Seasons of War

bolted the main door.
    ‘We have a problem, Otah-cha,’ Sinja said. He was breathing hard, like a man who’d run up stairs.
    ‘We have a hundred of them,’ Otah said.
    ‘The others may not matter,’ a woman’s voice said from the shadows of the bedchamber. Otah turned.
    Idaan was shorter than he remembered her, wider through the shoulders and the hips. Her hair was gray, her robe a cheaply dyed green and travel-stained. Otah took a step back without meaning to. His sister’s appearance chilled his heart like an omen of death, but he wouldn’t let it show.
    ‘Why are you here?’ he said.
    His exiled sister pursed her lips and shrugged.
    ‘Gratitude,’ she said. ‘You did away with my lover and his family. You took everything I had, including my true name, and sent me out into the world to survive as best I could.’
    ‘I’m not sorry,’ Otah said.
    ‘And I am? It’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for me,’ Idaan said. ‘I mean that. And I’m here to repay the debt. You’re in trouble, brother mine, and I’m the only one who can warn you. The andat are coming back to the world. And this time, the poets won’t be answering to you.’

8
    A utumn came early on the high plains. Even though the leaves were as green, the grasses as thick, Maati felt the change. It wasn’t a chill, but the presentiment of one: a sharpness to air that had been soft and torpid with summer heat. Another few weeks and the trees would turn to red and gold, the mornings would come late, the sunsets early. The endless change would change again. For the first time in years, Maati found himself pleased by the thought.
    The days following his return had fallen into a rhythm. In the mornings, he and his students worked on the simple tasks of maintenance that the school demanded: mending the coops for the chickens they’d brought from Utani, weeding the paths, washing the webs and dust from the corners of the rooms. At midday, they stopped, made food, and rested in the shade of the gardens or on the long, sloping hills where he had taken lessons as a boy. Afterward, he would retire for the afternoon, preparing his lectures and writing in his book until his eyes ached and then taking a short nap to revive before the evening lecture. And always, whatever the day brought, the subject drew itself back to Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight.
    ‘What about when you see things that aren’t there?’ Small Kae said.
    ‘Dreams, you mean?’ Eiah asked.
    Maati leaned forward on the podium. The classroom was larger than they required, all six of his students sitting in the first row. The high, narrow windows that had never known glass let the evening breeze disturb their lanterns. He had ended his remarks early. He found there was less need to fill the time with his knowledge than there had once been. Now a few remarks and comments would spur conversation and analysis that often led far from where he had intended. But it was rarely unproductive and never dull.
    ‘Dreams,’ Small Kae said. ‘Or when you mistake things for other things.’
    ‘My brother had a fever once,’ Ashti Beg said. ‘Saw rats coming through the walls for three days.’
    ‘I don’t think that applies,’ Eiah said. ‘The definitions we’ve based the draft on are all physicians’ texts. They have to do with the actual function of the eye.’
    ‘But if you see a thing without your eyes,’ Small Kae began.
    ‘Then you’re imagining them,’ Vanjit said, her voice calm and certain. ‘And the passages on clarity would prevent the contradiction.’
    ‘What contradiction?’ Large Kae asked.
    ‘Who can answer that?’ Maati said, leaping into the fray. ‘It’s a good question, but any of you should be able to think it through. Ashti-cha? Would you care to?’
    The older woman sucked her teeth for a moment. A sparrow flew in through one window, its wings fluttering like a pennant in the wind, and then out again.
    ‘Clarity,’ Ashti Beg said slowly. ‘The sense of clarity implies that it’s reflecting the world as it is, ne? And if you see something that’s not there to be seen, it’s not the world as it is. Even if imagining something is like sight, it isn’t like clarity.’
    ‘Very good,’ Maati said, and the woman smiled. Maati smiled back.
    The binding had progressed more quickly than Maati had thought possible. For the greatest part, the advances had been made in moments like these. Seven minds prodding at the same thought, debating the