Seasons of War

shrugged.
    ‘And Sinja?’ he asked.
    ‘He sends his regards,’ Otah said, ‘but he thought it best to withdraw from company. Fear of reprisal.’
    ‘He’s not wrong,’ Balasar said. ‘That man was many things, but he wasn’t stupid.’
    ‘I’m told your men have found places in the tunnels.’
    ‘It’s a tight fit,’ the Galt said. ‘And there are going to be problems. You can’t make a peace just by saying it. People are angry. Yours and mine both. They’re grieving, and grieving people aren’t sane. There haven’t been any fights yet, but there will be.’
    ‘I know it,’ Otah said. ‘We’ll keep them apart as best we can. I’ve given orders.’
    ‘I have too. As long as we’re both clear, we can keep it from growing out of control. At least before the thaw.’
    ‘And after that?’
    The Galt sighed and nodded, as if agreeing with the question. His gaze traveled up the walls, tracing the blue tile and the gold. Otah gestured, and a servant boy scuttled forward from the shadows and poured them each more tea. The Galt smiled at him, and the boy smiled back. Balasar took his bowl of tea and blew across it before he spoke.
    ‘I can’t stop the High Council from coming back,’ Balasar said. ‘I’m their general for this season. I don’t own the army. And . . . and since this campaign ended with the gelding of every man who would cast the vote, I doubt my voice will carry much with them.’
    Otah took a pose that accepted this statement.
    ‘There’s an age of war coming for you,’ Balasar said. ‘You still have some of the richest cities in the world, and you’re still ripe for plunder. Even if we don’t come, there’s Eymond, Eddensea, the Westlands. There will be pirates from Bakta and Obar State.’
    ‘I’ll address those problems. And the others,’ Otah said with a confidence he didn’t feel. Balasar let the issue drop. After a moment’s silence, Otah felt himself moved to ask the question he had intended to leave be. ‘What will you do? Go back to Galt?’
    ‘Yes,’ Balasar said. ‘I’ll go back, but I don’t think it would be wise for me to stay. I don’t know, Most High. I had plans, but none of them involved being hated and disgraced. So I suppose I’ll have to make others. What do you do when you’ve finished your life’s work and haven’t died?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Otah said, and Balasar laughed.
    ‘With the things still ahead of you, Lord Emperor, you likely never will. That’s your fate.’ Balasar’s gaze seemed to soften - melancholy creeping in at the corners of his eyes. ‘There are worse, though.’
    Otah sipped his tea. The leaves were perfectly brewed, neither weak nor bitter. Balasar raised his own cup in a wordless salute.
    ‘Shall we do this thing?’ Otah asked.
    ‘I was wondering,’ Balasar said. ‘I was afraid you might reconsider. Burning a library’s a terrible thing.’
    For a moment, Otah saw the cold eyes of Sterile, its feminine smile, heard its voice. The memory of the physicians’ cots filled with row upon row of women in pain possessed him for the length of a heartbeat and was gone.
    ‘There are worse,’ he said.
    Otah rose, and the general rose with him. From the servants’ niches and from beyond the great archway to the south, their respective people appeared. Hard soldiers from the South, men of the utkhaiem in flowing robes from the North. Otah raised his hands in a pose of command, and let the servants go forward to prepare their way.
    The furnaces were near the surface where they could be blocked off from the rest of the city if the fires ever should escape their cells. The air near them was thick with the scent of smoke and oppressive with heat. The noise of the flames was like a waterfall. Otah led Balasar and his men to the huge grates where the scrolls and codices and books were stacked. Generations of history. Philosophic essays composed by minds gone to dust a thousand years before. Maps that predated the First Empire. The surviving scraps of war records from before the first andat. Otah looked upon his culture, his history, the record of all that had come before and that had made the world what it was. The flames licked and leapt.
    If only it could have been just the poets’ books and treatises on the andat . . . but the Galt had insisted, and Otah had understood. Each history was a footprint in the path, each collection of court poems might contain a hint or reference. With time and attention,