Seasons of War

visibly.
    ‘I want to be married,’ she said.
    Maati blinked, coughed to give himself a moment to think, and leaned forward in his chair. The wood and cloth creaked slightly beneath him. Eiah stood, her arms crossed, her gaze on him in something almost like accusation.
    ‘Who is the boy?’ Maati said, regretting the word boy as soon as it left his mouth. If they were speaking of marriage, the least he could do was say man . But Eiah’s impatient snort dismissed the question.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Whoever.’
    ‘Anyone would do?’
    ‘Not just anyone. I don’t want to be tied to some low town firekeeper. I want someone good. And I should be able to. Father doesn’t have any other daughters, and I know people have talked with him. But nothing ever happens. How long am I supposed to wait?’
    Maati rubbed a palm across his cheeks. This was hardly a conversation he’d imagined himself having. He turned through half a hundred things he might say, approaches he might take, and felt a blush rising in his cheeks.
    ‘You’re young, Eiah-kya. I mean . . . I suppose it’s natural enough for a young woman to . . . be interested in men. Your body is changing, and if I recall the age, there are certain feelings that it’s . . .’
    Eiah looked at him as if he’d coughed up a rat.
    ‘Or perhaps I’ve misunderstood the issue,’ he said.
    ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I’ve kissed lots of boys.’
    The blush wasn’t growing less, but Maati resolved to ignore it.
    ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well, then. If it’s that you want apartments of your own, something outside the women’s quarters, you could always—’
    ‘Talit Radaani’s being married to the third son of the Khai Pathai,’ Eiah said, and then a heartbeat later, ‘She’s half a year younger than I am.’
    It was like feeling a puzzle box click open in his fingers. He understood precisely what was happening, what it meant and didn’t mean. He rubbed his palms against his knees and sighed.
    ‘And she gloats about that, I’d bet,’ he said. Eiah swiped at her betraying eyes with the back of a hand. ‘After all, she’s younger and lower in the courts. She must think that she’s got proof that she’s terribly special.’
    Eiah shrugged.
    ‘Or that you aren’t,’ Maati continued, keeping his voice gentle to lessen the sting of the words. ‘That’s what she thinks, isn’t it?’
    ‘I don’t know what she thinks.’
    ‘Well, then tell me what you think.’
    ‘I don’t know why he can’t find me a husband. It isn’t as if I’d have to leave. There’s marriages that go on for years before anyone does anything. But it’s understood. It’s arranged. I don’t see why he can’t do that much for me.’
    ‘Have you asked him?’
    ‘He should know this,’ Eiah snapped, pacing between the open door and the fire grate. ‘He’s the Khai Machi. He isn’t stupid.’
    ‘He also isn’t . . .’ Maati said and then bit down on the words a child . The woman Eiah thought she was would never stand for the name. ‘He isn’t fourteen summers old. It’s not so hard for men like me and your father to forget what it was like to be young. And I’m sure he doesn’t want to see you married yet, or even promised. You’re his daughter, and . . . it’s hard, Eiah-kya. It’s hard losing your child.’
    She stopped, her brow furrowed. In the trees just outside his door, a bird sang shrill and high and took flight. Maati could hear the fluttering of its wings.
    ‘It’s not losing me,’ she said, but her voice was less certain than it had been. ‘I don’t die.’
    ‘No. You don’t, but you’ll likely leave to be in your husband’s city. There’s couriers to carry messages back and forth, but once you’ve left, it’s not likely you’ll return in Otah’s life, or Kiyan’s. Or mine. It’s not death, but it is still loss, dear. And we’ve all lost so much already, it’s hard to look forward to another.’
    ‘You could come with me,’ Eiah said. ‘My husband would take you in. He wouldn’t be worth marrying if he wouldn’t, so you could come with me.’
    Maati allowed himself to chuckle as he rose from his seat.
    ‘It’s too big a world to plan for all that just yet,’ he said, mussing Eiah’s hair as he had when she’d been younger. ‘When we come nearer, we’ll see where things stand. I may not be staying here at all, depending on what the Dai-kvo thinks. I might be able to go back to his village and use his