A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2

by Abraham Daniel

  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