Abraham Daniel - A Betrayal in Winter

Back in the palaces, Kiyan was waiting for him. And Nlaati. They were to

meet and talk over the strategies for searching the library. And other

things, he supposed. And there was a petition from the silversmiths to

reduce the tax paid to the city on work that was sold in the nearby low

towns. And the head of the Saya wanted to discuss a proper match for his

daughter, with the strong and awkward implication that the Khai Machi

might want to consider who his second wife might be. But for now, all

the voices were gone, even the ones he loved, and the solitude was sweet.

He stopped a little under two-thirds of the way to the top, his legs

aching but his face warm. He wrestled open the inner sky doors and then

unlatched and pushed open the outer. The city was splayed out beneath

him, dark stone peeking out from under the snow, plumes of smoke rising

as always from the forges. TO the south, a hundred crows rose from the

branches of dead trees, circled briefly, and took their perches again.

And beyond that, to the east, he saw the distant forms he'd come to see:

a sledge with a small team and two figures on it, speeding out across

the snowfields. He sat, letting his feet dangle out over the rooftops,

and watched until they were only a tiny black mark in the distance. And

then as they vanished into the white.

Daniel Abraham's first published novel, A Shadow" in Summer, is the

first volume of the Long Price Quartet. He has had stories published in

the Vanishing Acts, Bones of the World, and TheDart anthologies, and has

been included in Gardner Dozois's Years Best Science Fiction anthology

as well. His story "Flat Diane" won the International Horror Guild award

for mid-length fiction.

He is currently working on the Long Price Quartet, the third volume of

which, An Autumn War, will he published in 2008. He lives in New Mexico

with his wife and daughter.