Seasons of War

wrapped it around herself. Her inner robes and her sandals she could reclaim tomorrow. Now she wanted her own bed, and pillows less thick with memories.
    She slipped out the door, pulling it closed behind her. So far North and without an ocean to hold the warmth of the day, Machi’s nights were cold, even now with spring at its height. Gooseflesh rose on her legs and arms, her belly and breasts, as she trotted along the wide, darkened paths to the apartments that Itani or Otah or the Khai Machi had given to her and her son.
    More than a week had passed since he had come to Maati’s apartments, gathering up a children’s book and a daughter halfway to womanhood and leaving behind a lasting unease. Liat had not spoken with him since, but the dread of the coming conversation weighed heavy. As Nayiit had grown, she’d seen nothing in him but himself. Even when people swore that the boy had her eyes, her mouth, her way of sighing, she’d never seen it. Perhaps when there was no space between a mother and her child, the sameness becomes invisible. Perhaps it merely seemed normal. She would have admitted that her son looked something like his father. It was only in seeing them together, seeing the simple, powerful knowing in Otah’s wife’s expression, that Liat understood the depth of her error in letting Nayiit come.
    And with that came her understanding of how it could not be undone. Her first impulse had been to send him away at once, to hide him again the way a child caught with a forbidden sweet might stuff it away into a sleeve as if unseen now might somehow mean never seen at all. Only the years of running her house had counseled her otherwise. The situation was what it was. Attempting any subterfuge would only make the Khai wary, and his unease might mean Nayiit’s death. As long as her son lived, he posed a threat to Danat, and she knew enough to understand that a babe held from its first breath meant something that a man full-grown never could. If Otah were forced to choose, Liat had no illusions what that choice would be.
    And so she prepared herself, prepared her arguments and her negotiating strategies, and told herself it would end well. They were all together, allies against the Galts. There would be no need. She told herself there would be no need.
    At her apartments, no candles were lit, but a fire burned in the grate: old pine, rich with sap that popped and hissed and filled the air with its scent. When she entered, her son looked up from the flames and took a pose of welcome, gesturing to a divan beside him. Liat hesitated, surprised by a sudden embarrassment, then gathered her sense of humor and sat beside him. He smelled of wine and smoke, and his robes hung as loose on him as her own did on her.
    ‘You’ve been to the teahouses,’ Liat said, trying to keep any note of disapproval from her voice.
    ‘You’ve been with my father,’ he replied.
    ‘I’ve been with Maati,’ Liat said as if it were an agreement and not a correction.
    Nayiit leaned forward and took up a length of iron, prodding the burning logs. Sparks rose and vanished like fireflies.
    ‘I haven’t been able to see him,’ Nayiit said. ‘We’ve been here weeks now, and he hasn’t come to speak with me. And every time I go to the library he’s gone or he’s with you. I think you’re trying to keep us from each other.’
    Liat raised her eyebrows and ran her tongue across the inside of her teeth, weighing the coppery taste that sprang to her mouth, thinking what it meant. She coughed.
    ‘You aren’t wrong,’ she said at last. ‘I’m not ready for it. Maati’s not who he was back then.’
    ‘So instead of letting us face each other and see what it is we see, you’ve decided to start up an affair with him and take all his time and attention?’ There was no rancor in his voice, only sadness and amusement. ‘It doesn’t seem the path of wisdom, Mother.’
    ‘Well, not when you say it that way,’ Liat said. ‘I was thinking of it as coming to know him again before the conflict began. I did love him, you know.’
    ‘And now?’
    ‘And still. I still love him, in my fashion,’ Liat said, her voice rueful. ‘I know I’m not what he wants. I’m not the person he wants me to be, and I doubt I ever have been, truly. But we enjoy each other. There are things we can say to each other that no one else would understand. They weren’t there, and we were. And he’s such a little boy. He’s carried so much and