A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2

by Abraham Daniel

  every court in all the cities of the Khaiem."

  Maati frowned and leaned forward.

  "You think Cehrnai-cha is in some danger?"

  "What?" the Khai said, then waved the thought away, stirring the smoky

  air. "No. Not that. I think my city is at risk. I think Otah ... my

  upstart son ..."

  He's forgiven you, a voice murmured in the back of Maati's mind. The

  voice of Seedless, the andat of Saraykeht. They were the words the andat

  had spoken to Maati in the instant before Heshai's death had freed it.

  It had been speaking of Otah.

  "I've called you here for a reason, Maati-cha," the Khai said, and Maati

  pulled his attention back to the present. "I didn't care to speak of it

  around those who would use it to fuel gossip. Your inquiry into

  Biitrah's death. You must move more quickly."

  "Even with the truce?"

  "Yes, even at the price of my sons returning to their tradition. If I

  die without a successor chosen-especially if Danat and Kaiin are still

  gone to ground-there will be chaos. The families of the utkhaiem start

  thinking that perhaps they would sit more comfortably in my chair, and

  schemes begin. Your task isn't only to find Otah. Your task is to

  protect my city."

  "I understand, most high."

  "You do not, Maati-cha. The spring roses are starting to bloom, and I

  will not see high summer. Neither of us has the luxury of time."

  THE GATHERING WAS ALL THAT CEHMAI HAD HOPED FOR, AND LESS. SPRING

  breezes washed the pavilion with the scent of fresh flowers. Kilns set

  along the edges roared behind the music of reed organ, flute, and drum.

  Overhead, the stars shone like gems strewn on dark velvet. The long

  months of winter had given musicians time to compose and practice new

  songs, and the youth of the high families week after weary week to tire

  of the cold and dark and the terrible constriction that deep winter

  brought to those with no business to conduct on the snow.

  Cehmai laughed and clapped time with the music and danced. Women and

  girls caught his eye, and he, theirs. The heat of youth did where

  heavier robes would otherwise have been called for, and the draw of body

  to body filled the air with something stronger than the perfume of

  flowers. Even the impending death of the Khai lent an air of license.

  Momentous things were happening, the world's order was changing, and

  they were young enough to find the thought romantic.

  And yet he could not enjoy it.

  A young man in an eagle's mask pressed a bowl of hot wine into his hand,

  and spun away into the dance. Cehmai grinned, sipped at it, and faded

  back to the edge of the pavilion. In the shadows behind the kilns,

  Stone-Made-Soft stood motionless. Cehmai sat beside it, put the bowl on

  the grass, and watched the revelry. Two young men had doffed their robes

  entirely and were sprinting around the wide grounds in nothing but their

  masks and long scarves trailing from their necks. The andat shifted like

  the first shudder of a landslide, then was still again. When it spoke,

  its voice was so soft that they would not be heard by the others.

  "It wouldn't he the first time the Dai-kvo had lied."

  "Or the first time I'd wondered why," Cehmai said. "It's his to decide

  what to say and to whom."

  "And yours?"

  "And mine to satisfy my curiosity. You heard what he said to the

  overseer in the mines. If he truly didn't want me to know, he would have

  lied better. Maati-kvo is looking into more than the library, and that's

  certain."

  The andat sighed. Stone-blade-Soft had no more need of breath than did a

  mountainside. The exhalation could only be a comment. Cehmai felt the

  subject of their conversation changing even before the andat spoke.

  "She's come."

  And there, dressed black as rooks and pale as mourning, Idaan Machi

  moved among the dancers. Her mask hid only part of her face and not her

  identity. Wrapped as he was by the darkness, she did not see him. Cehmai

  felt a lightening in his breast as he watched her move through the

  crowd, greeting friends and looking, he thought, for something or

  perhaps someone among them. She was not beautiful-well painted, but any

  number of the girls and women were more nearly perfect. She was not the

  most graceful, or the best spoken, or any of the hundred things that

  Cehmai thought of when he tried to explain to himself why this girl

  should fascinate him. The closest he could come was that she was

  interesting, and none of the others were.

  "It won't end well," the andat murmured.

  "It hasn't begun," Cehmai said. "How can something end when it hasn't

  even started?"

  Stone-blade-Soft sighed again, and Cehmai rose, tugging at his robes to

  smooth their lines. The music had paused and someone in the crowd

  laughed long and high.

  "Come back when you've finished and we'll carry on our conversation,"

  the andat said.

  Cchmai ignored the patience in its voice and strode forward, back into

  the light. The reed organ struck a chord just as he reached Idaan's

  side. He brushed her arm, and she turned-first annoyed and then

  surprised and then, he thought, pleased.

  "Idaan-cha," he said, the exaggerated formality acting as its opposite

  without taking him quite into the intimacy that the kya suffix would

  have suggested. "I'd almost thought you wouldn't be joining us."

  "I almost wasn't," she said. "I hadn't thought you'd be here."

  The organ set a beat, and the drums picked it up; the dance was

  beginning again. Cehmai held out a hand and, after a pause that took a

  thousand years and lasted perhaps a breath, Idaan took it. The music

  began in earnest, and Cehmai spun her, took her under his arm, and was

  turned by her. It was a wild tune, rich and fast with a rhythm like a

  racing heart. Around him the others were grinning, though not at him.

  Idaan laughed, and he laughed with her. The paving stones beneath them

  seemed to echo hack the song, and the sky above them received it.

  As they turned to face each other, he could see the flush in Idaan's

  check, and felt the same blood in his own, and then the music whirled

  them off again.

  In the center of the frenzy, someone took Cehmai's elbow from behind,

  and something round and hard was pressed into his hands. A man's voice

  whispered urgently in his ear.

  "Hold this."

  Cehmai faltered, confused, and the moment was gone. He was suddenly

  standing alone in a throng of people, holding an empty bowl-a thread of

  wine wetting the rim-while Adrah Vaunyogi took Idaan Machi through the

  steps and turns of the dance. The pair shifted away from him, left him

  behind. Cehmai felt the flush in his cheek brighten. He turned and

  walked through the shifting bodies, handing the bowl to a servant as he

  left.

  "He is her lover," the andat said. "Everyone knows it."

  "I don't," Cehmai said.

  "I just told you."

  "You tell me things all the time; it doesn't mean I agree to them."

  "This thing you have in mind," Stone-Made-Soft said. "You shouldn't do it."

&
nbsp; Cehmai looked up into the calm gray eyes set in the wide, placid face.

  He felt his own head lift in defiance, even as he knew the words were

  truth. It was stupid and mean and petty. Adrah Vaunyogi wasn't even

  entirely in the wrong. There was a perspective by which the little

  humiliation Cehmai had been dealt was a small price for flirting so

  openly with another man's love.

  And yet.

  The andat nodded slowly and turned to consider the dancers. It was easy

  enough to pick out Idaan and Adrah. They were too far for Cehmai to be

  sure, but he liked to think she was frowning. It hardly mattered. Cehmai

  focused on Adrah's movements-his feet, shifting in time with the drums

  while Idaan danced to the flutes. He doubled his attention, feeling it

  through his own body and also the constant storm at the hack of his

  mind. In that instant he was both of them-a single being with two bodies

  and a permanent struggle at the heart. And then, at just the moment when

  Adrah's foot came hack to catch his weight, Cehmai reached out. The

  paving stone gave way, the smooth stone suddenly soft as mud, and Adrah

  stumbled backward and fell, landing on his rear, legs splayed. Cehmai

  waited a moment for the stone to flow back nearer to smooth, then let

  his consciousness return to its usual state. The storm that was

  Stone-Made-Soft was louder, more present in his mind, like the proud

  flesh where a thorn has scratched skin. And like a scratch, Cehmai knew

  it would subside.

  "We should go," Cehmai said, "before I'm tempted to do something childish."

  The andat didn't answer, and Cehmai led the way through the nightdark

  gardens. The music floated in the distance and then faded. Far from the

  kilns and dancing, the night was cold-not freezing, but near it. But the

  stars were brighter, and the moon glowed: a rim of silver that made the

  starless thumbprint darker by contrast. They passed by the temple and

  the counting house, the bathhouse and base of the great tower. The andat

  turned down a side path then, and paused when Cehmai did not follow.

  Stone-Made-Soft took a pose of query.

  "Is this not where you were going?" it asked.

  Cehmai considered, and then smiled.

  "I suppose it is," he said, and followed the captive spirit down the

  curving pathway and up the wide, shallow steps that led to the library.

  The great stone doors were barred from within, but Cehmai followed the

  thin gravel path at the side of the building, keeping close to the wall.

  The windows of Baarath's apartments glowed with more than a night

  candle's light. Even with the night half gone, he was awake. The door

  slave was an ancient man, and Cehmai had to shake him by the shoulder

  before he woke, retreated into the apartments, and returned to lead them in.

  The apartments smelled of old wine, and the sandalwood resin that

  Baarath burned in his brazier. The tables and couches were covered with

  books and scrolls, and no cushion had escaped from some ink stain.

  Baarath, dressed in deep red robes thick as tapestry, rose from his desk

  and took a pose of welcome. His copper tore of office was lying

  discarded on the floor at his feet.

  "Cehmai-cha, to what do I owe this honor?"

  Cehmai frowned. "Are you angry with me?" he asked.

  "Of course not, great poet. How could a poor man of books dare to feel

  angry with a personage like yourself?"

  "Gods," Cehmai said as he shifted a pile of papers from a wide chair. "I

  don't know, Baarath-kya. Do tell me."

  "Kya? Oh, you are too familiar with me, great poet. I would not suggest

  so deep a friendship as that with a man so humble as myself."

  "You're right," Cehmai said, sitting. "I was trying to flatter you. Did

  it work?"

  "You should have brought wine," the stout man said, taking his own seat.

  The false graciousness was gone, and a sour impatience in its place.

  "And come at an hour when living men could talk business. Isn't it late

  for you to be wandering around like a dazed rabbit?"

  "There was a gathering at the rose pavilion. I was just going back to my

  apartments and I noticed the lights burning."

  Baarath made a sound between a snort and a cough. Stone-MadeSoft gazed

  placidly at the marble walls, thoughtful as a lumberman judging the best

  way to fell a tree. Cehmai frowned at him, and the andat replied with a

  gesture more eloquent than any pose. Don't blame me. He's your friend,

  not mine.

  "I wanted to ask how things were proceeding with Maati Vaupathai,"

  Cehmai said.

  "About time someone took an interest in that annoying, feckless idiot.

  I've met cows with more sense than he has."

  "Not proceeding well, then?"

  "Who can tell? Weeks, it's been. He's only here about half the morning,

  and then he's off dining with the dregs of the court, taking meetings

  with trading houses, and loafing about in the low towns. If I were the

  Dai-kvo, I'd pull that man back home and set him to plowing fields. I've

  eaten hens that were better scholars."

  "Cows and hens. He'll be a whole farmyard soon," Cehmai said, but his

  mind was elsewhere. "What does he study when he is here?"

  "Nothing in particular. He picks up whatever strikes him and spends a

  day with it, and then comes hack the next for something totally

  unrelated. I haven't told him about the Khai's private archives, and he

  hasn't bothered to ask. I was sure, you know, when he first came, that

  he was after something in the private archives. But now it's like the

  library itself might as well not exist."

  "Perhaps there is some pattern in what he's looking at. A common thread

  that places them all together."

  "You mean maybe poor old Baarath is too simple to see the picture when

  it's being painted for him? I doubt it. I know this place better than

  any man alive. I've even made my own shelving system. I have read more

  of these books and seen more of their relationships than anyone. When I

  tell you he's wandering about like tree fluff on a breezy day, it's

  because he is."

  Cehmai tried to feel surprise, and failed. The library was only an

  excuse. The Dai-kvo had sent Maati Vaupathai to examine the death of

  Biitrah Machi. That was clear. Why he would choose to do so, was not. It

  wasn't the poets' business to take sides in the succession, only to work

  with-and sometimes cool the ambitions of-whichever son sur vived. The

  Khaiem administered the city, accepted the glory and tribute, passed

  judgment. The poets kept the cities from ever going to war one against

  the other, and fueled the industries that brought wealth from the

  Westlands and Galt, Bakta, and the east islands. But something had

  happened, or was happening, that had captured the Dai-kvo's interest.

  And Maati Vaupathai was an odd poet. He held no post, trained under no

  one. He was old to attempt a new binding. By many standards, he was

  already a failure. The only thing Cehmai knew of him that stood out at

  all was that Maati had been in Saraykeht when that city's poet was

  murdered and the andat set free. He thought of the man's eyes, the

  darkness that
they held, and a sense of unease troubled him.

  "I don't know what the point of that sort of grammar would be," Baarath

  said. "Dalani Toygu's was better for one thing, and half the length."

  Cehmai realized that the Baarath had been talking this whole time, that

  the subject had changed, and in fact they were in the middle of a debate

  on a matter he couldn't identify. All this without the need that he speak.

  "I suppose you're right," Cehmai said. "I hadn't seen it from that angle."

  Stone-Made-Soft's calm, constant near-smile widened slightly.

  "You should have, though. That's my point. Grammars and translations and

  the subtleties of thought are your trade. That I know more about it than

  you and that Maati person is a bad sign for the world. Note this,

  Cehmai-kya, write down that I said it. It's that kind of ignorance that

  will destroy the Khaiem."

  "I'll write down that you said it," Cehmai said. "In fact, I'll go back

  to my apartments right now and do that. And afterwards, I'll crawl into

  bed, I think."

  "So soon?"

  "The night candle's past its center mark," Cehmai said.

  "Fine. Go. When I was your age, I would stay up nights in a row for the

  sake of a good conversation like this, but I suppose the generations

  weaken, don't they?"

  Cehmai took a pose of farewell, and Baarath returned it.