Seasons of War

Men created it. Men with little gods in their sleeves. And men like that still live. The cities of the Khaiem each have one, and they look on them like plow horses. Tools to feed their power and their arrogance. If it suited them, they could turn their andat loose on us. Hold our crops in permanent winter or sink our lands into the sea or whatever else they could devise. They could turn the world itself against us the way you or I might hold a knife. And do you know why they haven’t?’
    Eustin blinked, unnerved, Balasar thought, by the anger in his voice.
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘Because they haven’t yet chosen to. That’s all. They might. Or they might turn against each other. They could make everything into wastelands just like those. Acton, Kirinton, Marsh. Every city, every town. It hasn’t happened yet because we’ve been lucky. But someday, one of them will grow ambitious or mad. And then all the rest of us are ants on a battlefield, trampled into the mud. That’s what I mean when I say this is needed. You and I are seeing that it never happens,’ he said, and his words made his own blood hot. He was no longer uncertain or touched by shame. Balasar grinned wide and wolfish. If it was pride, then let him be proud. No man could do what he intended without it. ‘When I’ve finished, the god-ghosts of the Khaiem will be a story women tell their babes to scare them at night, and nothing more than that. That’s what Little Ott died for. Not for money or conquest or glory.
    ‘I’m saving the world,’ Balasar said. ‘So, now. Say you’d rather drown than help me.’

1
    I t had rained for a week, the cold gray clouds seeming to drape themselves between the mountain ranges to the east and west of the city like a wet canopy. The mornings were foggy, the afternoons chill. With the snowdrifts of winter almost all melted, the land around Machi became a soupy mud whose only virtue was the spring crop of wheat and snow peas it would bring forth. Travel was harder now even than in the deadly cold of deep winter.
    And still, the travelers came.
    ‘With all respect, this exercise, as you call it, is ill-advised,’ the envoy said. His hands still held a pose of deference though the conversation had long since parted from civility. ‘I am sure your intentions are entirely honorable, however it is the place of the Dai-kvo—’
    ‘If the Dai-kvo wants to rule Machi, tell him to come north,’ the Khai Machi snapped. ‘He can pull my puppet strings from the next room. I’ll make a bed for him.’
    The envoy’s eyes went wide. He was a young man, and hadn’t mastered the art of keeping his mind from showing on his face. Otah, the Khai Machi, waved away his own words and sighed. He had gone too far, and he knew it. Another few steps and they’d be pointing at each other and yelling about which of them wanted to create the Third Empire. The truth was that he had ruled Machi these last fourteen years only by necessity. The prospect of uniting the cities of the Khaiem under his rule was about as enticing as scraping his skin off with a rock.
    The audience was a private one, in a small room lined with richly carved blackwood, lit by candles that smelled like rich earth and vanilla, and set well away from the corridors and open gardens where servants and members of the utkhaiem might unintentionally overhear them. This wasn’t business he cared to have shared over the dances and dinners of the court. Otah rose from his chair and walked to the window, forcing his temper back down. He opened the shutters, and the city stretched out before him, grand towers of stone stretching up toward the sky, and beyond them the wide plain to the south, green with the first crops of the spring. He pressed his frustration back into yoke.
    ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I know that the Dai-kvo doesn’t intend to dictate to me. Or any of the Khaiem. I appreciate your concern, but the creation of the guard isn’t a threat. It’s hardly an army, you know. A few hundred men trained up to maybe half the level of a Westlands garrison could hardly topple the world.’
    ‘We are concerned for the stability of all the cities,’ the envoy said. ‘When one of the Khaiem begins to study war, it puts all the others on edge.’
    ‘It’s hardly studying war to hand a few men knives and remind them which end’s the handle.’
    ‘It’s more than any of the Khaiem have done in the past hundred years. And you must see that you