A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2

by Abraham Daniel

  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.

  They should have killed each other when they were young and didn't

  understand what a precious thing life is. That was the mistake. He and

  his brothers had forborne instead, and the years had drifted by. Danat

  had married, then Kaiin. He, the oldest of them, had met Hiami and

  followed his brothers' example last. He had two daughters, grown and now

  themselves married. And so here he and his brothers were. None of them

  had seen fewer than forty summers. None of them hated the other two.

  None of them wanted what would come next. And still, it would come.

  Better that the slaughter had happened when they were boys, stupid the

  way boys are. Better that their deaths had come before they carried the

  weight of so much life behind them. He was too old to become a killer.

  Sleep came somewhere in these dark reflections, and he dreamed of things

  more pleasant and less coherent. A dove with black-tipped wings flying

  through the galleries of the Second Palace; Hiami sewing a child's dress

  with red thread and a gold needle too soft to keep its point; the moon

  trapped in a well and he himself called to design the pump that would

  raise it. When he woke, troubled by some need his sleepsodden mind

  couldn't quite place, it was still dark. He needed to drink water or to

  pass it, but no, it was neither of these. He reached to unshutter the

  candlebox, but his hands were too awkward.

  "There now, most high," a voice said. "Bat it around like that, and

  you'll have the whole place in flames."

  Pale hands righted the box and pulled open the shutters, the candlelight

  revealing the moon-faced keeper. He wore a dark robe under a gray woolen

  traveler's cloak. His face, which had seemed so congenial before, filled

  Biitrah with a sick dread. The smile, he saw, never reached the eyes.

  "What's happened?" he demanded, or tried to. The words came out slurred

  and awkward. Still, the man Oshai seemed to catch the sense of them.

  "I've come to be sure you've died," he said with a pose that offered

  this as a service. "Your men drank more than you. Those that are

  breathing are beyond recall, but you ... Well, most high, if you see

  morning the whole exercise will have been something of a waste."

  Biitrah's breath suddenly hard as a runner's, he threw off the blankets,

  but when he tried to stand, his knees were limp. He stumbled toward the

  assassin, but there was no strength in the charge. Oshai, if that was

  his name, put a palm to Biitrah's forehead and pushed gently back.

  Biitrah fell to the floor, but he hardly felt it. It was like violence

  being done to some other man, far away from where he was.

  "It must be hard," Oshai said, squatting beside him, "to live you
r whole

  life known only as another man's son. To die having never made a mark of

  your own on the world. It seems unfair somehow."

  Who, Biitrah tried to say. Which of my brothers would stoop to poison?

  "Still, men die all the time," Oshai went on. "One more or less won't

  keep the sun from rising. And how are you feeling, most high? Can you

  get up? No? That's as well, then. I was half-worried I might have to

  pour more of this down you. Undiluted, it tastes less of plums."

  The assassin rose and walked to the bed. There was a hitch in his step,

  as if his hip ached. He is old as my father, but Biitrah's mind was too

  dim to see any humor in the repeated thought. Oshai sat on the bed and

  pulled the blankets over his lap.

  "No hurry, most high. I can wait quite comfortably here. Die at your

  leisure."

  Biitrah, trying to gather his strength for one last movement, one last

  attack, closed his eyes but then found he lacked the will even to open

  them again. The wooden floor beneath him seemed utterly comfortable; his

  limbs were heavy and slack. There were worse poisons than this. He could

  at least thank his brothers for that.

  It was only Hiami he would miss. And the treadmill pumps. It would have

  been good to finish his design work on them. He would have liked to have

  finished more of his work. His last thought that held any real coherence

  was that he wished he'd gotten to live just a little while more. He did

  not know it when his killer snuffed the candle.

  HIAMI HAD THE SEAT OF HONOR AT THE FUNERAL, ON THE DAIS WITH THE Khai

  Machi. The temple was full, bodies pressed together on their cushions as

  the priest intoned the rites of the dead and struck his silver chimes.

  The high walls and distant wooden ceiling held the heat poorly; braziers

  had been set in among the mourners. Hiami wore pale mourning robes and

  looked at her hands. It was not her first funeral. She had been present

  for her father's death, before her marriage into the highest family of

  Machi. She had only been a girl then. And through the years, when a

  member of the utkhaiem had passed on, she had sometimes sat and heard

  these same words spoken over some other body, listened to the roar of

  some other pyre.

  This was the first time it had seemed meaningless. Her grief was real

  and profound, and this flock of gawkers and gossips had no relation to

  it. The Khai Machi's hand touched her own, and she glanced up into his

  eyes. His hair, what was left of it, had gone white years before. He

  smiled gently and took a pose that expressed his sympathy. He was

  graceful as an actor-his poses inhumanly smooth and precise.

  Biitrah would have been a terrible Khai Machi, she thought. He would

  never have put in enough practice to hold himself that well.

  And the tears she had suffered through the last days remembered her. Her

  once-father's hand trembled as if uneased by the presence of genuine

  feeling. He leaned hack into his black lacquer seat and motioned for a

  servant to bring him a bowl of tea. At the front of the temple, the

  priest chanted on.

  When the last word was sung, the last chime struck, bearers came and

  lifted her husband's body. The slow procession began, moving through the

  streets to the pealing of hand bells and the wailing of flutes. In the

  central square, the pyre was ready-great logs of pine stinking of oil

  and within them a bed of hard, hot-burning coal from the mines. Biitrah

  was lifted onto it and a shroud of tight metal links placed over him to

  hide the sight when his skin peeled from his noble bones. It was her

  place now to step forward and begin the conflagration. She moved slowly.

  All eyes were on her, and she knew what they were thinking. Poor woman,

  to have been left alone. Shallow sympathies that would have been

  extended as readily to the wives of the Khai Machi's other sons, had

  their men been under the metal blanket. And in those voices she heard

  also the excitement, dread, and anticipation that these bloody paroxysms

  carried. When the empty, insincere words of comfort were said, in the

  same breath they would move on to speculations. Both of Biitrah's

  brothers had vanished. Danat, it was said, had gone to the mountains

  where he had a secret force at the ready, or to Lachi in the south to

  gather allies, or to ruined Saraykeht to hire mercenaries, or to the

  Dai-kvo to seek the aid of the poets and the andat. Or he was in the

  temple, gathering his strength, or he was cowering in the basement of a

  low town comfort house, too afraid to come to the streets. And every

  story they told of him, they also told of Kaiin.

  It had begun. At long last, after years of waiting, one of the men who

  might one day be Khai Machi had made his move. The city waited for the

  drama to unfold. This pyre was only the opening for them, the first

  notes of some new song that would make this seem to be about something

  honorable, comprehensible, and right.

  Hiami took a pose of thanks and accepted a lit torch from the

  firekeeper. She stepped to the oil-soaked wood. A dove fluttered past

  her, landed briefly on her husband's chest, and then flew away again.

  She felt herself smile to see it go. She touched the flame to the small

  kindling and stepped back as the fire took. She waited there as long as

  tradition required and then went back to the Second Palace. Let the

  others watch the ashes. "Their song might be starting, but hers here had

  ended.

  Her servant girl was waiting for her at the entrance of the palace's

  great hall. She held a pose of welcome that suggested there was some

  news waiting for her. Hiami was tempted to ignore the nuance, to walk

  through to her chambers and her fire and bed and the knotwork scarf that

  was now nearly finished. But there were tear-streaks on the girl's

  cheeks, and who was Hiami, after all, to treat a suffering child

  unkindly? She stopped and took a pose that accepted the welcome before

  shifting to one of query.

  "Idaan Machi," the servant girl said. "She is waiting for you in the

  summer garden."

  Hiami shifted to a pose of thanks, straightened her sleeves, and walked

  quietly down the palace halls. The sliding stone doors to the garden

  were open, a breeze too cold to be comfortable moving through the hall.

  And there, by an empty fountain surrounded by bare-limbed cherry trees,

  sat her once-sister. If her formal robes were not the pale of mourning,

  her countenance contradicted them: reddened eyes, paint and powder

  washed away. She was a plain enough woman without them, and Hiami felt

  sorry for her. It was one thing to expect the violence. It was another

  to see it done.

  She stepped forward, her hands in a pose of greeting. Idaan started to

  her feet as if she'd been caught doing something illicit, but then she

  took an answering pose. Hiami sat on the fountain's stone lip, and Idaan

  lowered herself, sitting on the ground at her feet as a child might.

  "Your things are packed," Idaan said.

  "Yes. I'll leave tomorrow. It's weeks to "Ian-Sadar. It won't be so

  hard, I think. O
ne of my daughters is married there, and my brother is a

  decent man. They'll treat me well while I make arrangements for my own

  apartments."

  "It isn't fair," Idaan said. "They shouldn't force you out like this.

  You belong here."

  "It's tradition," Hiami said with a pose of surrender. "Fairness has

  nothing to do with it. My husband is dead. I will return to my father's

  house, whoever's actually sitting in his chair these days."

  "If you were a merchant, no one would require anything like that of you.

  You could go where you pleased, and do what you wanted."

  "True, but I'm not, am I? I was born to the utkhaiem. You were horn to a

  Khai."

  "And women," Idaan said. Hiami was surprised by the venom in the word.

  "We were born women, so we'll never even have the freedoms our brothers do."

  Hiami laughed. She couldn't help herself, it was all so ridiculous. She

  took her once-sister's hand and leaned forward until their foreheads

  almost touched. Idaan's tear-red eyes shifted to meet her gaze.

  "I don't think the men in our families consider themselves unconstrained

  by history," she said, and Idaan's expression twisted with chagrin.

  "I wasn't thinking," she said. "I didn't mean that ... Gods ... I'm

  sorry, Hiami-kya. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry ..."

  Hiami opened her arms, and the girl fell into them, weeping. Hiami

  rocked her slowly, cooing into her ear and stroking her hair as if she

  were comforting a babe. And as she did, she looked around the gardens.

  This would be the last time she saw them. "Thin tendrils of green were

  rising from the soil. The trees were bare, but their bark had an

  undertone of green. Soon it would be warm enough to turn on the fountains.