Seasons of War

face, the nights were suddenly bitter. In the gardens, the leaves all lost their green at once, as if by conspiracy. It was unlike the near-imperceptible changes in the summer cities. In Saraykeht, autumn was a slow, lingering thing; the warmth of the world made a long good-bye. Things came faster here, and Liat found the pace disturbing. She was a woman of the South, and abrupt change uneased her.
    For instance, she thought as she sipped smoky tea in her apartments, she still imagined herself a businesswoman of Saraykeht. Had anyone asked of her work, she would have spoken of the combing rooms, the warehouses. Had anyone asked of her home, she would have described the seafront of Saraykeht, the scent of the ocean, the babble of a hundred languages. She would have pictured the brick-built house she’d taken over when Amat Kyaan had died, and the little bedroom with its window half-choked with vines. She hadn’t seen that city in over a year, and wouldn’t go back now before the spring at best.
    At best.
    At worst, Saraykeht itself might be gone. Or she might not live to see summer again.
    The city in which she now passed her days was suffering from change as well. Small shrines with images of the vanished andat had begun to appear in the niches between buildings, as if a few flowers and candles could coax them back. The temples had been filled every day by men and women who might not have sat before a priest in years. The beggars singing with boxes at their feet all chose songs about redemption and the return of things lost.
    She sipped her tea. It was no longer hot enough to scald her lips, but it felt good drinking it. It warmed her throat like wine, only without the easing in her muscles or the softness in her mind. The morning before her was full - coordinating the movement of food and fuel into the tunnels below Machi, the raising of stores into the high towers where they would wait out the cold of winter. There wasn’t time for dark thoughts. And yet the darkness came whether she courted it or not.
    She looked up at the sound of the door. Nayiit stepped in. The nights were not so long or so cold as to keep him in his rooms. Liat put down her bowl.
    ‘Good morning, Mother,’ he said as he sat on a cushion beside the fire. ‘You’re up early.’
    ‘Not particularly,’ Liat said.
    ‘No?’ Nayiit said, and then smiled the disarming, rueful smile that would always and forever mark him as the son of Otah Machi. ‘No, I suppose not. May I?’
    Liat gestured her permission, and Nayiit poured himself a bowl of the tea. He looked tired, and it was more than a night spent in teahouses and the baths. Something had changed while he’d been gone. She had thought at first that it was only exhaustion. When she’d found him asleep on Maati’s floor, he had been half-dead from his time on the road and visibly thinner. But since then he’d rested and eaten, and still there was something behind his eyes. An echo of her own bleak thoughts, perhaps.
    ‘I failed him,’ Nayiit said. Liat blinked and sat back in her chair. Nayiit tilted his head. ‘It’s what you were wondering, ne? What’s been eating the boy? Why can’t he sleep anymore? I failed the Khai. I had his good opinion. There was a time that he valued my counsel and listened to me, even when I had unpleasant things to say. And then I failed him. And he sent me away.’
    ‘You didn’t fail—’
    ‘I did. Mother, I love you, and I know that you’d move the stars for me if you could, but I failed. Your son can fail,’ Nayiit said. He put down his bowl with a sharp click, and Liat wondered if perhaps he was still just a bit tipsy from his night’s revelry. Drink sometimes made her maudlin too. ‘I’m not a good man, Mother. I’m not. I have left my wife and my child. I have slept with half the women I’ve met since we left home. I lost the Khai’s trust—’
    ‘Nayiit—’
    ‘I killed those men.’
    His face was still as stone, but a tear crept from the corner of his eye. Liat slid down from her seat to kneel on the floor beside him. She put her hand on his, but Nayiit didn’t move.
    ‘I called the retreat,’ he said. ‘I saw them fighting, and the Galts were everywhere. They were all around us. All I could think was that they needed to get away. I was calling signals. I knew how to call the retreat, and I did it. And they died. Every man that fell because we ran is someone I killed. And he knew it. The Khai. He knew it, and it’s why