Read Shadow and Betrayal Online
Authors: Daniel Abraham
Shadow and Betrayal (99 page)
The city seemed to have nothing in common with the one he had known, and still there was a beauty to it. It was stark and terrible, and the wide sky forgave it nothing, but he could imagine how someone might boast they lived here in the midst of the desolation and carved out a life worth living. Only the verdigris domes over the forges were free from snow, the fires never slackening enough to bow before the winter.
On the way to the palace of the Khai Machi, his guide passed what had once been the palaces of the Vaunyogi. The broken walls jutted from the snow. He thought he could still make out scorch marks on the stones. There were no bodies now. The Vaunyogi were broken, and those who were not dead had scattered into the world where they would be wise never to mention their true names again. The bones of their house made Maati shiver in a way that had little to do with the biting air. Otah-kvo had done this, or ordered it done. It had been necessary, or so Maati told himself. He couldn’t think of another path, and still the ruins disturbed him.
He entered the offices of the Master of Tides through the snow door, tramping up the slick painted wood of the ramp and into rooms he’d known in summer. When he had taken off his outer cloaks and let himself be led to the chamber where the servants of the Khai set schedules, Piyun See, the assistant to the Master of Tides, fell at once into a pose of welcome.
‘It’s a pleasure to have you back,’ he said. ‘The Khai mentioned that we should expect you. But he had thought you might be here earlier.’
Though the air in the offices felt warm, the man’s breath was still visible. Maati’s ideas of cold had changed during his journey.
‘The way was slower than I’d hoped,’ Maati said.
‘The most high is in meetings and cannot be disturbed, but he has left us with instructions for your accommodation . . .’
Maati felt a pang of disappointment. It was naïve of him to expect Otah-kvo to be there to greet him, and yet he had to admit that he had harbored hopes.
‘Whatever is most convenient will, I’m sure, suffice,’ Maati said.
‘Don’t bother yourself, Piyun-cha,’ a woman’s voice said from behind them. ‘I can see to this.’
The changes of the previous months had left Kiyan untransformed. Her hair - black with its lacing of white - was tied back in a simple knot that seemed out of place above the ornate robes of a Khai’s wife. Her smile didn’t have the chill formal distance or false pleasure of a player at court intrigue. When she embraced him, her hair smelled of lavender oil. For all her position and the incarcerating power of being her husband’s wife she would, Maati thought, still look at home at a wayhouse watching over guests or haggling with the farmers, bakers and butchers at the market.
But perhaps that was only his own wish that things could change and still be the same.
‘You look tired,’ she said, leading him down a long flight of smooth-worn granite stairs. ‘How long have you been traveling?’
‘I left the Dai-kvo before Candles Night,’ he said.
‘You still dress like a poet,’ she said, gently. So she knew.
‘The Dai-kvo agreed to Otah-kvo’s proposal. I’m not formally removed so long as I don’t appear in public ceremony in my poet’s robes. I’m not permitted to live in a poet’s house or present myself in any way as carrying the authority of the Dai-kvo.’
‘And Cehmai?’
‘Cehmai’s had some admonishing letters, I think. But I took the worst of it. It was easier that way, and I don’t mind so much as I might have when I was younger.’
The doors at the stairway’s end stood open. They had descended below the level of the street, even under its burden of snow, and the candlelit tunnel before them seemed almost hot. His breath had stopped ghosting.
‘I’m sorry for that,’ Kiyan said, leading the way. ‘It seems wrong that you should suffer for doing the right thing.’
‘I’m not suffering,’ Maati said. ‘Not as badly as I did when I was in the Dai-kvo’s good graces, at least. The more I see of the honors I was offered, the better I feel about having lost them.’
She chuckled.
The passageway glowed gold. A high, vaulted arch above them was covered with tiles that reflected the light back into the air where it hung like pollen. An echo of song came from a great distance, the words blurred by the tunnels. And then the melody was joined and the whispering voices of the gods seemed to touch the air. Maati’s steps faltered, and Kiyan turned to look at him and then followed his gaze into the air.
‘The winter choir,’ she said. Her voice was suddenly smaller, sharing his awe. ‘There are a lot of idle hands in the colder seasons. Music becomes more important, I think, when things are cold and dark.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Maati said. ‘I knew there were tunnels, but . . .’
‘It’s another city,’ Kiyan said. ‘Think how I feel. I didn’t know half the depth of it until I was supposed to help rule it.’
They began walking again, their words rising above the song.
‘How is he?’
‘Not idle,’ she said with both amusement and melancholy in her tone. ‘He’s been working until he’s half exhausted every day and then getting up early. There’s a thousand critical things that he’s called on to do, and a thousand more that are nothing more than ceremony that only swallow his time. It makes him cranky. He’ll be angry that he wasn’t free to meet you, but it will help that I could. That’s the best I can do these days. Make sure that the things most important to him are seen to while he’s off making sure the city doesn’t fall into chaos.’
‘I’d think it would be able to grind on without him for a time just from habit,’ Maati said.
‘Politics takes all the time you can give it,’ Kiyan said with distaste.
They walked through a wide gate and into a great subterranean hall. A thousand lanterns glowed, their white light filling the air. Men and women and children passed on their various errands, the gabble of voices like a brook over stones. A beggar sang, his lacquered begging box on the stone floor before him. Maati saw a waterseller’s cart, and another vendor selling waxpaper cones of rice and fish. It was almost like a street, almost like a wide pavilion with a canopy of stone.
‘Your rooms?’ Kiyan asked. ‘Or would you rather have something to eat first? There’s not much fresh this deep into winter, but I’ve found a woman who makes a hot barley soup that’s simply lovely.’
‘Actually . . . could I meet the child?’
Kiyan’s smile seemed to have a light of its own.
‘Can you imagine a world where I said no?’ she asked.
She nodded to a branching in the wide hall, and led him west, deeper into the underground. The change was subtle, moving from the public space of the street to the private tunnels beneath the palaces. There were gates, it was true, but they were open. There were armsmen here and there, but only a few of them. And yet soon all the people they passed wore the robes of servants or slaves of the Khai, and they had entered the Khai’s private domain. Kiyan stopped at a thin oak door, pulled it open and gestured him to follow her up the staircase it revealed.
The nursery was high above the tunnel-world. The air was kept warm by a roaring fire in a stone grate, but the light was from the sun. The nurse, a young girl, no more than sixteen summers, sat dozing in her chair while the baby cooed and gurgled to itself. Maati stepped to the edge of the crib, and the child quieted, staring up at him with distrustful eyes, and then breaking into a wide toothless grin.
‘She’s only just started sleeping through the night,’ Kiyan said, speaking softly to keep from waking her servant. ‘And there were two weeks of colic that were close to hell. I don’t know what we’d have done with her if it hadn’t been for the nurses. She’s been doing better now. We’ve named her Eiah.’
She reached down, scooped up her daughter, and settled her in her arms. It was a movement so natural as to seem inevitable. Maati remembered having done it himself, many years ago, in a very different place. Kiyan seemed almost to know his mind.
‘ ’Tani-kya said that if things went as you’d expected with the Dai-kvo you were thinking of seeking out your son. Nayiit?’
‘Nayiit,’ Maati agreed. ‘I sent letters to the places I knew to send them, but I haven’t heard back yet. I may not. But I’ll be here, in one place. If he and his mother want to find me, it won’t be difficult.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kiyan said. ‘Not that it will be easy for them, only that . . .’
Maati only shook his head. In Kiyan’s arms, the tiny girl with deep brown eyes grasped at air and gurgled, unaware, he knew, of all the blood and pain and betrayal that had gone into bringing her here.
‘She’s beautiful,’ he said.
‘Be reasonable!’
Cehmai lay back in his bath. Beside him, Stone-Made-Soft had put its feet into the warm water and was gazing placidly out into the thick salt-scented steam that rose from the water and filled the bathhouse. Against the far wall, a group of young women was rising from the pool and walking back toward the dressing rooms, leaving a servant to fish the floating trays with their teapots and bowls from the small, bobbing waves. Baarath slapped the water impatiently.
‘You can look at naked girls later,’ he said. ‘This is important. If Maati-cha’s come back to help me catalog the library . . .’
‘He might quibble on “help you,”’ Cehmai said, and might as well have kept silent.
‘. . . then it’s clearly of critical importance to the Dai-kvo. I’ve heard the rumors. I know the Vaunyogi were looking to sell the library to some Westlands warden. That’s why Maati was sent here in the first place.’
Cehmai closed his eyes. Rumors and speculation had run wild, and perhaps it would have been a kindness to correct Baarath. But Otah had asked him to keep silent, and the letters from the Dai-kvo had encouraged this strategy. If it were known what the Galts had done, what they had intended to do, it would mean the destruction of their nation: cities drowned, innocent men and women and children starved when a quiet word heavy with threat might suffice instead. There was always recourse to destruction. So long as one poet held one andat, they could find a path to ruin. So instead of slaughtering countless innocents, Cehmai put up with the excited, inaccurate speculation of his old friend and waited for the days to grow longer and warmer.
‘If the collection is split,’ Baraath went on, his voice dropping to a rough whisper, ‘we might overlook the very thing that made the library so important. You have to move your collection over to the library, or terrible things might happen.’
‘Terrible things like what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Baraath said, his whisper turning peevish. ‘That’s what Maati-cha and I are trying to find out.’
‘Well, once you’ve gone through your collection and found nothing, the two of you can come to the poet’s house and look through mine.’
‘That would take years!’
‘I’ll make sure they’re well kept until then,’ Cehmai said. ‘Have you spoken with the Khai about his private collection?’
‘Who’d want that? It’s all copies of contracts and agreements from five generations ago. Unless it’s the most obscure etiquette ever to see sunlight. Anyone who wants that, let them have it. You’ve got all the
good
books. The philosophy, the grammars, the studies of the andat.’
good
books. The philosophy, the grammars, the studies of the andat.’
‘It’s a hard life you lead,’ Cehmai said. ‘So close and still, no.’
‘You are an arrogant prig,’ Baraath said. ‘Everyone knows it, but I’m the only man in the city with the courage to say it to your face. Arrogant and selfish and small-souled.’
‘Well, perhaps it’s not too much to go over to the library. It isn’t as if it was that long a walk.’
Baraath’s face brightened for a moment, then, as the insincerity of the comment came clear, squeezed as if he’d taken a bite of fresh lemon. With a sound like an angry duck, he rose up and stalked from the baths and into the fog.
‘He’s a terrible person,’ the andat said.
‘I know. But he’s a friend of mine.’
‘And terrible people need friends as much as good ones do,’ the andat said, its tone an agreement. ‘More, perhaps.’
‘Which of us are you thinking of?’
Stone-Made-Soft didn’t speak. Cehmai let the warmth of the water slip into his flesh for a moment longer. Then he too rose, the water sluicing from him, and walked to the dressing rooms. He dried himself with a fresh cloth and found his robes, newly cleaned and dry. The other men in the room spoke among themselves, joked, laughed. Cehmai was more aware than usual of the formal poses with which they greeted him. In this quiet season, there was little work for him, and the days were filled with music and singing, gatherings organized by the young men and women of the utkhaiem. But all the cakes tasted slightly of ashes, and the brightest songs seemed tinny and false. Somewhere in the city, under her brother’s watchful eye, the woman he’d sworn to protect was locked away. He adjusted his robes in the mirror, smiled as if trying the expression like a party mask, and for the thousandth time noticed the weight of his decision.
Other books
Three Girls And A Leading Man by Rachel Schurig
Night of the Jaguar by Joe Gannon
30 Days by Christine d'Abo
The Turtle of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye
Swap by Jenesi Ash
A Handbook to Luck by Cristina Garcia
The Devil's Eye by Ian Townsend
Knight Errant by Rue Allyn
Expose (Billionaire Series) by Harper, Evelyn
The Best School Year Ever by Barbara Robinson
