“Yes. I suppose I should have been more subtle.”
“The assassin was killed yesterday.”
Maati took another bite of fish.
“Executed?”
“Disposed of,” the andat said and smiled.
Cehmai told the story. The fire in the tunnels, the deaths of the guards. The other prisoners said that there had been three men in black cloaks, that they had rushed in, killed the assassin, and vanished. Two others had choked to death on the smoke before the watchmen put the fire out.
“The story among the utkhaiem is that you discovered Otah Machi. The Master of Tides’s assistant said that you’d been angry with him for being indiscreet about your questions concerning a courier from Udun. Then the attack on you, and the fire. They say the Khai Machi sent for you to hunt his missing son, Otah.”
“Part true,” Maati said. “I was sent to look for Otah. I knew him once, when we were younger. But I haven’t found him, and the knife man was … something else. It wasn’t Otah.”
“You said that,” the andat rumbled. “When we found you, you said it was someone else.”
“Otah-kvo wouldn’t have done it. Not that way. He might have met me himself, but sending someone else to do it? No. He wasn’t behind that,” Maati said, and then the consequence of that fell into place. “And so I think he must not have been the one who killed Biitrah.”
Cehmai and his andat exchanged a glance and the young poet drew a bowl of water for Maati. The water was as good as the food, but Maati could see the unease in the way Cehmai looked at him. If he had ached less or been farther from exhaustion, he might have been subtle.
“What is it?” Maati asked.
Cehmai drew himself up, then sighed.
“You call him Otah-kvo.”
“He was my teacher. At the school, he was in the black robes when I was new arrived. He … helped me.”
“And you saw him again. When you were older.”
“Did I?” Maati asked.
Cehmai took a pose that asked forgiveness. “The Dai-kvo would hardly have trusted a memory that old. You were both children at the school. We were all children there. You knew him when you were both men, yes?”
“Yes,” Maati said. “He was in Saraykeht when … when Heshai-kvo died.”
“And you call him Otah-kvo,” Cehmai said. “He was a friend of yours, Maati-kvo. Someone you admired. He’s never stopped being your teacher.”
“Perhaps. But he’s stopped being my friend. That was my doing, but it’s done.”
“I’m sorry, Maati-kvo, but are you certain Otah-kvo is innocent because he’s innocent, or only because you’re certain? It would be hard to accept that an old friend might wish you ill …”
Maati smiled and sipped the water.
“Otah Machi may well wish me dead. I would understand it if he did. And he’s in the city, or was four days ago. But he didn’t send the assassin.”
“You think he isn’t hoping for the Khai’s chair?”
“I don’t know. But I suppose that’s something worth finding out. Along with who it was that killed his brother and started this whole thing rolling.”
He took another mouthful of rice and fish, but his mind was elsewhere.
“Will you let me help you?”
Maati looked up, half surprised. The young poet’s face was serious, his hands in a pose of formal supplication. It was as if they were back in the school and Cehmai was a boy asking a boon of the teachers. The andat had its hands folded in its lap, but it seemed mildly amused. Before Maati could think of a reply, Cehmai went on.
“You aren’t well yet, Maati-kvo. You’re the center of all the court gossip now, and anything you do will be examined from eight different views before you’ve finished doing it. I know the city. I know the court. I can ask questions without arousing suspicion. The Dai-kvo didn’t choose to take me into his confidence, but now that I know what’s happening—”
“It’s too much of a risk,” Maati said. “The Dai-kvo sent me because I know Otah-kvo, but he also sent me because my loss would mean nothing. You hold the andat—”
“It’s fine with me,” Stone-Made-Soft said. “Really, don’t let me stop you.”
“If I ask questions without you, I run the same risks, and without the benefits of shared information,” Cehmai said. “And expecting me not to wonder would be unrealistic.”
“The Khai Machi would expel me from his city if he thought I was endangering his poet,” Maati said. “And then I wouldn’t be of use to anyone.”
Cehmai’s dark eyes were both deadly serious and also, Maati thought, amused. “This wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve kept from him,” the young poet said. “Please, Maati-kvo. I want to help.”
Maati closed his eyes. Having someone to talk with, even if it was only a way to explore what he thought himself, wouldn’t be so bad a thing. The Dai-kvo hadn’t expressly forbidden that Cehmai know, and even if he had, the secret investigation had already sent Otah-kvo to flight, so any further subterfuge seemed pointless. And the fact was, he likely couldn’t find the answers alone.
“You have saved my life once already.”
“I thought it would be unfair to point that out,” Cehmai said.
Maati laughed, then stopped when the pain in his belly bloomed. He lay back, blowing air until he could think again. The pillows felt better than they should have. He’d done so little, and he was already tired. He glanced mistrustfully at the andat, then took a pose of acceptance.
“Come back tonight, when I’ve rested,” Maati said. “We’ll plan our strategy. I have to get my strength back, but there isn’t much time.”
“May I ask one other thing, Maati-kvo?”
Maati nodded, but his belly seemed to have grown more sensitive for the moment and he tried not to move more than that. It seemed laughing wasn’t a wise thing for him just now.
“Who are Liat and Nayiit?”
“My lover. Our son,” Maati said. “I called out for them, did I? When I had the fever?”
Cehmai nodded.
“I do that often,” Maati said. “Only not usually aloud.”
There were four great roads that connected the cities of the Khaiem, one named for each of the cardinal directions. The North Road that linked Cetani, Machi, and Amnat-Tan was not the worst, in part because there was no traffic in the winter, when the snows let men make a road wherever desire took them. Also the stones were damaged more by the cycle of thaw and frost that troubled the north only in spring and autumn. In high summer, it rarely froze, and for a third of the year it did not thaw. The West Road—far from the sea and not so far south as to keep the winters warm—required the most repair.
“They’ll have crews of indentured slaves and laborers out in shifts,” the old man in the cart beside Otah said, raising a finger as if his oratory was on par with the High Emperor’s, back when there had been an empire. “They start at one end, reset the stones until they reach the other, and begin again. It never ends.”
Otah glanced across the cart at the young woman nursing her babe and rolled his eyes. She smiled and shrugged so slightly that their orator didn’t notice the movement. The cart lurched down into and up from another wide hole where the stones had shattered and not yet been replaced.
“I have walked them all,” the old man said, “though they’ve worn me more than I’ve worn them. Oh yes, much more than I’ve worn them.”
He cackled, as he always seemed to when he made this observation. The little caravan—four carts hauled by old horses—was still six days from Cetani. Otah wondered whether his own legs were rested enough that he could start walking again.
He had bought an old laborer’s robe of blue-gray wool from a rag shop, chopped his hair to change its shape, and let his thin beard start to grow in. Once his whiskers had been long enough to braid, but the east islanders he’d lived with had laughed at him and pretended to mistake him for a woman. After Cetani, it would take another twenty days to reach the doc
ks outside Amnat-tan. And then, if he could find a fishing boat that would take him on, he would be among those men again, singing songs in a tongue he hadn’t tried out in years, explaining again, either with the truth or outrageous stories, why his marriage mark was only half done.
He would die there—on the islands or on the sea—under whatever new name he chose for himself. Itani Noygu was gone. He had died in Machi. Another life was behind him, and the prospect of beginning again, alone in a foreign land, tired him more than the walking.
“Now, southern wood’s too soft to really build with. The winters are too warm to really harden them. Up here there’s trees that would blunt a dozen axes before they fell,” the old man said.
“You know everything, don’t you, grandfather?” Otah said. If his annoyance was in his voice, the old man noticed nothing, because he cackled again.
“It’s because I’ve been everywhere and done everything,” the old man said. “I even helped hunt down the Khai Amnat-Tan’s older brother when they had their last succession. There were a dozen of us, and it was the dead of winter. Your piss would freeze before it touched ground. Oh, eh …”
The old man took a pose of apology to the young woman and her babe, and Otah swung himself out of the cart. It wasn’t a story he cared to hear. The road wound through a valley, high pine forest on either side, the air sharp and fragrant with the resin. It was beautiful, and he pictured it thick with snow, the image coming so clear that he wondered whether he might once have seen it that way. When the clatter of hooves came from the west, he forced himself again to relax his shoulders and look as curious and excited as the others. Twice before, couriers on fast horses had passed the ‘van, laden with news, Otah knew, of the search for him.
It had taken an effort of will not to run as fast as he could after he had been discovered, but the search was for a false courier either plotting murder or fleeing like a rabbit. No one would pay attention to a plodding laborer off to stay with his sister’s family in a low town outside Cetani. And yet, as the horses approached, tension grew in his breast. He prepared himself for the shock if one of the riders had a familiar face.
There were three this time—utkhaiem to judge by their robes and the quality of their mounts—and none of them men he knew. They didn’t slow for the ‘van, but the arms-men of the ‘van, the drivers, the dozen hangers-on like himself all shouted at them for news. One of them turned in his saddle and yelled something, but Otah couldn’t make it out and the rider didn’t repeat it. Ten days on the road. Six more to Cetani. The only challenge was not to be where they were looking for him.
They reached a wayhouse with the sun still three and a half hands above the treetops. The building was of northern design: stone walls as thick as the span of a man’s arm and stables and goat pen on the ground floor where the heat of the animals would rise and help warm the place in the winter. While the merchants and armsmen argued over whether to stop now or go farther and sleep in the open, Otah ran his eyes over the windows and walked around to the back, looking for all the signs Kiyan had taught him to know whether the keeper was working with robbers or keeping an unsafe kitchen. The house met all of her best marks. It seemed safe.
By the time he’d returned to the carts, his companions had decided to stay. After Otah had helped stable the horses, they shifted the carts into a locked courtyard. The caravan’s leader haggled with the keeper about the rooms and came to an agreement that Otah privately thought gave the keep the better half. Otah made his way up two flights of stairs to the room he was to share with five armsmen, two drivers, and the old man. He curled himself up in a corner on the floor. It was too small a room, and one of the drivers snored badly. A little sleep when things were quiet would only make the next day easier.
He woke in darkness to the sound of music—a drum throbbed and a flute sighed. A man’s voice and a woman’s moved in rough harmony. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe and went down to the main room. The members of his ‘van were all there and half a dozen other men besides. The air smelled of hot wine and roast lamb, pine trees and smoke. Otah sat at a rough, worn table beside one of the drivers and watched.
The singer was the keep himself; a pot-bellied man with a nose that had been broken and badly set. He drew the deep beat from a skin and earthenware drum as he sang. His wife was as shapely as a potato with an ugly face and a missing eye tooth, but their voices were well suited and their affection for each other forgave them much. Otah found himself tapping his fingertips against the table to match the drumbeats.
His mind went back to Kiyan, and the nights of music and stories and gossip he had spent in her wayhouse, far away to the south. He wondered what she was doing tonight, what music filled the warm air and competed with the murmur of the river.
When the last note had faded to silence, the crowd applauded, yelped, and howled their appreciation. Otah made his way to the singer—he was shorter than Otah had thought—and took his hand. The keeper beamed and blushed when Otah told him how good the music had been.
“We’ve had a few years’ practice, and there’s only so much to do when the days are short,” the keep said. “The winter choirs in Machi make us sound like street beggars.”
Otah smiled, regret pulling at him that he would never hear those songs, and a moment later he heard his name being spoken.
“Itani Noygu’s what he was calling himself,” one of the merchants said. “Played a courier for House Siyanti.”
“I think I met him,” a man said whom Otah had never met. “I knew there was something odd about the man.”
“And the poet … the one that had his belly opened for him? He’s picking the other Siyanti men apart like they were baked fish. The upstart has to wish that job had been done right the first time.”
“Sounds as if I’ve missed something,” Otah said, putting on his most charming smile. “What’s this about a poet’s belly?”
The merchant frowned at the interruption until Otah motioned to the keep’s wife and bought bowls of hot wine for the table. After that, the gossip flowed more freely.
Maati Vaupathai had been attacked, and the common wisdom held that Otah had arranged it. The most likely version was that the upstart had been passing as a courier, but others said that he had made his way into the palaces dressed as a servant or a meat seller. There was no question, though, that the Khai had sent out runners to all the winter cities asking for the couriers and overseers of House Siyanti to attend him at court. Amiit Foss, the man who’d been the upstart’s overseer in Udun, was being summoned in particular. It wasn’t clear yet whether Siyanti had knowingly backed Otah Machi, but if they had, it would mean the end of their expansion into the north. Even if they hadn’t, the house would suffer.
“And they’re sure he was the one who had the poet killed?” Otah asked, using all the skill the gentleman’s trade had taught him to hide his deepening despair and disgust.
“It seems they were in Saraykeht together, this poet and the upstart. That was just before Saraykeht fell.”
The implications of that hung over the room. Perhaps Otah Machi had somehow been involved with the death of Heshai, the poet of Saraykeht. Who knew what depravity the sixth son of the Khai Machi might sink to? It was a ghost story for them; a tale to pass a night on the road; a sport to follow.
Otah remembered the old, frog-mouthed poet, remembered his kindness and his weakness and his strength. He remembered the regret and the respect and the horrible complicity he’d felt in killing him, all those years ago. It had been so complicated, then. Now, they said it so simply and spoke as if they understood.
“There’s rumor of a woman, too. They say he had a lover in Udun.”
“If he was a courier, he’s likely got a woman in half the cities of the Khaiem. The gods know I would.”
“No,” the merchant said, shaking his head. He was more than half drunk. “No, they were very clear. All the Siyanti men say he had a lover in Udun and never took another. Loved her like
the world, they said. But she left him for another man. I say it’s that turned him evil. Love turns on you like … like milk.”
“Gentlemen,” the keep’s wife said, her voice powerful enough to cut through any conversation. “It’s late, and I’m not sleeping until these rooms are cleaned, so get you all to bed. I’ll have bread and honey for you at sunrise.”
The guests slurped down the last of the wine, ate the last mouthfuls of dried cherries and fresh cheese, and made their various ways toward their various beds. Otah walked down the inner stairs to the stables and the goat yard, then out through a side door and into the darkness. His body felt like he’d just run a race, or else like he was about to.
Kiyan. Kiyan and the wayhouse her father had run. Old Mani. He had set the dogs on them, and that he hadn’t intended to would count for nothing if his brothers found her. Whatever happened, whatever they did, it would be his fault.
He found a tall tree and sat with his back against it, looking out at the stars nearest the horizon. The air had the bite of cold in it. Winter never left this place. It made a little room for summer, but it never left. He thought of writing her a letter, of warning her. It would never reach her in time. It was ten days walk back to Machi, six days forward to Cetani, and his brothers’ forces would already be on the road south. He could send to Amiit Foss, beg his old overseer to take Kiyan in, to protect her. But there too, word would reach him too late.
Despair settled into his belly, too deep for tears. He was destroying the woman he loved most in the world simply by being who he was, by doing what he’d done. He thought of the boy he had been, marching away from the school across the western snows. He remembered his fear and the warmth of his rage at the poets and his parents and all in the world that treated boys so unfairly. What a pompous little ass he’d been, young and certain and alone. He should have taken the Dai-kvo’s offer and become a poet. He might have tried to bind an andat, and maybe failed and paid the price, dying in the attempt. And then Kiyan would never have met him. She would be safe.
A Betrayal in Winter (The Long Price Quartet Book 2) Page 14