A Betrayal in Winter

by Daniel Abraham

  "Is there anything I can do for you, Maati-cha?" the librarian asked again.

  `.. Thank You, Baarath-cha, but no. I'm quite well."

  The librarian took a step forward all the same. His hands seemed to twitch towards the books and scrolls that Maati had gathered to look over. The man's smile was fixed, his eyes glassy. In his worst moments, Maati had considered pretending to catch one of the ancient scrolls on fire, if only to see whether Baarath's knees would buckle.

  "Because, if there was anything ..."

  "Nlaati-cha?" The familiar voice of the young poet rang from the front of the library. Maati turned to see Cehmai stride into the chamber with a casual pose of welcome to Baarath. He dropped into a chair across from Maati's own. The librarian was trapped for a moment between the careful formality he had with Maati and the easy companionship he appeared to enjoy with Cehmai. He hesitated for a moment, then, frowning, retreated.

  "I'm sorry about him," Cehmai said. "He's an ass sometimes, but he is good at heart."

  "If you say so. And what brings you? I thought there was another celebration of the Khai's daughter making a match."

  "A messenger's come from the Dai-kvo," Cehmai said, lowering his voice so that Baarath, no doubt just behind the corner and listening, might not make out the words. "He says it's important."

  Maati sat up, his belly twingeing a bit. His messages couldn't have reached the Dai-kvo's village and returned so soon. This had to be something that had been sent before word of his injury had gone out, which meant the Dai-kvo had found something, or wished something done, or ... He noticed Cehmai's expression and paused.

  "Is the seal not right?"

  "There is no seal," Cehmai said. "There is no letter. The messenger says he was instructed to only speak the message to you, in private. It was too important, he said, to be written."

  "That seems unlikely," Maati said.

  "Doesn't it?"

  "Where is he now?"

  "They brought him to the poet's house when they heard who had sent him. I've had him put in a courtyard in the Fourth Palace. A walled one, with armsmen to keep him there. If this is a fresh assassin ..

  "Then he'll answer more questions than the last one can," Maati said. ""Take me there."

  As they left, Maati saw Baarath swoop down on the hooks and scrolls like a mother reunited with her babe. Maati knew that they would all he hidden in obscure drawers and shelves by the time he came hack. Some, he would likely never see again.

  The sun was moving toward the mountain peaks in the west, early evening descending on the valley. They walked together down the white gravel path that led to the Fourth Palace, looking, Maati was sure, like nothing so much as a teacher and his student in their matching brown poet's robes. Except that Cehmai was the man who held the andat, and Maati was only a scholar. They didn't speak, but Maati felt a knot of excitement and apprehension tightening in him.

  At the palace's great hall, a servant met them with a pose of formal welcome that couldn't hide the brightness in her eyes. At a gesture, she led them down a wide corridor and then up a flight of stairs to a gallery that looked down into the courtyard. Maati forced himself to breathe deeply as he stepped to the edge and looked down, Cehmai at his side.

  The space was modest, but lush. Thin vines rose along one wall and part of another. Two small, sculpted maple trees stood, one at either end of a long, low stone bench. It looked like a painting-the perfectly balanced garden, with the laborer in his ill-cut robes the only thing out of place. A breeze stirred the branches of the trees with a sound equal parts flowing water and dry pages turning. Maati stepped hack. His throat was tight, but his head felt perfectly clear. So this was how it would happen. Very well.

  Cehmai was frowning down warily at Otah-kvo. Maati put his hand on the young man's shoulder.

  "I have to speak with him," Maati said. "Alone."

  "You don't think he's a threat?"

  "It doesn't matter. I still need to speak with him."

  "Maati-kvo, please take one of the armsmen. Even if you keep him at the far end of the yard, you can ..."

  Maati took a pose that refused this, and saw something shift in the young man's eyes. Respect, Maati thought. He thinks I'm being brave. How odd that I was that young once.

  "Take me there," Maati said.

  OTAH SAT IN THE GARDEN, HIS BACK AND NECK TIGHT FROM RIDING AND from fear, and remembered being young in the summer cities. In one of the low towns outside Saraykeht, there had been a rock at the edge of a cliff that jutted out over the water so that, when the tide was just right, a boy of thirteen summers might step out to its edge and peer past his toes at the ocean below him and feel like a bird. There had been a hand of them-the homeless young scraping by on pity and small laborwho had dared each other to dive from that cliff. The first time he had made the leap himself, he had been sure the moment his feet left the rough, hot stone that he would die. That pause, divorced from earth and water, willing himself hack up, trying to force himself to fly and take hack that one irrevocable moment, had felt very much like sitting quiet and alone in this garden. The trees shifted like slow dancers, the flowers trembled, the stone glowed where the sun struck it and faded to gray where it did not. He rubbed his fingers against the gritty bench to remind himself where he was, and to keep the panic in his breast from possessing him.

  He heard the door slide open with a whisper, and then shut again. He rose, forcing his body to move deliberately and took a pose of greeting even before he looked up. Maati Vaupathai. 'l'ime had thickened him, and there was a sorrow in the lines of his face that hadn't been there even in the weary days when he had stood between his master Heshaikvo and the death that had eventually come. Otah wondered whether that change had sprung from Heshai's murder, and whether Maati had ever guessed that Otah had been the one who drew the cord across the old poet's throat.

  Maati took a pose of welcome appropriate for a student to a teacher.

  "It wasn't me," Otah said. "My brother. You. I had nothing to do with any of it."

  "I had guessed that." Maati said. He did not come nearer.

  "Are you going to call the armsmen? There must be half a dozen out there. Your student could have been more subtle in calling them."

  "'There's more than that, and he isn't my student. I don't have any students. I don't have anything." A strange smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "I have been something of a disappointment to the Daikvo. Why are you here?"

  "Because I need help," Otah said, "and I hoped we might not be enemies.

  Maati seemed to weigh the words. He walked to the bench, sat, and leaned forward on clasped hands. Otah sat beside him, and they were silent. A sparrow landed on the ground before them, cocked its head, and fluttered madly away again.

  "I came back because it was controlling me," Otah said. "This place. These people. I've spent a lifetime leaving them, and they keep coming back and destroying everything I build. I wanted to see it. I wanted to look at the city and my brothers and my father."

  He looked at his hands.

  "I don't know what I wanted," Otah said.

  "Yes," Maati said, and then, awkwardly, "It was foolish, though. And there will be consequences."

  "There have been already."

  "There'll be more."

  Again, the silence loomed. There was too much to say, and no order for it. Otah frowned hard, opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again.

  "I have a son," Maati said. "Liat and I have a son. His name's Nayiit. He's probably just old enough now that he's started to notice that girls aren't always repulsive. I haven't seen them in years."

  "I didn't know," Otah said.

  "How would you? The Dal-kvo said that I was a fool to keep a family. I am a poet, and my duty is to the world. And when I wouldn't renounce them, I fell from favor. I was given duties that might as well have been done by an educated slave. And you know, there was an odd kind of pride about it for a while. I was given clothing, shelter, food for myself.
Only for myself. I thought of leaving. Of folding my robes on the bed and running away as you did. I thought of you, the way you had chosen your own shape for your life instead of the shapes that were offered you. I thought I was doing the same. Gods, Otah-kvo, I wish you had been here. All these years, I wish I had been able to talk to you. To someone.

  "I'm sorry...."

  Maati raised a hand to stop him.

  "My son," Maati said, then his voice thickened, and he coughed and began again. "Liat and I parted ways. My low status among the poets didn't have the air of romance for her that I saw in it. And ... there were other things. Raising my son called for money and time and I had little to spare of either. My son is thirteen summers. Thirteen. She was carrying him before we left Saraykeht."

  Otah felt the words as if he'd been struck an unexpected blow-a sensation of shock without source or location, and then the flood. Maati glanced over at him and read his thoughts from his face, and he nodded.

  "I know," Maati said. "She told me about bedding you that one time after you came back, before you left again. Before Heshai-kvo died and Seedless vanished. I suppose she was afraid that if I discovered it someday and she hadn't said anything it would make things worse. She told me the truth. And she swore that my son was mine. And I believe her."

  "Do you?"

  "Of course not. I mean, some days I did. When he was young and I could hold him in one arm, I was sure that he was mine. And then some nights I would wonder. And even in those times when I was sure that he was yours, I still loved him. That was the worst of it. The nights I lay awake in a village where women and children aren't allowed, in a tiny cell that stank of the disapproval of everyone I had ever hoped to please. I knew that I loved him, and that he wasn't mine. No, don't. Let me finish. I couldn't be a father to him. And if I hadn't fathered him either, what was there left but watching from a distance while this little creature grew up and away from me without even knowing my heart was tucked in his sleeve."

  Maati wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand.

  "Liat said she was tired of my always mourning, that the boy deserved some joy; that she did too. So after that I didn't have them, and I didn't have the respect of the people I saw and worked beside. I was eaten by guilt over losing them, and having taken her from you. I thought that she would have been happy with you. That you would have been happy with her. If only I hadn't broken faith with you, the world might have been right after all. And you might have stayed.

  "And that has been my life until the day they called on me to hunt you.

  "I see," Otah said.

  "I have missed your company so badly, Otah-kya, and I have never hated anyone more. I have been waiting for years to say that. So. Now I have, what was it you wanted from me?"

  Otah caught his breath.

  "I wanted your help," he said. "There's a woman. She was my lover once. When I told her ... when I told her about my family, my past, she turned me out. She was afraid that knowing me would put her and the people she was responsible for in danger."

  "She's wise, then," Maati said.

  "I hoped you would help me protect her," Otah said. His heart was a lump of cold lead. "Perhaps that was optimistic."

  Maati laughed. The sound was hollow.

  "And how would I do that?" Maati asked. "Kill your brothers for you? Tell the Khai that the Dai-kvo had decreed that she was not to be harmed? I don't have that power. I don't have any power at all. This was my chance at redemption. They called upon me to hunt you because I knew your face, and I failed at that until you walked into the palaces and asked to speak with me."

  "Go to my father with me. I refused the brand, but I won't now. I'll renounce my claim to the chair in front of anyone he wants, only don't let him kill me before I do it."

  Maati looked across at him. The sparrow returned for a moment to perch between them.

  "It won't work," he said. "Renunciation isn't a simple thing, and once you've stepped outside of form, stepping back in ..."

  "But ..."

  "They won't believe you. And even if they did, they'd still fear you enough to see you dead."

  Otah took a deep breath, and then slowly let it out, letting his head sink into his hands. The air itself seemed to have grown heavier, thicker. It had been a mad hope, and even in its failure, at least Kiyan would be safe. It was past time, perhaps, that people stopped paying prices for knowing him.

  He could feel himself shaking. When he sat, his hands were perfectly still, though he could still feel the trembling in them.

  "So what are you going to do?" Otah asked.

  "In a moment, I'm going to call in the armsmen that are waiting outside that door," Maati said, his voice deceptively calm. He was trembling as well. "I am going to bring you before the Khai, who will at some point decide either that you are a murderer who has killed his son Biitrah and put you to the sword, or else a legitimate child of Machi who should be set loose for one of your older brothers to kill. I will speak on your behalf, and any evidence I can find that suggests Biitrah's murder wasn't your work, I will present."

  "Well, thank you for that, at least."

  "Don't," Maati said. "I'm doing it because it's true. If I thought you'd arranged it, I'd have said that."

  "Loyalty to the truth isn't something to throw out either."

  Maati took a pose that accepted the gratitude, and then dropped his hands to his sides.

  "There's something you should know," Otah said. "It might ... it seems to be your business. When I was in the islands, after Saraykeht, there was a woman. Not Maj. Another woman. I shared a bed with her for two, almost three years."

  "Otah-kvo, I admire your conquests, but . .

  "She wanted a child. From me. But it never took. Almost three years, and she bled with the moon the whole time. I heard that after I left, she took up with a fisherman from it tribe to the north and had a baby girl."

  "I see," Maati said, and there was something in his voice. A brightness. "Thank you, Otah-kvo."

  "I missed you as well. I wish we had had more time. Or other circumstances."

  "As do I. But it isn't ours to choose. Shall we do this thing?"

  "I don't suppose I could shave first?" Otah asked, touching his chin.

  "I don't see how," Maati said, rising. "But perhaps we can get you some better robes."

  Otah didn't mean to laugh; it simply came out of him. And then Maati was laughing as well, and the birds startled around them, lifting up into the sky. Otah rose and took a pose of respect appropriate to the closing of a meeting. Maati responded in kind, and they walked together to the door. Maati slid it open, and Otah looked to see whether there was a gap in the men, a chance to dodge them and sprint out to the streets. He might as well have looked for a stone cloud. The armsmen seemed to have doubled in number, and two already had hare blades at the ready. The young poet-the one Maati said wasn't his student-was there among them, his expression serious and concerned. Maati spoke as if the bulky men and their weapons weren't there.

  "Cehmai-cha," he said. "Good that you're here. I would like to introduce you to my old friend, Otah, the sixth son of the Khai Machi. Otahkvo, this is Cchmai Tyan and that small mountain in the back is the andat Stone-Made-Soft which he controls. Cehmai assumed you were an assassin come to finish me off."

  "I'm not," Otah said with a levity that seemed at odds with his situation, but which felt perfectly natural. "But I understand the misconception. It's the heard. I'm usually better shaved."

  Cehmai opened his mouth, closed it, and then took a formal pose of welcome. Maati turned to the armsmen.

  "Chain him," he said.

  EVEN AT THE HEIGHT OF MORNING, THE WIVES' QUARTERS OF THE HIGH palace were filled with the small somber activity of a street market starting to close at twilight. In the course of his life, the Khai Machi had taken eleven women as wives. Some had become friends, lovers, companions. Others had been little more than permanent guests in his house, sent as a means of assuring favor as one m
ight send a good hunting dog or a talented slave. Idaan had heard that there were several of them with whom he had never shared a bed. It had been Biitrah's wife, Hiami, who'd told her that, trying to explain to a young girl that the Khaiem had a different relationship to their women than other men had, that it was traditional. It hadn't worked. Even the words the older woman had used-your father chooser not to-had proven her point that this was a comfort house with high ceilings, grand halls, and only a single client.

  But now that was changing, not in character, but in the particulars. The succession would have the same effect on the eight wives who remained, whoever took the seat. It would be time for them to leavemake the journey back to whatever city or family had sent them forth in the first place. The oldest of them, a sharp-tongued woman named Carai, would be returning to a high family in Yalakeht where the man who would choose her disposition had been a delighted toddler grinning and filling his pants the last time she'd seen him. Another woman-one of the recent ones hardly older than Idaan herself-had taken a lover in the court. She was being sent hack to Chaburi-"[an, likely to be turned around and shipped off to another of the Khaicm or traded between the houses of the utkhaiem as a token of political alliance. Many of the wives had known each other for decades and would now scatter and lose the friends and companions they had known best. And on and on, every one of them a life shaped by a man's will, constrained by tradition.

  Idaan walked through the wide, bright corridors, listened to these women preparing to depart when the inevitable news came, anticipating the grief in a way that was as hard as the grief itself. Perhaps harder. She accepted their congratulations on her marriage. She would be able to remain in the city, and should her man die before her, her family would be there to support her. She, at least, would never he uprooted. Hiami had never understood why Idaan had objected to this way of living. Idaan had never understood why these women hadn't set the palaces on fire.