Seasons of War

faces of the boys he’d led from Machi. He felt old. He rarely felt old, but now he did.
    ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said, and got down from the plank.
    The men raised a late and halfhearted cheer. Sinja waved it away and headed back to his tent. Overhead, the stars shone where the smoke didn’t obscure them. The cooks had made chicken and pepper rice. Stinging flies were out, and, to Sinja’s mild disgust, Nantani seemed to be a haven for grass ticks. He spent a quiet, reflective time plucking the insects out of his skin and cracking them with his thumbnails. It was near midnight when he heard the roaring crash, thunder rolling suddenly from the ruined city, and then silence. The dome had fallen, then.
    How many of his men would know what the sound had meant, he wondered. And how many would understand that he’d given them all the strategy for slowing the Galts, point by point by point. And how many would have snuck away to the North by morning, thinking they were being clever. But he could tell the general he’d done as he was told, and no man present would be able to say otherwise. So maybe he could lull the general back into trusting him for a while longer at least. And maybe Kiyan’s husband would find a good way to make use of the time Sinja won for him.
    ‘Ah, Kiyan-kya,’ he said to the night and the northern stars, ‘look what you’ve done. You’ve made me into a politician.’
     
    ‘Most High,’ Ashua Radaani said, taking a pose that was an apology and a refusal, ‘this is . . . this is folly. I understand that the poets are concerned, but you have to see that we have nothing that supports their suspicion. We’re in summer. It’s only a few weeks before we have to harvest the spring crops and plant for autumn. The men you’re asking for . . . we can’t just send away our laborers.’
    Otah frowned. It was not a response his father would have gotten. The other Khaiem would have raised a hand, made a speech, perhaps only shifted hands into a pose asking for the speaker to repeat himself. The men and horses and wagons of grain and cheese and salt-packed meats would simply have appeared. But not for Otah Machi, the upstart who had not won his chair, who had married a wayhouse keeper and produced only one son and that one sickly. He felt the urgency like a hand pressing at his back, but he forced himself to remain calm. He wouldn’t have what he wanted by blustering now. He smiled sweetly at the round, soft man with his glittering rings and calculating eyes.
    ‘Your huntsmen, then,’ Otah said. ‘Bring your huntsmen. And come yourself. Ride with me, Ashua-cha, and we’ll go see whether there’s any truth to this thing. If not, you can bear witness yourself, and reassure the court.’
    The young man’s lips twisted into a half-smile.
    ‘Your offer is kind, Most High,’ he said. ‘My huntsmen are yours. I will consult with my overseer. If my house can spare me, I would be honored to ride at your side.’
    ‘It would please me, Ashua-cha,’ Otah said. ‘I leave in two days, and I look forward to your company.’
    ‘I will do all I can.’
    They finished the audience with the common pleasantries, and a servant girl showed the man out. Otah called for a bowl of tea and used the time to consider where he stood. If Radaani sent him a dozen huntsmen, that took the total to almost three hundred men. House Siyanti had offered up its couriers to act as scouts. None of the families of the utkhaiem had refused him; Daikani and old Kamau had even given him what he asked. The others dragged their feet, begged his forgiveness, compromised. If Radaani had backed him, the others would have fallen in line.
    And if he had thought Radaani was likely to, he’d have met with him first instead of last.
    It was the price, he supposed, of having played the game so poorly up to now. Had he been the man they expected him to be all these years - had he embraced the role he’d accepted and fathered a dozen sons on as many wives and assured the ritual bloodbath that marked the change of generations - they would have been more responsive now. But his own actions had called the forms of court into question, and now that he needed the traditions, he half-regretted having spent years defying them.
    The tea came in a bowl of worked silver carried on a pillow. The servant, a man perhaps twenty years older than Otah himself with a long, well-kept beard and one clouded eye, presented it to him with a grace born of