Abraham Daniel - A Betrayal in Winter

wisest?" Ghiah Vaunani pounded the speaker's pulpit before him with each

word, a dry, shallow sound. Idaan almost thought she could see flecks of

foam at the corners of his mouth. "How is it that the houses of the

utkhaiem are so much like sheep that they would consent to be led by

this shepherd boy of Vaunyogi?"

It was meant, Idaan knew, to be a speech to sway the others from their

confidence, but all she heard in the words was the confusion and pain of

a boy whose plans have fallen through. He could pound and rail and

screech his questions as long as his voice held out. Idaan, standing

above the proceedings like a protective ghost, knew the answers to every

one, and she would never tell them to him.

Below her, Adrah Vaunyogi looked up, his expression calm and certain. It

had been late in the morning that she'd woken in the poet's house, later

still when she'd returned to the rooms she shared now with her husband.

He had been there, waiting for her. The night's excesses had weighed

heavy on him. They hadn't spoken-she had only called for a bath and

clean robes. When she'd cleaned herself and washed her hair, she sat at

her mirror and painted her face with all her old skill and delicacy. The

woman who looked out at her when she put down her brushes might have

been the loveliest in Machi.

Adrah had left without a word. It had been almost half a hand before she

learned that her new father, Daaya Vaunyogi, had called for the

decision, and that the houses had agreed. No one had told her to come

here, no one had asked her to lend the sight of her silent presence to

the cause. She had done it, perhaps, because Adrah had not demanded it

of her.

"We must not hurry! We must not allow sentiment to push us into a

decision that will change our city forever!"

Idaan allowed herself a smile. It would seem to most people that the

force of the story had won the day. The last daughter of the old line

would be the first mother of the new, and if a quiet structure of money

and obligation supported it, if she were really the lover of the poet a

hundred times more than the Khai, it hardly mattered. It was what the

city would see, and that was enough.

Ghiah's energy was beginning to flag. She heard his words lose their

crispness and the pounding on his table fall out of rhythm. The anger in

his voice became merely petulance, and the objections to Adrah in

particular and the Vaunyogi in general lost their force. It would have

been better, she thought, if he'd ended half a hand earlier. Still

insufficient, but less so.

The Master of "fides stood when Ghiah at last surrendered the floor. He

was an old man with a long, northern face and a deep, sonorous voice.

Idaan saw his eyes flicker up to her and then away.

"Adaut Kamau has also asked to address the council," he said, "before

the houses speak on the decision to accept Adrah Vaunyogi as the Khai

Machi......

A chorus of jeers rose from the galleries and even the council tables.

Idaan held herself still and quiet. Her feet were starting to ache, but

she didn't shift her weight. The effect she desired wouldn't be served

by showing her pleasure. Adaut Kamau rose, his face gray and pinched. He

opened his arms, but before he could speak, a bundle of rough cloth

arced from the highest gallery. A long tail of brown fluttered behind it

like a banner as it fell, and in the instant that it struck the floor,

the screaming began.

Idaan's composure broke, and she leaned forward. The men at the tables

nearest the thing waved their arms and fled, shrieking and pounding at

the air. Voices buzzed and a cloud of pale, moving smoke rose toward the

galleries.

No. The buzzing was not voices, the cloud was not smoke. These were

wasps. The bundle on the council floor had been a nest wrapped in cloth

and wax. The first of the insects buzzed past her, a glimpse of black

and yellow. She turned and ran.

Bodies filled the corridors, panic pressing them together until there

was no air, no space. People screamed and cursed-men, women, children.

"Their shrill voices mixed with the angry buzz. She was pushed from all

sides. An elbow dug into her back. The surge of the crowd pressed the

breath from her. She was suffocating, and insects filled the air above

her. Idaan felt something bite the flesh at the back of her neck like a

hot iron burning her. She screamed and tried to reach back to hat the

thing away, but there was no room to move her arm, no air. She lashed

out at whoever, whatever was near. The crowd was a single, huge, biting

beast and Idaan flailed and shrieked, her mind lost to fear and pain and

confusion.

Stepping into the open air of the street was like waking from a

nightmare. The bodies around her thinned, becoming only themselves

again. The fierce buzz of tiny wings was gone, the cries of pain and

terror replaced by the groans of the stung. People were still streaming

out of the palace, arms flapping, but others were sitting on benches or

else the ground. Servants and slaves were rushing about, tending to the

hurt and the humiliated. Idaan felt the back of her neck-three angry

humps were already forming.

"It's a poor omen," a man in the red robes of the needle wrights said.

"Something more's going on than meets the eye if someone's willing to

attack the council to keep old Kamau from talking."

"What could he have said?" the man's companion asked.

"I don't know, but you can be sure whatever it was, he'll be saying

something else tomorrow. Someone wanted him stopped. Unless this is

about Adrah Vaunyogi. It could be that someone wants him closed down."

"Then why loose the things when his critics were about to speak?"

"Good point. Perhaps ..."

Idaan moved on down the street. It was like the aftermath of some

gentle, bloodless battle. People bound bruised limbs. Slaves brought

plasters to suck out the wasps' venom. But already, all down the wide

street, the talk had turned back to the business of the council.

Her neck was burning now, but she pushed the pain aside. There would he

no decision made today. That was clear. Kaman or Vaunani had disrupted

the proceedings to get more time. It had to be that. It couldn't he

more, except that of course it could. The fear was different now, deeper

and more complex. Almost like nausea.

Adrah was leaning against the wall at the mouth of an alleyway. His

father was sitting beside him, a serving girl dabbing white paste on the

angry welts that covered his arms and face. Idaan went to her husband.

His eyes were hard and shallow as stones.

"May I speak with you, Adrah-kya?" she said softly.

Adrah looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, then at his fa

ther. He nodded toward the shadows of the alley behind him, and Idaan

followed him until the noises of the street were vague and distant.

"It was Otah," she said. "He did this. Iie knows."

"Are you about to tell me that he's planned it all from the start again?

It was a cheap, desperate trick. It won't matter, except that anyone who

doesn't like us will say we did it, and anyone who has a grudge against

our enemies will put it to them. Nothing changes."

"Who would do it?"

Adrah shook his head, impatient, and turned to walk back out into the

street and noise and light. "Anyone might have. There's no point trying

to solve every puzzle in the world."

"Don't be stupid, Adrah. Someone's acted against-"