He heard the door slide open with a whisper, and then shut again. He rose, forcing his body to move deliberately and took a pose of greeting even before he looked up. Maati Vaupathai. Time had thickened him, and there was a sorrow in the lines of his face that hadn’t been there even in the weary days when he had stood between his master Heshai-kvo and the death that had eventually come. Otah wondered whether that change had sprung from Heshai’s murder, and whether Maati had ever guessed that Otah had been the one who drew the cord across the old poet’s throat.
Maati took a pose of welcome appropriate for a student to a teacher.
“It wasn’t me,” Otah said. “My brother. You. I had nothing to do with any of it.”
“I had guessed that,” Maati said. He did not come nearer.
“Are you going to call the armsmen? There must be half a dozen out there. Your student could have been more subtle in calling them.”
“There’s more than that, and he isn’t my student. I don’t have any students. I don’t have anything.” A strange smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “I have been something of a disappointment to the Dai-kvo. Why are you here?”
“Because I need help,” Otah said, “and I hoped we might not be enemies.”
Maati seemed to weigh the words. He walked to the bench, sat, and leaned forward with clasped hands. Otah sat beside him, and they were silent. A sparrow landed on the ground before them, cocked its head, and fluttered madly away again.
“I came back because it was controlling me,” Otah said. “This place. These people. I’ve spent a lifetime leaving them, and they keep coming back and destroying everything I build. I wanted to see it. I wanted to look at the city and my brothers and my father.”
He looked at his hands.
“I don’t know what I wanted,” Otah said.
“Yes,” Maati said, and then, awkwardly, “It was foolish, though. And there will be consequences.”
“There have been already.”
“There’ll be more.”
Again, the silence loomed. There was too much to say, and no order for it. Otah frowned hard, opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again.
“I have a son,” Maati said. “Liat and I have a son. His name’s Nayiit. He’s probably just old enough now that he’s started to notice that girls aren’t always repulsive. I haven’t seen them in years.”
“I didn’t know,” Otah said.
“How would you? The Dai-kvo said that I was a fool to keep a family. I am a poet, and my duty is to the world. And when I wouldn’t renounce them, I fell from favor. I was given duties that might as well have been done by an educated slave. And you know, there was an odd kind of pride about it for a while. I was given clothing, shelter, food for myself. Only for myself. I thought of leaving. Of folding my robes on the bed and running away as you did. I thought of you, the way you had chosen your own shape for your life instead of the shapes that were offered you. I thought I was doing the same. Gods, Otah-kvo, I wish you had been here. All these years, I wish I had been able to talk to you. To someone.”
“I’m sorry….”
Maati raised a hand to stop him.
“My son,” Maati said, then his voice thickened, and he coughed and began again. “Liat and I parted ways. My low status among the poets didn’t have the air of romance for her that I saw in it. And … there were other things. Raising my son called for money and time and I had little to spare of either. My son is thirteen summers. Thirteen. She was carrying him before we left Saraykeht.”
Otah felt the words as if he’d been struck an unexpected blow—a sensation of shock without source or location, and then the flood. Maati glanced over at him and read his thoughts from his face, and he nodded.
“I know,” Maati said. “She told me about bedding you that one time after you came back, before you left again. Before Heshai-kvo died and Seedless vanished. I suppose she was afraid that if I discovered it someday and she hadn’t said anything it would make things worse. She told me the truth. And she swore that my son was mine. And I believe her.”
“Do you?”
“Of course not. I mean, some days I did. When he was young and I could hold him in one arm, I was sure that he was mine. And then some nights I would wonder. And even in those times when I was sure that he was yours, I still loved him. That was the worst of it. The nights I lay awake in a village where women and children aren’t allowed, in a tiny cell that stank of the disapproval of everyone I had ever hoped to please. I knew that I loved him, and that he wasn’t mine. No, don’t. Let me finish. I couldn’t be a father to him. And if I hadn’t fathered him either, what was there left but watching from a distance while this little creature grew up and away from me without even knowing my heart was tucked in his sleeve.”
Maati wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand.
“Liat said she was tired of my always mourning, that the boy deserved some joy; that she did too. So after that I didn’t have them, and I didn’t have the respect of the people I saw and worked beside. I was eaten by guilt over losing them, and having taken her from you. I thought that she would have been happy with you. That you would have been happy with her. If only I hadn’t broken faith with you, the world might have been right after all. And you might have stayed.
“And that has been my life until the day they called on me to hunt you.”
“I see,” Otah said.
“I have missed your company so badly, Otah-kya, and I have never hated anyone more. I have been waiting for years to say that. So. Now I have, what was it you wanted from me?”
Otah caught his breath.
“I wanted your help,” he said. “There’s a woman. She was my lover once. When I told her … when I told her about my family, my past, she turned me out. She was afraid that knowing me would put her and the people she was responsible for in danger.”
“She’s wise, then,” Maati said.
“I hoped you would help me protect her,” Otah said. His heart was a lump of cold lead. “Perhaps that was optimistic.”
Maati laughed. The sound was hollow.
“And how would I do that?” Maati asked. “Kill your brothers for you? Tell the Khai that the Dai-kvo had decreed that she was not to be harmed? I don’t have that power. I don’t have any power at all. This was my chance at redemption. They called upon me to hunt you because I knew your face, and I failed at that until you walked into the palaces and asked to speak with me.”
“Go to my father with me. I refused the brand, but I won’t now. I’ll renounce my claim to the chair in front of anyone he wants, only don’t let him kill me before I do it.”
Maati looked across at him. The sparrow returned for a moment to perch between them.
“It won’t work,” he said. “Renunciation isn’t a simple thing, and once you’ve stepped outside of form, stepping back in …”
“But …”
“They won’t believe you. And even if they did, they’d still fear you enough to see you dead.”
Otah took a deep breath, and then slowly let it out, letting his head sink into his hands. The air itself seemed to have grown heavier, thicker. It had been a mad hope, and even in its failure, at least Kiyan would be safe. It was past time, perhaps, that people stopped paying prices for knowing him.
He could feel himself shaking. When he sat, his hands were perfectly still, though he could still feel the trembling in them.
“So what are you going to do?” Otah asked.
“In a moment, I’m going to call in the armsmen that are waiting outside that door,” Maati said, his voice deceptively calm. He was trembling as well. “I am going to bring you before the Khai, who will at some point decide either that you are a murderer who has killed his son Biitrah and put you to the sword, or else a legitimate child of Machi who should be set loose for one of your older brothers to kill. I will speak on your behalf, and any evidence I can find that suggests Biitrah’s murder wasn’t your work, I will present.”
“Well, thank you for that, at least.”
“Don’t,” Maati said. “I’m doing it because it’s true. If I thought you’d arranged it, I’d have said that.”
“Loyalty to the truth isn’t something to throw out either.”
Maati took a pose that accepted the gratitude, and then dropped his hands to his sides.
“There’s something you should know,” Otah said. “It might … it seems to be your business. When I was in the islands, after Saraykeht, there was a woman. Not Maj. Another woman. I shared a bed with her for two, almost three years.”
“Otah-kvo, I admire your conquests, but …”
“She wanted a child. From me. But it never took. Almost three years, and she bled with the moon the whole time. I heard that after I left, she took up with a fisherman from a tribe to the north and had a baby girl.”
“I see,” Maati said, and there was something in his voice. A brightness. “Thank you, Otah-kvo.”
“I missed you as well. I wish we had had more time. Or other circumstances.”
“As do I. But it isn’t ours to choose. Shall we do this thing?”
“I don’t suppose I could shave first?” Otah asked, touching his chin.
“I don’t see how,” Maati said, rising. “But perhaps we can get you some better robes.”
Otah didn’t mean to laugh; it simply came out of him. And then Maati was laughing as well, and the birds startled around them, rising up into the sky. Otah rose and took a pose of respect appropriate to the closing of a meeting. Maati responded in kind, and they walked together to the door. Maati slid it open, and Otah looked to see whether there was a gap in the men, a chance to dodge them and sprint out to the streets. He might as well have looked for a stone cloud. The armsmen seemed to have doubled in number, and two already had bare blades at the ready. The young poet—the one Maati said wasn’t his student—was there among them, his expression serious and concerned. Maati spoke as if the bulky men and their weapons weren’t there.
“Cehmai-cha,” he said. “Good that you’re here. I would like to introduce you to my old friend, Otah, the sixth son of the Khai Machi. Otah-kvo, this is Cehmai Tyan and that small mountain in the back is the andat Stone-Made-Soft which he controls. Cehmai assumed you were an assassin come to finish me off.”
“I’m not,” Otah said with a levity that seemed at odds with his situation, but which felt perfectly natural. “But I understand the misconception. It’s the beard. I’m usually better shaved.”
Cehmai opened his mouth, closed it, and then took a formal pose of welcome. Maati turned to the armsmen.
“Chain him,” he said.
EVEN AT the height of morning, the wives’ quarters of the high palace were filled with the small somber activity of a street market starting to close at twilight. In the course of his life, the Khai Machi had taken eleven women as wives. Some had become friends, lovers, companions. Others had been little more than permanent guests in his house, sent as a means of assuring favor as one might send a good hunting dog or a talented slave. Idaan had heard that there were several of them with whom he had never shared a bed. It had been Biitrah’s wife, Hiami, who’d told her that, trying to explain to a young girl that the Khaiem had a different relationship to their women than other men had, that it was traditional. It hadn’t worked. Even the words the older woman had used—your father chooses not to—had proven her point that this was a comfort house with high ceilings, grand halls, and only a single client.
But now that was changing, not in character, but in the particulars. The succession would have the same effect on the eight wives who remained, whoever took the seat. It would be time for them to leave—make the journey back to whatever city or family had sent them forth in the first place. The oldest of them, a sharp-tongued woman named Carai, would be returning to a high family in Yalakeht where the man who would choose her disposition had been a delighted toddler grinning and filling his pants the last time she’d seen him. Another woman—one of the recent ones hardly older than Idaan herself—had taken a lover in the court. She was being sent back to Chaburi-Tan, likely to be turned around and shipped off to another of the Khaiem or traded between the houses of the utkhaiem as a token of political alliance. Many of the wives had known each other for decades and would now scatter and lose the friends and companions they had known best. And on and on, every one of them a life shaped by a man’s will, constrained by tradition.
Idaan walked through the wide, bright corridors, listened to these women preparing to depart when the inevitable news came, anticipating the grief in a way that was as hard as the grief itself. Perhaps harder. She accepted their congratulations on her marriage. She would be able to remain in the city, and should her man die before her, her family would be there to support her. She, at least, would never be uprooted. Hiami had never understood why Idaan had objected to this way of living. Idaan had never understood why these women hadn’t set the palaces on fire.
Her own rooms were set in the back; small apartments with rich tapestries of white and gold on the walls. They might almost have been mistaken for the home of some merchant leader—the overseer of a great trading house, or a trade master who spoke with the voice of a city’s craftsmen. If only she had been born one of those. As she entered, one of her servants met her with an expression that suggested news. Idaan took a pose of query.
“Adrah Vaunyogi is waiting to see you, Idaan-cha,” the servant girl said. “It was approaching midday, so I’ve put him in the dining hall. There is food waiting. I hope I haven’t …”
“No,” Idaan said, “you did well. Please see that we’re left alone.”
He sat at the long, wooden table, and he did not look up when she came in. Idaan was willing to ignore him as well as to be ignored, so she gathered a bowl of food from the platters—early grapes from the south, sticky with their own blood; hard, crumbling cheese with a ripe scent that was both appetizing and not; twice-baked flatbread that cracked sharply when she broke off a piece—and retired to a couch. She forced herself to forget that he was here, to look forward at the bare fire grate. Anger buoyed her up, and she clung to it.
She heard it when he stood, heard his footsteps approaching. It was a little victory, but it pleased her. As he sat cross-legged on the floor before her, she raised an eyebrow and sketched a pose of welcome before choosing another grape.
“I came last night,” he said. “I was looking for you.”
“I wasn’t here,” she said.
The pause was meant to injure her. Look how sad you’ve made me, Idaan. It was a child’s tactic, and that it partially worked infuriated her.
“I’ve had trouble sleeping,” she said. “I walk. Otherwise, I’d spend the whole night staring at netting and watching the candle burn down. No call for that.”
Adrah sighed and nodded his head.
“I’ve been troubled too,” he said. “My father can’t reach the Galts. With Oshai … with what happened to him, he’s afraid they may withdraw their support.”
“Your father is an old woman frightened there’s a snake in the night bucket,” Idaan said, breaking a corner of her bread. “They may lie low now, but once it’s clear that you’re in position to become Khai, they’ll do what they promised. They’ve nothing to gain by not.”
“Once I’m Khai, they’ll still own me,” Adrah said. “They’ll know how I came there. They’ll be able to hold it over me. If they tell what they know, the gods only know what would happen.”
Idaan took a bite of grape and cheese both—the sweet and the salt mingling pleasantly. When she spoke, she spoke around it.
“They won’t. They won’t dare, Adrah. Give the worst: we’re exposed by the Galts. We’re deposed and killed horribly in the streets. Fine. Lift your gaze up from your own corpse for a moment and tell me what happens next?”
“There’s a struggle. Some other family takes the chair.”
“Yes. And what will the new Khai do?”
“He’ll slaughter
my family,” Adrah said, his voice hollow and ghostly. Idaan leaned forward and slapped him.
“He’ll have Stone-Made-Soft level a few Galtic mountain ranges and sink some islands. Do you think there’s a Khai in any city that would sit still at the word of the Galtic Council arranging the death of one of their own? The Galts won’t own you because your exposure would mean the destruction of their nation and the wholesale slaughter of their people. So worry a little less. You’re supposed to be overwhelmed with the delight of marrying me.”
“Shouldn’t you be delighted too, then?”
“I’m busy mourning my father,” she said dryly. “Do we have any wine?”
“How is he? Your father?”
“I don’t know,” Idaan said. “I try not to see him these days. He makes me … feel weak. I can’t afford that just now.”
“I heard he’s failing.”
“Men can fail for a long time,” she said, and stood. She left the bowl on the floor and walked back to her bedroom, holding her hands out before her, sticky with juice. Adrah followed along behind her and lay on her bed. She poured water into her stone basin and watched him as she washed her hands. He was a boy, lost in the world. Perhaps now was as good a time as any. She took a deep breath.
“I’ve been thinking, Adrah-kya,” she said. “About when you become Khai.”
He turned his head to look at her, but did not rise or speak.
“It’s going to be important, especially at the first, to gather allies. Founding a line is a delicate thing. I know we agreed that it would always be only the two of us, but perhaps we were wrong in that. If you take other wives, you’ll have more the appearance of tradition and the support of the families who bind themselves to us.”
A Betrayal in Winter (The Long Price Quartet Book 2) Page 16