The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(99)

Danat drew closer, his hands in a pose that both called for inclusion and offered sympathy. The boy might not know what had happened, but he'd drawn the fact that it wasn't good.

"Chaburi-Tan," Otah said, beginning with the least of the day's losses. "It's gone. Sacked. Burned. We don't know whether the mercenaries turned sides or simply wouldn't protect it, but it comes to the same thing. The pirates attacked the city, took what they could, and set the rest alight."

"And the fleet?"

Otah looked at the roadside. Sun had melted the snow as far as its light could reach, but the shadows were still pale. Otah had known Sinja Ajutani for more years than not. The dry humor, the casual disrespect of all things pompous or self-certain, the knife-sharp and unsentimental analysis of any issue. When Kiyan died, they had been the only two men in the world who truly understood what had been lost.

Now, only Otah knew.

"What ships remain have been set to guard the seafront at Saraykeht," he said when he could speak again. "The thought is that winter will protect Yalakeht and Amnat-Tan. When the thaw comes in spring, we may have to revisit the plan."

"Are you all right, Papa-kya?"

"I'll be fine," Otah said, then he raised his hand and called the courier close. "Tell them I read it. Tell them I understood."

The courier made his obeisance, turned his mount, and rode away. Otah let himself sit with his grief. The other letters for him could wait. They had come from his Master of Tides, and from others he'd named to watch the Empire crumble in his absence. Two had been for Ana Dasin, and he assumed they were from her parents. The letters had made their way up from Saraykeht and then along the low roads, tracking Otah and his party for days. And each day had marked the ending of lives, in Galt especially, but everywhere.

He had known that Sinja might die. He'd sent the fleet out knowing it might happen, and Sinja had gone without any illusions of safety. If it hadn't been this and now, it would have been something else at some other time. Every man and woman died, in time.

And in truth, death wasn't the curse he'd set out to break. All his work and sacrifice had been only so that they could balance the constant withering of age with some measure of renewal. He thought of his own children: Eiah, Danat, and even long-dead Nayiit. They had each of them been wagers he'd placed against a cruel world. A child comes into the world, and its father holds it close and thinks, If all goes as it should, I will die first. This one, I can love and never mourn for. That was all he wanted to leave for Danat and Eiah. The chance of knowing a love that they would never be called to bury. It was the world as it was intended to be.

He didn't notice Idaan riding close to him until she spoke. Her voice was gruff, but he imagined he could hear some offer of comfort in it.

"It's past time to shift. Crawl up on that cart and rest awhile. You've been riding that thing for five hands together."

"Have I?" Otah said. "I didn't notice."

"I know. It's why I came," she said. After a moment's pause, she added, "Danat told us what happened."

Otah took a pose that acknowledged having heard her, but nothing more than that. There wasn't anything more that could be meaningfully said. Idaan respected it and let him turn his horse aside and shift to the steamcart where Ana Dasin and Ashti Beg sat, their sightless eyes fixed on nothing. Otah sat on the wide boards not far from them, but not so near that their conversation would include him. Ana laughed at something Ashti Beg had said. The older woman looked vaguely pleased. Otah lay back, his closed eyes flooded with the red of sun and blood. He willed himself to sleep, certain that it would elude him.

He woke when the cart jerked to a halt. He sat up, half-thoughts of snapped axles and broken wheels forming and falling apart like mist in a high wind. When he was awake enough to make sense of the world, he saw that the sun had sunk almost to the treetops, and the cart was sitting in the yard of a wayhouse. The memory of the morning's foul message flooded back into him, but not so deeply as before. It would rise and fall, he knew. He would be jarred by the loss of his friend again and again and again, but less and less and less. It said something he didn't want to know that mourning had become so familiar. He plucked his traveling robes into their proper drape and lowered himself to the ground.

The one thing he truly didn't regret about the journey was that his servants were all in Utani or Saraykeht. Walking into the low, warm main room of the wayhouse without being surrounded by men and women wanting to change his robes or powder his feet was a small pleasure. He tried to savor it.

"Half a day east of here," a young man in a leather apron was saying, but he was pointing north. "Must have been five or six days ago. Raised ten kinds of trouble, then left in the middle of the night. So far as I can see, no one's talked about anything else since."

"Did you see them?" Danat asked. His voice had an edge, but Otah couldn't see his face to know if it was excitement or anger.

"Not myself, no," the young man said. "But it's the ones you asked after. An old man with a physician, and nothing but women traveling with him. There was even some talk he was trying to start a comfort house or something of that kind, but that was before the baby."

"Baby?" The voice was Ana's.

"Yes. Little one, not more than eight months old from the size. So I'm told. I didn't see him either, but they all saw him over at Chayiit's place. Walked right out in the middle of the main room."