Seasons of War

andat lifted a thick-fingered hand, gently touched a white stone, and slid it forward with a hiss. Cehmai glanced over, considered, and pushed the black stone he’d moved before back into the space it had come from. The andat coughed in frustration and set its head on balled fists, staring at the board.
    ‘It’s odd,’ Cehmai said. ‘There was a time when I was at the school - before I’d even taken the black robes, so early on. There was a pigeon that had taken up residence in my cohort’s rooms. Nasty thing. It would flap around through the air and drop feathers and shit on us all, and every time we waved it outside, it would come back. Then one day, one of the boys got lucky. He threw a boot at the poor thing and broke its wing. Well, we knew we were going to have to kill it. Even though it had been nothing but annoyance and filth, it was hard to break its neck.’ ‘Were you the one that did it?’ Maati asked.
    Cehmai took a pose of acknowledgment.
    ‘It felt like this,’ the younger poet said. ‘I won’t enjoy this, if it’s what we do.’
    The andat looked up from the board.
    ‘Has it ever struck you people how arrogant you are?’ it asked, huge hands taking an attitude of query that bordered on accusation. ‘You’re talking of slaughtering a nation. Thousands of innocent people destroyed, lands made barren, mountains leveled and the sea pulled up over them like a blanket. And you’re feeling sorry for yourself that you had to wring a bird’s neck as a boy? How can anyone have feelings that delicate and that numbed both at the same time?’
    ‘It’s your move,’ Cehmai said.
    Stone-Made-Soft sighed theatrically - it had no need for breath, so every sigh it made was a comment - and turned back toward the game. It was essentially over. The andat had lost again as it always did, but they played to the last move, finishing the ritual humiliation once again.
    ‘We’re off to the North,’ Cehmai said as he put the stones back into their trays. ‘There’s a new vein the Radaani want to explore, but I’m not convinced it’s possible. Their engineers are swearing that the structure won’t collapse, but those mountains are getting near lacework. ’
    ‘Eight generations is a long time,’ Maati agreed. ‘Even without help, the mines would have become a maze by now.’
    ‘I fear the day an earthquake comes,’ Cehmai said as he stood and stretched. ‘One shake, and half these mountains will fold up flat, I’d swear it.’
    ‘Then I suppose we’d have to spend months digging up the bodies,’ Maati said.
    ‘Not really,’ the andat said. Its voice was placid again, now that the game was ended. ‘If we make it soft enough, the bodies will float up through it. If stone is water, almost anything floats. We could have a whole field of stone flat as a lake, with mine dogs and men popping up out of it like bubbles.’
    ‘What a pleasant thought,’ Cehmai said, gently sarcastic. ‘And here I was wondering why we weren’t invited to more dinners. And you, Maati-kvo? What’s your day?’
    ‘More work in the library,’ Maati said. ‘I want the place in order. If the Dai-kvo calls for me . . .’
    ‘He will,’ Cehmai said. ‘You can count on that.’
    ‘If he does, I want the place left in order. A sane order that someone else could make sense of. Baarath had the thing put together like a puzzle. Took me three years just to make sense of it, and even then some of it I just went through book by book and made my own classifications.’
    ‘Well, he had a different opinion than yours,’ Cehmai said. ‘He wanted the library to be a place to bury secrets, not display them. It was how he made himself feel as if he mattered. I don’t suppose I can blame him too much for that.’
    ‘I suppose not,’ Maati agreed.
    The three of them walked along the wooded path that led to the palaces of the Khai. The stone towers of Machi rose high above the city, bright with the light of morning, and the smoke of the forges plumed up from the metalworkers’ district in the south. Maati kept company with Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft as far as the compound of House Radaani, where a litter and donkeys were waiting. They took poses of farewell, even the andat, and Maati sat on the steps of the compound to watch them lumber away to the North.
    In the days since he, Otah, and Liat had broken the news to Cehmai, Maati had found himself less and less able to do his work. The familiar stacks and shelves and