A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2

by Abraham Daniel

  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

  Mach] for his services. The engineer made his casewhere the stone would

  support the tunnels and where it would not. The overseer made his

  counter-case-pointing out where the ores seemed richest. 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 Hatbrcad. Cehmai ate and drank and looked at the

  maps and drawings. Fie 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 mortal

  ity. 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 tip 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.

  "Don't make it too soft," the engineer said.

  "It doesn't bear any load," the overseer said. "Gods! Who's been telling

  you ghost stories? You're nervous as a puppy first time down the hole."

  Cehmai ignored them, looked up, considering the stone above him as if he

  could see through it. He wanted a path wide as two men walking with

  their arms outstretched. And it would need to go forward from here and

  then tilt to the left and then up. Cehmai pictured the distances as if

  he would walk them. It was about as far from where he was now to the

  turning point as from the rose pavilion to the library. And then, the

  shorter leg would be no longer than the walk from the library to Maati's

  apartments. He turned his mind to it, pressed the whirlwind, applied it

  to the stone before him, slowly, carefully loosening the stone in the

  path he had imagined. Stone-Made-Soft resisted-not in the body that

  scowled now looking at the tunnel's blank side, but in their shared

  mind. The andat shifted and writhed and pushed, though not so badly as

  it might have. Cehmai reached the turning point, shifted his attention

  and began the shorter, upward movement.

  The storm's energy turned and leapt ahead, spreading like spilled water,

  pushing its influence out of the channel Cehmai's intention had

  prepared. Cehmai gritted his teeth with the effort of pulling it back in

  before the structure above them weakened and failed. The andat pressed

  again, trying to pull the mountain down on top of them. Cehmai felt a

  rivulet of sweat run down past his ear. The overseer and the engineer

  were speaking someplace a long way off, but he couldn't be bothered by

  them. They were idiots to distract him. He paused and gathered the

  storm, concentrated on the ideas and grammars that had tied the andat to

  him in the first place, that had held it for generations. And when it

  had been brought to heel, he took it the rest of the way through his

  pathway and then slowly, carefully, brought his mind, and its, back to

  where they stood.

  "Cehmai-cha?" the overseer asked again. The engineer was eyeing the

  walls as if they might start speaking with him.

  "I'm done," he said. "It's fine. I only have a headache."

  Stone-Made-Soft smiled placidly. Neither of them would tell the men how

  near they had all just come to dying: Cehmai, because he wished to keep

  it from them, Stone-Made-Soft, because it would never occur to it to care.

  The overseer took a hand pick from his satchel and struck the wall. The

  metal
head chimed and a white mark appeared on the stone. Cehmai waved

  his hand.

  "To your left," he said. "'t'here."

  The overseer struck again, and the pick sank deep into the stone with a

  sound like a footstep on gravel.

  "Excellent," the overseer said. "Perfect."

  Even the engineer seemed grudgingly pleased. Cehmai only wanted to get

  out, into the light and hack to the city and his own bed. Even if they

  left now, they wouldn't reach hlachi before nightfall. probably not

  before the night candle hit its half mark.

  On the way back up, the engineer started telling jokes. Cehmai allowed

  himself to smile. There was no call to make things unpleasant even if

  the pain in his head and spine were echoing his heartbeats.

  When they reached the light and fresh air, the servants had laid out a

  more satisfying meal-rice, fresh chickens killed here at the mine,

  roasted nuts with lemon, cheeses melted until they could be spread over

  their bread with a blade. Cehmai lowered himself into a chair of strung

  cloth and sighed with relief. To the south, they could see the smoke of

  the forges rising from Machi and blowing off to the east. A city

  perpetually afire.

  "When we get there," Cehmai said to the andat, "we'll be playing several

  games of stones. You'll be the one losing."

  The andat shrugged almost imperceptibly.

  "It's what I am," it said. "You may as well blame water for being wet."

  "And when it soaks my robes, I do," Cehmai said. The andat chuckled and

  then was silent. Its wide face turned to him with something like

  concern. Its brow was furrowed.

  "The girl," it said.

  "What about her?"

  "It seems to me the next time she asks if you love her, you could say yes.

  Cehmai felt his heart jump in his chest, startled as a bird. The andat's

  expression didn't change; it might have been carved from stone. Idaan

  wept in his memory, and she laughed, and she curled herself in his

  bedclothes and asked silently not to be sent away. Love, he discovered,

  could feel very much like sorrow.

  "I suppose you're right," he said, and the andat smiled in what looked

  like sympathy.

  MAATI LAID HIS NOTES OUT ON THE WIDE TABLE AT THE BACK OF THE LIbrary's

  main chamber. The distant throbbing of trumpet and drum wasn't so

  distracting here as in his rooms. Three times on the walk here, his

  sleeves heavy with paper and books, he'd been grabbed by some masked

  reveler and kissed. Twice, bowls of sweet wine had been forced into his

  hand. The palaces were a riot of dancing and song, and despite his best

  intentions, the memory of those three kisses drew his attention. It

  would be sweet to go out, to lose himself in that crowd, to find some

  woman willing to dance with him, and to take comfort in her body and her

  breath. It had been years since he had let himself be so young as that.

  He turned himself to his puzzle. Danat, the man destined to be Khai

  Machi, had seemed the most likely to have engineered the rumors of

  Otah's return. Certainly he had gained the most. Kahn Machi, whose death

  had already given Maati three kisses, was the other possibility. Until

  he dug in. He had asked the servants and the slaves of each household

  every question he could think of. No, none of them recalled any

  consultations with a man who matched the assassin's description. No,

  neither man had sent word or instruction since Maati's own arrival. He'd

  asked their social enemies what they knew or guessed or speculated on.

  Kahn Machi had been a weak-lunged man, pale of face and watery of eye.

  He'd had a penchant for sleeping with servant girls, but hadn't even

  gotten a child on one-likely because he was infertile. Danat was a bully

  and a sneak, a man whose oaths meant nothing to him-and the killing of

  noble, scholarly Kaiin showed that. Danat's triumph was the best of all

  possible outcomes or else the worst.

  Searching for conspiracy in court gossip was like looking for raindrops

  in a thunderstorm. Everyone he spoke to seemed to have four or five

  suggestions of what might have happened, and of those, each half

  contradicted the other. By far, the most common assumption was that Otah

  had been the essential villain in all of it.

  Nlaati had diagrammed the relationships of Danat and Kaiin with each of

  the high families-Kamau, Daikani, Radaani and a dozen more. Then with

  the great trading houses, with mistresses and rumored mistresses and the

  teahouses they liked best. At one point he'd even listed which horses

  each preferred to ride. The sad truth was that despite all these facts,

  all these words scribbled onto papers, referenced and checked, nothing

  pointed to either man as the author of Biitrah's death, the attempt on

  Maati's own life, or the slaughter of the assassin. He was either too

  dimwitted to see the pattern before him, it was too well hidden, or he

  was looking in the wrong place. Clearly neither man had been present in

  the city to direct the last two attacks, and there seemed to be no

  supporters in Machi who had managed the plans for them.

  Nor was there any reason to attack him. Nlaati had been on the verge of

  exposing Otah-kvo. That was in everyone's best interest, barring Otah's.

  Maati closed his eyes, sighed, then opened them again, gathered up the

  pages of his notes and laid them out again, as if seeing them in a

  different pattern might spark something.

  Drunken song burst from the side room to his left, and Baarath, li

  brarian of Machi, stumbled in, grinning. His face was flushed, and he

  smelled of wine and something stronger. He threw open his arms and

  strode unevenly to Maati, embracing him like a brother.

  "No one has ever loved these books as you and I have, Maati-kya,"

  Baarath said. "The most glorious party of a generation. Wine flowing in

  the gutters, and food and dancing, and I'll jump off a tower if we don't

  see a crop of babes next spring that look nothing like their fathers.

  And where do we go, you and I? Here."

  Baarath turned and made a sweeping gesture that took in the books and

  scrolls and codices, the shelves and alcoves and chests. He shook his

  head and seemed for a moment on the verge of tears. Maati patted him on

  the back and led him to a wooden bench at the side of the room. Baarath

  sat back, his head against the stone, and smiled like a baby.

  "I'm not as drunk as I look," Baarath said.

  "I'm sure you aren't," Maati agreed.

  Baarath pounded the board beside him and gestured for Maati to sit.

  There was no graceful way to refuse, and at the moment, he could think

  of no reason. Going back to stand, frustrated, over the table had no

  appeal. He sat.

  "What is bothering you, Maati-kya? You're still searching for some way

  to keep the upstart alive?"

  "Is that an option? I don't see Danat-cha letting him walk free. No, I

  suppose I'm just hoping to see him killed for the right reasons. Except

  ... I don't know. I can't find anyone else with reason to do the things

  that have been done."

  "Perhaps there's more than one thing going on then?" Baarath suggested.
/>
  Maati took a pose of surrender.

  "I can't comprehend one. The gods will have to lead me by the hand if

  there's two. Can you think of any other reason to kill Biitrah? The man

  seems to have moved through the world without making an enemy."

  "He was the best of us," Baarath agreed and wiped his eyes with the end

  of his sleeve. "He was a good man."

  "So it had to be one of his brothers. Gods, I wish the assassin hadn't

  been killed. He could have told us if there was a connection between

  Biitrah and what happened to me. Then at least I'd know if I were

  solving one puzzle or two."

  "Doesn't have to," Baarath said.

  Maati took a pose that asked for clarification. Baarath rolled his eyes

  and took on an expression of superiority that Maati had seen beneath his

  politeness for weeks now.

  "It doesn't have to be one of his brothers," Baarath said. "You say it's

  not the upstart. Fine, that's what you choose. But then you say you

  can't find anything that I)anat or Kaiin's done that makes you think

  they've done it. And why would they hide it, anyway? It's not shameful

  for them to kill their brother."

  "But no one else has a reason," Maati said.

  "No one? Or only no one you've found?"

  "If it isn't about the succession, I can't find any call to kill

  Biitrah. If it isn't about my search for Otah, I can't think of any

  reason to want me dead. The only killing that makes sense at all was

  poking the assassin full of holes, and that only because he might have

  answered my questions."

  "Why couldn't it have been the succession?"