A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2

by Abraham Daniel

  "You are merciful, most high."

  The old man looked up at him, squinting. His lips were pressed thin, and

  the lines in his face were black as charcoal. Maati stood waiting. At

  length, the Dai-kvo turned away again with a sigh.

  "Will you be able to do it?" he asked.

  "I will do as the Dai-kvo commands," Maati said.

  "Yes, I know you'll go there. But will you be able to tell me that he's

  there? You know if he is behind this, they'll kill him before they go on

  to each other. Are you able to bear that responsibility? Tell me now if

  you aren't, and I'll find some other way. You don't have to fail again."

  "I won't fail again, most high."

  "Good. That's good," the Dai-kvo said and went silent. Maati waited so

  long for the pose that would dismiss him that he wondered whether the

  Dai-kvo had forgotten he was there, or had chosen to ignore him as an

  insult. But the old man spoke, his voice low.

  "How old is your son, Maati-cha?"

  "Twelve, most high. But I haven't seen him in some years."

  "You're angry with me for that." Maati began to take a pose of denial,

  but checked himself and lowered his arms. This wasn't the time for court

  politics. The Dai-kvo saw this and smiled. "You're getting wiser, my

  boy. You were a fool when you were young. In itself, that's not such a

  bad thing. Many men are. But you embraced your mistakes. You de fended

  them against all correction. That was the wrong path, and don't think

  I'm unaware of how you've paid for it."

  "As you say, most high."

  "I told you there was no place in a poet's life for a family. A lover

  here or there, certainly. Most men are too weak to deny themselves that

  much. But a wife? A child? No. There isn't room for both what they

  require and what we do. And I told you that. You remember? I told you

  that, and you ..

  The Dai-kvo shook his head, frowning in remembered frustration. It was a

  moment, Maati knew, when he could apologize. He could repent his pride

  and say that the Dai-kvo had indeed known better all along. He remained

  silent.

  "I was right," the Dai-kvo said for him. "And now you've done half a job

  as a poet and half a job as a man. Your studies are weak, and the woman

  took your whelp and left. You've failed both, just as I knew you would.

  I'm not condemning you for that, Maati. No man could have taken on what

  you did and succeeded. But this opportunity in Machi is what will wipe

  clean the slate. Do this well and it will be what you're remembered for."

  "Certainly I will do my best."

  "Fail at it, and there won't be a third chance. Few enough men have two."

  Maati took a pose appropriate to a student receiving a lecture.

  Considering him, the Dal-kvo responded with one that closed the lesson,

  then raised his hand.

  "Don't destroy this chance in order to spite me, Maati. Failing in this

  will do me no harm, and it will destroy you. You're angry because I told

  you the truth, and because what I said would happen, did. Consider while

  you go north, whether that's really such a good reason to hate me."

  THE OPEN WINDOW LET IN A COOT, BREEZE THAT SMELLED OF PINE AND RAIN.

  Otah Mach], the sixth son of the Khai Machi, lay on the bed, listening

  to the sounds of water-rain pattering on the flagstones of the

  wayhouse's courtyard and the tiles of its roof, the constant hushing of

  the river against its banks. A fire danced and spat in the grate, but

  his bare skin was still stippled with cold. The night candle had gone

  out, and he hadn't bothered to relight it. Morning would come when it came.

  The door slid open and then shut. He didn't turn to look.

  "You're brooding, Itani," Kiyan said, calling him by the false name he'd

  chosen for himself, the only one he'd ever told her. Her voice was low

  and rich and careful as a singer's. He shifted now, turning to his side.

  She knelt by the grate-her skin smooth and brown, her robes the formal

  cut of a woman of business, one strand of her hair fallen free. Her face

  was thin-she reminded him of a fox sometimes, when a smile just touched

  her mouth. She placed a fresh log on the fire as she spoke. "I half

  expected you'd be asleep already."

  He sighed and sketched a pose of contrition with one hand.

  "Don't apologize to me," she said. "I'm as happy having you in my rooms

  here as in the teahouse, but Old Mani wanted more news out of you. Or

  maybe just to get you drunk enough to sing dirty songs with him. He's

  missed you, you know."

  "It's a hard thing, being so loved."

  "Don't laugh at it. It's not a love to carry you through ages, but it's

  more than some people ever manage. You'll grow into one of those pinched

  old men who want free wine because they pity themselves."

  "I'm sorry. I don't mean to make light of Old Mani. It's just ..."

  He sighed. Kiyan closed the window and relit the night candle.

  "It's just that you're brooding," she said. "And you're naked and not

  under the blankets, so you're feeling that you've done something wrong

  and deserve to suffer."

  "Ah," Otah said. "Is that why I do this?"

  "Yes," she said, untying her robes. "It is. You can't hide it from me,

  Itani. You might as well come out with it."

  Otah held the thought in his mind. I'm not who I've told you I am. Itani

  Noygu is the name I picked for myself when I was a child. My father is

  dying, and brothers I can hardly recall have started killing each other,

  and I find it makes me sad. He wondered what Kiyan would say to that.

  She prided herself on knowing him-on knowing people and how their minds

  worked. And yet he didn't think this was something she'd already have

  guessed.

  Naked, she lay beside him, pulling thick blankets up over them both.

  "Did you find another woman in Chaburi-Tan?" she asked, halfteasing. But

  only half. "Some young dancing girl who stole your heart, or some other

  hit of your flesh, and now you're stewing over how to tell me you're

  leaving me?"

  "I'm a courier," Otah said. "I have a woman in every city I visit. You

  know that."

  "You don't," she said. "Some couriers do, but you don't."

  "No?"

  "No. It took me half a year of doing everything short of stripping bare

  for you to notice me. You don't stay in other cities long enough for a

  woman to chip through your reserve. And you don't have to push away the

  blankets. You may want to be cold, but I don't."

  "Well. Maybe I'm just feeling old."

  "A ripe thirty-three? Well, when you decide to stop running across the

  world, I'd always be pleased to hire you on. We could stand another pair

  of hands around the place. You could throw out the drunks and track down

  the cheats that try to slip away without paying."

  "You don't pay enough," Otah said. "I talk to Old Mani. I know what your

  wages are.

  "Perhaps you'd get extra for keeping me warm at nights."

  "Shouldn't you offer that to Old Mani first? He's been here longer than

  I have."

  Kiyan slapped his chest smartly, and then nestled into him. He found

  himself curling toward her, the warmth of he
r body drawing him like a

  familiar scent. Her fingers traced the tattoo on his breast-the ink had

  faded over time, blurring lines that had once been sharp and clear.

  "Jokes aside," she said, and he could hear a weariness in her voice, "I

  would take you on, if you wanted to stay. You could live here, with me.

  Help me manage the house."

  He caressed her hair, feeling the individual strands as they flowed

  across his fingertips. There was a scattering of white among the black

  that made her look older than she was. Otah knew that they had been

  there since she was a girl, as if she'd been born old.

  "That sounds like you're suggesting marriage," he said.

  "Perhaps. You wouldn't have to, but ... it would be one way to arrange

  things. That isn't a threat, you know. I don't need a husband. Only if

  it would make you feel better, we could ..."

  He kissed her gently. It had been weeks, and he was surprised to find

  how much he'd missed the touch of her lips. Weeks of travel weariness

  slipped away, the deep unease loosened its hold on his chest, and he

  took comfort in her. He fell asleep with her arm over his body, her

  breath already soft and deep with sleep.

  In the morning, he woke before she did, slipped out of the bed, and

  dressed quietly. The sun was not up, but the eastern sky had lightened

  and the morning birds were singing madly as he took himself across an

  ancient stone bridge into Udun.

  A river city, Udun was laced with as many canals as roadways. Bridges

  humped up high enough for barges to pass beneath them, and the green

  water of the Qiit lapped at old stone steps that descended into the

  river mud. Otah stopped at a stall on the broad central plaza and traded

  two lengths of copper for a thick wedge of honey bread and a bowl of

  black, smoky tea. Around him, the city slowly came awakethe streets and

  canals filling with traders and merchants, beggars singing at the

  corners or in small rafts tied at the water's edge, laborers hauling

  wagons along the wide flagstoned streets, and birds bright as shafts of

  sunlight-blue and red and yellow, green as grass, and pink as dawn. Udun

  was a city of birds, and their chatter and shriek and song filled the

  air as he ate.

  The compound of House Siyanti was in the better part of the city, just

  downstream from the palaces, where the water was not yet fouled by the

  wastes of thirty thousand men and women and children. The red brick

  buildings rose up three stories high, and a private canal was filled

  with barges in the red and silver of the house. The stylized emblem of

  the sun and stars had been worked into the brick archway that led to the

  central courtyard, and Otah passed beneath it with a feeling like coming

  home.

  Amiit Foss, the overseer for the house couriers, was in his offices,

  ordering around three apprentices with sharp words and insults, but no

  blows. Otah stepped in and took a pose of greeting.

  "Ah! The missing Itani. Did you know the word for half-wit in the tongue

  of the Empire was itani-nah?"

  "All respect, Amiit-cha, but no it wasn't."

  The overseer grinned. One of the apprentices-a girl of perhaps thirteen

  summers-whispered something angrily, and the boy next to her giggled.

  "Fine," the overseer said. "You two. I need the ciphers rechecked on

  last week's letters."

  "But I wasn't the one . . . ," the girl protested. The overseer took a

  pose that commanded her silence, and the pair, glowering at each other,

  stalked away.

  "I get them when they're just growing old enough to flirt," Amiit said,

  sighing. "Come back to the meeting rooms. The journey took longer than

  I'd expected."

  "There were some delays," Otah said as he followed the older man hack.

  "Chaburi-'Ian isn't as tightly run as it was last time I was out there."

  "No?"

  "There are refugees from the Westlands."

  "There are always refugees from the Westlands."

  "Not this many," Otah said. "There are rumors that the Khai ChaburiTan

  is going to restrict the number of Westlanders allowed on the island."

  Amiit paused, his hands on the carved wood door of the meeting rooms.

  Otah could almost see the implications of this thought working

  themselves out behind the overseer's eyes. A moment later, Amiit looked

  up, raised his eyebrows in appreciation, and pushed the doors open.

  Half the day was spent in the raw silk chairs of the meeting rooms while

  Amiit took Otah's report and accepted the letters-sewn shut and written

  in cipher-that Otah had carried with him.

  It had taken Otah some time to understand all that being a courier

  implied. When he had first arrived in Udun six years before, hungry,

  lost and half-haunted by the memories he carried with him, he had still

  believed that he would simply be carrying letters and small packages

  from one place to another, perhaps waiting for a response, and then

  taking those to where they were expected. It would have been as right to

  say that a farmer throws some seeds in the earth and returns a few

  months later to sec what's grown. He had been lucky. His ability to win

  friends easily had served him, and he had been instructed in what the

  couriers called the gentleman's trade: how to gather information that

  might be of use to the house, how to read the activity of a street

  corner or market, and how to know from that the mood of a city. How to

  break ciphers and re-sew letters. How to appear to drink more wine than

  you actually did, and question travelers on the road without seeming to.

  He understood now that the gentleman's trade was one that asked a

  lifetime to truly master, and though he was still a journeyman, he had

  found a kind of joy in it. Amiit knew what his talents were, and chose

  assignments for him in which he could do well. And in return for the

  trust of the house and the esteem of his fellows, Otah did the best work

  he could, brokering information, speculation, gossip, and intrigue. He

  had traveled through the summer cities in the south, west to the plains

  and the cities that traded directly with the Westlands, up the eastern

  coasts where his knowledge of obscure east island tongues had served him

  well. By design or happy coincidence, he had never gone farther north

  than Yalakeht. He had not been called on to see the winter cities.

  Until now.

  "There's trouble in the north," Amiit said as he tucked the last of the

  opened letters into his sleeve.

  "I'd heard," Otah said. "The succession's started in Machi."

  "Amnat-"Ian, Machi, Cetani. All of them have something brewing. You may

  need to get some heavier robes."

  "I didn't think House Siyanti had much trade there," Otah said, trying

  to keep the unease out of his voice.

  "We don't. That doesn't mean we never will. And take your time. There's

  something I'm waiting for from the west. I won't be sending you out for

  a month at least, so you can have some time to spend you money. Unless ..."

  The overseer's eyes narrowed. His hands took a pose of query.

  "I just dislike the cold," Otah said, making a joke to cover his une
ase.

  "I grew up in Saraykeht. It seemed like water never froze there."

  "It's a hard life," Amiit said. "I can try to give the commissions to

  other men, if you'd prefer."

  And have them wonder why it was that I wouldn't go, Otah thought. He

  took a pose of thanks that also implied rejection.

  "I'll take what there is," he said. "And heavy wool robes besides."

  "It really isn't so bad up there in summer," Amiit said. "It's the

  winters that break your stones."

  "Then by all means, send someone else in the winter."

  They exchanged a few final pleasantries, and Otah left the name of

  Kiyan's wayhouse as the place to send for him, if he was needed. He

  spent the afternoon in a teahouse at the edge of the warehouse district,

  talking with old acquaintances and trading news. He kept an ear out for

  word from Machi, but there was nothing fresh. The eldest son had been

  poisoned, and his remaining brothers had gone to ground. No one knew

  where they were nor which had begun the traditional struggle. There were

  only a few murmurs of the near-forgotten sixth son, but every time he

  heard his old name, it was like hearing a distant, threatening noise.

  He returned to the wayhouse as darkness began to thicken the treetops

  and the streets fell into twilight, brooding. It wasn't safe, of course,