Seasons of War

showing respect at the same time. Granted, Danat was reversed - wide jaw above gray temples - and it made the nuances of expression difficult to read. It was enough, though, for him to judge approximately how much trouble he was in.
    ‘I’ve spoken to the overseer of my father’s apartments. Do you know what he told me?’
    ‘That I’d been caught hiding in Grandfather’s private garden,’ Calin said.
    ‘Is that true?’
    ‘Yes, Father. I was hiding from Aniit and Gaber. It was a part of a game.’
    Danat sighed, and Calin risked looking up. When his father was deeply upset, his face turned red. He was still flesh-colored. Calin looked back down, relieved.
    ‘You know you’re forbidden from your grandfather’s apartments.’
    ‘Yes, but that was what made them a good place to hide.’
    ‘You’re sixteen summers old and you’re acting twelve of them. Aniit and Gaber look to you for how to behave. It’s your duty to set an example,’ Danat said, his voice stern. And then he added, ‘Don’t do it again.’
    Calin rose to his feet, trying to keep his rush of joy from being obvious. The great punishment had not fallen. He was not barred from the steam caravan’s arrival. Life was still worth living. Danat took a pose that excused his son and motioned to his Master of Tides. Before the woman could glide over and lead his father back into the constant business of negotiating with the High Council, Calin left the audience chamber, followed only by his father’s shouted admonition not to run. Aniit and Gaber were waiting outside, their eyes wide.
    ‘It’s all right,’ Calin said, as if his father’s lenience were somehow proof of his own cleverness. Aniit took an exaggerated pose of congratulations. Gaber clapped her hands. She was young, though. Only fourteen summers old and barely marriageable.
    ‘Come on, then,’ Calin said. ‘We can pick the best places for when the caravan comes.’
    The roadway had been five years in the building, a shallow canal of smooth worked iron that began at the seafront in Saraykeht and followed the river up to Utani. The caravan was the first of its kind, and the common wisdom in the streets and teahouses was evenly divided between those who thought it would arrive even earlier than expected and those who predicted they’d find splinters of blown boilers and nothing else.
    Calin dismissed the skeptics. After all, his grandmother was arriving from her plantations in Chaburi-Tan, and she would never put herself on the caravan if it was going to explode.
    The sweet days of early spring were short and cold. Frost still sent white fingers up the stones of the palaces in the morning and snow lingered in the deep shadows. A hundred times Calin and his friends had gone through the elaborate ritual of how they would greet the caravan, rehearsing it in their minds and conversations. The event, of course, was nothing like what they’d planned.
    When word came, Calin was with his tutor, an ancient man from Acton, working complex sums. They were seated in the sunlight of the spring garden. Almond blossoms turned the tree branches white even before the first leaves had ventured out. Calin frowned at the wax tablet on his knees, trying not to count on his fingers. Hesitating, he lifted his stylus and marked his answer. His tutor made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat and Gaber appeared at the end of the arcade, running full out.
    ‘It’s here!’ she screamed. ‘It’s here!’
    Before any adult could object, Calin joined her flight. Tablet, stylus, and sums were forgotten in an instant. They ran past the pavilions that marked palaces from merchants’ compounds, the squares and open markets that showed where the great compound gave way to the haunts of common labor. The streets were thick with humanity, and Calin threaded his way through the press of bodies aided by his youth, the quality of his robes, and the boyish instinct that saw all obstacles as ephemeral.
    He reached the Emperor’s platform just before the caravan arrived. Wide plumes of smoke and steam stained the southern sky, and the air smelled of coal. Danat and Ana were already there, seated in chairs of carved stone with silk cushions. Otah Machi - the Emperor himself - sat on a raised dais, his hands resting like fragile claws on the arms of a black lacquer chair. Calin’s grandfather looked over as he arrived and smiled. Danat’s expression was distracted in a way that reminded Calin of doing