Daniel Abraham - Autumn War

The air was noticeably warmer here than in the library-in part from the heat of ten thousand people in the earth below him rising up, and in part from its stillness. Servants had prepared his bed with blankets and furs. A light meal of rice and spiced pork in one of the bowls of handthick iron that could hold the heat for the better part of a day waited on his writing table. Maati sat, ate slowly, not tasting the food, drinking rice wine as if it were water. Even as he sucked the pepper sauce off the last bit of pork, his feet and fingers were still cold. Removing-the-ChillFrom-the-Old-Man's-Flesh. There was an andat.

Nlaati closed the lid of the great iron bowl, slipped out of his robes, hefted himself into his bed, and willed himself to sleep. For a time, he lay watching the candle burn, smelling the wax as it melted and dripped, and could not get comfortable. IIe couldn't get the cold out of his toes and knuckles, couldn't make his mind stop moving. He couldn't avoid the growing fear that when he closed his eyes, the nightmares that had begun plaguing him would return.

The images his mind held when his eyes were closed had become more violent, more anxious. Fathers weeping for sons who were also sacks of bloodied grain and dead mice; long, sleeping hours spent searching through bodies in a charnel house hoping to find his child still living and only finding Otah's children again and again and again; the recurring dream of a tunnel that led down past the city, deeper than the mines, and into the earth until the stone itself grew fleshy and angry and bled. And the cry that woke him-a man's voice shouting from a great distance that demanded to know whose child this was. Whose (hil‹1.?

With this mind, Maati thought as he watched the single flame of the night candle, I'm intended to hind an andat. It's like driving nails with rotten meat.

The night candle had burned through three of its smallest marks when he abandoned his bed, pulled on his robes, and left his private chambers for the wide, arched galleries of the tunnels below the palaces. The bathhouses were at least warm. If he wasn't to sleep, he could at least be miserable in comfort.

The public spaces were surprisingly full with men and women in the glorious robes of the utkhaiem. It made sense, he supposed. Cetani had not only brought its merchants and craftsmen. There would be two courts living tinder the palaces this winter. And so twice the social intrigue. Who precisely was sleeping with whom would he even more complex, and even the threat of their death at the hands of a Galtic army wouldn't stop the courtiers playing for rank.

As he passed, the utkhaiem took poses of respect and welcome, the servants and slaves ones of abasement. hlaati repressed a swelling hatred of all of them. It wasn't their fault, after all, that he had to save them. And himself. And Liat and Nayiit and Otah and all the people he had ever known, all the cities he had ever seen. His world, and everything in it.

It was the Galts who deserved his anger. And they would feel it, by Al the gods. Failed crops, gelded men, and barren women until they rebuilt everything they'd broken and given back everything they took. If he could only think of a better way to say removing.

I Ic brooded his way along the dim galleries and through the great chambers until the air began to thicken with the first presentiment of steam, and the prospect of hot water, and of finally warming his chilled feet, intruded on him.

Ic found his way into the men's changing rooms, where he shrugged off his robes and hoots and let the servant offer him a howl of clear, cold water to drink before he went into the public baths and sweated it all out again. When he passed through the inner door, Maati shivered at the warmth. Voiccs filled the dim, gray space-conversations between people made invisible by the steam rising from the water. "There had been a time, Maati considered as he stepped gingerly down the submerged stairs and waded toward a low bench, when the idea of strangers wandering naked in the baths-men and women together-had held some erotic frisson. "Truth often disappoints.

He lowered himself to the thick, water-logged wood of the bench, the hot water rising past his belly, past his chest, until the small warm waves danced against the hollow of his throat. At last, his feet felt warm, and he leaned back against the warm stone, sighing with a purely physical contentment. He resolved to move down toward the warmer end before he went back to his rooms. If he boiled himself thoroughly enough, he might even carry the heat back to his bed.

Across the bath, hidden in the mist, two men talked of grain supplies and how best to address the problem of rats. Far away toward the hotter end of the bath, someone shouted, and there was a sound of splashing. Children, Nlaati supposed, and then fell into a long, gnawing plan for how best to move the volumes in the library. His concentration was so profound he didn't notice v%-hen the children approached.

"t'nclc Nlaati?"

F, iah was practically at his side, crouched low in the water to preserve her modesty. A gaggle of children of the utkhaiem behind her at what Maati supposed must be a respectful distance. He raised hands from the water and took a pose of greeting, somewhat cramped by being held high enough to be seen.

"I haven't seen you in ages, I? iah-kya," he said. "What's been keeping you?"

The girl shrugged, sending ripples.

"'T'here are a lot of new people from Cetani," she said. "There's a whole other Radaani family here now. And I've been studying with Loya-cha about how to fix broken bones. And… and 'Mama-kva said you were htisy and that I shouldn't bother you." "You should always bother me," \laati said with a grin. "Is it going well%"

"It's a complicated thing," \laati said. "But it's a long wait until spring. We'll have time."

"Complicated's hard," Eiah said. "Loya-cha says it's always easy to fix things when there's only one thing wrong. It's when there's two or three things at once that it's hardest."

"Smart man, Lova-cha," Nlaati said.

Flah shrugged again.

"I Ie's a servant," she said. "If you can't recapture Seedless, we can't heat the Galts can we?"

"Your father did once," Nlaati said. "He's a very clever man."

"But we might not."

" We might not," Nlaati allowed.

Flah nodded to herself, her forehead crinkling as she came to some decision. When she spoke, her voice had a seriousness that seemed out of place from a girl still so young, hardly half-grown.

"If we're all going to die, I wanted you to know that I think you were a very good father to Nayiit-cha."

Nlaati almost coughed from surprise, and then he understood. She knew. A warm sorrow filled him. She knew that Nayiit was Utah's son. That Nlaati loved the boy. That it mattered to him deeply that Nayiit love him hack. And the worst of it, she knew that he hadn't been a very good father.

"You're kind, love," he said, his voice thick.

She nodded sharply, embarrassed, perhaps, to have completed her task. One of her companions yelped and dropped under the water only to come back up spitting and shaking his head. Eiah turned toward them.

"heave him he!" Eiah shouted, then turned to Nlaati with an apologetic pose. lie smiled and waved her away. She went back to her group with the squared shoulders of an overseer facing a recalcitrant hand of laborers. Nlaati let his smile fade.

A good father to Nayiit. And to he told so by Otah's daughter. Perhaps binding the andat wasn't so complex after all. Not when compared with other things. Fathers and sons, lovers and mother and daughters. And the war. Saraykcht and Seedless. All of it touched one edge against another, like tilework. None of it existed alone. And how could anyone expect him to solve the thing when half of everything seemed to he broken, and half of what was broken was still beautiful.