Daniel Abraham - Price of Spring

"We can only show unity where it exists," Balasar said. His voice was low, and in the rising darkness it seemed to come from no direction at all. "After what happened yesterday, the fleet's as likely to turn on the city as the raiders."

"I don't have the ships and men to protect Chaburi-Tan," Otah said. "Not without you. The city will fall, and thousands will be killed. If the Galtic fleet came in, the pirates would turn back without so much as an arrow flown. And it would halfway unmake yesterday's mess."

"It can't happen," Balasar said.

"Then tell me what can," Otah said.

The general was silent. A moth took wing, fluttering between them like a clot of shadows and dust before it vanished.

"There is… something. It will make things here more difficult," Balasar said. "There are families who have committed to your scheme. That have already been brokering contracts and arranging alliances. I can gather them. It won't be anything like the full force of war, but if they sent their private ships and soldiers along with whatever you can muster up, it might serve."

"At the cost of sending away what allies I have," Otah said.

"That would be the price of it," Balasar said. "Send away your friends, and you're left eating with your enemies. It could poison the court against us."

Us. At least the man had said us.

"Get them," Otah said. "Get whoever you can quickly, and then send for me. I can't let another city die."

It only occurred to him as he stalked back through the wide stone halls and softly glowing lanterns of the first palace that he had been speaking to the man that had killed Udun and the village of the Daikvo, the man who had maimed Nantani and Yalakeht.

The meeting chamber was empty when he reached it; Danat and Issandra had gone. The cheese and apples and wine had been cleared away. The lanterns had blown out. Otah called for a servant to fetch him food and light. He sat, his annoyance and unease rising in his breast like the tide climbing a sea cliff.

Ana Dasin and her petulant, self-important father were well on their way to seeing both empires chewed away one bit at a time by pirates and foreign conspiracies. And failing crops. And time. Childless years growing one upon another like a winter with no promise of spring. There were so many things to fix, so uncountably many things that had gone wrong. He was the Emperor, the most powerful man in the cities of the Khaiem, and he was tired to his heart.

When the food arrived-pork in black sauce, spiced rice, sugared apple, wine and herbs-Otah was hardly hungry any longer. Moments after that, Sinja finally arrived.

"Where have you been?" Sinja demanded. "I've been wandering around the winter garden for half a hand looking for you."

"I should ask the same. I must have had half the servants in the palace looking for you."

"I know. Six of them found me. It got inconvenient telling them all I was busy. You need to come with me."

"You were busy?"

"Otah-cha, you need to come with me."

He breathed deeply and took a pose that commanded obedience. Sinja's eyebrows rose and he adopted an answering pose that held nuances of both query and affront.

"I have no intention of going anywhere until I have finished eating," Otah said. It embarrassed him to hear the peevishness in his voice, but not so much as to unsay it. Sinja tilted his head, stepped forward, and lifted one end of the table. The plates and bowl spun to the floor. One shattered. Otah was on his feet with no memory of standing. His face felt as warm as if he were looking into a fire. His ears filled with a buzzing of rage.

Sinja took a step back.

"I can have you killed," Otah said. "You know I can have you killed."

"You're right," Sinja said. "That passed the mark. I apologize, Most High. But you have to come with me. Now."

Servants came in, their eyes wide as little moons, their hands fluttering over the carnage of his dinner.

"What is it?" Otah said.

"Not here. Not where someone might hear us."

Sinja turned and walked from the room. Otah hesitated, mumbled an obscenity that made the servants turn their faces away, and followed. As his own anger faded, he saw the tension in Sinja's shoulders and through his neck. They were the sorts of signs he should have picked up on at once. He was tired. He was slipping.

Sinja was quartered in apartments of the third palace, where the Khai Saraykeht's second son would have lived, had there been a Khai Saraykeht or any sons. The walls were black marble polished until the darkness itself shone in the torchlight. Doors of worked silver still showed where gems had been wrenched from them by Galtic hands. They were beautiful all the same. Perhaps more beautiful than when they had been intact; scars created character.

Without speaking, Sinja went to each window in turn, poking his head out into the night, then closing outer shutters and inner. Otah stood, arms in his sleeves, unease growing in his heart.

"What is this?" Otah said, but the man only took a pose that asked patience and continued in his errand. At the last, he looked out into the corridor, sent the servant there away, then closed and bolted the main door.

"We have a problem, Otah-cha," Sinja said. He was breathing hard, like a man who'd run up stairs.

"We have a hundred of them," Otah said.

"The others may not matter," a woman's voice said from the shadows of the bedchamber. Otah turned.

Idaan was shorter than he remembered her, wider through the shoulders and the hips. Her hair was gray, her robe a cheaply dyed green and travel-stained. Otah took a step back without meaning to. His sister's appearance chilled his heart like an omen of death, but he wouldn't let it show.

"Why are you here?" he said.

His exiled sister pursed her lips and shrugged.

"Gratitude," she said. "You did away with my lover and his family. You took everything I had, including my true name, and sent me out into the world to survive as best I could."

"I'm not sorry," Otah said.

"And I am? It's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for me," Idaan said. "I mean that. And I'm here to repay the debt. You're in trouble, brother mine, and I'm the only one who can warn you. The andat are coming back to the world. And this time, the poets won't be answering to you."

Autumn came early on the high plains. Even though the leaves were as green, the grasses as thick, Maati felt the change. It wasn't a chill, but the presentiment of one: a sharpness to air that had been soft and torpid with summer heat. Another few weeks and the trees would turn to red and gold, the mornings would come late, the sunsets early. The endless change would change again. For the first time in years, Maati found himself pleased by the thought.

The days following his return had fallen into a rhythm. In the mornings, he and his students worked on the simple tasks of maintenance that the school demanded: mending the coops for the chickens they'd brought from Utani, weeding the paths, washing the webs and dust from the corners of the rooms. At midday, they stopped, made food, and rested in the shade of the gardens or on the long, sloping hills where he had taken lessons as a boy. Afterward, he would retire for the afternoon, preparing his lectures and writing in his book until his eyes ached and then taking a short nap to revive before the evening lecture. And always, whatever the day brought, the subject drew itself back to Vanjit and Clarity-ofSight.

"What about when you see things that aren't there?" Small Kae said.

"Dreams, you mean?" Eiah asked.

Maati leaned forward on the podium. The classroom was larger than they required, all six of his students sitting in the first row. The high, narrow windows that had never known glass let the evening breeze disturb their lanterns. He had ended his remarks early. He found there was less need to fill the time with his knowledge than there had once been. Now a few remarks and comments would spur conversation and analysis that often led far from where he had intended. But it was rarely unproductive and never dull.