A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (16 page)

tempted to open them again, just for a moment. To see the land and sky

laid out before her.

"It's odd, you know," she said. "If I had been born a man, they would

have sent me away to the school. I would have become a poet or taken the

brand. But instead, they kept me here, and I became what they're afraid

of. Kaiin and Danat are hiding from the brother who has broken the

traditions and come back to kill them for the chair. And here I am. I am

Otah Machi. Only they can't see it."

"I love you, Idaan-kya."

She smiled because there was nothing else to do. He had heard the words,

but understood nothing. It would have meant as much to talk to a dog.

She took his hand in hers, laced her fingers with his.

"I love you too, Adrah-kya. And I will be happy once we've done all this

and taken the chair. You'll be the Khai Machi, and I will be your wife.

We'll rule the city together, just as we always planned, and everything

will be right again. It's been half a hand by now. We should go."

They parted in one of the night gardens, he to the east and his family

compound, and she to the south, to her own apartments, and past them and

west to tree-lined path that led to the poet's house. If the shutters

were closed, if no light shone but the night candle, she told herself

she wouldn't go in. But the lanterns were lit brightly, and the shutters

open. She paced quietly through the grounds, peering in through windows,

until she caught the sound of voices. Cehmai's soft and reasonable, and

then another. A man's, loud and full of a rich selfimportance. Baarath,

the librarian. Idaan found a tree with low branches and deep shadows and

sat, waiting with as much patience as she could muster, and silently

willing the man away. The full moon was halfway across the sky before

the two came to the door, silhouetted. Baarath swayed like a drunkard,

but Cehmai, though he laughed as loud and sang as poorly, didn't waver.

She watched as Baarath took a sloppy pose of farewell and stumbled off

along the path. Cehmai watched him go, then looked back into the house,

shaking his head.

Idaan rose and stepped out of the shadows.

She saw Cehmai catch sight of her, and she waited. He might have another

guest-he might wave her away, and she would have to go back through the

night to her own apartments, her own bed. The thought filled her with

black dread until the poet put one hand out to her, and with the other

motioned toward the light within his house.

Stone-Made-Soft brooded over a game of stones, its massive head cupped

in a hand twice the size of her own. The white stones, she noticed, had

lost badly. The andat looked up slowly and, its curiosity satisfied, it

turned back to the ended game. The scent of mulled wine filled the air.

Cehmai closed the door behind her, and then set about fastening the

shutters.

"I didn't expect to see you," the poet said.

"Do you want me to leave?"

'T'here were a hundred things he could have said. Graceful ways to say

yes, or graceless ways to deny it. He only turned to her with the

slightest smile and went back to his task. Idaan sat on a low couch and

steeled herself. She couldn't say why she was driven to do this, only

that the impulse was much like draping her legs out the sky doors, and

that it was what she had chosen to do.

"Daaya Vaunyogi is approaching the Khai tomorrow. He is going to

petition that Adrah and I be married."

Cehmai paused, sighed, turned to her. His expression was melancholy, but

not sorrowful. He was like an old man, she thought, amused by the world

and his own role in it. There was a strength in him, and an acceptance.

"I understand," he said.

"Do You?"

"No.'

"He is of a good house, their bloodlines-"

"And he's well off and likely to oversee his family's house when his

father passes. And he's a good enough man, for what he is. It isn't that

I can't imagine why he would choose to marry you, or you him. But, given

the context, there are other questions."

"I love him," Idaan said. "We have planned to do this for ... we have

been lovers for almost two years."

Cehmai sat beside a brazier, and looked at her with the patience of a

man studying a puzzle. The coals had burned down to a fine white ash.

"And you've come to be sure I never speak of what happened the other

night. To tell me that it can never happen again."

The sense of vertigo returned, her feet held over the abyss.

"No," she said.

"You've come to stay the night?"

"If you'll have me, yes."

The poet looked down, his hands laced together before him. A cricket

sang, and then another. The air seemed thin.

"Idaan-kya, I think it might be better if-"

"Then lend me a couch and a blanket. If you ... let me stay here as a

friend might. We are friends, at least? Only don't make me go back to my

rooms. I don't want to be there. I don't want to be with people and I

can't stand being alone. And I ... I like it here."

She took a pose of supplication. Cehmai rose and for a moment she was

sure he would refuse. She almost hoped he would. Scoot forward, no more

effort than sitting up, and then the sound of wind. But Cehmai took a

pose that accepted her. She swallowed, the tightness in her throat

lessening.

"I'll be hack. The shutters ... it might be awkward if someone were to

happen by and see you here."

"Thank you, Cehmai-kya."

He leaned forward and kissed her mouth, neither passionate nor chaste,

then sighed again and went to the back of the house. She heard the

rattle of wood as he closed the windows against the night. Idaan looked

at her hands, watching them tremble as she might watch a waterfall or a

rare bird. An effect of nature, outside herself. The andat shifted and

turned to look at her. She felt her brows rise, daring the thing to

speak. Its voice was the low rumble of a landslide.

"I have seen generations pass, girl. I've seen young men die of age. I

don't know what you are doing, but I know this. It will end in chaos.

For him, and for you."

Stone-Made-Soft went silent again, stiller than any real man, not even

the pulse of breath in it. She glared into the wide, placid face and

took a pose of challenge.

"It that a threat?" she asked.

The andat shook its head once-left, and then right, and then still as if

it had never moved in all the time since the world was young. When it

spoke again, Idaan was almost startled at the sound.

"It's a blessing," it said.

"WHAT DID HE LOOK LIKE?" MAA'I'I ASKED.

Piyun See, chief assistant to the Master of 'rides, frowned and glanced

out the window. The man sensed that he had done something wrong, even if

he could not say what it had been. It made him reluctant. Maati sipped

tea from a white stone bowl and let the silence stretch.

"A courier. He wore decent robes. He stood half a head taller than you,

and had a good face. Long as a north man's."

"Well, that will help me," Maati said. He couldn't keep his impatience

entirely to himself.

Piyun took a pose of apology formal enough to be utterly insincere.

"He had two eyes and two feet and one nose, Maati-cha. I thought he was

your acquaintance. Shouldn't you know better than I what he looks like?"

"If it is the man."

"He didn't seem pleased to hear you'd been asking after him. He made an

excuse and lit out almost as soon as he heard of you. It isn't as if 1

knew that he wasn't to be told of you. I didn't have orders to hold back

your name."

"Did you have orders to volunteer me to him?" Maati asked.

"No, but ..."

Maati waved the objection away.

"House Siyanti. You're sure of that?"

"Of course I am."

"How do I reach their compound?"

"They don't have one. House Siyanti doesn't trade in the winter cities.

He would be staying at a wayhouse. Or sometimes the houses here will let

couriers take rooms."

"So other than the fact that he came, you can tell me nothing," Maati said.

This time the pose of apology was more sincere. Frustration clamped

Maati's jaw until his teeth hurt, but he forced himself into a pose that

thanked the assistant and ended the interview. Piyun See left the small

meeting room silently, closing the door behind him.

Otah was here, then. He had come back to Machi, using the same name he

had had in Saraykeht. And that meant ... Maati pressed his fingertips to

his eyes. That meant nothing certain. That he was here suggested that

Biitrah's death was his work, but as yet it was only a sug gestion. He

doubted that the Dai-kvo or the Khai Machi would see it that way. His

presence was as much as proof to them, and there was no way to keep it

secret. Piyun See was no doubt spreading the gossip across the palaces

even now-the visiting poet and his mysterious courier. He had to find

Otah himself, and he had to do it now.

He straightened his robes and stalked out to the gardens, and then the

path that would lead him to the heart of the city. He would begin with

the teahouses nearest the forges. It was the sort of place couriers

might go to drink and gossip. There might be someone there who would

know of House Siyanti and its partners. He could discover whether Irani

Noygu had truly been working for Siyanti. That would bring him one step

nearer, at least. And there was nothing more he could think of to do now.

The streets were busy with children playing street games with rope and

sticks, with beggars and slaves and water carts and firekeepers' kilns,

with farmers' carts loaded high with spring produce or lambs and pigs on

their way to the fresh butcher. Voices jabbered and shouted and sang,

the smells of forge smoke and grilling meat and livestock pressed like a

fever. The city seemed busy as an anthill, and Maati's mind churned as

he navigated his way through it all. Otah had come to the winter cities.

Was he killing his brothers? Had he chosen to become the Khai Machi?

And if he had, would Maati have the strength to stop him?

He told himself that he could. He was so focused and among so many

distractions that he almost didn't notice his follower. Only when he

found what looked like a promising alley-hardly more than a shoulderwide

crack between two long, tall buildings-did he escape the crowds long

enough to notice. The sound of the street faded in the dim twilight that

the band of sky above him allowed. A rat, surprised by him, scuttled

through an iron grating and away. The thin alley branched, and Maati

paused, looked down the two new paths, and then glanced back. The path

behind him was blocked. A dark cloak, a raised hood, and shoulders so

broad they touched both walls. Maati hesitated, and the man behind him

didn't move. Maati felt the skin at the back of his neck tighten. He

picked one turning of the alleyway and walked down it briskly until the

dark figure reached the intersection as well and turned after him. Then

Maati ran. The alley spilled out into another street, this less

populous. The smoke of the forges made the air acrid and hazy. Maati

raced toward them. There would be men there-smiths and tradesmen, but

also firekeepers and armsmen.

When he reached the mouth where the street spilled out onto a major

throughway, he looked back. The street behind him was empty. His steps

slowed, and he stopped, scanning the doorways, the rooftops. There was

nothing. His pursuer-if that was what he had been-had vanished. Maati

waited there until he'd caught his breath, then let himself laugh. No

one was coming. No one had followed. It was easy to see how a man could

be eaten by his fears. He turned to the metalworkers' quarter.

The streets widened here, with shops and stalls facing out, filled with

the tools of the metal trades as much as their products. The forges and

smith's houses were marked by the greened copper roofs, the pillars of

smoke, the sounds of yelling voices and hammers striking anvils. The

businesses around them-sellers of hammers and tongs, suppliers of ore

and wax blocks and slaked lime-all did their work loudly and

expansively, waving hands in mock fury and shouting even when there was

no call to. Maati made his way to a teahouse near the center of the

district where sellers and workers mixed. He asked after House Siyanti,

where their couriers might be found, what was known of them. The brown