It was bad. The Galts were not on Machi’s door and Otah-kvo lived, but these were the only bright points in Nayiit’s long, quiet recitation. They sat in the dimming front room, shutters closed and candles unlit, while Nayiit told the tale. Maati clasped his hands together, squeezing his knuckles until they ached. The Dai-kvo was dead. The men whom Maati had known in the long years he had lived in the village were memories now. He found himself trying to remember their names, their faces. There were fewer fresh to his mind than he would have thought - the firekeeper whose kiln had been at the corner nearest Maati’s cell, the old man who’d run the bathhouse, a few others. They were gone, fallen into the forgetfulness of history. The records of their names had been burned.
    ‘We searched. We searched through everything,’ Nayiit said. ‘I brought you what we found.’
    With a thick rustle, he pulled the thick waxed cloth from out of the crate. Two stacks of books lay beneath it, and Maati, squatting on the floor, lifted the ancient texts out one at a time with trembling hands. Fourteen books. The library of the Dai-kvo reduced to fourteen books. He opened them, smelling the smoke in their pages, feeling the terrible lightness of the bindings. There was no unity to them - a sampling of what had happened to be in a dark corner or hidden beneath something unlikely. A history of agriculture before the First Empire. An essay on soft grammars. Jantan Noya’s Fourth Treatise on Form , which Maati had two copies of among his own books. None of these salvaged volumes outlined the binding of an andat, or the works of ancient poets.
    Stone-Made-Soft wouldn’t be bound with these. And so Stone-Made-Soft wouldn’t be bound, because these were all that remained. Maati felt a cold, deep calm descend upon him. Grunting, he stood up and then began pacing his rooms. His hands went through the movements of lighting candles and lanterns without his conscious participation. His mind was as clear and sharp as broken ice.
    Stone-Made-Soft could not be bound - not without years of work - and so he put aside that hope. If he and Cehmai failed to bind an andat, and quickly, the Galts would destroy them all. Nayiit, Liat, Otah, Eiah. Everyone. So something had to be done. Perhaps they could trick the Galts into believing that an andat had been bound. Perhaps they could delay the armies arrayed against them until the cold shut Machi against invasion. If he could win the long, hard months of winter in which he could scheme . . .
    When the answer came to him, it was less like discovering something than remembering it. Not a flash of insight, but a familiar glow. He had, perhaps, known it would come to this.
    ‘I think I know what to do, but we have to find Cehmai,’ he began, but when he turned to Nayiit, his son was curled on the floor, head pillowed by his arms. His breath was as deep and regular as tides, and his eyes were sunken and hard shut. Weariness had paled the long face, sharpening his cheeks. Maati walked as softly as he could to his bedchamber, pulled a thick blanket from his bed, and brought it to drape over Nayiit. The thick carpets were softer and warmer than a traveler’s cot. There was no call to wake him.
    What had happened out there - the battle, the search through the village, the trek back to Machi with this thin gift of useless books - would likely have broken most men. It had likely scarred Nayiit. Maati reached to smooth the hair on Nayiit’s brow, but held back and smiled.
    ‘All the years I should have done this,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Putting my boy to bed.’
    He softly closed the door to his apartments. The night was deep and dark, stars shining like diamonds on velvet, and a distant, eerie green aurora dancing far to the North. Maati stopped at the library proper, tucked the book he needed into his sleeve, and then - though the urge to find Cehmai instantly was hard to resist - made his way to the palaces, and to the apartments that Otah had given Liat.
    A servant girl showed him into the main chamber. The only light was the fire in the grate, the shadows of flame dancing on the walls and across Liat’s brow as she stared into them. Her hair was disarrayed, wild as a