A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (45 page)

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

yoked to Seedless. Trapped in the torture box just the way Heshai had

been all those years. Heshai knew that, and he waited for me to do the

thing."

"And you did it."

"I did."

Maati was silent. Otah sat. His knees seemed less solid than he would

have liked, but he didn't let the weakness stop him.

"It was the worst thing I have ever done," Otah said. "I never stopped

dreaming about it. Even now, I see it sometimes. Heshai was a good man,

but what he'd created in Seedless...."

"Seedless was only part of him. They all are. They couldn't be anything

else. Heshai-kvo hated himself, and Seedless was that."

"Everyone hates themselves sometimes. There isn't often a price in

blood," Otah said. "You know what would happen if that were proven.

Killing a Khai would pale beside murdering a poet."

Maati nodded slowly, and still nodding, spoke.

"I didn't ask on the Dai-kvo's behalf. I asked for myself. When

Heshai-kvo died, Seedless ... vanished. I was with him. I was there. He

was asking me whether I would have forgiven you. If you'd committed some

terrible crime, like what he had done to Maj, if I would forgive you.

And I told him I would. I would forgive you, and not him. Because ..."

They were silent. Maati's eyes were dark as coal.

"Because?" Otah asked.

"Because I loved you, and I didn't love him. He said it was a pity to

think that love and justice weren't the same. The last thing he said was

that you had forgiven me."

"Forgiven you?"

"For Liat. For taking your lover."

"I suppose it's true," Otah said. "I was angry with you. But there was a

part of me that was ... relieved, I suppose."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't love her. I thought I did. I wanted to, and I enjoyed

her company and her bed. I liked her and respected her. Sometimes, I

wanted her as badly as I've ever wanted anyone. And that was enough to

let me mistake it for love. But I don't remember it hurting that deeply

or for that long. Sometimes I was even glad. You had each other to take

care of, and so it wasn't mine to do."

"You said, that last time we spoke before you left ... before Heshaikvo

died, that you didn't trust me."

"That's true," Otah said. "I do remember that."

"But you've come to me now, and you've told me this. You've told me all

of it. Even after I gave you over to the Khai. You've brought me in

here, shown me where you've hidden. You know there are half a hundred

people I could say a word to, and you and all these other people would

be dead before the sun set. So it seems you trust me now."

"I do," Otah said without hesitating.

"Why?"

Otah sat with the question. His mind had been consumed for days with a

thousand different things that all nipped and shrieked and robbed him of

his rest. To reach out to Maati had seemed natural and obvious, and even

though when he looked at it coldly it was true that each had in some way

betrayed the other, his heart had never been in doubt. He could feel the

heaviness in the air, and he knew that I don't know wouldn't be answer

enough. He looked for words to give his feelings shape.

"Because," he said at last, "in all the time I knew you, you never once

did the wrong thing. Even when what you did hurt inc, it was never wrong."

To his surprise, there were tears on Maati's cheeks.

"Thank you, Otah-kvo," he said.

A shout went up in the tunnels outside the storehouse and the sound of

running feet. Maati wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robes, and

Otah stood, his heart beating fast. The murmur of voices grew, but there

were no sounds of blade against blade. It sounded like a busy corner

more than a battle. Otah walked to the door and, Maati close behind him,

stepped out into the main space. A knot of men were talking and

gesturing one to the other by the mouth of the stairs. Otah caught a

glimpse of Kiyan in their midst, frowning deeply and speaking fast.

Amiit detached himself from the throng and strode to Otah.

"What's happened?"

"Bad news, Otah-cha. Daaya Vaunyogi has called for a decision, and

enough of the families have hacked the call to push it through."

Otah felt his heart sink.

"They're hound to decide by morning," Amilt went on, "and if all the

houses that hacked him for the call side with him in the decision, Adrah

Vaunyogi will be the Khai Machi by the time the sun comes up."

"And then what?" NIaati asked.

"And then we run," Otah said, "as far and fast and quiet as we can, and

we hope he never finds us."

THE SUN HAD PASSED ITS HIGHEST POINT AND STARTED THE LONG, SLOW slide

toward darkness. Idaan had chosen robes the blue-gray of twilight and

bound her hair hack with clasps of silver and moonstone. Around her, the

gallery was nearly full, the air thick with heat and the mingled scents

of bodies and perfumes. She stood at the rail, looking down into the

press of bodies below her. The parquet of the floor was scuffed with the

marks of hoots. There were no empty places at the tables or against the

stone walls, no quiet negotiations going on in hallways or teahouses.

That time had passed, and in its wake, they were all brought here.

Voices washed together like the hushing of wind, and she could feel the

weight of the eyes upon her-the men below her sneaking glances up, the

representatives of the merchant houses at her side considering her, and

the lower orders in the gallery above staring down at her and the men

over whom she loomed. She was a woman, and not welcome to speak or sit

at the tables below. But still, she would make her presence felt.

"How is it that we accept the word of these men that they are the

wisest?" Ghiah Vaunani pounded the speaker's pulpit before him with each

word, a dry, shallow sound. Idaan almost thought she could see flecks of

foam at the corners of his mouth. "How is it that the houses of the

utkhaiem are so much like sheep that they would consent to be led by

this shepherd boy of Vaunyogi?"

It was meant, Idaan knew, to be a speech to sway the others from their

confidence, but all she heard in the words was the confusion and pain of

a boy whose plans have fallen through. He could pound and rail and

screech his questions as long as his voice held out. Idaan, standing

above the proceedings like a protective ghost, knew the answers to every

one, and she would never tell them to him.

Below her, Adrah Vaunyogi looked up, his expression calm and certain. It

had been late in the morning that she'd woken in the poet's house, later

still when she'd returned to the rooms she shared now with her husband.

He had been there, waiting for her. The night's excesses had weighed

heavy on him. They hadn't spoken-she had only called for a bath and

clean robes. When she'd cleaned herself and washed her hair, she sat at

her mirror and painted her face with all her old skill and delicacy. The

woman who looked out at her when she put down her brushes might have

been the loveliest in Machi.

Adrah had left without a word. It had been almost half a hand before she

learned that her new father, Daaya Vaunyogi, had called for the

decision, and that the houses had agreed. No one had told her to come

here, no one had asked her to lend the sight of her silent presence to

the cause. She had done it, perhaps, because Adrah had not demanded it

of her.

"We must not hurry! We must not allow sentiment to push us into a

decision that will change our city forever!"

Idaan allowed herself a smile. It would seem to most people that the

force of the story had won the day. The last daughter of the old line

would be the first mother of the new, and if a quiet structure of money

and obligation supported it, if she were really the lover of the poet a

hundred times more than the Khai, it hardly mattered. It was what the

city would see, and that was enough.

Ghiah's energy was beginning to flag. She heard his words lose their

crispness and the pounding on his table fall out of rhythm. The anger in

his voice became merely petulance, and the objections to Adrah in

particular and the Vaunyogi in general lost their force. It would have

been better, she thought, if he'd ended half a hand earlier. Still

insufficient, but less so.

The Master of "fides stood when Ghiah at last surrendered the floor. He

was an old man with a long, northern face and a deep, sonorous voice.

Idaan saw his eyes flicker up to her and then away.

"Adaut Kamau has also asked to address the council," he said, "before

the houses speak on the decision to accept Adrah Vaunyogi as the Khai

Machi......

A chorus of jeers rose from the galleries and even the council tables.

Idaan held herself still and quiet. Her feet were starting to ache, but

she didn't shift her weight. The effect she desired wouldn't be served

by showing her pleasure. Adaut Kamau rose, his face gray and pinched. He

opened his arms, but before he could speak, a bundle of rough cloth

arced from the highest gallery. A long tail of brown fluttered behind it

like a banner as it fell, and in the instant that it struck the floor,

the screaming began.

Idaan's composure broke, and she leaned forward. The men at the tables

nearest the thing waved their arms and fled, shrieking and pounding at

the air. Voices buzzed and a cloud of pale, moving smoke rose toward the

galleries.

No. The buzzing was not voices, the cloud was not smoke. These were

wasps. The bundle on the council floor had been a nest wrapped in cloth

and wax. The first of the insects buzzed past her, a glimpse of black

and yellow. She turned and ran.

Bodies filled the corridors, panic pressing them together until there

was no air, no space. People screamed and cursed-men, women, children.

"Their shrill voices mixed with the angry buzz. She was pushed from all

sides. An elbow dug into her back. The surge of the crowd pressed the

breath from her. She was suffocating, and insects filled the air above

her. Idaan felt something bite the flesh at the back of her neck like a

hot iron burning her. She screamed and tried to reach back to hat the

thing away, but there was no room to move her arm, no air. She lashed

out at whoever, whatever was near. The crowd was a single, huge, biting

beast and Idaan flailed and shrieked, her mind lost to fear and pain and

confusion.

Stepping into the open air of the street was like waking from a

nightmare. The bodies around her thinned, becoming only themselves

again. The fierce buzz of tiny wings was gone, the cries of pain and

terror replaced by the groans of the stung. People were still streaming

out of the palace, arms flapping, but others were sitting on benches or

else the ground. Servants and slaves were rushing about, tending to the

hurt and the humiliated. Idaan felt the back of her neck-three angry

humps were already forming.

"It's a poor omen," a man in the red robes of the needle wrights said.

"Something more's going on than meets the eye if someone's willing to

attack the council to keep old Kamau from talking."

"What could he have said?" the man's companion asked.

"I don't know, but you can be sure whatever it was, he'll be saying

something else tomorrow. Someone wanted him stopped. Unless this is

about Adrah Vaunyogi. It could be that someone wants him closed down."