Seasons of War

through the air to their roof. The men around her looked at the Khaiem, embarrassed at the interruption, or else knelt by the girl to comfort her. She shrieked, and the stones themselves seemed to take up her voice. A sound rose from the city in a long, rolling unending moan. Thousands of voices, calling out in pain. Otah’s skin seemed to retreat from it, and a chill that had nothing to do with the still-falling snow ran down his sides. For a moment, the towers themselves seemed about to twist with agony. This, he thought, was what gods sounded like when they died.
    Around him, men looked nervously at the air, gazes darting into the gray and white sky. Otah caught the runner by his sleeve.
    ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Go, and tell me what’s happened.’
    Dread widened the boy’s eyes, but he took an acknowledging pose before retreating. The Khai Cetani seemed poised to ask something, but only turned away, walking to the roof’s edge himself. Otah went to the servant girl. Her face was white with pain.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ Otah asked her, gently. ‘Where does it hurt?’
    She couldn’t take a formal pose, but her gesture and the shame in her eyes told Otah everything he needed to know. He’d spent several seasons as a midwife’s assistant in the eastern islands. If the girl was lucky, she had been pregnant and was miscarrying. If she hadn’t been carrying a child, then something worse was happening. He had already ordered the other servants to carry her down to the physicians when Cehmai appeared, red-faced and wide-eyed. Before he could speak, it fell into place. The girl, the unearthly shriek, the poet.
    ‘Something’s gone wrong with the binding,’ Otah said. Cehmai took a pose of confirmation.
    ‘Please,’ the poet said. ‘Come now. Hurry.’
    Otah didn’t pause to think; he went to the stairs, lifting the hem of his robes, and dropping down three steps at a time. It was four stories from the top of the warehouse to its bottom floor. Otah felt that he could hardly have gone there faster if he’d jumped over the building’s side.
    The space was eerie; shadows seemed to hang in the corners of the huge, empty room and the distant sound of voices in pain murmured and shrieked. Great symbols were chalked on the walls, and an ugly, disjointed script in Maati’s handwriting spelled out the binding. Otah knew little enough of the old grammars, but he picked out the words for womb, seed, and corruption. Three people stood in tableau at the top of the stair that led down to the tunnels. Maati stood, his hands at his sides, his expression blank. Otah’s belly went tight as sickness as he saw that the girl at Maati’s feet was Eiah. And the thing that cradled his daughter’s head turned to look at him. After a long moment, it drew breath and spoke.
    ‘Otah-kya,’ it said. Its voice was low and beautiful, heavy with amusement and contempt. The familiarity of it was dizzying.
    ‘Seedless?’
    ‘It isn’t,’ Maati said. ‘It’s not him.’
    ‘What’s happened?’ Otah asked. When Maati didn’t answer, Otah shook the man’s sleeve. ‘Maati. What’s going on?’
    ‘He’s failed,’ the andat said. ‘And when a poet fails, he pays a price for it. Only Maati-kvo is clever. He’s found a way to make it so that failure can’t touch him. He’s found a trick.’
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Otah said.
    ‘My protection,’ Maati said, his voice rich with despair. ‘It doesn’t stop the price being paid. It only can’t kill me .’
    The andat took a pose that agreed, as a teacher might approve of a clever student. From the stairwell, Otah heard footsteps and the voice of the Khai Cetani. The first of the servant men hurried into the room, robes flapping like a flag in high wind, before he saw them and stopped dead and silent.
    ‘What is it doing?’ Otah asked. ‘What’s it done?’
    ‘You can ask me, Most High,’ Sterile said. ‘I have a voice.’
    Otah looked into the black, inhuman eyes. Eiah whimpered, and the thing stroked her brow gently, comforting and threatening both. Otah felt the urge to pull Eiah away from the thing, as if it were a spider or a snake.
    ‘What have you done to my daughter?’ he asked.
    ‘What would you guess, Most High?’ Sterile asked. ‘I am the reflection of a man whose son is not his son. All his life, Maati-kya has been bent double by the questions of fathers and sons. What do you imagine I would do?’
    ‘Tell me.’
    ‘I’ve soured her