Seasons of War

pose that promised compliance, but then hesitated. Idaan’s dark eyes flashed with something that wasn’t anger. When she spoke, her voice was lower but no softer.
    ‘How have you spent a lifetime in the company of women and learned nothing?’ she asked, and, shaking her head, turned back to Ana.
    True to her word, a hand and a half later, Ana and Idaan emerged from the school as if nothing strange had happened. Ana’s outer robe was changed to a dark wool, and she leaned on Idaan’s arm as she stepped up to the bed of the steamcart. Danat moved forward, but Idaan’s scowl drove him back. The two women made their slow way to the shed, where Idaan closed the door behind them.
    The men steering the carts called out to one another, voices carrying like crows’ calls in the empty landscape. The carts stuttered and lurched, and turned to the east, tracking back along the path to the high road between ruined Nantani and Pathai, from which they’d come. Otah rode down the path he’d walked as a boy, searching his mind for some feeling of kinship with his past, but the world as it was demanded too much of him. He searched for some memory deep within him of the first time he’d walked away from the school, of leaving everything he’d known, rejected, behind him.
    His mind was knotted with questions of how to find the poet, how to persuade her to do as he asked, what Idaan had meant, what was wrong with Ana, whether the steamcarts had enough fuel, and a growing ache in his spine that came from too many days riding horses he didn’t know. There was no effort to spare for the past. Whatever he didn’t remember now of his original flight from the school he likely never would. The past would be lost, as it always was. Always. He didn’t bother trying to hold it.
    They made better time than he had expected, starting as late as they had. By the time they stopped for the night, the high road was behind them. The fastest route to Utani would be overland to the Qiit, then by boat up the river. Any hope they had of overtaking Maati and Eiah would come on the roads, where the steamcarts gave Otah an advantage. They would have to sleep in the open more than if they had kept to wider roads, and the rough terrain increased the possibility of the carts breaking or getting stuck. Even of a boiler bursting and killing anyone too near it. But Idaan’s voice spoke in Otah’s mind of the next day, and the next, and the next, so he pushed them and himself.
    Four of the armsmen rode ahead in the lowering gloom of night to scout out the next day’s path. The others prepared a simple meal of pork and rice, Ashti Beg sitting with them and trading jokes. Danat’s slow circling of their camp took the name of defense but seemed more to be avoiding the still-closed shed where Idaan and Ana rested. Otah sat alone near the steamcart’s kiln, reflecting that it was very much like his son to shift between noble dedication in the morning and childish pouting as night came on. He had been much the same as a young man, or imagined that he had.
    The door opened, Ana’s laughter spilling out into the night. Idaan led the girl forward, letting Ana keep a careful grip on her. Her dark eyes and Ana’s unfocused gray ones were both light and merry. Ana’s hair had been combed and braided in the style of children in the winter cities. In the dim moonlight, it made Ana seem hardly more than a girl.
    Idaan steered the girl to the cart’s front and helped her sit beside Otah. He coughed once to make sure the girl knew he was there, but she seemed unsurprised at the sound. Idaan placed a hand on the back of the girl’s neck.
    ‘I’ll go get some food,’ Idaan said. ‘My brother here should be able to keep you out of trouble for that long.’
    Ana took a pose that offered thanks. She did a creditable job of it. Idaan snorted, patted the girl’s neck, and lowered herself to the ground. Otah heard her footsteps crushing the snow as she walked away.
    ‘Ana-cha,’ Otah said. His voice was more tentative than he liked. ‘I hope you’re well?’
    ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry I delayed things today. It won’t happen again.’
    ‘Hardly worth thinking about,’ Otah said, relieved that her infirmity had passed. Grief, he suspected, over what the poet had done to her, to her family, her nation.
    ‘I misjudged you,’ Ana said. ‘I know it seems like everything we do is another round of apology, but I am sorry for it.’
    ‘It