utkhaiem alikeseemed stunned by the change. They were polite and
accommodating because Balasar's men were armed and practiced and
thousands strong, but as Balasar walked down the long, winding red brick
streets, he had the feeling that "Ian-Sadar was hoping to wake from this
nightmare and find the world once again as it had been. A hard, bitter
wind came from the North, and behind it, the season's first thin,
tentative snow.
lie found his mind turning hack to the west and home. The darkness
Eustin had seen in him grew with the prospect of returning. The years he
had spent gathering the threads of his campaign had come to their end;
that it was ending in triumph only partly forgave that it was ending. He
found himself wondering who he would be now that he was no longer the
man driven to destroy the andat. In the mornings, he imagined himself
living on his hereditary estate near Kirinton, perhaps taking a wife.
Perhaps teaching in one of the military academics. All his old dreams
revisited. As the sun peaked low in the sky and scuttled toward the
horizon, the fantasy darkened too. He would be a racing dog with nothing
left to chase. And worst, in the dark of the nights, he tried to sleep,
his mind pricked by another day gone by without word from the North and
the sick fear that despite all their successes, something had gone wrong.
And then, on a cold, clear morning, the courier from Coal arrived. Only
it wasn't from Coal. Not really. Because Coal was dead, and Balasar had
another ghost at his heels.
""I'hey came without warning," Balasar said. ""They were hiding in the
trees, like street bandits. He was the first to fall."
"I'm sorry to hear it," Sinja said. "It was a dishonorable attack. Not
that the honorable one did them much good from what I've heard."
Eustin's face might have been carved from stone.
"You have a point to make, Captain?" Balasar asked.
"Only that he did make an honest man's try on the field outside the
Dal-kvo's village, and he failed. "There's only so much you can count
against him that he tried a different tack."
He killed my men, Balasar wanted to say. Wanted to shout. He killed Coal.
Instead, he paced the length of the wide parlor, staring at the maps
he'd unrolled after he'd unsewn the letter from the remnants of the
northern force. The oil lamps hung from their chains, adding a thick
buttery light to the thin gray sunlight that filtered in from the
windows. Cetani was occupied, but the library was emptied, Khai and poet
missing along with the full population of the city. Machi remained. The
last of the poets, the last of the books, the last of the Khaiem. His
fingertips traced the route that would take him there.
"It's no use, General," Sinja said. "You can't put an army in the field
this late in the season. It's too cold. One half-decent storm will
freeze them to death."
"It's still autumn," Dustin said. "Winter's not come quite yet."
"It's a Northern autumn," Sinja said. "You're thinking it's like
Eddensea, but I'll tell you it's not. There's no ocean nearby to hold
the heat in. General, Machi isn't going anywhere between now and the
first thaw. The Dal-kvo's meat on a stick. Your man burned his books.