Read An Autumn War for Free Online Page A

immediate presence, but she had never meant to keep Nayiit so long from home and the family he had only recently begun.
    The news had reached Saraykeht last summer-almost a year ago now. It had hardly been more than a confluence of rumors-a Galtic ship in Nantani slipping away before its cargo had arrived, a scandal at the [)a[-kvo's village, inquiries discreetly made about a poet. And still, as her couriers arrived at the compound, Liat had felt unease growing in her. "There were few enough people who knew as she did that the house she ran had been founded to keep watch on the duplicity of the Gaits. Fewer still knew of the books she kept, as her mentor Amat Kyaan had before her, tracking the actions and strategies of the Galtic houses among the Khaiem, and it was a secret she meant to keep. So when tales of a missing poet began to dovetail too neatly with stories of Galtic intrigue in Nantani, there was no one whom she trusted the task to more than herself. She had been in Saraykeht for ten years. She decided to leave again the day that Nayiit's son Tai took his first steps.
    Looking back, she wondered why it had been so easy for Nayiit to come with her. He and his wife were happy, she'd thought. The baby boy was delightful, and the work of the house engaging. When he had made the offer, she had hidden her pleasure at the thought and made only slight objections. The truth was that the years they had spent on the road when Nayiit had been a child-the time between her break with Maati Vaupathai and her return to the arms of Saraykeht-held a powerful nostalgia for her. Alone in the world with only a son barely halfway to manhood, she had expected struggle and pain and the emptiness that she had always thought must accompany a woman without a man.
    The truth had been a surprise. Certainly the emptiness and struggle and pain had attended their travels. She and Nayiit had spent nights huddling under waxed-cloth tarps while chill rain pattered around them. They had eaten cheap food from low-town firekeepers. She had learned again all she'd known as a girl of how to mend a robe or a boot. And she had discovered a competence she had never believed herself to possess. Before that, she had always had a lover by whom to judge herself. With a son, she found herself stronger, smarter, more complete than she had dared pretend.
    The journey to Nantani had been a chance for her to relive that, one last time. Her son was a man now, with a child of his own. There wouldn't be many more travels, just the two of them. So she had put aside any doubts, welcomed him, and set off to discover what she could about Riaan Vaudathat, son of a high family of the Nantani utkhaiem and missing poet. She had expected the work to take a season, no more. They would be back in the compound of House Kyaan in time to spend the autumn haggling over contracts and shipping prices.
    And now it was spring, and she saw no prospect of sleeping in a bed she might call her own any time soon. Nayiit had not complained when it became clear that their investigation would require a journey to the village of the Dai-kvo. As a woman, Liat was not permitted beyond the low towns approaching it. She would need a man to do her business within the halls of the Dai-kvo's palaces. They had hooked passage to Yalakeht, and then upriver. They had arrived at mid-autumn and hardly finished their investigation before Candles Night. So far North, there had been no ship hack to Saraykeht, and Liat had taken apartments for them in the narrow, gated streets of Yalakeht for the winter.
    In the long, dark hours she had struggled with what she knew, and with the thaw and the first ships taking passages North, she had prepared to travel to AmnatTan, and then Cetani. And then, though the prospect made her sick with anxiety, Nlachi.
    A shout rose on the deck above them-a score of men calling out to each other-and the ship lurched and boomed. Nayiit blinked awake, looked over at her, and smiled. He