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

  “You told him,” Sinja said. “You should at least let the man rest before you tell him things like that. He’s had a hard day.”

  “He’s been up to the task,” Kiyan said.

  “Well, I’ve come to make things worse. We’ve just had a runner from the city, Otah-cha. It appears you’ve murdered your father in his sleep. Your brother Danat led a hunting party bent on bringing back your head on a stick, but apparently you’ve killed him too. You’re running out of family, Otah-cha.”

  “Ah,” Otah said, and then a moment later. “I think perhaps I should lie down now.”

  They burned the Khai Machi and his son together in the yard outside the temple. The head priest wore his pale robes, the hood pulled low over his eyes in respect, and tended the flames. Thick, black smoke rose from the pyre and vanished into the air high above the city. Machi had woken from its revels to find the world worse than when they’d begun, and Cehmai saw it in every face he passed. A thousand of them at least stood in the afternoon sun. Shock and sorrow, confusion and fear.

  And excitement. In a few eyes among the utkhaiem, he saw the bright eyes and sharp ears of men who smelled opportunity. He walked among them, Stone-Made-Soft at his side, peering through the funereal throng for the one familiar face. Idaan had to be there, but he could not find her.

  The lower priests also passed through the crowds, singing dirges and beating the dry notes of drums. Slaves in ceremonially torn robes passed out tin cups of bittered water. Cehmai ignored them. The burning would go on through the night until the ashes of the men and the ashes of the coal were indistinguishable. And then a week’s mourning. And then these men weeping or staring, grim or secretly pleased, would meet and decide which of their number would have the honor of sitting on the dead family’s chair and leading the hunt for the man who had murdered his own father. Cehmai found himself unable to care particularly who won or lost, whether the upstart was caught or escaped. Somewhere among all these mourners was the woman he’d come to love, in more pain than she had ever been in since he’d known her. And he—he who could topple towers at a whim and make mountains flow like floodwater—couldn’t find her.

  Instead, he found Maati in brown poet’s robes standing on a raised walkway that overlooked the mourning throng. Though they were on the edge of the ceremony, Cehmai saw the pyre light reflecting in Maati’s fixed eyes. Cehmai almost didn’t approach him, almost didn’t speak. There was a darkness wrapped around the poet. But it was possible he had been there from the ceremony’s beginning. He might know where Idaan was. Cehmai took a pose of greeting which Maati did not return.

  “Maati-kvo?”

  Maati looked over first at Cehmai, then Stone-Made-Soft, and then back again at the fire. After a moment’s pause, his face twisted in disgust.

  “Not kvo. Never kvo. I haven’t taught you anything, so don’t address me as a teacher. I was wrong. From the beginning, I was wrong.”

  “Otah was very convincing,” Cehmai said. “No one thought he would—”

  “Not about that. He didn’t do this. Baarath … Gods, why did it have to be Baarath that saw it? Prancing, self-important, smug …”

  Maati fumbled with a sewn-leather wineskin and took a long deep, joyless drink from it. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand, then held the skin out in offering. Cehmai declined. Maati offered it to the andat, but Stone-Made-Soft only smiled as if amused.

  “I thought it was someone in the family. One of his brothers. It had to be. Who else would benefit? I was stupid.”

  “Forgive me, Maati-kvo. But no one did benefit.”

  “One of them did,” he said, gesturing out at the mourners. “One of them is going to be the new Khai. He’ll tell you what to do, and you’ll do it. He’ll live in the high palaces, and everyone else in the city will lick his ass if he tells them to. That’s what it’s all about. Who has to lick whose ass. And there’s blood enough to fill a river answering that.” He took another long pull from the wineskin, then dropped it idly to the ground at his feet. “I hate all of them.”

  “So do I,” Stone-Made-Soft said, his tone light and conversational.

  “You’re drunk, Maati-kvo.”

  “Not half enough. Here, look at this. You know what this is?”

  Cehmai glanced at the object Maati had pulled from his sleeve.

  “A book.”

  “This is my teacher’s masterwork. Heshai-kvo, poet of Saraykeht. The Dai-kvo sent me to him when I was hardly younger than you are now. I was going to study under him, take control of Seedless. Removing-the-Part-That-Continues. We called him Seedless. This is Heshai-kvo’s examination of everything he’d done wrong. Every improvement he could have made to his binding, if he’d had it to do over again. It’s brilliant.”

  “But it can’t work, can it?” Cehmai said. “It would be too close….”

  “Of course not, it’s a refinement of his work, not how to bind Seedless again. It’s a record of his failure. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Cehmai grasped for a right answer to the question and ended with honesty.

  “No,” he said.

  “Heshai-kvo was a drunkard. He was a failure. He was haunted his whole life by the woman he loved and the child he lost, and every measure of the hatred he had for himself was in his binding. He imagined the andat as the perfect man and implicit in that was the disdain he imagined such a man would feel looking at him. But Heshai was strong enough to look his mistake in the face. He was strong enough to sit with it and catalog it and understand. And the Dai-kvo sent me to him. Because he thought we could be the same. He thought I would understand him well enough to stand in his place.”

  “Maati-kvo, I’m sorry. Have you seen Idaan?”

  “Well,” Maati said, ignoring the question as he swayed slightly and frowned at the crowd. “I can face my stupidities just as well as he did. The Dai-kvo wants to know who killed Biitrah? I’ll find out. He can tell me it’s too late and he can tell me to come home, but he can’t make me stop looking. Whoever gets that chair … whoever gets it …”

  Maati frowned, confused for a moment, and a sudden racking sob shook him. He leaned forward. Cehmai moved to him, certain for a moment that Maati was about to pitch off the walkway and down to the distant ground, but instead the older poet gathered himself and took a pose of apology.

  “I’m … making an ass of myself,” he said. “You were saying something.”

  Cehmai was torn for a moment. He could see the red that lined Maati’s eyes, could smell the sick reek of distilled wine on his breath and something deeper—some drug mixed with the wine. Someone needed to see Maati back to his apartments, needed to see that he was cared for. On another night, Cehmai would have done it.

  “Idaan,” he said. “She must have been here. They’re burning her brother and her father. She had to attend the ceremony.”

  “She did.” Maati agreed. “I saw her.”

  “Where’s she gone?”

  “With her man, I think. He was there beside her,” Maati said. “I don’t know where they went.”

  “Are you going to be all right, Maati-kvo?”

  Maati seemed to think about this, then nodded once and turned back to watch the pyre burning. The brown leather book had fallen to the ground by the wineskin, and the andat retrieved it and put it back in Maati’s sleeve. As they walked away, Cehmai took a pose of query.

  “I didn’t think he’d want to lose it,” the andat said.

  “So that was a favor to him?” Cehmai said. Stone-Made-Soft didn’t reply. They walked toward the women’s quarters and Idaan’s apartments. If she was not there, he would go to the Vaunyogi’s palace. He would say he was there to offer condolences to Idaan-cha. That it was his duty as poet and representative of the Dai-kvo to offer condolences to Idaan Machi on this most sorrowful of days. It was his duty. Gods. And the Vaunyogi would be chewing their own livers out. They’d contracted to marry their son to the Khai Machi’s sister. Now she was no one’s family.
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  “Maybe they’ll cancel the arrangement,” Stone-Made-Soft said. “It isn’t as if anyone would blame them. She could come live with us.”

  “You can be quiet now,” Cehmai said.

  At Idaan’s quarters, the servant boy reported that Idaancha had been there, but had gone. Yes, Adrah-cha had been there as well, but he had also gone. The unease in the boy’s manner made Cehmai wonder. Part of him hoped that they had been fighting, those two. It was despicable, but it was there: the desire that he and not Adrah Vaunyogi be the one to comfort her.

  He stopped next at the palace of the Vaunyogi. A servant led him to a waiting chamber that had been dressed in pale mourning cloth fragrant from the cedar chests in which it had been stored. The chairs and statuary, windows and floors were all swathed in white rags that candlelight made gold. The andat stood at the window, peering out at the courtyard while Cehmai sat on the front handspan of a seat. Every breath he took here made him wonder if coming had been a mistake.

  The door to the main hall swung open. Adrah Vaunyogi stepped in. His shoulders rode high and tight, his lips as thin as a line drawn on paper. Cehmai stood and took a pose of greeting which Adrah mirrored before he closed the door.

  “I’m surprised to see you, Cehmai-cha,” Adrah said, walking forward slowly, as if unsure what precisely he was approaching. Cehmai smiled to keep his unease from showing. “My father is occupied. But perhaps I might be able to help you?”

  “You’re most kind. I came to offer my sympathies to Idaan-cha. I had heard she was with you, and so …”

  “No. She was, but she’s left. Perhaps she went back to the ceremony.” Adrah’s voice was distant, as if only half his attention was on the conversation. His eyes, however, were fixed on Cehmai like a snake on a mouse, only Cehmai wasn’t sure which of them would be the mouse, which the serpent.

  “I will look there,” Cehmai said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “We are always pleased by an audience with the poet of Machi. Wait. Don’t … don’t go. Sit with me a moment.”

  Stone-Made-Soft didn’t shift, but Cehmai could feel its interest and amusement in the back of his mind. Cehmai sat in a rag-covered chair. Adrah pulled a stool near to him, nearer than custom required. It was as if Adrah wanted to make him feel they were in a smaller room together. Cehmai kept his face as placid as the andat’s.

  “The city is in terrible trouble, Cehmai-cha. You know how bad these things can get. When it’s only the three sons of the Khai, it’s bad enough. But with all the utkhaiem scheming and fighting and betraying one another, the damage to the city …”

  “I’d thought about that,” Cehmai said, though in truth he cared more about Idaan than the political struggles that the coming weeks would bring. “And there’s still the problem of Otah. He has a claim …”

  “He’s murdered his own father.”

  “Have we proven that?”

  “You doubt that he did the thing?”

  “No,” Cehmai said after a moment’s pause. “No, I don’t.” But Maati-kvo still does.

  “It would be best to end this quickly. To name the new Khai before things can get out of control. You are a man of tremendous power. I know the Dai-kvo takes no sides in matters of succession. But if you were to let it be known that you favored some particular house, without taking any formal position, it would make things easier.”

  “Only if I backed a house that was prepared to win,” Cehmai said. “If I chose poorly, I’d throw some poor unprepared family in with the pit hounds.”

  “My family is ready. We are well respected, we have partners in all the great trading houses, and the silversmiths and ironworkers are closer to us than to any other family. Idaan is the only blood of the old Khai remaining in the city. Her brothers will never be Khai Machi, but someday, her son might.”

  Cehmai considered. Here was a man asking his help, asking for political backing, unaware that Cehmai knew the shape and taste of his lover’s body as well as he did. It likely was in his power to elevate Adrah Vaunyogi to the ranks of the Khaiem. He wondered if it was what Idaan would want.

  “That may be wise,” Cehmai said. “I would need to think about it, of course, before I could act.”

  Adrah put his hand on Cehmai’s knee, familiar as if they were brothers. The andat moved first, ambling toward the door, and then Cehmai stood and adopted a pose appropriate to parting. The amusement coming from Stone-Made-Soft was like constant laughter that only Cehmai could hear.

  When they had made their farewells, Cehmai started east again, toward the burning bodies and the priests. His mind was a jumble—concern for Idaan, frustration at not finding her, unease with Adrah’s proposal, and at the back, stirring like something half asleep, a dread that seemed wrapped up with Maati Vaupathai staring drunk into the fire.

  One of them, Maati had said, meaning the high families of the utkhaiem. One of them would benefit. Unless Cehmai took a hand and put his own lover’s husband in the chair. That wasn’t the sort of thing that could have been planned for. No scheme for power could include the supposition that Cehmai would fall in love with Idaan, or that her husband would ask his aid, or that his guilt and affection would drive him to give it. It was the kind of thing that could come from nowhere and upset the perfect plan.

  If it wasn’t Otah Machi who had engineered all this bloodletting, then some other viper was in the city, and the prospect of Adrah Vaunyogi taking the prize away by marrying Idaan and wooing the poets would drive the killer mad. And even if it was Otah Machi, he might still hope to take his father’s place. Adrah’s rise would threaten that claim as well.

  “You’re thinking too hard,” the andat said.

  “Thinking never hurt anyone.”

  “So you’ve all said,” the andat sighed.

  She wasn’t at the ceremony. She wasn’t at her quarters. Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft walked together through the gardens and pavilions, the courtyards and halls and passages. Mourning didn’t fill the streets and towers the way celebration had. The dry music of the funeral drums wasn’t taken up in the teahouses or gardens. Only the pillar of smoke blotting out the stars stood testament to the ceremony. Twice, Cehmai took them past his own quarters, hoping that Idaan might be there waiting for him, but without effect. She had vanished from the city like a bird flying up into darkness.

  HIS OLD notes were gone, left in a packet in his rooms. Kaiin and Danat were forgotten, and instead, Maati had fresh papers spread over the library table. Lists of the houses of the utkhaiem that might possibly succeed in a bid to become the next Khai. Beside them, a fresh ink brick, a pen with a new bronze nib, and a pot of tea that smelled rich, fresh cut, and green. Summer tea in the winter cities. Maati poured himself a bowl, then blew across the pale surface, his eyes going over the names again.

  According to Baarath, who had accepted his second apology with a grace that had surprised him, the most likely was Kamau—a family that traced its bloodline back to the Second Empire. They had the wealth and the prestige. And, most important, an unmarried son in his twenties who was well-respected and active in the court. Then the Vaunani, less wealthy, less prestigious, but more ruthless. Or possibly the Radaani, who had spent generations putting their hands into the import and export trade until almost every transaction in the city fed their coffers. They were the richest of the utkhaiem, but apparently unable to father males. There were seventeen daughters, and the only candidates for the Khai’s chair were the head of the house, his son presently overseeing a trading venture in Yalakeht, and a six-year-old grandson.

  And then there were the Vaunyogi. Adrah Vaunyogi was a decent candidate, largely because he was young and virile, and about to be married to Idaan Machi. But the rumors held that the family was underfunded and not as well connected in court. Maati sipped his tea and considered whether to leave them on his list. One of these houses—most likely one of these, though there were certainly other possibilities—had engineered the murder of the Khai Machi. They had plac
ed the blame on Otah. They had spirited him away, and once the mourning was finished with …

  Once the mourning was finished, the city would attend the wedding of Adrah Vaunyogi to Idaan. No, no, he would keep the Vaunyogi on his list. It was such a convenient match, and the timing so apt.

  Others, of course, put the crimes down to Otah-kvo. A dozen hunting packs had gone out in the four days since the bloody morning that killed the Khai and Danat both. The utkhaiem were searching the low towns for Otah and those who had aided his escape, but so far no one had succeeded. It was Maati’s task now to solve the puzzle before they found him. He wondered how many of them had guessed that he alone in the city was working to destroy all their chances. If someone else had done these things … if he could show it … Otah would still be able to take his father’s place. He would become Khai Machi.

  And what, Maati wondered, would Liat think of that, once she heard of it? He imagined her cursing her ill judgment in losing the ruler of a city and gaining half a poet who hadn’t proved worth keeping.

  “Maati,” Baarath said.

  Maati jumped, startled, and spilled a few drops of tea over his papers. Ink swirled into the pale green as he blotted them with a cloth. Baarath clicked his teeth and hurried over to help.

  “My fault,” the librarian said. “I thought you had noticed me. You were scowling, after all.”

  Maati didn’t know whether to laugh at that, so he only took a pose of gratitude as Baarath blew across the still damp pages. The damage was minor. Even where the ink had smudged, he knew what he had meant. Baarath fumbled in his sleeve and drew out a letter, its edges sewn in green silk.

  “It’s just come for you,” he said. “The Dai-kvo, I think?”

  Maati took it. The last he had reported, Otah had been found and turned over to the Khai Machi. It was a faster response than he had expected. He turned the letter over, looking at the familiar handwriting that formed his name. Baarath sat across the table from him, smiling as if he were, of course, welcome, and waiting to see what the message said. It was one of the little rudenesses to which the librarian seemed to feel himself entitled since Maati’s apology. Maati had the uncomfortable feeling Baarath thought they were becoming friends.