Daniel Abraham - An Autumn War

knew the tunnels well enough to find a new hiding place where the

ventilation was good. They weren't in danger of the fire igniting the

mine air, as had sometimes happened. Or of the flames suffocating them.

The only thing they didn't have in quantity was water; that, they could

harvest. MMlaati or Cehmai could take one of the mine sleds out, fill it

with snow, and haul it down into the earth. A trip every day or two was

sufficient. They took turns sitting at the brazier, scooping handful

after handful of snow into the flat iron pans, watching the perfect

white collapse on itself and vanish into the black of the iron.

"We did what we could," Maati said. "It isn't as if we could have done

anything differently."

"I know," Cehmai said, settling deeper into his cloak.

The rough stone walls didn't make their voices echo so much as sound hollow.

"I couldn't just let the Galts roll through the city. I had to try,"

Maati said.

"We all agreed," Cehmai said. "It was a decision we all reached

together. It's not your fault. Let it go."

It was the conversation Maati always returned to in the handful of days

they'd spent in hiding. He couldn't help it. He could start with plans

for the spring-taking gold and gems from the bolt-hole and marching off

to Eddensea or the Westlands. He could start with speculations on what

was happening in Machi or reminiscences of his childhood, or what sort

of drum fit best with which type of court dance. He could begin

anywhere, and he found himself always coming hack to the same series of

justifications, and Cehmai agreeing by rote with each of them. The dark

season spread out before them-only one another for company and only one

conversation spoken over and over, its variations meaningless. Maati

took another handful of snow and dropped it into the iron melting pan.

"I've always wanted to go to Bakta," Cehmai said. "1 hear it's warm all

year."

"I've heard that too."

"Maybe next winter," Cehmai said.

"Maybe," Maati agreed. "I'he last icy island of snow melted and

vanished. Maati dropped another handful in.

"What part of the day is it, do you think?" Nlaati asked.

"After morning, I'd think. Maybe a hand or two either side of midday."

"You think so? I'd have thought later."

"Could be later," Cehmai said. "I lose track down here."

"I'm going to the bolt-hole again. Get more supplies."

They didn't need them, but Cehmai only raised his hands in a pose of

agreement, then curled into himself and shut his eyes. Maati pulled the

thick leather straps of the sled harness over his shoulders, lit a

lantern, and began the long walk through the starless dark. The wood and

metal flat-bottomed sled scraped and ground along the stone and dust of

the mine floor. It was light now. It would be heavier coming hack. But

at least \laati was alone for a time, and the effort of pulling kept his

mind clear.

An instrument of slaughter, made in fear. Sterile had called herself

that. Maati could still hear her voice, could still feel the bite of her

words. He had destroyed Galt, but he had destroyed his own people as

well. He'd failed, and every doubt he had ever had of his own ability,

or his worthiness to be among the poets, stood justified. He would he

the most hated man in generations. And he'd earned it. The sled dragging

behind him, the straps pulling hack at his shoulders-they were the

simplest burden he carried. They were nothing.

Cehmai had marked the turnings to take with piles of stone. Hunters

searching the mines would be unlikely to notice the marks, but they were

easy enough for Maati to follow. He turned left at a crossing, and then

bore right where the tunnel forked, one passage leading up into

darkness, the other down into air just as black.

The only comfort that the andat had offered-the only faint sliver of

grace-was that Maati was not wholly at fault. Otah-kvo bore some measure

of this guilt as well. fie was the one who had come to Ntaati, all those

years ago. He was the one who had hinted to Maati that the school to

which they had both been sent had a hidden structure. If he hadn't,

Maati might never have been a poet. Never have known Seedless or Heshai,

Liat or Cehmai. Nayiit might never have been born. Even if the Galts had

come, even if the world had fallen, it wouldn't have fallen on Maati's

shoulders. Cehmai was right; the binding of Sterile had been a decision

they had all made-Otah-kvo more than any of the rest. But it was Maati

who was cast out to live in the dark and the cold. The sense of betrayal

was as comforting as a candle in the darkness, and as he walked, Maati

found himself indulging it.

The fault wasn't his alone, and the punishment was. There was nothing

fair in that. Nothing right. The terrible thing that had happened seemed

nearly inevitable now that he looked back on it. He'd been given hardly

any hooks, not half the time he'd been promised, and the threat of death

at the end of a Galtic sword unless he succeeded. It would have been

astounding it he hadn't failed.

And for the price, that wasn't something he'd chosen. That had been

Sterile. Once the binding had failed, he'd had no control over it. He

would never have hurt Eiah if he'd had the choice. It had simply

happened. And still, he felt it in the hack of his mind-the shape of the

andat, the place in the realm of ideas that it had pressed down in him,

like the flattened grass where a hunting cat has slept. Sterile came

from him, was him, and even if she had only been brief, she had still

learned her voice from him and visited her price upon the world through

his mind and fears. The clever trick of pushing the price away from

himself and onto the world had been his. The way in which the world had

broken was his shadow-not him, not even truly shaped like him. But

connected.

The tunnel before him came to a sudden end, and Nlaati had to follow his

own track back to the turn he'd missed, angling up a steep slope and

into the first breath of fresh, cold air, the first glimmer of daylight.

Nlaati stood still a moment to catch his breath, then fastened all the

tics on his cloak, pulled the furred hood up over his head, and began

the long last climb.

The bolt-hole was perhaps half a hand's walk from the entrance to the

mines in which the poets hid. The snow was dry as sand, and the icy

breeze from the North would he enough to conceal what traces of his

footsteps the sled didn't smooth over. \Iaati trudged through the world

of snow and stone, his breath pluming out before him, his face stung and

numbed. It was a hellish. His feet first burned then went numb, and

frost began to form on the fur around his hood's mouth. AIaati dragged

himself and his sled. The numbness and the pain felt a hit like penance,

and he was so caught tip in them he nearly failed to notice the horse at

the mouth of the bolt-hole.

It was a small animal, fit with heavy blankets and riding tack. Nlaati

blinked at it, stunned by its presence, then scurried quickly behind a

boulder, his heart in his mouth. Someone had come looking for them.

Someone had found them. He turned to look back at the path he'd walked,

certain that the footsteps in the snow were visible as blood on a

wedding dress.

lie waited for what seemed half a day but couldn't have been more than

half a hand's width in the arc of the fast winter sun. A figure emerged