Daniel Abraham - An Autumn War

think, but a hit easier to grin. It was ridiculous, except that it made

sense. Ile should have anticipated this. I Ie should have known.

"You want to send me in? As a spy?"

"'lake a couple good horses in the morning, and ride hard for the city,"

Eustin said. "You'll arrive a few days ahead of us. You were the Khai's

advisor before. I Ie'Il listen to you, or at least let you listen to

him. When the time conies for the attack, you guide us."

The captain made a small gesture with one hand, as if what he'd said was

simple. Go into Nlachi, betray Otah and everyone else he'd known this

last decade. If I turn against the general, Sinja thought, it'll he a

bad death when these men find me.

"It will be faster this way," I3alasar said. "hewer people will die on

both sides. And, because you ask, the woman is yours. Safe and unharmed

if I can do it."

"I have your word on that Sinja asked.

Balasar took a pose that accepted an oath. It wasn't quite the right

vocabulary, but it carried the meaning. Sinja felt unpleasantly like he

was looking down over a cliff. His head swam a little, and the tightness

in his body fell to knotting his gut. He held out his bowl and Balasar

refilled it.

"I'll understand if it's too much," Balasar said, his voice soft. "It

will make things easier for both sides and it won't change the way the

battle falls, but that doesn't mean it isn't a terrible thing to ask of

you. 'lake a few days to sit with it if you'd like."

"No," Sinja said. "I don't need time. I'll do the thing."

"You're sure?" Eustin asked.

Sinja drained his cup in a gulp. He could feel the flush starting to

grow in his neck and cheeks, the nausea starting in his belly and the

back of his throat. It was strong wine and a had night coming.

"It needs doing, and it's the price I asked," Sinja said. "So I'll do it."

(.EIIMAI SA"l' FORWARD IN Ills CIIAIR. THE, Wlll"1'E MARBLE WALLS OF

THEIR workspace glowed with candlelight, but Nlaati didn't find the

brightness reassuring. He was sitting as quietly as he could manage on a

red and violet embroidered cushion, waiting. Cehmai lifted one of the

wide yellow pages, paused, and turned it over. Nlaati saw the younger

poet's lips moving as he shaped sonic phrase from the papers. Nlaati

restrained himself from asking which. Interruptions wouldn't make this

go any faster.

The simple insight that Eiah had given him that night in the baths had

taken the better part of two weeks to work into a draft worthy of

consideration. Fitting the grammars so that the nuances of corruption

and continuance-destruction and creation, or more precisely the

destruction of creation-reinforced one another had been tricky. And the

extra obstacle of fitting in the structures to protect himself should

things go amiss had likely tacked on an extra three or four days to the

process.

And still, it had taken him only weeks. Not years, not even months.

Weeks. The structure of the binding was laid out now.

Corruption-ofthe-Generative, called Sterile. The death of the Gait's

crops. The gelding of its men. The destruction of its women's wombs.

Once he had seen the trick of it, the binding had flowed from his pen.

It had been as if some small voice at the back of his mind was

whispering the words, and he'd only had to write them down. Even now,

squatting on this damnable cushion, his hack aching, his feet cold,

waiting for Cehmai to read over the last of the changes, he felt half

drunk from the work. He was a poet. All the things that had happened in

his life to bring him to this place at this time had built toward these

days, and the dry pages that hissed and shushed as Cehmai slid them

across each other. Maati bit his lip and did not interrupt.

It seemed like days, but Cehmai came to the final page, fingertips

tracing the lines Maati had written there, paused, and set it down with

the others. Maati leaned forward, his hands taking a querying pose.

Cehmai frowned and gently shook his head.

"No?" Maati asked. Something between rage and dismay shot through his

belly, only to vanish when Cehmai spoke.

"It's brilliant," he said. "It's a first draft, but it's a very, very

good one. I don't think there are many things we'd have to adjust. A few

to make it easier to pass on, perhaps. But we can work with those. No,

Maatikvo, I think this is likely to work. It's just ..."

"Just?„

Cehmai's frown deepened. His fingertips tapped cautiously on the pages,

as if he were testing an iron pot, afraid it would be hot enough to

burn. He sighed.

"I've never seen an andat fashioned to be a weapon," he said. There was

a hook that the Dal-kvo had that dated from the fall of the Second

Empire, but he never let anyone look at it. I don't know."

"There's a war, Cehmai-kya," Maati said. "They killed the Dai-kvo and

everyone in the village. The gods only know how many other men they've

slaughtered. How many women they're raped. What's on those pages,

they've earned."

"I know," Cehmai said. "I do know that. It's just I keep thinking of

Stone-:Made-Soft. It was capable of terrible things. I can't count the

times I had to hold it hack from collapsing a mine or a building. It had

no respect for the lives of men. But there was no particular malice in

it either. This ... Sterile ... it seems different."

Nlaati clamped his jaw. He was tired, that was all. "They both were. It

was no reason to be annoyed with Cehmai, even if his criticism of the

binding was something less than useful. Nlaati smiled the way he

imagined a teacher at the school smiling. Or the I)ai-kvo. lie took a

pose that offered instruction.

"Cutting shears and swords are both sharp. Before the war, you and I and

the men like us? We made cutting shears," he said, and gestured to the

papers. ""That's our first sword. It's only natural that you'd feel

uneasy with it; we aren't men of violence. If we were, the I)ai-kvo

would never have chosen us, would he? But the world's a different place

now, and so we have to be willing to do things that we wouldn't have

before."

""Then it makes you uneasy too?" Cehmai asked. Nlaati smiled. It didn't

make him uneasy at all, but he could see it was what the man needed to hear.

"Of course it does," he said. "But I can't allow that to stop me. The

stakes are too high."

Cehmai seemed to collapse on himself. The dark eyes flickered,

searching, \Iaati thought, for some other path. But in the end, the man

only sighed.

"I think you've found the thing, \laati-kvo. There are some passages I'd

want to think about. 'T'here might be ways we can refine it. But I think

we'll he ready to try it well before the thaw."

A tension that Nlaati hadn't known he was carrying released, and he

grinned like a boy. Ile could imagine himself as the controller of the

only andat in the world. He and Cehmai would become the new teachers,

and under their protection, they would raise up a new generation of

poets to hind more of the andat. The cities would be safe again. Nlaati

could feel it in his bones.

The rest of the meeting went quickly, as if Cehmai wanted to be away

from the library as quickly as lie could. \laati supposed the prospect

of binding Sterile was more disturbing to Cehmai than to him. lie hoped,

as he walked back tip the stairways and corridors to his rooms, that

Cchmai would be able to adjust to the new way of things. It couldn't be