Seasons of War

He’d fathered three children and raised two. He could no longer hold himself apart from the world. It was his to see that the city was a place that Danat and Eiah and children like them could live safe and cared for until they too grew old and uncertain.
    He looked at the swirl of red at the bottom of his bowl. Too much wine, and too much memory. It was making him maudlin. He stopped at his private chambers and allowed the servants to switch his robes to something less formal. Kiyan lay on a couch, her eyes closed, her breath deep and regular. Otah didn’t wake her, only slid one of the books from his bedside table into the sleeve of his robe and kissed her temple as he left.
    The physician’s assistant was seated outside Danat’s door. The man took a pose of greeting. Otah responded in kind and then nodded to the closed door.
    ‘Is he asleep?’ he whispered.
    ‘He’s been waiting for you.’
    Otah slipped into the room. Candles flickered above two great iron statues that flanked the bed - hunting cats with the wings of hawks. Soot darkened their wings from a day spent in the fire grates, and they radiated the warmth that kept the cool night breeze at bay. Danat sat up in his bed, pulling aside the netting.
    ‘Papa-kya!’ he said. He didn’t cough, didn’t sound frail. It was a good day, then. Otah felt a tightness he had not known he carried loosen its grip on his heart. He pulled his robes up around his knees and sat on his son’s bed. ‘Did you bring it?’ Danat asked.
    Otah drew the book from his sleeve, and the boy’s face lit so bright, he might have almost read by him.
    ‘Now, you lie back,’ Otah said. ‘I’ve come to help you sleep, not keep you up all night.’
    Danat plopped down onto his pillow, looking like the farthest thing from sleep. Otah opened the book, turning through the ancient pages until he found his place.
    ‘In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Beh, there came to court a boy whose blood was half Bakta, his skin the color of soot, and his mind as clever as any man who has ever lived . . .’
     
    ‘This is spring?’ Nayiit said as they walked. The wind had blown away even the constant scent of forge smoke, and brought in a mild chill. Mild, at least, to Maati. Nayiit wore woolen robes, thick enough that they had hardly rippled. Maati’s own were made for summer, and pressed against him, leaving, he was sure, no doubt as to the shape of his legs and belly. He wished he’d thought to wear something heavier too.
    ‘It’s always like this,’ Maati said. ‘There’s one last death throe, and then the heat will come on. Still nothing like the summer cities, even at its worst. I remember in Saraykeht, I had a trail of sweat down my back for weeks at a time.’
    ‘We call that pleasantly warm ,’ Nayiit said, and Maati chuckled.
    In truth, the chill, moonless night was hardly anything to him now. For over a decade, he’d lived through the bone-cracking cold of Machi winters. He’d seen snowdrifts so high that even the second-story doors couldn’t be opened. He’d been out on days so cold the men coated their faces with thick-rendered fat to keep their skin from freezing. There was no way to describe those brief, bitter days to someone who had never seen them. So instead, he told Nayiit of the life below ground, the tunnels of Machi, the bathhouses hidden deep below the surface, the streets and apartments and warehouses, the glitter of winter dew turning to frost on the stone of the higher passages. He spoke of the choirs who took the long, empty weeks to compose new songs and practice old ones - weeks spent in the flickering, buttery light of oil lamps surrounded by music.
    ‘I’m amazed people don’t stay down there,’ Nayiit said as they turned a corner and left the white and silver paths of the palaces behind for the black-cobbled streets of the city proper. ‘It sounds like one huge, warm bed.’
    ‘It has its pleasures,’ Maati agreed. ‘But people get thirsty for sunlight. As soon as they can stand it, people start making treks up to the streets. They’ll go up and lie naked on an ice sheet sometimes just to drink in a little more light. And the river freezes, so the children will go skating on it. There’s only about seven weeks when no one comes up. Here. This street. There’s a sweet wine they serve at this place that’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted.’
    It was less awkward than he’d expected, spending the evening with