A Betrayal in Winter (The Long Price Quartet Book 2)

  “His own rooms?”

  “Yes. We have a poet of our own, you know. We aren’t going to put Cehmai-cha on a cot in the granary every time the Dai-kvo sends us a guest. Maati-cha has apartments near the library.”

  The air seemed to leave the room. A dull roar filled Otah’s ears, and he had to put a hand to the wall to keep from swaying. Maati-cha. The name came like an unforeseen blow.

  Maati Vaupathai. Maati whom Otah had known briefly at the school, and to whom he had taught the secrets he had learned before he turned his back on the poets and all they offered. Maati whom he had found again in Saraykeht, who had become his friend and who knew that Itani Noygu was the son of the Khai Machi.

  The last night they had seen one another—thirteen, fourteen summers ago—Maati had stolen his lover and Otah had killed Maati’s master. He was here now, in Machi. And he was looking for Otah. He felt like a deer surprised by the hunter at its side.

  The servant girl fumbled with her strings, the notes of the tune coming out a jangle, and Otah shifted his gaze to her as if she’d shouted. For a moment, their eyes met and he saw discomfort in her as she hurried back to her song. She might have seen something in his face, might have realized who was standing before her. Otah balled his fists at his sides, pressing them into his thighs to keep from shaking. The assistant had been speaking. Otah didn’t know what he’d said.

  “Forgive me, but before we do anything, would you be so kind …,” Otah feigned an embarrassed simper. “I’m afraid I had one bowl of tea too many this morning, and waters that run in, run out….”

  “Of course. I’ll have a slave take you to—”

  “No need,” Otah said as he stepped to the door. No one shouted. No one stopped him. “I’ll be back with you in a moment.”

  He walked out of the hall, forcing himself not to run though he could feel his heartbeat in his neck, and his ribs seemed too small for his breath. He waited for the warning yell to come—armsmen with drawn blades or the short, simple pain of an arrow in his breast. Generations of his uncles had spilled their blood, spat their last breaths perhaps here, under these arches. He was not immune. Itani Noygu would not protect him. He controlled himself as best he could, and when he reached the gardens, boughs shielding him from the eyes of the palaces, he bolted.

  IDAAN SAT at the open sky doors, her legs hanging out over the void, and let her gaze wander the moonlit valley. The glimmers of the low towns to the south. The Daikani mine where her brother had gone to die. The Poinyat mines to the west and southeast. And below the soles of her bare feet, Machi itself: the smoke rising from the forges, the torches and lanterns glimmering in the streets and windows smaller and dimmer than fireflies. The winches and pulleys hung in the darkness above her, long lengths of iron chain in guides and hooks set in the stone, ready to be freed should there be call to haul something up to the high reaches of the tower or lower something down. Chains that clanked and rattled, uneasy in the night breeze.

  She leaned forward, forcing herself to feel the vertigo twist her stomach and tighten her throat. Savoring it. Scoot forward a few inches, no more effort really than standing from a chair, and then the sound of wind would fill her ears. She waited as long as she could stand and then drew back, gasping and nauseated and trembling. But she did not pull her legs back in. That would have been weakness.

  It was an irony that the symbols of Machi’s greatness were so little used. In the winter, there was no heating them—all the traffic of the city went in the streets, or over the snows, or through the networks of tunnels. And even in summer, the endless spiraling stairways and the need to haul up any wine or food or musical instruments made the gardens and halls nearer the ground more inviting. The towers were symbols of power, existing to show that they could exist and little enough more. A boast in stone and iron used for storage and exotic parties to impress visitors from the other courts of the Khaiem. And still, they made Idaan think that perhaps she could imagine what it would be to fly. In her way she loved them, and she loved very few things these days.

  It was odd, perhaps that she had two lovers and still felt alone. Adrah had been with her for longer, it felt, than she had been herself. And so it had surprised her that she was so ready to betray him in another man’s bed. Perhaps she’d thought that by being a new man’s lover, she would strip off that old skin and become innocent again.

  Or perhaps it was only that Cehmai had a sweet face and wanted her. She was young, she thought, to have given up flirtation and courtship. She’d been angry with Adrah for embarrassing Cehmai at the dance. She’d promised herself never to be owned by a man. And also, killing Biitrah had left a hunger in her—a need that nothing yet had sated.

  She liked Cehmai. She longed for him. She needed him in a way she couldn’t quite fathom, except to say that she hated herself less when she was with him.

  “Idaan!” a voice whispered from the darkness behind her. “Come away from there! You’ll be seen!”

  “Only if you’re fool enough to bring a torch,” she said, but she pulled her feet back in from the abyss and hauled the great bronze-bound oaken sky doors shut. For a moment, there was nothing—black darker than closing her eyes—and then the scrape of a lantern’s hood and the flame of a single candle. Crates and boxes threw deep shadows on the stone walls and carved cabinets. Adrah looked pale, even in the dim light. Idaan found herself amused and annoyed—pulled between wanting to comfort him and the desire to point out that it wasn’t his family they were killing. She wondered if he knew yet that she had taken the poet to bed and whether he would care. And whether she did. He smiled nervously and glanced around at the shadows.

  “He hasn’t come,” Idaan said.

  “He will. Don’t worry,” Adrah said, and then a moment later: “My father has drafted a letter. Proposing our union. He’s sending it to the Khai tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Idaan said. “We’ll want that in place before everyone finishes dying.”

  “Don’t.”

  “If we can’t speak of it to each other, Adrah-kya, when will we ever? It isn’t as if I can go to our friends or the priest.” Idaan took a pose of query to some imagined confidant. “Adrah’s going to take me as his wife, but it’s important that we do it now, so that when I’ve finished slaughtering my brothers, he can use me to press his suit to become the new Khai without it seeming so clearly that I’m being traded at market. And don’t you love this new robe? It’s Westlands silk.”

  She laughed bitterly. Adrah did not step back, quite, but he did pull away.

  “What is it, Idaan-kya?” he said, and Idaan was surprised by the pain in his voice. It sounded genuine. “Have I done something to make you angry with me?”

  For a moment, she saw herself through his eyes—cutting, ironic, cruel. It wasn’t who she had been with him. Once, before they had made this bargain with Chaos, she had had the luxury of being soft and warm. She had always been angry, only not with him. How lost he must feel.

  Idaan leaned close and kissed him. For one terrible moment, she meant it—the softness of his lips against hers stirring something within her that cried out to hold and be held, to weep and wail and take comfort. Her flesh also remembered the poet, the strange taste of another man’s skin, the illusion of hope and of safety that she’d felt in her betrayal of the man who was destined to share her life.

  “I’m not angry, sweet. Only tired. I’m very tired.”

  “This will pass, Idaan-kya. Remember that this part only lasts a while.”

  “And is what follows it better?”

  He didn’t answer.

  The candle had hardly burned past another mark when the moon-faced assassin appeared, moving like darkness itself in his back cotton robe. He put down his lantern and took a pose of welcome before dusting a crate with his sleeve and sitting. His expression was as pleasant as that of a fruit seller in a summer market. It only made Idaan like him less.

  “So,” Oshai said. “You called, I’ve come. What seems to be
the problem?”

  She had intended to begin with Maati Vaupathai, but the pretense of passive stupidity in Oshai’s eyes annoyed her. Idaan raised her chin and her brows, considering him as she would a garden slave. Adrah looked back and forth between the two. The motion reminded her of a child watching his parents fighting. When she spoke, she had to try not to spit.

  “I would know where our plans stand,” she said. “My father’s ill, and I hear more from Adrah and the palace slaves than from you.”

  “My apologies, great lady,” Oshai said without a hint of irony. “It’s only that meetings with you are a risk, and written reports are insupportable. Our mutual friends …”

  “The Galtic High Council,” Idaan said, but Oshai continued as if she had not spoken.

  “… have placed agents and letters of intent with six houses. Contracts for iron, silver, steel, copper, and gold. The negotiations are under way, and I expect we will be able to draw them out for most of the summer, should we need to. When all three of your brothers die, you will have been wed to Adrah, and between the powerful position of his house, his connection with you, and the influence of six of the great houses whose contracts will suddenly ride on his promotion to Khai, you should be sleeping in your mother’s bed by Candles Night.”

  “My mother never had a bed of her own. She was only a woman, remember. Traded to the Khai for convenience, like a gift.”

  “It’s only an expression, great lady. And remember, you’ll be sharing Adrah here with other wives in your turn.”

  “I won’t take others,” Adrah said. “It was part of our agreement.”

  “Of course you won’t,” Oshai said with a nod and an insincere smile. “My mistake.”

  Idaan felt herself flush, but kept her voice level and calm when she spoke.

  “And my brothers? Danat and Kaiin?”

  “They are being somewhat inconvenient, it’s true. They’ve gone to ground. Frightened, I’m told, by your ghost brother Otah. We may have to wait until your father actually dies before they screw up the courage to stand against each other. But when they do, I will be ready. You know all this, Idaan-cha. It can’t be the only reason you’ve asked me here?” The round, pale face seemed to harden without moving. “There had best be something more pressing than seeing whether I’ll declaim when told.”

  “Maati Vaupathai,” Idaan said. “The Dai-kvo’s sent him to study in the library.”

  “Hardly a secret,” Oshai said, but Idaan thought she read a moment’s unease in his eyes.

  “And it doesn’t concern your owners that this new poet has come for the same prize they want? What’s in those old scrolls that makes this worth the risk for you, anyway?”

  “I don’t know, great lady,” the assassin said. “I’m trusted with work of this delicate nature because I don’t particularly care about the points that aren’t mine to know.”

  “And the Galts? Are they worried about this Maati Vaupathai poking through the library before them?”

  “It’s … of interest,” Oshai said, grudgingly.

  “It was the one thing you insisted on,” Idaan said, stepping toward the man. “When you came to Adrah and his father, you agreed to help us in return for access to that library. And now your price may be going away.”

  Will your support go, too? The unasked question hung in the chill air. If the Galts could not have what they wanted from Adrah and Idaan and the books of Machi, would the support for this mad, murderous scheme remain? Idaan felt her heart tripping over faster, half hoping that the answer might be no.

  “It is the business of a poet to concern himself with ancient texts,” Oshai said. “If a poet were to come to Machi and not avail himself of its library, that would be odd. This coincidence of timing is of interest. But it’s not yet a cause for alarm.”

  “He’s looking into the death of Biitrah. He’s been down to the mines. He’s asking questions.”

  “About what?” Oshai said. The smile was gone.

  She told him all she knew, from the appearance of the poet to his interest in the court and high families, the low towns and the mines. She recounted the parties at which he had asked to be introduced, and to whom. The name he kept mentioning—Itani Noygu. The way in which his interest in the ascension of the next Khai Machi seemed to be more than academic. She ended with the tale she’d heard of his visit to the Daikani mines and to the wayhouse where her brother had died at Oshai’s hands. When she was finished, neither man spoke. Adrah looked stricken. Oshai, merely thoughtful. At length, the assassin took a pose of gratitude.

  “You were right to call me, Idaan-cha,” he said. “I doubt the poet knows precisely what he’s looking for, but that he’s looking at all is bad enough.”

  “What do we do?” Adrah said. The desperation in his voice made Oshai look up like a hunting dog hearing a bird.

  “You do nothing, most high,” Oshai said. “Neither you nor the great lady does anything. I will take care of this.”

  “You’ll kill him,” Idaan said.

  “If it seems the best course, I may….”

  Idaan took a pose appropriate to correcting a servant. Oshai’s words faded.

  “I was not asking, Oshai-cha. You’ll kill him.”

  The assassin’s eyes narrowed for a moment, but then something like amusement flickered at the corners of his mouth and the glimmer of candlelight in his eyes grew warmer. He seemed to weigh something in his mind, and then took a pose of acquiescence. Idaan lowered her hands.

  “Will there be anything else, most high?” Oshai asked without taking his gaze from her.

  “No,” Adrah said. “That will be all.”

  “Wait half a hand after I’ve gone,” Oshai said. “I can explain myself, and the two of you together borders on the self-evident. All three would be difficult.”

  And with that, he vanished. Idaan looked at the sky doors. She was tempted to open them again, just for a moment. To see the land and sky laid out before her.

  “It’s odd, you know,” she said. “If I had been born a man, they would have sent me away to the school. I would have become a poet or taken the brand. But instead, they kept me here, and I became what they’re afraid of. Kaiin and Danat are hiding from the brother who has broken the traditions and come back to kill them for the chair. And here I am. I am Otah Machi. Only they can’t see it.”

  “I love you, Idaan-kya.”

  She smiled because there was nothing else to do. He had heard the words, but understood nothing. It would have meant as much to talk to a dog. She took his hand in hers, laced her fingers with his.

  “I love you too, Adrah-kya. And I will be happy once we’ve done all this and taken the chair. You’ll be the Khai Machi, and I will be your wife. We’ll rule the city together, just as we always planned, and everything will be right again. It’s been half a hand by now. We should go.”

  They parted in one of the night gardens, he to the east and his family compound, and she to the south, to her own apartments, and past them and west to a tree-lined path that led to the poet’s house. If the shutters were closed, if no light shone but the night candle, she told herself she wouldn’t go in. But the lanterns were lit brightly, and the shutters open. She paced quietly through the grounds, peering in through windows, until she caught the sound of voices. Cehmai’s soft and reasonable, and then another. A man’s, loud and full of a rich self-importance. Baarath, the librarian. Idaan found a tree with low branches and deep shadows and sat, waiting with as much patience as she could muster, and silently willing the man away. The full moon was halfway across the sky before the two came to the door, silhouetted. Baarath swayed like a drunkard, but Cehmai, though he laughed as loud and sang as poorly, didn’t waver. She watched as Baarath took a sloppy pose of farewell and stumbled off along the path. Cehmai watched him go, then looked back into the house, shaking his head.

  Idaan rose and stepped out of the shadows.

  She saw Cehmai catch sight of her, and she waited. He might have ano
ther guest—he might wave her away, and she would have to go back through the night to her own apartments, her own bed. The thought filled her with black dread until the poet put one hand out to her, and with the other motioned toward the light within his house.

  Stone-Made-Soft brooded over a game of stones, its massive head cupped in a hand twice the size of her own. The white stones, she noticed, had lost badly. The andat looked up slowly and, its curiosity satisfied, it turned back to the ended game. The scent of mulled wine filled the air. Cehmai closed the door behind her, and then set about fastening the shutters.

  “I didn’t expect to see you,” the poet said.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  There were a hundred things he could have said. Graceful ways to say yes, or graceless ways to deny it. He only turned to her with the slightest smile and went back to his task. Idaan sat on a low couch and steeled herself. She couldn’t say why she was driven to do this, only that the impulse was much like draping her legs out the sky doors, and that it was what she had chosen to do.

  “Daaya Vaunyogi is approaching the Khai tomorrow. He is going to petition that Adrah and I be married.”

  Cehmai paused, sighed, turned to her. His expression was melancholy, but not sorrowful. He was like an old man, she thought, amused by the world and his own role in it. There was a strength in him, and an acceptance.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “He is of a good house, their bloodlines—”

  “And he’s well off and likely to oversee his family’s house when his father passes. And he’s a good enough man, for what he is. It isn’t that I can’t imagine why he would choose to marry you, or you him. But, given the context, there are other questions.”

  “I love him,” Idaan said. “We have planned to do this for … we have been lovers for almost two years.”

  Cehmai sat beside a brazier, and looked at her with the patience of a man studying a puzzle. The coals had burned down to a fine white ash.