A Betrayal in Winter (The Long Price Quartet Book 2)

by Daniel Abraham

  “I don’t have the details. But, yes. The longer we wait, the more suspicious it will look when Danat and the poet die.”

  “You still want Maati Vaupathai dead?” Daaya asked.

  “Otah is locked away, and the poet’s digging. Maati Vaupathai isn’t satisfied to blame the upstart for everything, even if the whole city besides him is. There are three breathing men between Adrah and my father’s chair. Danat, Otah, and the poet. I’ll need armsmen, though, to do what I intend. How many could you put together? They would have to be men you trust.”

  Daaya looked at his son, as if expecting to find some answer there, but Adrah neither spoke nor moved. He might very nearly not have been there at all. Idaan swallowed her impatience and leaned forward, her palms spread on the cool stone of the table. One of the candles sputtered and spat.

  “I know a man. A mercenary lord. He’s done work for me before and kept quiet,” Daaya said at last. He didn’t seem certain.

  “We’ll free the upstart and slit the poet’s throat,” Idaan said. “There won’t be any question who’s actually done the thing. No sane person would doubt that it was Otah’s hand. And when Danat rides out to find him, our men will be ready to ride with him. That will be the dangerous part. You’ll have to find a way to get him apart from anyone else who goes.”

  “And the upstart?” Daaya asked.

  “He’ll go where we tell him to go. We’ll just have saved him, after all. There will be no reason to think we mean him harm. They’ll all be dead in time for the wedding, and if we do it well, the joy that is our bonding will put us as the clear favorites to take the chair. That should be enough to push the Galts into action. Adrah will be Khai before the harvest.”

  Idaan leaned back, smiling in grim satisfaction. It was Adrah who broke the silence, his voice calm and sure and unlike him.

  “It won’t work.”

  Idaan began to take a pose of challenge, but she hesitated when she saw his eyes. Adrah had gone cold as winter. It wasn’t fear that drove him, whatever his father’s weakness. There was something else in him, and Idaan felt a stirring of unease.

  “I can’t see why not,” Idaan said, her voice still strong and sure.

  “Killing the poet and freeing Otah would be simple enough to manage. But the other. No. It supposes that Danat would lead the hunt himself. He wouldn’t. And if he doesn’t, the whole thing falls apart. It won’t work.”

  “I say that he would,” Idaan said.

  “And I say that your history planning these schemes isn’t one that inspires confidence,” Adrah said and stood. The candlelight caught his face at an angle, casting shadows across his eyes. Idaan rose, feeling the blood rushing into her face.

  “I was the one who saved us when Oshai fell,” she said. “You two were mewling like kittens, and crying despair—”

  “That’s enough,” Adrah said.

  “I don’t recall you being in a position to order me when to speak and when to be silent.”

  Daaya coughed, looking from one to the other of them like a lamb caught between wolf and lion. The smile that touched Adrah’s mouth was thin and unamused.

  “Idaan-kya,” Adrah said, “I am to be your husband and the Khai of this city. Sit with that. Your plan to free Oshai failed. Do you understand that? It failed. It lost us the support of our backers, it killed the man most effective in carrying out these unfortunate duties we’ve taken on, and it exposed me and my father to risk. You failed before, and this scheme you’ve put before us now would also fail if we did as you propose.”

  Adrah began to pace slowly, one hand brushing the hanging tapestries. Idaan shook her head, remembering some epic she’d seen when she was young. A performer in the role of Black Chaos had moved as Adrah moved now. Idaan felt her heart grow tight.

  “It isn’t that it’s without merit—the shape of it generally is useful, but the specifics are wrong. If Danat is to grab what men he can find and rush out into the night, it can’t be because he’s off to avenge a poet. He would have to be possessed by some greater passion. And it would help if he were drunk, but I don’t know that we can arrange that.”

  “So if not Maati Vaupathai …,” she began, and her throat closed.

  Cehmai, she thought. He means to kill Cehmai and free the andat. Her hands balled into fists, her heart thudded as if she’d been sprinting. Adrah turned to face her, his arms folded, his expression as calm as a butcher in the slaughterhouse.

  “You said there were three breathing men blocking us. There’s a fourth. Your father.”

  No one spoke. When Idaan laughed, it sounded shrill and panicked in her own ears. She took a pose that rejected the suggestion.

  “You’ve gone mad, Adrah-kya. You’ve lost all sense. My father is dying. He’s dying, there’s no call to …”

  “What else would enrage Danat enough to let his caution slip? The upstart escapes. Your father is murdered. In the confusion, we come to him, a hunting party in hand, ready to ride with him. We can put it out today that we’re planning to ride out before the end of the week. Fresh meat for the wedding feast, we’ll say.”

  “It won’t work,” Idaan said, raising her chin.

  “And why not?” Adrah replied.

  “Because I won’t let you!”

  She spun and grabbed for the door. As she hauled it open, Adrah was around her, his arms pressing it shut again. Daaya was there too, his wide hands patting at her in placating gestures that filled her with rage. Her mind left her, and she shrieked and howled and wept. She clawed at them both and kicked and tried to bite her way free, but Adrah’s arms locked around her, lifted her, tightened until she lost her breath and the room spun and grew darker.

  She found herself sitting again without knowing when she’d been set down. Adrah was raising a cup to her lips. Strong, unwatered wine. She sipped it, then pushed it away.

  “Have you calmed yourself yet?” Adrah asked. There was warmth in his voice again, as if she’d been sick and was only just recovering.

  “You can’t do it, Adrah-kya. He’s an old man, and …”

  Adrah let the silence stretch before he leaned toward her and wiped her lips with a soft cloth. She was trembling, and it annoyed her. Her body was supposed to be stronger than that.

  “It will cost him a few days,” Adrah said. “A few weeks at most. Idaan-kya, his murder is the thing that will draw your brother out if anything will. You said it to me, love. If we falter, we fail.”

  He smiled and caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. Daaya was at the table, drinking wine of his own. Idaan looked into Adrah’s dark eyes, and despite the smiles, despite the caresses, she saw the hardness there. I should have said no, she thought. When he asked if I had taken another lover, I shouldn’t have danced around it. I should have said no.

  She nodded.

  “We can make it quick. Painless,” Adrah said. “It will be a mercy, really. His life as it is now can hardly be worth living. Sick, weak. That’s no way for a proud man to live.”

  She nodded again. Her father. The simple pleasure in his eyes.

  “He wanted so much to see us wed,” she murmured. “He wanted so much for me to be happy.”

  Adrah took a pose that offered sympathy, but she wasn’t such a fool as to believe it. She rose shakily to her feet. They did not stop her.

  “I should go,” she said. “I’ll be expected at the palaces. I expect there will be food and song until the sun comes up.”

  Daaya looked up. His smile was sickly, but Adrah took a pose of reassurance and the old man looked away again.

  “I’m trusting you, Idaan-kya,” Adrah said. “To let you go. It’s because I trust you.”

  “It’s because you can’t lock me away without attracting attention. If I vanish, people will wonder why, and my brother not the least. We can’t have that, can we? Everything must seem perfectly normal.”

  “It still might be wise, locking you away,” Adrah said. He pretended to be joking, but she could see the deb
ate going on behind his eyes. For a moment, her life spread out before her. The first wife of the Khai Machi, looking into these eyes. She had loved him once. She had to remember that. Idaan smiled, leaned forward, kissed his lips.

  “I’m only sad,” she said. “It will pass. I’ll come and meet you tomorrow. We can plan what needs to be done.”

  Outside, the revelry had spread. Garlands arched above the streets. Choirs had assembled and their voices made the city chime like a struck bell. Joy and relief were everywhere, except in her. For most of the afternoon, she moved from feast to feast, celebration to celebration—always careful not to be touched or bumped, afraid she might break like a girl made from spun sugar. As the sun hovered three hands’ widths above the mountains to the west, she found the face she had been longing for.

  Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft were in a glade, sitting with a dozen children of the utkhaiem. The little boys and girls were sitting on the grass, grinding green into their silk robes with knees and elbows, while three slaves performed with puppets and dolls. The players squealed and whistled and sang, the puppets hopped and tumbled, beat one another, and fled. The children laughed. Cehmai himself was stretched out like a child, and two adventurous girls were sitting in Stone-Made-Soft’s wide lap, their arms around each other. The andat seemed mildly amused.

  When Cehmai caught sight of her, he came over immediately. She smiled as she had been doing all day, took a greeting pose that her hands had shaped a hundred times since morning. He was the first one, she thought, to see through pose and smile both.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, stepping close. His eyes were as dark as Adrah’s, but they were soft. They were young. There wasn’t any hatred there yet, or any pain. Or perhaps she only wished that was true. Her smile faltered.

  “Nothing,” she said, and he took her hand. Here where they might be seen—where the children at least were sure to see them—he took her hand and she let him.

  “What’s happened?” he repeated, his voice lower and closer. She shook her head.

  “My father is going to die,” she said, her voice breaking on the words, her lips growing weak. “My father’s going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to help it. No way for me to stop it. And the only time crying makes me feel better is when I can do it with you. Isn’t that strange?”

  Cehmai rode up the wide track, switchbacking up the side of the mountain. The ore chute ran straight from the mine halfway up the mountain’s face to the carter’s base at its foot. When the path turned toward it, Cehmai considered the broad beams and pillars that held the chute smooth and even down the rough mountainside. When they turned away, he looked south to where the towers of Machi stood like reeds in the noonday sun. His head ached.

  “We do appreciate your coming, Cehmai-cha,” the mine’s engineer said again. “With the new Khai come home, we thought everyone would put business off for a few days.”

  Cehmai didn’t bother taking a pose accepting the thanks as he had the first few times. Repetition had made it clear that the gratitude was less than wholly sincere. He only nodded and angled his horse around the next bend, swinging around to a view of the ore chute.

  There were six of them: Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft, the mine’s engineer, the overseer with the diagrams and contracts in a leather satchel on his hip, and two servants to carry the water and food. Normally there would have been twice as many people. Cehmai wondered how many miners would be in the tunnels, then found he didn’t particularly care, and returned to contemplating the ore chute and his headache.

  They had left before dawn, trekking to the Raadani mines. It had been arranged weeks before, and business and money carried a momentum that even stone didn’t. A landslide might overrun a city, but it only went down. Something had to have tremendous power to propel something as tired and heavy as he felt up the mountainside. Something in the back of his mind twitched at the thought—attention shifting of its own accord like an extra limb moving without his willing it.

  “Stop,” Cehmai snapped.

  The overseer and engineer hesitated for a moment before Cehmai understood their confusion.

  “Not you,” he said and gestured to Stone-Made-Soft. “Him. He was judging what it would take to start a landslide.”

  “Only as an exercise,” the andat said, its low voice sounding both hurt and insincere. “I wasn’t going to do it.”

  The engineer looked up the slope with an expression that suggested Cehmai might not hear any more false thanks. Cehmai felt a spark of vindictive pleasure at the man’s unease and saw Stone-Made-Soft’s lips thin so slightly that no other man alive would have recognized the smile.

  Idaan had spent the first night of the festival with him, weeping and laughing, taking comfort and coupling until they had both fallen asleep in the middle of their pillow talk. The night candle had hardly burned down a full quarter mark when the servant had come, tapping on his door to wake him. He’d risen for the trek to the mines, and Idaan—alone in his bed—had turned, wrapping his bedclothes about her naked body, and watched him as if afraid he would tell her to leave. By the time he had found fresh robes, her eyelids had closed again and her breath was deep and slow. He’d paused for a moment, considering her sleeping face. With the paint worn off and the calm of sleep, she looked younger. Her lips, barely parted, looked too soft to bruise his own, and her skin glowed like honey in sunlight.

  But instead of slipping back into bed and sending out a servant for new apples, old cheese, and sugared almonds, he’d strapped on his boots and gone out to meet his obligations. His horse plodded along, flies buzzed about his face, and the path turned away from the ore chute and looked back toward the city.

  There would be celebrations from now until Idaan’s wedding to Adrah Vaunyogi. Between those two joys—the finished succession and the marriage of the high families—there would also be the preparations for the Khai Machi’s final ceremony. And, despite everything Maati-kvo had done, likely the execution of Otah Machi in there as well. With as many rituals and ceremonies as the city faced, they’d be lucky to get any real work done before winter.

  The yipping of the mine dogs brought him back to himself, and he realized he’d been half-dozing for the last few switchbacks. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. He would have to pull himself together when they began working in earnest. It would help, he told himself, to have some particular problem to set his mind to instead of the tedium of travel. Thankfully, Stone-Made-Soft wasn’t resisting him today. The effort it would have taken to force the unwilling andat to do as it was told could have pushed the day from merely unpleasant to awful.

  They reached the mouth of the mine and were greeted by several workers and minor functionaries. Cehmai dismounted and walked unsteadily to the wide table that had been set up for their consultations. His legs and back and head ached. When the drawings and notes were laid out before him, it took effort to turn his attention to them. His mind wandered off to Idaan or his own discomfort or the mental windstorm that was the andat.

  “We would like to join these two passages,” the overseer was saying, his fingers tracing lines on the maps. Cehmai had seen hundreds of sets of plans like this, and his mind picked up the markings and translated them into holes dug through the living rock of the mountain only slightly less easily than usual. “The vein seems richest here and then here. Our concern is—”

  “My concern,” the engineer broke in, “is not bringing half the mountain down on us while we do it.”

  The structure of tunnels that honeycombed the mountain wasn’t the most complicated Cehmai had ever seen, but neither was it simple. The mines around Machi were capable of a complexity difficult in the rest of the world, mostly because he himself was not in the rest of the world, and mines in the Westlands and Galt weren’t interested in paying the Khai Machi for his services. The engineer made his case—where the stone would support the tunnels and where it would not. The overseer made his counter-case—pointing out where the ores seemed riches
t. The decision was left to him.

  The servants gave them bowls of honeyed beef and sausages that tasted of smoke and black pepper; a tart, sweet paste made from last year’s berries; and salted flat-bread. Cehmai ate and drank and looked at the maps and drawings. He kept remembering the curve of Idaan’s mouth, the feeling of her hips against his own. He remembered her tears, her reticence. He would have sacrificed a good deal to better understand her sorrow.

  It was more, he thought, than the struggle to face her father’s mortality. Perhaps he should talk to Maati about it. He was older and had greater experience with women. Cehmai shook his head and forced himself to concentrate. It was half a hand before he saw a path through the stone that would yield a fair return and not collapse the works. Stone-Made-Soft neither approved nor dissented. It never did.

  The overseer took a pose of gratitude and approval, then folded up the maps. The engineer sucked his teeth, craning his neck as the diagrams and notes vanished into the overseer’s satchel, as if hoping to see one last objection, but then he too took an approving pose. They lit the lanterns and turned to the wide, black wound in the mountain’s side.

  The tunnels were cool, and darker than night. The smell of rock dust made the air thick. As he’d guessed, there were few men working, and the sounds of their songs and the barking of their dogs only made the darkness seem more isolating. They talked very little as they wound their way through the maze. Usually Cehmai made a practice of keeping a mental map, tracking their progress through the dark passages. After the second unexpected intersection, he gave up and was content to let the overseer lead them.

  Unlike the mines on the plain, even the deepest tunnels here were dry. When they reached the point Cehmai had chosen, they took out the maps one last time, consulting them in the narrow section of the passageway that the lanterns lit. Above them, the mountain felt bigger than the sky.