Seasons of War

or the world and everything in it made from the first. Otah closed his eyes, letting the darkness create a space large enough for the woman in his arms and his own complicated heart.
    Eiah murmured something he couldn’t make out. He made a small interrogative sound in the back of his throat, and she coughed before repeating herself.
    ‘There was no one at the school I could talk with,’ she said. ‘I got so tired of being strong all the time.’
    ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Oh, love. That, I know.’
    Otah slept deeply that night, lulled by exhaustion and the soft sounds of familiar voices and of the river. He slept as if he had been ill and the fever had only just broken. As if he was weak, and gaining strength. The dreams that possessed him faded with his first awareness of light and motion, less substantial than cobwebs, less lasting than mist.
    The air itself seemed cleaner. The early-morning haze burned off in sunlight the color of water. They ate boiled wheat and honey, dried apples, and black tea. The boatman’s second made his call, the boatman responded, and they nosed out again into the flow. Maati, sulking, kept as nearly clear of Otah as he could but kept casting glances at Eiah. Jealous, Otah assumed, of the conversation between father and daughter and unsure of her allegiance. Eiah for her part seemed to be making a point of speaking with her brother and her aunt and Ana Dasin, sitting with them, eating with them, making conversation with the jaw-clenched determination of a horse laboring uphill.
    The character of the river itself changed as they went farther north. Where the south was wide and slow and gentle, the stretch just south of Udun was narrower - sometimes no more than a hundred yards across - and faster. The boatman kept his kiln roaring, the boiler bumping and complaining. The paddle wheel spat up river water, slicking the deck nearest the stern. Otah would have been concerned if the boatman and his second hadn’t appeared so pleased with themselves. Still, whenever the boiler chimed after some particularly loud knock, Otah eyed it with suspicion. He had seen boilers burst their seams.
    The miles passed slowly, though still faster than the poet girl could have walked. Every now and then, a flicker of movement on the shore would catch Otah’s attention. Bird or deer or trick of the light. He found himself wondering what they would do if she appeared, andat in her arms, and struck them all blind. His fears always took the form of getting Danat and Eiah and Ana to safety, though he knew that his own danger would be as great as theirs and their competence likely greater.
    The spitting waterwheel slowly drove them toward the bow. Near midday, the captain of the guard brought them tin bowls of raisins and bread and cheese. They all sat in a clump, and even Maati haunted the edges of the conversation. Ana and Eiah sat hand in hand on a long, low bench; Danat, cross-legged on the deck. Otah and Idaan kept to leather and canvas stools that creaked when sat upon and resisted any attempt to rise. The cheese was rich and fragrant, the bread only mildly stale, and the topic a council of war.
    ‘If we do find her,’ Idaan said, answering Otah’s voiced concerns, ‘I’m not sure what we do with her. Can she be made to see reason?’
    ‘A month ago, I’d have said it was possible,’ Eiah said. ‘Not simple, but possible. I’m half-sorry we didn’t kill her in her sleep when we were still at the school.’
    ‘Only half?’ Danat asked.
    ‘There’s Galt,’ Eiah said. ‘As it stands now, she’s the only one who can put it back. It’s harder for her to do that dead.’
    Danat looked chagrined, and, as if sensing it, Idaan put a hand on his shoulder. Eiah squeezed Ana’s hand, then gently bent it at the wrist, as if testing something.
    ‘She’s alone. She’s hurt and she’s sad. I’m not saying that’s all certain to work in our favor,’ Maati said, ‘but it’s something.’ Otah thought he sounded petulant, but none of the others appeared to hear it that way.
    Eiah’s voice cut the conversation like a blade. Even before he took the sense of the words, Otah was halfway to his feet.
    ‘How long?’ Eiah asked.
    Her hands were around Ana’s wrists, her fingers curled as if measuring the girl’s pulses. Eiah’s face was pale.
    ‘Ah,’ Idaan said. ‘Well. Sitting those two together was a mistake.’
    ‘Tell me,’ Eiah said. ‘How far along?’
    ‘A third, perhaps,’ Ana