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

by Daniel Abraham

  “That was easier. Then at least I knew what was going to happen. I wish I could go out. If I could be up there listening to the people themselves … If I spent half an evening in the right teahouse, I’d know more than I’ll learn skulking down here for days. Yes, I know. You’ve the best minds of the house out watching for us. But listening to reports isn’t the same as putting my hands to something.”

  “I know it. More than half my work has been trying to guess the truth out of a dozen different reports of a thing. There’s a knack to it. You’ll have your practice with it.”

  “If this ends well,” Otah said.

  “Yes,” Amiit agreed. “If that.”

  Otah filled a tin cup with water from a stone jar and sat back down. It was warm, and a thin grit swam at the cup’s bottom. He wished it were wine and pushed the thought away. If there was any time in his life to be as sober as stone, this was it, but his unease shifted and tightened. He looked up from his water to see Amiit’s gaze on him, his expression quizzical.

  “We have to make a plan for if we lose,” Otah said. “If the Vaunyogi are to blame and the council gives them power, they’ll be able to wash away any number of crimes. And all those families that supported them will be invested in keeping things quiet. If it comes out that Daaya Vaunyogi killed the Khai in order to raise up his son and half the families of the utkhaiem took money to support it, they’ll all share in the guilt. Being in the right won’t mean much then.”

  “There’s time yet,” Amiit said, but he was looking away when he said it.

  “And what happens if we fail?”

  “That all depends on how we fail. If we’re discovered before we’re ready to move, we’ll all be killed. If Adrah is named Khai, we’ll at least have a chance to slip away quietly.”

  “You’ll take care of Kiyan?”

  Amiit smiled. “I hope to see to it that you can perform that duty.”

  “But if not?”

  “Then of course,” Amiit said. “Provided I live.”

  The rapping came again, and the door opened on a young man. Otah recognized him from the meetings in House Siyanti, but he couldn’t recall his name.

  “The poet’s come,” the young man said.

  Amiit rose, took a pose appropriate to the parting of friends, and left. The young man went with him, and for a moment the door swung free, half closing. Otah drank the last of his water, the grit rough in his throat. Maati came in slowly, a diffidence in his body and his face, like a man called in to hear news that might bring him good or ill or some unimagined change that folded both inextricably together. Otah gestured to the door, and Maati closed it.

  “You sent for me?” Maati asked. “That’s a dangerous habit, Otah-kvo.”

  “I know it, but … Please. Sit. I’ve been thinking. About what we do if things go poorly.”

  “If we fail?”

  “I want to be ready for it, and when Kiyan and I were talking last night, something occurred to me. Nayiit? That’s his name, isn’t it? The child that you and Liat had?”

  Maati’s expression was cool and distant and misleading. Otah could see the pain in it, however still the eyes.

  “What of him?”

  “He mustn’t be my son. Whatever happens, he has to be yours.”

  “If you fail, you don’t take your father’s title—”

  “If I don’t take his title, and someone besides you decides he’s mine, they’ll kill him to remove all doubt of the succession. And if I succeed, Kiyan may have a son,” Otah said. “And then they would someday have to kill each other. Nayiit is your son. He has to be.”

  “I see,” Maati said.

  “I’ve written a letter. It looks like something I’d have sent Kiyan before, when I was in Chaburi-Tan. It talks about the night I left Saraykeht. It says that on the night I came back to the city, I found the two of you together. That I walked into her cell, and you and she were in her cot. It makes it clear that I didn’t touch her, that I couldn’t have fathered a child on her. Kiyan’s put it in her things. If we have to flee, we’ll take it with us and find a way for it to come to light—we can hide it at her wayhouse, perhaps. If we’re found and killed here, it will be found with us. You have to back that story.”

  Maati steepled his fingers and leaned back in the chair.

  “You’ve put it with Kiyan-cha’s things to be found in case she’s slaughtered?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Otah said. “I don’t think about it when I can help it, but I know she could die here. There’s no reason that your son should die with us.”

  Maati nodded slowly. He was struggling with something, Otah could see that much, but whether it was sorrow or anger or joy, he had no way to know. When the question came, though, it was the one he had been dreading for years.

  “What did happen?” Maati asked at last, his voice low and hushed. “The night Heshai-kvo died. What happened? Did you just leave? Did you take Maj with you? Did … did you kill him?”

  Otah remembered the cord cutting into his hands, remembered the way Maj had balked and he had taken the task himself. For years, those few minutes had haunted him.

  “He knew what was coming,” Otah said. “He knew it was necessary. The consequences if he had lived would have been worse. Heshai was right when he warned you to let the thing drop. The Khai Saraykeht would have turned the andat against Galt. There would have been thousands of innocent lives ruined. And when it was over, you would still have been yoked to Seedless. Trapped in the torture box just the way Heshai had been all those years. Heshai knew that, and he waited for me to do the thing.”

  “And you did it.”

  “I did.”

  Maati was silent. Otah sat. His knees seemed less solid than he would have liked, but he didn’t let the weakness stop him.

  “It was the worst thing I have ever done,” Otah said. “I never stopped dreaming about it. Even now, I see it sometimes. Heshai was a good man, but what he’d created in Seedless….”

  “Seedless was only part of him. They all are. They couldn’t be anything else. Heshai-kvo hated himself, and Seedless was that.”

  “Everyone hates themselves sometimes. There isn’t often a price in blood,” Otah said. “You know what would happen if that were proven. Killing a Khai would pale beside murdering a poet.”

  Maati nodded slowly, and still nodding, spoke.

  “I didn’t ask on the Dai-kvo’s behalf. I asked for myself. When Heshai-kvo died, Seedless … vanished. I was with him. I was there. He was asking me whether I would have forgiven you. If you’d committed some terrible crime, like what he had done to Maj, if I would forgive you. And I told him I would. I would forgive you, and not him. Because …”

  They were silent. Maati’s eyes were dark as coal.

  “Because?” Otah asked.

  “Because I loved you, and I didn’t love him. He said it was a pity to think that love and justice weren’t the same. The last thing he said was that you had forgiven me.”

  “Forgiven you?”

  “For Liat. For taking your lover.”

  “I suppose it’s true,” Otah said. “I was angry with you. But there was a part of me that was … relieved, I suppose.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t love her. I thought I did. I wanted to, and I enjoyed her company and her bed. I liked her and respected her. Sometimes, I wanted her as badly as I’ve ever wanted anyone. And that was enough to let me mistake it for love. But I don’t remember it hurting that deeply or for that long. Sometimes I was even glad. You had each other to take care of, and so it wasn’t mine to do.”

  “You said, that last time we spoke before you left … before Heshai-kvo died, that you didn’t trust me.”

  “That’s true,” Otah said. “I do remember that.”

  “But you’ve come to me now, and you’ve told me this. You’ve told me all of it. Even after I gave you over to the Khai. You’ve brought me in here, shown me where you’ve hidden. You know there are half a h
undred people I could say a word to, and you and all these other people would be dead before the sun set. So it seems you trust me now.”

  “I do,” Otah said without hesitating.

  “Why?”

  Otah sat with the question. His mind had been consumed for days with a thousand different things that all nipped and shrieked and robbed him of his rest. To reach out to Maati had seemed natural and obvious, and even though when he looked at it coldly it was true that each had in some way betrayed the other, his heart had never been in doubt. He could feel the heaviness in the air, and he knew that I don’t know wouldn’t be answer enough. He looked for words to give his feelings shape.

  “Because,” he said at last, “in all the time I knew you, you never once did the wrong thing. Even when what you did hurt me, it was never wrong.”

  To his surprise, there were tears on Maati’s cheeks.

  “Thank you, Otah-kvo,” he said.

  A shout went up in the tunnels outside the storehouse and the sound of running feet. Maati wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robes, and Otah stood, his heart beating fast. The murmur of voices grew, but there were no sounds of blade against blade. It sounded like a busy corner more than a battle. Otah walked to the door and, Maati close behind him, stepped out into the main space. A knot of men were talking and gesturing one to the other by the mouth of the stairs. Otah caught a glimpse of Kiyan in their midst, frowning deeply and speaking fast. Amiit detached himself from the throng and strode to Otah.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Bad news, Otah-cha. Daaya Vaunyogi has called for a decision, and enough of the families have backed the call to push it through.”

  Otah felt his heart sink.

  “They’re bound to decide by morning,” Amiit went on, “and if all the houses that backed him for the call side with him in the decision, Adrah Vaunyogi will be the Khai Machi by the time the sun comes up.”

  “And then what?” Maati asked.

  “And then we run,” Otah said, “as far and fast and quiet as we can, and we hope he never finds us.”

  THE SUN had passed its highest point and started the long, slow slide toward darkness. Idaan had chosen robes the blue-gray of twilight and bound her hair back with clasps of silver and moonstone. Around her, the gallery was nearly full, the air thick with heat and the mingled scents of bodies and perfumes. She stood at the rail, looking down into the press of bodies below her. The parquet of the floor was scuffed with the marks of boots. There were no empty places at the tables or against the stone walls, no quiet negotiations going on in hallways or teahouses. That time had passed, and in its wake, they were all brought here. Voices washed together like the hushing of wind, and she could feel the weight of the eyes upon her—the men below her sneaking glances up, the representatives of the merchant houses at her side considering her, and the lower orders in the gallery above staring down at her and the men over whom she loomed. She was a woman, and not welcome to speak or sit at the tables below. But still, she would make her presence felt.

  “How is it that we accept the word of these men that they are the wisest?” Ghiah Vaunani pounded the speaker’s pulpit before him with each word, a dry, shallow sound. Idaan almost thought she could see flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. “How is it that the houses of the utkhaiem are so much like sheep that they would consent to be led by this shepherd boy of Vaunyogi?”

  It was meant, Idaan knew, to be a speech to sway the others from their confidence, but all she heard in the words was the confusion and pain of a boy whose plans have fallen through. He could pound and rail and screech his questions as long as his voice held out. Idaan, standing above the proceedings like a protective ghost, knew the answers to every one, and she would never tell them to him.

  Below her, Adrah Vaunyogi looked up, his expression calm and certain. It had been late in the morning that she’d woken in the poet’s house, later still when she’d returned to the rooms she shared now with her husband. He had been there, waiting for her. The night’s excesses had weighed heavy on him. They hadn’t spoken—she had only called for a bath and clean robes. When she’d cleaned herself and washed her hair, she sat at her mirror and painted her face with all her old skill and delicacy. The woman who looked out at her when she put down her brushes might have been the loveliest in Machi.

  Adrah had left without a word. It had been almost half a hand before she learned that her new father, Daaya Vaunyogi, had called for the decision, and that the houses had agreed. No one had told her to come here, no one had asked her to lend the sight of her silent presence to the cause. She had done it, perhaps, because Adrah had not demanded it of her.

  “We must not hurry! We must not allow sentiment to push us into a decision that will change our city forever!”

  Idaan allowed herself a smile. It would seem to most people that the force of the story had won the day. The last daughter of the old line would be the first mother of the new, and if a quiet structure of money and obligation supported it, if she really loved the poet a hundred times more than the Khai, it hardly mattered. It was what the city would see, and that was enough.

  Ghiah’s energy was beginning to flag. She heard his words lose their crispness and the pounding on his table fall out of rhythm. The anger in his voice became merely petulance, and the objections to Adrah in particular and the Vaunyogi in general lost their force. It would have been better, she thought, if he’d ended half a hand earlier. Still insufficient, but less so.

  The Master of Tides stood when Ghiah at last surrendered the floor. He was an old man with a long, northern face and a deep, sonorous voice. Idaan saw his eyes flicker up to her and then away.

  “Adaut Kamau has also asked to address the council,” he said, “before the houses speak on the decision to accept Adrah Vaunyogi as the Khai Machi….”

  A chorus of jeers rose from the galleries and even the council tables. Idaan held herself still and quiet. Her feet were starting to ache, but she didn’t shift her weight. The effect she desired wouldn’t be served by showing her pleasure. Adaut Kamau rose, his face gray and pinched. He opened his arms, but before he could speak, a bundle of rough cloth arced from the highest gallery. A long tail of brown fluttered behind it like a banner as it fell, and in the instant that it struck the floor, the screaming began.

  Idaan’s composure broke, and she leaned forward. The men at the tables nearest the thing waved their arms and fled, shrieking and pounding at the air. Voices buzzed and a cloud of pale, moving smoke rose toward the galleries.

  No. The buzzing was not voices, the cloud was not smoke. These were wasps. The bundle on the council floor had been a nest wrapped in cloth and wax. The first of the insects buzzed past her, a glimpse of black and yellow. She turned and ran.

  Bodies filled the corridors, panic pressing them together until there was no air, no space. People screamed and cursed—men, women, children. Their shrill voices mixed with the angry buzz. She was pushed from all sides. An elbow dug into her back. The surge of the crowd pressed the breath from her. She was suffocating, and insects filled the air above her. Idaan felt something bite the flesh at the back of her neck like a hot iron burning her. She screamed and tried to reach back to bat the thing away, but there was no room to move her arm, no air. She lashed out at whoever, whatever was near. The crowd was a single, huge, biting beast and Idaan flailed and shrieked, her mind lost to fear and pain and confusion.

  Stepping into the open air of the street was like waking from a nightmare. The bodies around her thinned, becoming only themselves again. The fierce buzz of tiny wings was gone, the cries of pain and terror replaced by the groans of the stung. People were still streaming out of the palace, arms flapping, but others were sitting on benches or else the ground. Servants and slaves were rushing about, tending to the hurt and the humiliated. Idaan felt the back of her neck—three angry bumps were already forming.

  “It’s a poor omen,” a man in the red robes of the needle wrights said. “Something
more’s going on than meets the eye if someone’s willing to attack the council to keep old Kamau from talking.”

  “What could he have said?” the man’s companion asked.

  “I don’t know, but you can be sure whatever it was, he’ll be saying something else tomorrow. Someone wanted him stopped. Unless this is about Adrah Vaunyogi. It could be that someone wants him closed down.”

  “Then why loose the things when his critics were about to speak?”

  “Good point. Perhaps …”

  Idaan moved on down the street. It was like the aftermath of some gentle, bloodless battle. People bound bruised limbs. Slaves brought plasters to suck out the wasps’ venom. But already, all down the wide street, the talk had turned back to the business of the council.

  Her neck was burning now, but she pushed the pain aside. There would be no decision made today. That was clear. Kamau or Vaunani had disrupted the proceedings to get more time. It had to be that. It couldn’t be more, except that of course it could. The fear was different now, deeper and more complex. Almost like nausea.

  Adrah was leaning against the wall at the mouth of an alleyway. His father was sitting beside him, a serving girl dabbing white paste on the angry welts that covered his arms and face. Idaan went to her husband. His eyes were as hard and shallow as stones.

  “May I speak with you, Adrah-kya?” she said softly.

  Adrah looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, then at his father. He nodded toward the shadows of the alley behind him, and Idaan followed him until the noises of the street were vague and distant.

  “It was Otah,” she said. “He did this. He knows.”

  “Are you about to tell me that he’s planned it all from the start again? It was a cheap, desperate trick. It won’t matter, except that anyone who doesn’t like us will say we did it, and anyone who has a grudge against our enemies will put it to them. Nothing changes.”

  “Who would do it?”

  Adrah shook his head, impatient, and turned to walk back out into the street and noise and light. “Anyone might have. There’s no point trying to solve every puzzle in the world.”