A Betrayal in Winter

by Daniel Abraham

  "Otah Machi. In recognition of your blood and claim, we of the high families of Machi have chosen to dissolve our council, and cede to you the chair that was your father's."

  Otah took a pose of thanks that he realized as he took it was a thousand times too casual for the moment, dropped it, and walked up the dais. Someone in the second gallery high above him began to applaud, and within moments, the air was thick with the sound. Otah sat on the black and uncomfortable chair and looked out. There were thousands of faces, all of them fixed upon him. Old men, young men, children. The highest families of the city and the palace servants. Some were exultant, some stunned. A few, he thought, were dark with anger. He picked out Maati and Cehmai. Even the andat had joined in. The ta bles at which the Kamau and Vaunani, Radaani and Saya and Daikani all sat were surrounded by cheering men. The table of the Vaunyogi was empty.

  They would never all truly believe him innocent. They would never all give him their loyalty. He looked out into their faces and he saw years of his life laid out before him, constrained by necessity and petty expedience. He guessed at the mockery he would endure behind his hack while he struggled to learn his new-acquired place. He tried to appear gracious and grave at once, certain he was failing at both.

  For this, he thought, I have given up the world.

  And then, at the far back of the hall, he caught sight of Kiyan. She, perhaps alone, wasn't applauding him. She only smiled as if amused and perhaps pleased. He felt himself soften. Amid all the meaningless celebration, all the empty delight, she was the single point of stillness. Kiyan was safe, and she was his, and their child would he born into safety and love.

  If all the rest was the price for those few things, it was one he would pay.

  It was winter when Maati Vaupathai returned to Mlachi. "I'he days were brief and hitter, the sky often white with a scrim of cloud that faded seamlessly into the horizon. Roads were forgotten; the snow covered road and river and empty field. "I'hc sledge dogs ran on the thick glaze of ice wherever the teamsman aimed them. Maati sat on the skidding waxed wood, his arms pulled inside his clothes, the hood of his cloak pulled low and tight to warm the air before he breathed it. He'd been told that he must above all else be careful not to sweat. If his robes got wet, they would freeze, and that would be little better than running naked through the drifts. He had chosen not to make the experiment.

  His guide seemed to stop at every wayhouse and low town. INlaati learned that the towns had been planned by local farmers and merchants so that no place was more than a day's fast travel from shelter, even on the short days around Candles Night when the darkness was three times as long as the light. When Maati walked up the shallow ramps and through the snow doors, he appreciated their wisdom. A night in the open during a northern winter might not kill someone who had been horn and bred there. A northerner would know the secrets of carving snow into shelter and warming the air without drenching himself. He, on the other hand, would simply have died, and so he made certain that his guide and the dogs were well housed and fed. Even so, when the time came to sleep in a bed piled high with blankets and dogs, he often found himself as exhausted from the cold as from a full day's work.

  What in summer would have been the journey of weeks took him from just before Candles Night almost halfway to the thaw. The days began to blend together-blazing bright white and then warm, close darkness-until he felt he was traveling through a dream and might wake at any moment.

  When at last the dark stone towers of Machi appeared in the distance-lines of ink on a pale parchment-it was difficult to believe. He had lost track of the days. He felt as if he had been traveling forever, or perhaps that he had only just begun. As they drew nearer, he opened his hood despite the stinging air and watched the towers thicken and take form.

  He didn't know when they passed over the river. The bridge would have been no more than a rise in the snow, indistinguishable from a random drift. Still, they must have passed it, because they entered into the city itself. The high snow made the houses seemed shorter. Other dog teams yipped and called, pulled wide sledges filled with boxes or ore or the goods of trade; even the teeth of winter would not stop Machi. Maati even saw men with wide, leather-laced nets on their shoes and goods for sale strapped to their backs tramping down worn paths that led from one house to the next. He heard voices lifted in loud conversation and the harking of dogs and the murmur of the platform chains that rose up with the towers and shifted, scraping against the stone.

  The city seemed to have nothing in common with the one he had known, and still there was a beauty to it. It was stark and terrible, and the wide sky forgave it nothing, but he could imagine how someone might boast they lived here in the midst of the desolation and carved out a life worth living. Only the verdigris domes over the forges were free from snow, the fires never slackening enough to how before the winter.

  On the way to the palace of the Khai Machi, his guide passed what had once been the palaces of the Vaunyogi. The broken walls jutted from the snow. He thought he could still make out scorch marks on the stones. There were no bodies now. The Vaunyogi were broken, and those who were not dead had scattered into the world where they would be wise never to mention their true names again. The hones of their house made Maati shiver in a way that had little to do with the biting air. Otah-kvo had done this, or ordered it done. It had been necessary, or so Maati told himself. He couldn't think of another path, and still the ruins disturbed him.

  He entered the offices of the Master of Tides through the snow door, tramping up the slick painted wood of the ramp and into rooms he'd known in summer. When he had taken off his outer cloaks and let himself be led to the chamber where the servants of the Khai set schedules, Piyun See, the assistant to the Master of Tides, fell at once into a pose of welcome.

  "It's a pleasure to have you back," he said. "The Khai mentioned that we should expect you. But he had thought you might be here earlier."

  Though the air in the offices felt warm, the man's breath was still visible. Maati's ideas of cold had changed during his journey.

  "The way was slower than I'd hoped," Maati said.

  "The most high is in meetings and cannot be disturbed, but he has left us with instructions for your accommodation...."

  Maati felt a pang of disappointment. It was naive of him to expect Otah-kvo to be there to greet him, and yet he had to admit that he had harbored hopes.

  "Whatever is most convenient will, I'm sure, suffice," Maati said.

  "Don't bother yourself Piyun-cha," a woman's voice said from behind them. "I can see to this."

  The changes of the previous months had left Kiyan untransformed. Her hair-black with its lacing of white-was tied hack in a simple knot that seemed out of place above the ornate robes of a Khai's wife. Her smile didn't have the chill formal distance or false pleasure of a player at court intrigue. When she embraced him, her hair smelled of lavender oil. For all her position and the incarcerating power of being her husband's wife she would, Maati thought, still look at home at a wayhouse watching over guests or haggling with the farmers, bakers and butchers at the at the market.

  But perhaps that was only his own wish that things could change and still be the same.

  "You look tired," she said, leading him down a long flight of smnooth- worn granite stairs. "How long have you been traveling?"

  "I left the Dai-kvo before Candles Night," he said.

  "You still dress like a poet," she said, gently. So she knew.

  "The Dai-kvo agreed to Otah-kvo's proposal. I'm not formally removed so long as I don't appear in public ceremony in my poet's robes. I'm not permitted to live in a poet's house or present myself in any way as carrying the authority of the Dal-kvo."

  "And Cehmai?"

  "Cehmai's had some admonishing letters, I think. But I took the worst of it. It was easier that way, and I don't mind so much as I might have when I was younger."

  The doors at the stairway's end stood open. They had descended below the lev
el of the street, even under its burden of snow, and the candlelit tunnel before them seemed almost hot. His breath had stopped ghosting.

  "I'm sorry for that," Kiyan said, leading the way. "It seems wrong that you should suffer for doing the right thing."

  "I'm not suffering," Maati said. "Not as badly as I did when I was in the Dai-kvo's good graces, at least. The more I see of the honors I was offered, the better I feel about having lost them."

  She chuckled.

  The passageway glowed gold. A high, vaulted arch above them was covered with tiles that reflected the light hack into the air where it hung like pollen. An echo of song came from a great distance, the words blurred by the tunnels. And then the melody was joined and the whispering voices of the gods seemed to touch the air. Maati's steps faltered, and Kiyan turned to look at him and then followed his gaze into the air.

  "The winter choir," she said. Her voice was suddenly smaller, sharing his awe. "There are a lot of idle hands in the colder seasons. Music becomes more important, I think, when things are cold and dark."

  "It's beautiful," Maati said. "I knew there were tunnels, but ..."

  "It's another city," Kiyan said. "Think how I feel. I didn't know half the depth of it until I was supposed to help rule it."

  They began walking again, their words rising above the song.

  "How is he?"

  "Not idle," she said with both amusement and melancholy in her tone. "He's been working until he's half exhausted every day and then getting up early. There's a thousand critical things that he's called on to do, and a thousand more that are nothing more than ceremony that only swallow his time. It makes him cranky. He'll be angry that he wasn't free to meet you, but it will help that I could. "That's the best I can do these days. Make sure that the things most important to him are seen to while he's off making sure the city doesn't fall into chaos."

  "I'd think it would be able to grind on without him for a time just from habit," Maati said.

  "Politics takes all the time you can give it," Kiyan said with distaste.

  They walked through a wide gate and into a great subterranean hall. A thousand lanterns glowed, their white light filling the air. Men and women and children passed on their various errands, the gabble of voices like a brook over stones. A beggar sang, his lacquered begging box on the stone floor before him. Maati saw a waterseller's cart, and another vendor selling waxpaper cones of rice and fish. It was almost like a street, almost like a wide pavilion with a canopy of stone.

  "Your rooms?" Kiyan asked. "Or would you rather have something to eat first? There's not much fresh this deep into winter, but I've found a woman who makes a hot barley soup that's simply lovely."

  "Actually ... could I meet the child?"

  Kiyan's smile seemed to have a light of its own.

  "Can you imagine a world where I said no?" she asked.

  She nodded to a branching in the wide hall, and led him west, deeper into the underground. The change was subtle, moving from the public space of the street to the private tunnels beneath the palaces. There were gates, it was true, but they were open. There were armsmen here and there, but only a few of them. And yet soon all the people they passed wore the robes of servants or slaves of the Khai, and they had entered the Khai's private domain. Kiyan stopped at a thin oak door, pulled it open and gestured him to follow her up the staircase it revealed.

  The nursery was high above the tunnel-world. The air was kept warm by a roaring fire in a stone grate, but the light was from the sun. The nurse, a young girl, no more than sixteen summers, sat dozing in her chair while the baby cooed and gurgled to itself. Maati stepped to the edge of the crib, and the child quieted, staring up at him with distrustful eyes, and then breaking into a wide toothless grin.

  "She's only just started sleeping through the night," Kiyan said, speaking softly to keep from waking her servant. "And there were two weeks of colic that were close to hell. I don't know what we'd have done with her if it hadn't been for the nurses. She's been doing better now. We've named her Eiah."

  She reached down, scooped up her daughter, and settled her in her arms. It was a movement so natural as to seem inevitable. Maati remembered having done it himself, many years ago, in a very different place. Kiyan seemed almost to know his mind.

  " "Iani-kya said that if things went as you'd expected with the Daikvo you were thinking of seeking out your son. Nayiit?"

  "Nayiit," Maati agreed. "I sent letters to the places I knew to send them, but I haven't heard hack yet. I may not. But I'll be here, in one place. If he and his mother want to find me, it won't be difficult."

  "I'm sorry," Kiyan said. "Not that it will be easy for them, only that ..."

  Maati only shook his head. In Kiyan's arms, the tiny girl with deep brown eyes grasped at air and gurgled, unaware, he knew, of all the blood and pain and betrayal that had gone into bringing her here.

  "She's beautiful," he said.

  "BE REASONABLE!"

  Cehmai lay back in his bath. Beside him, Stone-Made-Soft had put its feet into the warm water and was gazing placidly out into the thick salt-scented steam that rose from the water and filled the bathhouse. Against the far wall, a group of young women was rising from the pool and walking back toward the dressing rooms, leaving a servant to fish the floating trays with their teapots and bowls from the small, bobbing waves. Baarath slapped the water impatiently.

  "You can look at naked girls later," he said. "This is important. If Maati-cha's come back to help me catalog the library ..."

  "He might quibble on `help you,'" Cehmai said, and might as well have kept silent.

  "... then it's clearly of critical importance to the Dai-kvo. I've heard the rumors. I know the Vaunyogi were looking to sell the library to some Westlands warden. That's why Maati was sent here in the first place."

  Cehmai closed his eyes. Rumors and speculation had run wild, and perhaps it would have been a kindness to correct Baarath. But Otah had asked him to keep silent, and the letters from the Dai-kvo had encouraged this strategy. If it were known what the Galts had done, what they had intended to do, it would mean the destruction of their nation: cities drowned, innocent men and women and children starved when a quiet word heavy with threat might suffice instead. There was always recourse to destruction. So long as one poet held one andat, they could find a path to ruin. So instead of slaughtering countless innocents, Cehmai put up with the excited, inaccurate speculation of his old friend and waited for the days to grow longer and warmer.

  "If the collection is split," Baraath went on, his voice dropping to a rough whisper, "we might overlook the very thing that made the library so important. You have to move your collection over to the library, or terrible things might happen."

  "Terrible things like what?"

  "I don't know," Baraath said, his whisper turning peevish. "That's what Maati-cha and I are trying to find out."

  "Well, once you've gone through your collection and found nothing, the two of you can come to the poet's house and look through mine."

  "That would take years!"

  "I'll make sure they're well kept until then," Cehmai said. "Have you spoken with the Khai about his private collection?"

  "Who'd want that? It's all copies of contracts and agreements from five generations ago. Unless it's the most obscure etiquette ever to see sunlight. Anyone who wants that, let them have it. You've got all the good books. The philosophy, the grammars, the studies of the andat."

  "It's a hard life you lead," Cehmai said. "So close and still, no."

  "You are an arrogant prig," Baraath said. "Everyone knows it, but I'm the only man in the city with the courage to say it to your face. Arrogant and selfish and small-souled."

  "Well, perhaps it's not too much to go over to the library. It isn't as if it was that long a walk."

  Baraath's face brightened for a moment, then, as the insincerity of the comment came clear, squeezed as if he'd taken a bite of fresh lemon. With a sound like an angry duck, he rose
up and stalked from the baths and into the fog.

  "He's a terrible person," the andat said.

  "I know. But he's a friend of mine."

  "And terrible people need friends as much as good ones do," the andat said, its tone an agreement. "More, perhaps."

  "Which of us are you thinking of?"

  Stone-Made-Soft didn't speak. Cehmai let the warmth of the water slip into his flesh for a moment longer. Then he too rose, the water sluicing from him, and walked to the dressing rooms. He dried himself with a fresh cloth and found his robes, newly cleaned and dry. The other men in the room spoke among themselves, joked, laughed. Cehmai was more aware than usual of the formal poses with which they greeted him. In this quiet season, there was little work for him, and the days were filled with music and singing, gatherings organized by the young men and women of the utkhaiem. But all the cakes tasted slightly of ashes, and the brightest songs seemed tinny and false. Somewhere in the city, under her brother's watchful eye, the woman he'd sworn to protect was locked away. He adjusted his robes in the mirror, smiled as if trying the expression like a party mask, and for the thousandth time noticed the weight of his decision.

  He left the bathhouse, following a broad, low tunnel to the east where it would join a larger passage, one of the midwinter roads, which in turn ran beneath the trees outside the poet's house before it broke into a thousand maze-like corridors running under the old city. Along the length of the passage, men and women stood or sat, some talking, some singing. An old man, his dog lying at his feet, sold bread and sausages from a hand cart. The girls he'd seen in the bathhouse had been joined by young men, joking and posing in the timeless rituals of courtship. Stone-Made-Soft was kneeling by the wall, looking out over all of it, silently judging what it would take to bring the roof down and bury them all. Cehmai reached out with his will and tugged at the andat. Still smiling, Stone-Made-Soft rose and ambled over.

  "I think the one on the far left was hoping to meet you," it said, gesturing to the knot of young men and women as it drew near. "She was watching you all the time we were in the baths."