A Betrayal in Winter lpq-2

by Abraham Daniel

"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

  level 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 ri
sing 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."

  "Perhaps it was Baraath she was looking at," Cehmai said.

  "You think so?" the andat said. "I suppose he's a decent looking man.

  And many women are overcome by the romance of the librarian. No doubt

  you're right."

  "Don't," Cehmai said. "I don't want to play that game again."

  Something like real sympathy showed in the andat's wide face. The

  struggle at the back of Cehmai's mind neither worsened nor diminished as

  Stone-Made-Soft's broad hand reached out to rest on his shoulder.

  "Enough," it said. "You did what you had to do, and whipping yourself

  now won't help you or her. Let's go meet that girl. Talk to her. We can

  find someone selling sweetcakes. Otherwise we'll only go back to the

  rooms and sulk away another night."

  Cehmai looked over, and indeed, the girl farthest to the left-her long,

  dark hair unbound, her robes well cut and the green of jadecaught his

  eyes, and blushing, looked away. He had seen her before, he realized.

  She was beautiful, and he did not know her name.

  "Perhaps another day," he said.

  "There are only so many other days," the andat said, its voice low and

  gentle. "I may go on for generations, but you little men rise and fall

  with the seasons. Stop biting yourself. It's been months."

  "One more day. I'll bite myself for one more day at least," Cehmai said.

  "Come on."

  The andat sighed and dropped its hand to its side. Cehmai turned east,

  walking into the dim tunnels. He felt the temptation to look back, to

  see whether the girl was watching his departure and if she was, what

  expression she wore. He kept his eyes on the path before him and the

  moment passed.

  THE KHAI MACHI HAD NO OTHER NAME NOW THAT HE HAI) TAKEN HIS FAther's

  office. It had been stripped from him in formal ceremony. He had

  renounced it and sworn before the gods and the Emperor that he would be

>   nothing beyond this trust with which he had been charged. Otah had

  forced his way through the ceremony, bristling at both the waste of time

  and the institutional requirement that he lie in order to preserve

  etiquette. Of Itani Noygu, Otah Machi, and the Khai Machi, the last was

  the one least in his heart. But he was willing to pretend to have no

  other self and the utkhaiem and the priests and the people of the city

  were all willing to pretend to believe him. It was all like some

  incredibly long, awkward, tedious game. And so when the rare occasion

  arose when he could do something real, something with consequences, he

  found himself enjoying it more perhaps than it deserved.

  The emissary from Galt looked as if he were trying to convince himself

  he'd misunderstood.

  "Most high," he said, "I came here as soon as our ambassadors sent word

  that they'd been expelled. It was a long journey, and winter travel's

  difficult in the north. I had hoped that we could address your concerns

  and ..."

  Otah took a pose that commanded silence, then sat back on the black

  lacquer chair that had grown no more comfortable in the months since

  he'd first taken it. He switched from speaking in the Khaiate tongue to

  Galtic. It seemed, if anything, to make the man more uncomfortable.

  "I appreciate that the generals and lords of Gait are so interested in

  ... what? Addressing my concerns? And I thank you for coming so quickly,