A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (10 page)

"So things with the woman didn't work out?"

"No," Utah said.

"I'm sorry."

"It was entirely my fault."

"If it's true, you're a wise man to know it, and if not, you're a good

man for saying it. Either way."

"I think it would he ... that is, if there are any letters to be

carried, I think travel might be the best thing just now. I don't really

care to stay in Udun."

Amiit sighed and nodded.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Come to my offices in the morning. We'll arrange

something."

Afterwards, they finished the rice wine and talked of nothing

important-of old stories and old travels, the women they had known and

loved or else hated. Or both. Otah said nothing of Kiyan or the north,

and Amiit didn't press him. When Otah rose to leave, he was surprised to

find how drunk he had become. He navigated his way to his room and lay

on the couch, mustering the resolve to pull off his robes. Morning found

him still dressed. He changed robes and went down to the bathhouse,

forcing his mind back over his conversations of the night before. He was

fairly certain he had said nothing to implicate himself or make Amiit

suspect the nature of his falling out with Kiyan. He wondered what the

old man would have made of the truth, had he known it.

The packet of letters waited for him, each sewn and sealed, in a leather

bag on Amiit Foss' desk. Most were for trading houses in Machi, though

there were four that were to go to members of the utkhaiem. Otah turned

the packet in his hands. Behind him, one of the apprentices said

something softly and another giggled.

"You have time to reconsider," Amiit said. "You could go back to her on

your knees. If the letters wait another day, there's little lost. And

she might relent."

Otah tucked the letters into their pouch and slipped it into his sleeve.

"An old lover of mine once told me that everything I'd ever won, I won

by leaving," Otah said.

"The island girl?"

"Did I mention her last night?"

"At length," Amiit said, chuckling. "That particular quotation came up

twice, as I recall. There might have been a third time too. I couldn't

really say."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I hope I didn't tell you all my secrets," Otah

said, making a joke of his sudden unease. He didn't recall saying

anything about Maj, and it occurred to him exactly how dangerous that

night had been.

"If you had, I'd make it a point to forget them," Amiit said. "Nothing a

drunk man says on the day his woman leaves him should be held against

him. It's poor form. And this is, after all, a gentleman's trade, ne?"

Otah took a pose of agreement.

"I'll report what I find when I get back," he said, unnecessarily.

"Assuming I haven't frozen to death on the roads."

"Be careful up there, Itani. Things are uncertain when there's the scent

of a new Khai in the wind. It's interesting, and it's important, but

it's not always safe."

Otah shifted to a pose of thanks, to which his supervisor replied in

kind, his face so pleasantly unreadable that Otah genuinely didn't know

how deep the warning ran.

When Maati considered the mines-something he had rarely had occasion to

do-he had pictured great holes going deep into the earth. He had not

imagined the branchings and contortions of passages where miners

struggled to follow veins of ore, the stench of dust and damp, the yelps

and howls of the dogs that pulled the flatbottomed sledges filled with

gravel, or the darkness. He held his lantern low, as did the others

around him. 't'here was no call to raise it. Nothing more would be seen,

and the prospect of breaking it against the stone overhead was unpleasant.

""There can be places where the air goes bad, too," Cehmai said as they

turned another twisting corner. "They take birds with them because they

die first."

"What happens then?" Maati asked. "If the birds die?"

"It depends on how valuable the ore is," the young poet said. "Abandon

the mine, or try to blow out the had air. Or use slaves. There are men

whose indentures allow that."

Two servants followed at a distance, their own torches glowing. Maati

had the sense that they would all, himself included, have been better

pleased to spend the day in the palaces. All but the andat.

StoneMade-Soft alone among them seemed untroubled by the weight over

them and the gloom that pressed in when the lanterns flickered. The

wide, calm face seemed almost stupid to Maati, the andat's occasional

pronouncements simplistic compared with the thousand-layered comments of

Seedless, the only andat he'd known intimately. He knew better than to

be taken in. 'The form of the andat might be different, the mental

bindings that held it might place different strictures upon it, but the

hunger at its center was as desperate. It was an andat, and it would

long to return to its natural state. They might seem as different as a

marble from a thorn, but at heart they were all the same.

And Maati knew he was walking through a tunnel not so tall he could

stand to his full height with a thousand tons of stone above him. This

placid-faced ghost could bring it down on him as if they'd been crawling

through a hole in the ocean.

"So, you see," Cehmai was saying, "the Daikani engineers find where they

want to extend the mine out. Or down, or up. We have to leave that to

them. Then I will come through and walk through the survey with them, so

that we all understand what they're asking."

"And how much do you soften it?"

"It varies," Cehmai said. "It depends on the kind of rock. Some of them

you can almost reduce to putty if you're truly clear where you want it

to be. Then other times, you only want it to be easier to dig through.

Most often, that's when they're concerned about collapses."

"I see," Maati said. "And the pumps? How do those figure in?"

"That was actually an entirely different agreement. The Khai's eldest

son was interested in the problem. The mines here are some of the lowest

that are still in use. The northern mines are almost all in the

mountains, and so they aren't as likely to strike water."

"So the Daikani pay more for being here?"

"No, not really. The pumps he designed usually work quite well."

"But the payment for them?"

Cehmai grinned. His teeth and skin were yellowed by the lantern light.

"It was a different agreement," Cehmai said again. "The Daikani let him

experiment with his designs and he let them use them."

"But if they worked well ..."

"Other mines would pay the Khai for the use of the pumps if they wished

for help building them. Usually, though, the mines will help each other

on things like that. There's a certain . . . what to call it ...

brotherhood? The miners take care of each other, whatever house they

work for."

"Might we see the pumps?"

"If you'd like," he said. "They're back in the deeper parts of the mine.

If you don't mind walking down farther...."

Maati forced a grin and did not look at the wide face of the andat

turning toward him.

"Not at all," he said. "Let's go down."

The pumps, when he found them at last, were ingenious. A series of

treadmills turned huge corkscrews that lifted the water up to pools

where another corkscrew waited to lift it higher again. They did not

keep the deepest tunnels dry-the walls there seemed to weep as Maati

waded through warm, knee-high water-but they kept it clear enough to

work. Machi had, Cehmai assured him, the deepest tunnels in the world.

NIaati did not ask if they were the safest.

They found the mine's overseer here in the depths. Voices seemed to

carry better in the watery tunnels than up above, but Maati could not

make out the words clearly until they were almost upon him. A small,

thick-set man with a darkness to him that made Maati think of grime

worked so deeply into skin that it would never come clean, he took a

pose of welcome as they approached.

"We've an honored guest come to the city," Cehmai said.

"We've had many honored guests in the city," the overseer said, with a

grin. "Damn few in the bottom of the hole, though. There's no palaces

down here."

"But Machi's fortunes rest on its mines," Maati said. "So in a sense

these are the deepest cellars of the palaces. The ones where the best

treasures are hidden."

The overseer grinned.

"I like this one," he said to Cehmai. "He's got a quick head on him."

"I heard about the pumps the Khai's eldest son had designed," Maati

said. "I was wondering if you could tell me of them?"

The grin widened, and the overseer launched into an expansive and

delighted discussion of water and mines and the difficulty of removing

the one from the other. Maati listened, struggling to follow the

vocabulary and grammar particular to the trade.

"He had a gift for them," the overseer said, at last. His voice was

melancholy. "We'll keep at them, these pumps, and they'll get better,

but not like they would have with Biitrah-cha on them."

"He was here, I understand, on the day he was killed," Maati said. He

saw the young poet's head shift, turning to consider him, and he ignored

it as he had the andat's.

"That's truth. And I wish he'd stayed. His brothers aren't bad men, but

they aren't miners. And ... well, he'll be missed."

"I had thought it odd, though," Nlaati said. "Whichever brother killed

him, they had to know where he would be-that he would be called out

here, and that the work would take so much of the day that he wouldn't

return to the city itself."

"I suppose that's so," the overseer said.

"Then someone knew your pumps would fail," Maati said.

The lamplight flickered off the surface of the water, casting shadows up

the overseer's face as this sank in. Cehmai coughed. Maati said nothing,

did not move, waited. If any man here had been involved with it, the

overseer was most likely. But Maati saw no rage or wariness in his

expression, only the slow blooming of implication that might be expected

in a man who had not thought the murder through. So perhaps he could be

used after all.

"You're saying someone sabotaged my pumps to get him out here," the

overseer said at last.

Maati wished deeply that Cehmai and his andat were not presentthis was a

thing better done alone. But the moment had arrived, and there was

nothing to be done but go forward. The servants at least were far enough

away not to overhear if he spoke softly. Maati dug in his sleeve and

came out with a letter and a small leather pouch, heavy with silver

lengths. He pressed them both into the surprised overseer's hands.

"If you should discover who did, I would very much like to speak with

them before the officers of the utkhaiem or the head of your House. That

letter will tell you how to find me."

The overseer tucked away the pouch and letter, taking a pose of thanks

which Maati waved away. Cehmai and the andat were silent as stones.

"And how long is it you've been working these mines?" Maati asked,

forcing a lightness to his tone he did not feel. Soon the overseer was

regaling them with stories of his years underground, and they were

walking together toward the surface again. By the time Maati stepped out

from the long, sloping throat of the mine and into daylight, his feet

were numb. A litter waited for them, twelve strong men prepared to carry

the three of them back to the palaces. Maati stopped for a moment to

wring the water from the hem of his robes and to appreciate having

nothing but the wide sky above him.

"Why was it the Dai-kvo sent you?" Cehmai asked as they climbed into the

wooden litter. His voice was almost innocent, but even the andat was

looking at Maati oddly.

"There are suggestions that the library may have some old references

that the Dai-kvo lacks. Things that touch on the grammars of the first

poets."

"Ah," Cehmai said. The litter lurched and rose, swaying slightly as the

servants bore them away hack to the palaces. "And nothing more than that?"

"Of course not," Maati said. "What more could there he?"

He knew that he was convincing no one. And that was likely a fine thing.

Maati had spent his first days in Machi learning the city, the courts,