The Price of Spring

  It was the opening to a hundred other issues. Galt and the cities of the Khaiem were in a state of profound disarray. Ana Dasin might be the new Empress, but that meant little enough in practical terms. In Galt the High Council and the full council were each in flux, their elections and appointments in question now that their cities were little more than abandoned. Otah would be hated for that destruction or else beloved for the mending of it.

  "It is the point, isn't it? If we are two nations, we're doomed," Farrer said, reading his concerns. "We have too many enemies and not enough strengths between us."

  "If we're one ... how do we do that? Will the High Council be ruled by my edict? Am I supposed to cede my power to them?"

  "Compromise, Most High," Farrer said. "It will be a long process of compromise and argument, idiotic yammering debate and high melodrama. But in its defense, it won't be war."

  "It won't be war," Otah repeated. Only when the words had come out into the night air, hanging as if physical, did he realize he had meant it as an agreement. One nation. His empire had just doubled in size, tripled in complexity and need, and his own power had been cut at least by half. Farrer seemed surprised when he laughed.

  "Tomorrow," Otah said. "Call the High Council tomorrow. I'll bring my council. We'll start with the report and try to build something like a plan from there. And tell Issandra that I'll have the letters of embassage sent. Best get that done before there's a debate about it, ne?"

  They sat for a time without speaking, two men whose children had just joined their families. Two enemies planning a house in common. Two great powers whose golden ages had ended. They could play at it, but each knew that it was only in their children, in their grandchildren, that the game of friendship could become truth.

  Farrer finished his wine, leaving the bowl by his chair. As he walked out, he put a hand on Otah's shoulder.

  "Your son seems a fine man," he said.

  "Your daughter is a treasure."

  "She is," Farrer Dasin said, his voice serious. And then Otah was alone again, the night numbing his feet and biting his ears and nose. He pulled the blanket around himself more tightly and left the balcony and the city and the celebrations behind him.

  The palaces were as quiet and busy as the backstage at a performance. Servants ran or walked or conducted low, angry conversations that died at Otah's approach. He let the night make its own path. He knew the bridal procession had returned to the palaces by the number of robes with bits of tinsel and bright paper clinging to the hems. And also by the flushed faces and spontaneous laughter. There would have been celebration on into the night, even if they hadn't scheduled the wedding on Candles Night. As it was, Utani as a whole, from the highest nobility to the lowest beggar, would sleep late and speak softly when they woke. Otah doubted there would be any wine left by spring.

  But there would be babies. He could already name a dozen women casually who would be giving birth when the summer came. And everywhere, in all the cities, the conditions were the same. They would miss a generation, but only one. The Empire would stumble, but it need not fall.

  Even more than the joining of the Empire and Galt, the night was the first formal celebration of a world made new. Otah wished he felt more part of it. Perhaps he understood too well what price had brought them here.

  He found Eiah where he knew he would. The physicians' house with its wide, slate tables and the scent of vinegar and burning herbs. Cloth lanterns bobbled in the breeze outside the open doors. A litter of stretched canvas and light wood lay on the steps, blood staining the cloth. Within, half a dozen men and two women sat on low wooden benches or lay on the floor. One of the men tried to take a pose of obeisance, winced in pain, and sat back down. Otah made his way to the rear. Three men in leather aprons were working the tables, servants and assistants swarming around them. Eiah, in her own apron, was at the back table. A Galtic man lay before her, groaning. Blood drenched his side. Eiah glanced up, saw him, and took a pose of welcome with red hands.

  "What's happened?" Otah asked.

  "He fell out of a window and onto a stick," Eiah said. "I'm fairly sure we've gotten all the splinters out of him."

  "He'll live, then?"

  "If he doesn't go septic," Eiah said. "He's a man with a hole in his side. You can't ask better odds than that."

  The wounded man stuttered out his gratitude in his own language while Eiah, letting him hold one of her hands, gestured with the other for an assistant.

  "Bind the wound, give him three measures of poppy milk, and put him somewhere safe until morning. I'll want to see his wound again before we send him back to his people."

  The assistant took a pose that accepted instruction, and Eiah walked to the wide stone basins on the back wall to wash the blood from her hands. A woman screamed and retched, but he couldn't see where she was. Eiah was unfazed.

  "We'll have forty more like him by morning," she said. "Too drunk and happy to think of the risks. There was a woman here earlier who wrenched her knee climbing a rope they'd strung over the street. Almost fell on Danat's head, to hear her say it. She may walk with a cane the rest of her life, but she's all smiles tonight."

  "Well, she won't be dancing," Otah said.

  "If she can hop, she will."

  "Is there a place we can speak?" Otah asked.

  Eiah dried her hands on a length of cloth, leaving it dark with water and pink with blood. Her expression was closed, but she led the way through a wide door and down a hall. Someone was moaning nearby. She turned off into a small garden, the bushes as bare as sticks, a widebranched tree empty. If there had been snow, it would have been lovely.

  "I'm calling a meeting with the Galtic High Council tomorrow," he said. "And my own as well. It's the beginning of unification. I wanted you to hear it from me."

  "That seems wise," Eiah said.

  "The poets. The andat. They can't be kept out of that conversation."

  "I know," she said. "I've been thinking about it."

  "I don't suppose there are any conclusions you'd want to share," he asked, trying to keep his tone light. Eiah pulled at her fingers, one hand and then the other.

  "We can't be sure there won't be others," she said. "The hardest thing about binding them is the understanding that they can be bound. They burned all the books, they killed every poet they could find, and we remade the grammar. We bound two andat. Other people are going to try to do what we did. Work from the basic structures and find a way."

  "You think they'll do it?"

  "History doesn't move backward," she said. "There's power in them. And there are people who want power badly enough to kill and die. Eventually, someone will find a way."

  "Without Maati? Without Cehmai?"

  "Or Irit, or Ashti Beg, or the two Kaes?" Eiah said. "Without me? It will be harder. It will take longer. The cost in lives and failed bindings may be huge."

  "You're talking about generations from now," Otah said.

  "Yes," Eiah said. "Likely, I am."

  Otah nodded. It wasn't what he'd hoped to hear, but it would do. He took a pose that thanked Eiah. She bowed her head.

  "Are you well?" he asked. "It isn't an easy thing, killing."

  "Vanjit wasn't the first person I've killed, Father. Knowing when to help someone leave is part of what I do," Eiah said. She looked up, staring at the moon through the bare branches that couldn't shelter them, even from light. "I'm more troubled by what I could have done and didn't."

  Otah took a pose that asked her to elaborate. Eiah shook her head, and then a moment later spoke softly, as if the words themselves were delicate.

  "I could have held all our enemies at bay just by the threat of Wounded," she said. "What army would take the field, knowing I could blow out their lives like so many candles? Who would conspire against us knowing that if their agents were discovered, I could slaughter their kings and princes without hope of defense?"

  "It would have been convenient," Otah agreed carefully.

 
"I could have slaughtered the men who killed Sinja-kya," Eiah said. "I could have ended every man who had ever taken a woman against her will or hurt a child. Between one breath and the next, I could have wiped them from the world."

  Eiah turned her gaze to him. In the cool moonlight, her eyes seemed lost in shadow.

  "I look at those things-all the things I might have done-and I wonder whether I would have. And if I had, would they have been wrong?"

  "And what do you believe?"

  "I believe I saved myself when I set that perversion free," she said. "I only hope the price the rest of the world pays isn't too high."

  Otah stepped forward and took her in his arms. Eiah held back for a moment, and then relaxed into the embrace. She smelled of herbs and vinegar and blood. And mint. Her hair smelled of mint, just as her mother's had done.

  "You should go see him," she said. He knew who she meant.

  "Is he well?"

  "For now," she said. "He's weathered the attacks so far. But his blood's still slowing. I expect he'll be fine until he isn't, and then he'll die."

  "How long?"

  "Not another year," she said.

  Otah closed his eyes.

  "He misses you," she said. "You know he does."

  He stepped back and kissed her forehead. In the distance, someone screamed. Eiah glanced over his shoulder with disgust.

  "That will be Yaniit," she said. "I'd best go tend to him. Tall as a tree, wide as a bear, and wails if you pinch him."

  "Take care," Otah said.

  His daughter walked away with the steady stride of a woman about her own business, leaving the bare garden for him. He looked up at the moon, but it had lost its poetry and charm. His sigh was opaque in the cold.

  Maati's cell was the most beautifully appointed prison in the cities, possibly in the world. The armsmen led Otah into a chamber with vaulted ceilings and carved cedar along the walls. Maati sat up, waving the servant at his side to silence. The servant closed the book she'd been reading but kept the place with her thumb.

  "You're learning Galtic tales now?" Otah asked.

  "You burned my library," Maati said. "Back in Machi, or don't you recall that? The only histories your grandchild will read are written by them."

  "Or by us," Otah said. "We can still write, you know."

  Maati took a pose that accepted correction, but with a dismissive air that verged on insult. So this was how it was, Otah thought. He motioned to the armsmen to take the prisoner and follow him, then spun on his heel. The feeble sounds of protest behind him didn't slow his pace.

  The highest towers of Utani were nothing in comparison to those in Machi; they could be scaled by stairways and corridors and didn't re quire a rest halfway along. Under half the height, and Otah liked them better. They were built with humanity in mind, and not the raw boasting power of the andat.

  At the pinnacle, a small platform stood high above the world. The tallest place in the city. Wind whipped it, as cold as a bath of ice water. Otah motioned for Maati to be led forward. The poet's eyes were wild, his breath short. He raised his thick chin.

  "What?" Maati spat. "Decided to throw me off, have you?"

  "It's almost the half-candle," Otah said and went to stand at the edge. Maati hesitated and then stepped to his side. The city spread out below them, the streets marked by lanterns and torches. A fire blazed in a courtyard down near the riverfront, taller than ten men with whole trees for logs. Otah could cover it with his thumbnail.

  The chime came, a deep ringing that seemed to shake the world. And then a thousand thousand bells rang out in answer to mark the deepest part of the longest night of the year.

  "Here," Otah said. "Watch."

  Below, light spread through the city. Every window, every balcony, ever parapet glowed with newly lit candles. Within ten breaths, the center of the Empire went from any large city in darkness to something woven from light, the perfect city-the idea of a city-made for a moment real. Maati shifted. When his voice came, it was little more than a whisper.

  "It's beautiful."

  "Isn't it?"

  A moment later, Maati said, "Thank you."

  "Of course," Otah replied.

  They stood there for a long time, neither speaking nor arguing, concerned with neither future nor past. Below them, Utani glowed and rang, marking the moment of greatest darkness and celebrating the yearly return of the light.

  EPILOG

  We say that the flowers return every spring, but that is a lie.

  CALIN MACHI, ELDEST SON OF THE EMPEROR REGENT, KNELT BEFORE HIS father, his gaze downcast. The delicate tilework of the floor was polished so brightly that he could watch Danat's face and seem to be showing respect at the same time. Granted, Danat was reversed-wide jaw above gray temples-and it made the nuances of expression difficult to read. It was enough, though, for him to judge approximately how much trouble he was in.

  "I've spoken to the overseer of my father's apartments. Do you know what he told me?"

  "That I'd been caught hiding in Grandfather's private garden," Calin said.

  "Is that true?"

  "Yes, Father. I was hiding from Aniit and Gaber. It was a part of a game.

  Danat sighed, and Calin risked looking up. When his father was deeply upset, his face turned red. He was still flesh-colored. Calin looked back down, relieved.

  "You know you're forbidden from your grandfather's apartments."

  "Yes, but that was what made them a good place to hide."

  "You're sixteen summers old and you're acting twelve of them. Aniit and Gaber look to you for how to behave. It's your duty to set an example," Danat said, his voice stern. And then he added, "Don't do it again."

  Calin rose to his feet, trying to keep his rush of joy from being obvious. The great punishment had not fallen. He was not barred from the steam caravan's arrival. Life was still worth living. Danat took a pose that excused his son and motioned to his Master of Tides. Before the woman could glide over and lead his father back into the constant business of negotiating with the High Council, Calin left the audience chamber, followed only by his father's shouted admonition not to run. Aniit and Gaber were waiting outside, their eyes wide.

  "It's all right," Calin said, as if his father's lenience were somehow proof of his own cleverness. Aniit took an exaggerated pose of congratulations. Gaber clapped her hands. She was young, though. Only fourteen summers old and barely marriageable.

  "Come on, then," Calin said. "We can pick the best places for when the caravan comes."

  The roadway had been five years in the building, a shallow canal of smooth worked iron that began at the seafront in Saraykeht and followed the river up to Utani. The caravan was the first of its kind, and the common wisdom in the streets and teahouses was evenly divided between those who thought it would arrive even earlier than expected and those who predicted they'd find splinters of blown boilers and nothing else.

  Calin dismissed the skeptics. After all, his grandmother was arriving from her plantations in Chaburi-Tan, and she would never put herself on the caravan if it was going to explode.

  The sweet days of early spring were short and cold. Frost still sent white fingers up the stones of the palaces in the morning and snow lingered in the deep shadows. A hundred times Calin and his friends had gone through the elaborate ritual of how they would greet the caravan, rehearsing it in their minds and conversations. The event, of course, was nothing like what they'd planned.

  When word came, Calin was with his tutor, an ancient man from Acton, working complex sums. They were seated in the sunlight of the spring garden. Almond blossoms turned the tree branches white even before the first leaves had ventured out. Calin frowned at the wax tablet on his knees, trying not to count on his fingers. Hesitating, he lifted his stylus and marked his answer. His tutor made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat and Gaber appeared at the end of the arcade, running full out.

  "It's here!" she screamed. "It's here!"

  Bef
ore any adult could object, Calin joined her flight. Tablet, stylus, and sums were forgotten in an instant. They ran past the pavilions that marked palaces from merchants' compounds, the squares and open markets that showed where the great compound gave way to the haunts of common labor. The streets were thick with humanity, and Calin threaded his way through the press of bodies aided by his youth, the quality of his robes, and the boyish instinct that saw all obstacles as ephemeral.

  He reached the Emperor's platform just before the caravan arrived. Wide plumes of smoke and steam stained the southern sky, and the air smelled of coal. Danat and Ana were already there, seated in chairs of carved stone with silk cushions. Otah Machi-the Emperor himselfsat on a raised dais, his hands resting like fragile claws on the arms of a black lacquer chair. Calin's grandfather looked over as he arrived and smiled. Danat's expression was distracted in a way that reminded Calin of doing sums. His mother was craning her neck and trying not to seem that she was.

  It hardly mattered. The crowd that pressed and seethed around the yard at the caravan road's end had eyes only for the great carts speeding toward them, faster than horses at full gallop. Calin sat at his mother's feet, his intended perch nearest his friends forgotten. The first of the carts came near enough to make out the raised dais, twin of his grandfather's, and the stiff-backed white-haired woman sitting atop it. Calin's mother left all decorum, and stood, waving and calling to her mother.

  Calin felt his father's hand on his shoulder and turned.

  "Watch this," Danat said. "Pay attention. That caravan reached us in half the time even a boat could have. What you're seeing right now is going to change everything."

  Calin nodded solemnly as if he understood.

  It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price.

  CEHMAI TYAN SAT ACROSS THE MEETING TABLE FROM THE HIGH COUNCIL'S special envoy. The man was nondescript, his clothing of Galtic cut and unremarkable quality. Cehmai didn't like the envoy, but he respected him. He'd known too many dangerous men in his life not to.