"Captain Ajutani? lie's here, in the city. Wintering here with the rest of us. He's done quite well for himself. And for us. I le's given me some very good advice."
Eustin grunted and shook his head.
"Still don't trust him, sir."
"He's more or less out of opportunities to betray us," Balasar said, and Eustin spat into the fire by way of reply.
Over the next days, the arms' shifted slowly from the rigorous discipline of the road to the bawdy, long, low riot that comes with wintering in a captured city. The locals-tradesmen and laborers and utkhaiem alikeseemed stunned by the change. They were polite and accommodating because Balasar's men were armed and practiced and thousands strong, but as Balasar walked down the long, winding red brick streets, he had the feeling that "Ian-Sadar was hoping to wake from this nightmare and find the world once again as it had been. A hard, bitter wind came from the North, and behind it, the season's first thin, tentative snow. lie found his mind turning hack to the west and home. The darkness Eustin had seen in him grew with the prospect of returning. The years he had spent gathering the threads of his campaign had come to their end; that it was ending in triumph only partly forgave that it was ending. He found himself wondering who he would be now that he was no longer the man driven to destroy the andat. In the mornings, he imagined himself living on his hereditary estate near Kirinton, perhaps taking a wife. Perhaps teaching in one of the military academics. All his old dreams revisited. As the sun peaked low in the sky and scuttled toward the horizon, the fantasy darkened too. He would be a racing dog with nothing left to chase. And worst, in the dark of the nights, he tried to sleep, his mind pricked by another day gone by without word from the North and the sick fear that despite all their successes, something had gone wrong.
And then, on a cold, clear morning, the courier from Coal arrived. Only it wasn't from Coal. Not really. Because Coal was dead, and Balasar had another ghost at his heels.
"I'hey came without warning," Balasar said. "They were hiding in the trees, like street bandits. He was the first to fall."
"I'm sorry to hear it," Sinja said. "It was a dishonorable attack. Not that the honorable one did them much good from what I've heard."
Eustin's face might have been carved from stone.
"You have a point to make, Captain?" Balasar asked.
"Only that he did make an honest man's try on the field outside the Dal-kvo's village, and he failed. "There's only so much you can count against him that he tried a different tack."
He killed my men, Balasar wanted to say. Wanted to shout. He killed Coal.
Instead, he paced the length of the wide parlor, staring at the maps he'd unrolled after he'd unsewn the letter from the remnants of the northern force. The oil lamps hung from their chains, adding a thick buttery light to the thin gray sunlight that filtered in from the windows. Cetani was occupied, but the library was emptied, Khai and poet missing along with the full population of the city. Machi remained. The last of the poets, the last of the books, the last of the Khaiem. His fingertips traced the route that would take him there.
"It's no use, General," Sinja said. "You can't put an army in the field this late in the season. It's too cold. One half-decent storm will freeze them to death."
"It's still autumn," Dustin said. "Winter's not come quite yet."
"It's a Northern autumn," Sinja said. "You're thinking it's like Eddensea, but I'll tell you it's not. There's no ocean nearby to hold the heat in. General, Machi isn't going anywhere between now and the first thaw. The Dal-kvo's meat on a stick. Your man burned his books. "I'hev have the same chance of binding a fresh andat before spring that I have of growing wings and flying. And you have every chance of killing more of your men than have died since we left the \Vestlands if you go out there now."
"' ou've always given me good advice, Captain Ajutani," Balasar said. "I appreciate your wisdom on this."
"I wouldn't call it wisdom particularly," Sinja said. "Just a common interest in not turning into ice sculpture in a bean field somewhere be- twwwecn here and there."
"Thank you," Balasar said, his tone making it clear that the meeting had ended. Sinja saluted Balasar, nodded to Eustin, and made his way out. The door closed with a click. F, ustin coughed.
"Do you think he's lying?" Balasar said. "I le'd been living in \lachi. If there were a place he didn't rant captured, it would be there."
Eustin frowned, arms folded across his chest. lie looked older, Balasar thought. The grief of losing Coal was heavy on his shoulders too. In a sense, they were the last. 'T'here were other men who had taken part in the campaign, but only the two of them had been there from the beginning. Only they had been to the desert. And so there was no one else who could have this conversation and truly understand it.
"I le's not lying," Eustin said. I lis voice was thick. Balasar could hear how much it had cost him to agree with Sinja. "h, verything I've heard says the cold up there is deadly. It's not a pleasant day out now, and the season's milder here."
"And Nlachi's army?"
Eustin shrugged.
"It wasn't an honorable fight," he said. "If we empty t'tani and "lan- Sadar, we've got something near three times the men Coal had at the end."
It would take them weeks to reach Nlachi, even if they started now. A bad storm would be worse than a battle. "Ian-Sadar, on the other hand, was a safe place to winter, and when the spring came, they could overwhelm Machi in safety. They could revenge Coal a thousand times over. 'T'here was no army that could come to \lachi's aid. Meaningful defenses for the city couldn't be built in that time.
Snow was the only armor the enemy had, and the turning seasons would he enough to remove it. Every strategist in Galt would counsel that he wait, plan, prepare, rest. But there were poets in Machi, and all the world to lose if he failed.
He looked up from the maps. His gaze met Eustin's, and they stood together in silence, the only two men in the world who would look at these facts, these odds, these stakes, and have no need to debate them.
"I'll break it to the men," Eustin said.
20
"`And quietly, one foot sliding behind the other, for the parapet was too narrow to walk along, the half-Bakta boy went from his own prison chamber around to the bars of the Empress's cell."' Utah paused, letting the half-Bakta boy hang in the air outside the prison tower. And this time I)anat failed to object. I lis eyes were closed, his breathing heavy and regular. Utah sat for a moment, watching his boy sleep, then closed the hook, tucked it in its place by the door, and put out the lantern. [)gnat murmured and snuggled more deeply into his blankets as Utah carefully opened the door and stepped out into the tunnel.
The physician set to watch over I)anat took a pose of obeisance to Otah, and Otah replied with one of thanks before walking to the North, and to the broad spiral stairway that led tip to the higher chambers of the underground palace or else down to Otah's own rooms and the women's quarters. Small brass lanterns filled the air with their warmth and the scent of oil. The walls were lighter than sandstone and shone brighter than the Hanes seemed to warrant. At the stairway, he hesitated.
Above him, Nlachi was beginning its descent into the other city, washing down into the rooms and corridors reserved for the deep, long winter that was almost upon them. The bathhouses far above had emptied their pipes, shunting the water from their kilns down to lower pools. The towers were being filled with goods of summer, the great platforms crawling tip their tracks in the unforgiving stone, and then down again. In the wide, vaulted corridors that would become the main roads and public squares of the winter, beggars sang and food carts filled the air with rich, warm scents: beef soup and peppered pork, fish on hot rice, almond milk and honey cakes. The men and women pulling the carts would he calling, luring the curious and the hungry and the almost-hungry.