Daniel Abraham - An Autumn War

way to fill him with joy without asking him to abandon his sorrow.

"It's Nlaati's now," Otah whispered. "If he can bind Seedless before the

spring thaw, this will all he over."

I Ic felt an odd relaxation in her body, as if by saying the thing, he'd

freed her from some secret effort she'd been making.

"And if he can't?" she asked. "If it's all going to fall apart anyway,

can we run? You and me and the children? If I take them and go, are you

going to come with us, or stay here and fight?"

Ile kissed her again. She rested her hands against his shoulders,

leaning into him. Otah didn't answer, and he knew from the sound of her

breath that she understood.

"11: WE TAKE 'I'I I I: NI'ANCE of MOVEMENT'-ANNAY IN NI 'RAT AND THE

SYMBOL set you worked up for the senses of continuance," Nlaati

said, "I think then we'll have something we can work with."

Cehmai's eves were bloodshot, his hair wild from another long evening of

combing frustrated fingers through it. Around them, the lamplight shone

on a bedlam of paper. The library would have seemed a rat's nest to any

but the two of them: books laid open; scrolls unfurled and weighted by

other scrolls which were themselves unfurled; loose pages of a dozen

codices stacked together. The mass of information and inference, grammar

and poetry and history would have been overwhelming, \laati thought, to

anyone who didn't know how profoundly little it was. Cchnlai ran his

fingertips down the notes \laati had made and shook his head.

"It's still the same," he said. "Nurat is modified by the fourth case of

a(/at, and then it's exactly the same logical structure as the one

Fleshai used."

"No, it isn't," \laati said, slapping the table with an open palm. "It's

differ r ut. "

Cchmai took a long, slow breath, raising his hands palms-out. It wasn't

a formal gesture, but \laati understood it all the same. They were both

worn raw. I Ic sat hack in his chair, feeling the knots in his back and

neck. The brazier in the corner made the wide room smell warm without

seeming to actually heat it.

"Look," \laati said. "Let's put it aside for the day. We need to move

the library underground soon anyway. It's going to he too cold tip here

to do more than watch our fingers turn blue."

Cehmai nodded, then looked around at the disarray. Nlaati could read the

despair in his face.

"I'll put it hack together," MIaati said. ""Then a dozen slaves with

strong hacks, and I'll put it all together in the winter quarters in two

days' time."

"I should move the poet's house down too," Cehmai said. "I feel like I

haven't been there in weeks."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. The place seems too big without Stone-Made-Soft anyway. "loo

quiet. It reminds me of ... well, of everything."

Nlaati rose, his knees aching. His feet tingled with the pins and

needles that long motionlessness brought him these days. lie clapped his

hand on Cehmai's Shoulder.

"Meet me in three days," he said. "I'll have the hooks in order. We'll

start again fresh."

Cehmai took a pose of agreement, but he looked exhausted. Worn thin. The

younger poet began snuffing the lanterns as %Iaati walked back toward

his apartments, placing his feet carefully until normal feeling returned

to them. Stepping the wrong way and breaking his ankle would he just the

thing to make the winter even more miserable than it already promised to he.

The rooms in which he spent his summers were already bare. The fire

grate was empty of everything but old soot. The tapestries were gone,

the couches, the tables, the cabinets. Everything had been moved to the

lower city. Winter are the middle of things in the North. The snows

would come soon, blocking the doors and windows. The second-story snow

doors would open out for anyone who needed to travel into the world.

Below, in the warmth of the ground, all the citizens of Machi, and now

of Cetani too, would huddle and talk and fight and sing and play at

tiles and stones until winter lost its grip and the snows turned to

meltwater and washed the black-cobbled streets. Only the metalworkers

remained at the ground level, the green copper roofs of the forges free

of snow and ice, the plumes of coal smoke rising almost as high as the

towers all through the winter.

At least all through this winter. This one last winter before the Galts

came and butchered them all.

If only there was some other way to phrase the idea of removing.

Seedless's true name would have been better translated Removing-the-

Part-"That-Continues. Continuity was a fairly simple problem. The old

grammars had several ways to conceptualize continuance. It was removal ...

Nlaati reached the thin red doorway at the back of the rooms, and

started down the stairs. It was dark as night. Darker. He would need to

talk with the palace servant masters about seeing that lanterns were lit

here. With as many people as there were filling every available niche in

the tunnels and, from what he heard, the mines as well, it seemed

unlikely that no one could he spared to be sure there was a little light

on his path.

Or they might be rationing lamp oil already. There was a depressing thought.

He descended, one hand on the smooth, cool stone of the wall to keep him

steady. He moved slowly because going quickly would get him winded, and

it was dark enough that he wanted to stay sure of his footing. His mind

was only half concerned with walking anyway. Cehmai was right. The

logical structure was the same whether he used nurat or something else.

So that was another dead end.

Removal.

It was a concept of relative motion. "faking something enclosed and

producing a distance between it and its-now previous-enclosure. Plucking

out a seed, or a baby. A gemstone from its setting. A man from his bed

or his home. Removing. Heshai's work in framing Seedless was so elegant,

so simple, that it seemed inevitable. That was the curse of second and

third bindings of the same andat. Finding something equally graceful,

but utterly different. It made his jaw ache just thinking about it.

I is reached the bottom of the stairs and the wide upper chamber of his

winter quarters. The night candle burning there was hardly to its first

quarter mark, which given the lengthening nights of autumn meant the

city beneath him would likely still he awake and active. Rest for him,

though. His day had been full already. He took up the candle, passed

down a short, close corridor, and reached the second stairway, which led

down to the bedchambers.

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