A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (14 page)

servant, learned the protocols for entering and leaving the house, got

directions to the nearest bathhouse, and after placing the oiled leather

pouch that held his letters safely with the steward, went back out to

wash off the journey.

The bathhouse smelled of iron pipes and sandalwood, but the air was warm

and thick. A launderer had set tip shop at the front, and Otah gave over

his robes to be scrubbed and kiln-dried with the understanding that it

doomed him to be in the baths for at least the time it took the sun to

move the width of two hands. He walked naked to the public baths and

eased himself into the warm water with a sigh.

"Hai!" a voice called, and Otah opened his eyes. Two older men and a

young woman sat on the same submerged bench on which he rested. One of

the older men spoke.

"You've just come in with the `van?"

"Indeed," Otah said. "Though I hope you could tell by looking more than

smell."

"Where from?"

"Udun, most recently."

The trio moved closer. The woman introduced them all-overseers for a

metalworkers group. Silversmiths, mostly. Otah was gracious and ordered

tea for them all and set about learning what they knew and thought, felt

and feared and hoped for, and all of it with smiles and charm and just

slightly less wit displayed than their own. It was his craft, and they

knew it as well as he did, and would exchange their thoughts and

speculations for his gossip. It was the way of traders and merchants the

world over.

It was not long before the young woman mentioned the name of Otah Machi.

"If it is the upstart behind it all, it's a poor thing for Machi," the

older man said. "None of the trading houses would know him or trust him.

None of the families of the utkhaiem would have ties to him. Even if

he's simply never found, the new Khai will always he watching over his

shoulder. It isn't good to have an uncertain line in the Khai's chair.

The best thing that could happen for the city would be to find him and

put a knife through his belly. Him, and any children he's got meantime."

Otah smiled because it was what a courier of House Siyanti would do. The

younger man sniffed and sipped his bowl of tea. The woman shrugged, the

motion setting small waves across the water.

"It might do us well to have someone new running the city," she said.

"It's clear enough that nothing will change with either of the two

choices we have now. Biitrah. He at least was interested in mechanism.

The Galts have been doing more and more with their little devices, and

we'd be fools to ignore what they've managed."

"Children's toys," the older man said, waving the thought away.

"Toys that have made them the greatest threat Eddensea and the Westlands

have seen," the younger man said. "Their armies can move faster than

anyone else's. There isn't a warden who hasn't felt the bite of them. If

they haven't been invaded, they've had to offer tribute to the Lords

Convocate, and that's just as bad."

"The ward being sacked might disagree," Otah said, trying for a joke to

lighten the mood.

"The problem with the Galts," the woman said, "is they can't hold what

they take. Every year it's another raid, another sack, another fleet

carrying slaves and plunder back to Galt. But they never keep the land.

They'd have much more money if they stayed and ruled the Westlands. Or

Eymond. Or Eddensea."

"Then we'd have only them to trade with," the younger man said. "That'd

be ugly."

"The Galts don't have the andat," the older man said, and his tone

carried the rest: they don't have the andat, so they are not worth

considering.

"But if they did," Otah said, hoping to keep the subject away from

himself and his family. "Or if we did not-"

"If the sky dives into the sea, we'll be fishing for birds," the older

man said. "It's this Otah Machi who's uneasing things. I have it on good

authority that Danat and Kaiin have actually called a truce between them

until they can rout out the traitor."

"Traitor?" Otah asked. "I hadn't heard that of him."

"There are stories," the younger man said. "Nothing anyone has proved.

Six years ago, the Khai fell ill, and for a few days, they thought he

might die. Some people suspected poison."

"And hasn't he turned to poison again? Look at Biitrah's death," the

younger man said. "And I tell you the Khai Machi hasn't been himself

since then, not truly. Even if Otah were to claim the chair, it'd be

better to punish him for his crimes and raise up one of the high families."

"It could have been had fish," the woman said. "There was a lot of bad

fish that year."

"No one believes that," the older man said.

"Which of the others would be best for the city now that Biitrah is

gone?" Otah asked.

The older man named Kaiin, and the younger man and woman Danat, in the

same moment, the syllables grinding against each other in the warm, damp

air, and they immediately fell to debate. Kaiin was a master negotiator;

Danat was better thought of by the utkhaiem. Kaiin was prone to fits of

temper, Danat to weeks of sloth. Each man, to hear it, was a paragon of

virtue and little better than a street thug. Otah listened, interjected

comments, asked questions crafted to keep the conversation alive and on

its course. His mind was hardly there.

When at last he made his excuses, the three debaters hardly paused in

their wrangle. Otah dried himself by a brazier and collected his

robes-laundered now, smelling of cedar oil and warm from the kiln. The

streets were fuller than when he had gone into the bathhouse. The sun

would fall early, disappearing behind the peaks to the west long before

the sky grew dark, but it still hovered two hands above the mountainous

horizon.

Otah walked without knowing where he was walking to. The black cobbles

and tall houses seemed familiar and exotic at the same time. The towers

rose into the sky, glowing in the sunlight. At the intersection of three

large streets, Otah found a courtyard with a great stone archway inlaid

with wood and metal sigils of chaos and order. Harsh forge smoke from

the east mixed with the greasy scent of a cart seller's roasting duck

and, for a moment, Otah was possessed by the memory of being a child no

more than four summers old. The smoke scent wove with the taste of

honeybread nearly too hot to eat, the clear open view of the valley and

mountains from the top of the towers, and a woman's skin-mother or

sister or servant. There was no way to know.

It was a ghost memory, strong and certain as stone, but without a place

in his life. Something had happened, once, that tied all these senses

together, but it was gone and he would never have it. He was upstart and

traitor. Poisoner and villain. None of it was true, but it made for an

interesting story to tell in the teahouses and meeting rooms-a variation

on the theme of fratricide that the Khaiem replayed in every generation.

A deep fatigue pressed into him. He had been an innocent to think that

he might be forgotten, that Otah Machi might escape the venomous

speculation of the traders and merchants, high families and low

townsmen. There was no use for truth when spectacle was at issue. And

there was nothing in the city that could matter less than the

halfrecalled memories of a courier's abandoned childhood. The life he'd

built mattered less than ashes to these people. His death would be a

relief to them.

He returned to House Nan just as the stars began to glimmer in the deep

northern sky. There was fresh bread and pepper-baked lamb, distilled

rice wine and cold water. The other men who were to share his room

joined him at the table, and they laughed and joked, traded information

and gossip from across the world. Otah slid back comfortably into Itani

Noygu, and his smiles came more easily as the night wore on, though a

cold core remained in his breast. It was only just before he went to

crawl into his cot that he found the steward, recovered his pouch of

letters, and prepared himself.

All the letters were, of course, still sewn shut, but Otah checked the

knots. None had been undone so far as he could tell. It would have been

a breach of the gentleman's trade to open letters held in trust, and it

would have been foolishness to trust to honor. Had House Nan been

willing to break trust, that would have been interesting to know as

well. He laid them out on his cot, considering.

Letters to the merchant houses and lower families among the utkhaiem

were the most common. He didn't carry a letter for the Khai himself-he

would have balked at so high a risk-but his work would take him to the

palaces. And there were audiences, no doubt, to which he could get an

invitation. If he chose, he could go to the Master of Tides and claim

business with members of the court. It wouldn't even require stretching

the truth very far. He sat in silence, feeling as if there were two men

within him.

One wanted nothing more than to embrace the fear and flee to some

distant island and be pleased to live wondering whether his brothers

would still be searching him out. The other was consumed by an anger

that drove him forward, deeper into the city of his birth and the family

that had first discarded him and then fashioned a murderer from his memory.

Fear and anger. He waited for the calm third voice of wisdom, but it

didn't come. He was left with no better plan than to act as Irani Noygu

would have, had he been nothing other than he appeared. When at last he

repacked his charges and lay on his cot, he expected that sleep would

not come, but it did, and he woke in the morning forgetful of where he

was and surprised to find that Kiyan was not in the bed beside him.

The palaces of the Khai were deep within the city, and the gardens

around them made it seem more like a walk into some glorious low town

than movement into the center of a great city. Trees arched over the

walkways, branches bright with new leaves. Birds fluttered past him,

reminding him of Udun and the wayhouse he had almost made his home. The

greatest tower loomed overhead, dark stone rising up like twenty

palaces, one above the other. Otah stopped in a courtyard before the

lesser palace of the Master of Tides and squinted up at the great tower,

wondering whether he had ever been to the top of it. Wondering whether

being here, now, was valor, cowardice, foolishness, or wisdom; the

product of anger or fear or the childish drive to show that he could

defy them all if he chose.

He gave his name to the servants at the door and was led to an an

techamber larger than his apartments back in Udun. A slave girl plucked

a lap harp, filling the high air with a sweet, slow tune. He smiled at

her and took a pose of appreciation. She returned his smile and nodded,

but her fingers never left the strings. The servant, when he came, wore

robes of deep red shot with yellow and a silver armband. He took a pose

of greeting so brief it almost hadn't happened.

"Irani Noygu. You're Itani Noygu, then? Ah, good. I am Piyun See, the

Master of Tides' assistant. He's too busy to see you himself. So House

Siyanti has taken an interest in Machi, then?" he said. Otah smiled,

though he meant it less this time.

"I couldn't say. I only go where they send me, Piyun-cha."

The assistant took a pose of agreement.

"I had hoped to know the court's schedule in the next week," Otah said.

"I have business-"

"With the poet. Yes, I know. He left your name with us. He said we

should keep a watch out for you. You're wise to come to us first. You

wouldn't imagine the people who simply drift through on the breeze as if

the poets weren't members of the court."

Otah smiled, his mouth tasting of fear, his heart suddenly racing. The

poet of Machi-Cehmai 'Ivan, his name was-had no reason to know Itani

Noygu or expect him. This was a mistake or a trap. If it was a trap, it

was sloppy, and if a mistake, dangerous. The lie came to his lips as

gracefully as a rehearsed speech.

"I'm honored to have been mentioned. I hadn't expected that he would

remember me. But I'm afraid the business I've come on may not be what he

had foreseen."

"I wouldn't know," the assistant said as he shifted. "Visiting

dignitaries might confide in the Master of Tides, but I'm like you. I

follow orders. Now. Let me see. I can send a runner to the library, and

if he's there ..."

"Perhaps it would be best if I went to the poet's house," Otah said. "He