Seasons of War

in the grate.
    The letters had arrived by fast courier. Against all expectation, the Emperor’s benighted mission to Galt had borne fruit. Danat was to be married to a daughter of the Galtic High Council. Terms were being arranged for the transport of a thousand Galtic women of childbearing age to the cities of the Khaiem. Applications would be taken for a thousand men to leave their lives among the cities of the Khaiem and move to Galt. It was, Eiah said, intended to be the first exchange of many.
    There were protests and anger in only a few cities. Nantani and Yalakeht, hit hard by the war, were sending petitions of condemnation. In the low towns, the anger burned brighter. Galt was still the enemy, and there were rumors of plots to kill whomever of them dared set foot on Khaiate soil: talk and rumor, drunken rhetoric likely to come to nothing.
    The greater mass of the utkhaiem were already gathering their best robes and most garish jewelry in preparation for the journey south to Saraykeht to greet the returning fleet and see this Galtic girl who would one day be Empress. Maati listened to it all, his frown deepening until his mouth began to ache.
    ‘It doesn’t change anything,’ he said. ‘Otah can sell us to our enemies if he wants. It doesn’t affect our work here. Once we have the grammar worked through and the andat back in the world—’
    ‘It changes everything,’ Eiah said. ‘Danat is marrying a Galt. The utkhaiem are either going to line up like sailors at a comfort house to follow the example or resist and restart a war we’ll never win. Or worse, both. Perhaps he’ll divide the utkhaiem so deeply that we turn on each other.’
    Maati took the tea from the fire and filled his bowl. It was bitter and overbrewed and scalded his tongue. He drank it anyway. Eiah was looking at him, waiting for him to speak. The fire danced over the graying lumps of coal.
    ‘The women’s grammar won’t matter if the world’s already passed us by,’ Eiah said softly. ‘If it takes us five more years to capture an andat, there will already be a half-Galt child on its way to becoming Emperor. There will already be half-Galt children born to every family with any power, anywhere in the cities. Will an andat undo that? Will an andat unmake the love these fathers feel for their new children?’
    If it’s the right one, yes, Maati thought but didn’t say. He only stared down into his bowl of tea, watching the dark leaves staining its depth.
    ‘He is remaking the world without us,’ Eiah went on. ‘He’s giving his official seal to the thought that if a woman can’t bear a child, she doesn’t matter. He’s doing the wrong thing, and once a wound has healed badly, Uncle, it’s twice as hard to put right.’
    Everything she said made sense. The longer it took to bring back the andat, the harder it would be to repair the damage he’d done. And if the world had changed past recognition before his work was complete, he wasn’t sure what meaning the effort would have. His jaw ached, and he realized he’d been clenching it.
    ‘So what then?’ Maati said, taking a pose that made his words a challenge. ‘What do you want me to do I’m not doing already?’
    Eiah sat back, her head in her hands. She looked like Otah when she did it. It was always unnerving when he caught a glimpse of her father in her. He knew what she would say before she spoke. It was, after all, what she’d been steering him toward from the conversation’s start. It was the subject they had been arguing for months.
    ‘Let me try my binding,’ Eiah said. ‘You’ve seen my outlines. You know the structure’s sound. If I can capture Returning-to-Natural-Equilibrium . . .’
    She let the words trail away. Returning-to-Natural-Equilibrium, called Healing.
    ‘I don’t know that,’ Maati said, half-ashamed by the peevishness in his voice. ‘I only said that I didn’t see a flaw in them. I never said there wasn’t one, only that I couldn’t see it. And besides which, it might be too near something that’s been done before. I won’t lose you because some minor poet in the Second Empire bound Making-Things-Right or Fix-the-Broken or some idiotically broad concept like that.’
    ‘Even if they did, they hadn’t trained as physicians. I know how flesh works in ways they wouldn’t have. I can bring things back the way they’re meant to be. The women that Sterile broke, I can make whole again. If we could only—’
    ‘You’re too