Seasons of War

he’s bent on war, you’re a bit squeamish about violence.’
    Otah chuckled.
    ‘I think sending the Dai-kvo his messenger’s head might not be the most convincing argument for my commitment to peace,’ he said.
    ‘Excellent point,’ Sinja agreed as he poured himself a bowl of wine. ‘But then you are training men to fight. It’s a hard thing to preach peace and stability and also pay men to think what’s the best way to disembowel someone with a spear.’
    ‘I know it,’ Otah said, his voice dark as wet slate. ‘Gods. You’d think having total power over a city would give you more options, wouldn’t you?’
    Otah sipped the wine. It was rich and astringent and fragrant of late summer, and it swirled in the bowl like a dark river. He felt old. Fourteen years he’d spent trying to be what Machi needed him to be - steward, manager, ruler, half-god, fuel for the gossip and backbiting of the court. Most of the time, he did well enough, but then something like this would happen, and he would be sure again that the work was beyond him.
    ‘You could disband it,’ Sinja said. ‘It’s not as though you need the extra trade.’
    ‘It’s not about getting more silver,’ Otah said.
    ‘Then what’s it about? You aren’t actually planning to invade Cetani, are you? Because I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
    Otah coughed out a laugh.
    ‘It’s about being ready,’ he said.
    ‘Ready?’
    ‘Every generation finds it harder to bind fresh andat. Every one that slips away becomes more difficult to capture. It can’t go on forever. There will come a time that the poets fail, and we have to rely on something else.’
    ‘So,’ Sinja said. ‘You’re starting a militia so that someday, generations from now, when some Dai-kvo that hasn’t been born yet doesn’t manage to keep up to the standards of his forebears—’
    ‘There will also be generations of soldiers ready to keep the cities safe.’
    Sinja scratched his belly and nodded.
    ‘You think I’m wrong?’
    ‘Yes. I think you’re wrong,’ Sinja said. ‘I think you saw Seedless escape. I think you saw Saraykeht suffer the loss. You know that the Galts have ambitions, and that they’ve put their hands into the affairs of the Khaiem more than once.’
    ‘That doesn’t make me wrong,’ Otah said, unable to keep the sudden anger from his voice. So many years had passed, and the memory of Saraykeht had not dimmed. ‘You weren’t there, Sinja-cha. You don’t know how bad it was. That’s mine. And if it lets me see farther than the Dai-kvo or the Khaiem—’
    ‘It’s possible to look at the horizon so hard you trip over your feet,’ Sinja said, unfazed by Otah’s heat. ‘You aren’t responsible for everything under the sky.’
    But I am responsible for that, Otah thought. He had never confessed his role in the fall of Saraykeht to Sinja, never told the story of the time he had killed a helpless man, of sparing an enemy and saving a friend. The danger and complexity and sorrow of that time had never entirely left him, but he could not call it regret.
    ‘You want to keep the future safe,’ Sinja said, breaking the silence, ‘and I respect that. But you can’t do it by shitting on the table right now. Alienating the Dai-kvo gains you nothing.’
    ‘What would you do, Sinja? If you were in my place, what would you do?’
    ‘Take as much gold as I could put on a fast cart, and live out my life in a beach hut on Bakta. But then I’m not particularly reliable.’ He drained his bowl and put it down on the table, porcelain clicking softly on lacquered wood. ‘What you should do is send us west.’
    ‘But the men aren’t ready—’
    ‘They’re near enough. Without real experience, these poor bastards would protect you from a real army about as well as sending out all the dancing girls you could find. And now that I’ve said it, girls might even slow them down longer.’
    Otah coughed a mirthless laugh. Sinja leaned forward, his eyes calm and steady.
    ‘Put us in the Westlands as a mercenary company,’ he said. ‘It gives real weight to it when you tell the Dai-kvo that you’re just looking for another way to make money if we’re already walking away from our neighboring cities. The men will get experience; I’ll be able to make contacts with other mercenaries, maybe even strike up alliances with some of the Wardens. You can even found your military tradition. But besides that, there are certain problems with training