A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (46 page)

"Then why loose the things when his critics were about to speak?"

"Good point. Perhaps ..."

Idaan moved on down the street. It was like the aftermath of some

gentle, bloodless battle. People bound bruised limbs. Slaves brought

plasters to suck out the wasps' venom. But already, all down the wide

street, the talk had turned back to the business of the council.

Her neck was burning now, but she pushed the pain aside. There would he

no decision made today. That was clear. Kaman or Vaunani had disrupted

the proceedings to get more time. It had to be that. It couldn't he

more, except that of course it could. The fear was different now, deeper

and more complex. Almost like nausea.

Adrah was leaning against the wall at the mouth of an alleyway. His

father was sitting beside him, a serving girl dabbing white paste on the

angry welts that covered his arms and face. Idaan went to her husband.

His eyes were hard and shallow as stones.

"May I speak with you, Adrah-kya?" she said softly.

Adrah looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, then at his fa

ther. He nodded toward the shadows of the alley behind him, and Idaan

followed him until the noises of the street were vague and distant.

"It was Otah," she said. "He did this. Iie knows."

"Are you about to tell me that he's planned it all from the start again?

It was a cheap, desperate trick. It won't matter, except that anyone who

doesn't like us will say we did it, and anyone who has a grudge against

our enemies will put it to them. Nothing changes."

"Who would do it?"

Adrah shook his head, impatient, and turned to walk back out into the

street and noise and light. "Anyone might have. There's no point trying

to solve every puzzle in the world."

"Don't be stupid, Adrah. Someone's acted against-"

The violence and suddenness of his movement was shocking. He was walking

away, his hack to her, and then a heartbeat later, there was no more

room between them than the width of a leaf His face was twisted,

flushed, possessed by anger.

"Don't be stupid? Is that what you said?"

Idaan took a step hack, her feet unsteady beneath her.

"How do you mean, stupid, Idaan? Stupid like calling out my lover's name

in a crowd?"

"What?"

"Cehmai. The poet boy. When you were running, you called his name.

"I did?"

"Everyone heard it," Adrah said. "Everybody knows. At least you could

keep it between us and not parade it all over the city!"

"I didn't mean to," she said. "I swear it, Adrah. I didn't know I had."

He stepped hack and spat, the spittle striking the wall beside him and

dripping down toward the ground. His gaze locked on her, daring her to

push him, to meet his anger with defiance or submission. Either would be

devastating. Idaan felt herself go hard. It wasn't unlike the feeling of

seeing her father dying breath by breath, his belly rotting out and

taking him with it.

"It won't get better, will it?" she asked. "It will go on. It will

change. But it will never get better than it is right now."

The dread in Adrah's eyes told her she'd struck home. When he turned and

stalked away, she didn't try to stop him.

FELL ME, HE'I) SAID.

I can't, she'd replied.

And now Cehmai sat on a chair, staring at the bare wall and wished that

he'd left it there. The hours since morning had been filled with a kind

of anguish he'd never known. He'd told her he loved her. He did love

her. But ... Gods! She'd murdered her own family. She'd engineered her

own father's death and as much as sold the Khai's library to the Galts.

And the only thing that had saved her was that she loved him and he'd

sworn he'd protect her. He'd sworn it.

"What did you expect?" Stone-Made-Soft asked.

"That it was Adrah. That I'd be protecting her from the Vaunyogi,"

Cehmai said.

"Well. Perhaps you should have been more specific."

The sun had passed behind the mountains, but the daylight hadn't yet

taken on the ruddy hues of sunset. This was not night but shadow. 'The

andat stood at the window, looking out. A servant had come from the

palaces earlier bearing a meal of roast chicken and rich, dark bread.

The smell of it filled the house, though the platter had been set

outside to be taken away. He hadn't been able to eat.

Cehmai could barely feel where the struggle in the back of his mind met

the confusion at the front. Idaan. It had been Idaan all along.

"You couldn't have known," the andat said, its tone conciliatory. "And

it isn't as if she asked you to be part of the thing."

"You think she was using me."

"Yes. But since I'm a creature of your mind, it seems to follow that

you'd think the same. She did extract a promise from you. You're sworn

to protect her."

"I love her."

"You'd better. If you don't, then she told you all that under a false

impression that you led her to believe. If she hadn't truly thought she

could trust you, she'd have kept her secrets to herself."

"I do love her."

"And that's good," Stone-Made-Soft said. "Since all that blood she

spilled is part yours now."

Cehmai leaned forward. His foot knocked over the thin porcelain bowl at

his feet. The last dregs of the wine spilled to the floor, but he didn't

bother with it. Stained carpet was beneath his notice now. His head was

stuffed with wool, and none of his thoughts seemed to connect. He

thought of Idaan's smile and the way she turned toward him, nestling

into him as she slept. Her voice had been so soft, so quiet. And then,

when she had asked him if he was horrified by her, there had been so

much fear in her.

He hadn't been able to say yes. It had been there, waiting in his

throat, and he'd swallowed it. He'd told her he loved her, and he hadn't

lied. But he hadn't slept either. The andat's wide hand turned the bowl

upright and pressed a cloth onto the spill. Cehmai watched the red wick

up into the white cloth.

"Thank you," he said.

Stone-Made-Soft took a brief, dismissive pose and lumbered away. Cehmai

heard it pouring water into a basin to rinse the cloth, and felt a pang

of shame. He was falling apart. The andat itself was taking care of him

now. He was pathetic. Cehmai rose and stalked to the window. He felt as

much as heard the andat come up behind him.

"So," the andat said. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think she's got her legs around him now? Just at the moment, I

mean," the andat said, its voice as calm and placid and distantly amused

as always. "He is her husband. He must get her knees apart now and

again. And she must enjoy him on some level. She did slaughter her

family to elevate Adrah. It's not something most girls would do."

"You're not helping," Cehmai said.

"It could he you're just a part of her plan. She did fall into your bed

awfully easily. Do you think they talk about it, the two of them? About

what she can do to you or for you to win your support? Having the poet's

oath protecting you would be a powerful thing. And if you protect her,

you protect them. You can't suggest anything evil of the Vaunyogi now

without drawing her into it."

"She isn't like that!"

Cehmai gathered his will, but before he could turn it on the andat,

before he pushed the rage and the anger and the hurt into a force that

would make the beast be quiet, Stone-Made-Soft smiled, leaned forward,

and gently kissed Cehmai's forehead. In all the years he'd held it,

Cehmai had never seen the andat do anything of the sort.

"No," it said. "She isn't. She's in terrible trouble, and she needs you

to save her if you can. If she can be saved. And she trusts you.

Standing with her is the only thing you could do and still he a decent man."

Cehmai glared at the wide face, the slow, calm eyes, searching for a

shred of sarcasm. 'T'here was none.

"Why are you trying to confuse me?" he asked.

The andat turned to look out the window and stood as still as a statue.

Cehmai waited, but it didn't shift, even to look at him. The rooms

darkened and Cehmai lit lemon candles to keep the insects away. His mind

was divided into a hundred different thoughts, each of them powerful and

convincing and no two fitting together.

When at last he went up to his bed, he couldn't sleep. The blankets

still smelled of her, of the two of them. Of love and sleep. Cehmai

wrapped the sheets around himself and willed his mind to quiet, but the

whirl of thoughts didn't allow rest. Idaan loved him. She had had her

own father killed. Maati had been right, all this time. It was his duty

to tell what he knew, but he couldn't. It was possible-she might have

tricked him all along. He felt as cracked as river ice when a stone had

been dropped through it, jagged fissures cut through him in all

directions. "Where was no center of peace within him.

And yet he must have drifted off, because the storm pulled him awake.

Cehmai stumbled out of bed, pulling down half his netting with a soft

ripping sound. He crawled to the corridor almost before he understood

that the pitching and moaning, the shrieking and the nausea were all in

the private space behind his eyes. It had never been so powerful.

He fell as he went to the front of the house, harking his knee against

the wall. The thick carpets were sickening to touch, the fibers seeming

to writhe tinder his fingers like dry worms. Stone-Made-Soft sat at the

gaming table. The white marble, the black basalt. A single white stone

was shifted out of its beginning line.

"Not now," Cehmai croaked.

"Now," the andat said, its voice loud and low and undeniable.

The room pitched and spun. Cehmai dragged himself to the table and tried

to focus on the pieces. The game was simple enough. He'd played it a

thousand times. He shifted a black stone forward. He felt he was still

half dreaming. The stone he'd moved was Idaan. Stone-MadeSoft's reply

moved a token that was both its fourth column and also Otah Machi.

Groggy with sleep and distress and annoyance and the an gry pressure of

the andat struggling against him, he didn't understand how far things

had gone until twelve moves later when he shifted a black stone one

place to the left, and Stone-Made-Soft smiled.

"Maybe she'll still love you afterwards," the andat said. "Do you think

she'll care as much about your love when you're just a man in a brown robe?"

Cehmai looked at the stones, the shifting line of them, flowing and

sinuous as a river, and he saw his mistake. Stone-Made-Soft pushed a

white stone forward and the storm in Cehmai's mind redoubled. He could

hear his own breath rattling. He was sticky with the rancid sweat of

effort and fear. He was losing. He couldn't make himself think,

controlling his own mind was like wrestling a beast-something large and

angry and stronger than he was. In his confusion, Idaan and Adrah and

the death of the Khai all seemed connected to the tokens glowing on the

board. Each was enmeshed with the others, and all of them were lost. He

could feel the andat pressing toward freedom and oblivion. All the

generations of carrying it, gone because of him.

"It's your move," the andat said.

"I can't," Cehmai said. His own voice sounded distant.

"I can wait as long as you care to," it said. "Just tell me when you

think it'll get easier."

"You knew this would happen," Cehmai said. "You knew."

"Chaos has a smell to it," the andat agreed. "Move."

Cchmai tried to study the board, but every line he could see led to

failure. He closed his eyes and rubbed them until ghosts bloomed in the

darkness, but when he reopened them, it was no better. The sickness grew

in his belly. He felt he was falling. The knock on the door behind him

was something of a different world, a memory from some other life, until

the voice came.

"I know you're in there! You won't believe what's happened. Half the

utkhaiem are spotty with welts. Open the door!"

"Baarath!"

Cehmai didn't know how loud he'd called-it might have been a whisper or

a scream. But it was enough. The librarian appeared beside him. The

stout man's eyes were wide, his lips thin.

"What's wrong?" Baarath asked. "Are you sick? Gods, Cehmai.... Stay