Daniel Abraham - An Autumn War

she smiled.

"I heard the Khai Cetani speaking today," she said.

"Really?"

"l le was in one of the teahouses. And, honestly, not one of the best ones.

"I won't ask what you were doing in a third-rate tea house," Otah said,

and Kiyan chuckled.

"Nothing more scandalous than listening to the Khai," she said. "But

that might be enough. Ile thinks quite highly of you."

"Oh gods," Otah said. "Did the term come up again?"

"Yes, the word emperor figured highly in the conversation. He seems to

think the sun shines brighter when you tell it to."

"Ile seems to forget that first battle where I got everyone killed. And

that I didn't manage to keep the [)ai-kvo from being slaughtered."

"Ile doesn't forget. But lie does say you were the only man who tried to

stop the Galts, who banded cities together instead of letting them fall

one at a time, and in the end the only man who put them to flight."

"He should stop that," Utah said, and sighed. "Ile seemed so reasonable

when I first met him. Who'd have guessed he was so easily wooed."

"He may not he wrong, you know. We'll need to do something when this is

over. An emperor or a way to choose new families to act as Khaiem. A

I)ai-kvo. That would have to be ylaati or Cehmai, wouldn't it:'

It was how all the conversations went now-how to rebuild, how to remake.

The polite fiction that the poets were sure to succeed was the tissue

that seemed to hold people together, and Utah couldn't bring himself to

break it now.

"I suppose so," Utah said. "It'll be a life's work, though. Perhaps

more. It was getting hard enough finding andat that could still be hound

before this. We've lost so much now, going hack will be harder than it

was at the first. If we have a new I)ai-kvo, he won't have time for

am-thing more than that."

"An emperor, then. One man protecting all the cities. With the poets

answering to him. liven just one poet with one andat would he enough. It

would protect us."

"I recommend someone else do it. I've decided on a beach hut on Bakta,"

Utah said, trying to make it a joke. I Ic saw Kivan's expression. "It's

too far ahead to think about now, love. Let it pass, and we'll solve it

later if it still needs solving."

Kiyan turned and took his hand. The days since he'd come home hadn't

allowed them time together, not as they had had before the war. First,

when he and his men had marched across the bridge to trumpets and drums

and dancing, it had been a mad festival. 't'hey had cone out to meet

him. I Ic had embraced her, and Eiah, and little [)gnat whom he had

danced around until they were both dizzy. Otah had found himself whirled

from one pavilion to the next, balancing the giddy joy of survival with

the surprisingly complex work of taking an army-even one as improvised

and unformed as his own-apart. And afterward, he'd discovered that Kiyan

was still as much in demand now tending the things she'd set in motion

as when he had been gone.

Men and women of all classes seemed to have need of her time and

attention, coordinating the stores of food and the arrangements of the

refugees and the movements of goods and trade that had once been the

business of the merchant houses, and had become the work of a few

coordinating minds. Kiyan had become the hand that moved Machi, that

pushed it into line, that tucked its children into warm beds and kept it

from eating all the best food and leaving nothing for tomorrow. It

consumed her days.

And the utkhaicm and the high trading families had all wanted a moment

of his day, to congratulate or express thanks or wheedle some favor in

light of the changed circumstances of the world. To be here, in the warm

light of candles, Kiyan's hand in his, her gaze on him, seemed like a

dream badly wished for. And yet, now that he had it, he found himself

troubled and unable to relax. She squeezed his hand.

"How bad was it?" she asked, and he knew what she meant. The battles.

The Dai-kvo. The war.

Otah began to say something witty, something glib. The words got lost on

the way to his lips. For long moment, silence was all he could manage.

"It was terrible," he said. "There were so many of them."

"The Galts?"

"'l'he dead. "Theirs. Ours. I've never seen anything like it, Kiyan-

kya. I've read the histories and I've heard the epics sung, and it's not

the same. They were young. And ... and they looked like they were

sleeping. I lowever badly they'd died, in the end, I kept thinking

they'd wake up and speak or call for help or scream. I think about all

the men I led out there. The ones who would have lived if we hadn't done

this."

"We didn't choose this, love. The Galts haven't given anyone much

choice. The men who went with you would have died out there in the

field, or here when the city fell. Would one have been better?"

"I suppose not. The other ways it could have gone might be just as had,

but the way it did happen, they died from following me. From doing what

I asked."

To his surprise, Kiyan chuckled low and mirthless.

"That's why he calls you Emperor, isn't it," Kiyan said, and Otah took a

pose of query. "The Khai Cetani. It's from gratitude. If you're the

leader of the age, then it stops being his burden. Everything you're

suffering, you've saved him."

Otah looked at his hands, rubbing his palms together with a long, dry

sound. His throat felt tight, and something deep in his chest ached with

the suspicion that she was right. When he had asked the man to abandon

his city and take the role of follower, he had also been asking for the

right to choose whatever happened after. And the responsibility for it.

For a moment, he was on the chill, gray field of the dead, and walking

the cold, lifeless ruin where poets had once conspired to hind thoughts

themselves. He remembered the Dal-kvo's dead eyes, looking at nothing.

The bodies, the Galts' and his own both, and the voices calling him Emperor.

"I'm sorry," Kiyan said, and he could tell from her voice that she knew

how inadequate the words were. He pulled his mind hack to his soft-lit

room, the scent of the candles, the touch of this long-beloved hand.

"They've lived with it," he said. "Galt and Eddensea and the Westlands.

It's always been like this for them. War and battle. We'll learn."

"I don't think I'm looking forward to that."

Otah raised her hand to his lips. Gently, she caressed his cheek. Ile

drew her close, folding his arms around her, feeling the warmth of her

body against him, smelling the familiar scent of her hair, and willing

the moment to not end. If only the future could never come.

Kiyan sensed it in the tension of his spine, the fierceness of his

embrace. Something. She did not speak, but only breathed, softening

against him with every exhalation, and in time he felt himself beginning

to relax with her. One of the lanterns, burning the last of its oil,

dimmed, spat, and went out. The smoke touched the air with a smell of

endings.

"I missed you," she said. "Every night, I went to bed thinking you might

not come hack. I kept telling the children over and over that things

would he fine, that you'd he home soon. And I was sick. I was sick with it."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't. Don't apologize. Don't be sorry. Just know it. Just know we

wanted you hack. Not the Khai and not the emperor. You. Remember that

you are a good man and I love you."

Ile raised her chin and kissed her, wondering how she knew so well the