A Betrayal in Winter (The Long Price Quartet Book 2) Read online

  Idaan waited to hear her father accept, to hear the ritual complete itself. The silence stretched, profound and horrible. Idaan felt her heart begin to race, fear rising up in her blood. Something had happened; Oshai had broken. Idaan looked up, prepared to see armsmen descending upon them. But instead, she saw her father bent close to Adrah—so close their foreheads almost touched. There were tears on the sunken cheeks. The formal reserve and dignity were gone. The Khai was gone. All that remained was a desperately ill man in robes too gaudy for a sick house.

  “Will you make her happy? I would have one of my children be happy.”

  Adrah’s mouth opened and shut like a fish pulled from the river. Idaan closed her eyes, but she could not stop her ears.

  “I … most high, I will do … Yes. I will.”

  Idaan felt her own tears forcing their way into her eyes like traitors. She bit her lip until she tasted blood.

  “Let it be known,” her father said, “that I have authorized this match. Let the blood of the Khai Machi enter again into House Vaunyogi. And let all who honor the Khaiem respect this transfer and join in our celebration. The ceremony shall be held in thirty-four days, on the opening of summer.”

  The whisperers began, but the hush of their voices was quickly drowned out by cheering and applause. Idaan raised her head and smiled as if the smears on her cheeks were from joy. Every man and woman in the chamber had risen. She turned to them and took a pose of thanks, and then to Adrah and his father, and then, finally, to her own. He was still weeping—a show of weakness that the gossips and backbiters of the court would be chewing over for days. But his smile was so genuine, so hopeful, that Idaan could do nothing but love him and taste ashes.

  “Thank you, most high,” she said. He bowed his head, as if honoring her.

  The Khai Machi left the dais first, attended by servants who lifted him into his litter and others who bore him away. Then Idaan herself retreated. The others would escape according to the status of their families and their standing within them. It would be a hand and a half before the chamber was completely empty. Idaan strode along white marble corridors to a retiring room, sent away her servants, locked the door and sobbed until her heart was empty again. Then she washed her face in cool water from her basin, arrayed her kohl and blush, whitener and lip rouge before a mirror and carefully made a mask of her skin.

  There would be talk, of course. Even without her father’s unseemly display of humanity—and she hated them all for the laughter and amusement that would occasion—there would be enough to pick apart. The strength of Adrah’s voice would be commented on. The way in which he carried himself. Even his unease when the ritual slipped from its form might speak well of him in people’s memory. It was a small thing, of course. In the minds of the witnesses, it had been clear that she would be the daughter of a Khai only very briefly and merely sister to the Khai was a lower status. House Vaunyogi was buying something whose value would soon drop. It must be a love match, they would say, and pretend to be touched. She wondered if it wouldn’t be better—cleaner—to simply burn the city and everyone in it, herself included. Let a hot iron clean and seal it like searing a wound. It was a passing fantasy, but it gave her comfort.

  A knock came, and she arranged her robes before unlocking the door. Adrah stood, his house servants behind him. He had not changed out of his ritual robes.

  “Idaan-kya,” he said, “I was hoping you might come have a bowl of tea with my father.”

  “I have gifts to present to your honored father,” Idaan said, gesturing to a cube of cloth and bright paper the size of a boar. It was already lashed to a carrying pole. “It is too much for me. Might I have the aid of your servants?”

  Two servants had already moved forward to lift the burden.

  Adrah took a pose of command, and she answered with one of acquiescence, following him as he turned and left. They walked side by side through the gardens, not touching. Idaan could feel the gazes of the people they passed, and kept her expression demure. By the time they reached the palaces of the Vaunyogi, her cheeks ached with it. Idaan and Adrah walked with their entourage through a hall of worked rosewood and mother-of-pearl, and to the summer garden where Daaya Vaunyogi sat beneath a stunted maple tree and sipped tea from a stone bowl. His face was weathered but kindly. Seeing him in this place was like stepping into a woodcut from the Old Empire—the honored sage in contemplation. The gift package was placed on the table before him as if it were a meal.

  Adrah’s father put down his bowl and took a pose that dismissed the servants.

  “The garden is closed,” he said. “We have much to discuss, my children and I.”

  As soon as the doors were shut and the three were alone, his face fell. He sank back to his seat like a man struck by fever. Adrah began to pace. Idaan ignored them both and poured herself tea. It was overbrewed and bitter.

  “You haven’t heard from them, then, Daaya-cha?”

  “The Galts?” the man said. “The messengers I send come back empty handed. When I went to speak to their ambassador, they turned me away. Things have gone wrong. The risk is too great. They won’t back us now.”

  “Did they say that?” Idaan asked.

  Daaya took a pose that asked clarification. Idaan leaned forward, holding back the snarl she felt twisting at her lip.

  “Did they say they wouldn’t back us, or is it only that you fear they won’t?”

  “Oshai,” Daaya said. “He knows everything. He’s been my intermediary from the beginning. If he tells what he knows—”

  “If he does, he’ll be killed,” Idaan said. “That he injured a poet is bad enough, but he murdered a son of the Khaiem without being a brother to him. He knows what would happen. His best hope is that someone intercedes for him. If he speaks what he knows, he dies badly.”

  “We have to free him,” Adrah said. “We have to get him out. We have to show the Galts that we can protect them.”

  “We will,” Idaan said. She drank down her tea. “The three of us. And I know how we’ll do it.”

  Adrah and his father looked at her as if she’d just spat out a serpent. She took a pose of query.

  “Shall we wait for the Galts to take action instead? They’ve already begun to distance themselves. Shall we take some members of your house into our confidence? Hire some armsmen to do it for us? Assume that our secrets will be safer the more people know?”

  “But …,” Adrah said.

  “If we falter, we fail,” Idaan said. “I know the way to the cages. He’s kept underground now; if they move him to the towers, it gets harder. I asked that we meet in a place with a private exit. This garden. There is a way out of it?”

  Daaya took an acknowledging pose, but his face was as pale as bread dough.

  “I thought there would be others you wished to consult,” he said.

  “There’s nothing to consult over,” Idaan said and pulled open the gifts she had brought to her new marriage. Three dark cloaks with deep hoods, three blades in dark leather sheaths, two unstrung hunter’s bows with dark-shafted arrows, two torches, a pot of smoke pitch and a bag to carry it. And beneath it, a wall stand of silver with the sigils of order and chaos worked in marble and bloodstone. Idaan passed the blades and cloaks to the men.

  “The servants will only know of the wall stand. These others we can give to Oshai to dispose of once we have him,” Idaan said. “The smoke pitch we can use to frighten the armsmen at the cages. The bows and blades are for those that don’t flee.”

  “Idaan-kya,” Adrah said, “this is madness, we can’t …”

  She slapped him before she knew she meant to. He pressed a palm to his cheek, and his eyes glistened. But there was anger in him too. That was good.

  “We do the thing now, while there are servants to swear it was not us. We do it quickly, and we live. We falter and wail like old women, and we die. Pick one.”

  Daaya Vaunyogi broke the silence by taking a cloak and pulling it on. His son looked to him, th
en to her, then trembling began to do the same.

  “You should have been born a man,” her soon-to-be father said. There was disgust in his voice.

  The tunnels beneath the palaces were little traveled in spring. The long winter months trapped in the warrens that laced the earth below Machi made even the slaves yearn for daylight. Idaan knew them all. Long winter months stealing unchaperoned up these corridors to play on the river ice and snow-shrouded city streets had taught her how to move through them unseen. They passed the alcove where she and Janat Saya had kissed once, when they were both too young to think it more than something that they should wish to do. She led them through the thin servant’s passage she’d learned of when she was stealing fresh applecakes from the kitchens. Memories made the shadows seem like old friends from better times, when her mischief had been innocent.

  They made their way from tunnel to tunnel, passing through wide chambers unnoticed and passages so narrow they had to stoop and go singly. The weight of stone above them made the journey seem like traveling through a mine.

  They knew they were nearing the occupied parts of the tunnels as much by the smell of shit from the cages and acrid smoke as by the torchlight that danced at the corridor’s mouth. Thick timber beams framed the hall. Idaan paused. This was only a side gallery—little used, rarely trafficked. But it would do, she thought.

  “What now?” Adrah asked. “We light the pitch? Simulate a fire?”

  Idaan took the pot from its bag and weighed it in her hands.

  “We simulate nothing, Adrah-kya,” she said. She threw the pot at the base of a thick timber support and tossed her lit torch onto the blackness. It sputtered for a moment, then caught. Idaan unslung the bow from her shoulder and draped a fold of the cloak over it. “Be ready.”

  She waited as the flames caught. If she waited too long, they might not be able to pass the fire. If she was too quick, the armsmen might be able to put out the blaze. A deep calm seemed to descend upon her, and she felt herself smile. Now would be a fine moment, she thought, and screamed, raising the alarm. Adrah and Daaya followed her as she stumbled through the darkness and into the cages. In the time it took for her to take two breaths of the thickening air, they found themselves in the place she’d hoped: a wide gallery in torchlight, the air already becoming dense with smoke, and iron cages set into the stone where prisoners waited on the justice of the Khai. Two armsmen in leather and bronze armor scuttled to the three of them, their eyes round with fear.

  “There’s a fire in the gallery!” Daaya shrilled. “Get water! Get the watch!”

  The prisoners were coming to the front of the cages now. Their cries of fear added to the confusion. Idaan pretended to cough as she considered the problem. There were two more armsmen at the far end of the cages, but they were coming closer. Of the first two who had approached, one had raced off toward the fire, the other down a well-lit tunnel, she presumed towards aid. And then midway down the row of cages on the left, she caught a glimpse of the Galts’ creature. There was real fear in his eyes.

  Adrah panicked as the second pair came close. With a shriek, he drew his blade, hewing at the armsmen like a child playing at war. Idaan cursed, but Daaya was moving faster, drawing his bow and sinking a dark shaft into the man’s belly as Idaan shot at his chest and missed. But Adrah was lucky—a wild stroke caught the armsman’s chin and seemed to cleave his jaw apart. Idaan raced to the cages, to Oshai. The moon-faced assassin registered a moment’s surprise when he saw her face within the hood, and then Oshai closed his eyes and spat.

  Adrah and Daaya rushed to her side.

  “Do not speak,” Oshai said. “Nothing. Every man here would sell you for his freedom, and there are people who would buy. Do you understand?”

  Idaan nodded and pointed toward the thick lock that barred the door. Oshai shook his head.

  “The Khai’s Master of Blades keeps the keys,” Oshai said. “The cages can’t be opened without him. If you meant me to leave with you, you didn’t think this through very well.”

  Adrah whispered a curse, but Oshai’s eyes were on Idaan. He smiled thinly, his eyes dead as a fish’s. He saw it when she understood, and he nodded, stepped back from the bars, and opened his arms like a man overwhelmed by the beauty of a sunrise. Idaan’s first arrow took him in the throat. There were two others after that, but she thought they likely didn’t matter. The first shouts of the watch echoed. The smoke was thickening. Idaan walked away, down the route she had meant to take when the prisoners were free. She’d meant to free them all, adding to the chaos. She’d been a fool.

  “What have you done?” Daaya Vaunyogi demanded once they were safely away in the labyrinth. “What have you done?”

  Idaan didn’t bother answering.

  Back in the garden, they sank the blades and the cloaks in a fountain to lie submerged until Adrah could sneak back in under cover of night and get rid of them. Even with the dark hoods gone, they all reeked of smoke. She hadn’t foreseen that either. Neither of the men met her eyes. And yet, Oshai was beyond telling stories to the utkhaiem. So perhaps things hadn’t ended so badly.

  She gave her farewells to Daaya Vaunyogi. Adrah walked with her back through the evening-dimmed streets to her rooms. That the city seemed unchanged struck her as odd. She couldn’t say what she had expected—what the day’s events should have done to the stones, the air—but that it should all be the same seemed wrong. She paused by a beggar, listening to his song, and dropped a length of silver into the lacquered box at his feet.

  At the entrance to her rooms, she sent her servants away. She did not wish to be attended. They would assume she smelled of sex, and best that she let them. Adrah peered at her, earnest as a puppy, she thought. She could see the distress in his eyes.

  “You had to,” he said, and she wondered if he meant to comfort her or convince himself. She took a pose of agreement. He stepped forward, his arms curving to embrace her.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, and he stepped back, paused, lowered his arms. Idaan saw something die behind his eyes, and felt something wither in her own breast. So this is what we are, she thought.

  “Things were good once,” he said, as if willing her to say and they will be again. The most she could give him was a nod. They had been good once. She had wanted and admired and loved him once. And even now, a part of her might love him. She wasn’t sure.

  The pain in his expression was unbearable. Idaan leaned forward, kissed him briefly on the lips, and went inside to wash the day off her skin. She heard his footsteps as he walked away.

  Her body felt wrung out and empty. There were dried apples and sugared almonds waiting for her, but the thought of food was foreign. Gifts had arrived throughout the day—celebrations of her being sold off. She ignored them. It was only after she had bathed, washing her hair three times before it smelled more of flowers than smoke, that she found the note.

  It rested on her bed, a square of paper folded in quarters. She sat naked beside it, reached out a hand, hesitated, and then plucked it open. It was brief, written in an unsteady hand.

  Daughter, it said. I had hoped that you might be able to spend some part of this happy day with me. Instead, I will leave this. Know that you have my blessings and such love as a weary old man can give. You have always delighted me, and I hope for your happiness in this match.

  When her tears and sobbing had exhausted her, Idaan carefully gathered the scraps of the note together and placed them under her pillow. Then she bowed and prayed to all the gods and with all her heart that her father should die, and die quickly. That he should die without discovering what she was.

  MAATI WAS lost for a time in pain, then discomfort, and then pain again. He didn’t suffer dreams so much as a pressing sense of urgency without goal or form, though for a time he had the powerful impression that he was on a boat, rocked by waves. His mind fell apart and reformed itself at the will of his body.

  He came to himself in the night, aware that he had been half awak
e for some time; that there had been conversations in which he had participated, though he couldn’t say with whom or on what matters. The room was not his own, but there was no mistaking that it belonged to the Khai’s palace. No fire burned in the grate, but the stone walls were warm with stored sunlight. The windows were shuttered with shaped stone, the only light coming from the night candle that had burned almost to its quarter mark. Maati pulled back the thin blankets and considered the puckered gray flesh of his wound and the dark silk that laced it closed. He pressed his belly gently with his fingertips until he thought he knew how delicate he had become. When he stood, tottering to the night pot, he found he had underestimated, but that the pain was not so excruciating that he could not empty his bladder. After, he pulled himself back into bed, exhausted. He intended only to close his eyes for a moment and gather his strength, but when he opened them, it was morning.

  He had nearly resolved to walk from his bed to the small writing table near the window when a slave entered and announced that the poet Cehmai and the andat Stone-Made-Soft would see him if he wished. Maati nodded and sat up carefully.

  The poet arrived with a wide plate of rice and river fish in a sauce that smelled of plums and pepper. The andat carried a jug of water so cold it made the stone sweat. Maati’s stomach came to life with a growl at the sight.

  “You’re looking better, Maati-kvo,” the young poet said, putting the plate on the bed. The andat pulled two chairs close to the bed and sat in one, its face calm and empty.

  “I looked worse than this?” Maati asked. “I wouldn’t have thought that possible. How long has it been?”

  “Four days. The injury brought on a fever. But when they poured onion soup down you, the wound didn’t smell of it, so they decided you might live after all.”

  Maati lifted a spoon of fish and rice to his mouth. It tasted divine.

  “I think I have you to thank for that,” Maati said. “My recollection isn’t all it could be, but …”

  “I was following you,” Cehmai said, taking a pose of contrition. “I was curious about your investigations.”