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.
Only, of course, they wouldn't he there this winter. Food was no longer
an item available for trade. It was being rationed out by the utkhaiem
and by the exquisite mechanisms that Kiyan had put in place. The men and
women of Cetani had been housed there or in the mines along the plain
even before Otah and his army had returned with the news that the Galts
had been turned back. Now, with the quarters being shared, there were
two and sometimes three families sharing the space meant for one.
There was a part of him that wanted badly to take the stairs leading up,
to go out of the palaces, and into the webwork of passages and tunnels
one layered upon another that were his city. He knew it was an illusion
to think that seeing things would improve them, make them easier to
control and make right. But it was a powerful illusion.
Ile sighed and took the descending stairs. ']'he women's
quartersdesigned to accommodate a Khai's dozen or more wives-had been
changed over to smaller, more private rooms by the addition of a few
planks of wood and tapestries taken from the palaces above. The utkhaiem
of Cetani-husbands and wives together-found some accommodations there.
It had seemed an obvious choice, and Kiyan had never particularly made
use of her rooms there. And still it seemed odd to have people so close.
Late in the night, he could sometimes hear the voices of people passing by.
The great blue and gold doors to his private apartments stood closed,
two guards on either side. Otah noticed as he accepted their salutes how
quickly he had come to think of these men as guards where before they
had only been servants. "Their duties were no different, their robes