Seasons of War

will have to kill Danat or Danat will have to kill him. And when that happens, the blood will be on your hands, because you could have prevented it and chose not to. Don’t speak. I’m not finished. If any of the houses of the utkhaiem thought Danat was not the one and only man who could take his father’s place, some of them would start thinking of killing him themselves in expectation of Nayiit-cha favoring them once he became Khai Machi. I can’t protect him from everyone in this city, any more than I can protect him from air or his own body. You have done a wrong thing, stealing. And if you truly mean to hold your brother’s life hostage to keep from being chastised for it, I would like to know that now.’
    Eiah wept silently, shocked by the cold fire in Kiyan’s voice. Otah felt as if he’d been slapped as well. As if he ought somehow to have known, all those years ago, in that distant city, that the consequences of taking to his lover’s bed would come back again to threaten everything he held dear. His daughter took a pose that begged her mother’s forgiveness.
    ‘I won’t, Mama-kya. I won’t say anything. Not ever.’
    ‘You’ll apologize to the man you stole from and you will go in the morning to the physicians’ house and do whatever they ask of you. I will decide what to do about Talit and Shoyen.’
    ‘Yes, Mama-kya.’
    ‘You can leave now,’ Kiyan said and looked away. Eiah rose, silent except for the rough breath of tears, and left the room. The door closed behind her.
    ‘I’m sorry—’
    ‘Don’t,’ Kiyan said. ‘Not now. I can’t . . . I don’t want to hear it just now.’
    Otah rose and walked to the window. The sun was high, but the towers cast shadows across the city all the same, like trees above children. Far to the west, clouds were gathering over the mountains, towering white thunderheads with bases dark as a bruise. There would be a storm later. It would come. One of the sparrows returned, considered Otah once with each eye, and then flew away again.
    ‘What would you ask me to do?’ Otah said. His voice was placid. No one would have known from the words how much pain lay behind them. No one except Kiyan. ‘I can’t unmake him. Should I have him killed?’
    ‘How did Eiah know?’ Kiyan asked.
    ‘She saw. Or she guessed. She knew the way that you did.’
    ‘No one told her? Maati or Liat or Nayiit. None of them told her?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You’re sure?’
    ‘I am.’
    ‘Because if they did, if they’re spreading it through the city that you have—’
    ‘They aren’t. I was there when she realized it. Only me. No one else.’
    Kiyan took a long, low, shuddering breath. If it had been otherwise - if someone had told Eiah as part of a plan to spread word of Nayiit’s parentage - Kiyan would have asked him to have the boy killed. He wondered what he would have done. He wondered how he would have refused her.
    ‘They’ll leave the city as soon as we have word from the Dai-kvo,’ Otah said. ‘Either they’ll go back to Saraykeht or they’ll go to the Dai-kvo’s village. Either way, they’ll be gone from here.’
    ‘And if they come back?’
    ‘They won’t. I’ll see to it. They won’t hurt Danat, love. He’s safe.’
    ‘He’s ill. He’s still coughing,’ Kiyan said. That was it too, of course. Seasons had come and gone, and Danat was still haunted by illness. It was natural for them - Kiyan and himself both - to bend themselves double to protect him from the dangers that they could, especially since there were so many so close over which they were powerless.
    It was part of why Otah had postponed for so long the conversation he was doomed to have with Liat Chokavi. But it was only part. Kiyan’s chair scraped against the floor as she rose. Otah put his hand out to her, and she took it, stepping in close to him, her arms around him. He kissed her temple.
    ‘Promise me this all ends well,’ she said. ‘Just tell me that.’
    ‘It will be fine,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s going to hurt our boy.’
    They stood silently for a time, looking at each other, and then out at the city. The plumes of smoke rising from the forges, the black-cobbled streets and gray slanted roofs. The sun slipped behind the clouds or else the clouds rose to block the light. The knock that interrupted them was sharp and urgent.
    ‘Most High?’ a man’s voice said. ‘Most High, forgive me, but the poets wish to speak with you. Maati-cha says the issue is