A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (12 page)

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."

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