Seasons of War

sums. His mother was craning her neck and trying not to seem that she was.
    It hardly mattered. The crowd that pressed and seethed around the yard at the caravan road’s end had eyes only for the great carts speeding toward them, faster than horses at full gallop. Calin sat at his mother’s feet, his intended perch nearest his friends forgotten. The first of the carts came near enough to make out the raised dais, twin of his grandfather’s, and the stiff-backed white-haired woman sitting atop it. Calin’s mother left all decorum, and stood, waving and calling to her mother.
    Calin felt his father’s hand on his shoulder and turned.
    ‘Watch this,’ Danat said. ‘Pay attention. That caravan reached us in half the time even a boat could have. What you’re seeing right now is going to change everything.’
    Calin nodded solemnly as if he understood.
     
    It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price.
     
    Cehmai Tyan sat across the meeting table from the High Council’s special envoy. The man was nondescript, his clothing of Galtic cut and unremarkable quality. Cehmai didn’t like the envoy, but he respected him. He’d known too many dangerous men in his life not to.
    The envoy read the letters - ciphered and sent between a fictional merchant in Obar State and Cehmai himself here in Utani. They outlined the latest advance in the poetmaster’s rebuilding of the lost libraries of Machi, which also had not happened. Cehmai sipped tea from an iron bowl and looked out the window. He couldn’t see the steam caravan from here, but he had a good view of the river. It was at the point he liked it most, the water freed by the thaw, the banks not yet overgrown by green. No matter how many years passed, he still felt a personal affinity with earth and stone.
    The envoy finished reading, his mouth in a smile that would have seemed pleasant and perhaps a bit simple on someone else.
    ‘Is any of this true?’ the envoy asked.
    ‘Danat-cha did send a dozen men into the foothills north of Machi,’ Cehmai said, ‘and Maati-kvo and I did spend a winter there. Past that, nothing. But it should keep Eddensea’s attention on sneaking through to search for it themselves. And we’re in the process of forging books that we can then “recover” in a year or so.’
    The envoy tucked the letters into a leather pouch at his belt. He didn’t look up as he spoke.
    ‘That brings a question,’ the man said. ‘I know we’ve talked about this before, but I’m not sure you’ve fully grasped the advantages that could come from leaning a little nearer the truth. Nothing that would be effective. We all understand that. But our enemies all have scholars working at these problems. If they were able to come close enough that the bindings cost them, if they paid the andat’s price—’
    Cehmai took a pose of query. ‘Wouldn’t that be doing your work for you?’ he asked.
    ‘My job is to see they don’t succeed,’ the envoy said. ‘A few mysterious, grotesque deaths would help me find the people involved.’
    ‘It would give away too much,’ Cehmai said. ‘Bringing them near enough to be hurt by the effort would also bring them near to succeeding.’
    The envoy looked at him silently. His placid eyes conveyed only a mild distrust.
    ‘If you have a threat to make, feel free,’ Cehmai said. ‘It won’t do you any good.’
    ‘Of course there’s no threat, Cehmai-cha,’ the envoy said. ‘We’re all on the same side here.’
    ‘Yes,’ the poetmaster said, rising from his chair with a pose that called the meeting to its close. ‘Try to keep it in mind.’
    His apartments were across the palaces. He made his way along the pathways of white and black sand, past the singing slaves and the fountain in the shape of the Galtic Tree that marked the wing devoted to the High Council. The men and women he passed nodded to him with deference, but few took any formal pose. A decade of joint rule had led to a thousand small changes in etiquette. Cehmai supposed it was small-minded of him to regret them.
    Idaan was sitting on the porch of their entranceway, tugging at a length of string while a gray tomcat worried the other end. He paused, watching her. Unlike her brother, she’d grown thicker with time, more solid, more real. He must have made some small sound, because she looked up and smiled at him.
    ‘How was the assassin’s conference?’ she asked.
    The tomcat forgot his string