An Autumn War by Daniel Abraham Read Free Book Online Page A

was the Khai Machi. And Maati, with whom she had betrayed him. The idea tightened her throat every time she thought of it.
    Maati. Nayiit was going to see hlaati, perhaps to confront him, perhaps to seek the sort of advice that a son can ask only of a father. Something, perhaps, that touched on the finer points of going to foreign bathhouses with young women in snowfox robes. Liat sighed.
    Nayiit had been thinking about what it would he to walk away from his wife, the son he'd brought to the world. He'd said as much, and more than once. She had thought it was a question based in anger-an accusation against Nlaati. It only now occurred to her that perhaps there was also longing in it, and she thought to wonder how complex her quiet, pleasant son's heart might he.
    BALASAR LEANED OVER THE BALCONY AND LOOKED DOWN A'1" HE COVRTYARI) below. A crowd had gathered, talking animatedly with the brownskinned, almond-eyed curiosity he had spirited from across the sea. They peppered him with questions-why was he called a poet when he didn't write poems, what did he think of Acton, how had he learned to speak Galtic so well. "Their eyes were bright and the conversation as lively as water dropped on a hot skillet. For his part, Riaan Vaudathat drank it all in, answering everything in the slushy singsong accent of the Khaiem. When the people laughed, he joined in as if they were not laughing at him. Perhaps he truly didn't know they were.
    Riaan glanced up and saw him, raising his hands in a pose that Balasar recognized as a form of greeting, though he couldn't have said which of the half-thousand possible nuances it held. He only waved in return and stepped away from the edge of the balcony.
    "It's like I've taught a dog to wear clothes and talk," Balasar said, lowering himself onto a bench beside Tustin.
    "Yes, sir."
    ""They don't understand."
    "You can't expect them to, sir. "They're simple folk, most of 'em. Never been as far as Eddensea. "They've been hearing about the Khaiem and the poets and the andat all their lives, but they've never seen 'em. Now they have the chance."
    "Well, it'll help my popularity at the games," Balasar said, his voice more bitter than he'd intended.
    ""They don't know the things we do, sir. You can't expect them to think like us."
    "And the High Council? Can I expect it of them? Or are they in chambers talking about the funny brown man who dresses like a girl?"
    Eustin looked down, silent for long enough that Balasar began to regret his tone.
    "All fairness, sir," Eustin said, "the robes do look like a girl's."
    It was six years now since he and Eustin and Coal had returned to the hereditary estate outside Kirinton, half a year since they had recruited the fallen poet of Nantani, and three weeks since Balasar had received the expected summons. He'd come to Acton with his best men, the hooks, the poet, the plans. The High Council had heard him out-the dangers of the andat, the need to end the supremacy of the Khaiem. That part had gone quite well. No one seriously disputed that the Khaiem were the single greatest threat to Galt. It was only when he began to reveal his plans and how far he had already gone that the audience began to turn sour on him.
    Since then, the Council had met without him. They might have been debating the plan he had laid out before them, or they might have moved to other business, leaving him to soak in his own sweat. He and Eustin and the poet Riaan had lived in the apartments assigned to them. Balasar had spent his days sitting outside the Council's halls and meeting chambers, and his nights walking the starlit streets, restless as a ghost. Each hour that passed was wasted. Every night was one less that he would have in the autumn when the end of his army was racing against the snow and cold of the Khaiate North. If the Council's intention had been to set him on edge, they had done their work.
    A flock of birds, black as crows but thinner, burst from the walnut trees beyond the