Otah paused, the tip of his pen touching the brick of ink. Something
with wide, pale wings the size of his hands and eyes as black and wet as
river stones hovered at the window and then vanished. A soft breeze
rattled the open shutters. He pulled back the sleeve of his robe, but
before the bronze tip touched the paper, a soft knock came at his door.
"Most High," the servant boy said, his hands in a pose of obeisance.
"Balasar-cha requests an audience."
Otah smiled and took a pose that granted the request and implied that
the guest should be brought to him here, the nuance only slightly
hampered by the pen still in his hand. As the servant scampered out,
Otah straightened his sleeves and stuck the pen nib-first into the ink
brick.
Once, Balasar Gice had led armies against the Khaiem, and only raw
chance had kept him from success. Instead of leading Galt to its
greatest hour, he had precipitated its slow ruin. That the Khaiem shared
that fate took away little of the sting. The general had spent years
rebuilding his broken reputation, and even now was less a force within
Galt than once he had been.
And still, he was a man to be reckoned with.
He came into the room, bowing to Otah as he always did, but with a wry
smile which was reserved for occasions out of the public eye.
"I came to inquire after your health, Most High," Balasar Gice said in
the language of the Khaiem. His accent hadn't lessened in the years
since they had met. "Councilman Trathorn was somewhat relieved by your
absence, but he had to pretend distress."
"Well, you can tell him his distress in every way mirrors my own," Otah
said. "I couldn't face it. I've been too much in the world. There is
only so much praise I can stand from people who'd be happy to see my
head on a plate. Please, sit. I can have a fire lit if you're cold...."
Balasar sat on a low couch beside the window. He was a small man, more
than half a head shorter than Otah, with the force of personality that
made it easy to forget. The years had weathered his face, grooves at the
corners of his eyes and mouth that spoke as much of laughter as sorrow.
They had met a decade and a half ago in the snow-covered square that had
been the site of the last battle in the war between Galt and the Khaiem.
A war that they had both lost.
The years since had seen his status in his homeland collapse and then
slowly be rebuilt. He wasn't a member of the convocation, much less the
High Council, but he was still a man of power within Galt. When he sat
forward, elbows resting on his knees, Otah could imagine him beside a
campfire, working through the final details of the next morning's attack.
"Otah," the former general said, falling into his native tongue, "what
is your plan if the vote fails?"
Otah leaned back in his chair.
"I don't see why it should," Otah said. "All respect, but what Sterile
did, she did to both of us. Galt is in just as much trouble as the
cities of the Khaiem. Your men can't father children. Our women can't
bear them. We've gone almost fifteen years without children. The farms
are starting to feel the loss. The armies. The trades."
"I know all that," Balasar said, but Otah pressed on.
"Both of our nations are going to fall. They've been falling, but we're
coming close to the last chance to repair it. We might be able to
weather a single lost generation, but if there isn't another after that,
Galt will become Eymond's back gardens, and the Khaiem will be eaten by
whoever can get to us first. You know that Eymond is only waiting for
your army to age into weakness."
"And I know there are other peoples who weren't cursed," Balasar said.
"Eymond, certainly. And the Westlands. Bakta. Obar State."
"And there are a handful of half-bred children from matches like those
in the coastal cities," Otah said. "They're born to high families that
can afford them and hoarded away like treasure. And there are others
whose blood was mixed. Some have borne. Might that be enough, do you think?"
Balasar's smile was thin.
"It isn't," he said. "They won't suffice. Children can't be rarer than
silk and lapis. So few might as well be none. And why should Eymond or
Eddensea or the Westlands send their sons here to make families, when
they can wait a few more years and take what they want from a nation of
geriatrics? If the Khaiem and the Galts don't become one, we'll both be
forgotten. Our land will be taken, our cities will be occupied, and you
and I will spend our last years picking wild berries and stealing eggs
out of nests, because there won't be farm hands enough to keep us in bread."
"That was my thought as well," Otah said.
"So, no fallback position, eh?"
"None," Otah said. "It was raw hell getting the utkhaiem to agree to the
proposal I've brought. I take it the vote is going to fail?"
"The vote is going to fail," Balasar said.
Otah sat forward, his face cradled in his palms. The slight, acrid smell
of old ink on his fingers only made the darkness behind his closed lids
deeper.
Five months before, he had wrestled the last of the language in his
proposed treaty with Galt into shape. A hundred translators from the
high families and great trading houses had offered comment and
correction, and small wars had been fought in the halls and meeting
rooms of his palace at Utani, sometimes resulting in actual blows. Once,
memorably, a chair had been thrown and the chief overseer of House
Siyanti had suffered a broken finger.
Otah had set forth with an entourage of hundreds-court servants, guards,
representatives of every interest from Machi in the far, frozen north to
the island city of Chaburi-Tan, where ice was a novelty. The ships had
poured into the harbor flying brightly dyed sails and more banners and
good-luck pennants than the world had ever seen. For weeks and months,
Otah had made his arguments to any man of any power in the bizarre,
fluid government of his old enemy. And now, this.
"Can I ask why?" he said, his eyes still closed.
"Pride," Balasar said. Otah heard the sympathy in the softness of his
voice. "No matter how prettily you put it, you're talking about putting
our daughters in bed under your sons."
"And rather than that, they'll let everything die?" Otah said, looking
up at last. Balasar's gaze didn't waver. When the old Galt spoke, it was
with a sense of reason and consideration that might almost have made a