Seasons of War

more than that. There wasn’t anything more that could be meaningfully said. Idaan respected it and let him turn his horse aside and shift to the steamcart where Ana Dasin and Ashti Beg sat, their sightless eyes fixed on nothing. Otah sat on the wide boards not far from them, but not so near that their conversation would include him. Ana laughed at something Ashti Beg had said. The older woman looked vaguely pleased. Otah lay back, his closed eyes flooded with the red of sun and blood. He willed himself to sleep, certain that it would elude him.
    He woke when the cart jerked to a halt. He sat up, half-thoughts of snapped axles and broken wheels forming and falling apart like mist in a high wind. When he was awake enough to make sense of the world, he saw that the sun had sunk almost to the treetops, and the cart was sitting in the yard of a wayhouse. The memory of the morning’s foul message flooded back into him, but not so deeply as before. It would rise and fall, he knew. He would be jarred by the loss of his friend again and again and again, but less and less and less. It said something he didn’t want to know that mourning had become so familiar. He plucked his traveling robes into their proper drape and lowered himself to the ground.
    The one thing he truly didn’t regret about the journey was that his servants were all in Utani or Saraykeht. Walking into the low, warm main room of the wayhouse without being surrounded by men and women wanting to change his robes or powder his feet was a small pleasure. He tried to savor it.
    ‘Half a day east of here,’ a young man in a leather apron was saying, but he was pointing north. ‘Must have been five or six days ago. Raised ten kinds of trouble, then left in the middle of the night. So far as I can see, no one’s talked about anything else since.’
    ‘Did you see them?’ Danat asked. His voice had an edge, but Otah couldn’t see his face to know if it was excitement or anger.
    ‘Not myself, no,’ the young man said. ‘But it’s the ones you asked after. An old man with a physician, and nothing but women traveling with him. There was even some talk he was trying to start a comfort house or something of that kind, but that was before the baby.’
    ‘Baby?’ The voice was Ana’s.
    ‘Yes. Little one, not more than eight months old from the size. So I’m told. I didn’t see him either, but they all saw him over at Chayiit’s place. Walked right out in the middle of the main room.’
    Otah slipped down at a bench by the fire grate. The fire was small but warm. He hadn’t realized how cold he’d gotten.
    ‘Those are the people,’ Danat said.
    ‘Five, six days then,’ the young man said with a pleased nod. He glanced over at Otah, their eyes meeting briefly. The other man paled as Otah took a pose of casual greeting and then turned his attention back to the flames. The conversation behind him grew softer and ended. Danat came to sit at his side. Through the open door, the yard fell into evening as the armsmen finished unloading and leading away their horses.
    ‘We’ve gotten closer,’ Danat said. ‘If they keep traveling as slowly as they have up to now, we’ll overtake them well before Utani.’
    Otah grunted. There was a deep thump from overhead and voices lifted in annoyance. Danat’s fingers laced his knee.
    ‘I told Balasar that I would beg,’ Otah said. ‘I told him that I would bend myself before this new poet and beg if it meant restoring him and Galt.’
    ‘And now?’
    ‘I don’t believe I can. And more than that, having heard Ashti Beg talk about this Vanjit, it’s hard work thinking it would help.’
    ‘Maati, perhaps. He holds some sway with her.’
    ‘But what can I say that would move him?’ Otah asked, his voice thick. ‘We were friends once, and then enemies, and friends again, but I’m not sure we know each other now. The more I look at it, the more I’m tempted to set some sort of trap, capture the new poet, and give her over to blind torturers until she makes the world what it should be.’
    ‘And what about Eiah?’ Danat asked. ‘If she manages her binding—’
    ‘What if she does?’ Otah said. ‘She’s been against me from the start. She’s gone with Maati, and between them they’ve sunk the fleet, burned Chaburi-Tan, blinded Galt, and killed Sinja. What would you have me say to her?’
    ‘You’ll have to say something,’ Danat said, his voice harder than Otah had expected. ‘And we’ll be