Abraham Daniel - A Betrayal in Winter

keep the sun from rising. And how are you feeling, most high? Can you

get up? No? That's as well, then. I was half-worried I might have to

pour more of this down you. Undiluted, it tastes less of plums."

The assassin rose and walked to the bed. There was a hitch in his step,

as if his hip ached. He is old as my father, but Biitrah's mind was too

dim to see any humor in the repeated thought. Oshai sat on the bed and

pulled the blankets over his lap.

"No hurry, most high. I can wait quite comfortably here. Die at your

leisure."

Biitrah, trying to gather his strength for one last movement, one last

attack, closed his eyes but then found he lacked the will even to open

them again. The wooden floor beneath him seemed utterly comfortable; his

limbs were heavy and slack. There were worse poisons than this. He could

at least thank his brothers for that.

It was only Hiami he would miss. And the treadmill pumps. It would have

been good to finish his design work on them. He would have liked to have

finished more of his work. His last thought that held any real coherence

was that he wished he'd gotten to live just a little while more. He did

not know it when his killer snuffed the candle.

HIAMI HAD THE SEAT OF HONOR AT THE FUNERAL, ON THE DAIS WITH THE Khai

Machi. The temple was full, bodies pressed together on their cushions as

the priest intoned the rites of the dead and struck his silver chimes.

The high walls and distant wooden ceiling held the heat poorly; braziers

had been set in among the mourners. Hiami wore pale mourning robes and

looked at her hands. It was not her first funeral. She had been present

for her father's death, before her marriage into the highest family of

Machi. She had only been a girl then. And through the years, when a

member of the utkhaiem had passed on, she had sometimes sat and heard

these same words spoken over some other body, listened to the roar of

some other pyre.

This was the first time it had seemed meaningless. Her grief was real

and profound, and this flock of gawkers and gossips had no relation to

it. The Khai Machi's hand touched her own, and she glanced up into his

eyes. His hair, what was left of it, had gone white years before. He

smiled gently and took a pose that expressed his sympathy. He was

graceful as an actor-his poses inhumanly smooth and precise.

Biitrah would have been a terrible Khai Machi, she thought. He would

never have put in enough practice to hold himself that well.

And the tears she had suffered through the last days remembered her. Her

once-father's hand trembled as if uneased by the presence of genuine

feeling. He leaned hack into his black lacquer seat and motioned for a

servant to bring him a bowl of tea. At the front of the temple, the

priest chanted on.

When the last word was sung, the last chime struck, bearers came and

lifted her husband's body. The slow procession began, moving through the

streets to the pealing of hand bells and the wailing of flutes. In the

central square, the pyre was ready-great logs of pine stinking of oil

and within them a bed of hard, hot-burning coal from the mines. Biitrah

was lifted onto it and a shroud of tight metal links placed over him to

hide the sight when his skin peeled from his noble bones. It was her

place now to step forward and begin the conflagration. She moved slowly.

All eyes were on her, and she knew what they were thinking. Poor woman,

to have been left alone. Shallow sympathies that would have been

extended as readily to the wives of the Khai Machi's other sons, had

their men been under the metal blanket. And in those voices she heard

also the excitement, dread, and anticipation that these bloody paroxysms

carried. When the empty, insincere words of comfort were said, in the

same breath they would move on to speculations. Both of Biitrah's

brothers had vanished. Danat, it was said, had gone to the mountains

where he had a secret force at the ready, or to Lachi in the south to

gather allies, or to ruined Saraykeht to hire mercenaries, or to the

Dai-kvo to seek the aid of the poets and the andat. Or he was in the

temple, gathering his strength, or he was cowering in the basement of a

low town comfort house, too afraid to come to the streets. And every

story they told of him, they also told of Kaiin.

It had begun. At long last, after years of waiting, one of the men who

might one day be Khai Machi had made his move. The city waited for the

drama to unfold. This pyre was only the opening for them, the first

notes of some new song that would make this seem to be about something

honorable, comprehensible, and right.

Hiami took a pose of thanks and accepted a lit torch from the

firekeeper. She stepped to the oil-soaked wood. A dove fluttered past

her, landed briefly on her husband's chest, and then flew away again.

She felt herself smile to see it go. She touched the flame to the small

kindling and stepped back as the fire took. She waited there as long as

tradition required and then went back to the Second Palace. Let the

others watch the ashes. "Their song might be starting, but hers here had

ended.

Her servant girl was waiting for her at the entrance of the palace's

great hall. She held a pose of welcome that suggested there was some

news waiting for her. Hiami was tempted to ignore the nuance, to walk

through to her chambers and her fire and bed and the knotwork scarf that

was now nearly finished. But there were tear-streaks on the girl's

cheeks, and who was Hiami, after all, to treat a suffering child

unkindly? She stopped and took a pose that accepted the welcome before

shifting to one of query.

"Idaan Machi," the servant girl said. "She is waiting for you in the

summer garden."

Hiami shifted to a pose of thanks, straightened her sleeves, and walked

quietly down the palace halls. The sliding stone doors to the garden

were open, a breeze too cold to be comfortable moving through the hall.

And there, by an empty fountain surrounded by bare-limbed cherry trees,

sat her once-sister. If her formal robes were not the pale of mourning,

her countenance contradicted them: reddened eyes, paint and powder

washed away. She was a plain enough woman without them, and Hiami felt

sorry for her. It was one thing to expect the violence. It was another

to see it done.

She stepped forward, her hands in a pose of greeting. Idaan started to

her feet as if she'd been caught doing something illicit, but then she

took an answering pose. Hiami sat on the fountain's stone lip, and Idaan

lowered herself, sitting on the ground at her feet as a child might.

"Your things are packed," Idaan said.

"Yes. I'll leave tomorrow. It's weeks to "Ian-Sadar. It won't be so

hard, I think. One of my daughters is married there, and my brother is a

decent man. They'll treat me well while I make arrangements for my own

apartments."

"It isn't fair," Idaan said. "They shouldn't force you out like this.

You belong here."

"It's tradition," Hiami said with a pose of surrender. "Fairness has

nothing to do with it. My husband is dead. I will return to my father's

house, whoever's actually sitting in his chair these days."

"If you were a merchant, no one would require anything like that of you.

You could go where you pleased, and do what you wanted."

"True, but I'm not, am I? I was born to the utkhaiem. You were horn to a

Khai."