Daniel Abraham - An Autumn War

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.

Ic 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?"

"lour father did once," \laati said. "IIe's a very clever man."

"Rut we might not."

" WVe might not," \laati allowed.

F,iah 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."

\laati 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. 't'hat 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.

The physician was right. It would he easy to fix one thing, if there

were only one thing wrong. But there were so many was to break something

so delicate and so complex. Even the act of making one thing right

seemed destined to undo something else. And he was too tired and too

confused to say whether one way of being wounded was better than another.