Seasons of War

the Empress-to-be, that they compromised in order to make the lives of uncountable strangers better.
    More than that, he should have encouraged her to speak, and he should have listened.
    An approving roar came from the deck above him. A reed organ hummed and sang, flute and drum following a heartbeat later. Otah hesitated and turned back. He would try again. At worst, the girl would think he was ridiculous, and she likely already did that.
    As he drew near the hold, he heard her weeping again, her voice straining at words he couldn’t make out. A man’s voice answered, not her father’s. Otah hesitated, then quietly stepped forward.
    In the gloom, Ana Dasin knelt, her arms around a young man. The boy, whoever he was, wore the work clothes of a sailor, but his arms were thin and his skin was as pale as the girl’s. He returned her embrace, his arms finding their way around her as if through long acquaintance; his tear-streaked face nuzzled her hair. Ana Dasin stroked the boy’s head, murmuring reassurances.
    Ah, Otah thought as he stepped back, unnoticed. That’s how it is.
    Above deck, he smiled and nodded at Issandra and pretended to turn his attention back to the music. He wondered how many other sacrifices he had demanded in order to remake the world according to his vision, how many other lovers would be parted to further his little scheme to save two empires. He would likely never know the full price of it. As if in answer, the candles guttered in the breeze, the reed organ took a mournful turn, and the sea through which they sailed grew darker.

4
    T he midday sun beat down on the lush green; gnats and flies filled the air. The river - not the Qiit proper but one of its tributaries - threaded its way south like a snake. Maati tied his mule under the wide leaves of a catalpa and squatted down on a likely-looking boulder. Pulling a pouch of raisins and seeds from his sleeve, he looked out over the summer. The wild trees, the rough wagon track he’d followed from the farmers’ low town to the northwest, the cultivated fields to the south.
    A cluster of small farms made a loose community here, raising goats and millet and, near the water, rice. The land between the cities was dotted with low communities like this one: the rural roots that fed the great, blossoming cities of the Khaiem. The accents were rougher here, the effete taint of a high court as foreign as another language. Men might be born, grow, love, marry, and die without ever traveling more than a day’s walk, birthing bed and grave marker no more distant than a thrown pebble.
    And one of those fields with its ripe green grasses had been plowed by the only other man in all the world who knew how to bind the andat. Maati took a mouthful of raisins and chewed slowly, thinking.
    Leaving the warehouse outside Utani had proven harder than he had expected. For over a decade, he had been rootless, moving from one city or town to another, living in the shadows. One more journey - and this one heading south into the summer cities - hadn’t seemed to signify anything more than a few weeks’ time and, of course, the errand itself. But somewhere in the years since the Galtic invasion, Maati had grown accustomed to traveling with companions, and as he and his swaybacked pack mule had made their slow way down the tracks and low-town roads, he had felt their absence.
    The world had changed in the years he had been walking through it. Having no one there to talk with forced his mind back in on itself, and the nature of the changes he saw were more disturbing than he’d thought they would be.
    Many were things he had expected. The cities and towns had grown quieter, undisturbed by the laughter and games of children. The people were older, grayer. The streets felt too big, like the robes of a once-hale man who had grown thin with illness or age. And the scars of the war itself - the burned towns already half-reclaimed by foxes and saplings, the bright green swath from Utani all the way down to ruined Nantani on the southern coast where once an army had passed - had faded, but they had not disappeared.
    The distrust of the foreign was driven deep into the flesh here. He had heard stories of Westlands women coming to marry among the low towns, thinking their wombs would make them of greater value here than in their own lands. Instead, they were recognized as a slower kind of invasion. Driven out with threats or stones. The men who had had the temerity to marry