Abraham Daniel - A Betrayal in Winter

"We have always been playing the same game, you and I. If you were

someone else at the start, it's your problem."

They never started speaking until the game's end was a forgone

conclusion. That Stone-Made-Soft was willing to speak was as much a sign

that this particular battle was drawing to its end as the silence in

Cehmai's mind. But the last piece had not yet been pushed when a

pounding came on the door.

"I know you're in there! Wake up!"

Cehmai sighed at the familiar voice and rose. The andat brooded over the

board, searching, the poet knew, for some way to win a lost game. He

clapped a hand on the andat's shoulder as he passed by it toward the door.

"I won't have it," the stout, red-checked man said when the opened door

revealed him. He wore brilliant blue robes shot with rich yellow and a

copper tore of office. Not for the first time, Cehmai thought Baarath

would have been better placed in life as the overseer of a merchant

house or farm than within the utkhaiem. "You poets think that because

you have the andat, you have everything. Well, I've come to tell you it

isn't so."

Cehmai took a pose of welcome and stepped back, allowing the man in.

"I've been expecting you, Baarath. I don't suppose you've brought any

food with you?"

"You have servants for that," Baarath said, striding into the wide room,

taking in the shelves of books and scrolls and maps with his customary

moment of lust. The andat looked up at him with its queer, slow smile,

and then turned back to the board.

"I don't like having strange people wandering though my library,"

Baarath said.

"Well, let's hope our friend from the Dai-kvo won't be strange."

"You are an annoying, contrary man. He's going to come in here and root

through the place. Some of those volumes are very old, you know. They

won't stand mishandling."

"Perhaps you should make copies of them."

"I am making copies. But it's not a fast process, you know. It takes a

great deal of time and patience. You can't just grab some half-trained

scribes off the street corners and set them to copying the great hooks

of the Empire."

"You also can't do the whole job by yourself, Baarath. No matter how

much you want to."

The librarian scowled at him, but there was a playfulness in the man's

eyes. The andat shifted a white marker forward and the noise in Cehmai's

head murmured. It had been a good move.

"You hold an abstract thought in human form and make it play tricks, and

you tell me what's not possible? Please. I've come to offer a trade. If

you'll-"

"Wait," Cehmai said.

"If you'll just-"

"Baarath, you can be quiet or you can leave. I have to finish this."

Stone-Made-Soft sighed as Cehmai took his seat again. The white stone

had opened a line that had until now been closed. It wasn't one he'd

seen the andat play before, and Cehmai scowled. The game was still over,

there was no way for the andat to clear his files and pour the white

markers to their target squares before Cehmai's dark stones had reached

their goal. But it would be harder now than it had been before the

librarian came. Cehmai played through the next five moves in his mind,

his fingertips twitching. Then, decisively, he pushed the black marker

forward that would block the andat's fastest course.

"Nice move," the librarian said.

"What did you want with me? Could you just say it so I can refuse and

get about my day?"

"I was going to say that I will give this little poet-let of the

Dai-kvo's full access if you'll let me include your collection here. It

really makes more sense to have all the books and scrolls cataloged

together."

Cehmai took a pose of thanks.

"No," he said. "Now go away. I have to do this."

"Be reasonable! If I choose-"

"First, you will give Maati Vaupathai full access because the Dai-kvo

and the Khai Machi tell you to. You have nothing to bargain with.

Second, I'm not the one who gave the orders, nor was I consulted on

them. If you want barley, you don't negotiate with a silversmith, do

you? So don't come here asking concessions for something that I'm not

involved with."

A flash of genuine hurt crossed Baarath's face. Stone-Made-Soft touched

a white marker, then pulled back its hand and sank into thought again.

Baarath took a pose of apology, his stance icy with its formality.

"Don't," Cehmai said. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to he a farmer's wife

about the thing, but you've come at a difficult time."

"Of course. This children's game upon which all our fates depend. No,

no. Stay. I'll see myself out."

"We can talk later," Cehmai said to the librarian's hack.

The door closed and left Cchmai and his captive, or his ward, or his

other self, alone together.

"He isn't a very good man," Stone-Made-Soft rumbled.

"No, he's not," Cehmai agreed. "But friendship falls where it falls. And

may the gods keep us from a world where only the people who deserve love

get it."

"Well said," the andat replied, and pushed forward the white stone

Cehmai knew it would.

The game ended quickly after that. Cehmai ate a breakfast of roast lamb

and boiled eggs while Stone-Made-Soft put away the game pieces and then

sat, warming its huge hands by the fire. There was a long day before

them, and after the morning's struggle, Cchmai was dreading it. They

were promised to go to the potter's works before midday. A load of

granite had come from the quarries and required his services before it

could be shaped into the bowls and vases for which Machi was famed.

After midday, he was needed for a meeting with the engineers to consider

the plans for House Pirnat's silver mine. The Khai Machi's engi neers

were concerned, he knew, that using the andat to soften the stone around

a newfound seam of ore would weaken the structure of the mine. House

Pirnat's overseer thought it worth the risk. It would be like sitting in

a child's garden during a mud fight, but it had to be done. Just

thinking of it made him tired.

"You could tell them I'd nearly won," the andat said. "Say you were too

shaken to appear."

"Yes, because my life would be so much better if they were all afraid of

turning into a second Saraykeht."

"I'm only saying that you have options," the andat replied, smiling into

the fire.

The poet's house was set apart from the palaces of the Khai and the

compounds of the utkhaiem. It was a broad, low building with thick stone

walls nestled behind a small and artificial wood of sculpted oaks. The

snows of winter had been reduced to gray-white mounds and frozen pools

in the deep shadows where sunlight would not touch them. Cehmai and the

andat strode west, toward the palaces and the Great "rower, tallest of

all the inhuman buildings of Machi. It was a relief to walk along

streets in sunlight rather than the deep network of tunnels to which the

city resorted when the drifts were too high to allow even the snow doors

to open. Brief days, and cold profound enough to crack stone, were the

hallmarks of the Machi winter. The terrible urge to he out in the

gardens and streets marked her spring. The men and women Cehmai passed

were all dressed in warm robes, but their faces were bare and their

heads uncovered. The pair paused by a firekeeper at his kiln. A singing

slave stood near enough to warm her hands at the fire as she filled the

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