Abraham Daniel - A Betrayal in Winter

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.

" "Iani-kya said that if things went as you'd expected with the Daikvo

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 hack 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."

"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.

He left the bathhouse, following a broad, low tunnel to the east where

it would join a larger passage, one of the midwinter roads, which in

turn ran beneath the trees outside the poet's house before it broke into