A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2

by Abraham Daniel

  bone. She felt as if she'd swum for a day. She found Cehmai's hand and

  laced her fingers with his, wondering where dawn was. It seemed the

  night had already lasted for years. Surely there would be light soon.

  "You feel better?" he asked, and she nodded her reply, trusting him to

  feel the movement against his flesh.

  "Do you want to tell me what it is?" he asked.

  Idaan felt her throat go tighter for a moment. He must have felt some

  change in her body, because he raised her hand to his lips. His mouth

  was so soft and so warm.

  "I do," she said. "I want to. But I'm afraid."

  "Of me?"

  "Of what I would say."

  There was something in his expression. Not a hardening, not a pulling

  away, but a change. It was as if she'd confirmed something.

  "There's nothing you can say that will hurt me," Cehmai said. "Not if

  it's true. It's the Vaunyogi, isn't it? It's Adrah."

  "I can't, love. Please don't talk about it."

  But he only ran his free hand over her arm, the sound of skin against

  skin loud in the night's silence. When he spoke again, Cehmai's voice

  was gentle, but urgent.

  "It's about your father and your brothers, isn't it?"

  Idaan swallowed, trying to loosen her throat. She didn't answer, not

  even with a movement, but Cehmai's soft, beautiful voice pressed on.

  "Otah Machi didn't kill them, did he?"

  The air went thin as a mountaintop's. Idaan couldn't catch her breath.

  Cehmai's fingers pressed hers gently. He leaned forward and kissed her

  temple.

  "It's all right," he said. "Tell me."

  "I can't," she said.

  "I love you, Idaan-kya. And I will protect you, whatever happens."

  Idaan closed her eyes, even in the darkness. Her heart seemed on the

  edge of bursting she wanted it so badly to he true. She wanted so badly

  to lay her sins before him and be forgiven. And he knew already. He knew

  the truth or else guessed it, and he hadn't denounced her.

  "I love you," he repeated, his voice softer than the sound of his hand

  stroking her skin. "How did it start?"

  "I don't know," she said. And then, a moment later, "When I was young, I

  think."

  Quietly, she told him everything, even the things she had never told

  Adrah. Seeing her brothers sent to the school and being told that she

  could not go herself because of her sex. Watching her mother brood and

  suffer and know that one day she would be sent away or else die there,

  in the women's quarters and be remembered only as something that had

  borne a Khai's babies.

  She told him about listening to songs about the sons of the Khaiem

  battling for the succession and how, as a girl, she'd pretend to be one

  of them and force her playmates to take on the roles of her rivals. And

  the sense of injustice that her older brothers would pick their own

  wives and command their own fates, while she would be sold at convenience.

  At some point, Cchmai stopped stroking her, and only listened, but that

  open, receptive silence was all she needed of him. She poured out

  everything. The wild, impossible plans she'd woven with Adrah. The

  intimation, one night when a Galtic dignitary had come to Nlaehi, that

  the schemes might not be impossible after all. The bargain they had

  struck-access to a library's depth of old books and scrolls traded for

  power and freedom. And from there, the progression, inevitable as water

  flowing toward the sea, that led Adrah to her father's sleeping chambers

  and her to the still moment by the lake, the terrible sound of the arrow

  striking home.

  With every phrase, she felt the horror of it case. It lost none of the

  sorrow, none of the regret, but the bleak, soul-eating despair began to

  fade from black to merely the darkest gray. By the time she came to the

  end of one sentence and found nothing following it, the birds outside

  had begun to trill and sing. It would be light soon. Dawn would come

  after all. She sighed.

  "That was a longer answer than you hoped for, maybe," she said.

  "It was enough," he said.

  Idaan shifted and sat up, pulling her hair back from her face. Cehmai

  didn't move.

  "Hiami told me once," she said, "just before she left, that to become

  Khai you had to forget how to love. I see why she believed that. But it

  isn't what's happened. Not to me. "Thank You, Cchmai-kya."

  "For what?"

  "For loving me. For protecting me," she said. "I didn't guess how much I

  needed to tell you all that. It was ... it was too much. You see that."

  "I do," Cehmai said.

  "Are you angry with me now?"

  "Of course not," he said.

  "Are you horrified by me?"

  She heard him shift his weight. The pause stretched, her heart sickening

  with every beat.

  "I love you, Idaan," he said at last, and she felt the tears come again,

  but this time with a very different pressure behind them. It wasn't joy,

  but it was perhaps relief.

  She shifted forward in the darkness, found his body there waiting, and

  held him for a time. She was the one who kissed him this time. She was

  the one who moved their conversation from the intimacy of confession to

  the intimacy of sex. Cehmai seemed almost reluctant, as if afraid that

  taking her body now would betray some deeper moment that they had

  shared. But Idaan led him to his bed in the darkness, opened her own

  robes and his, and coaxed his flesh until whatever objection he'd

  fostered was forgotten. She found herself at ease, lighter, almost as if

  she was half in dream.

  Afterwards, she lay nestled in his arms, warm, safe, and calm as she had

  never been in years. Sunlight pressed at the closed shutters as she

  drifted down to sleep.

  The tunnels beneath Machi were a city unto themselves. Otah found

  himself drawn out into them more and more often as the days crept

  forward. Sinja and Amiit had tried to keep him from leaving the

  storehouse beneath the underground palaces of the Sava, but Otah had

  overruled them. The risk of a few quiet hours walking abandoned

  corridors was less, he judged, than the risk of going quietly mad

  waiting in the same sunless room day after day. Sinja had convinced him

  to take an armsman as guard when he went.

  Otah had expected the darkness and the quiet-wide halls empty, water

  troughs dry-hut the beauty he stumbled on took him by stirprise. Here a

  wide square of stone smooth as beach sand, delicate pillars spiraling

  tip from it like bolts of twisting silk made from stone. And down

  another corridor, a bathhouse left dry for the winter but rich with the

  scent of cedar and pine resin.

  Even when lie returned to the storehouse and the voices and faces he

  knew, lie found his mind lingering in the dark corridors and galleries,

  unsure whether the images of the spaces lit with the white shadowless

  light of a thousand candles were imagination or memory.

  A sharp rapping brought him back to himself, and the door of his private

  office swung open. Amiit and Sinja walked in, already half into a

  conversation. Sinja's expression was mildly a
nnoyed. Amiit, Otah

  thought, seemed worried.

  "It would only make things worse," Amiit said.

  "We'd earn more time. And it isn't as if they'd accuse Otah-cha here of

  it. They think he's dead."

  "'T'hen they'll accuse him of it once they find he's alive," Amiit said

  and turned to Otah. "Sinja wants to assassinate the head of a high

  family in order to slow the work of the council."

  "We won't do that," Otah said. "My hands aren't particularly bloodied

  yet, and I'd like to keep it that way-"

  "It isn't as though people are going to believe it," Sinja said. "If

  you're going to carry the blame you may as well get the advantages from

  doing the thing."

  "It'll be easier to convince them of my innocence later if I'm actually

  innocent of something," Otah said, "hut there may be other roads that

  come to the same place. Is there something else that would slow the

  council and doesn't involve putting holes in someone?"

  Sinja frowned, his eyes shifting as if he were reading text written in

  the air. He half-smiled.

  "Perhaps. Let me look into that."

  With a pose that ended his conversation, Sinja left. Amiit sighed and

  lowered himself into one of the chairs.

  "What news?" Amiit asked.

  "Kamau and Vaunani are talking about merging their forces," Otah said.

  "Most of the talks seem to involve someone hitting someone or throwing a

  knife. The Loiya, Bentani, and (:oirah have all been quietly, and so far

  as I can tell, independently, backing the Vaunyogi."

  "And they all have contracts with Galt," Amiit said. "What about the

  others?"

  "Of the families we know? None have come out against them. And none for,

  or at least not openly."

  "There should be more fighting," Amiit said. "There should be struggles

  and coalitions. Alliances should be forming and breaking by the moment.

  It's too steady."

  "Only if there was a real struggle going on. If the decision was already

  made, it would look exactly like this."

  "Yes. There are times I hate being right. Any word from the poet?"

  Otah shook his head and sat, then stood again. Maati had gone from their

  first meeting, and he'd seemed convinced. Otah had been sure at the time

  that he wouldn't betray them. He was sure in his bones. He only wished

  he'd had his thoughts more in order at the time. He'd been swept up in

  the moment, more concerned with his lies about Liat's son than anything

  else. He'd had time since to reflect, and the other worries had swarmed

  out. Otah had sat up until the night candle was at its halfway mark,

  listing the things he needed to consider. It hadn't lent him peace.

  "It's hard, waiting," Amiit said. "You must feel like you're back up in

  that tower."

  "That was easier. Then at least I knew what was going to happen. I wish

  I could go out. If I could be up there listening to the people

  themselves ... If I spent half an evening in the right teahouse, I'd

  know more than I'll learn skulking down here for days. Yes, I know.

  You've the best minds of the house out watching for us. But listening to

  reports isn't the same as putting my hands to something."

  "I know it. More than half my work has been trying to guess the truth

  out of a dozen different reports of a thing. There's a knack to it.

  You'll have your practice with it."

  "If this ends well," Otah said.

  "Yes," Amiit agreed. "If that."

  Otah filled a tin cup with water from a stone jar and sat back down. It

  was warm, and a thin grit swam at the cup's bottom. He wished it were

  wine and pushed the thought away. If there was any time in his life to

  be sober as stone, this was it, but his unease shifted and tightened. He

  looked up from his water to sec Amiit's gaze on him, his expression

  quizzical.

  "We have to make a plan for if we lose," Otah said. "If the Vaunyogi are

  to blame and the council gives them power, they'll be able to wash away

  any number of crimes. And all those families that supported them will be

  invested in keeping things quiet. If it comes out that Daaya Vaunyogi

  killed the Khai in order to raise up his son and half the families of

  the utkhaiem took money to support it, they'll all share in the guilt.

  Being in the right won't mean much then."

  "There's time yet," Amiit said, but he was looking away when he said it.

  "And what happens if we fail?"

  "That all depends on how we fail. If we're discovered before we're ready

  to move, we'll all be killed. If Adrah is named Khai, we'll at least

  have a chance to slip away quietly."

  "You'll take care of Kiyan?"

  Amiit smiled. "I hope to see to it that you can perform that duty."

  "But if not?"

  "Then of course," Amiit said. "Provided I live."

  The rapping came again, and the door opened on a young man. Otah

  recognized him from the meetings in House Siyanti, but he couldn't

  recall his name.

  "The poet's come," the young man said.

  Amiit rose, took a pose appropriate to the parting of friends, and left.

  The young man went with him, and for a moment the door swung free, half

  closing. Otah drank the last of his water, the grit rough in his throat.

  Maati came in slowly, a diffidence in his body and his face, like a man

  called in to hear news that might bring him good or ill or some

  unimagined change that folded both inextricably together. Otah gestured

  to the door, and Maati closed it.

  "You sent for me?" Maati asked. "That's a dangerous habit, Otah-kvo."

  "I know it, but ... Please. Sit. I've been thinking. About what we do if

  things go poorly."

  "If we fail?"

  "I want to be ready for it, and when Kiyan and I were talking last

  night, something occurred to me. Nayiit? That's his name, isn't it? The

  child that you and Liat had?"

  Maati's expression was cool and distant and misleading. Otah could see

  the pain in it, however still the eyes.

  "What of him?"

  "He mustn't be my son. Whatever happens, he has to be yours."

  "If you fail, you don't take your father's title-"

  "If I don't take his title, and someone besides you decides he's mine,

  they'll kill him to remove all doubt of the succession. And if I

  succeed, Kiyan may have a son," Otah said. "And then they would someday

  have to kill each other. Nayiit is your son. He has to be."

  "I see," Maati said.

  "I've written a letter. It looks like something I'd have sent Kiyan

  before, when I was in Chaburi-Tan. It talks about the night I left

  Saraykeht. It says that on the night I came back to the city, I found

  the two of you together. That I walked into her cell, and you and she

  were in her cot. It makes it clear that I didn't touch her, that I

  couldn't have fathered a child on her. Kiyan's put it in her things. If

  we have to flee, we'll take it with us and find a way for it to come to

  light-we can hide it at her wayhouse, perhaps. If we're found and killed

  here, it will be found with us. You have to back that story."

  Maati steepled his fingers and leaned back in the chair.

  "You've put it wi
th Kiyan-cha's things to be found in case she's

  slaughtered?" he asked.

  "Yes," Otah said. "I don't think about it when I can help it, but I know

  she could die here. There's no reason that your son should die with us."

  Maati nodded slowly. He was struggling with something, Otah could see

  that much, but whether it was sorrow or anger or joy, he had no way to

  know. When the question came, though, it was the one he had been

  dreading for years.

  "What did happen?" Maati asked at last, his voice low and hushed. "The

  night Heshai-kvo died. What happened? Did you just leave? Did you take

  Mai with you? Did . . . did you kill him?"

  Otah remembered the cord cutting into his hands, remembered the way Mai

  had balked and he had taken the task himself. For years, those few

  minutes had haunted him.

  "He knew what was coming," Otah said. "He knew it was necessary. The

  consequences if he had lived would have been worse. Heshai was right

  when he warned you to let the thing drop. The Khai Saraykeht would have

  turned the andat against Galt. There would have been thousands of

  innocent lives ruined. And when it was over, you would still have been