Seasons of War

put him in his place. It keeps not happening, and they’re wondering why. Wondering how you can stand the idea of a life licking that little prick’s boot. Time will come they’ll understand you aren’t thinking of him in the long term.’
    Balasar needed a moment to think that through. He bit the apple; it was tart and chalky and squeaked against his teeth. He tossed the rest of it out into the street where the rain took it rolling downhill, white flesh and green skin in the dark water.
    ‘Do you think Riaan suspects?’ Balasar asked at length.
    Eustin snorted. ‘He can’t believe the tide would go out so long as he was on the beach. The waves all love him too much to leave. But the men, sir. They’ll figure you’re planning to kill him. And if they do, they may slip.’
    Balasar nodded. Eustin was right. He was acting differently than he would have had Riaan been a problem with a future. It hadn’t been difficult to let the Councilmen in Acton blind themselves to the poet’s character. Visions of godlike power, of magic bent to the High Council’s will, were enough to let them overlook the dangers. The captains, the men who spoke with Riaan, would be more likely to understand why he wasn’t to be trusted. They might well see what Balasar had seen from the beginning, even before he had made the doomed journey into the desert: that the andat were a dangerous tool, best discarded the moment the need had passed.
    But, and here was the trouble, not a moment before that. If the poet failed him, everything was lost. He weighed the risks for a long moment before Eustin spoke again.
    ‘Let me send the girl away, sir. I’ll give her enough silver to take herself out into the farmland for half a year, and tell her that if we see her in the city, I’ll have her head on a pike for true. I’ll send the poet a pig heart, say we cut it out of her. The man that runs the comfort house’ll know. I’ll tell the men it was your idea.’
    ‘It’s a gamble,’ Balasar said.
    ‘It’s all a gamble, sir,’ Eustin said, and then, ‘Besides. He really did earn it.’
    To the east, lightning flashed, and before the thunder reached them, Balasar nodded his assent. Eustin took his leave, stalking out into the downpour to make this one more tiny adjustment to the monumental plan Balasar had devised and directed. At the end of the pathway, the apple-selling girl sensed some slackening, pulled a hood up over her fair hair, and darted out into the city. For a time, Balasar sat quietly, feeling the weariness in his flesh that came from tension without release. He let his gaze soften, the white walls of the city fading, losing their separate natures, becoming different shades of nothing, like the shadows of hills covered by snow.
    He wondered what Little Ott would have made of all this: the campaign, the poet, the wheels within wheels that he’d put in motion. If it came together as he planned, Balasar would save the world from another war like the one that had toppled the Old Empire. If it failed, he might start one. And whatever happened, he had sacrificed Bes, Laran, Kellem, Little Ott. Men who had loved him were dead and would never return. Men alive now who trusted him might well die. His nation, everyone he’d known or cared for - his father growing bent with age, the girl he’d lost his heart to when he was a boy shaking the petals off spring cherry trees, Eustin, Coal - they might all be slaughtered if he once judged poorly. It was something he tried not to consider, afraid the weight of it might crush him. And yet in these still moments, it found him. The dread and the awe at what he had begun. And with it the certainty that he was right.
    He imagined Bes standing in the street before him, wide face split in the knowing grin that he would never see again outside memory. Balasar lifted a hand in greeting, and the image bowed to him and faded. They would have understood. All the men whose blood he’d spilled for this would have understood. Or if they didn’t, they’d have done it all the same. It was what they meant by faith.
    When at last he returned to the library, one of his other captains - a lanky man named Orem Cot - was pacing the length of the room, literally wringing his hands in agitation or excitement. Balasar closed the door behind him with a thump as the captain bowed.
    ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘There’s a man come wanting to speak with you. I thought I’d best bring him to you myself.’
    ‘What’s