Shadow and Betrayal

by Abraham Daniel

  ‘Take care,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to hear that one of your brothers has finally killed you.’

  ‘When the time comes, I don’t think they’ll come after me with a treadmill pump.’

  Still, he made a point to kiss her before he walked to his dressing chamber, allowed the servants to array him in a robe of gray and violet, stepped into the sealskin boots, and went out to meet the bearer of the bad tidings.

  ‘It’s the Daikani mine, most high,’ the man said, taking a pose of apology formal enough for a temple. ‘It failed in the night. They say the lower passages are already half a man high with water.’

  Biitrah cursed, but took a pose of thanks all the same. Together, they walked through the wide main hall of the Second Palace. The caves shouldn’t have been filling so quickly, even with a failed pump. Something else had gone wrong. He tried to picture the shape of the Daikani mines, but the excavations in the mountains and plains around Machi were numbered in the dozens, and the details blurred. Perhaps four ventilation shafts. Perhaps six. He would have to go and see.

  His private guard stood ready, bent in poses of obeisance, as he came out into the street. Ten men in ceremonial mail that for all its glitter would turn a knife. Ceremonial swords and daggers honed sharp enough to shave with. Each of his two brothers had a similar company, with a similar purpose. And the time would come, he supposed, that it would descend to that. But not today. Not yet. He had a pump to fix.

  He stepped into the waiting chair, and four porters came out. As they lifted him to their shoulders, he called out to the messenger.

  ‘Follow close,’ he said, his hands flowing into a pose of command with the ease of long practice. ‘I want to hear everything you know before we get there.’

  They moved quickly through the grounds of the palaces - the famed towers rising above them like forest trees above rabbits - and into the black-cobbled streets of Machi. Servants and slaves took abject poses as Biitrah passed. The few members of the utkhaiem awake and in the city streets took less extreme stances, each appropriate to the difference in rank between themselves and the man who might one day renounce his name and become the Khai Machi.

  Biitrah hardly noticed. His mind turned instead upon his passion - the machinery of mining: water pumps and ore graves and hauling winches. He guessed that they would reach the low town at the mouth of the mine before the fast sun of early spring had moved the width of two hands.

  They took the south road, the mountains behind them. They crossed the sinuous stone bridge over the Tidat, the water below them still smelling of its mother glacier. The plain spread before them, farmsteads and low towns and meadows green with new wheat. Trees were already pushing forth new growth. It wouldn’t be many weeks before the lush spring took root, grabbing at the daylight that the winter stole away. The messenger told him what he could, but it was little enough, and before they had reached the halfway point, a wind rose whuffling in Biitrah’s ears and making conversation impossible. The closer they came, the better he recalled these particular mines. They weren’t the first that House Daikani had leased from the Khai - those had been the ones with six ventilation shafts. These had four. And slowly - more slowly than it once had - his mind recalled the details, spreading the problem before him like something written on slate or carved from stone.

  By the time they reached the first outbuildings of the low town, his fingers had grown numb, his nose had started to run from the cold, he had four different guesses as to what might have gone wrong, and ten questions in mind whose answers would determine whether he was correct. He went directly to the mouth of the mine, forgetting to stop for even bread and tea.

  Hiami sat by the brazier, knotting a scarf from silk thread and listening to a slave boy sing old tunes of the Empire. Almost-forgotten emperors loved and fought, lost, won, and died in the high, rich voice. Poets and their slave spirits, the andat, waged their private battles sometimes with deep sincerity and beauty, sometimes with bedroom humor and bawdy rhymes - but all of them ancient. She couldn’t stand to hear anything written after the great war that had destroyed those faraway palaces and broken those song-recalled lands. The new songs were all about the battles of the Khaiem - three brothers who held claim to the name of Khai. Two would die, one would forget his name and doom his own sons to another cycle of blood. Whether they were laments for the fallen or celebrations of the victors, she hated them. They weren’t songs that comforted her, and she didn’t knot scarves unless she needed comfort.

  A servant came in, a young girl in austere robes almost the pale of mourning, and took a ritual pose announcing a guest of status equal to Hiami’s.

  ‘Idaan,’ the servant girl said, ‘daughter to the Khai Machi.’

  ‘I know my husband’s sister,’ Hiami snapped, not pausing in her handwork. ‘You needn’t tell me the sky is blue.’

  The servant girl flushed, her hands fluttering toward three different poses at once and achieving none of them. Hiami regretted her words and put down the knotting, taking a gentle pose of command.

  ‘Bring her here. And something comfortable for her to sit on.’

  The servant took a pose of acknowledgment, grateful, it seemed, to know what response to make, and scampered off. And then Idaan was there.

  Hardly twenty, she could have been one of Hiami’s own daughters. Not a beauty, but it took a practiced eye to know that. Her hair, pitch dark, was pleated with strands of silver and gold. Her eyes were touched with paints, her skin made finer and paler than it really was by powder. Her robes, blue silk embroidered with gold, flattered her hips and the swell of her breasts. To a man or a younger woman, Idaan might have seemed the loveliest woman in the city. Hiami knew the difference between talent and skill, but of the pair, she had greater respect for skill, so the effect was much the same.

  They each took poses of greeting, subtly different to mark Idaan’s blood relation to the Khai and Hiami’s greater age and her potential to become someday the first wife of the Khai Machi. The servant girl trotted in with a good chair, placed it silently, and retreated. Hiami halted her with a gesture and motioned to the singing slave. The servant girl took a pose of obedience and led him off with her.

  Hiami smiled and gestured toward the seat. Idaan took a pose of thanks much less formal than her greeting had been and sat.

  ‘Is my brother here?’ she asked.

  ‘No. There was a problem at one of the mines. I imagine he’ll be there for the day.’

  Idaan frowned, but stopped short of showing any real disapproval. All she said was, ‘It must seem odd for one of the Khaiem to be slogging through tunnels like a common miner.’

  ‘Men have their enthusiasms,’ Hiami said, smiling slightly. Then she sobered. ‘Is there news of your father?’

  Idaan took a pose that was both an affirmation and a denial.

  ‘Nothing new, I suppose,’ the dark-haired girl said. ‘The physicians are watching him. He kept his soup down again last night. That makes almost ten days in a row. And his color is better.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But he’s still dying,’ Idaan said. Her tone was plain and calm as if she’d been talking about a horse or a stranger. Hiami put down her thread, the half-finished scarf in a puddle by her ankles. The knot she felt in the back of her throat was dread. The old man was dying, and the thought carried its implications with it - the time was growing short. Biitrah, Danat, and Kaiin Machi - the three eldest sons of the Khai - had lived their lives in something as close to peace as the sons of the Khaiem ever could. Otah, the Khai’s sixth son, had created a small storm all those years ago by refusing to take the brand and renounce his claim to his father’s chair, but he had never appeared. It was assumed that he had forged his path elsewhere or died unknown. Certainly he had never caused trouble here. And now every time their father missed his bowl of soup, every night his sleep was troubled and restless, the hour drew nearer when the peace would have to break.

  ‘How are his wives?’ Hiami ask
ed.

  ‘Well enough,’ Idaan said. ‘Or some of them are. The two new ones from Nantani and Pathai are relieved, I think. They’re younger than I am, you know.’

  ‘Yes. They’ll be pleased to go back to their families. It’s harder for the older women, you know. Decades they’ve spent here. Going back to cities they hardly remember . . .’

  Hiami felt her composure slip and clenched her hands in her lap. Idaan’s gaze was on her. Hiami forced a simple pose of apology.

  ‘No. I’m sorry,’ Idaan said, divining, Hiami supposed, all the fear in her heart from her gesture. Hiami’s lovely, absent-minded, warm, silly husband and lover might well die. All his string and carved wood models and designs might fall to disuse, as abandoned by his slaughter as she would be. If only he might somehow win. If only he might kill his own brothers and let their wives pay this price, instead of her.

  ‘It’s all right, dear,’ Hiami said. ‘I can have him send a messenger to you when he returns if you like. It may not be until morning. If he thinks the problem is interesting, he might be even longer.’

  ‘And then he’ll want to sleep,’ Idaan said, half smiling, ‘and I might not see or hear from him for days. And by then I’ll have found some other way to solve my problems, or else have given up entirely.’

  Hiami had to chuckle. The girl was right, and somehow that little shared intimacy made the darkness more bearable.

  ‘Perhaps I can be of some use, then,’ Hiami said. ‘What brings you here, sister?’

  To Hiami’s surprise, Idaan blushed, the real color seeming slightly false under her powder.

  ‘I’ve . . . I wanted Biitrah to speak to our father. About Adrah. Adrah Vaunyogi. He and I . . .’

  ‘Ah,’ Hiami said. ‘I see. Have you missed a month?’

  It took a moment for the girl to understand. Her blush deepened.

  ‘No. It’s not that. It’s just that I think he may be the one. He’s from a good family,’ Idaan said quickly, as if she were already defending him. ‘They have interests in a trading house and a strong bloodline and . . .’

  Hiami took a pose that silenced the girl. Idaan looked down at her hands, but then she smiled. The horrified, joyous smile of new love discovered. Hiami remembered how once it had felt, and her heart broke again.

  ‘I will talk to him when he comes back, no matter how dearly he wants his sleep,’ Hiami said.

  ‘Thank you, sister,’ Idaan said. ‘I should . . . I should go.’

  ‘So soon?’

  ‘I promised Adrah I’d tell him as soon as I spoke to my brother. He’s waiting in one of the tower gardens, and . . .’

  Idaan took a pose that asked forgiveness, as if a girl needed to be forgiven for wanting to be with a lover and not a woman her mother’s age knotting silk to fight the darkness in her heart. Hiami took a pose that accepted the apology and released her. Idaan grinned and turned to go. Just as the blue and gold of her robe was about to vanish through the doorway, Hiami surprised herself by calling out.

  ‘Does he make you laugh?’

  Idaan turned, her expression questioning. Hiami’s mind flooded again with thoughts of Biitrah and of love and the prices it demanded.

  ‘Your man. Adrah? If he doesn’t make you laugh, Idaan, you mustn’t marry him.’

  Idaan smiled and took a pose of thanks appropriate for a pupil to her master, and then was gone. Hiami swallowed until she was sure the fear was under control again, picked up her knotwork and called for the slave to return.

  The sun was gone, the moon a sliver no wider than a nail clipping. Only the stars answered the miners’ lanterns as Biitrah rose from the earth into darkness. His robes were wet and clung to his legs, the gray and violet turned to a uniform black. The night air was bitingly cold. The mine dogs yipped anxiously and paced in their kennels, their breath pluming like his own. The chief engineer of House Daikani’s mines took a pose of profound thanks, and Biitrah replied graciously, though his fingers were numb and awkward as sausages.

  ‘If it does that again, call for me,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, most high,’ the engineer said. ‘As you command.’

  Biitrah’s guard walked him to the chair, and his bearers lifted him. It was only now, with the work behind him and the puzzles all solved, that he felt the exhaustion. The thought of being carried back to the palaces in the cold and mud of springtime was only slightly less odious than the option of walking under his own power. He gestured to the chief armsman of his guard.

  ‘We’ll stay in the low town tonight. The usual wayhouse.’

  The armsman took a pose of acknowledgment and strode forward, leading his men and his bearers and himself into the unlit streets. Biitrah pulled his arms inside his robes and hugged bare flesh to flesh. The first shivers were beginning. He half regretted now that he hadn’t disrobed before wading down to the lowest levels of the mine.

  Ore was rich down in the plain - enough silver to keep Machi’s coffers full even had there been no other mines here and in the mountains to the north and west - but the vein led down deeper than a well. In its first generation, when Machi had been the most distant corner of the Empire, the poet sent there had controlled the andat Raising-Water, and the stories said that the mines had flowed up like fountains under that power. It wasn’t until after the great war that the poet Manat Doru had first captured Stone-Made-Soft and Machi had come into its own as the center for the most productive mines in the world and the home of the metal trades - ironmongers, silversmiths, Westland alchemists, needlemakers. But Raising-Water had been lost, and no one had yet discovered how to recapture it. And so, the pumps.

  He again turned his mind back on the trouble. The treadmill pumps were of his own design. Four men working together could raise their own weight in water sixty feet in the time the moon - always a more reliable measure than the seasonally fickle northern sun - traveled the width of a man’s finger. But the design wasn’t perfect yet. It was clear from his day’s work that the pump, which finally failed the night before, had been working at less than its peak for weeks. That was why the water level had been higher than one night’s failure could account for. There were several possible solutions to that.

  Biitrah forgot the cold, forgot his weariness, forgot indeed where he was and was being borne. His mind fell into the problem, and he was lost in it. The wayhouse, when it appeared as if by magic before them, was a welcome sight: thick stone walls with one red lacquered door at the ground level, a wide wooden snow door on the second story, and smoke rising from all its chimneys. Even from the street, he could smell seasoned meat and spiced wine. The keeper stood on the front steps with a pose of welcome so formal it bent the old, moon-faced man nearly double. Biitrah’s bearers lowered his chair. At the last moment, Biitrah remembered to shove his arms back into their sleeves so that he could take a pose accepting the wayhouse keeper’s welcome.

  ‘I had not expected you, most high,’ the man said. ‘We would have prepared something more appropriate. The best that I have—’

  ‘Will do,’ Biitrah said. ‘Certainly the best you have will do.’

  The keeper took a pose of thanks, standing aside to let them through the doorway as he did. Biitrah paused at the threshold, taking a formal pose of thanks. The old man seemed surprised. His round face and slack skin made Biitrah think of a pale grape just beginning to dry. He could be my father’s age, he thought, and felt in his breast the bloom of a strange, almost melancholy, fondness for the man.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ Biitrah said. ‘What’s your name, neighbor? ’

  ‘Oshai,’ the moon-faced man said. ‘We haven’t met, but everyone knows of the Khai Machi’s kindly eldest son. It is a pleasure to have you in this house, most high.’

  The house had an inner garden. Biitrah changed into a set of plain, thick woolen robes that the wayhouse kept for such occasions and joined his men there. The keeper himself brought them black-sauced noodles, river fish cooked with dried figs, and carafe after stone carafe
of rice wine infused with plum. His guard, at first dour, relaxed as the night went on, singing together and telling stories. For a time, they seemed to forget who this long-faced man with his graying beard and thinning hair was and might someday be. Biitrah even sang with them at the end, intoxicated as much by the heat of the coal fire, the weariness of the day, and the simple pleasure of the night, as by the wine.

  At last he rose up and went to his bed, four of his men following him. They would sleep on straw outside his door. He would sleep in the best bed the wayhouse offered. It was the way of things. A night candle burned at his bedside, the wax scented with honey. The flame was hardly down to the quarter mark. It was early. When he’d been a boy of twenty, he’d seen candles like this burn their last before he slept, the light of dawn blocked by goose-down pillows around his head. Now he couldn’t well imagine staying awake to the half mark. He shuttered the candlebox, leaving only a square of light high on the ceiling from the smoke hole.

  Sleep should have come easily to him as tired, well fed, half drunk as he was, but it didn’t. The bed was wide and soft and comfortable. He could already hear his men snoring on their straw outside his door. But his mind would not be still.