A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2

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A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2 Page 12

by Abraham Daniel


  same moment, the syllables grinding against each other in the warm, damp

  air, and they immediately fell to debate. Kaiin was a master negotiator;

  Danat was better thought of by the utkhaiem. Kaiin was prone to fits of

  temper, Danat to weeks of sloth. Each man, to hear it, was a paragon of

  virtue and little better than a street thug. Otah listened, interjected

  comments, asked questions crafted to keep the conversation alive and on

  its course. His mind was hardly there.

  When at last he made his excuses, the three debaters hardly paused in

  their wrangle. Otah dried himself by a brazier and collected his

  robes-laundered now, smelling of cedar oil and warm from the kiln. The

  streets were fuller than when he had gone into the bathhouse. The sun

  would fall early, disappearing behind the peaks to the west long before

  the sky grew dark, but it still hovered two hands above the mountainous

  horizon.

  Otah walked without knowing where he was walking to. The black cobbles

  and tall houses seemed familiar and exotic at the same time. The towers

  rose into the sky, glowing in the sunlight. At the intersection of three

  large streets, Otah found a courtyard with a great stone archway inlaid

  with wood and metal sigils of chaos and order. Harsh forge smoke from

  the east mixed with the greasy scent of a cart seller's roasting duck

  and, for a moment, Otah was possessed by the memory of being a child no

  more than four summers old. The smoke scent wove with the taste of

  honeybread nearly too hot to eat, the clear open view of the valley and

  mountains from the top of the towers, and a woman's skin-mother or

  sister or servant. There was no way to know.

  It was a ghost memory, strong and certain as stone, but without a place

  in his life. Something had happened, once, that tied all these senses

  together, but it was gone and he would never have it. He was upstart and

  traitor. Poisoner and villain. None of it was true, but it made for an

  interesting story to tell in the teahouses and meeting rooms-a variation

  on the theme of fratricide that the Khaiem replayed in every generation.

  A deep fatigue pressed into him. He had been an innocent to think that

  he might be forgotten, that Otah Machi might escape the venomous

  speculation of the traders and merchants, high families and low

  townsmen. There was no use for truth when spectacle was at issue. And

  there was nothing in the city that could matter less than the

  halfrecalled memories of a courier's abandoned childhood. The life he'd

  built mattered less than ashes to these people. His death would be a

  relief to them.

  He returned to House Nan just as the stars began to glimmer in the deep

  northern sky. There was fresh bread and pepper-baked lamb, distilled

  rice wine and cold water. The other men who were to share his room

  joined him at the table, and they laughed and joked, traded information

  and gossip from across the world. Otah slid back comfortably into Itani

  Noygu, and his smiles came more easily as the night wore on, though a

  cold core remained in his breast. It was only just before he went to

  crawl into his cot that he found the steward, recovered his pouch of

  letters, and prepared himself.

  All the letters were, of course, still sewn shut, but Otah checked the

  knots. None had been undone so far as he could tell. It would have been

  a breach of the gentleman's trade to open letters held in trust, and it

  would have been foolishness to trust to honor. Had House Nan been

  willing to break trust, that would have been interesting to know as

  well. He laid them out on his cot, considering.

  Letters to the merchant houses and lower families among the utkhaiem

  were the most common. He didn't carry a letter for the Khai himself-he

  would have balked at so high a risk-but his work would take him to the

  palaces. And there were audiences, no doubt, to which he could get an

  invitation. If he chose, he could go to the Master of Tides and claim

  business with members of the court. It wouldn't even require stretching

  the truth very far. He sat in silence, feeling as if there were two men

  within him.

  One wanted nothing more than to embrace the fear and flee to some

  distant island and be pleased to live wondering whether his brothers

  would still be searching him out. The other was consumed by an anger

  that drove him forward, deeper into the city of his birth and the family

  that had first discarded him and then fashioned a murderer from his memory.

  Fear and anger. He waited for the calm third voice of wisdom, but it

  didn't come. He was left with no better plan than to act as Irani Noygu

  would have, had he been nothing other than he appeared. When at last he

  repacked his charges and lay on his cot, he expected that sleep would

  not come, but it did, and he woke in the morning forgetful of where he

  was and surprised to find that Kiyan was not in the bed beside him.

  The palaces of the Khai were deep within the city, and the gardens

  around them made it seem more like a walk into some glorious low town

  than movement into the center of a great city. Trees arched over the

  walkways, branches bright with new leaves. Birds fluttered past him,

  reminding him of Udun and the wayhouse he had almost made his home. The

  greatest tower loomed overhead, dark stone rising up like twenty

  palaces, one above the other. Otah stopped in a courtyard before the

  lesser palace of the Master of Tides and squinted up at the great tower,

  wondering whether he had ever been to the top of it. Wondering whether

  being here, now, was valor, cowardice, foolishness, or wisdom; the

  product of anger or fear or the childish drive to show that he could

  defy them all if he chose.

  He gave his name to the servants at the door and was led to an an

  techamber larger than his apartments back in Udun. A slave girl plucked

  a lap harp, filling the high air with a sweet, slow tune. He smiled at

  her and took a pose of appreciation. She returned his smile and nodded,

  but her fingers never left the strings. The servant, when he came, wore

  robes of deep red shot with yellow and a silver armband. He took a pose

  of greeting so brief it almost hadn't happened.

  "Irani Noygu. You're Itani Noygu, then? Ah, good. I am Piyun See, the

  Master of Tides' assistant. He's too busy to see you himself. So House

  Siyanti has taken an interest in Machi, then?" he said. Otah smiled,

  though he meant it less this time.

  "I couldn't say. I only go where they send me, Piyun-cha."

  The assistant took a pose of agreement.

  "I had hoped to know the court's schedule in the next week," Otah said.

  "I have business-"

  "With the poet. Yes, I know. He left your name with us. He said we

  should keep a watch out for you. You're wise to come to us first. You

  wouldn't imagine the people who simply drift through on the breeze as if

  the poets weren't members of the court."

  Otah smiled, his mouth tasting of fear, his heart suddenly racing. The

  poet of Machi-Cehmai 'Ivan, his name was-had no reason to know Itani

  Noygu or expect him. This was a mis
take or a trap. If it was a trap, it

  was sloppy, and if a mistake, dangerous. The lie came to his lips as

  gracefully as a rehearsed speech.

  "I'm honored to have been mentioned. I hadn't expected that he would

  remember me. But I'm afraid the business I've come on may not be what he

  had foreseen."

  "I wouldn't know," the assistant said as he shifted. "Visiting

  dignitaries might confide in the Master of Tides, but I'm like you. I

  follow orders. Now. Let me see. I can send a runner to the library, and

  if he's there ..."

  "Perhaps it would be best if I went to the poet's house," Otah said. "He

  can find me there when he isn't-"

  "Oh, we haven't put him there. Gods! He has his own rooms."

  "His own rooms?"

  "Yes. We have a poet of our own, you know. We aren't going to put

  Cehmai-cha on a cot in the granary every time the Dai-kvo sends us a

  guest. Maati-cha has apartments near the library."

  The air seemed to leave the room. A dull roar filled Otah's ears, and he

  had to put a hand to the wall to keep from swaying. Maati-cha. The name

  came like an unforeseen blow.

  Maati Vaupathai. Maati whom Otah had known briefly at the school, and to

  whom he had taught the secrets he had learned before he turned his back

  on the poets and all they offered. Maati whom he had found again in

  Saraykeht, who had become his friend and who knew that Irani Noygu was

  the son of the Khai Machi.

  The last night they had seen one another-thirteen, fourteen summers

  ago-Maati had stolen his lover and Otah had killed Maati's master. He

  was here now, in Machi. And he was looking for Otah. He felt like a deer

  surprised by the hunter at its side.

  The servant girl fumbled with her strings, the notes of the tune coming

  out a jangle, and Otah shifted his gaze to her as if she'd shouted. For

  a moment, their eyes met and he saw discomfort in her as she hurried

  back to her song. She might have seen something in his face, might have

  realized who was standing before her. Otah balled his fists at his

  sides, pressing them into his thighs to keep from shaking. The assistant

  had been speaking. Otah didn't know what he'd said.

  "Forgive me, but before we do anything, would you be so kind . . . "

  Otah feigned an embarrassed simper. "I'm afraid I had one bowl of tea

  too many this morning, and waters that run in, run out...."

  "Of course. I'll have a slave take you to-"

  "No need," Otah said as he stepped to the door. No one shouted. No one

  stopped him. "I'll be back with you in a moment."

  He walked out of the hall, forcing himself not to run though he could

  feel his heartbeat in his neck, and his ribs seemed too small for his

  breath. He waited for the warning yell to come-armsmen with drawn blades

  or the short, simple pain of an arrow in his breast. Generations of his

  uncles had spilled their blood, spat their last breaths perhaps here,

  under these arches. He was not immune. Irani Noygu would not protect

  him. He controlled himself as best he could, and when he reached the

  gardens, boughs shielding him from the eyes of the palaces, he bolted.

  IDAAN SAT AT THE OPEN SKY DOORS, HER LEGS HANGING OUT OVER THE VOID, and

  let her gaze wander the moonlit valley. The glimmers of the low towns to

  the south. The Daikani mine where her brother had gone to die. The

  Poinyat mines to the west and southeast. And below the soles of her bare

  feet, Machi itself: the smoke rising from the forges, the torches and

  lanterns glimmering in the streets and windows smaller and dimmer than

  fireflies. The winches and pulleys hung in the darkness above her, long

  lengths of iron chain in guides and hooks set in the stone, ready to be

  freed should there be call to haul something tip to the high reaches of

  the tower or lower something down. Chains that clanked and rattled,

  uneasy in the night breeze.

  She leaned forward, forcing herself to feel the vertigo twist her

  stomach and tighten her throat. Savoring it. Scoot forward a few inches,

  no more effort really than standing from a chair, and then the sound of

  wind would fill her ears. She waited as long as she could stand and then

  drew hack, gasping and nauseated and trembling. But she did not pull her

  legs back in. That would have been weakness.

  It was an irony that the symbols of Machi's greatness were so little

  used. In the winter, there was no heating them-all the traffic of the

  city went in the streets, or over the snows, or through the networks of

  tunnels. And even in summer, the endless spiraling stairways and the

  need to haul up any wine or food or musical instruments made the gardens

  and halls nearer the ground more inviting. The towers were symbols of

  power, existing to show that they could exist and little enough more. A

  boast in stone and iron used for storage and exotic parties to impress

  visitors from the other courts of the Khaiem. And still, they made Idaan

  think that perhaps she could imagine what it would he to fly. In her way

  she loved them, and she loved very few things these days.

  It was odd, perhaps that she had two lovers and still felt alone. Adrah

  had been with her for longer, it felt, than she had been herself. And so

  it had surprised her that she was so ready to betray him in another

  man's bed. Perhaps she'd thought that by being a new man's lover, she

  would strip off that old skin and become innocent again.

  Or perhaps it was only that Cehmai had a sweet face and wanted her. She

  was young, she thought, to have given tip flirtation and courtship.

  She'd been angry with Adrah for embarrassing Cchmai at the dance. She'd

  promised herself never to be owned by a man. And also, killing Biitrah

  had left a hunger in her-a need that nothing yet had sated.

  She liked Cehmai. She longed for him. She needed him in a way she

  couldn't quite fathom, except to say that she hated herself less when

  she was with him.

  "Idaan!" a voice whispered from the darkness behind her. "Conic away

  from there! You'll he seen!"

  "Only if you're fool enough to bring a torch," she said, but she pulled

  her feet hack in from the abyss and hauled the great bronze-bound oaken

  sky doors shut. For a moment, there was nothing-black darker than

  closing her eyes-and then the scrape of a lantern's hood and the flame

  of a single candle. Crates and boxes threw deep shadows on the stone

  walls and carved cabinets. Adrah looked pale, even in the dim light.

  Idaan found herself amused and annoyed-pulled between wanting to comfort

  him and the desire to point out that it wasn't his family they were

  killing. She wondered if he knew yet that she had taken the poet to bed

  and whether he would care. And whether she did. He smiled nervously and

  glanced around at the shadows.

  "He hasn't come," Idaan said.

  "He will. Don't worry," Adrah said, and then a moment later: "My father

  has drafted a letter. Proposing our union. He's sending it to the Khai

  tomorrow."

  "Good," Idaan said. "We'll want that in place before everyone finishes

  dying."

  "Don't."

  "If we c
an't speak of it to each other, Adrah-kya, when will we ever? It

  isn't as if I can go to our friends or the priest." Idaan took a pose of

  query to some imagined confidant. "Adrah's going to take me as his wife,

  but it's important that we do it now, so that when I've finished

  slaughtering my brothers, he can use me to press his suit to become the

  new Khai without it seeming so clearly that I'm being traded at market.

  And don't you love this new robe? It's Westlands silk."

  She laughed bitterly. Adrah did not step back, quite, but he did pull away.

  "What is it, Idaan-kya?" he said, and Idaan was surprised by the pain in

  his voice. It sounded genuine. "Have I done something to make you angry

  with me?"

  For a moment, she saw herself through his eyes-cutting, ironic, cruel.

  It wasn't who she had been with him. Once, before they had made this

  bargain with Chaos, she had had the luxury of being soft and warm. She

  had always been angry, only not with him. How lost he must feel.

  Idaan leaned close and kissed him. For one terrible moment, she meant

  it-the softness of his lips against hers stirring something within her

  that cried out to hold and be held, to weep and wail and take com fort.

  Her flesh also remembered the poet, the strange taste of another man's

  skin, the illusion of hope and of safety that she'd felt in her betrayal

  of the man who was destined to share her life.

  "I'm not angry, sweet. Only tired. I'm very tired."

  "This will pass, Idaan-kya. Remember that this part only lasts a while."

  "And is what follows it better?"

  He didn't answer.

  The candle had hardly burned past another mark when the moonfaced

 

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