Seasons of War

girl’s.’
    It was six years now since he and Eustin and Coal had returned to the hereditary estate outside Kirinton, half a year since they had recruited the fallen poet of Nantani, and three weeks since Balasar had received the expected summons. He’d come to Acton with his best men, the books, the poet, the plans. The High Council had heard him out - the dangers of the andat, the need to end the supremacy of the Khaiem. That part had gone quite well. No one seriously disputed that the Khaiem were the single greatest threat to Galt. It was only when he began to reveal his plans and how far he had already gone that the audience began to turn sour on him.
    Since then, the Council had met without him. They might have been debating the plan he had laid out before them, or they might have moved to other business, leaving him to soak in his own sweat. He and Eustin and the poet Riaan had lived in the apartments assigned to them. Balasar had spent his days sitting outside the Council’s halls and meeting chambers, and his nights walking the starlit streets, restless as a ghost. Each hour that passed was wasted. Every night was one less that he would have in the autumn when the end of his army was racing against the snow and cold of the Khaiate North. If the Council’s intention had been to set him on edge, they had done their work.
    A flock of birds, black as crows but thinner, burst from the walnut trees beyond the courtyard, whirled overhead, and settled back where they had come from. Balasar wove his fingers together on one knee.
    ‘What do we do if they don’t move forward?’ Eustin asked quietly.
    ‘Convince them.’
    ‘And if they can’t be convinced?’
    ‘Convince them anyway,’ Balasar said.
    Eustin nodded. Balasar appreciated that the man didn’t press the issue. Eustin had known him long enough to understand that bloodymindedness was how Balasar moved through the world. From the beginning, he’d been cursed by a small stature, a shorter reach than his brothers or the boys with whom he’d trained. He’d gotten used to working himself harder, training while other boys slept and drank and whored. Where he couldn’t make himself bigger or stronger, he instead became fast and smart and uncompromising.
    When he became a man of arms in the service of Galt, he had been the smallest in his cohort. And in time, they had named him general. If the High Council needed to be convinced, then he would by God convince them.
    A polite cough came from the archways behind them, and Balasar turned. A secretary of the Council stood in the shade of the wide colonnade. As Balasar and Eustin rose, he bowed slightly at the waist.
    ‘General Gice,’ the secretary said. ‘The Lord Convocate requests your presence.’
    ‘Good,’ Balasar said, then turned to Eustin and spoke quickly and low. ‘Stay here and keep an eye on our friend. If this goes poorly, we may need to make good time out of Acton.’
    Eustin nodded, his face as calm and impassive as if Balasar asked him to turn against the High Council half the days of any week. Balasar tugged his vest and sleeves into place, nodded to the secretary, and allowed himself to be led into the shadows of government.
    The path beneath the colonnade led into a maze of hallways as old as Galt itself. The air seemed ancient, thick and dusty and close with the breath of men generations dead. The secretary led Balasar up a stone stairway worn treacherously smooth by a river of footsteps to a wide door of dark and carved wood. Balasar scratched on it, and a booming voice called him in.
    The meeting room was wide and long, with a glassed-in terrace that looked out over the city and shelves lining the walls with books and rolled maps. Low leather couches squatted by an iron fireplace, a low rosewood table between them with dried fruits and glass flutes ready for wine. And standing at the terrace’s center looking out over the city, the Lord Convocate, a great gray bear of a man.
    Balasar closed the door behind him and walked over to the man’s side. Acton spilled out before them - smoke and grime, broad avenues where steam wagons chuffed their slow way through the city taking on passengers for a half-copper a ride laced with lanes so narrow a man’s shoulders could touch the walls on either side. For a moment, Balasar recalled the ruins in the desert, placing the memory over the view before him. Reminding himself again of the stakes he played for.
    ‘I’ve been riding herd on