Seasons of War

words were like rain in a desert; he absorbed them, cherished them. She found herself searching for more - anecdotes of Nayiit and his friends, his early lovers, the city, anything. She searched for them and offered them up, part apology, part sacrifice. The candles had grown visibly shorter before he asked whether Nayiit had stayed in Saraykeht, and Liat reluctantly shook her head.
    ‘I’ve left him at the wayhouse,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t certain how this would go, between us. I didn’t want him to be here if it was bad.’
    Maati’s hands started to move toward some pose - a denial, perhaps - then faltered. His eyes locked on hers. There were decades in them. She felt tears welling up.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘If that’s worth anything, I am sorry, Maati-kya.’
    ‘For what?’ he asked, and his tone said that he could imagine a number of answers.
    ‘That you weren’t a part of his life until now.’
    ‘It was my choice as much as yours. And it will be good to see him again.’
    He heaved a sigh and pressed the stopper back into the bottle’s neck. The sun was long gone, and a cold breeze, thick with the perfume of night-flowering gardens, raised bumps on her arms. Only the air. Not dread.
    ‘You haven’t asked me why I’ve come,’ she said.
    He chuckled and leaned back against his couch. His cheeks were ruddy from the candlelight and wine. His eyes seemed to glitter.
    ‘I was pretending it was for me. Mending old wounds, making peace,’ Maati said. The anger she’d seen was there now, swimming beneath the pleasant, joking surface. She wondered if she’d waited too long to come to the issue. She should have asked before she’d told him Nayiit was in the city, before the sour memories came back.
    Maati took a pose of query, inviting her to share her true agenda.
    ‘I need your help,’ Liat said. ‘I need an audience with the Khai.’
    ‘You want to talk to Otah-kvo? You don’t need my help for that. You could just—’
    ‘I need you to help me convince him. To argue my case with me. We have to convince him to intercede with the Dai-kvo.’
    Maati’s eyes narrowed, and his head tilted like that of a man considering a puzzle. Liat felt herself starting to blush. She’d had too much of the wine, and her control wasn’t all it should be.
    ‘Intercede with the Dai-kvo?’ he said.
    ‘I’ve been following the world. And the Galts. It was what Amat Kyaan built the house to do. I have decades of books and ledgers. I’ve made note of every contract they’ve made in the summer cities. I know every ship that sails past, what her captain’s name is, and half the time, what cargo she carries. I know , Maati. I’ve seen them scheming. I’ve even blocked them a time or two.’
    ‘They had hands in the succession here too. They were backing the woman, Otah-kvo’s sister. Anything you want to say about Galt, he’ll half-believe before he’s heard it. But how is the Dai-kvo part of it?’
    ‘They won’t do it without the Dai-kvo,’ Liat said. ‘He has to say it’s the right thing, or they won’t do it.’
    ‘Who won’t do what?’ Maati said, impatience growing in his voice.
    ‘The poets,’ Liat said. ‘They have to kill the Galts. And they have to do it now.’
     
    Otah presented the meeting as a luncheon, a social gathering of old friends. He chose a balcony high in the palace looking out over the wide air to the south. The city lay below them, streets paved in black stone, tile and metal roofs pointing sharply at the sky. The towers rose above, only sun and clouds hanging higher. The wind was thick with the green, permeating scent of spring and the darker, acrid forge smoke. Between them, the low stone table was covered with plates - bread and cheese and salt olives, honeyed almonds and lemon trout and a sweetbread topped with sliced oranges. The gods alone knew where the kitchen had found a fresh orange.
    Yet of all those present none of them ate.
    Maati had made the introductions. Liat and Nayiit and Otah and Kiyan. The young man, Liat’s son, had taken all the appropriate poses, said all the right phrases, and then taken position standing behind his mother like a bodyguard. Maati leaned against the stone banister, the sky at his back. Otah - formal, uneased, and feeling more the Khai Machi than ever under the anxious gaze of woman who had been his lover in his youth - took a pose of query, and Liat shared the news that changed the world forever: the Galts had a