A Betrayal in Winter

Cchmai rode tip the wide track, switchbacking up the side of the mountain. The ore chute ran straight from the mine halfway up the mountain's face to the carter's base at its foot. When the path turned toward it, Cchmai considered the broad beams and pillars that held the chute smooth and even down the rough mountainside. When they turned away, he looked south to where the towers of Machi stood like reeds in the noonday sun. His head ached.

"We do appreciate your coming, Cehmai-cha," the mine's engineer said again. "With the new Khai come home, we thought everyone would put business off for a few days."

Cchmai didn't bother taking a pose accepting the thanks as he had the first few times. Repetition had made it clear that the gratitude was less than wholly sincere. He only nodded and angled his horse around the next bend, swinging around to a view of the ore chute.

There were six of them; Cchmai and Stone-blade-Soft, the mine's engineer, the overseer with the diagrams and contracts in a leather satchel on his hip, and two servants to carry the water and food. Normally there would have been twice as many people. Cehmai wondered how many miners would he in the tunnels, then found he didn't particularly care, and returned to contemplating the ore chute and his headache.

They had left before dawn, trekking to the Raadani mines. It had been arranged weeks before, and business and money carried a momentum that even stone didn't. A landslide might overrun a city, but it only went down. Something had to have tremendous power to propel something as tired and heavy as he felt up the mountainside. Something in the back of his mind twitched at the thought-attention shifting of its own accord like an extra limb moving without his willing it.

"Stop," Cehmai snapped.

The overseer and engineer hesitated for a moment before Cehmai understood their confusion.

"Not you," he said and gestured to Stone-Made-Soft. "Him. He was judging what it would take to start a landslide."

"Only as an exercise," the andat said, its low voice sounding both hurt and insincere. "I wasn't going to do it."

The engineer looked up the slope with an expression that suggested Cehmai might not hear any more false thanks. Cehmai felt a spark of vindictive pleasure at the man's unease and saw Stone-Made-Soft's lips thin so slightly that no other man alive would have recognized the smile.

Idaan had spent the first night of the festival with him, weeping and laughing, taking comfort and coupling until they had both fallen asleep in the middle of their pillow talk. The night candle had hardly burned down a full quarter mark when the servant had come, tapping on his door to wake him. He'd risen for the trek to the mines, and Idaan- alone in his bed-had turned, wrapping his bedclothes about her naked body, and watched him as if afraid he would tell her to leave. By the time he had found fresh robes, her eyelids had closed again and her breath was deep and slow. He'd paused for a moment, considering her sleeping face. With the paint worn off and the calm of sleep, she looked younger. Her lips, barely parted, looked too soft to bruise his own, and her skin glowed like honey in sunlight.

But instead of slipping back into bed and sending out a servant for new apples, old cheese, and sugared almonds, he'd strapped on his boots and gone out to meet his obligations. His horse plodded along, flies buzzed about his face, and the path turned away from the ore chute and looked back toward the city.

There would be celebrations from now until Idaan's wedding to Adrah Vaunyogi. Between those two joys-the finished succession and the marriage of the high families-there would also be the preparations for the Khai Machi's final ceremony. And, despite everything Maati-kvo had done, likely the execution of Otah Machi in there as well. With as many rituals and ceremonies as the city faced, they'd be lucky to get any real work done before winter.

The yipping of the mine dogs brought him back to himself, and he realized he'd been half-dozing for the last few switchbacks. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. He would have to pull himself together when they began working in earnest. It would help, he told himself, to have some particular problem to set his mind to instead of the tedium of travel. Thankfully, Stone-Made-Soft wasn't resisting him today. The effort it would have taken to force the unwilling andat to do as it was told could have pushed the day from merely unpleasant to awful.

They reached the mouth of the mine and were greeted by several workers and minor functionaries. Cehmai dismounted and walked Unsteadily to the wide table that had been set up for their consultations. His legs and back and head ached. When the drawings and notes were laid out before him, it took effort to turn his attention to them. His mind wandered off to Idaan or his own discomfort or the mental windstorm that was the andat.

"We would like to join these two passages," the overseer was saying, his fingers tracing lines on the maps. Cehmai had seen hundreds of sets of plans like this, and his mind picked up the markings and translated them into holes dug through the living rock of the mountain only slightly less easily than usual. "The vein seems richest here and then here. Our concern is-"

"My concern," the engineer broke in, "is not bringing half the mountain down on us while we do it."

The structure of tunnels that honeycombed the mountain wasn't the most complicated Cehmai had ever seen, but neither was it simple. The mines around Machi were capable of a complexity difficult in the rest of the world, mostly because he himself was not in the rest of the world, and mines in the Westlands and Galt weren't interested in paying the Khai Mach] for his services. The engineer made his casewhere the stone would support the tunnels and where it would not. The overseer made his counter-case-pointing out where the ores seemed richest. The decision was left to him.

The servants gave them bowls of honeyed beef and sausages that tasted of smoke and black pepper; a tart, sweet paste made from last year's berries; and salted Hatbrcad. Cehmai ate and drank and looked at the maps and drawings. Fie kept remembering the curve of Idaan's mouth, the feeling of her hips against his own. He remembered her tears, her reticence. He would have sacrificed a good deal to better understand her sorrow.

It was more, he thought, than the struggle to face her father's mortal ity. Perhaps he should talk to Maati about it. He was older and had greater experience with women. Cehmai shook his head and forced himself to concentrate. It was half a hand before he saw a path through the stone that would yield a fair return and not collapse the works. Stone-Made-Soft neither approved nor dissented. It never did.

The overseer took a pose of gratitude and approval, then folded tip the maps. The engineer sucked his teeth, craning his neck as the diagrams and notes vanished into the overseer's satchel, as if hoping to see one last objection, but then he too took an approving pose. They lit the lanterns and turned to the wide, black wound in the mountain's side.

The tunnels were cool, and darker than night. The smell of rock dust made the air thick. As he'd guessed, there were few men working, and the sounds of their songs and the barking of their dogs only made the darkness seem more isolating. They talked very little as they wound their way through the maze. Usually Cehmai made a practice of keeping a mental map, tracking their progress through the dark passages. After the second unexpected intersection, he gave up and was content to let the overseer lead them.

Unlike the mines on the plain, even the deepest tunnels here were dry. When they reached the point Cehmai had chosen, they took out the maps one last time, consulting them in the narrow section of the passageway that the lanterns lit. Above them, the mountain felt bigger than the sky.

"Don't make it too soft," the engineer said.

"It doesn't bear any load," the overseer said. "Gods! Who's been telling you ghost stories? You're nervous as a puppy first time down the hole."

Cehmai ignored them, looked up, considering the stone above him as if he could see through it. He wanted a path wide as two men walking with their arms outstretched. And it would need to go forward from here and then tilt to the left and then up. Cehmai pictured the distances as if he would walk them. It was about as far from where he was now to the turning point as from the rose pavilion to the library. And then, the shorter leg would be no longer than the walk from the library to Maati's apartments. He turned his mind to it, pressed the whirlwind, applied it to the stone before him, slowly, carefully loosening the stone in the path he had imagined. Stone-Made-Soft resisted-not in the body that scowled now looking at the tunnel's blank side, but in their shared mind. The andat shifted and writhed and pushed, though not so badly as it might have. Cehmai reached the turning point, shifted his attention and began the shorter, upward movement.

The storm's energy turned and leapt ahead, spreading like spilled water, pushing its influence out of the channel Cehmai's intention had prepared. Cehmai gritted his teeth with the effort of pulling it back in before the structure above them weakened and failed. The andat pressed again, trying to pull the mountain down on top of them. Cehmai felt a rivulet of sweat run down past his ear. The overseer and the engineer were speaking someplace a long way off, but he couldn't be bothered by them. They were idiots to distract him. He paused and gathered the storm, concentrated on the ideas and grammars that had tied the andat to him in the first place, that had held it for generations. And when it had been brought to heel, he took it the rest of the way through his pathway and then slowly, carefully, brought his mind, and its, back to where they stood.

"Cehmai-cha?" the overseer asked again. The engineer was eyeing the walls as if they might start speaking with him.

"I'm done," he said. "It's fine. I only have a headache."

Stone-Made-Soft smiled placidly. Neither of them would tell the men how near they had all just come to dying: Cehmai, because he wished to keep it from them, Stone-Made-Soft, because it would never occur to it to care.

The overseer took a hand pick from his satchel and struck the wall. The metal head chimed and a white mark appeared on the stone. Cehmai waved his hand.

"To your left," he said. "'t'here."

The overseer struck again, and the pick sank deep into the stone with a sound like a footstep on gravel.

"Excellent," the overseer said. "Perfect."

Even the engineer seemed grudgingly pleased. Cehmai only wanted to get out, into the light and hack to the city and his own bed. Even if they left now, they wouldn't reach hlachi before nightfall. probably not before the night candle hit its half mark.

On the way back up, the engineer started telling jokes. Cehmai allowed himself to smile. There was no call to make things unpleasant even if the pain in his head and spine were echoing his heartbeats.

When they reached the light and fresh air, the servants had laid out a more satisfying meal-rice, fresh chickens killed here at the mine, roasted nuts with lemon, cheeses melted until they could be spread over their bread with a blade. Cehmai lowered himself into a chair of strung cloth and sighed with relief. To the south, they could see the smoke of the forges rising from Machi and blowing off to the east. A city perpetually afire.

"When we get there," Cehmai said to the andat, "we'll be playing several games of stones. You'll be the one losing."

The andat shrugged almost imperceptibly.

"It's what I am," it said. "You may as well blame water for being wet."

"And when it soaks my robes, I do," Cehmai said. The andat chuckled and then was silent. Its wide face turned to him with something like concern. Its brow was furrowed.

"The girl," it said.

"What about her?"

"It seems to me the next time she asks if you love her, you could say yes.

Cehmai felt his heart jump in his chest, startled as a bird. The andat's expression didn't change; it might have been carved from stone. Idaan wept in his memory, and she laughed, and she curled herself in his bedclothes and asked silently not to be sent away. Love, he discovered, could feel very much like sorrow.

"I suppose you're right," he said, and the andat smiled in what looked like sympathy.

MAATI LAID HIS NOTES OUT ON THE WIDE TABLE AT THE BACK OF THE LIbrary's main chamber. The distant throbbing of trumpet and drum wasn't so distracting here as in his rooms. Three times on the walk here, his sleeves heavy with paper and books, he'd been grabbed by some masked reveler and kissed. Twice, bowls of sweet wine had been forced into his hand. The palaces were a riot of dancing and song, and despite his best intentions, the memory of those three kisses drew his attention. It would be sweet to go out, to lose himself in that crowd, to find some woman willing to dance with him, and to take comfort in her body and her breath. It had been years since he had let himself be so young as that.

He turned himself to his puzzle. Danat, the man destined to be Khai Machi, had seemed the most likely to have engineered the rumors of Otah's return. Certainly he had gained the most. Kahn Machi, whose death had already given Maati three kisses, was the other possibility. Until he dug in. He had asked the servants and the slaves of each household every question he could think of. No, none of them recalled any consultations with a man who matched the assassin's description. No, neither man had sent word or instruction since Maati's own arrival. He'd asked their social enemies what they knew or guessed or speculated on.

Kahn Machi had been a weak-lunged man, pale of face and watery of eye. He'd had a penchant for sleeping with servant girls, but hadn't even gotten a child on one-likely because he was infertile. Danat was a bully and a sneak, a man whose oaths meant nothing to him-and the killing of noble, scholarly Kaiin showed that. Danat's triumph was the best of all possible outcomes or else the worst.

Searching for conspiracy in court gossip was like looking for raindrops in a thunderstorm. Everyone he spoke to seemed to have four or five suggestions of what might have happened, and of those, each half contradicted the other. By far, the most common assumption was that Otah had been the essential villain in all of it.

Nlaati had diagrammed the relationships of Danat and Kaiin with each of the high families-Kamau, Daikani, Radaani and a dozen more. Then with the great trading houses, with mistresses and rumored mistresses and the teahouses they liked best. At one point he'd even listed which horses each preferred to ride. The sad truth was that despite all these facts, all these words scribbled onto papers, referenced and checked, nothing pointed to either man as the author of Biitrah's death, the attempt on Maati's own life, or the slaughter of the assassin. He was either too dimwitted to see the pattern before him, it was too well hidden, or he was looking in the wrong place. Clearly neither man had been present in the city to direct the last two attacks, and there seemed to be no supporters in Machi who had managed the plans for them.

Nor was there any reason to attack him. Nlaati had been on the verge of exposing Otah-kvo. That was in everyone's best interest, barring Otah's. Maati closed his eyes, sighed, then opened them again, gathered up the pages of his notes and laid them out again, as if seeing them in a different pattern might spark something.

Drunken song burst from the side room to his left, and Baarath, li brarian of Machi, stumbled in, grinning. His face was flushed, and he smelled of wine and something stronger. He threw open his arms and strode unevenly to Maati, embracing him like a brother.

"No one has ever loved these books as you and I have, Maati-kya," Baarath said. "The most glorious party of a generation. Wine flowing in the gutters, and food and dancing, and I'll jump off a tower if we don't see a crop of babes next spring that look nothing like their fathers. And where do we go, you and I? Here."

Baarath turned and made a sweeping gesture that took in the books and scrolls and codices, the shelves and alcoves and chests. He shook his head and seemed for a moment on the verge of tears. Maati patted him on the back and led him to a wooden bench at the side of the room. Baarath sat back, his head against the stone, and smiled like a baby.

"I'm not as drunk as I look," Baarath said.

"I'm sure you aren't," Maati agreed.

Baarath pounded the board beside him and gestured for Maati to sit. There was no graceful way to refuse, and at the moment, he could think of no reason. Going back to stand, frustrated, over the table had no appeal. He sat.

"What is bothering you, Maati-kya? You're still searching for some way to keep the upstart alive?"

"Is that an option? I don't see Danat-cha letting him walk free. No, I suppose I'm just hoping to see him killed for the right reasons. Except ... I don't know. I can't find anyone else with reason to do the things that have been done."

"Perhaps there's more than one thing going on then?" Baarath suggested.

Maati took a pose of surrender.

"I can't comprehend one. The gods will have to lead me by the hand if there's two. Can you think of any other reason to kill Biitrah? The man seems to have moved through the world without making an enemy."

"He was the best of us," Baarath agreed and wiped his eyes with the end of his sleeve. "He was a good man."

"So it had to be one of his brothers. Gods, I wish the assassin hadn't been killed. He could have told us if there was a connection between Biitrah and what happened to me. Then at least I'd know if I were solving one puzzle or two."

"Doesn't have to," Baarath said.

Maati took a pose that asked for clarification. Baarath rolled his eyes and took on an expression of superiority that Maati had seen beneath his politeness for weeks now.

"It doesn't have to be one of his brothers," Baarath said. "You say it's not the upstart. Fine, that's what you choose. But then you say you can't find anything that I)anat or Kaiin's done that makes you think they've done it. And why would they hide it, anyway? It's not shameful for them to kill their brother."

"But no one else has a reason," Maati said.

"No one? Or only no one you've found?"

"If it isn't about the succession, I can't find any call to kill Biitrah. If it isn't about my search for Otah, I can't think of any reason to want me dead. The only killing that makes sense at all was poking the assassin full of holes, and that only because he might have answered my questions."

"Why couldn't it have been the succession?"

Maati snorted. It was difficult being friendly with Baarath when he was sober. Now, with him half-maudlin, half-contemptuous, and reeking of wine, it was worse. Maati's frustration peaked, and his voice, when he spoke, was louder and angrier than he'd intended.

"Because Otah didn t, and Kaiin didn't, and Danat didn't, and there's no one else who's looking to sit on the chair. Is there some fifth brother I haven't been told about?"

Baarath raised his hands in a pose of a tutor posing an instructive question to a pupil. The effect was undercut by the slight weaving of his hands.

"What would happen if all three brothers died?"

"Otah would be Khai."

"Four. I meant four. What if they all die? What if none of them takes the chair?"

"']'he utkhaiem would fight over it like very polite pit dogs, and whichever one ended with the most blood on its muzzle would be elevated as the new Khai."

"So someone else might benefit from this yet, you see? They would have to hide it because having slaughtered the whole family of the previous Khai wouldn't help their family prestige, seeing as all their heads would be hanging from poles. But it would be about your precious succession, and there would be someone besides the three ... four brothers with reason to do the thing."

"Except that Danat's alive and about to be named Khai Machi, it's a pretty story."

Baarath sneered and made a grand gesture at the world in general.

"What is there but pretty stories? What is history but the accumulation of plausible speculation and successful lies? You're a scholar, Maati-kya, you should enjoy them more."

Baarath chuckled drunkenly, and Maati rose to his feet. Outside, something cracked with a report like a stone slab broken or a roof tile dropped from a great height. A moment later, laughter followed it. Maati leaned against the table, his arms folded and each hand tucked into the opposite sleeve. Baarath shifted, lay back on the bench, and sighed.

"You don't think it's true," Maati said. "You don't think it's one of the high families plotting to be Khai."

"Of course not," Baarath said. "It's an idiot plan. If you were to start something like that, you'd need to be certain you'd win it, and that would take more money and influence than any one family could gather. Even the Radaani don't have that much gold, and they've got more than the Khai."

"Then you think I'm chasing mist," Maati said.

"I think the upstart is behind all of it, and that you're too much in awe of him to see it. Everyone knows he was your teacher when you were a boy. You still think he's twice what you are. Who knows, maybe he is."

His anger gave Maati the illusion of calm, and a steadiness to his voice. He took a pose of correction.

"That was rude, Baarath-cha. I'd thank you not to say it again."

"Oh, don't be ashamed of it," Baarath said. "There are any number of boys who have those sorts of little infatuations with-"

Maati's body lifted itself, sliding with an elegance and grace he didn't know he posessed. His palm moved out by its own accord and slapped Baarath's jaw hard enough to snap the man's head to the side. He put a hand on Baarath's chest, pinning him firmly to the bench. Baarath yelped in surprise and Maati saw the shock and fear in his face. Maati kept his voice calm.

"We aren't friends. Let's not be enemies. It would distract me, and you may have perfect faith that it would destroy you. I am here on the Dai-kvo's work, and no matter who becomes Khai Mach], he'll have need of the poets. Standing beside that, one too-clever librarian can't count for much."

Outrage shone in Baarath's eyes as he pushed Maati's hand away. Maati stepped back, allowing him to rise. The librarian pulled his disarrayed robes back into place, his features darkening. Maati's rage began to falter, but he kept his chin held high.

"You're a bully, Maati-cha," Baarath said, then he took a pose of farewell and marched proudly out of the library. His library. Maati heard the door slam closed and felt himself deflate.

It galled him, but he knew he would have to apologize later. He should never have struck the man. If he had borne the insults and insinuations, he could have forced contrition from Baarath, but he hadn't.

He looked at his scattered notes. Perhaps he was a bully. Perhaps there was nothing to be found in all this. After all, Otah would die regardless. Danat would take his father's place, and Maati would go back to the Dai-kvo. He would even be able to claim a measure of success. Otah was starving to death in the high air above Machi thanks to him, after all. And what was that if not victory? One small mystery left unsolved could hardly matter in the end.

He pulled his papers together, stacking them, folding them, tucking the packet away into his sleeve. "There was nothing to be done here. He was tired and frustrated, ashamed of himself and in despair. There was a city of wine and distraction that would welcome him with open arms and delighted smiles.

He remembered Heshai-kvo-the poet of Saraykeht, the controller of Removing-the-Part-That-Continues who they'd called Seedless. He remembered his teacher's pilgrimages to the soft quarter with its drugs and gambling, its wine and whores. Heshai had felt this, or something like it; Maati knew he had.

He pulled the brown leather-bound book from his sleeve, where it always waited. He opened it and read Heshai's careful, beautiful handwriting. The chronicle and examination of his errors in binding the andat. He recalled Seedless' last words. He's forgiven you.

Maati turned back, his limbs heavy with exhaustion and dread. He put the hook back into his sleeve and pulled out his notes. He rearranged them on the table. He began again, and the night stretched out endlessly before him.

THE PALACES WERE DRUNKEN AND DIZZY AND LOST IN THE RELIEF THAT comes when a people believe that the worst is over. It was a celebration of fratricide, but of all the dancers, the drinkers, the declaimers of small verse, only Idaan seemed to remember that fact. She played her part, of course. She appeared in all the circles of which she had been part back before she'd entered this darkness. She drank wine and tea, she accepted the congratulations of the high families on her joining with the house of Vaunyogi. She blushed at the ribald comments made about her and Adrah, or else replied with lewder quips.

She played the part. The only sign was that she was more elaborate when she painted her face. Even if people noticed, what would they think but that the colors on her eyelids and the plum-dark rouge on her lips were a part of her celebration. Only she knew how badly she needed the mask.

The night candle was just past its middle mark when they broke away, she and Adrah with their arms around each other as if they were lovers. No one they saw had any question what they were planning, and no one would object. Half of the city had paired off already and slunk away to find an empty bed. It was the night for it. They laughed and stumbled toward the high palaces-her father's.

Once, when they were hidden behind a high row of hedges and it wasn't a performance for anyone, Adrah kissed her. He smelled of wine and the warm, musky scent of a young man's skin. Idaan kissed him back, and for that moment-that long silent, sensual moment-she meant it. "Then he pulled away and smiled, and she hated him again.

The celebrations in the halls and galleries of the Khai's palace were the nearest to exhaustion-everyone from the highest family of the utkhaiem to the lowest firekeeper had dressed in their finest robes and set out to stain them with something. The days of revelry had taken their toll, and with the night half-passed, the wildest celebrations were over. Music and song still played, people still danced and talked, drew one another away into alcoves and corners. Old men talked gravely of who would benefit from Danat's survival and promotion. But the sense was growing that the time was drawing near when the city would catch its breath and rest a while.

She and Adrah made their way through to the private wings of the palace, where only servants and slaves and the wives of the Khai moved freely. They made no secret of their presence. There was no need. Idaan led the way up a series of wide, sweeping staircases to apartments on the south side of the palace. A servant-an old man with gray hair, a limp, and a rosy smile-greeted them, and Idaan instructed him that they were not to be disturbed for any reason. The old man took a solemn expression and a pose of acknowledgment, but there was merriment in his eyes. Idaan let him believe what she, after all, intended him to. Adrah opened the great wooden doors, and he also closed them behind her.

"They aren't the best rooms, are they?" Adrah said.

"They'll do," Idaan said, and went to the windows. She pulled open the shutters. The great tower, Otah Machi's prison, stood like a dark line inked in the air. Adrah moved to stand beside her.

"One of us should have gone with them," she said. "If the upstart's found safely in his cell come morning . . ."

"He won't be," Adrah said. "Father's mercenaries are competent men. He wouldn't have hired them for this if he hadn't been sure of them."

"I don't like using hired men," Idaan said. "If we can buy them, so can anyone.

"They're armsmen, not whores," Adrah said. "They've taken a contract, and they'll see it through. It's how they survive."

There were five lanterns, from small glass candleboxes to an oil lamp with a wick as wide as her thumb and heavy enough to require both of them to move it. They pulled them all as near the open window as they could, and Adrah lit them while Idaan pulled the thin silks from under her robes. The richest dyes in the world had given these their colorone blue, the other red. Idaan hung the blue over the window's frame, and then peered out, squinting into the night for the signal. And there, perhaps half a hand from the top of the tower, shone the answering light. Idaan turned away.

With all the light gathered at the window, the rooms were cast into darkness. Adrah had pulled a hooded cloak over his robes. Idaan remembered again the feeling of hanging over the void, feeling the wind tugging at her. This wasn't so different, except that the prospect of her own death had seemed somehow cleaner.

"He would want it," Idaan said. "If he knew that we'd planned this, he would allow it. You know that."

"Yes, Idaan-kya. I know."

"To live so weak. It disgraces him. It makes him seem less before the court. It's not a fit ending for a Khai."

Adrah drew a thin, blackened blade. It looked no wider than a finger, and not much longer. Adrah sighed and squared his shoulders. Idaan felt her stomach rise to her throat.

"I want to go with you," she said.

"We discussed this, Idaan-kya. You stay in case someone comes. You have to convince them that I'm still in here with you."

"They won't come. They've no reason to. And he's my father."

"More reason that you should stay."

Idaan moved to him, touching his arm like a beggar asking alms. She felt herself shaking and loathed the weakness, but she could not stop it. Adrah's eyes were as still and empty as pebbles. She remembered Danat, how he had looked when he arrived from the south. She had thought he was ill, but it had been this. He had become a killer, a murderer of the people he had once respected and loved. That he still respected and loved. Adrah had those eyes now, the look of near-nausea. He smiled, and she saw the determination. There were no words that would stop him now. The stone had been dropped, and not all the wishing in the world could call it back into her hand.

"I love you, Idaan-kya," Adrah said, his voice as cool as a gravestone. "I have always loved you. From the first time I kissed you. Even when you have hurt me, and you have hurt me worse than anyone alive, I have only ever loved you."

He was lying. He was saying it as she'd said that her father would welcome death, because he needed it to be true. And she found that she needed that as well. She stepped back and took a pose of gratitude. Adrah walked to the door, turned, nodded to her, and was gone. Idaan sat in the darkness and looked at nothing, her arms wrapped around herself. The night seemed unreal: absurd and undeniable at the same time, a terrible dream from which she might wake to find herself whole again. The weight of it was like a hand pressing down on her head.

There was time. She could call for armsmen. She could call for Danat. She could go and stop the blade with her own body. She sat silent, trying not to breathe. She remembered the ceremony of her tenth summer, the year after her mother's death. Her father had taken her to sit at his side during all that day's ritual. She had hated it, bored by the petitions and formality until tears ran down her cheeks. She re membered a meal with a representative from some Westlands warden where her father had forced her to sit on a hard wooden chair and swallow a cold bean soup that made her gag rather than seem ungracious to the Westlander for his food.

She fought to remember a smile, an embrace. She wanted a moment in the long years of her childhood to which she could point and say here is how I know he loved me. The blue silk stirred in the breeze. The lantern flames flickered, dimmed, and rose again. It must have happened. For him to be so desperate for her happiness now, there must have been some sign, some indication.

She found herself rocking rapidly back and forth. When a sound came from the door, she jumped up, panicked, looking around for some excuse to explain Adrah's absence. When he himself came in, she could see in his eyes that it was over.

Adrah pulled off the cloak, letting it pool around his ankles. His bright robes seemed incongruous as a butterfly in a butcher's shop. His face was stone.

"You've done it," Idaan said, and two full breaths later, he nodded. Something as much release as despair sank into her. She could feel her body made heavy by it.

She walked to him, pulled the blade and its soft black leather sheath from his belt, and let them drop to the floor. Adrah didn't try to stop her.

"Nothing we ever do will be so bad as this," she said. "This now is the worst it will ever be. Everything will be better than this."

"He never woke," Adrah said. "The drugs that let him sleep ... He never woke."

"That's good."

A slow, mad grin bloomed on his face, stretching until the blood left his lips. There was a hardness in his eyes and a heat. It looked like fury or possession. He took her shoulders in his hands and pulled her near him. Their kiss was a gentle violence. For a moment, she thought he meant to open her robes, to drag her back to the bed in a sad parody of what they were expected to be doing. She pressed a palm to his sex and was surprised to find that he was not aroused. Slowly, with perfect control and a grip that bruised her, Adrah brought her away from him.

"I did this thing for you," he said. "I did this for you. Do you understand that?"

"I do."

"Never ask me for anything again," he said and released her, turning away. "From now until you die, you are in debt to me, and I owe you nothing."

"For the favor of killing my father?" she asked, unable to keep the edge from her voice.

"For what I have sacrificed to you," he said without looking back. Idaan felt her face flush, her hands ball into fists. She heard him groan from the next room, heard his robes shushing against the stone floor. The bed creaked.

A lifetime, married to him. There wouldn't be a moment in the years that followed that would not be poisoned. He would never forgive her, and she would never fail to hate him. They would go to their graves, each with teeth sunk in the other's neck.

They were perfect for each other.

Idaan walked silently to the window, took down the blue silk and put up the red.

THE ARMSMEN GAVE HIM ENOUGH WATER TO LIVE, THOUGH NOT SO MUCH AS to slake his thirst. Almost enough food to live as well, though not quite. He had no clothing but the rags he'd worn when he'd come back to Machi and the cloak that Maati had brought. When dawn was coming near and the previous day's heat had gone from the tower, he would be huddling in that cloth. Through the day, sun heated the great tower, and that heat rose. And as it rose, it grew. In his stone cage, Otah lay sweating as if he'd been working at hard labor, his throat dry and his head pounding.

The towers of Machi, Otah had decided, were the stupidest buildings in the world. Too cold in winter, too hot in summer, unpleasant to use, exhausting to climb. They existed only to show that they could exist.

More and more of the time, his mind was in disarray; hunger and boredom, the stifling heat and the growing presentiment of his own death conspired to change the nature of time. Otah felt outside it all, apart from the world and adrift. He had always been in this room; the memories from before were like stories he'd heard told. He would always be in this room unless he wriggled out the window and into the cool, open air. Twice already he had dreamed that he'd leapt from the tower. Both times, he woke in a panic. It was that as much as anything that kept him from taking the one control left to him. When despair washed through him, he remembered the dream of falling, with its shrill regret. He didn't want to die. His ribs were showing, he was almost nauseated with thirst, his mind would not slow down or be quiet. He was going to be put to death, and he did not want to die.

The thought that his suffering saved Kiyan had ceased to comfort him. Part of him was glad that he had not known how wretched his father's treatment of him would be. He might have faltered. At least now he could not run. He would lose-he had lost, and badly-but he could not run. Mai sat on her chair-the tall, thin one with legs of woven cane that she'd had in their island hut. When she spoke, it was in the soft liquid sounds of her native language and too fast for Otah to follow. He struggled, but when he croaked out that he couldn't understand her, his own voice woke him until he drifted away again into nothing, troubled only by the conviction that he could hear rats chewing through the stone.

The shriek woke him completely. He sat upright, his arms trembling. The room was real again, unoccupied by visions. Outside the great door, he heard someone shout, and then something heavy pounded once against the door, shaking it visibly. Otah rose. There were voices-new ones. After so many days, he knew the armsmen by their rhythms and the timbre of their murmurs. The throats that made the sounds he heard now were unfamiliar. He walked to the door and leaned against it, pressing his ear to the hairline crack between the wood and its stone frame. One voice rose above the others, its tone commanding. Otah made out the word "chains."

The voices went away again for so long Otah began to suspect he'd imagined it all. The scrape of the bar being lifted from the door startled him. He stepped hack, fear and relief coming together in his heart. This might be the end. He knew his brother had returned; this could be his death come for him. But at least it was an end to his time in this cell. He tried to hold himself with some dignity as the door swung open. The torches were so bright that Otah could hardly see.

"Good evening, Otah-cha," a man's voice said. "I hope you're well enough to move. I'm afraid we're in a bit of a hurry."

"Who are you?" Otah asked. His own voice sounded rough. Squinting, he could make out perhaps ten men in black leather armor. They had blades drawn. The armsmen lay in a pile against the far wall, stacked like goods in a warehouse, a black pool of blood surrounding them. The smell of them wasn't rotten, not yet, but it was disturbingcoppery and intimate. They had only been dead for minutes. If all of them were dead.

"We're the men who've come to take you out of here," the commander said. He was the one actually standing in the doorway. He had the long face of a man of the winter cities, but a westlander's flowing hair. Otah moved forward and took a pose of gratitude that seemed to amuse him.

"Can you walk?" he asked as Utah came out into the larger room. The signs of struggle were everywhere-spilled wine, overturned chairs, blood on the walls. The armsmen had been taken by surprise. Utah put a hand against the wall to steady himself. The stone felt warm as flesh.

"I'll do what I have to," Otah said.

"That's admirable," the commander said, "but I'm more curious about what you can do. I've suffered long confinement myself a time or two, and I know what it does. We can't take the easy way down. We've got to walk. If you can do this, that's all to the good. If you can't, we're prepared to carry you, but I need to have you out of the city quickly."

"I don't understand. Did Maati send you?"

"There's better places to discuss this, Otah-cha. We can't go down by the chains. Even if there weren't more armsmen waiting there, we've just broken them. Can you walk down the tower?"

A memory of the endlessly turning stairs and the ghost of pain in his knees and legs. Otah felt a stab of shame, but pulled himself up and shook his head.

"I don't believe I can," he said. The commander nodded and two of his men pulled lengths of wood from their backs and fitted them together in a cripple's litter. There was a small seat for Otah, canted against the slope of the stairway, and the poles were set one longer than the other to fit the tight curve. It would have been useless in any other situation, but for this task it was perfect. As one of the men helped Otah take his place on it, he wondered if the device had been built for this moment, or if things like it existed in service of these towers. The largest of the men spat on his hands and gripped the carrying poles that would start down the stairs and bear most of Otah's weight. One of his fellows took the other end, and Otah lurched up.

They began their descent, Otah with his back to the center of the spiral staircase. He watched the stone of the wall curl up from below. The men grunted and cursed, but they moved quickly. The man on the higher poles stumbled once, and the one below shouted angrily back at him.

The journey seemed to last forever-stone and darkness, the smell of sweat and lantern oil. Otah's knees bumped against the wall before him, his head against the wall behind. When they reached the halfway point, another huge man was waiting to take over the worst of the carrying. Otah felt his shame return. He tried to protest, but the commander put a strong, hard hand on his shoulder and kept him in the chair.

"You chose right the first time," the commander said.

The second half of the journey down was less terrible. Otah's mind was beginning to clear, and a savage hope was lifting him. He was being saved. He couldn't think who or why, but he was delivered from his cell. He thought of the armsmen new-slaughtered at the tower's height, and recalled Kiyan's words. How do you expect to protect me and my house? They could all be killed, his jailers and his rescuers alike. All in the name of tradition.

He could tell when they reached the level of the street-the walls had grown so thick there was almost no room for them to walk, but thin windows showed glimmers of light, and drunken, disjointed music filled the air. At the base of the stair, his carriers lowered Otah to the ground and took his arms over their shoulders as if he were drunk or sick. The commander squeezed to the front of the party. Despite his frown, Otah sensed the man was enjoying himself immensely.

They moved quickly and quietly through mare-like passages and out at last into an alley at the foot of the tower. A covered cart was waiting, two horses whickering restlessly. The commander made a sign, and the two bearers lifted Otah into the back of the cart. The commander and two of the men climbed in after, and the driver started the horses. Shod hooves rapped the stone, and the cart lurched and bumped. The commander pulled the back cloth closed and tied it, but loose enough he could peer out the seam. The lantern was extinguished, and the scent of its dying smoke filled the cart for a moment and was gone.

"What's happening out there?" Otah asked.

"Nothing," the commander said. "And best we keep it that way. No talking."

In silence and darkness, they continued. Otah felt lightheaded. The cart turned twice to the left and then again to the right. The driver was hailed and replied, but they never stopped. A breeze fluttered the thick cloth of the cover, and when it paused, Otah heard the sound of water; they were on the bridge heading south. He was free. He grinned, and then as the implications of his freedom unfolded themselves in his mind, his relief faltered.

"Forgive me. I don't know your name. I'm sorry. I can't do this."

The commander shifted. It was nearly black in the cart, so Otah couldn't see the man's face, but he imagined incredulity on the long features.

"I went to Machi to protect someone-a woman. If I vanish, they'll still have reason to suspect her. My brother might kill her on the chance that she's involved with this. I can't let that happen. I'm sorry, but we have to turn hack."

"You love her that much?" the commander asked.

"This isn't her fault. It's mine."

"All this is your fault, eh? You have a lot to answer for." There was amusement in the man's voice. Otah felt himself smile.

"Well, perhaps not all my fault. But I can't let her be hurt. This is the price of it, and I'll pay it if I have to."

They were all silent for a long moment, then the commander sighed.

"You're an honorable man, Otah Machi. I want you to know I respect that. Boys. Chain him and gag him. I don't want him calling out."

They were on him in an instant, pushing him hard onto the rough wood of the cart. Someone's knee drove in between his shoulder blades; invisible hands bent his arms backwards. When he opened his mouth to scream, a wad of heavy cloth was shoved in so deeply he gagged. A leather strap followed, keeping it in place. He didn't know when his legs were bound, but in fewer than twenty breaths, he was immobile-his arms chained painfully behind him at his wrists and elbows, his mouth stuffed until it was hard to breathe. The knee moved to the small of his back, digging into his spine with every shift of the cart. He tried once to move, and the pressure from above increased. He tried again, and the man cursed him and rapped his head with something hard.

"I said no talking," the commander murmured, and returned to peering out the opening in the hack cloth. Otah shifted, snarling in impotent rage that none of these men seemed to see or recognize. The cart moved off through the night. He could feel it when they moved from the paving of the main road to a dirt track; he could hear the high grass hushing against the wheels. They were taking him nowhere, and he couldn't think why.

He guessed it was almost three hands before the first light started to come. Dawn was still nothing more than a lighter kind of darkness, the commander's feet-the only part of the man Otah could see without lifting his head-were a dim form of shadow within shadow. It was something. Otah heard the trill of a daymartin, and then a rough rattling and the sound of water. A bridge over some small river. When the cart lurched back to ground, the commander turned.

"Have him stop," he said, and then a moment later, "I said stop the cart. Do it."

One of the other two-the one who wasn't kneeling on Otah- shifted and spoke to the driver. The jouncing slowed and stopped.

"I thought I heard something out there. In the trees on the left. Baat. Go check. If you see anything at all get back fast."

The pressure on Otah's back eased and one of the men clambered out. Otah turned over and no one tried to stop him. There was more light now. He could make out the grim set of the commander's features, the unease in the one remaining armsman.

"Well, this is interesting," the commander said.

"What's out there," the other man asked, his blade drawn. The commander looked out the slit of cloth and motioned for the armsman to pass over his sword. He did, and the commander took it, holding it with the ease of long familiarity.

"It may be nothing," he said. "Were you with me when I was working for the Warden of Elleais?"

"I'd just signed on then," the armsman said.

"You've always been a good fighter, Lachmi. I want you to know I respect that."

With the speed of a snake, the commander's wrist flickered, and the armsman fell hack in the cart, blood flowing from his opened neck. Otah tried to push himself away as the commander turned and drove the sword into the armsman's chest. He dropped the blade then, letting it fall to the cart's floor, and took a pose of regret to the dying man.

"But," the commander said, "you should never have cheated me at tiles. That was stupid."

The commander stepped over the body and spoke to the driver. He spoke clearly enough for Otah to hear.

"Is it done?"

The driver said something.

"Good," the commander replied, and came hack. He flipped Otah onto his belly with casual disregard, and Otah felt his bonds begin to loosen.

"All apologies, Otah-cha," the commander said. "But there's a lesson you can take from all this: just because someone's bought a mercenary captain, it doesn't mean his commanders aren't still for sale. Now I will need your robes, such as they are."

Otah pulled the leather strap from around his head and spat out the cloth, retching as he did so. Before he could speak, the commander had climbed out of the cart, and Otah was left to follow.

They had stopped at a clearing by a river, surrounded by white oaks. The bridge was old wood and looked almost too decrepit to cross. Six men with gray robes and hunting bows were walking toward them from the trees, two of them dragging the arrow-riddled body of the armsman the commander had sent out. Two others carried a litter with what was clearly another dead man-thin and naked. The commander took a pose of welcome, and the first archer returned it. Otah stumbled forward, rubbing his wrists. The archers were all smiling, pleased with themselves. When he came close enough, Otah saw the second corpse was on its back, and a wide swath of intricate black ink stained its breast. The first half of an east island marriage mark. A tattoo like his own.

"That's why we'll need your robes, Otah-cha," the commander said. "This poor bastard will have been in the water for a while before he reaches the main channel of the river. But the closer he seems to you, the less people will bother looking at him. I'll see whether I can find something for you to wear after, but you might consider sponging off in the brook there first. No offense, but you've been a while without a bath."

"Who is he?" Otah asked.

The commander shrugged.

"Nobody, now."

He clapped Otah on the shoulder and turned back toward the cart. The archers were pitching the corpses of the two armsmen into the water. Otah saw arrows rising from the river like reeds. The driver was coming forward now, his thumbs stuck in his belt. He was a hairy man, his full heard streaked with gray. He smiled at Otah and took a pose of welcome.

"I don't understand," Otah said. "What's happening?"

"We don't understand either, Itani-cha. Not precisely. We're only sure that it's something terrible," the carter said, and Otah's mouth dropped open. He spoke with the voice of Amiit Foss, his overseer in House Siyanti. Amiit grinned beneath his heard. "And we're sure that it isn't happening to you."