A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (7 page)

air with traditional songs. The palaces of the Khai loomed before

them-huge and gray with roofs pitched sharp as axe blades-and the city

and the daylight stood at their backs, tempting as sugar ghosts on

Candles Night.

"It isn't too late," the andat murmured. "Manat Doru used to do it all

the time. He'd send a note to the Khai claiming that the weight of

holding me was too heavy, and that he required his rest. We would go

down to a little teahouse by the river that had sweetcakes that they

cooked in oil and covered with sugar so fine it hung in the air if you

blew on it."

"You're lying to me," Cehmai said.

"No," the andat said. "No, it's truth. It made the Khai quite angry

sometimes, but what was he to do?"

The singing slave smiled and took a pose of greeting to them that Cehmai

returned.

"We could stop by the spring gardens that Idaan frequents. If she were

free she might be persuaded to join us," the andat said.

"And why would the daughter of the Khai tempt me more than sweetcakes?"

"She's well-read and quick in her mind," the andat said, as if the

question had been genuine. "You find her pleasant to look at, I know.

And her demeanor is often just slightly inappropriate. If memory serves,

that might outweigh even sweetcakes."

Cehmai shifted his weight from foot to foot, then, with a commanding

gesture, stopped a servant boy. The boy, seeing who he was, fell into a

pose of greeting so formal it approached obeisance.

"I need you to carry a message for one. To the Master of'I'ides."

"Yes, Cehmai-cha," the boy said.

"Tell him I have had a bout with the andat this morning, and find myself

too fatigued to conduct business. And tell him that I will reach him on

the morrow if I feel well enough."

The poet fished through his sleeves, pulled out his money pouch and took

out a length of silver. The boy's eyes widened, and his small hand

reached out toward it. Cehmai drew it back, and the boy's dark eyes

fixed on his.

"If he asks," Cehmai said, "you tell him I looked quite ill."

The boy nodded vigorously, and Cehmai pressed the silver length into his

palm. Whatever errand the boy had been on was forgotten. He vanished

into the austere gloom of the palaces.

"You're corrupting me," Cehmai said as he turned away.

"Constant struggle is the price of power," the andat said, its voice

utterly devoid of humor. "It must be a terrible burden for you. Now

let's see if we can find the girl and those sweetcakes."

"They tell me you knew my son," the Khai Machi said. The grayness of his

skin and yellow in his long, hound hair were signs of something more

than the ravages of age. The Dai-kvo was of the same generation, but

Maati saw none of his vigor and strength here. The sick man took a pose

of command. "Tell me of him."

Maati stared down at the woven reed mat on which he knelt and fought to

push away the weariness of his travels. It had been days since he had

bathed, his robes were not fresh, and his mind was uneasy. But he was

here, called to this meeting or possibly this confrontation, even before

his bags had been unpacked. He could feel the attention of the servants

of the Khai-there were perhaps a dozen in the room. Some slaves, others

attendants from among the highest ranks of the utkhaiem. The audience

might be called private, but it was too well attended for Maati's

comfort. The choice was not his. He took the bowl of heated wine he had

been given, sipped it, and spoke.

"Otah-kvo and I met at the school, most high. He already wore the black

robes awarded to those who had passed the first test when I met him. I

... I was the occasion of his passing the second."

The Khai Machi nodded. It was an almost inhumanly graceful movement,

like a bird or some finely wrought mechanism. Maati took it as a sign

that he should continue.

"He came to me after that. He ... he taught me things about the school

and about myself. He was, I think, the best teacher I have known. I

doubt I would have been chosen to study with the Dai-kvo if it hadn't

been for him. But then he refused the chance to become a poet."

"And the brand," the Khai said. "He refused the brand. Perhaps he had

ambitions even then."

He was a boy, and angry, Maati thought. He had beaten Tahi-kvo and

Milah-kvo on his own terms. He'd refused their honors. Of course he

didn't accept disgrace.

The utkhaiem high enough to express an opinion nodded among themselves

as if a decision made in heat by a boy not yet twelve might explain a

murder two decades later. Maati let it pass.

"I met him again in Saraykeht," Maati said. "I had gone there to study

under Heshai-kvo and the andat Removing-the-Part-ThatContinues. Otah-kvo

was living under an assumed name at the time, working as a laborer on

the docks."

"And you recognized him?"

"I did," Maati said.

"And yet you did not denounce him?" The old man's voice wasn't angry.

Maati had expected anger. Outrage, perhaps. What he heard instead was

gentler and more penetrating. When he looked up, the redrimmed eyes were

very much like Otah-kvo's. Even if he had not known before, those eyes

would have told him that this man was Otah's father. He wondered briefly

what his own father's eyes had looked like and whether his resembled

them, then forced his mind back to the matter at hand.

"I did not, most high. I regarded him as my teacher, and ... and I

wished to understand the choices he had made. We became friends for a

time. Before the death of the poet took me from the city."

"And do you call him your teacher still? You call him Otah-kvo. That is

a title for a teacher, is it not?"

Maati blushed. He hadn't realized until then that he was doing it.

"An old habit, most high. I was sixteen when I last saw Otah-cha. I'm

thirty now. It has been almost half my life since I have spoken with

him. I think of him as a person I once knew who told me some things I

found of use at the time," Maati said, and sensing that the falsehood of

those words might be clear, he continued with some that were more nearly

true. "My loyalty is to the Dai-kvo."

"That is good," the Khai Machi said. "Tell me, then. How will you

conduct this examination of my city?"

"I am here to study the library of Machi," Maati said. "I will spend my

mornings there, most high. After midday and in the evenings I will move

through the city. I think ... I think that if Otah-kvo is here it will

not be difficult to find him."

The gray, thin lips smiled. Maati thought there was condescension in

them. Perhaps even pity. He felt a blush rise in his cheeks, but kept

his face still. He knew how he must appear to the Khai's weary eyes, but

he would not flinch and confirm the man's worst suspicions. He swallowed

once to loosen his throat.

"You have great faith in yourself," the Khai Machi said. "You come to my

city for the first time. You know nothing of its streets and tunnels,

little of its history, and you say that finding my missing son will be

easy for you."

"Rather, most high, I will make it easy for him to find me."

It might have been his imagination-he knew from experience that he was

prone to see his own fears and hopes in other people instead of what was

truly there-but Maati thought there might have been a flicker of

approval on the old man's face.

"You will report to me," the Khai said. "When you find him, you will

come to me before anyone else, and I will send word to the Dai-kvo."

"As you command, most high," Maati lied. He had said that his loyalty

lay with the Dal-hvo, but there was no advantage he could see to

explaining all that meant here and now.

The meeting continued for a short time. The Khai seemed as exhausted by

it as Maati himself was. Afterward, a servant girl led him to his

apartments within the palaces. Night was already falling as he closed

the door, truly alone for the first time in weeks. The journey from his

home in the Dai-kvo's village wasn't the half-season's trek he would

have had from Saraykeht, but it was enough, and Maati didn't enjoy the

constant companionship of strangers on the road.

A fire had been lit in the grate, and warm tea and cakes of honeyed

almonds waited for him at a lacquered table. He lowered himself into the

chair, rested his feet, and closed his eyes. Being here, in this place,

had a sense of unreality to it. To have been entrusted with anything of

importance was a surprise after his loss of status. The thought stung,

but he forced himself to turn in toward it. He had lost a great deal of

the Dai-kvo's trust between his failure in Saraykeht and his refusal to

disavow Liat, the girl who had once loved Otah-kvo but left both him and

the fallen city to be with Maati, when it became clear she was bearing

his child. If there had been time between the two, perhaps it might have

been different. One scandal on the heels of the other, though, had been

too much. Or so he told himself. It was what he wanted to believe.

A scratch at the door roused him from his bitter reminiscences. He

straightened his robes and ran a hand through his hair before he spoke.

"Come in."

The door slid open and a young man of perhaps twenty summers wearing the

brown robes of a poet stepped in and took a pose of greeting. Maati

returned it as he considered Cehmai Tyan, poet of Mach]. The broad

shoulders, the open face. Here, Maati thought, is what I should have

been. A talented boy poet who studied under a master while young enough

to have his mind molded to the right shape. And when the time came, he

had taken that burden on himself for the sake of his city. As I should

have done.

"I only just heard you'd arrived," Cehmai Tyan said. "I left orders at

the main road, but apparently they don't think as much of me as they

pretend."

There was a light humor in his voice and manner. As if this were a game,

as if he were a person whom anyone in Machi-or in the worldcould truly

treat with less than total respect. He held the power to soften stone-it

was the concept, the essential idea, that Manat I)oru had translated

into a human form all those generations ago. This widefaced, handsome

boy could collapse every bridge, level every mountain. The great towers

of Machi could turn to a river of stone, fast-flowing and dense as

quicksilver, which would lay the city to ruin at his order. And he made

light of being ignored as if he were junior clerk in some harbormaster's

house. Maati couldn't tell if it was an affectation or if the poet was

really so utterly naive.

"The Khai left orders as well," Maati said.

"Ah, well. Nothing to be done about that, then. I trust everything is

acceptable with your apartments?"

"I ... I really don't know. I haven't really looked around yet. 'Ibo

busy sitting on something that doesn't move, I suppose. I close my eyes,

and I feel like I'm still jouncing around on the back of a cart."

The young poet laughed, a warm sound that seemed full of selfconfidence

and summer light. Maati felt himself smiling thinly and mentally

reproved himself for being ungracious. Cehmai dropped onto a cushion

beside the fire, legs crossed under him.

"I wanted to speak with you before we started working in the morning,"

Cehmai said. "The man who guards the library is ... he's a good man, but

he's protective of the place. I think he looks on it as his trust to the

ages."

"Like a poet," Maati said.

Cehmai grinned. "I suppose so. Only he'd have made a terrible poet. He's

puffed himself three times larger than anyone else just by having the

keys to a building full of papers in languages only half a dozen people

in the city can read. If he'd ever been given something important to do,

he'd have popped like a tick. Anyway, I thought it might ease things if

I came along with you for the first few days. Once Baarath is used to

you, I expect he'll be fine. It's that first negotiation that's tricky."

Maati took a pose that offered gratitude, but was also a refusal.

"There's no call to take you from your duties," he said. "I expect the

order of the Khai will suffice."

"I wouldn't only be doing it as a favor to you, Maati-kvo," Cehmai said.

The honorific took Maati by surprise, but the young poet didn't seem to

notice his reaction. "Baarath is a friend of mine, and sometimes you