An Autumn War(146)

"Most High," he said in the Khai's language. The Khai took a pose of greeting that was simple enough for a foreigner to understand but subtle enough to avoid condescension. "Forgive me, but am I speaking with Machi or Cetani?"

" Cetani broke his foot in the fighting. I am Otah Mlachi."

The Khai sat, and Balasar across from him. 'T'here were dark circles under the Khai's eyes. Fatigue, Balasar thought, and something more.

"So," the Khai Machi said. "blow do we stop this?"

Balasar raised his hands in what he believed was a request for clarification. It was one of the first things he'd learned when studying the Khaiate tongue, hack when he was a boy who had only just heard of the andat.

"We have to stop this," the Khai Machi said. "How do we do it?"

"You're asking for my surrender?"

"If you'd like."

"What are your terms?"

The Khai seemed to sag back in his chair. Balasar was pricked by the sense that he'd disappointed the man.

"Surrender your arms," the Khai said. "All of them. Swear to return to (salt and not attack any of the cities of the Khaiem again. Return what you've taken from us. Free the people you've enslaved."

"I won't negotiate for the other cities," Balasar began, but the Khai shook his head.

"I am the Emperor of all the cities," the man said. "We end it all here. All of it."

Balasar shrugged.

"All right, then. Emperor it is. Here are my terms. Surrender the poets, their library, the andat, yourself and your family, the Khai Cetani and his family, and we'll spare the rest."

"I've heard those terms before," the Emperor said. "So that takes us hack to where we started, doesn't it? How do we stop this?"

"As long as you have the andat, we can't," Balasar said. "As long as you can hold yourselves above the world and better than it, the threat you pose is too great to let you go on. If I die-if every man I have dies-and we can stop those things from being in the world, it's worth the price. So how do we stop it? We don't, Most High. You slaughter its for our impudence, and then pray to your gods that you can hold on to the power that protects you. Because when it slips, it'll he your turn with the executioner."

"I don't have an andat," the Emperor said. "We failed."

"But ..."

The Khai made a weary gesture that seemed to encompass the city, the plains, the sky. Everything.

"What happened to your men, happened to every Galtic man in the world. And it happened to our women. My wife. My daughter. Everyone else's wives and daughters in all the cities of the Khaiem. It was the price of failing the binding. You'll never father another child. My daughter will never hear one. And the same is true for both our nations. But I don't have an andat."

Balasar blinked. He had had more to say, but the words seemed suddenly empty. The Emperor waited, his eyes on Balasar.

"Ah," Balasar managed. "Well."

"So I'll ask you again. How do we stop this?"

Far above, a crow cawed in the chill air. The fire kilns roared in their mindless voices. The world looked sharp and clear and strange, as if Balasar were seeing the city for the first time.

"I don't know," he said. ""I'he poet?"

"'I'hev've fled. For fear that I would kill them. Or that one of my people would. Or one of yours. I don't have them, so I can't give them over to you. But I have their books. The libraries of Machi and Cetani, and what we salvaged from the I)ai-kvo. Give me your weapons. Give me your promise that you'll go back to Galt and not make war against us again. I'll burn the books and try to keep us all from starving next spring."

"I can't promise you what the Council will do. Especially once ... if..."

"Promise me you won't. You and your men. I'll worry about the others later."

There was strength in the man's voice. And sorrow. Balasar thought of all the things he knew of this man, all the things Sinja had told him. A seafront laborer, a sailor, a courier, an assistant midwife. And now a man who negotiated the fate of the world over a meeting table in a snow-packed square while thousands of soldiers who'd spent the previous day trying to kill one another looked on. He was unremarkableexhausted, grieving, determined. He could have been anyone.

"I'll need to talk to my men," Balasar said.

"Of course."

"I'll have an answer for you by sundown."

"If you have it by midday, we can get you someplace warm before night."

"Midday, then."

They rose together, Balasar taking a pose of respect, and the Emperor Otah Machi returning it.

"General," Otah said as Balasar began to turn away. His voice was gray as ashes. "One thing. You came because you believed the andat were too powerful, and the poet's hearts were too weak. You weren't wrong. The man who did this was a friend of mine. He's a good man. Good men shouldn't be able to make mistakes with prices this high."