Seasons of War

might be here. I can’t leave without her.’
    ‘You should have left before the sun rose,’ Liat said, standing up. ‘You have to leave now.’
    ‘But Eiah—’
    ‘You can’t wait for her,’ Liat said. ‘You can’t stay here.’
    Danat began to cry, a high wailing that echoed against the high tiled ceiling and seemed to fill the world. Nayiit crouched and tried to calm the boy. Liat felt something warm and powerful unwind in her breast. Rage, perhaps. She hauled her son up by his shoulder and leaned in close.
    ‘Leave her,’ she said. ‘Leave the girl and get out of this city now . Do you understand me?’
    ‘I promised Kiyan-cha that I’d—’
    ‘You can’t keep a girl fourteen summers old from being stupid. No one can. She made her decision when she left you.’
    ‘I promised that I’d look after them,’ Nayiit said.
    ‘Then save the one you can,’ Liat said. ‘And do it now, before you lose that chance too.’
    Nayiit blinked in something like surprise and glanced down at the still-wailing boy. His expression hardened and he took a pose of apology.
    ‘You’re right, Mother. I wasn’t thinking.’
    ‘Go. Now,’ Liat said. ‘You don’t have much time.’
    ‘I want my sister!’ Danat howled.
    ‘She’s going to meet us there,’ Nayiit said, and then swept the boy up in his arms with a grunt. Danat - eyes puffy and red, snot streaming from his nose - pulled back to stare at Nayiit with naked mistrust. Nayiit smiled his charming smile. His father’s smile. Otah’s. ‘It’s going to be fine, Danat-kya. Your mama and papa and your sister. They’ll meet us at the cave. But we have to leave now.’
    ‘No they won’t,’ the boy said.
    ‘You watch,’ Nayiit said, lying cheerfully. ‘You’ll see. Eiah’s probably there already.’
    ‘But we have the cart.’
    ‘Yes, good thought,’ Nayiit said. ‘Let’s go see the cart.’
    He leaned over, awkward with his burden of boy, and kissed Liat.
    ‘I’ll do better,’ he murmured.
    You’re perfect, Liat wanted to say. You’ve always been the perfect boy.
    But Nayiit was rushing away now, his robes billowing behind him as he sped to the end of the gallery, Danat still on his hip, and turned to the north and vanished toward the back halls and the cart and the north where if the gods could hear Liat’s prayers, they would be safe.

    House Siyanti had offered up its warehouses for the Khaiem - Machi and Cetani together - to use as their commandery. Five stories high and well back from the edge of the city, the wide, gently sloped roof had as clear a view of the streets as anything besides the great towers themselves. A passage led from the lower warehouse on the street level into the underground should there be a need to retreat into that shelter. In the great empty space - the warehouse emptied of its wares - Maati wrote the text of his binding on the smooth stone wall, pausing occasionally to rub his hands together and try to calm his unquiet mind. A stone stair led up to the second-floor snow doors, which stood open to let the sun in until they were ready to light the dozen glass lanterns that lined the walls. The air blew in bitterly cold and carried a few stray flakes of hard snow that had found their way down from the sky.
    Ideally, Maati would have spent the last day meditating on the binding - holding the nuances of each passage clear in his mind, creating step-by-step the mental structure that would become the andat. He had done his best, drinking black tea and reading through his outline for Corrupting-the-Generative. The binding looked solid. He thought he could hold it in his mind. With months or weeks - perhaps even days - he could have been sure. But this morning he felt scattered. The hot metal scent of the brazier, the wet smell of the snow, the falling gray snowflakes against a sky of white, the scuffing of Cehmai’s feet against the stone floor, and the occasional distant call of trumpet and drum as the armsmen and defenders of Machi took their places - everything seemed to catch his attention. And he could not afford distraction.
    ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ he said. His voice echoed against the stone walls, sounding hollow. He turned to meet Cehmai’s gaze. ‘I don’t know if I can go through with this, Cehmai-kya.’
    ‘I know,’ the other poet said, but did not pause in his work of chalking symbols into the spare walls. ‘I felt the same before I took Stone-Made-Soft from my master. I