Abraham Daniel - A Betrayal in Winter

Until now.

"There's trouble in the north," Amiit said as he tucked the last of the

opened letters into his sleeve.

"I'd heard," Otah said. "The succession's started in Machi."

"Amnat-"Ian, Machi, Cetani. All of them have something brewing. You may

need to get some heavier robes."

"I didn't think House Siyanti had much trade there," Otah said, trying

to keep the unease out of his voice.

"We don't. That doesn't mean we never will. And take your time. There's

something I'm waiting for from the west. I won't be sending you out for

a month at least, so you can have some time to spend you money. Unless ..."

The overseer's eyes narrowed. His hands took a pose of query.

"I just dislike the cold," Otah said, making a joke to cover his unease.

"I grew up in Saraykeht. It seemed like water never froze there."

"It's a hard life," Amiit said. "I can try to give the commissions to

other men, if you'd prefer."

And have them wonder why it was that I wouldn't go, Otah thought. He

took a pose of thanks that also implied rejection.

"I'll take what there is," he said. "And heavy wool robes besides."

"It really isn't so bad up there in summer," Amiit said. "It's the

winters that break your stones."

"Then by all means, send someone else in the winter."

They exchanged a few final pleasantries, and Otah left the name of

Kiyan's wayhouse as the place to send for him, if he was needed. He

spent the afternoon in a teahouse at the edge of the warehouse district,

talking with old acquaintances and trading news. He kept an ear out for

word from Machi, but there was nothing fresh. The eldest son had been

poisoned, and his remaining brothers had gone to ground. No one knew

where they were nor which had begun the traditional struggle. There were

only a few murmurs of the near-forgotten sixth son, but every time he

heard his old name, it was like hearing a distant, threatening noise.

He returned to the wayhouse as darkness began to thicken the treetops

and the streets fell into twilight, brooding. It wasn't safe, of course,

to take a commission in Machi, but neither could he safely refuse one.

Not without a reason. He knew when gossip and speculation had grown hot

enough to melt like sugar and stick. There would be a dozen reports of

Otah Mach] from all over the cities, and likely beyond as well. If even

a suggestion was made that he was not who he presented himself to be, he

ran the risk of being exposed, dragged into the constant, empty, vicious

drama of succession. He would sacrifice quite a lot to keep that from

happening. Going north, doing his work, and returning was what he would

have done, had he been the man he claimed to be. And so perhaps it was

the wiser strategy.

And also he wondered what sort of man his father was. What sort of man

his brother had been. Whether his mother had wept when she sent her boy

away to the school where the excess sons of the high familes became

poets or fell forever from grace.

As he entered the courtyard, his dark reverie was interrupted by

laughter and music from the main hall, and the scent of roast pork and

baked yams mixed with the pine resin. When he stepped in, Old Mani

slapped an earthenware bowl of wine into his hands and steered him to a

bench by the fire. There were a good number of travelers-merchants from

the great cities, farmers from the low towns, travelers each with a

story and a past and a tale to tell, if only they were asked the right

questions in the right ways.

It was later, the warm air busy with conversation, that Otah caught

sight of Kiyan across the wide hall. She had on a working woman's robes,

her hair tied back, but the expression on her face and the angle of her

body spoke of a deep contentment and satisfaction. She knew her place

was here, and she was proud of it.

Otah found himself suddenly stilled by a longing for her unlike the

simple lust that he was accustomed to. He imagined himself feeling the

same satisfaction that he saw in her. The same sense of having a place

in the world. She turned to him as if he had spoken and tilted her

head-not an actual formal pose, but nonetheless a question.

He smiled in reply. This that she offered was, he suspected, a life

worth living.

CEHMAI TYAN'S DREAMS, WHENEVER THE TIME. CAME TO RENEW HIS LIFE'S

struggle, took the same form. A normal dream-meaningless, strange, and

trivial-would shift. Something small would happen that carried a weight

of fear and dread out of all proportion. This time, he dreamt he was

walking in a street fair, trying to find a stall with food he liked,

when a young girl appeared at his side. As he saw her, his sleeping mind

had already started to rebel. She held out her hand, the palm painted

the green of summer grass, and he woke himself trying to scream.

Gasping as if he had run a race, he rose, pulled on the simple brown

robes of a poet, and walked to the main room of the house. The worked

stone walls seemed to glow with the morning light. The chill spring air

fought with the warmth from the low fire in the grate. The thick rugs

felt softer than grass against Cehmai's bare feet. And the andat was

waiting at the game table, the pieces already in place before it-black

basalt and white marble. The line of white was already marred, one stone

disk shifted forward into the field. Cehmai sat and met his opponent's

pale eyes. There was a pressure in his mind that felt the way a

windstorm sounded.

"Again?" the poet asked.

Stone-Made-Soft nodded its broad head. Cehmai Tyan considered the board,

recalled the binding-the translation that had brought the thing across

from him out of formlessness-and pushed a black stone into the empty

field of the hoard. The game began again.

The binding of Stone-Made-Soft had not been Cehmai's work. It had been

done generations earlier, by the poet Manat Doru. The game of stones had

figured deeply in the symbolism of the binding-the fluid lines of play

and the solidity of the stone markers. The competition between a spirit

seeking its freedom and the poet holding it in place. Cehmai ran his

fingertip along his edge of the board where Manat Doru's had once

touched it. He considered the advancing line of white stones and crafted

his answering line of black, touching stones that long-dead men had held

when they had played the same game against the thing that sat across

from him now. And with every victory, the binding was renewed, the andat

held more firmly in the world. It was an excellent strategy, in part

because the binding had also made StoneMade-Soft a terrible player.

The windstorm quieted, and Cehmai stretched and yawned. StoneMade-Soft

glowered down on its failing line.

"You're going to lose," Cehmai said.

"I know," the andat replied. Its voice was a deep rumble, like a distant

rockslide-another evocation of flowing stone. "Being doomed doesn't take

away from the dignity of the effort, though."

"Well said."

The andat shrugged and smiled. "One can afford to be philosophical when

losing means outliving one's opponent. This particular game? You picked

it. But there are others we play that I'm not quite so crippled at."

"I didn't pick this game. I haven't seen twenty summers, and you've seen

more than two hundred. I wasn't even a dirty thought in my grandfather's

head when you started playing this."

The andat's thick hands took a formal position of disagreement.