‘We haven’t met. My name is Kiyan. Itani’s told me all about you.’
It took the space of a breath for him to truly understand what she’d said and all it meant. The woman nodded confirmation, and Maati stepped close to her, looking back over his shoulder and then down the corridor behind her to be sure they were alone.
‘We were going to send you an escort,’ the woman said, ‘but no one could think of how to approach you without seeming like we were assassins. I thought an unarmed woman coming to you alone might suffice.’
‘You were right,’ he said, and then a moment later, ‘That’s likely naïve of me, isn’t it?’
‘A bit.’
‘Please. Take me to him.’
Twilight had soaked the sky in indigo. In the east, stars were peeking over the mountain tops, and the towers rose up into the air as if they led up to the clouds themselves. Maati and the woman walked quickly; she didn’t speak, and he didn’t press her to. His mind was busy enough already. They walked side by side along darkening paths. Kiyan smiled and nodded to those who took notice of them. Maati wondered how many people would be reporting that he had left the council with a woman. He looked back often for pursuers. No one seemed to be tracking them, but even at the edge of the palaces, there were enough people to prevent him from being sure.
They reached a teahouse, its windows blazing with light and its air rich with the scent of lemon candles to keep off the insects. The woman strode up the wide steps and into the warmth and light. The keep seemed to expect her, because they were led without a word into a back room where red wine was waiting along with a plate of rich cheese, black bread, and the first of the summer grapes. Kiyan sat at the table and gestured to the bench across from her. Maati sat as she plucked two of the small bright green grapes, bit into them and made a face.
‘Too early?’ he asked.
‘Another week and they’ll be decent. Here, pass me the cheese and bread.’
Kiyan chewed these and Maati poured himself a bowl of wine. It was good - rich and deep and clean. He lifted the bottle but she shook her head.
‘He’ll be joining us, then?’
‘No. We’re just waiting a moment to be sure we’re not leading anyone to him.’
‘Very professional,’ he said.
‘Actually I’m new to all this. But I take advice well.’
She had a good smile. Maati felt sure that this was the woman Otah had told him about that day in the gardens when Otah had left in chains. The woman he loved and whom he’d asked Maati to help protect. He tried to see Liat in her - the shape of her eyes, the curve of her cheek. There was nothing. Or perhaps there was something the two women shared that was simply beyond his ability to see.
As if feeling the weight of his attention, Kiyan took a querying pose. Maati shook his head.
‘Reflecting on ages past,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
She seemed about to ask something when a soft knock came at the door and the keep appeared, carrying a bundle of cloth. Kiyan stood, accepted the bundle, and took a pose that expressed her gratitude only slightly hampered by her burden. The keep left without speaking, and Kiyan pulled the cloth apart - two thin gray hooded cloaks that would cover their robes and hide their faces. She handed one to Maati and pulled the other on.
When they were both ready, Kiyan dug awkwardly in her doubled sleeve for a moment before coming out with four lengths of silver that she left on the table. Seeing Maati’s surprise, she smiled.
‘We didn’t ask for the food and wine,’ she said. ‘It’s rude to underpay. ’
‘The grapes were sour,’ Maati said.
Kiyan considered this for a moment and scooped one silver length back into her sleeve. They didn’t leave through the front door or out to the alley, but descended a narrow stairway into the tunnels beneath the city. Someone - the keep or one of Kiyan’s conspirators - had left a lit lantern for them. Kiyan took it in hand and strode into the black tunnels as assured as a woman who had walked this maze her whole life. Maati kept close to her, dread pricking at him for the first time.
The descent seemed as deep as the mines in the plain. The stairs were worn smooth by generations of footsteps, the path they traveled inhabited by the memory of men and women long dead. At length the stairs gave way to a wide, tiled hallway shrouded in darkness. Kiyan’s small lantern lit only part way up the deep blue and worked gold of the walls, the darkness above them more profound than a moonless sky.
The mouths of galleries and halls seemed to gape and close as they passed. Maati could see the scorch marks rising up the walls where torches had been set during some past winter, the smoke staining the tiles. A breath seemed to move through the dim air, like the earth exhaling.
The tunnels seemed empty except for them. No glimmer of light came from the doors and passages they passed, no voices however distant competed with the rustle of their robes. At a branching of the great hallway, Kiyan hesitated, then bore left. A pair of great brass gates opened onto a space like a garden, the plants all designed from silk, the birds perched on the branches dead and dust-covered.
‘Unreal, isn’t it?’ Kiyan said as she picked her way across the sterile terrain. ‘I think they must go a little mad in the winters down here. All those months without seeing the sunlight.’
‘I suppose,’ Maati said.
After the garden, they went down a series of corridors so narrow that Maati could place his palms on both walls without stretching. Kiyan came to a high wooden doorway with brass fittings that was barred from within. She passed the lantern to Maati and knocked a complex pattern. A scraping sound spoke of the bar being lifted, and then the door swung in. Three men with blades in their hands stood. The center one smiled, stepped back and silently gestured them through.
Lanterns filled the stone-walled passage with warm, buttery light and the scent of burnt oil. There was no door at the end, only an archway that opened out into a wide, tall space that smelled of sweat and damp wool and torch smoke. A storehouse, then, with the door frames stuffed with rope to keep out even a glimmer of light.
Half a dozen men stopped their conversations as Kiyan led him across the empty space to the overseer’s office - a shack within the structure that glowed from within.
Kiyan opened the office door and stood aside, smiling encouragement to Maati as he stepped past her and into the small room. A desk. Four chairs. A stand for scrolls. A map of the winter cities nailed to the wall. Three lanterns. And Otah-kvo rising now from his seat.
He was still thin, but there was an energy about him - in the way he held his shoulders and his hands. In the way he moved.
‘You’re looking well for a dead man,’ Maati said.
‘Feeling better than expected, too,’ Otah said, and a smile spread across his long, northern face. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘How could I not?’ Maati drew one of the chairs close to him and sat, his fingers laced around one knee. ‘So you’ve chosen to take the city after all?’
Otah hesitated a moment, then sat. He rubbed the desktop with his open palm - a dry sound - and his brow furrowed.
‘I don’t see my option,’ he said at last. ‘That sounds convenient, I know. But . . . you said before that you’d realized I had nothing to do with Biitrah’s death and your assault. I didn’t have a part in Danat’s murder either. Or my father’s. Or even my own rescue from the tower, come to that. It’s all simply happened up to now. And I didn’t know whether you still believed me innocent.’
Maati smiled ruefully. There was something in Otah’s voice that sounded like hope. Maati didn’t know his own heart - the resentment, the anger, the love of Otah-kvo and of Liat and the child she’d borne. He couldn’t say even what they all had to do with this man sitting across his appropriated desk.
‘I do,’ Maati said at last. ‘I’ve been looking into the matter, but I suppose you know that if you’ve had me watched.’
‘Yes. That’s one reason I wanted to speak to you.’
>
‘There are others?’
‘I have a confession to make. I’d likely be wiser to keep quiet until this whole round is finished, but . . . I’ve lied to you, Maati. I told you that I’d been with a woman in the east islands and failed to father a child on her. She . . . she wasn’t real. That never happened.’
Maati considered this, waiting for his heart to rise in anger or shrivel, but it only beat in its customary rhythm. He wondered when it had stopped mattering to him, the father of the boy he’d lost. Since the last time he had spoken with Otah in the high stone cell, certainly, but looking back, he couldn’t put a moment to it. If the boy was his get or Otah’s, neither would bring him back. Neither would undo the years gone by. And there were other things that he had that he might still lose, or else save.
‘I thought I was going to die,’ Otah said. ‘I thought it wouldn’t matter to me, and if it gave you some comfort, then . . .’
‘Let it go,’ Maati said. ‘If there’s anything to be said about it, we can say it later. There are other matters at hand.’
‘Have you found something, then?’
‘I have a family name, I think. Certainly there’s someone putting money and influence behind the Vaunyogi.’
‘Likely the Galts,’ Otah said. ‘They’ve been making contracts bad enough to look like bribes. We didn’t know what influence they were buying.’
‘It could be this,’ Maati said. ‘Do you know why they’d do it?’
‘No,’ Otah said. ‘But if you’ve proof that the Vaunyogi are behind the murders—’
‘I don’t,’ Maati said. ‘I have a suspicion, but nothing more than that. Not yet. And if we don’t uncover them quickly, they’ll likely have Adrah named Khai Machi and have the resources of the whole city to find you and kill you for crimes that everyone outside this warehouse assumes you guilty of.’
They sat in silence for the space of three breaths.
‘Well,’ Otah-kvo said, ‘it appears we have some work to do then. But at least we’ve an idea where to look.’
In her dream, Idaan was at a celebration. Fire burned in a ring all around the pavilion, and she knew with the logic of dreams that the flames were going to close, that the circle was growing smaller. They were all going to burn. She tried to shout, tried to warn the dancers, but she could only croak; no one heard her. There was someone there who could stop the thing from happening - a single man who was Cehmai and Otah and her father all at once. She beat her way through the bodies, trying to find him, but there were dogs in with the people. The flames were too close already, and to keep themselves alive, the women were throwing the animals into the fire. She woke to the screams and howls in her mind and the silence in her chamber.
The night candle had failed. The chamber was dim, silvered by moonlight beyond the dark web of the netting. The shutters along the wall were all open, but no breath of air stirred. Idaan swallowed and shook her head, willing the last wisps of nightmare into forgetfulness. She waited, listening to her breath, until her mind was her own again. Even then she was reluctant to sleep for fear of falling into the same dream. She turned to Adrah, but the bed at her side was empty. He was gone.
‘Adrah?’
There was no answer.
Idaan wrapped herself with a thin blanket, pushed aside the netting and stepped out of her bed - her new bed. Her marriage bed. The smooth stone of the floor was cool against her bare feet. She walked through the chambers of their apartments - hers and her husband’s - silently. She found him sitting on a low couch, a bottle beside him. A thick earthenware bowl on the floor stank of distilled wine. Or perhaps it was his breath.
‘You aren’t sleeping?’ she asked.
‘Neither are you,’ he said. The slurred words were half accusation.
‘I had a dream,’ she said. ‘It woke me.’
Adrah lifted the bottle, drinking from its neck. She watched the delicate shifting mechanism of his throat, the planes of his cheeks, his eyes closed and as smooth as a man asleep. Her fingers twitched toward him, moving to caress that familiar skin without consulting him on her wishes. Coughing, he put down the wine, and the eyes opened. Whatever beauty had been in him, however briefly, was gone now.
‘You should go to him,’ Adrah said. Perversely, he sounded less drunk now. Idaan took a pose of query. Adrah waved it away with the sloshing bottle. ‘The poet boy. Cehmai. You should go to him. See if you can get more information.’
‘You don’t want me here?’
‘No,’ Adrah said, pressing the bottle into her hand. As he rose and staggered past her, Idaan felt the insult and the rejection and a certain relief that she hadn’t had to find an excuse to slip away.
The palaces were deserted, the empty paths dreamlike in their own way. Idaan let herself imagine that she had woken into a new, different world. As she slept, everyone had vanished, and she was walking now alone through an empty city. Or she had died in her sleep and the gods had put her here, into a world with nothing but herself and darkness. If they had meant it for punishment, they had misjudged.
The bottle was below a quarter when she stepped under the canopy of sculpted oaks. She had expected the poet’s house to be dark as well, but as she advanced, she caught glimpses of candle glow, more light than a single night candle could account for. Something like hope surged in her, and she slowly walked forward. The shutters and door were open, the lanterns within all lit. But the wide, still figure on the steps wasn’t him. Idaan hesitated. The andat raised its hand in greeting and motioned her closer.
‘I was starting to think you wouldn’t come,’ Stone-Made-Soft said in its distant, rumbling voice.
‘I hadn’t intended to,’ Idaan said. ‘You had no call to expect me.’
‘If you say so,’ it agreed, amiably. ‘Come inside. He’s been waiting to see you for days.’
Going up the steps felt like walking downhill; the pull to be there and see him was more powerful than weight. The andat stood and followed her in, closing the door behind her and then proceeding around the room, fastening the shutters and snuffing the flames. Idaan looked around the room, but there were only the two of them.
‘It’s late. He’s in the back,’ the andat said and pinched out another small light. ‘You should go to him.’
‘I don’t want to disturb him.’
‘He’d want you to.’
She didn’t move. The spirit tilted its broad head and smiled.
‘He said he loves me,’ Idaan said. ‘When I saw him last, he said that he loved me.’
‘I know.’
‘Is it true?’
The smile broadened. Its teeth were white as marble and perfectly regular. She noticed for the first time that it had no canines - every tooth was even and square as the one beside it. For a moment, the inhuman mouth disturbed her.
‘Why are you asking me?’
‘You know him,’ she said. ‘You are him.’
‘True on both counts,’ Stone-Made-Soft said. ‘But I’m not credited as being the most honest source. I’m his creature, after all. And all dogs hate the leash, however well they pretend otherwise.’
‘You’ve never lied to me.’
The andat looked startled, then chuckled with a sound like a boulder rolling downhill.
‘No,’ it said. ‘I haven’t, have I? And I won’t start now. Yes, Cehmai-kya has fallen in love with you. He’s young. His passions are still a large part of what he is. In forty years, he won’t burn so hot. It’s the way it’s been with all of them.’
‘I don’t want him hurt,’ she said.
‘Then stay.’
‘I’m not sure that would save him pain. Not in the long term.’
The andat went still a moment, then shrugged.
‘Then go,’ it said. ‘But when he finds you’ve gone, he’ll chew his own guts out over it. There’s been nothing he’s wanted more than for you to come here, to him. Coming this close, talking to me, and leaving? It’d hardly make him feel better about things.’<
br />
Idaan looked at her feet. The sandals weren’t laced well. She’d done the thing in darkness, and the wine had, perhaps, had more effect on her than she’d thought. She shook her head as she had when shaking off the dreams.
‘He doesn’t have to know I came.’
‘Late for that,’ the andat said and put out another candle. ‘He woke up as soon as we started talking.’
‘Idaan-kya?’ his voice came from behind her.
Cehmai stood in the corridor that led back to his bedchamber. His hair was tousled by sleep. His feet were bare. Idaan caught her breath, seeing him here in the dim light of candles. He was beautiful. He was innocent and powerful, and she loved him more than anyone in the world.
‘Cehmai.’
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