The Price of Spring

23

Otah rose in the mornings with stiff, aching joints and a pain in his side that would not fade. The steamcarts allowed each of them the chance to sleep for a hand or two in the late mornings or just after the midday meal. Without the rest, Otah knew he wouldn't have been able to keep pace with the others.

The courier found them on the road. His outer robe was the colors of House Siyanti and mud-spattered to the waist. His mount cantered alongside the carts now, cooling down from the morning's travel as its rider waited for replies. The man's satchel held a dozen letters at least, but only one had occasioned his speed. It was written on paper the color of cream, sewn with black thread, and the imprint in the wax belonged to Balasar Gice. Otah sat in his saddle, afraid to open it and afraid not to.

The thread ripped easily and the pages unfolded. Otah skimmed the letter from beginning to end, then began again, reading more slowly, letting the full import of the words wash over him. He folded the letter and slipped it into his sleeve, his heart heavy.

Danat drew closer, his hands in a pose that both called for inclusion and offered sympathy. The boy might not know what had happened, but he'd drawn the fact that it wasn't good.

"Chaburi-Tan," Otah said, beginning with the least of the day's losses. "It's gone. Sacked. Burned. We don't know whether the mercenaries turned sides or simply wouldn't protect it, but it comes to the same thing. The pirates attacked the city, took what they could, and set the rest alight."

"And the fleet?"

Otah looked at the roadside. Sun had melted the snow as far as its light could reach, but the shadows were still pale. Otah had known Sinja Ajutani for more years than not. The dry humor, the casual disrespect of all things pompous or self-certain, the knife-sharp and unsentimental analysis of any issue. When Kiyan died, they had been the only two men in the world who truly understood what had been lost.

Now, only Otah knew.

"What ships remain have been set to guard the seafront at Saraykeht," he said when he could speak again. "The thought is that winter will protect Yalakeht and Amnat-Tan. When the thaw comes in spring, we may have to revisit the plan."

"Are you all right, Papa-kya?"

"I'll be fine," Otah said, then he raised his hand and called the courier close. "Tell them I read it. Tell them I understood."

The courier made his obeisance, turned his mount, and rode away. Otah let himself sit with his grief. The other letters for him could wait. They had come from his Master of Tides, and from others he'd named to watch the Empire crumble in his absence. Two had been for Ana Dasin, and he assumed they were from her parents. The letters had made their way up from Saraykeht and then along the low roads, tracking Otah and his party for days. And each day had marked the ending of lives, in Galt especially, but everywhere.

He had known that Sinja might die. He'd sent the fleet out knowing it might happen, and Sinja had gone without any illusions of safety. If it hadn't been this and now, it would have been something else at some other time. Every man and woman died, in time.

And in truth, death wasn't the curse he'd set out to break. All his work and sacrifice had been only so that they could balance the constant withering of age with some measure of renewal. He thought of his own children: Eiah, Danat, and even long-dead Nayiit. They had each of them been wagers he'd placed against a cruel world. A child comes into the world, and its father holds it close and thinks, If all goes as it should, I will die first. This one, I can love and never mourn for. That was all he wanted to leave for Danat and Eiah. The chance of knowing a love that they would never be called to bury. It was the world as it was intended to be.

He didn't notice Idaan riding close to him until she spoke. Her voice was gruff, but he imagined he could hear some offer of comfort in it.

"It's past time to shift. Crawl up on that cart and rest awhile. You've been riding that thing for five hands together."

"Have I?" Otah said. "I didn't notice."

"I know. It's why I came," she said. After a moment's pause, she added, "Danat told us what happened."

Otah took a pose that acknowledged having heard her, but nothing more than that. There wasn't anything more that could be meaningfully said. Idaan respected it and let him turn his horse aside and shift to the steamcart where Ana Dasin and Ashti Beg sat, their sightless eyes fixed on nothing. Otah sat on the wide boards not far from them, but not so near that their conversation would include him. Ana laughed at something Ashti Beg had said. The older woman looked vaguely pleased. Otah lay back, his closed eyes flooded with the red of sun and blood. He willed himself to sleep, certain that it would elude him.

He woke when the cart jerked to a halt. He sat up, half-thoughts of snapped axles and broken wheels forming and falling apart like mist in a high wind. When he was awake enough to make sense of the world, he saw that the sun had sunk almost to the treetops, and the cart was sitting in the yard of a wayhouse. The memory of the morning's foul message flooded back into him, but not so deeply as before. It would rise and fall, he knew. He would be jarred by the loss of his friend again and again and again, but less and less and less. It said something he didn't want to know that mourning had become so familiar. He plucked his traveling robes into their proper drape and lowered himself to the ground.

The one thing he truly didn't regret about the journey was that his servants were all in Utani or Saraykeht. Walking into the low, warm main room of the wayhouse without being surrounded by men and women wanting to change his robes or powder his feet was a small pleasure. He tried to savor it.

"Half a day east of here," a young man in a leather apron was saying, but he was pointing north. "Must have been five or six days ago. Raised ten kinds of trouble, then left in the middle of the night. So far as I can see, no one's talked about anything else since."

"Did you see them?" Danat asked. His voice had an edge, but Otah couldn't see his face to know if it was excitement or anger.

"Not myself, no," the young man said. "But it's the ones you asked after. An old man with a physician, and nothing but women traveling with him. There was even some talk he was trying to start a comfort house or something of that kind, but that was before the baby."

"Baby?" The voice was Ana's.

"Yes. Little one, not more than eight months old from the size. So I'm told. I didn't see him either, but they all saw him over at Chayiit's place. Walked right out in the middle of the main room."

Otah slipped down at a bench by the fire grate. The fire was small but warm. He hadn't realized how cold he'd gotten.

"Those are the people," Danat said.

"Five, six days then," the young man said with a pleased nod. He glanced over at Otah, their eyes meeting briefly. The other man paled as Otah took a pose of casual greeting and then turned his attention back to the flames. The conversation behind him grew softer and ended. Danat came to sit at his side. Through the open door, the yard fell into evening as the armsmen finished unloading and leading away their horses.

"We've gotten closer," Danat said. "If they keep traveling as slowly as they have up to now, we'll overtake them well before Utani."

Otah grunted. There was a deep thump from overhead and voices lifted in annoyance. Danat's fingers laced his knee.

"I told Balasar that I would beg," Otah said. "I told him that I would bend myself before this new poet and beg if it meant restoring him and Galt."

"And now?"

"I don't believe I can. And more than that, having heard Ashti Beg talk about this Vanjit, it's hard work thinking it would help."

"Maati, perhaps. He holds some sway with her."

"But what can I say that would move him?" Otah asked, his voice thick. "We were friends once, and then enemies, and friends again, but I'm not sure we know each other now. The more I look at it, the more I'm tempted to set some sort of trap, capture the new poet, and give her over to blind torturers until she makes the world what it should be."

"And what about Eiah?" Danat asked. "If she manages her bind„ ing-

"What if she does?" Otah said. "She's been against me from the start. She's gone with Maati, and between them they've sunk the fleet, burned Chaburi-Tan, blinded Galt, and killed Sinja. What would you have me say to her?"

"You'll have to say something," Danat said, his voice harder than Otah had expected. "And we'll be upon them soon enough. It's a thing you should consider."

Otah looked over. Danat's head was bowed, his mouth tight.

"You'd like to suggest something?" Otah asked, his voice low and careful. The anger in his breast shifted like a dog in sleep. Danat either didn't hear the warning or chose to ignore it.

"We're trading revenge," Danat said. "The Galts came from anger at our arrogance and fear of the andat. Maati and Vanjit have struck back now for the deaths during their invasion. This can't go on."

"It isn't in my power to stop it," Otah said.

"It isn't in your power to stop them," Danat said, taking a pose of correction. "Only promise me this. If you have the chance, you'll forgive them."

"Forgive them?" Otah said, rising to his feet. "You want them forgiven for this? You think it can all be put aside? It can't. If you ask Anacha, I will wager anything you like that she can't look on the deaths in Galt with calm in her heart. Would you have me forgive them for what they've done to her as well? Gods, Danat. If what they've done isn't going too far, nothing is!"

"He isn't worried for them," Idaan said from the shadows. Otah turned. She was sitting alone at the back of the room, a lit pipe in her hand and pale smoke rising from her lips as she spoke. "He's saying there are crimes that can't be made right. Trying to make justice out of this will only make it last longer."

"So we should let it go?" Otah demanded. "We should meekly accept what they've done?"

"It was what you told Eiah to do," Danat said. "She wanted to find a way to heal the damage from Sterile; you told her to let it go and accept what had happened. Didn't you?"

Otah's clenched fists loosened. His mind clouded with rage and chagrin. Idaan's low chuckle filled the room like a growl.

"Which of us is innocent now, eh?" she said, waving her pipe. "It's easy to counsel forgiveness when you aren't the one swallowing poison. It's harder to forgive them for having won."

"What would you have me do, then?" Otah snapped.

"In your place, I'd kill them all before they could do more damage," Idaan said. "Maati, Vanjit, Eiah. All of them. Even Ashti Beg."

"That isn't an option," Otah said. "I won't kill Eiah."

"So you won't end them and you won't forgive them," Idaan said. "You want the world saved, but you don't know what that means any longer. There isn't much time to clear your mind, brother. And you can't put your thoughts in line when you're half-sunk in rage."

Danat took a pose of agreement.

"It's what I was trying to say," he said.

"Lift yourself above this," Idaan said. "See it as if you were someone else. Someone less hurt by it."

Otah lifted his hands, palms out, refusing it all. His jaw ached, but the heat in his chest and throat, the blood in his ears, washed him out of the room. He heard Danat cry out behind him, and Idaan's softer voice. He stalked out to the road. No one followed. His mind was a cacophony of voices, all of them his own.

Alone on the dimming road, he excoriated Maati and Eiah, Danat and Idaan, Balasar and Sinja and Issandra Dasin. He muttered all the venom that rose to his lips, and, in time, he sat at the base of an ancient tree, throwing stones at nothing. The rage faded and left him as empty as an old skin. The sun was gone and the sky darkening blue to indigo and indigo to starlit black.

Alone as he had not been in years, he wept. At first it was only the loss of Sinja, but then of the fleet and Chaburi-Tan. Eiah and his warring senses of guilt and betrayal. Galt, blind and dying. It ended where he had known it would. All rivers led to the sea, and all his sorrows to the death of Kiyan.

"Oh, love," he said to the empty air. "Oh, my love. Can this never go well?"

Nothing answered back.

The tears faded. The sorrow and rage, spent, left his heart and mind clearer. The tree at his back scratched, its bark as rough as broken stone. It offered no comfort, but he let himself rest against it. He noticed the scent of fresh earth for the first time, and the hushing of a breeze that stirred the treetops without descending to the path they covered. A falling star lit the sky and was gone.

He must, Otah thought, have looked like he was on the edge of murder the whole day for his son and his sister to face him down that way. He must have seemed like a man gone mad. It was near enough to the truth.

The night air was cold and his robes insufficient. He went back to the wayhouse more for warmth than the desire to continue any conversation. There was an odd silence in his mind now that felt fragile and comforting. He knew as he stepped into the yard that he wouldn't be able to maintain it.

Voices raised in anger filled the yard. Danat and the captain of the armsmen stood so close to each other their chests nearly touched, each of them shouting at the other. Idaan stood at Danat's right, her arms crossed, her expression deceptively calm. The captain had his armsmen arrayed behind him, lit torches in their hands. Otah made out words like protection and answerable from the captain and disrespect and mutiny from Danat. Otah rubbed his hands together to fight off the numbness and made his way toward the confrontation. The captain saw him first and stopped talking, his face flushed red by blood and torchlight. Danat took a moment longer, then glanced over his shoulder.

"I suppose this is to do with me," Otah said.

"We only wanted to see that you were safe, Most High," the captain said. The words were strangled. Otah hesitated, then took a pose of apology.

"I needed solitude," he said. "I should have told you before I left. But if I'd been clear-minded, I likely wouldn't have needed to leave. Please accept my apology."

There was little enough the man could do. Moments later, the armsmen were scattering back to the wayhouse or the stables. The smell of doused torches filled the air like a forest on fire. Danat and Idaan stood side by side.

"Should I apologize to you as well?" Otah asked with a half-smile.

"Isn't called for," Idaan said. "I was only keeping your boy near to hand in case you reconsidered my death order."

"Next time, maybe," Otah said, and Idaan grinned. "Is there anything warm to drink in this place?"

The young keeper brought them the best food the wayhouse had to offer-river fish baked with red pepper and lemon, sweet rice, almond milk with mint, hot plum wine, and cold water. They arrayed themselves through the main room, all other guests being turned away by the paired guards at every door. Ana and Ashti Beg were in a deep conversation about the strategies they'd developed in their new sightlessness. Danat sat nearer the fire, watching them with a naked longing in his expression that would have made Ana blush, Otah thought, had she been able to see it. Otah and Idaan sat together at a low table, passing the chipped lacquer bowls back and forth. The armsmen who weren't on duty had taken a back room, and their voices came in occasional outbursts of hilarity and song.

It could have been the image of peace, of something approaching a family passing a road-wearied night in warmth and companionship. And perhaps it was. But it was other things as well.

"You look better," Idaan said, freshening the wine in his bowl. Fragrant steam rose from it, astringent and rich with the scent of the fruit.

"I am for now," Otah said. "I'll be worse again later."

"Have you made up your mind, then?" she asked. He sighed. Ashti Beg illustrated some point with a wide, vague gesture. Danat placed a new length of pine on the fire.

"There isn't an answer," Otah said. "They have all the power. All I can do is ask them to reconsider. So I suppose I'll do that and see what happens next. I know that you think I should go in and kill them all-"

"I didn't say that," Idaan said. "I said it was what I would do. My judgment on those matters is… occasionally suspect."

Otah sipped his wine, then put the bowl down carefully.

"I think that's the nearest you've ever come to apologizing," he said.

"To you, perhaps," Idaan said. "I spent years talking to the dead about it. They didn't have much to say back."

"Do you miss them?"

"Yes," Idaan said without hesitation. "I do."

They lapsed into silence again. Danat and Ashti Beg were in the middle of a lively debate over the ethics of showfighting, Ana listening to them both with a frown. Her hand pressed her belly as if the fish was troubling her.

"If Maati were here tonight," Otah said, "and demanded that he be named emperor, I think I'd give it to him."

"He'd hand it back in a week," Idaan said with a smile.

"Who's to say I'd take it?"

They left in the morning, the horses rested or changed for fresh, the carts restocked with wood and coal and water. Ana looked worse, but kept a brave face. Idaan stayed with her like a personal guard, to Danat's visible annoyance. A cold wind haunted them, striking leaves from the trees.

News of the Emperor's party came close to overwhelming stories of the mysterious baby at the wayhouse. No couriers came to trouble Otah with word of fire or death. Twice, Otah dreamed that Sinja was riding at his side, robes soaked with seawater and black as a bat's wing, and he woke each time with an obscure feeling of peace. And with every stop, they found the poets had passed before them more and more recently.

Three days ago. Then two.

When they reached the river Qiit, tea-dark with newly fallen leaves, just the day before.