“You’re going to lose,” Cehmai said.
“I know,” the andat replied. Its voice was a deep rumble, like a distant rockslide—another evocation of flowing stone. “Being doomed doesn’t take away from the dignity of the effort, though.”
“Well said.”
The andat shrugged and smiled. “One can afford to be philosophical when losing means outliving one’s opponent. This particular game? You picked it. But there are others we play that I’m not quite so crippled at.”
“I didn’t pick this game. I haven’t seen twenty summers, and you’ve seen more than two hundred. I wasn’t even a dirty thought in my grandfather’s head when you started playing this.”
The andat’s thick hands took a formal position of disagreement.
“We have always been playing the same game, you and I. If you were someone else at the start, it’s your problem.”
They never started speaking until the game’s end was a forgone conclusion. That Stone-Made-Soft was willing to speak was as much a sign that this particular battle was drawing to its end as the silence in Cehmai’s mind. But the last piece had not yet been pushed when a pounding came on the door.
“I know you’re in there! Wake up!”
Cehmai sighed at the familiar voice and rose. The andat brooded over the board, searching, the poet knew, for some way to win a lost game. He clapped a hand on the andat’s shoulder as he passed by it toward the door.
“I won’t have it,” the stout, red-cheeked man said when the opened door revealed him. He wore brilliant blue robes shot with rich yellow and a copper torc of office. Not for the first time, Cehmai thought Baarath would have been better placed in life as the overseer of a merchant house or farm than within the utkhaiem. “You poets think that because you have the andat, you have everything. Well, I’ve come to tell you it isn’t so.”
Cehmai took a pose of welcome and stepped back, allowing the man in.
“I’ve been expecting you, Baarath. I don’t suppose you’ve brought any food with you?”
“You have servants for that,” Baarath said, striding into the wide room, taking in the shelves of books and scrolls and maps with his customary moment of lust. The andat looked up at him with its queer, slow smile, and then turned back to the board.
“I don’t like having strange people wandering through my library,” Baarath said.
“Well, let’s hope our friend from the Dai-kvo won’t be strange.”
“You are an annoying, contrary man. He’s going to come in here and root through the place. Some of those volumes are very old, you know. They won’t stand mishandling.”
“Perhaps you should make copies of them.”
“I am making copies. But it’s not a fast process, you know. It takes a great deal of time and patience. You can’t just grab some half-trained scribes off the street corners and set them to copying the great books of the Empire.”
“You also can’t do the whole job by yourself, Baarath. No matter how much you want to.”
The librarian scowled at him, but there was a playfulness in the man’s eyes. The andat shifted a white marker forward and the noise in Cehmai’s head murmured. It had been a good move.
“You hold an abstract thought in human form and make it play tricks, and you tell me what’s not possible? Please. I’ve come to offer a trade. If you’ll—”
“Wait,” Cehmai said.
“If you’ll just—”
“Baarath, you can be quiet or you can leave. I have to finish this.”
Stone-Made-Soft sighed as Cehmai took his seat again. The white stone had opened a line that had until now been closed. It wasn’t one he’d seen the andat play before, and Cehmai scowled. The game was still over, there was no way for the andat to clear his files and pour the white markers to their target squares before Cehmai’s dark stones had reached their goal. But it would be harder now than it had been before the librarian came. Cehmai played through the next five moves in his mind, his fingertips twitching. Then, decisively, he pushed the black marker forward that would block the andat’s fastest course.
“Nice move,” the librarian said.
“What did you want with me? Could you just say it so I can refuse and get about my day?”
“I was going to say that I will give this little poet-let of the Dai-kvo’s full access if you’ll let me include your collection here. It really makes more sense to have all the books and scrolls cataloged together.”
Cehmai took a pose of thanks.
“No,” he said. “Now go away. I have to do this.”
“Be reasonable! If I choose—”
“First, you will give Maati Vaupathai full access because the Dai-kvo and the Khai Machi tell you to. You have nothing to bargain with. Second, I’m not the one who gave the orders, nor was I consulted on them. If you want barley, you don’t negotiate with a silversmith, do you? So don’t come here asking concessions for something that I’m not involved with.”
A flash of genuine hurt crossed Baarath’s face. Stone-Made-Soft touched a white marker, then pulled back its hand and sank into thought again. Baarath took a pose of apology, his stance icy with its formality.
“Don’t,” Cehmai said. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a farmer’s wife about the thing, but you’ve come at a difficult time.”
“Of course. This children’s game upon which all our fates depend. No, no. Stay. I’ll see myself out.”
“We can talk later,” Cehmai said to the librarian’s back.
The door closed and left Cehmai and his captive, or his ward, or his other self, alone together.
“He isn’t a very good man,” Stone-Made-Soft rumbled.
“No, he’s not,” Cehmai agreed. “But friendship falls where it falls. And may the gods keep us from a world where only the people who deserve love get it.”
“Well said,” the andat replied, and pushed forward the white stone Cehmai knew it would.
The game ended quickly after that. Cehmai ate a breakfast of roast lamb and boiled eggs while Stone-Made-Soft put away the game pieces and then sat, warming its huge hands by the fire. There was a long day before them, and after the morning’s struggle, Cehmai was dreading it. They were promised to go to the potter’s works before midday. A load of granite had come from the quarries and required his services before it could be shaped into the bowls and vases for which Machi was famed. After midday, he was needed for a meeting with the engineers to consider the plans for House Pirnat’s silver mine. The Khai Machi’s engineers were concerned, he knew, that using the andat to soften the stone around a newfound seam of ore would weaken the structure of the mine. House Pirnat’s overseer thought it worth the risk. It would be like sitting in a child’s garden during a mud fight, but it had to be done. Just thinking of it made him tired.
“You could tell them I’d nearly won,” the andat said. “Say you were too shaken to appear.”
“Yes, because my life would be so much better if they were all afraid of turning into a second Saraykeht.”
“I’m only saying that you have options,” the andat replied, smiling into the fire.
The poet’s house was set apart from the palaces of the Khai and the compounds of the utkhaiem. It was a broad, low building with thick stone walls nestled behind a small and artificial wood of sculpted oaks. The snows of winter had been reduced to gray-white mounds and frozen pools in the deep shadows where sunlight would not touch them. Cehmai and the andat strode west, toward the palaces and the Great Tower, tallest of all the inhuman buildings of Machi. It was a relief to walk along streets in sunlight rather than the deep network of tunnels to which the city resorted when the drifts were too high to allow even the snow doors to open. Brief days, and cold profound enough to crack stone, were the hallmarks of the Machi winter. The terrible urge to be out in the gardens and streets marked her spring. The men and women Cehmai passed were all dressed in warm robes, but their faces were bare and their heads uncovered. The pair paused by a firekeeper at his
kiln. A singing slave stood near enough to warm her hands at the fire as she filled the air with traditional songs. The palaces of the Khai loomed before them—huge and gray with roofs pitched sharp as axe blades—and the city and the daylight stood at their backs, as tempting as sugar ghosts on Candles Night.
“It isn’t too late,” the andat murmured. “Manat Doru used to do it all the time. He’d send a note to the Khai claiming that the weight of holding me was too heavy, and that he required his rest. We would go down to a little teahouse by the river that had sweetcakes that they cooked in oil and covered with sugar so fine it hung in the air if you blew on it.”
“You’re lying to me,” Cehmai said.
“No,” the andat said. “No, it’s truth. It made the Khai quite angry sometimes, but what was he to do?”
The singing slave smiled and took a pose of greeting to them that Cehmai returned.
“We could stop by the spring gardens that Idaan frequents. If she were free she might be persuaded to join us,” the andat said.
“And why would the daughter of the Khai tempt me more than sweetcakes?”
“She’s well-read and quick in her mind,” the andat said, as if the question had been genuine. “You find her pleasant to look at, I know. And her demeanor is often just slightly inappropriate. If memory serves, that might outweigh even sweetcakes.”
Cehmai shifted his weight from foot to foot, then, with a commanding gesture, stopped a servant boy. The boy, seeing who he was, fell into a pose of greeting so formal it approached obeisance.
“I need you to carry a message for me. To the Master of Tides.”
“Yes, Cehmai-cha,” the boy said.
“Tell him I have had a bout with the andat this morning, and find myself too fatigued to conduct business. And tell him that I will reach him on the morrow if I feel well enough.”
The poet fished through his sleeves, pulled out his money pouch and took out a length of silver. The boy’s eyes widened, and his small hand reached out toward it. Cehmai drew it back, and the boy’s dark eyes fixed on his.
“If he asks,” Cehmai said, “you tell him I looked quite ill.”
The boy nodded vigorously, and Cehmai pressed the silver length into his palm. Whatever errand the boy had been on was forgotten. He vanished into the austere gloom of the palaces.
“You’re corrupting me,” Cehmai said as he turned away.
“Constant struggle is the price of power,” the andat said, its voice utterly devoid of humor. “It must be a terrible burden for you. Now let’s see if we can find the girl and those sweetcakes.”
“They tell me you knew my son,” the Khai Machi said. The grayness of his skin and yellow in his long, bound hair were signs of something more than the ravages of age. The Dai-kvo was of the same generation, but Maati saw none of his vigor and strength here. The sick man took a pose of command. “Tell me of him.”
Maati stared down at the woven reed mat on which he knelt and fought to push away the weariness of his travels. It had been days since he had bathed, his robes were not fresh, and his mind was uneasy. But he was here, called to this meeting or possibly this confrontation, even before his bags had been unpacked. He could feel the attention of the servants of the Khai—there were perhaps a dozen in the room. Some slaves, others attendants from among the highest ranks of the utkhaiem. The audience might be called private, but it was too well attended for Maati’s comfort. The choice was not his. He took the bowl of heated wine he had been given, sipped it, and spoke.
“Otah-kvo and I met at the school, most high. He already wore the black robes awarded to those who had passed the first test when I met him. I … I was the occasion of his passing the second.”
The Khai Machi nodded. It was an almost inhumanly graceful movement, like a bird or some finely wrought mechanism. Maati took it as a sign that he should continue.
“He came to me after that. He … he taught me things about the school and about myself. He was, I think, the best teacher I have known. I doubt I would have been chosen to study with the Dai-kvo if it hadn’t been for him. But then he refused the chance to become a poet.”
“And the brand,” the Khai said. “He refused the brand. Perhaps he had ambitions even then.”
He was a boy, and angry, Maati thought. He had beaten Tahi-kvo and Milah-kvo on his own terms. He’d refused their honors. Of course he didn’t accept disgrace.
The utkhaiem high enough to express an opinion nodded among themselves as if a decision made in heat by a boy not yet twelve might explain a murder two decades later. Maati let it pass.
“I met him again in Saraykeht,” Maati said. “I had gone there to study under Heshai-kvo and the andat Removing-the-Part-That-Continues. Otah-kvo was living under an assumed name at the time, working as a laborer on the docks.”
“And you recognized him?”
“I did,” Maati said.
“And yet you did not denounce him?” The old man’s voice wasn’t angry. Maati had expected anger. Outrage, perhaps. What he heard instead was gentler and more penetrating. When he looked up, the red-rimmed eyes were very much like Otah-kvo’s. Even if he had not known before, those eyes would have told him that this man was Otah’s father. He wondered briefly what his own father’s eyes had looked like and whether his resembled them, then forced his mind back to the matter at hand.
“I did not, most high. I regarded him as my teacher, and … and I wished to understand the choices he had made. We became friends for a time. Before the death of the poet took me from the city.”
“And do you call him your teacher still? You call him Otah-kvo. That is a title for a teacher, is it not?”
Maati blushed. He hadn’t realized until then that he was doing it.
“An old habit, most high. I was sixteen when I last saw Otah-cha. I’m thirty now. It has been almost half my life since I have spoken with him. I think of him as a person I once knew who told me some things I found of use at the time,” Maati said, and sensing that the falsehood of those words might be clear, he continued with some that were more nearly true. “My loyalty is to the Dai-kvo.”
“That is good,” the Khai Machi said. “Tell me, then. How will you conduct this examination of my city?”
“I am here to study the library of Machi,” Maati said. “I will spend my mornings there, most high. After midday and in the evenings I will move through the city. I think … I think that if Otah-kvo is here it will not be difficult to find him.”
The gray, thin lips smiled. Maati thought there was condescension in them. Perhaps even pity. He felt a blush rise in his cheeks, but kept his face still. He knew how he must appear to the Khai’s weary eyes, but he would not flinch and confirm the man’s worst suspicions. He swallowed once to loosen his throat.
“You have great faith in yourself,” the Khai Machi said. “You come to my city for the first time. You know nothing of its streets and tunnels, little of its history, and you say that finding my missing son will be easy for you.”
“Rather, most high, I will make it easy for him to find me.”
It might have been his imagination—he knew from experience that he was prone to see his own fears and hopes in other people instead of what was truly there—but Maati thought there might have been a flicker of approval on the old man’s face.
“You will report to me,” the Khai said. “When you find him, you will come to me before anyone else, and I will send word to the Dai-kvo.”
“As you command, most high,” Maati lied. He had said that his loyalty lay with the Dai-kvo, but there was no advantage he could see to explaining all that meant here and now.
The meeting continued for a short time. The Khai seemed as exhausted by it as Maati himself was. Afterward, a servant girl led him to his apartments within the palaces. Night was already falling as he closed the door, truly alone for the first time in weeks. The journey from his home in the Dai-kvo’s village wasn’t the half-season’s trek he would have had from Saraykeht, but it was enough
, and Maati didn’t enjoy the constant companionship of strangers on the road.
A fire had been lit in the grate, and warm tea and cakes of honeyed almonds waited for him at a lacquered table. He lowered himself into the chair, rested his feet, and closed his eyes. Being here, in this place, had a sense of unreality to it. To have been entrusted with anything of importance was a surprise after his loss of status. The thought stung, but he forced himself to turn in toward it. He had lost a great deal of the Dai-kvo’s trust between his failure in Saraykeht and his refusal to disavow Liat, the girl who had once loved Otah-kvo but left both him and the fallen city to be with Maati, when it became clear she was bearing his child. If there had been time between the two, perhaps it might have been different. One scandal on the heels of the other, though, had been too much. Or so he told himself. It was what he wanted to believe.
A scratch at the door roused him from his bitter reminiscences. He straightened his robes and ran a hand through his hair before he spoke.
“Come in.”
The door slid open and a young man of perhaps twenty summers wearing the brown robes of a poet stepped in and took a pose of greeting. Maati returned it as he considered Cehmai Tyan, poet of Machi. The broad shoulders, the open face. Here, Maati thought, is what I should have been. A talented boy poet who studied under a master while young enough to have his mind molded to the right shape. And when the time came, he had taken that burden on himself for the sake of his city. As I should have done.
“I only just heard you’d arrived,” Cehmai Tyan said. “I left orders at the main road, but apparently they don’t think as much of me as they pretend.”
There was a light humor in his voice and manner. As if this were a game, as if he were a person whom anyone in Machi—or in the world—could truly treat with less than total respect. He held the power to soften stone—it was the concept, the essential idea, that Manat Doru had translated into a human form all those generations ago. This wide-faced, handsome boy could collapse every bridge, level every mountain. The great towers of Machi could turn to a river of stone, fast-flowing and dense as quicksilver, which would lay the city to ruin at his order. And he made light of being ignored as if he were junior clerk in some harbormaster’s house. Maati couldn’t tell if it was an affectation or if the poet was really so utterly naïve.
A Betrayal in Winter (The Long Price Quartet Book 2) Page 5