andat stood at the window, looking out. A servant had come from the
palaces earlier bearing a meal of roast chicken and rich, dark bread.
The smell of it filled the house, though the platter had been set
outside to be taken away. He hadn't been able to eat.
Cehmai could barely feel where the struggle in the back of his mind met
the confusion at the front. Idaan. It had been Idaan all along.
"You couldn't have known," the andat said, its tone conciliatory. "And
it isn't as if she asked you to be part of the thing."
"You think she was using me."
"Yes. But since I'm a creature of your mind, it seems to follow that
you'd think the same. She did extract a promise from you. You're sworn
to protect her."
"I love her."
"You'd better. If you don't, then she told you all that under a false
impression that you led her to believe. If she hadn't truly thought she
could trust you, she'd have kept her secrets to herself."
"I do love her."
"And that's good," Stone-Made-Soft said. "Since all that blood she
spilled is part yours now."
Cehmai leaned forward. His foot knocked over the thin porcelain bowl at
his feet. The last dregs of the wine spilled to the floor, but he didn't
bother with it. Stained carpet was beneath his notice now. His head was
stuffed with wool, and none of his thoughts seemed to connect. He
thought of Idaan's smile and the way she turned toward him, nestling
into him as she slept. Her voice had been so soft, so quiet. And then,
when she had asked him if he was horrified by her, there had been so
much fear in her.
He hadn't been able to say yes. It had been there, waiting in his
throat, and he'd swallowed it. He'd told her he loved her, and he hadn't
lied. But he hadn't slept either. The andat's wide hand turned the bowl
upright and pressed a cloth onto the spill. Cehmai watched the red wick
up into the white cloth.
"Thank you," he said.
Stone-Made-Soft took a brief, dismissive pose and lumbered away. Cehmai
heard it pouring water into a basin to rinse the cloth, and felt a pang
of shame. He was falling apart. The andat itself was taking care of him
now. He was pathetic. Cehmai rose and stalked to the window. He felt as
much as heard the andat come up behind him.
"So," the andat said. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
"Do you think she's got her legs around him now? Just at the moment, I
mean," the andat said, its voice as calm and placid and distantly amused
as always. "He is her husband. He must get her knees apart now and
again. And she must enjoy him on some level. She did slaughter her
family to elevate Adrah. It's not something most girls would do."
"You're not helping," Cehmai said.
"It could he you're just a part of her plan. She did fall into your bed
awfully easily. Do you think they talk about it, the two of them? About
what she can do to you or for you to win your support? Having the poet's
oath protecting you would be a powerful thing. And if you protect her,
you protect them. You can't suggest anything evil of the Vaunyogi now
without drawing her into it."
"She isn't like that!"
Cehmai gathered his will, but before he could turn it on the andat,
before he pushed the rage and the anger and the hurt into a force that
would make the beast be quiet, Stone-Made-Soft smiled, leaned forward,
and gently kissed Cehmai's forehead. In all the years he'd held it,
Cehmai had never seen the andat do anything of the sort.
"No," it said. "She isn't. She's in terrible trouble, and she needs you
to save her if you can. If she can be saved. And she trusts you.
Standing with her is the only thing you could do and still he a decent man."
Cehmai glared at the wide face, the slow, calm eyes, searching for a
shred of sarcasm. 'T'here was none.
"Why are you trying to confuse me?" he asked.
The andat turned to look out the window and stood as still as a statue.
Cehmai waited, but it didn't shift, even to look at him. The rooms
darkened and Cehmai lit lemon candles to keep the insects away. His mind
was divided into a hundred different thoughts, each of them powerful and
convincing and no two fitting together.
When at last he went up to his bed, he couldn't sleep. The blankets
still smelled of her, of the two of them. Of love and sleep. Cehmai
wrapped the sheets around himself and willed his mind to quiet, but the
whirl of thoughts didn't allow rest. Idaan loved him. She had had her
own father killed. Maati had been right, all this time. It was his duty
to tell what he knew, but he couldn't. It was possible-she might have
tricked him all along. He felt as cracked as river ice when a stone had
been dropped through it, jagged fissures cut through him in all
directions. "Where was no center of peace within him.
And yet he must have drifted off, because the storm pulled him awake.
Cehmai stumbled out of bed, pulling down half his netting with a soft
ripping sound. He crawled to the corridor almost before he understood
that the pitching and moaning, the shrieking and the nausea were all in
the private space behind his eyes. It had never been so powerful.
He fell as he went to the front of the house, harking his knee against
the wall. The thick carpets were sickening to touch, the fibers seeming
to writhe tinder his fingers like dry worms. Stone-Made-Soft sat at the
gaming table. The white marble, the black basalt. A single white stone
was shifted out of its beginning line.
"Not now," Cehmai croaked.
"Now," the andat said, its voice loud and low and undeniable.
The room pitched and spun. Cehmai dragged himself to the table and tried
to focus on the pieces. The game was simple enough. He'd played it a
thousand times. He shifted a black stone forward. He felt he was still
half dreaming. The stone he'd moved was Idaan. Stone-MadeSoft's reply
moved a token that was both its fourth column and also Otah Machi.
Groggy with sleep and distress and annoyance and the an gry pressure of
the andat struggling against him, he didn't understand how far things
had gone until twelve moves later when he shifted a black stone one
place to the left, and Stone-Made-Soft smiled.
"Maybe she'll still love you afterwards," the andat said. "Do you think
she'll care as much about your love when you're just a man in a brown robe?"
Cehmai looked at the stones, the shifting line of them, flowing and
sinuous as a river, and he saw his mistake. Stone-Made-Soft pushed a
white stone forward and the storm in Cehmai's mind redoubled. He could
hear his own breath rattling. He was sticky with the rancid sweat of
effort and fear. He was losing. He couldn't make himself think,
controlling his own mind was like wrestling a beast-something large and
angry and stronger than he was. In his confusion, Idaan and Adrah and
the death of the Khai all seemed connected to the tokens glowing on the
board. Each was enmeshed with the others, and all of them were lost. He
could feel the andat pressing toward freedom and
oblivion. All the
generations of carrying it, gone because of him.
"It's your move," the andat said.
"I can't," Cehmai said. His own voice sounded distant.
"I can wait as long as you care to," it said. "Just tell me when you
think it'll get easier."
"You knew this would happen," Cehmai said. "You knew."
"Chaos has a smell to it," the andat agreed. "Move."
Cchmai tried to study the board, but every line he could see led to
failure. He closed his eyes and rubbed them until ghosts bloomed in the
darkness, but when he reopened them, it was no better. The sickness grew
in his belly. He felt he was falling. The knock on the door behind him
was something of a different world, a memory from some other life, until
the voice came.
"I know you're in there! You won't believe what's happened. Half the
utkhaiem are spotty with welts. Open the door!"
"Baarath!"
Cehmai didn't know how loud he'd called-it might have been a whisper or
a scream. But it was enough. The librarian appeared beside him. The
stout man's eyes were wide, his lips thin.
"What's wrong?" Baarath asked. "Are you sick? Gods, Cehmai.... Stay
here. Don't move. I'll have a physician-"
"Paper. Bring me paper. And ink."
"It's your move!" the andat shouted, and Baarath seemed about to bolt.
"Hurry," Cehmai said.
It was a week, a month, a year of struggle before the paper and ink
brick appeared at his side. He could no longer tell whether the andat
was shouting to him in the real world or only within their shared mind.
The game pulled at him, sucking like a whirlpool. The stones shifted
with significance beyond their own, and confusion built on confusion in
waves so that Cehmai grasped his one thought until it was a certainty.
There was too much. There was more than he could survive. The only
choice was to simplify the panoply of conflicts warring within him;
there wasn't room for them all. He had to fix things, and if he couldn't
make them right, he could at least make them end.
He didn't let himself feel the sorrow or the horror or the guilt as he
scratched out a note-brief and clear as he could manage. The letters
were shaky, the grammar poor. Idaan and the Vaunyogi and the Galts.
Everything he knew written in short, unadorned phrases. He dropped the
pen to the floor and pressed the paper into Baarath's hand.
"Maati," Cehmai said. "'lake it to Maati. Now."
Baarath read the letter, and whatever blood had remained in his face
drained from it now.
"This ... this isn't ..."
"Run!" Cehmai screamed, and Baarath was off, faster than Cehmai could
have gone if he'd tried, Idaan's doom in his hands. Cehmai closed his
eyes. That was over, then. That was decided, and for good or ill, he was
committed. The stones now could he only stones.
He pulled himself back to the game board. Stone-Made-Soft had gone
silent again. The storm was as fierce as it had ever been, but Cehmai
found he also had some greater degree of strength against it. He forced
himself along every line he could imagine, shifting the stones in his
mind until at last he pushed one black token forward. Stone-Made-Soft
didn't pause. It shifted a white stone behind the black that had just
moved, trapping it. Cehmai took a long deep breath and shifted a black
stone on the far end of the board back one space.
The andat stretched out its wide fingers, then paused. The storm
shifted, lessened. Stone-Made-Soft smiled ruefully and pulled back its
hand. The wide brow furrowed.
"Good sacrifice," it said.
Cehmai leaned hack. His body was shuddering with exhaustion and effort
and perhaps something else more to do with l3aarath running through the
night. The andat moved a piece forward. It was the obvious move, but it
was doomed. They had to play it out, but the game was as good as
finished. Cchmai moved a black token.
"I think she does love you," the andat said. "And you did swear you'd
protect her."
"She killed two men and plotted her own father's slaughter," Cehmai said.
"You love her. I know you do."
"I know it too," Cehmai said, and then a long moment later. "It's your
move."
Rain came in from the south. By midmorning tall clouds of billowing
white and yellow and gray had filled the wide sky of the valley. When
the sun, had it been visible, would have reached the top of its arc, the
rain poured down on the city like an upended bucket. The black cobbled
streets were brooks, every slant roof a little waterfall. Maati sat in
the side room of the teahouse and watched. The water seemed lighter than
the sky or the stone-alive and hopeful. It chilled the air, making the
warmth of the earthenware bowl in his hands more present. Across the
smooth wooden table, Otah-kvo's chief armsman scratched at the angry red
weals on his wrists.
"If you keep doing that, they'll never heal," Maati said.
"Thank you, grandmother," Sinja said. "I had an arrow through my arm
once that hurt less than this."
"It's no worse than what half the people in that hall suffered," Maati said.
"It's a thousand times worse. Those stings are on them. These are on me.
I'd have thought the difference obvious."
Maati smiled. It had taken three days to get all the insects out of the
great hall, and the argument about whether to simply choose a new venue
or wait for the last nervous slave to find and crush the last dying wasp
would easily have gone on longer than the problem itself. The time had
been precious. Sinja scratched again, winced, and pressed his hands flat
against the table, as if he could pin them there and not rely on his own
will to control himself.
"I hear you've had another letter from the Dai-kvo," Sinja said.
Maati pursed his lips. The pages were in his sleeve even now. "They'd
arrived in the night by a special courier who was waiting in apartments
Maati had bullied out of the servants of the dead Khai. The message
included an order to respond at once and commit his reply to the
courier. He hadn't picked up a pen yet. He wasn't sure what he wanted to
say.
"He ordered you back?" Sinja asked.
"Among other things," Maati agreed. "Apparently he's been getting
information from someone in the city besides myself."
"The other one? The boy?"
"Cehmai you mean? No. One of the houses that the Galts bought, I'd
guess. But I don't know which. It doesn't matter. He'll know the truth
soon enough."
"If you say so."
A bolt of lightning flashed and a half breath later, thunder rolled
through the thick air. Maati raised the bowl to his lips. The tea was
smoky and sweet, and it did nothing to unknot his guts. Sinja leaned
toward the window, his eyes suddenly bright. Maati followed his gaze.
Three figures leaned into the slanting rain-one a thick man with a
slight limp, the others clearly servants holding a canopy over the first
in a vain attempt to keep their master from being soaked to the skin.
All wore cloaks with deep hoo
ds that hid their faces.
"Is that him?" Sinja asked.
"I think so," Maati said. "Go. Get ready."
Sinja vanished and Maati refilled his bowl of tea. It was only moments
before the door to the private room opened again and Porsha Radaani came
into the room. His hair was plastered back against his skull, and his
rich, ornately embroidered robes were dark and heavy with water. Maati
rose and took a pose of welcome. Radaani ignored it, pulled out the
chair Sinja had only recently left, and sat in it with a grunt.
"I'm sorry for the foul weather," Maati said. "I'd thought you'd take
the tunnels."
Radaani made an impatient sound.
"They're half flooded. The city was designed with snow in mind, not
water. The first thaw's always like a little slice of hell in the
spring. But tell me you didn't bring me here to talk about rain,
Maati-cha. I'm a busy man. The council's just about pulled itself back
together, and I'd like to see an end to this nonsense."
"That's what I wanted to speak to you about, Porsha-cha. I'd like you to
call for the council to disband. You're well respected. If you were to
adopt the position, the lower families would take interest. And the
Vaunani and Kamau can both work with you without having to work with
each other."
"I'm a powerful enough man to do that," Radaani agreed, his tone
A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2 Page 39