Seasons of War

brilliantly white.
    ‘Mother.’
    ‘Empress,’ Issandra Dasin said. Her voice was warm. ‘I’m afraid our timing left something to be desired.’
    ‘No,’ Ana said. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered. Tell Father that I appreciate the invitation, but I can’t leave my family here.’
    ‘He won’t hear it from me,’ Issandra said. ‘He’s a good man, but time hasn’t made him less stubborn. He wants his little girl back.’
    Ana sighed. Her mother nodded.
    ‘I know his little girl is gone,’ Issandra said. ‘I’ll try to make him understand that you’re happy here. It may come to his visiting you himself.’
    ‘How are things at home?’ Ana asked. She knew it was a telling question. She started to take a pose that unasked it but lost her way. It wasn’t part of their conversation anyway.
    ‘The word from Galt is good. The trade routes are busier than Farrer’s seafront can accommodate. He’s filling his coffers with silver and gems at a rate I’ve never seen,’ Issandra said. ‘It consoles him.’
    ‘I am happy here,’ Ana said.
    ‘I know you are, love,’ her mother said. ‘This is where your children live.’
    They talked about small things for another hour, and then Ana took her leave. There would be time enough later.
    The Emperor’s pyre was set to be lit in two days. Utani was wrapped in mourning cloth. The palaces were swaddled in rags, the trees hung heavy with gray and white cloth. Dry mourning drums filled the air where there had once been music. The music would come again. She knew that. This was only something that had to be endured.
    She found Danat in his father’s apartments, tears streaking his face. Around him were spread sheets of paper as untidy as a bird’s nest. All of them were written upon in Otah Machi’s hand. There had to be a thousand pages. Danat looked up at her. For the length of a heartbeat, she could see what her husband had looked like as a child.
    ‘What is it?’ Ana asked.
    ‘It was a crate,’ Danat said. ‘Father left orders that it be put on his pyre. They’re letters. All of them are to my mother.’
    ‘From when they were courting?’ Ana asked, sitting on the floor, her legs crossed.
    ‘After she died,’ Danat said. Ana plucked a page from the pile. The paper was brittle, the ink pale. Otah Machi’s words were perfectly legible.
Kiyan-kya—
You have been dead for a year tonight. I miss you. I want to have something more poetic to say, something that will do you some honor or change how it feels to be without you. Something. I had a thousand things I thought I would write, but those were when it was only me. Now, here, with you, all I can say is that I miss you.
The children are starting to come back from the loss. I don’t know if they ever will. I have no experience with this. I had no mother or father. As a child, I had no family. I don’t have any experience losing a family.
The closest thing I have to solace is knowing that, if I had gone first, you would have suffered all this darkness yourself. That I have to bear it is the price of sparing you. It doesn’t make the burden lighter, it doesn’t make the pain less, it doesn’t take away any of the longing I have to see you again or hear your voice. But it does give the pain meaning. I suppose that’s all I can ask: that the pain have meaning.
I love you. I miss you. I will write again soon.
    Ana folded the letter. Thousands of pages of letters to the Empress who had died. The last Empress before her.
    ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Danat said.
    ‘I love you. You know I love you more than anything except the children?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘If you burn these, I will leave you. Honestly, love. You’ve lost enough of him. You have to keep these.’
    Danat took a deep shuddering breath and closed his eyes. His hands pressed flat on his thighs. Another tear slipped down his cheek, and Ana leaned forward to smooth it away with her sleeve.
    ‘I want to,’ Danat said. ‘I want to keep them. I want to keep him . But it was what he asked.’
    ‘He’s dead, love,’ Ana said. ‘He’s dead and gone. Truly. He doesn’t care anymore.’
    When Danat had finished crying, his body heavy against her own, the sun had set. The apartments were a collection of shadows. Somewhere in the course of things, they had made their way to Otah Machi’s bed - a soft mattress that smelled of roses and had, so far as Ana could tell, never been slept in. She stroked Danat’s hair and listened to