A Betrayal in Winter

FELL ME, HE'I) SAID.

I can't, she'd replied.

And now Cehmai sat on a chair, staring at the bare wall and wished that he'd left it there. The hours since morning had been filled with a kind of anguish he'd never known. He'd told her he loved her. He did love her. But ... Gods! She'd murdered her own family. She'd engineered her own father's death and as much as sold the Khai's library to the Galts. And the only thing that had saved her was that she loved him and he'd sworn he'd protect her. He'd sworn it.

"What did you expect?" Stone-Made-Soft asked.

"That it was Adrah. That I'd be protecting her from the Vaunyogi," Cehmai said.

"Well. Perhaps you should have been more specific."

The sun had passed behind the mountains, but the daylight hadn't yet taken on the ruddy hues of sunset. This was not night but shadow. 'The andat stood at the window, looking out. A servant had come from the palaces earlier bearing a meal of roast chicken and rich, dark bread. The smell of it filled the house, though the platter had been set outside to be taken away. He hadn't been able to eat.

Cehmai could barely feel where the struggle in the back of his mind met the confusion at the front. Idaan. It had been Idaan all along.

"You couldn't have known," the andat said, its tone conciliatory. "And it isn't as if she asked you to be part of the thing."

"You think she was using me."

"Yes. But since I'm a creature of your mind, it seems to follow that you'd think the same. She did extract a promise from you. You're sworn to protect her."

"I love her."

"You'd better. If you don't, then she told you all that under a false impression that you led her to believe. If she hadn't truly thought she could trust you, she'd have kept her secrets to herself."

"I do love her."

"And that's good," Stone-Made-Soft said. "Since all that blood she spilled is part yours now."

Cehmai leaned forward. His foot knocked over the thin porcelain bowl at his feet. The last dregs of the wine spilled to the floor, but he didn't bother with it. Stained carpet was beneath his notice now. His head was stuffed with wool, and none of his thoughts seemed to connect. He thought of Idaan's smile and the way she turned toward him, nestling into him as she slept. Her voice had been so soft, so quiet. And then, when she had asked him if he was horrified by her, there had been so much fear in her.

He hadn't been able to say yes. It had been there, waiting in his throat, and he'd swallowed it. He'd told her he loved her, and he hadn't lied. But he hadn't slept either. The andat's wide hand turned the bowl upright and pressed a cloth onto the spill. Cehmai watched the red wick up into the white cloth.

"Thank you," he said.

Stone-Made-Soft took a brief, dismissive pose and lumbered away. Cehmai heard it pouring water into a basin to rinse the cloth, and felt a pang of shame. He was falling apart. The andat itself was taking care of him now. He was pathetic. Cehmai rose and stalked to the window. He felt as much as heard the andat come up behind him.

"So," the andat said. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think she's got her legs around him now? Just at the moment, I mean," the andat said, its voice as calm and placid and distantly amused as always. "He is her husband. He must get her knees apart now and again. And she must enjoy him on some level. She did slaughter her family to elevate Adrah. It's not something most girls would do."

"You're not helping," Cehmai said.

"It could he you're just a part of her plan. She did fall into your bed awfully easily. Do you think they talk about it, the two of them? About what she can do to you or for you to win your support? Having the poet's oath protecting you would be a powerful thing. And if you protect her, you protect them. You can't suggest anything evil of the Vaunyogi now without drawing her into it."

"She isn't like that!"

Cehmai gathered his will, but before he could turn it on the andat, before he pushed the rage and the anger and the hurt into a force that would make the beast be quiet, Stone-Made-Soft smiled, leaned forward, and gently kissed Cehmai's forehead. In all the years he'd held it, Cehmai had never seen the andat do anything of the sort.

"No," it said. "She isn't. She's in terrible trouble, and she needs you to save her if you can. If she can be saved. And she trusts you. Standing with her is the only thing you could do and still he a decent man."

Cehmai glared at the wide face, the slow, calm eyes, searching for a shred of sarcasm. 'T'here was none.

"Why are you trying to confuse me?" he asked.

The andat turned to look out the window and stood as still as a statue. Cehmai waited, but it didn't shift, even to look at him. The rooms darkened and Cehmai lit lemon candles to keep the insects away. His mind was divided into a hundred different thoughts, each of them powerful and convincing and no two fitting together.

When at last he went up to his bed, he couldn't sleep. The blankets still smelled of her, of the two of them. Of love and sleep. Cehmai wrapped the sheets around himself and willed his mind to quiet, but the whirl of thoughts didn't allow rest. Idaan loved him. She had had her own father killed. Maati had been right, all this time. It was his duty to tell what he knew, but he couldn't. It was possible-she might have tricked him all along. He felt as cracked as river ice when a stone had been dropped through it, jagged fissures cut through him in all directions. "Where was no center of peace within him.

And yet he must have drifted off, because the storm pulled him awake. Cehmai stumbled out of bed, pulling down half his netting with a soft ripping sound. He crawled to the corridor almost before he understood that the pitching and moaning, the shrieking and the nausea were all in the private space behind his eyes. It had never been so powerful.

He fell as he went to the front of the house, harking his knee against the wall. The thick carpets were sickening to touch, the fibers seeming to writhe tinder his fingers like dry worms. Stone-Made-Soft sat at the gaming table. The white marble, the black basalt. A single white stone was shifted out of its beginning line.

"Not now," Cehmai croaked.

"Now," the andat said, its voice loud and low and undeniable.

The room pitched and spun. Cehmai dragged himself to the table and tried to focus on the pieces. The game was simple enough. He'd played it a thousand times. He shifted a black stone forward. He felt he was still half dreaming. The stone he'd moved was Idaan. Stone-MadeSoft's reply moved a token that was both its fourth column and also Otah Machi. Groggy with sleep and distress and annoyance and the an gry pressure of the andat struggling against him, he didn't understand how far things had gone until twelve moves later when he shifted a black stone one place to the left, and Stone-Made-Soft smiled.

"Maybe she'll still love you afterwards," the andat said. "Do you think she'll care as much about your love when you're just a man in a brown robe?"

Cehmai looked at the stones, the shifting line of them, flowing and sinuous as a river, and he saw his mistake. Stone-Made-Soft pushed a white stone forward and the storm in Cehmai's mind redoubled. He could hear his own breath rattling. He was sticky with the rancid sweat of effort and fear. He was losing. He couldn't make himself think, controlling his own mind was like wrestling a beast-something large and angry and stronger than he was. In his confusion, Idaan and Adrah and the death of the Khai all seemed connected to the tokens glowing on the board. Each was enmeshed with the others, and all of them were lost. He could feel the andat pressing toward freedom and oblivion. All the generations of carrying it, gone because of him.

"It's your move," the andat said.

"I can't," Cehmai said. His own voice sounded distant.

"I can wait as long as you care to," it said. "Just tell me when you think it'll get easier."

"You knew this would happen," Cehmai said. "You knew."

"Chaos has a smell to it," the andat agreed. "Move."

Cchmai tried to study the board, but every line he could see led to failure. He closed his eyes and rubbed them until ghosts bloomed in the darkness, but when he reopened them, it was no better. The sickness grew in his belly. He felt he was falling. The knock on the door behind him was something of a different world, a memory from some other life, until the voice came.

"I know you're in there! You won't believe what's happened. Half the utkhaiem are spotty with welts. Open the door!"

"Baarath!"

Cehmai didn't know how loud he'd called-it might have been a whisper or a scream. But it was enough. The librarian appeared beside him. The stout man's eyes were wide, his lips thin.

"What's wrong?" Baarath asked. "Are you sick? Gods, Cehmai.... Stay here. Don't move. I'll have a physician-"

"Paper. Bring me paper. And ink."

"It's your move!" the andat shouted, and Baarath seemed about to bolt.

"Hurry," Cehmai said.

It was a week, a month, a year of struggle before the paper and ink brick appeared at his side. He could no longer tell whether the andat was shouting to him in the real world or only within their shared mind. The game pulled at him, sucking like a whirlpool. The stones shifted with significance beyond their own, and confusion built on confusion in waves so that Cehmai grasped his one thought until it was a certainty.

There was too much. There was more than he could survive. The only choice was to simplify the panoply of conflicts warring within him; there wasn't room for them all. He had to fix things, and if he couldn't make them right, he could at least make them end.

He didn't let himself feel the sorrow or the horror or the guilt as he scratched out a note-brief and clear as he could manage. The letters were shaky, the grammar poor. Idaan and the Vaunyogi and the Galts. Everything he knew written in short, unadorned phrases. He dropped the pen to the floor and pressed the paper into Baarath's hand.

"Maati," Cehmai said. "'lake it to Maati. Now."

Baarath read the letter, and whatever blood had remained in his face drained from it now.

"This ... this isn't ..."

"Run!" Cehmai screamed, and Baarath was off, faster than Cehmai could have gone if he'd tried, Idaan's doom in his hands. Cehmai closed his eyes. That was over, then. That was decided, and for good or ill, he was committed. The stones now could he only stones.

He pulled himself back to the game board. Stone-Made-Soft had gone silent again. The storm was as fierce as it had ever been, but Cehmai found he also had some greater degree of strength against it. He forced himself along every line he could imagine, shifting the stones in his mind until at last he pushed one black token forward. Stone-Made-Soft didn't pause. It shifted a white stone behind the black that had just moved, trapping it. Cehmai took a long deep breath and shifted a black stone on the far end of the board back one space.

The andat stretched out its wide fingers, then paused. The storm shifted, lessened. Stone-Made-Soft smiled ruefully and pulled back its hand. The wide brow furrowed.

"Good sacrifice," it said.

Cehmai leaned hack. His body was shuddering with exhaustion and effort and perhaps something else more to do with l3aarath running through the night. The andat moved a piece forward. It was the obvious move, but it was doomed. They had to play it out, but the game was as good as finished. Cchmai moved a black token.

"I think she does love you," the andat said. "And you did swear you'd protect her."

"She killed two men and plotted her own father's slaughter," Cehmai said.

"You love her. I know you do."

"I know it too," Cehmai said, and then a long moment later. "It's your move."