"There will also he generations of soldiers ready to keep the cities safe."
Sinja scratched his belly and nodded.
"You think I'm wrong?"
"Yes. I think you're wrong," Sinja said. "I think you saw Seedless
escape. I think you saw Saraykeht stiffer the loss. You know that the
Galts have ambitions, and that they've put their hands into the affairs
of the Khaiem more than once."
"That doesn't make me wrong," Otah said, unable to keep the sudden anger
from his voice. So many years had passed, and the memory of Saraykeht
had not dimmed. "You weren't there, Sinja-cha. You don't know how had it
was. "That's mine. And if it lets me see farther than the Dai-kvo or the
Khaiem-"
"It's possible to look at the horizon so hard you trip over your feet,"
Sinja said, unfazed by Otah's heat. "You aren't responsible for
everything tinder the sky."
But I am responsible for that, Utah thought. He had never confessed his
role in the fall of Saraykeht to Sinja, never told the story of the time
he had killed a helpless man, of sparing an enemy and saving a friend.
The danger and complexity and sorrow of that time had never entirely
left him, but he could not call it regret.
"You want to keep the future safe," Sinja said, breaking the silence,
"and I respect that. But you can't do it by shitting on the table right
now. Alienating the Dai-kvo gains you nothing."
"What would you do, Sinja? If you were in my place, what would you do?"
"Take as much gold as I could put on a fast cart, and live out my life
in a beach hut on Bakta. But then I'm not particularly reliable." He
drained his bowl and put it down on the table, porcelain clicking softly
on lacquered wood. "What you should do is send us west."
"But the men aren't ready-"
"They're near enough. Without real experience, these poor bastards would
protect you from a real army about as well as sending out all the
dancing girls you could find. And now that I've said it, girls might
even slow them down longer."
Utah coughed a mirthless laugh. Sinja leaned forward, his eyes calm and
steady.
"Put us in the Westlands as a mercenary company," he said. "It gives
real weight to it when you tell the Dai-kvo that you're just looking for
another way to make money if we're already walking away from our
neighboring cities. The men will get experience; I'll be able to make
contacts with other mercenaries, maybe even strike up alliances with
some of the Wardens. You can even found your military tradition. But
besides that, there are certain problems with training and arming men,
and then not giving them any outlet."
Otah looked up, meeting Sinja's grim expression.
"More trouble?" Otah asked.
"I've whipped the men involved and paid reparations," Sinja said, "but
if the Dai-kvo doesn't like you putting together a militia, the fine
people of Machi are getting impatient with having them. We're paying
them to play at soldiers while everybody else's taxes buy their food and