Seasons of War

he sent me back here.’
    ‘That battle was doomed from the start,’ Liat said. ‘They outnumbered you; they were veterans. Your men were exhausted laborers and huntsmen. If what happened out there is anyone’s fault, it’s Otah’s.’
    ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. His voice wasn’t angry, only tired. ‘I want to be a good man. And I’m not. For a time, I thought I was. I thought I could be. I was wrong.’
    Liat felt a thickness at the back of her throat. She forced a smile, half-rose, and kissed him on the top of his head, where the bones hadn’t yet grown closed the first time she’d held him.
    ‘Then do better,’ she said. ‘As long as you’re alive, the next thing you do can be a good one, ne? Besides which, of course you’re a good man. Only good men worry about whether they’re bad.’
    Nayiit chuckled. The darkness slid back to the place it had been. Not gone, but hidden.
    ‘And what do bad men worry about?’ he asked.
    Liat shrugged and started to answer him, but the bells began to ring. It took half a breath for Liat to recall what the deep chiming alarm meant. She didn’t remember going to the window; she couldn’t say how Nayiit had come to be at her side. She squinted against the blue-yellow light of morning, trying to make out the banners hanging from the towers high above.
    ‘Is it red or yellow?’ Liat asked.
    ‘Gods,’ Nayiit said. ‘Look at that.’
    His gaze was nearer the ground. Liat looked to the south. The low cloud of dust seemed to cover half the horizon. Otah’s remaining men couldn’t have done that. It wasn’t him. The Galts had come to Machi. Liat stepped back from the window, her hands gripping the folds of her robe just over her heart.
    ‘We have to get Kiyan-cha,’ she said. ‘We have to get Kiyan-cha and the children. And Maati. We have to get them out before—’
    ‘Red,’ Nayiit said.
    Liat shook her head, uncertain for a moment what he meant. Nayiit pointed to the high dark tower and spoke over the still-ringing bells.
    ‘The banner’s red,’ he said. ‘It’s not the Galts. It’s the Khai.’
    Only it wasn’t. The couriers reached Kiyan just before Liat did, so when she entered Kiyan-cha’s meeting rooms, she found Otah’s wife with a thick letter - seams ripped, seal broken - lying abandoned in her lap and an expression equal parts disbelief and outrage on her pale face.
    ‘He’s an idiot,’ Kiyan said. ‘He’s a self-aggrandizing, half-blind idiot who can’t think two thoughts in a straight line.’
    Liat took a pose that asked the question.
    ‘My husband,’ Kiyan said, color coming at last to her cheeks. ‘He’s sent us another whole city .’
    Cetani, nearest neighbor of Machi, had emptied itself. The couriers had arrived just before the fastest carts. The dust that Liat had mistaken for an army was only the first wave of tens of thousands of men and women - their stores of grains, their chickens and ducks and goats, whatever small precious things they could not bring themselves to leave behind. Otah’s letter explained that they were in need of shelter, that Machi should do its best for them. The tone of the words was apologetic, but only for someone who knew the man well. Only to women like themselves. Kiyan held Liat’s arm as if for support as they walked together to the bridge outside the city where they awaited her.
    The man who stood at the middle point in the bridge wore an elegant robe - black silk shot with yellow - that was only slightly disarrayed by his travels. Servants and armsmen of Machi parted for Kiyan, allowing her passage onto the bridge’s western end. Liat tried to disengage, but Kiyan’s grip didn’t lessen, and so they walked out together. On seeing them, the man took a pose of greeting appropriate for a man of lower rank to the wife of a more prestigious man. This was not the Khai Cetani, then, but some member of the Cetani utkhaiem.
    ‘I have been sent to speak to the first wife of the Khai Machi,’ he said.
    ‘I am the Khai’s only wife,’ Kiyan said.
    He took this odd information in stride, turning his attention wholly to Kiyan. Liat felt awkward and out of place, and oddly quite protective of the woman at her side.
    ‘Kiyan-cha,’ the man said. ‘I am Kamath Vauamnat, voice of House Vauamnat. The Khai Cetani has sent us here at your husband’s invitation. The army of Galt is still some days behind us, but it is coming. Our city . . .’
    Something changed in the