What she wished the Khai Saraykeht had done in response, what she would
have preferred he had not. Everything."
Liat's gaze went to Mlaati and then Cehmai and then hack to Otah. "There
was still a deep confusion in her expression.
"It's happened again," Otah said.
10
Given a half-decent road, the armies of Galt could travel faster than
any in the world. It was the steam wagons, Balasar reflected, that made
the difference. As long as there was wood or coal to burn and water for
the boilers, the carts could keep their pace at a fast walk. In addition
to the supplies they carried-food, armor, weapons that the men were then
spared-a tenth of the infantry could climb aboard the rough slats, rest
themselves, and eat. Rotated properly, his men could spend a full day at
fast march, make camp, and he rested enough by morning to do the whole
thing again. Balasar sat astride his horse-a nameless mare Eustin had
procured for him-and looked back over the valley; the sun dropping at
their back stretched their shadows to the east. Hundreds of plumes of
dark smoke and pale steam rose from the green silk banners rippling
above and beside them. The plain behind him was a single, ordered mass
of the army stretching hack, it seemed, to the horizon. Boots crushed
the grasses, steam wagons consumed the trees, horses tramped the ground
to mud. 'T'heir passing alone would scar these fields and meadows for a
generation.
And the whole of it was his. Balasar's will had gathered it and would
direct it, and despite all his late-night sufferings, in this moment he
could not imagine failure. Eustin cleared his throat.
"If they had found some andat to do this," Balasar said, "do you know
what would have happened?"
"Sir?" Eustin said.
"If the andat had done this-Wagon-'T'hat-Pulls-Itself or Horse-
l)oesn't-'l'ire, something like that-no one would ever have designed a
steam wagon. The merchants would have paid some price to the Khai, the
poet would have been set to it, and it would have worked until the poet
fell down stairs or failed to pass the andat on."
"Or until we came around," Eustin said, but Balasar wasn't ready to
leave his chain of thought for self-congratulations yet.
"And if someone had made the thing, had seen a way that any decent smith
could do what the Khai charged good silver for, he'd either keep it
quiet or find himself facedown in the river," Balasar said and then
spat. "It's no way to run a culture."
Eustin's mount whickered and shifted. Balasar sighed and shifted his
gaze forward to the rolling hills and grasslands where the first and
farthest-flung of Nantani's low towns dotted the landscape. Another day,
perhaps two, and he would be there. He was more than half tempted to
press on; night marches weren't unheard-of and the anticipation of what
lay before them sang to him, the hours pressing at him. But the summer
was hardly begun. Better not to suffer surprises too early in the
campaign. He moved a practiced gaze over the road ahead, considered the
distance between the reddening orb of the sun and the horizon, and made