A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (44 page)

to lay her sins before him and be forgiven. And he knew already. He knew

the truth or else guessed it, and he hadn't denounced her.

"I love you," he repeated, his voice softer than the sound of his hand

stroking her skin. "How did it start?"

"I don't know," she said. And then, a moment later, "When I was young, I

think."

Quietly, she told him everything, even the things she had never told

Adrah. Seeing her brothers sent to the school and being told that she

could not go herself because of her sex. Watching her mother brood and

suffer and know that one day she would be sent away or else die there,

in the women's quarters and be remembered only as something that had

borne a Khai's babies.

She told him about listening to songs about the sons of the Khaiem

battling for the succession and how, as a girl, she'd pretend to be one

of them and force her playmates to take on the roles of her rivals. And

the sense of injustice that her older brothers would pick their own

wives and command their own fates, while she would be sold at convenience.

At some point, Cchmai stopped stroking her, and only listened, but that

open, receptive silence was all she needed of him. She poured out

everything. The wild, impossible plans she'd woven with Adrah. The

intimation, one night when a Galtic dignitary had come to Nlaehi, that

the schemes might not be impossible after all. The bargain they had

struck-access to a library's depth of old books and scrolls traded for

power and freedom. And from there, the progression, inevitable as water

flowing toward the sea, that led Adrah to her father's sleeping chambers

and her to the still moment by the lake, the terrible sound of the arrow

striking home.

With every phrase, she felt the horror of it case. It lost none of the

sorrow, none of the regret, but the bleak, soul-eating despair began to

fade from black to merely the darkest gray. By the time she came to the

end of one sentence and found nothing following it, the birds outside

had begun to trill and sing. It would be light soon. Dawn would come

after all. She sighed.

"That was a longer answer than you hoped for, maybe," she said.

"It was enough," he said.

Idaan shifted and sat up, pulling her hair back from her face. Cehmai

didn't move.

"Hiami told me once," she said, "just before she left, that to become

Khai you had to forget how to love. I see why she believed that. But it

isn't what's happened. Not to me. "Thank You, Cchmai-kya."

"For what?"

"For loving me. For protecting me," she said. "I didn't guess how much I

needed to tell you all that. It was ... it was too much. You see that."

"I do," Cehmai said.

"Are you angry with me now?"

"Of course not," he said.

"Are you horrified by me?"

She heard him shift his weight. The pause stretched, her heart sickening

with every beat.

"I love you, Idaan," he said at last, and she felt the tears come again,

but this time with a very different pressure behind them. It wasn't joy,

but it was perhaps relief.

She shifted forward in the darkness, found his body there waiting, and

held him for a time. She was the one who kissed him this time. She was

the one who moved their conversation from the intimacy of confession to

the intimacy of sex. Cehmai seemed almost reluctant, as if afraid that

taking her body now would betray some deeper moment that they had

shared. But Idaan led him to his bed in the darkness, opened her own

robes and his, and coaxed his flesh until whatever objection he'd

fostered was forgotten. She found herself at ease, lighter, almost as if

she was half in dream.

Afterwards, she lay nestled in his arms, warm, safe, and calm as she had

never been in years. Sunlight pressed at the closed shutters as she

drifted down to sleep.

The tunnels beneath Machi were a city unto themselves. Otah found

himself drawn out into them more and more often as the days crept

forward. Sinja and Amiit had tried to keep him from leaving the

storehouse beneath the underground palaces of the Sava, but Otah had

overruled them. The risk of a few quiet hours walking abandoned

corridors was less, he judged, than the risk of going quietly mad

waiting in the same sunless room day after day. Sinja had convinced him

to take an armsman as guard when he went.

Otah had expected the darkness and the quiet-wide halls empty, water

troughs dry-hut the beauty he stumbled on took him by stirprise. Here a

wide square of stone smooth as beach sand, delicate pillars spiraling

tip from it like bolts of twisting silk made from stone. And down

another corridor, a bathhouse left dry for the winter but rich with the

scent of cedar and pine resin.

Even when lie returned to the storehouse and the voices and faces he

knew, lie found his mind lingering in the dark corridors and galleries,

unsure whether the images of the spaces lit with the white shadowless

light of a thousand candles were imagination or memory.

A sharp rapping brought him back to himself, and the door of his private

office swung open. Amiit and Sinja walked in, already half into a

conversation. Sinja's expression was mildly annoyed. Amiit, Otah

thought, seemed worried.

"It would only make things worse," Amiit said.

"We'd earn more time. And it isn't as if they'd accuse Otah-cha here of

it. They think he's dead."

"'T'hen they'll accuse him of it once they find he's alive," Amiit said

and turned to Otah. "Sinja wants to assassinate the head of a high

family in order to slow the work of the council."

"We won't do that," Otah said. "My hands aren't particularly bloodied

yet, and I'd like to keep it that way-"

"It isn't as though people are going to believe it," Sinja said. "If

you're going to carry the blame you may as well get the advantages from

doing the thing."

"It'll be easier to convince them of my innocence later if I'm actually

innocent of something," Otah said, "hut there may be other roads that

come to the same place. Is there something else that would slow the

council and doesn't involve putting holes in someone?"

Sinja frowned, his eyes shifting as if he were reading text written in

the air. He half-smiled.

"Perhaps. Let me look into that."

With a pose that ended his conversation, Sinja left. Amiit sighed and

lowered himself into one of the chairs.

"What news?" Amiit asked.

"Kamau and Vaunani are talking about merging their forces," Otah said.

"Most of the talks seem to involve someone hitting someone or throwing a

knife. The Loiya, Bentani, and (:oirah have all been quietly, and so far

as I can tell, independently, backing the Vaunyogi."

"And they all have contracts with Galt," Amiit said. "What about the

others?"

"Of the families we know? None have come out against them. And none for,

or at least not openly."

"There should be more fighting," Amiit said. "There should be struggles

and coalitions. Alliances should be forming and breaking by the moment.

It's too steady."

"Only if there was a real struggle going on. If the decision was already

made, it would look exactly like this."

"Yes. There are times I hate being right. Any word from the poet?"

Otah shook his head and sat, then stood again. Maati had gone from their

first meeting, and he'd seemed convinced. Otah had been sure at the time

that he wouldn't betray them. He was sure in his bones. He only wished

he'd had his thoughts more in order at the time. He'd been swept up in

the moment, more concerned with his lies about Liat's son than anything

else. He'd had time since to reflect, and the other worries had swarmed

out. Otah had sat up until the night candle was at its halfway mark,

listing the things he needed to consider. It hadn't lent him peace.

"It's hard, waiting," Amiit said. "You must feel like you're back up in

that tower."

"That was easier. Then at least I knew what was going to happen. I wish

I could go out. If I could be up there listening to the people

themselves ... If I spent half an evening in the right teahouse, I'd

know more than I'll learn skulking down here for days. Yes, I know.

You've the best minds of the house out watching for us. But listening to

reports isn't the same as putting my hands to something."

"I know it. More than half my work has been trying to guess the truth

out of a dozen different reports of a thing. There's a knack to it.

You'll have your practice with it."

"If this ends well," Otah said.

"Yes," Amiit agreed. "If that."

Otah filled a tin cup with water from a stone jar and sat back down. It

was warm, and a thin grit swam at the cup's bottom. He wished it were

wine and pushed the thought away. If there was any time in his life to

be sober as stone, this was it, but his unease shifted and tightened. He

looked up from his water to sec Amiit's gaze on him, his expression

quizzical.

"We have to make a plan for if we lose," Otah said. "If the Vaunyogi are

to blame and the council gives them power, they'll be able to wash away

any number of crimes. And all those families that supported them will be

invested in keeping things quiet. If it comes out that Daaya Vaunyogi

killed the Khai in order to raise up his son and half the families of

the utkhaiem took money to support it, they'll all share in the guilt.

Being in the right won't mean much then."

"There's time yet," Amiit said, but he was looking away when he said it.

"And what happens if we fail?"

"That all depends on how we fail. If we're discovered before we're ready

to move, we'll all be killed. If Adrah is named Khai, we'll at least

have a chance to slip away quietly."

"You'll take care of Kiyan?"

Amiit smiled. "I hope to see to it that you can perform that duty."

"But if not?"

"Then of course," Amiit said. "Provided I live."

The rapping came again, and the door opened on a young man. Otah

recognized him from the meetings in House Siyanti, but he couldn't

recall his name.

"The poet's come," the young man said.

Amiit rose, took a pose appropriate to the parting of friends, and left.

The young man went with him, and for a moment the door swung free, half

closing. Otah drank the last of his water, the grit rough in his throat.

Maati came in slowly, a diffidence in his body and his face, like a man

called in to hear news that might bring him good or ill or some

unimagined change that folded both inextricably together. Otah gestured

to the door, and Maati closed it.

"You sent for me?" Maati asked. "That's a dangerous habit, Otah-kvo."

"I know it, but ... Please. Sit. I've been thinking. About what we do if

things go poorly."

"If we fail?"

"I want to be ready for it, and when Kiyan and I were talking last

night, something occurred to me. Nayiit? That's his name, isn't it? The

child that you and Liat had?"

Maati's expression was cool and distant and misleading. Otah could see

the pain in it, however still the eyes.

"What of him?"

"He mustn't be my son. Whatever happens, he has to be yours."

"If you fail, you don't take your father's title-"

"If I don't take his title, and someone besides you decides he's mine,

they'll kill him to remove all doubt of the succession. And if I

succeed, Kiyan may have a son," Otah said. "And then they would someday

have to kill each other. Nayiit is your son. He has to be."

"I see," Maati said.

"I've written a letter. It looks like something I'd have sent Kiyan

before, when I was in Chaburi-Tan. It talks about the night I left

Saraykeht. It says that on the night I came back to the city, I found

the two of you together. That I walked into her cell, and you and she

were in her cot. It makes it clear that I didn't touch her, that I

couldn't have fathered a child on her. Kiyan's put it in her things. If

we have to flee, we'll take it with us and find a way for it to come to

light-we can hide it at her wayhouse, perhaps. If we're found and killed

here, it will be found with us. You have to back that story."

Maati steepled his fingers and leaned back in the chair.

"You've put it with Kiyan-cha's things to be found in case she's