Seasons of War

Nayiit. The first time the boy had come to the library alone - tentative and uncertain - Maati had been acutely aware of Liat’s absence. She had always been there, even in the ancient days before they had parted. Maati knew how to speak with Liat whether she was alone or with their son, and Maati had discovered quickly how much he’d relied upon her to mediate between him and the boy. The silences had been awkward, the conversations forced. Maati had said something of how pleased he was that Nayiit had come to Machi and felt in the end that he’d only managed to embarrass them both.
    It was going to the teahouses and bathhouses and epics that let them speak at last. Once there was a bit of shared experience, a toehold, Maati was able to make conversation, and Nayiit was an expert listener to stories. For several nights in a row, Maati found himself telling tales of the Dai-kvo and the school, the history of Machi and the perils he had faced years ago when he’d been sent to hunt Otah-kvo down. In the telling, he discovered that, to his profound surprise, his life had been interesting.
    The platform rested at the base of one of the lower towers, chains thick as a man’s arm clanking against it and against the stone as they rose up into the sky like smoke. Nayiit paused to stare up at it, and Maati followed his gaze. The looming, inhuman bulk of the tower, and beyond it the full moon hanging like a lantern of rice paper in the black sky.
    ‘Does anyone ever fall from up there?’ Nayiit asked.
    ‘Once every year or so,’ Maati said. ‘There’s winter storage up there, so there are laborers carrying things in the early spring and middle autumn. There are accidents. And the utkhaiem will hold dances at the tops of them sometimes. They say wine gets you drunk faster at the top, but I don’t know if that’s true. Then sometimes men kill themselves by stepping through the sky doors when the platform’s gone down. It would happen more if there were people up there more often. Otah-kvo has a plan for channeling the air from the forges up through the center of one so it would be warm enough to use in the winter, but we’ve never figured out how to make the change without bringing the whole thing down.’
    Nayiit shuddered, and Maati was willing to pretend it was the wind. He put his arm on the boy’s shoulder and steered him farther down the street to a squat stone building with a copper roof gone as green as trees with time. Inside, the air was warmed by braziers. Two old men were playing tin-and-silver flutes while a young woman kept time on a small drum and sang. Half a hundred bodies were seated at long wooden tables or on benches. The place was rich with the smell of roast lamb even though the windows were unshuttered; it was as if no one in Machi would miss the chance for fresh air. Maati sympathized.
    He and Nayiit took a bench in the back, away from singers and song. The serving boy was hardly as old as Eiah, but he knew his trade. It seemed fewer than a dozen heartbeats before he brought them bowls of sweet wine and a large worked-silver bowl filled with tender slivers of green: spring peas fresh from the vines. Maati, hands full, nodded his thanks.
    ‘And you’ve worked your whole life in House Kyaan, then?’ Maati asked. ‘What does Liat have you doing?’
    ‘Since we’ve been traveling, I haven’t been doing much at all. Before that, I had been working the needle trades,’ Nayiit said as he tucked one leg up under him. It made him sit taller. ‘The spinners, the dyers, the tailors, and the sailmakers and all like that. They aren’t as profitable as they were in the days before Seedless was lost, but they still make up a good deal of the business in Saraykeht.’
    ‘Habits,’ Maati said. ‘The cotton trade’s always been in Saraykeht. People don’t like change, so it doesn’t move away so quickly as it might. Another generation and it’ll all be scattered throughout the world.’
    ‘Not if I do my work,’ Nayiit said with a smile that showed he hadn’t taken offense.
    ‘Fair point,’ Maati said. ‘I only mean that’s what you have to work against. It would be easier if there was still an andat in the city that helped with the cotton trade the way Seedless did.’
    ‘You knew it, didn’t you? Seedless, I mean.’
    ‘I was supposed to take him over,’ Maati said. ‘The way Cehmai took Stone-Made-Soft from his master, I was to take Seedless from Heshai-kvo. In a way, I was