They fell into their rhythm of walking and shouting and not being answered until time lost its meaning. They might have been working for half a hand, they might have been working for a sunless week, and so the dawn surprised him.
One of the other searching parties had quit earlier. Someone had found a firekeeper’s kiln and stoked it, and the rich smell of cracked wheat and flaxseed and fresh honey cut through the smoke and death like a sung melody above a street fight. Otah sat on an abandoned cart and cradled a bowl of the sweet gruel in his hands, the heat from the bowl soothing his palms and fingers. He didn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and though he was bone-weary, he could not bring himself to think of sleep. He feared his dreams.
Nayiit walked to him carrying a similar bowl and sat at his side. He looked older. The horrors of the past days had etched lines at the corners of his mouth. Exhaustion had blackened his eyes. Exhaustion and guilt.
‘There’s no one, is there?’ Nayiit said.
‘No. They’re gone.’
Nayiit nodded and looked down to the neat, carefully fitted bricks that made the road. No blade of grass pressed its way through those stony joints. It struck Otah as strangely obscene that a place of such carnage and destruction should have such well-maintained paving stones. It would be better when tree roots had lifted a few of them. Something so ruined should be a ruin. A few years, perhaps. A few years, and this would all be a wild garden dedicated to the dead. The place would be haunted, but at least it would be green.
‘There weren’t any children. Or women,’ Nayiit said. ‘That’s something. ’
‘There were in Yalakeht,’ Otah said.
‘I suppose there were. And Saraykeht too.’
It took a moment to realize what Nayiit meant. It was so simple to forget that the boy had a wife. Had a child. Or once had, depending on how badly things had gone in the summer cities. Otah felt himself blush.
‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t . . . Forgive my saying that.’
‘It’s true, though. It won’t change if we’re more polite talking about it.’
‘No. No, it won’t.’
They were silent for a long moment. Off to their left, three of the others were laying out blankets, unwilling, it seemed, to seek shelter in the halls of the dead. Farther on, Saya the blacksmith was looking over the Galtic steam wagon with what appeared to be a professional interest. High in the robin’s-egg sky, a double vee of cranes flew southward, calling to one another in high, nasal voices. Otah took two cupped fingers and lifted a mouthful of the wheat gruel to his lips. It tasted wonderful - sweet and rich and warm - and yet he didn’t enjoy it so much as recognize that he should. His limbs felt heavy and awkward as wood. When Nayiit spoke, his voice was low and shaky.
‘I know that I won’t ever be able to make good for this. If I hadn’t called the retreat—’
‘This isn’t your fault,’ Otah said. ‘It’s the Dai-kvo’s.’
Nayiit reared back, his mouth making a small ‘o.’ His hands fumbled toward a pose of query, but the porcelain bowl defeated him. Otah took his meaning anyway.
‘Not just this one. The last Dai-kvo. Tahi, his name was. And the one before that. All of them. This is their fault. We trusted everything in the andat. Our power, our wealth, the safety of our children. Everything. We built on sand. We were stupid.’
‘But it worked for so long.’
‘It worked until it didn’t,’ Otah said. The response came from the back of his mind, as if it had always been there, only waiting for the time to speak. ‘It was always certain to fail sometime. Now, or ten generations from now. What difference does it make? If we’d been able to postpone the crisis until my children had to face it, or my grandchildren, or your grandchildren - how would that have been better than us facing it now? The andat have always been an unreliable tool, and poets have always been men with all the vanity and frailty and weakness that men are born with. The Empire fell, and we built ourselves in its image and so now we’ve fallen too. There’s no honor in a lesson half-learned.’
‘Too bad you hadn’t said that to the Dai-kvo.’
‘I did. To all three of them, one way and another. They didn’t take it to heart. And I . . . I didn’t stay to press the point.’
‘Then we’ll have to learn the lesson now,’ Nayiit said. It sounded like an attempt at resolution, perhaps even bravery. It sounded hollow as a drum.
‘Someone will,’ Otah said. ‘Someone will learn by our example. And maybe the Galts burned all the books that would have let them teach more poets of their own. Perhaps they’re already safe from our mistakes.’
‘That would be ironic. To come all this way and destroy the thing that you’d come for.’
‘Or wise. It might be wise.’ Otah sighed and took another mouthful of the wheat. ‘The Galts are likely almost to Tan-Sadar by now. As long as they’re heading south, we may be able to reach Machi again before they do. There’s no fighting them, I think we’ve discovered that, but we might be able to flee. Get people to Eddensea and the Westlands before the passes all close. It’s probably too late to take a fast cart for Bakta.’
Nayiit shook his head.
‘They aren’t going south.’
Otah took another mouthful. The food seemed to be seeping into his blood; he felt only half-dead with exhaustion. Then, a breath or two later, Nayiit’s words found their meaning, and he frowned, put down his bowl, and took a questioning pose. Nayiit nodded down toward the low towns at the base of the mountain village.
‘I was talking with one of the footmen. The Galts came up the river from Yalakeht, and they left heading north on the road to Amnat-Tan. They’re likely only a day or so ahead of us. It doesn’t seem like they’re interested in Tan-Sadar.’
‘Why not?’ Otah said, more than half to himself. ‘It’s the nearest city.’
‘Marshes,’ a low voice said from behind them. The blacksmith, Saya, had come up behind them. ‘There’s decent roads between here and Amnat-Tan. And then the North Road between all the winter cities. Tan-Sadar’s close, Most High. But there’s two different rivers find their start in the marshes between here and there, and if their wagons are like the one they’ve left down there, they’ll need roads.’ The thick arms folded into a pose appropriate for an apprentice to his master. ‘Come and see yourself, if you’d care to.’
The steam wagon was wider than a cart, its bed made of hard, oiled wood at the front, and sheeted with copper at the back. A coal furnace twice the size of a firekeeper’s kiln stood around a steel boiling tank. Saya pointed out how the force of the steam drove the wheels, and how it might be controlled to turn slowly and with great force or else more swiftly. Otah remembered a model he’d seen as a boy in Saraykeht. An army of teapots, the Khai Saraykeht had called them. The world had always told them how it would be, how things would fall apart. They had all been deaf.
‘It’s heavy, though,’ Saya said. ‘And there’s housings there at the front where you could yoke a team of oxen, but I wouldn’t want to pull it through soft land.’
‘Why would they ever pull it?’ Nayiit asked. ‘Why put all this into making it go on fire and then use oxen?’
‘They might run out of coal,’ Otah said.
‘They might,’ Saya agreed. ‘But more likely, they don’t want to rattle it badly. All this was a rounded chamber like an egg. Built to hold the pressure in. You can see how they leaved the seams. Something cracked that egg, and that’s why this is all scrap now. Anyone who was nearby when it happened . . . well. Anything strong enough to make a wagon this heavy move in the first place, and then load it with men or supplies, and then keep it going fast enough to be worth doing . . . it’d be a lot to let loose at once.’
‘How?’ Otah said. ‘How did they break it?’
Saya shrugged.
‘Lucky shot with a hard crossbow, maybe. Or the heat came too high. I don’t know how gentle these things are. Looking at this one, though, I’d like a nice smooth meadow or a well-mad
e road. Nothing too rutted.’
‘I can’t believe they’d put men on this,’ Nayiit said. ‘A wagon that could kill everyone on it if it hits a bad bump? Why would anyone ever do that?’
‘Because the gain is worth the price,’ Otah said. ‘They think the men they lose from it are a good sacrifice for the power they get.’
Otah touched the twisted metal. The egg chamber had burst open like a flower bud blooming. The petals were bright and sharp and too thick for Otah to bend bare-handed. His mind felt perfectly awake, and his head felt full. It was as if he were thinking without yet knowing what he was thinking of. He squatted and looked at the wide, blackened door of the coal furnace.
‘This is made of iron,’ Otah said.