the guard to accompany Sinja and other ones to deliver to F.ustin. Then
he turned to the maps of Machi. Truly there was little choice. The poets
lived. Another night in the cold would mean losing more men. Balasar sat
for a long moment, quietly asking God to let this day end well; then he
walked out into the late-morning sun and gave the call to formation.
It was time.
23
Liat had expected panic-in herself and in the city. Instead there was a
strange, tense calm. Wherever she went, she was greeted with civility
and even pleasure. 'T'here were smiles and even laughter, and a sense of
purpose in the face of doom. In the interminable night, she had been
invited to join in three suppers, as many breakfasts, and howls of tea
without number. She had seen the highest of the utkhaicm sitting with
metalsmiths and common armsmcn. She had heard one of the famed choirs of
h~Iachi softly singing its Candles Night hymns.'1'he rules of society
had been suspended, and the human solidarity beneath it moved her to weep.
She and Kiyan had taken the news first to the Khai Cetani and the
captains of the battle that had once turned the Galts aside. When the
plans had come from Otah's small Council-where to place men, how to
resist the Galts as they tried to overrun the city-the Khai Cetani had
emerged with the duties of arming and armoring the men who could fight.
As the underground city was emptied of anything that could be used as a
weapon-hunting arrows, kitchen knives, even lengths of leather and
string cut from beds and fashioned into slings-Liar had seen children
too young to fight and men and women too old or frail or ill packed into
side galleries, the farthest from the fighting. Cots lined the walls,
piled with blankets. In some places, there were thick doors that could
be closed and pegged from the inside. 'T'hough If the Galts ever came
this far, it would hardly matter how difficult it was to open the doors.
Everything would already be lost.
Kiyan had made the physicians her personal duty-preparing one of the
higher galleries for the care of the wounded and dying who would he
coming back before the day's end. They'd managed seventy beds and
scavenged piles of cloth high as a man's waist, ready to pack wounds.
Bottles of distilled wine stood ready to case pain and clean cuts. A
firekeeper's kiln, cauterizing irons already glowing in its maw, had
been pulled in and the air was rich with the scent of poppy milk cooking
to the black sludge that would take away pain at one spoonful and grant
mercy with two. Liat walked between the empty beds, imagining them as
they would shortly be-canvas soaked with gore. And still the panic
didn't come.
By the entrance, one of the physicians was talking in a calm voice to
twenty or so girls and boys no older than Eiah, too young to fight, but
old enough to help care for the wounded. Kiyan was nowhere to he found,
and Liat wasn't sure whether she was pleased or dismayed.
She sat on one of the beds and let her eyes close. She had not slept all
the long night. She wouldn't sleep until the battle was ended. Which
meant, of course, that she might never sleep again. The thought carried
a sense of unreality that was, she thought, the essential mood of the