Seasons of War

younger,’ he said. ‘I still would, but I’ve been busy.’
    ‘You see?’ Eiah said. ‘You had more vices when you were young. You’ve grown old and wise.’
    ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think you can mention me and wisdom in the same breath.’
    ‘You aren’t dead. There’s time yet.’ She paused, then asked, ‘Will they find her?’
    ‘If Otah-kvo’s right, and she wants us to,’ Maati said. ‘If she doesn’t want to be found, we might as well go home.’
    Eiah nodded. Her grip tightened for a moment, and she released his hand. Her brow was furrowed with thought, but it was nothing she chose to share. Don’t leave me , he wanted to say. Don’t go back to Otah and leave me by myself. Or worse, with only Vanjit . In the end, he kept his silence.
    His second foray into the city came in the middle of the afternoon. This time they had set paths to follow, rough-drawn maps marked with each pair’s route, and Maati was going out with Danat. They would come back three hands before sunset unless some significant discovery was made. Maati accepted Otah’s instructions without complaint, though the resentment was still there.
    The air was warmer now, and with the younger man’s pace, Maati found himself sweating. They moved down smaller streets this time, narrow avenues that nature had not quite choked. The birds seemed to follow them, though more likely it was only that there were birds everywhere. There was no sign of Vanjit or Clarity-of-Sight, only raccoons and foxes, mice and hunting cats, feral dogs on the banks and otters in the canals. They were hardly a third of the way through the long, complex loop set out for them when Maati called a halt. He sat on a stonework bench, resting his head in his hands and waiting for his breath to slow. Danat paced, frowning seriously at the brush.
    It struck Maati that the boy was the same age Otah had been in Saraykeht. Not as broad across the shoulders, but Otah had been Itani Noygu and a seafront laborer then. Maati himself had been born four years after the Emperor, hardly sixteen when he’d gone to study under Heshai and Seedless. Younger than Ana Dasin was now. It was hard to imagine ever having been that young.
    ‘I meant to offer my congratulations to you,’ Maati said. ‘Ana-cha seems a good woman.’
    Danat paused. The reflection of his father’s rage warmed the boy’s face, but not more than that.
    ‘I didn’t think an alliance with Galt would please you.’
    ‘I didn’t either,’ Maati said, ‘but I have enough experience with losing to your father that I’m learning to be generous about it.’
    Danat almost started. Maati wondered what nerve he had touched, but before he could ask, a flock of birds a more violent blue than anything Maati had seen burst from a treetop down the avenue. They wheeled around one another, black beaks and wet eyes and tiny tongues pink as a fingertip. Maati closed his eyes, disturbed, and when he opened them, Danat was kneeling before him. The boy’s face was a webwork of tiny lines like the cracked mud in a desert riverbed. Fine, dark whiskers rose from Danat’s pores. His eyelashes crashed together when he blinked, interweaving or pressing one another apart like trees in a mudslide. Maati closed his eyes again, pressing his palms to them. He could see the tiny vessels in each eyelid, layer upon layer almost out to the skin.
    ‘Maati-cha?’
    ‘She’s seen us,’ Maati said. ‘She knows I’m here.’
    In spite of the knowledge, it took Maati half a hand to find her. He swept the horizon and from east to west and back again. He could see half-a-hundred rooftops. He found her at last near the top of the palaces of the Khai Udun on a balcony of bricks enameled the color of gold. At this distance, she was smaller than a grain of sand, and he saw her perfectly. Her hair was loose, her robe ripped at the sleeve. The andat was on her hip, its black, hungry eyes on his own. Vanjit nodded and put the andat down. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, she took a pose of greeting. Maati returned it.
    ‘Where? Where is she?’ Danat asked. Maati ignored him.
    Vanjit shifted her hands and her body into a pose that was both a rebuke and an accusation. Maati hesitated. He had imagined a thousand scenarios for this meeting, but they had all involved the words he would speak, and what she would say in return. His first impulse now was toward apology, but something in the back of his mind resisted. Her face was a