Seasons of War

missing poet. There’s nothing about Stone-Made-Soft, of course. The courier won’t be there with that sorry news for days yet. It’s only about me. It’s the thing I’d always hoped for. It’s my absolution, Liat-kya. I have been out of favor since before Nayiit was born. After I took Otah’s cause in the succession, they almost forbade me from wearing the robes, you know. The old Daikvo made it very clear he didn’t consider me a poet.’
    Liat leaned against the cool stone wall. Her pains were forgotten. She watched Maati raise his brows, shake his head. His lips shifted as if he were having some silent conversation to which she was only half welcome. A familiar heaviness touched her heart.
    ‘You must have hoped for this,’ she said.
    ‘Dreamed of it, when I dared to. I’m welcomed back with honor and dignity. I’m saved.’
    ‘That’s a bitter tone for a saved man,’ she said.
    ‘I’ve only just met you again. I’ve only just started to know Nayiit. And Otah-kvo’s in need. And the Galts are stirring trouble again. My shining hour has come to call me away from everyone who actually matters.’
    ‘You can’t refuse the Dai-kvo,’ Liat said softly. ‘You have to go.’
    ‘Do I?’
    The air between them grew still. Half a hundred other conversations echoed in their words. Liat closed her eyes, weariness dragging her like rain-heavy robes.
    ‘It’s all happening again, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘It’s all the things we’ve suffered before, coming back at once. The Galts. Stone-Made-Soft set free. Cehmai lost and mourning the way Heshai was that summer, after Seedless killed the baby. And then us. You and I.’
    ‘You and I, ending again,’ Maati said. ‘All of history pressed into one season. It doesn’t seem fair.’
    ‘How is Cehmai?’ she asked, turning the conversation to safer ground, if only for a moment. ‘Has he been eating?’
    ‘A little. Not enough.’
    ‘Does he know yet what happened? How Stone-Made-Soft slipped free?’
    ‘No, but . . . but he suspects. And I do, too.’
    Liat moved forward, sat beside Maati, took the bowl from his hands and drank the wine. Her throat and chest warmed and relaxed. Maati took a bottle from the floor.
    ‘Not every poet is made for slaughter,’ Maati said as he tipped rice wine clear as water into the bowl. ‘There was a part of him that rebelled at the prospect of turning the andat against the Galts. I know he struggled with it, and he and I both believed he’d made his peace with it.’
    ‘But now you think not?’
    ‘Now I think perhaps he wasn’t as certain as he told himself he was. He may not even have known what he meant to do. It would take so little, in a way. The decision of a moment, and then gone beyond retrieval. If he regretted it in the next breath, it would already be too late. But it can’t be a coincidence, the Galts and Stone-Made-Soft. ’
    Liat sipped now, just enough to maintain the warmth in her body but not so much as to make her drunk. Maati drank directly from the bottle, wiping it with his sleeve after.
    ‘There’s another explanation,’ she said. ‘The Galts could have done it.’
    ‘How? They can’t unmake a binding.’
    ‘They could have bought him.’
    Maati shook his head, frowning. ‘Not Cehmai. There’s not a man in the world less likely to turn against the Khaiem.’
    ‘You’re sure of that?’
    ‘Yes. I’m sure,’ Maati said. ‘He was happy. He had his life and his place in the world, and he was happy.’
    ‘So much the worse for him,’ Liat said. ‘At least we don’t have that to suffer, eh?’
    ‘And now who sounds bitter?’
    Liat chuckled and took a pose accepting the point that was made awkward by the bowl in one hand.
    ‘How are things with Otah-kvo?’ Maati asked.
    ‘He’s like the wind on legs,’ Liat said. ‘He wants to know everything at once, control all of it, and I think he’s driving the court half mad. And . . . don’t say I said it, but it’s almost as if he’s enjoying it. Everything’s falling apart except him. If simple force of will can hold a city together, I think Machi will be fine.’
    ‘It can’t, though.’
    ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It can’t.’
    The back of Maati’s hand brushed against her arm. It was a small, tentative gesture, familiar as breath. It was something he had always done when he was uncertain and in need of comfort. There had been times when she’d found it powerfully annoying and times when she’d found herself