A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2

by Abraham Daniel

  excruciating that he could not empty his bladder. After, he pulled

  himself back into bed, exhausted. He intended only to close his eyes for

  a moment and gather his strength, but when he opened them, it was morning.

  He had nearly resolved to walk from his bed to the small writing table

  near the window when a slave entered and announced that the poet Cehmai

  and the andat Stone-Made-Soft would see him if he wished. Maati nodded

  and sat up carefully.

  The poet arrived with a wide plate of rice and river fish in a sauce

  that smelled of plums and pepper. The andat carried a jug of water so

  cold it made the stone sweat. Maati's stomach came to life with a growl

  at the sight.

  "You're looking better, Maati-kvo." the young poet said, putting the

  plate on the bed. The andat pulled two chairs close to the bed and sat

  in one, its face calm and empty.

  "I looked worse than this?" Maati asked. "I wouldn't have thought that

  possible. How long has it been?"

  "Four days. The injury brought on a fever. But when they poured onion

  soup down you, the wound didn't smell of it, so they decided you might

  live after all."

  Maati lifted a spoon of fish and rice to his mouth. It tasted divine.

  "I think I have you to thank for that," Maati said. "My recollection

  isn't all it could be, but ..."

  "I was following you," Cehmai said, taking a pose of contrition. "I was

  curious about your investigations."

  "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 Utah Machi. The

  Master of Tides' 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, Utah."

  "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 Dal-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 had 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 hack, 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-Ian 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 docks 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 armsmen 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 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 heat from a skin and

  earthenware drum as he sang. His wife was 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