Shadow and Betrayal

  ‘Because he is power, and you’re drawn to that more than anything? ’

  Idaan bit back her first response and let the accusation sit. Then she nodded.

  ‘Perhaps a bit of that, yes,’ she said.

  Adrah sighed and leaned against the wall. Slowly, he slid down until he was sitting on the floor, his arms resting on his knees.

  ‘There is a list of houses and their women,’ he said. ‘There was before you and Cehmai took up with each other. I argued against it, but my father said it was just as an exercise. Just in case it was needed later. Only tell me . . . today, when he came . . . you didn’t . . . the two of you didn’t . . .’

  Idaan laughed again, but this was a lower sound, gentler.

  ‘No, I haven’t lain down for another man in your house, Adrah-kya. I can’t say why I think that would be worse than what I have done, but I do.’

  Adrah nodded. She could see another question in the way he shifted his eyes, the way he moved his hands. They had been lovers and conspirators for years. She knew him as if he were her family, or a distant part of herself. It didn’t make her love him, but she remembered when she had.

  ‘The first time I kissed you, you looked so frightened,’ she said. ‘Do you remember that? It was the middle of winter, and we’d all gone skating. There must have been twenty of us. We all raced, and you won.’

  ‘And you kissed me for the prize,’ he said. ‘Noichi Vausadar was chewing his own tongue, he was so jealous of me.’

  ‘Poor Noichi. I half did it to annoy him, you know.’

  ‘And the other half?’

  ‘Because I wanted to,’ she said. ‘And then it was weeks before you came back for another.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d laugh at me. I went to sleep every night thinking about you, and woke up every morning just as possessed. Can you imagine only being afraid that someone would laugh at you?’

  ‘Now? No.’

  ‘Do you remember the night we both went to the inn. With the little dog out front?’

  ‘The one that danced when the keep played flute? Yes.’

  Idaan smiled. It had been a tiny animal with gray hair and soft, dark eyes. It had seemed so delighted, rearing up on its hind legs and capering, small paws waving for balance. It had seemed happy. She wiped away the tear before it could mar her kohl, then remembered that her eyes were only her eyes now. In her mind, the tiny dog leapt and looked at her. It had been so happy and so innocent. She pushed her own heart out toward that memory, pleading with the cold world that the pup was somewhere out there, still safe and well, trusting and loved as it had been that day. She didn’t bother wiping the tears away now.

  ‘We were other people then,’ she said.

  They were silent again. After a moment, Idaan went to sit on the floor beside Adrah. He put his arm across her shoulder, and she leaned into him, weeping silently for too many things for one mind to hold. He didn’t speak until the worst of the tears had passed.

  ‘Do they bother you?’ he asked at last, his voice low and hoarse.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Them,’ he said, and she knew. She heard the sound of the arrow again, and shivered.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know what’s funny? It isn’t your father who haunts me. It should be, I know. He was helpless, and I went there knowing what I was going to do. But he isn’t the one.’

  Idaan frowned, trying to think who else there had been. Adrah saw her confusion and smiled, as if confirming something for himself. Perhaps only that she hadn’t known some part of him, that his life was something different from her own.

  ‘When we went in for the assassin, Oshai. There was a guard. I hit him. With a blade. It split his jaw. I can still see it. Have you ever swung a thin bar of iron into hard snow? It felt just like that. A hard, fast arc and then something that both gave way and didn’t. I remember how it sounded. And afterward, you wouldn’t touch me.’

  ‘Adrah . . .’

  He raised his hands, stopping anything that might have been sympathy. Idaan swallowed it. She had no right to pardon him.

  ‘Men do this,’ Adrah said. ‘All over the world, in every land, men do this. They slaughter each other over money or sex or power. The Khaiem do it to their own families. I never wondered how. Even now, I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine doing the things I’ve done, even after I’ve done them. Can you?’

  ‘There’s a price they pay,’ Idaan said. ‘The soldiers and the armsmen. Even the thugs and drunkards who carve each other up outside comfort houses. They pay a price, and we’re paying it too. That’s all.’

  She felt him sigh.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said.

  ‘So what do we do from here? What about Otah?’

  Adrah shrugged, as if the answer were obvious.

  ‘If Maati Vaupathai’s set himself to be Otah’s champion, Otah will eventually come to him. And Cehmai’s already shown that there’s one person in the world he’ll break his silence for.’

  ‘I want Cehmai kept out of this.’

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ Adrah said. His voice should have been cold or angry or cruel, and perhaps those were in him. Mostly, he sounded exhausted. ‘He’s the only one who can lead us to Otah Machi. And you’re the only one he’ll tell.’

  Porsha Radaani gestured toward Maati’s bowl, and a servant boy moved forward, graceful as a dancer, to refill it. Maati took a pose of gratitude toward the man. There were times and places that he would have thanked the servant, but this was not one of them. Maati lifted the bowl and blew across the surface. The pale green-yellow tea smelled richly of rice and fresh, unsmoked leaves. Radaani laced thick fingers over his wide belly and smiled. His eyes, sunk deep in their sockets and padded by generous fat, glittered like wet stones in a brook.

  ‘I confess, Maati-cha, that I hadn’t expected a visit from the Daikvo’s envoy. I’ve had men from every major house in the city here to talk with me these last few days, but the most high Dai-kvo usually keeps clear of these messy little affairs.’

  Maati sipped his tea though it was still too hot. He had to be careful how he answered this. It was a fine line between letting it be assumed that he had the Dai-kvo’s backing and actually saying as much, but that difference was critical. He had so far kept away from anything that might reach back to the Dai-kvo’s village, but Radaani was an older man than Ghiah Vaunani or Adaut Kamau. And he seemed more at home with the bullying attitude of wealth than the subtleties of court. Maati put down his bowl.

  ‘The Dai-kvo isn’t taking a hand in it,’ Maati said, ‘but that hardly means he should embrace ignorance. The better he knows the world, the better he can direct the poets to everyone’s benefit, ne?’

  ‘Spoken like a man of the court,’ Radaani said, and despite the smile in his voice, Maati didn’t think it had been a compliment.

  ‘I have heard that the Radaani might have designs on the Khai’s chair,’ Maati said, dropping the oblique path he had intended. It would have done no good here. ‘Is that the case?’

  Radaani smiled and pointed for the servant boy to go. The boy dropped into a formal pose and retreated, sliding the door closed behind him. Maati sat, smiling pleasantly, but not filling the silence. It was a small room, richly appointed - wood varnished until it seemed to glow and ornaments of worked gold and carved stone. The windows were adorned with shutters of carved cedar so fine that they let the breeze in and kept the birds and insects out even as they scented the air. Radaani tilted his head, distant eyes narrowing. Maati felt like a gem being valued by a merchant.

  ‘I have one son in Yalakeht, overseeing our business interests. I have a grandson who has recently learned how to sing and jump sticks at the same time. I can’t see that either of them would be well suited to the Khai’s chair. I would have to either abandon my family’s business or put a child in power over the city.’

  ‘Certainly there must be some financial advantages to being the Khai Machi,’ Maati said. ‘I
can’t think it would hurt your family to exchange your work in Yalakeht to join the Khaiem.’

  ‘Then you haven’t spoken to my overseers,’ Radaani laughed. ‘We are pulling in more gold from the ships in Yalakeht and Chaburi-Tan than the Khai Machi can pull out of the ground, even with the andat. No. If I want power, I can purchase it and not have to compromise anything. Besides, I have six or eight daughters I’d be happy for the new Khai to marry. He could have one for every day of the week.’

  ‘You could take the chair for yourself,’ Maati said. ‘You’re not so old . . .’

  ‘And I’m not so young as to be that stupid. Here, Vaupathai, let me lay this out for you. I am old, gouty as often as not, and rich. I have what I want from life, and being the Khai Machi would mean that if I were lucky, my grandsons would be slitting each other’s throats. I don’t want that for them, and I don’t want the trouble of running a city for myself. Other men want it, and they can have it. None of them will cross me, and I will support whoever takes the name.’

  ‘So you have no preference,’ Maati said.

  ‘Now I didn’t go so far as to say that, did I? Why does the Dai-kvo care which of us becomes the Khai?’

  ‘He doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean he’s uninterested.’

  ‘Then let him wait two weeks, and he can have the name. It doesn’t figure. Either he has a favorite or . . . or is this about your belly getting opened for you?’ Radaani pursed his lips, his eyes darting back and forth over Maati’s face. ‘The upstart’s dead, so it isn’t that. You think someone was working with Otah Machi? That one of the houses was backing him?’

  ‘I didn’t go so far as to say that, did I? And even if they were, it’s no concern of the Dai-kvo’s,’ Maati said.

  ‘True, but no one tried to fish-gut the Dai-kvo. Could it be, Maati-cha, that you’re here on your own interest?’

  ‘You give me too much credit,’ Maati said. ‘I’m only a simple man trying to make sense of complex times.’

  ‘Yes, aren’t we all,’ Radaani said with an expression of distaste.

  Maati kept the rest of the interview to empty niceties and social forms, and left with the distinct feeling that he’d given out more information than he’d gathered. Chewing absently at his inner lip, he turned west, away from the palaces and out into the streets of the city. The pale mourning cloth was coming down already, and the festival colors were going back up for the marriage of Adrah Vaunyogi and Idaan Machi. Maati watched as a young boy, skin brown as a nut, sat atop a lantern pole with pale mourning rags in one hand and a garland of flowers in the other. Maati wondered if a city had ever gone from celebration to sorrow and back again so quickly.

  Tomorrow ended the mourning week, marked the wedding of the dead Khai’s last daughter, and began the open struggle to find the city’s new master. The quiet struggle had, of course, been going on for the week. Adaut Kamau had denied any interest in the Khai’s chair, but had spent enough time intimating that support from the Dai-kvo might sway his opinion that Maati felt sure the Kamau hadn’t abandoned their ambitions. Ghiah Vaunani had been perfectly pleasant, friendly, open, and had managed in the course of their conversation to say nothing at all. Even now, Maati saw messengers moving through the streets and alleyways. The grand conversation of power might put on the clothes of sorrow, but the chatter only changed form.

  Maati walked more often these days. The wound in his belly was still pink, but the twinges of pain were few and widely spaced. While he walked the streets, his robes marked him as a man of importance, and not someone to interrupt. He was less likely to be disturbed here than in the library or his own rooms. And moving seemed to help him think.

  He had to speak to Daaya Vaunyogi, the soon-to-be father of Idaan Machi. He’d been putting off that moment, dreading the awkwardness of condolence and congratulations mixed. He wasn’t sure whether to be long-faced and formal or jolly and pleasant, and he felt a deep certainty that whatever he chose would be the wrong thing. But it had to be done, and it wasn’t the worst of the errands he’d set himself for the day.

  There wasn’t a soft quarter set aside for the comfort houses in Machi as there had been in Saraykeht. Here the whores and gambling, drug-laced wine and private rooms were distributed throughout the city. Maati was sorry for that. For all its subterranean entertainments, the soft quarter of Saraykeht had been safe - protected by an armed watch paid by all the houses. He’d never heard of another place like it. In most cities of the Khaiem, a particular house might guard the street outside its own door, but little more than that. In low towns, it was often wise to travel in groups or with a guard after dark.

  Maati paused at a waterseller’s cart and paid a length of copper for a cup of cool water with a hint of peach to it. As he drank, he looked up at the sun. He’d spent almost a full hand’s time reminiscing about Saraykeht and avoiding any real consideration of the Vaunyogi. He should have been thinking his way through the puzzles of who had killed the Khai and his son, who had spirited Otah-kvo away, and then falsified his death, and why.

  The sad truth was, he didn’t know and wasn’t sure that anything he’d done since he’d come had brought him much closer. He understood more of the court politics, he knew the names of the great houses and trivia about them: Kamau was supported by the breeders who raised mine dogs and the copper workers, the Vaunani by the gold-smiths, tanners and leatherworkers, Vaunyogi had business ties to Eddensea, Galt and the Westlands and little money to show for it when compared to the Radaani. But none of that brought him close to understanding the simple facts as he knew them. Someone had killed these men and meant the world to put the blame on Otah-kvo. And Otah-kvo had not done the thing.

  Still, there had to be someone backing Otah-kvo. Someone who had freed him and staged his false death. He ran through his conversation with Radaani again, seeing if perhaps the man’s lack of ambition masked support for Otah-kvo, but there was nothing.

  He gave back the waterseller’s cup and let his steps wander through the streets, his hands tucked inside his sleeves, until his hip and knee started to complain. The sun was shifting down toward the western mountains. Winter days here would be brief and bitter, the swift winter sun ducking behind stone before it even reached the horizon. It hardly seemed fair.

  By the time he regained the palaces, the prospect of walking all the way to the Vaunyogi failed to appeal. They would be busy with preparations for the wedding anyway. There was no point intruding now. Better to speak to Daaya Vaunyogi afterwards, when things had calmed. Though, of course, by then the utkhaiem would be in council, and the gods only knew whether he’d be able to get through then, or if he’d be in time.

  He might only find who’d done the thing by seeing who became the next Khai.

  There was still the one other thing to do. He wasn’t sure how he would accomplish it either, but it had to be tried. And at least the poet’s house was nearer than the Vaunyogi. He angled down the path through the oaks, the gravel of the pathway scraping under his weight. The mourning cloth had already been taken from the tree branches and the lamp posts and benches, but no bright banners or flowers had taken their places.

  When he stepped out from the trees, he saw Stone-Made-Soft sitting on the steps before the open doorway, its wide face considering him with a calm half-smile. Maati had the impression that had he been a sparrow or an assassin with a flaming sword, the andat’s reaction would have been the same. He saw the large form lean back, turning to face into the house, and heard the deep, rough voice if not the words themselves. Cehmai was at the door in an instant, his eyes wide and bright, and then bleak with disappointment before becoming merely polite.

  With an almost physical sensation, it fit together - Cehmai’s rage at holding back news of Otah’s survival, the lack of wedding decoration, and the disappointment that Maati was only himself and not some other, more desired guest. The poor bastard was in love with Idaan Machi.

  Well, that was one secret discovered. It wasn’t much, but t
he gods all knew he’d take anything these days. He took a pose of greeting and Cehmai returned it.

  ‘I was wondering if you had a moment,’ Maati said.

  ‘Of course, Maati-kvo. Come in.’

  The house was in a neat sort of disarray. Tables hadn’t been overturned or scrolls set in the brazier, but things were out of place, and the air seemed close and stifling. Memories rose in his mind. He recalled the moments in his own life when a woman had left him. The scent was very much the same. He suppressed the impulse to put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and say something comforting. Better to pretend he hadn’t guessed. At least he could spare Cehmai that indignity. He lowered himself into a chair, groaning with relief as the weight left his legs and feet.

  ‘I’ve gotten old. When I was your age I could walk all day and never feel it.’

  ‘Perhaps if you made it more a habit,’ Cehmai said. ‘I have some tea. It’s a little tepid now, but if you’d like . . .’