Shadow and Betrayal

command.
    ‘Bring her here. And something comfortable for her to sit on.’
    The servant took a pose of acknowledgment, grateful, it seemed, to know what response to make, and scampered off. And then Idaan was there.
    Hardly twenty, she could have been one of Hiami’s own daughters. Not a beauty, but it took a practiced eye to know that. Her hair, pitch dark, was pleated with strands of silver and gold. Her eyes were touched with paints, her skin made finer and paler than it really was by powder. Her robes, blue silk embroidered with gold, flattered her hips and the swell of her breasts. To a man or a younger woman, Idaan might have seemed the loveliest woman in the city. Hiami knew the difference between talent and skill, but of the pair, she had greater respect for skill, so the effect was much the same.
    They each took poses of greeting, subtly different to mark Idaan’s blood relation to the Khai and Hiami’s greater age and her potential to become someday the first wife of the Khai Machi. The servant girl trotted in with a good chair, placed it silently, and retreated. Hiami halted her with a gesture and motioned to the singing slave. The servant girl took a pose of obedience and led him off with her.
    Hiami smiled and gestured toward the seat. Idaan took a pose of thanks much less formal than her greeting had been and sat.
    ‘Is my brother here?’ she asked.
    ‘No. There was a problem at one of the mines. I imagine he’ll be there for the day.’
    Idaan frowned, but stopped short of showing any real disapproval. All she said was, ‘It must seem odd for one of the Khaiem to be slogging through tunnels like a common miner.’
    ‘Men have their enthusiasms,’ Hiami said, smiling slightly. Then she sobered. ‘Is there news of your father?’
    Idaan took a pose that was both an affirmation and a denial.
    ‘Nothing new, I suppose,’ the dark-haired girl said. ‘The physicians are watching him. He kept his soup down again last night. That makes almost ten days in a row. And his color is better.’
    ‘But?’
    ‘But he’s still dying,’ Idaan said. Her tone was plain and calm as if she’d been talking about a horse or a stranger. Hiami put down her thread, the half-finished scarf in a puddle by her ankles. The knot she felt in the back of her throat was dread. The old man was dying, and the thought carried its implications with it - the time was growing short. Biitrah, Danat, and Kaiin Machi - the three eldest sons of the Khai - had lived their lives in something as close to peace as the sons of the Khaiem ever could. Otah, the Khai’s sixth son, had created a small storm all those years ago by refusing to take the brand and renounce his claim to his father’s chair, but he had never appeared. It was assumed that he had forged his path elsewhere or died unknown. Certainly he had never caused trouble here. And now every time their father missed his bowl of soup, every night his sleep was troubled and restless, the hour drew nearer when the peace would have to break.
    ‘How are his wives?’ Hiami asked.
    ‘Well enough,’ Idaan said. ‘Or some of them are. The two new ones from Nantani and Pathai are relieved, I think. They’re younger than I am, you know.’
    ‘Yes. They’ll be pleased to go back to their families. It’s harder for the older women, you know. Decades they’ve spent here. Going back to cities they hardly remember . . .’
    Hiami felt her composure slip and clenched her hands in her lap. Idaan’s gaze was on her. Hiami forced a simple pose of apology.
    ‘No. I’m sorry,’ Idaan said, divining, Hiami supposed, all the fear in her heart from her gesture. Hiami’s lovely, absent-minded, warm, silly husband and lover might well die. All his string and carved wood models and designs might fall to disuse, as abandoned by his slaughter as she would be. If only he might somehow win. If only he might kill his own brothers and let their wives pay this price, instead of her.
    ‘It’s all right, dear,’ Hiami said. ‘I can have him send a messenger to you when he returns if you like. It may not be until morning. If he thinks the problem is interesting, he might be even longer.’
    ‘And then he’ll want to sleep,’ Idaan said, half smiling, ‘and I might not see or hear from him for days. And by then I’ll have found some other way to solve my problems, or else have given up entirely.’
    Hiami had to chuckle. The girl was right, and somehow that little shared intimacy made