A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (9 page)

He had to know. He had to. Except that she was not being led away under

guard. She was not being taken to the quiet chambers and questioned. If

he did not know, he must only suspect.

Let him suspect, then. She would get word to Adrah and the Galts. They

would know better than she what to do with this NIaati Vaupathai. If he

was a threat, he would be added to the list. I3iitrah, Danat, Kaiin,

Otah, Maati. The men she would have to kill or have killed. She smiled

at him gently, and he nodded to her. One more name could make little

difference now, and he, at least, was no one she loved.

"WHEN ARE THEY SENDING YOU?" KIYAN ASKED AS SIZE POURED OUT THE bucket.

Gray water flowed over the bricks that paved the small garden at the

hack of the wayhouse. Otah took the longhandled brush and swept the

water off to the sides, leaving the walkway deep red and glistening in

the sunlight. He felt Kiyan's gaze on him, felt the question in the air.

The gardens smelled of fresh turned earth. Spices for the kitchen grew

here. In a few weeks, the place would be thick with growing things:

basil and mint and thyme. He imagined scrubbing these bricks week after

week over the span of years until they wore smooth or he died, and felt

an irrational surge of fondness for the walkway. He smiled to himself.

"Itani?"

"I don't know. That is, I know they want me to go to Machi in two weeks

time. Amiit Foss is sending half the couriers he has up there, it seems.

"Of course he is. It's where everything's happening."

"But I haven't decided to go."

The silence bore down on him now, and he turned. Kiyan stood in the

doorway-in her doorway. Her crossed arms, her narrowed eyes, and the

single frown-line drawn vertically between her brows, made Otah smile.

He leaned on his brush.

"We need to talk, sweet," he said. "There are some things ... we have

some business, I think, to attend to."

Kiyan answered by taking the brush from him, leaning it against the

wall, and marching to a meeting room at the back of the house. It was

small but formal, with a thick wooden door and a window that looked out

on the corner of the interior courtyard. The sort of place she might

give to a diplomat or a courier for an extra length of copper. The sort

of place it would be difficult to be overheard. That was as it should be.

Kiyan sat carefully, her face as blank as that of a man playing tiles.

Otah sat across from her, careful not to touch her hand. She was holding

herself back, he knew. She was restraining herself from hoping until she

knew, so that if what he said did not match what she longed to hear, the

disappointment would not he so heavy. For a moment, his mind flickered

back to a bathhouse in Saraykeht and another woman's eyes. He had had

this conversation once before, and he doubted he would ever have it again.

"I don't want to go to the north," Otah said. "For more reasons than one.

"Why not?" Kiyan asked.

"Sweet, there are some things I haven't told you. Things about my

family. About myself...."

And so he began, slowly, carefully, to tell the story. He was the son of

the Khai Machi, but his sixth son. One of those cast out by his family

and sent to the school where the sons of the Khaiem and utkhaiem

struggled in hope of one day being selected to be poets and wield the

power of the andat. He had been chosen once, and had walked away. Itani

Noygu was the name he had chosen for himself, the man he had made of

himself. But he was also Otah Machi.

He was careful to tell the story well. He more than half expected her to

laugh at him. Or to accuse him of a self-aggrandizing madness. Or to

sweep him into her arms and say that she'd known, she'd always known he

was something more than a courier. Kiyan defeated all the stories he had

spun in his dreams of this moment. She merely listened, arms crossed,

eyes turned toward the window. The vertical line between her brows

deepened slightly, and that was all. She did not move or ask questions

until he had nearly reached the end. All that was left was to tell her

he'd chosen to take her offer to work with her here at the wayhouse, but

she knew that already and lifted her hands before he could say the words.

"Irani ... lover, if this isn't true ... if this is a joke, please tell

me. Now."

"It isn't a joke," he said.

She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. When she spoke, she

seemed calm in a way that he knew meant rage beyond expression. At the

first tone of it, his heart went tight.

"You have to leave. Now. Tonight. You have to leave and never come hack."

"Kiyan-kya..."

"No. No kya. No sweet. No my lone. None of that. You have to leave my

house and you can't ever come back or tell anyone who you are or who I

am or that we knew each other once. Igo you understand that?"

"I understand that you're angry with me," Otah said, leaning toward her.

"You have a right to be. But you don't know how carefully I have had to

guard this."

Kiyan tilted her head, like a fox that's heard a strange noise, then

laughed once.

"You think I'm upset you didn't tell me? You think I'm upset because you

had a secret and you didn't spill it the first time we shared a bed?

Irani, this may surprise you, but I have secrets a thousand times less

important than that, and I've kept them a hundred times better."

`But you want me to leave?

"Of course I want you to leave. Are you dim? Do you know what happened

to the men who guarded your eldest brother? They're dead. Do you recall

what happened when the Khai Yalakeht's sons turned on each other six

years back? 't'here were a dozen corpses before that was through, and

only two of them were related to the Khai. Now look around you. How do

you expect me to protect my house? How can I protect Old Mani? And think

before you speak, because if you tell me that you'll be strong and manly

and protect me, I swear by all the gods I'll turn you in myself."

"No one will find out," Otah said.

She closed her eyes. A tear broke free, tracing a bright line down her

cheek. When he leaned close, reaching out to wipe it away, she slapped

his hand before it touched her.

"I would almost be willing to take that chance, if it were only me. Not

quite, but nearly. It isn't, though. It's everyone and everything I've

worked for."

"Kiyan-kya, together we could ..."

"Do nothing. Together we could do nothing, because you are leaving now.

And odd as it sounds, I do understand. Why you concealed what you did,

why you told inc now. And I hope ghosts haunt you and chew out your eyes

at night. I hope all the gods there are damn you for making me love you

and then doing this to me. Now get out. If you're here in half a hand's

time, I will call for the guard."

Outside the window, a flutter of wings and then the fluting melody of a

songbird. The constant distant sound of the river. The scent of pine.

"Do you believe me?" she asked. "That I'll call the guard on you if you

stay?"

"I do," he said.

"Then go."

"I love you."

"I know you do, 'Tani-kya. Go."

House Siyanti had quarters in the city for its people-small rooms hardly

large enough for a cot and a brazier, but the blankets were thick and

soft, and the kitchens sold meals at half the price a cart on the street

would. When the rain came that night, Otah lay in the glow of the coals

and listened to patter of water against leaves mix with the voices from

the covered courtyard. Someone was playing a nomad's harp, and the music

was lively and sorrowful at the same time. Sometimes voices would rise

up together in song or laughter. He turned Kiyan's words over in his

mind and noticed how empty they made him feel.

He'd been a fool to tell her, a fool to say anything. If he had only

kept his secrets secret, he could have made a life for himself based on

lies, and if the brothers he only knew as shadows and moments from a

halfrecalled childhood had ever discovered him, Kiyan and Old Mani and

anyone else unfortunate enough to know him might have been killed

without even knowing why.

Kiyan had not been wrong.

A gentle murmur of thunder came and went. Otah rose from his cot and

walked out. Amiit Foss kept late hours, and Otah found him sitting at a

fire grate, poking the crackling flames with a length of iron while he

joked over his shoulder with the five men and four women who lounged on

cushions and low chairs. He smiled when he saw Otah and called for a

howl of wine for him. The gathering looked so calm and felt so relaxed

that only someone in the gentleman's trade would have recognized it for

the business meeting that it was.

"Itani-cha is one of the couriers I mean to send north, if I can pry him

away from his love of sloth and comfort," Amiit said with a smile. The

others greeted him and made him welcome. Otah sat by the fire and

listened. There would be nothing said here that he was not permitted to

know. Amiit's introduction had established with the subtlety of a master

Otah's rank and the level of trust to be afforded him, and no one in the

room was so thick as to misunderstand him.

The news from the north was confusing. The two surviving sons of Machi

had vanished. Neither had appeared in the other cities of the Khaiem,

going to courts and looking for support as tradition would have them do.

Nor had the streets of Machi erupted in bloodshed as their bases of

power within the city vied for advantage. The best estimates were that

the old Khai wouldn't see another winter, and even some of the houses of

the utkhaiem seemed to be preparing to offer up their sons as the new

Khai should the succession fail to deliver a single living heir.

Something very quiet was happening, and House Siyanti-like everyone else

in the world-was aching with curiosity. Otah could hear it in their

voices, could see it in the way they held their wine. Even when the

conversation shifted to the glassblowers of Cetani and the collapse of

the planned summer fair in Amnat-Tan, all minds were drawn toward Machi.

He sipped his wine.

Going north was dangerous. He knew that, and still it didn't escape him

that the Khai Machi dying by inches was his father, that these men were

the brothers he knew only as vague memories. And because of these men,

he had lost everything again. If he was going to be haunted his whole

life by the city, perhaps he should at least see it. The only thing he

risked was his life.

At length, the conversation turned to less weighty matters andwithout a

word or shift in voice or manner-the meeting was ended. Otah spoke as

much as any, laughed as much, and sang as loudly when the pipe players

joined them. But when he stretched and turned to leave, Amiit Foss was

at his side. Otah and the overseer left together, as if they had only

happened to rise at the same time, and Otah knew that no one in the

drunken, boisterous room they left had failed to notice it.

"So, it sounds as if all the interesting things in the world were

happening in Machi," Otah said as they strode back through the hallways

of the house compound. "You are still hoping to send me there?"

"I've been hoping," Amiit Foss agreed. "But I have other plans if you

have some of your own."

"I don't," Otah said, and Amiit paused. In the dim lantern light, Otah

let the old man search his face. Something passed over Amiit, the ghost

of some old sorrow, and then he took a pose of condolence.

"I thought you had come to quit the house," Amiit said.

"I'd meant to," Otah said, surprised at himself for admitting it.

Amiit gestured Otah to follow him, and together they retired to Amiit's

apartments. The rooms were large and warm, hung with tapestries and lit

by a dozen candles. Utah sat on a low seat by a table, and Amiit took a

box from his shelf. Inside were two small porcelain bowls and a white

stoppered bottle that matched them. When Amiit poured, the scent of rice

wine filled the room.

"We drink to the gods," Amiit said, raising his bowl. "May they never

drink to us."

Otah drank the wine at a gulp. It was excellent, and he felt his throat

grow warmer. He looked at the empty bowl in his fingers and nodded.

Amiit grinned.

"It was a gift from an old friend," Amiit said. "I love to drink it, but

I hate to drink alone."

"I'm pleased to be of service," Otah said as Amiit filled the bowl again.