Shadow and Betrayal

by Daniel Abraham

  ‘Otah thought it might be better not to attend. Until he knew whether you intended to help him or have him killed.’

  ‘He’s wise. Just the poet, then,’ Radaani said. ‘The others don’t matter.’

  Maati nodded and left the room. The teahouse proper was a wide, low room with fires burning low in two corners. Radaani’s servants were drinking something that Maati doubted was only tea and talking with one of the couriers of House Siyanti. There would be more information from that, he guessed, than from the more formal meeting. At the door to the back room, Sinja leaned back in a chair looking bored but commanding a view of every approach.

  ‘Well?’ Sinja asked.

  ‘He’d like to speak with Cehmai-cha.’

  ‘But not the others?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘He doesn’t care if it’s true, then. Just whether the poets are backing our man,’ Sinja let his chair down and stood, stretching. ‘The forms of power are fascinating stuff. Reminds me why I started fighting for a living.’

  Maati opened the door. The back room was quieter, though the rush of rain was everywhere. Cehmai and the andat were sitting by the fire. The huntsman Sinja-cha had tracked down was at a small table, half drunk. It was best, perhaps, that Radaani hadn’t wanted him. And three armsmen in the colors of House Siyanti also lounged about. Cehmai looked up, meeting Maati’s gaze. Maati nodded.

  Radaani’s expression when Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft entered the room was profoundly satisfied. It was as if the young poet’s presence answered all the questions that were important to ask. Still, Maati watched Cehmai take a pose of greeting and Radaani return it.

  ‘You wished to speak with me?’ Cehmai asked. His voice was low and tired. Maati could see how much this moment was costing him.

  ‘Your fellow poet here’s told me quite a tale,’ Radaani said. ‘He says that Otah Machi’s not dead, and that Idaan Machi’s the one who arranged her family’s death.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Cehmai agreed.

  ‘I see. And you were the one who brought that to light?’

  ‘That’s so.’

  Radaani paused, his lips pursed, his fingers knotted around each other.

  ‘Does the Dai-kvo back the upstart, then?’

  ‘No,’ Maati said before Cehmai could speak. ‘We take no side in this. We support the council’s decision, but that doesn’t mean we withhold the truth from the utkhaiem.’

  ‘As Maati-kvo says,’ Cehmai agreed. ‘We are servants here.’

  ‘Servants with the world by its balls,’ Radaani said. ‘It’s easy, Cehmai-cha, to support a position in a side room with no one much around to hear you. It’s a harder thing to say the same words in front of the gods and the court and the world in general. If I take this to the council and you decide that perhaps it wasn’t all quite what you’ve said it was, it will go badly for me.’

  ‘I’ll tell what I know,’ Cehmai said. ‘Whoever asks.’

  ‘Well,’ Radaani said, then more than half to himself, ‘Well well well.’

  In the pause that followed, another roll of thunder rattled the shutters. But Porsha Radaani’s smile had faded into something less amused, more serious. We have him, Maati thought. Radaani clapped his hands on his thighs and stood.

  ‘I have some conversations I’ll have to conduct, Maati-cha,’ he said. ‘You understand that I’m taking a great personal risk doing this? Me and my family both.’

  ‘And I know that Otah-kvo will appreciate that,’ Maati said. ‘In my experience, he has always been good to his friends.’

  ‘That’s best,’ Radaani said. ‘After this, I expect he’ll have about two of them. Just so long as he remembers what he owes me.’

  ‘He will. And so will the Kamau and the Vaunani. And I imagine a fair number of your rival families will be getting less favorable terms from the Galts in the future.’

  ‘Yes. That had occurred to me too.’

  Radaani smiled broadly and took a formal pose of leave-taking that included the room and all three of them in it - the two poets, the one spirit. When he was gone, Maati went to the window again. Radaani was walking fast down the street, his servants half-skipping to keep the canopy over him. His limp was almost gone.

  Maati closed the shutters.

  ‘He’s agreed?’ Cehmai asked.

  ‘As near as we can expect. He smells profit in it for himself and disappointment for his rivals. That’s the best we can offer, but I think he’s pleased enough to do the thing.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Maati sat in the chair Radaani had used, sighing. Cehmai leaned against the table, his arms folded. His mouth was thin, his eyes dark. He looked more than half ill. The andat pulled out the chair beside him and sat with a mild, companionable expression.

  ‘What did the Dai-kvo say?’ Cehmai asked. ‘In the letter?’

  ‘He said I was under no circumstances to take sides in the succession. He repeated that I was to return to his village as soon as possible. He seems to think that by involving myself in all this court intrigue, I may be upsetting the utkhaiem. And then he went into a long commentary about the andat being used in political struggle as the reason that the Empire ate itself.’

  ‘He’s not wrong,’ Cehmai said.

  ‘Well, perhaps not. But it’s late to undo it.’

  ‘You can blame me if you’d like,’ Cehmai said.

  ‘I think not. I chose what I’d do, and I don’t think I chose poorly. If the Dai-kvo disagrees, we can have a conversation about it.’

  ‘He’ll throw you out,’ Cehmai said.

  Maati thought for a moment of his little cell at the village, of the years spent in minor tasks at the will of the Dai-kvo and the poets senior to himself. Liat had asked him to leave it all a hundred times, and he’d refused. The prospect of failure and disgrace faced him now, and he heard her words, saw her face, and wondered why it had all seemed so wrong when she’d said it and so clear now. Age perhaps. Experience. Some tiny sliver of wisdom that told him that in the balance between the world and a woman, either answer could be right.

  ‘I’m sorry for all this, Cehmai. About Idaan. I know how hard this is for you.’

  ‘She picked it. No one made her plot against her family.’

  ‘But you love her.’

  The young poet frowned now, then shrugged.

  ‘Less now than I did two days ago,’ he said. ‘Ask again in a month. I’m a poet, after all. There’s only so much room in my life. Yes, I loved her. I’ll love someone else later. Likely someone that hasn’t set herself to kill off her relations.’

  ‘It’s always like this,’ Stone-Made-Soft said. ‘Every one of them. The first love always comes closest. I had hopes for this one. I really did.’

  ‘You’ll live with the disappointment,’ Cehmai said.

  ‘Yes,’ the andat said amiably. ‘There’s always another first girl.’

  Maati laughed once, amused though it was also unbearably sad. The andat shifted to look at him quizzically. Cehmai’s hands took a pose of query. Maati tried to find words to fit his thoughts, surprised by the sense of peace that the prospect of his own failure brought him.

  ‘You’re who I was supposed to be, Cehmai-kvo, and you’re much better at it. I never did very well.’

  Idaan leaned forward, her hands on the rail. The gallery behind her was full but restless, the air thick with the scent of their bodies and perfumes. People shifted in their seats and spoke in low tones, prepared for some new attack, and Idaan had noticed a great fashion for veils that covered the heads and necks of men and women alike that tucked into their robes like netting on a bed. The wasps had done their work, and even if they were gone now, the feeling of uncertainty remained. She took another deep breath and tried to play her role. She was the last blood of her murdered father. She was the bride of Adrah Vaunyogi. Looking down over the council, her part was to remind them of how Adrah’s marriage connected him to the old line of the Khaiem.

  And yet
she felt like nothing so much as an actor, put out to sing a part on stage that she didn’t have the range to voice. It had been so recently that she’d stood here, inhabiting this space, owning the air and the hall around her. Today, everything was the same - the families of the utkhaiem arrayed at their tables, the leaves-in-wind whispering from the galleries, the feeling of eyes turned toward her. But it wasn’t working. The air itself seemed different, and she couldn’t begin to say why.

  ‘The attack leveled against this council must not weaken us,’ Daaya, her father now, half-shouted. His voice was hoarse and scratched. ‘We will not be bullied! We will not be turned aside! When these vandals tried to make mockery of the powers of the utkhaiem, we were preparing to consider my son, the honorable Adrah Vaunyogi, as the proper man to take the place of our lamented Khai. And to that matter we must return.’

  Applause filled the air, and Idaan smiled sweetly. She wondered how many of the people now present had heard her cry out Cehmai’s name in her panic. Those that hadn’t had no doubt heard it from other lips. She had kept clear of the poet’s house since then, but there hadn’t been a moment her heart hadn’t longed toward it. He would understand, she told herself. He would forgive her absence once this was all finished. All would be well.

  And yet, when Adrah looked up to her, when their gaze met, it was like looking at a stranger. He was beautiful: his hair fresh cut, his robes of jeweled silk. He was her husband, and she no longer knew him.

  Daaya stepped down, glittering, and Adaut Kamau rose. If, as the gossipmongers had told, the wasps had been meant to keep old Kamau silent that day, this would be the moment when something more should follow. The galleries became suddenly quiet as the old man stepped to the stage. Even from across the hall, Idaan could see the red weal on his face where the sting had marked him.

  ‘I had intended,’ he said, ‘to speak in support of Ghiah Vaunani in his urging of caution and against hasty decision. Since that time, however, my position has changed, and I would like to invite my old, dear friend Porsha Radaani to address the council.’

  With nothing more than that, old Kamau stepped down. Idaan leaned forward, looking for the green and gray robes of the Radaani. And there, moving between the tables, was the man striding toward the speaker’s dais. Adrah and his father were bent together, speaking swiftly and softly. Idaan strained to hear something of what they said. She didn’t notice how tight she was holding the rail until her fingers started to ache with it.

  Radaani rose up in the speaker’s pulpit, looking over the council and the galleries for the space of a half-dozen breaths. His expression was considering, like a man at a fish market judging the freshest catch. Idaan felt her belly tighten. Below her and across the hall, Radaani lifted his arms to the crowd.

  ‘Brothers, we have come here in these solemn times to take the fate of our city into our hands,’ he intoned, and his voice was rich as cream. ‘We have suffered tragedy and in the spirit of our ancestors, we rise to overcome it. No one can doubt the nobility of our intentions. And yet the time has come to dissolve this council. There is no call to choose a new Khai Machi when a man with legitimate claim to the chair still lives.’

  The noise was like a storm. Voices rose and feet stamped. On the council floor, half the families were on their feet, the others sitting with stunned expressions. And yet it was as if it were happening in some other place. Idaan felt the unreality of the moment wash over her. It was a dream. A nightmare.

  ‘I have not stood down!’ Radaani shouted. ‘I have not finished! Yes, an heir lives! And he has the support of my family and my house! Who among you will refuse the son of the Khai Machi his place? Who will side with the traitors and killers that slaughtered his father?’

  ‘Porsha-cha!’ one of the men of the council said, loud enough to carry over the clamor. ‘Explain yourself or step down! You’ve lost your mind!’

  ‘I’ll better that! Brothers, I give my place before you to the son of the Khai and his one surviving heir!’

  Had she thought the hall loud before? It was deafening. No one was left seated. Bodies pressed at her back, jostling her against the railing as they craned and stretched for a glimpse of the man entering the chamber. He stood tall and straight, his dark robes with their high collar looking almost priestly. Otah Machi, the upstart, strode into the hall, with the grace and calm of a man who owned it and every man and woman who breathed air.

  He’s mad, she thought. He’s gone mad to come here. They’ll tear him apart with their hands. And then she saw behind him the brown robes of a poet - Maati Vaupathai, the envoy of the Dai-kvo. And behind him . . .

  Her mouth went dry and her body began to tremble. She shrieked, she screamed, but no one could hear her over the crowd. She couldn’t even hear herself. And yet, walking at Maati’s side, Cehmai looked up. His face was grim and calm and distant. The poets strode together behind the upstart. And then the armsmen of Radaani and Vaunani, Kamau and Daikani and Saya. Hardly a tenth of the families of the utkhaiem, but still a show of power. The poets alone would have been enough.

  She didn’t think, couldn’t recall pushing back the people around her, she only knew her own intentions when she was over the rail and falling. It wasn’t so far to the ground - no more than the height of two men, and yet in the roar and chaos, the drop seemed to last forever. When she struck the floor at last, it jarred her to the bone. Her ankle bloomed with pain. She put it aside and ran as best she could through the stunned men of the utkhaiem. Men all about her, unable to act, unable to move. They were like statues, frozen by their uncertainty and confusion. She knew that she was screaming - she could feel it in her throat, could hear it in her ears. She sounded crazed, but that was unimportant. Her attention was single, focused. The rage that possessed her, that lifted her up and sped her steps by its power alone, was only for the upstart, Otah Machi, who had taken her lover from her.

  She saw Adrah and Daaya already on the floor, an armsman kneeling on each back. There was a blade still in Adrah’s hand. And then there before her like a fish rising to the surface of a pond was Otah Machi, her brother. She launched herself at him, her hands reaching for him like claws. She didn’t see how the andat moved between them; perhaps it had been waiting for her. Its wide, cold body appeared, and she collided with it. Huge hands wrapped her own, and the wide, inhuman face bent close to hers.

  ‘Stop this,’ it said. ‘It won’t help.’

  ‘This isn’t right!’ she shouted, aware now that the pandemonium had quieted, that her voice could be heard, but she could no more stop herself now than learn to fly. ‘He swore he’d protect me. He swore it. It’s not right!’

  ‘Nothing is,’ the andat agreed, as it pulled her aside, lifted her as if she was still a child, and pressed her against the wall. She felt herself sinking into it, the stone giving way to her like mud. She fought, but the wide hands were implacable. She shrieked and kicked, sure that the stone would close over her like water, and then she stopped fighting. Let it kill her, let her die.

  Let it end.

  The hands went away, and Idaan found herself immobile, trapped in stone that had found its solidity again. She could breathe, she could see, she could hear. She opened her mouth to scream, to call for Cehmai. To beg. Stone-Made-Soft put a single finger to her lips.

  ‘It won’t help,’ the andat said again, then turned and lumbered up beside the speaker’s pulpit where Cehmai stood waiting for it. She didn’t look at her brother as he took the pulpit, only Cehmai. He didn’t look back at her. When Otah spoke, his words cut through the air, clean and strong as wine.

  ‘I am Otah Machi, sixth son of the Khai Machi. I have never renounced my claim to this place; I have never killed or plotted to kill my brothers or my father. But I know who has, and I have come here before this council to show you what has been done, and by whom, and to claim what is mine by right.’

  Idaan closed her eyes and wept, surprised to find her desolation complicated by relief.

  ‘I not
ice you never mentioned the Galts,’ Amiit said.

  The waiting area to which the protocol servant had led them was open and light, looking out over a garden of flowering vines. A silver bowl with water cooling fresh peaches sat on a low table. Amiit leaned against the railing. He looked calm, but Otah could see the white at the corners of his mouth and the small movements of his hands; Amiit’s belly was as much in knots as his own.

  ‘There was no call,’ Otah said. ‘The families that were involved know that they were being used, and if they only suspect that I know it, that’s almost as good as being sure. How long are we going to have to wait?’

  ‘Until they’ve finished deciding whether to kill you as a murderer or raise you up as the Khai Machi,’ Amiit said. ‘It shouldn’t take long. You were very good out there.’

  ‘You could sound more sure of all this.’