"The coal?"
Otah took a confirming pose.
"'l'hey aren't built for forge coal," he said. "And the men we're facing? "They're soldiers, not smiths and ironmongers. "Where's no reason for them to look too closely at what they raid out of your stocks. Especially when they're pushing to get to Machi before the winter comes. If we leave them mixed coal, it'll burn too hot. The seams of their metalwork will soften, if the grates don't simply melt out from underneath."
"And so they have to come on foot or by horse?"
Otah remembered the twisted metal from the I)ai-kvo's village and allowed himself a smile.
"When those wagons break, it's more than only stopping. "They'll lose men just from that, and if we play it well, we can use the confusion to make things worse for them. And there's the other thing. They know we're going to lose. They have the strength, and we're unprepared. The only time we've faced them head-on, we were slaughtered. They know that we can't effectively fight them."
""IThat's a weakness?" the Khai Cetani asked.
"l'es. It keeps them from paying attention. To them, it's already over. Everything's certain but the details. That something else might happen isn't likely to occur to them. Why should it?"
The Khai Cetani looked into the fire. "I'he flames seemed to glitter in his dark eyes. When he spoke, his voice was grim.
"'They've made all the same mistakes we did."
Otah considered that for a moment before nodding.
""I'he Galts understand war," he said. "They're the best teachers I have. And so I'll do to them what they did to us."
"And to do that, you would have rne-Khai of my own cityabandon Cetani to follow your lead?"
"Yes," Otah said.
The Khai sat in silence for a long time, then rose. The rustle of his robes as he walked to the window was the only sound. Otah waited as the man looked out over the city. Over Cetani, the city for which this man had killed his brothers, for which he had given up his name. Otah felt the tension in his own hack and neck. Ile was asking this man to abandon everything, to walk away from the only role he had played in his life. Cetani would fall. It would be sacked. Even if everything went perfectly, there might he nothing to rebuild. And what would a Khai he if there was no city left him?
Many years before, Otah had asked another man to do the right thing, even though it would cost him his honor and prestige and the only place he had in the world. Heshai-kvo had refused, and he had died for the decision.
"Most High," Otah began, but the Khai Cetani held up a hand to stop him without even so much as looking back. Otah could see it in the man's shoulders in the moment the decision was made; they lifted as if a burden had been taken from him.
Chapter 18
Even the winter she had passed in Yalakeht had not prepared Liat for the fickleness of seasons in the North. Each day now was noticeably shorter than the one before, and even when the afternoons were warm, the sun pressing down benignly on her face, the nights were suddenly hitter. In the gardens, the leaves all lost their green at once, as if by conspiracy. It was unlike the near-imperceptible changes in the summer cities. In Saraykeht, autumn was a slow, lingering thing; the warmth of the world made a long good-bye. Things came faster here, and Liat found the pace disturbing. She was a woman of the South, and abrupt change uneased her.
For instance, she thought as she sipped smoky tea in her apartments, she still imagined herself a businesswoman of Saraykeht. Had anyone asked of her work, she would have spoken of the combing rooms, the warehouses. I lad anyone asked of her home, she would have described the seafront of Saraykeht, the scent of the ocean, the babble of a hundred languages. She would have pictured the brick-built house she'd taken over when Amat Kyaan had died, and the little bedroom with its window half-choked with vines. She hadn't seen that city in over a year, and wouldn't go back now before the spring at best.
At best.
At worst, Saraykeht itself might be gone. Or she might not live to see summer again.
The city in which she now passed her days was suffering from change as well. Small shrines with images of the vanished andat had begun to appear in the niches between buildings, as if a few flowers and candles could coax them back. The temples had been filled every day by men and women who might not have sat before a priest in years. The beggars singing with boxes at their feet all chose songs about redemption and the return of things lost.
She sipped her tea. It was no longer hot enough to scald her lips, but it felt good drinking it. It warmed her throat like wine, only without the casing in her muscles or the softness in her mind. The morning before her was full-coordinating the movement of food and fuel into the tunnels below Machi, the raising of stores into the high towers where they would wait out the cold of winter. "There wasn't time for dark thoughts. And yet the darkness came whether she courted it or not.