us both fed the best food and housed in the best brothels for the rest
of our lives, and I can't bring myself to enjoy a minute of it."
"You do tend to worry most when things are going well, sir."
They reached a place where the mud path split, one way to the west, the
other to the North. Balasar put out his hand, and Eustin took it. For a
moment, they weren't general and captain. They were friends and
conspirators in the plot to save the world. Balasar found his anxiety
ebbing, felt the grin on his face and saw it mirrored in his man's.
"Meet me in Tan-Sadar before the leaves turn," Balasar said. "We'll see
then whether Coal has use for us or if it's time to go home."
"I'll he there, sir," Eustin said. "Rely on it. And as a favor to nee?
Keep an eye on Ajutani."
"Both, when I can spare them," Balasar promised. And then they parted.
Balasar walked through the thin mud and low grass to the camp at the
head of the first legion. His groom stood waiting, a fresh horse
munching contentedly at the roadside weeds. A second horse stood beside
it, a rider in the saddle looking out bemused at the men and the rolling
hills and the horizon beyond.
"Captain Ajutani," Balasar said, and the rider turned and saluted.
"You're ready for the march?"
"At your command, General."
Balasar swung himself up onto the horse and accepted the reins from his
groom.
"'T'hen let's begin," he said. "We've got a war to finish."
IT HAD TAKEN A FEW LENGI'IIS OF COPPER TO CONVINCE'FIlE KEEPERS OF THE
wide platforms to unhook their chains and haul her skyward, but Liat
didn't care. The dread in her belly made small considerations like money
seem trivial. Money or food or sleep. She stood now at the open sky
doors and looked out to the south and east, where the men of Machi made
their way through the high green grasses of summer. From this distance,
they looked like a single long black mark on the landscape. She could no
more make out an individual wagon or rider than she could take to the
air and fly. And still she strained her eyes, because one part of that
distant mark was her only son.
Ile had only told her when it was already done. She had been in her
apartments-the apartments given her by the man who had once been her
lover. She had been thinking of how a merchant or tradesman who took in
an old lover so casually would have been the subject of gossipeven a
member of the utkhaiem would have had answers to make-hut the Khai was
above that. She had gone as far as wondering, not for the first time,
what Kiyan-cha thought and felt on the matter, when Nayiit had scratched
at her door and let himself in.
She knew when she saw his face that something had happened. "There was a
light in his eyes brighter than candles, but his smile was the
too-charming one he always employed when he'd done something he feared
she'd fault him for. Her first thought was that he'd offered to marry
some local girl. She took a pose that asked the question even before he
could speak.
"Sit with me," he said and took her by the hand.