"Yes," Balasar said. "I'II go hack, but I don't think it would he wise
for me to stay. I don't know, Most High. I had plans, but none of them
involved being hated and disgraced. So I suppose I'll have to make
others. What do you do when you've finished your life's work and haven't
died?"
"I don't know," Otah said, and Balasar laughed.
"With the things still ahead of you, Lord Emperor, you likely never
will. "That's your fate." Balasar's gaze seemed to soften-melancholy
creeping in at the corners of his eyes. "'There are worse, though."
Otah sipped his tea. The leaves were perfectly brewed, neither weak nor
bitter. Balasar raised his own cup in a wordless salute.
"Shall we do this thing?" Otah asked.
"1 was wondering," Balasar said. "I was afraid you might reconsider.
Burning a library's a terrible thing."
For a moment, Otah saw the cold eyes of Sterile, its feminine smile,
heard its voice. The memory of the physicians' cots filled with row upon
row of women in pain possessed him for the length of a heartbeat and was
gone.
""There are worse," lie said.
Otah rose, and the general rose with him. From the servants' niches and
from beyond the great archway to the south, their respective people
appeared. Hard soldiers from the South, amen of the utkhaiem in flowing
robes from the North. Otah raised his hands in a pose of command, and
let the servants go forward to prepare their way.
The furnaces were near the surface where they could be blocked off from
the rest of the city if the fires ever should escape their cells. The
air near them was thick with the scent of smoke and oppressive with
heat. The noise of the flames was like a waterfall. Otah led Balasar and
his men to the huge grates where the scrolls and codices and books were
stacked. Generations of history. Philosophic essays composed by minds
gone to dust a thousand years before. Maps that predated the First
Empire. The surviving scraps of war records from before the first andat.
Otah looked upon his culture, his history, the record of all that had
cone before and that had made the world what it was. The flames licked
and leapt.
If only it could have been just the poets' books and treatises on the
andat ... but the Gait had insisted, and Otah had understood. Each his
tory was a footprint in the path, each collection of court poems might
contain a hint or reference. With time and attention, someone might put
together again what had been torn apart, and it was a chance the Galt
had refused to accept. Their tenuous peace required sacrifices, and
sacrifice without loss didn't deserve the name.
"Forgive this," Utah said, to no one. He walked forward, coming to the
first pile. The hook was leather-hound and worn from years of loving
care. Utah let it fall open and looked on Heshai's careful handwriting
for the last time. With a sense of sorrow, Utah cast the book into the
flames, then raised his hands again, and the sen'ants began to throw the
pages into the fire. parchment darkened and curled in the suddenly white
flame. "Piny embers flew out into the air, glowing and going dark,
fireflies at sunset. The horror of it all closed his throat, and with it
came a strange elation.
A hand touched his arm, and Utah looked at the Galtic general. 't'here
were tears in his eyes too.
"It was necessary," he said.
The night candles were burned down past their first quarter before Utah
found his way hack to his rooms. Kivan was already asleep, her face
smooth and peaceful. He resisted the urge to touch her, to pull her
awake and hope that some of that calm might come with her. It wouldn't.
Ile knew that. Instead he watched the subtle rise and fall of her
breath, listened to the small sounds the tunnels made in the darkness,
the soft flow of air. Ile thought of crawling in beside her, still in
his robes, pressing his eyes closed until forgetfulness took him as
well. But he needed to perform one last errand. He rose quietly and left
by the hack passage, down deeper into the earth.
The physician rose when he caught sight of Utah, taking a welcoming pose
so quietly that the rustle of cloth in his robes seemed loud. Utah
replied with one that asked a question.
"I le's well," the physician said. "The poppy milk makes him sleepy, but
it stops the cough."
"May I?" Utah asked.
"I think he'll never rest unless you do. But it would be best if he
didn't speak overmuch."
1)anat's room was warm and close. The night candle fluttered and glowed
in its glass case. Great iron statues of hunting cats and a hear risen
on his hack feet radiated heat from the fires in which they'd been kept
all through the day. His boy sat up unsteadily, smiling. Utah went to
his side.
"You should be asleep," Otah said, smoothing the hair from Uanat's brow.
"You were supposed to read to me," the boy said. His voice was scratchy
and thick, but not as had as it had been. Otah felt tears in his eyes
again. He could not bring himself to say that the hooks were all gone,
the stories all made ash. "Lie back," he said. "I'll do what I can."
Grinning, Danat dropped to his pillows. Otah took a long, unsteady
breath and closed his eyes.
"In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Bch," Otah
murmured, "there came to court a boy whose blood was half Bakta, his
skin the color of soot, and his mind as clever as any man who has ever
lived . . ." I)anat made a small sound of pleasure and closed his eyes,
his hand seeking out Otah's fingers.
Otah went on as long as he could before his memory failed him, and then
he began to invent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
An Autumn War is the third novel of the Long Price Quartet by Daniel
Abraham. The first two are A Shador" in Summer and A Betrayal in Winter.
He has published stories in the Ianishing Acts, Bones of the IW'oorld,
and The Dark anthologies, and has been included in Gardner Dozois's
Years Bert Science Fiction anthology and The Years Best Fantasy &
Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin J. Grant, as well.
His story "Flat Diane" won the International Horror Guild Award for best
short story and was nominated for the Nebula. He is also the coauthor of
Hunter'r Run with Gardner I)ozois and George R. R. Martin.
He is currently working on The Price of ,Spring, the final volume of the
long Price Quartet. He lives in New Mexico with his wife and daughter.