Shadow and Betrayal

weight in water sixty feet in the time the moon - always a more reliable measure than the seasonally fickle northern sun - traveled the width of a man’s finger. But the design wasn’t perfect yet. It was clear from his day’s work that the pump, which finally failed the night before, had been working at less than its peak for weeks. That was why the water level had been higher than one night’s failure could account for. There were several possible solutions to that.
    Biitrah forgot the cold, forgot his weariness, forgot indeed where he was and was being borne. His mind fell into the problem, and he was lost in it. The wayhouse, when it appeared as if by magic before them, was a welcome sight: thick stone walls with one red lacquered door at the ground level, a wide wooden snow door on the second story, and smoke rising from all its chimneys. Even from the street, he could smell seasoned meat and spiced wine. The keeper stood on the front steps with a pose of welcome so formal it bent the old, moon-faced man nearly double. Biitrah’s bearers lowered his chair. At the last moment, Biitrah remembered to shove his arms back into their sleeves so that he could take a pose accepting the wayhouse keeper’s welcome.
    ‘I had not expected you, most high,’ the man said. ‘We would have prepared something more appropriate. The best that I have—’
    ‘Will do,’ Biitrah said. ‘Certainly the best you have will do.’
    The keeper took a pose of thanks, standing aside to let them through the doorway as he did. Biitrah paused at the threshold, taking a formal pose of thanks. The old man seemed surprised. His round face and slack skin made Biitrah think of a pale grape just beginning to dry. He could be my father’s age, he thought, and felt in his breast the bloom of a strange, almost melancholy, fondness for the man.
    ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ Biitrah said. ‘What’s your name, neighbor? ’
    ‘Oshai,’ the moon-faced man said. ‘We haven’t met, but everyone knows of the Khai Machi’s kindly eldest son. It is a pleasure to have you in this house, most high.’
    The house had an inner garden. Biitrah changed into a set of plain, thick woolen robes that the wayhouse kept for such occasions and joined his men there. The keeper himself brought them black-sauced noodles, river fish cooked with dried figs, and carafe after stone carafe of rice wine infused with plum. His guard, at first dour, relaxed as the night went on, singing together and telling stories. For a time, they seemed to forget who this long-faced man with his graying beard and thinning hair was and might someday be. Biitrah even sang with them at the end, intoxicated as much by the heat of the coal fire, the weariness of the day, and the simple pleasure of the night, as by the wine.
    At last he rose up and went to his bed, four of his men following him. They would sleep on straw outside his door. He would sleep in the best bed the wayhouse offered. It was the way of things. A night candle burned at his bedside, the wax scented with honey. The flame was hardly down to the quarter mark. It was early. When he’d been a boy of twenty, he’d seen candles like this burn their last before he slept, the light of dawn blocked by goose-down pillows around his head. Now he couldn’t well imagine staying awake to the half mark. He shuttered the candlebox, leaving only a square of light high on the ceiling from the smoke hole.
    Sleep should have come easily to him as tired, well fed, half drunk as he was, but it didn’t. The bed was wide and soft and comfortable. He could already hear his men snoring on their straw outside his door. But his mind would not be still.
    They should have killed each other when they were young and didn’t understand what a precious thing life is. That was the mistake. He and his brothers had forborne instead, and the years had drifted by. Danat had married, then Kaiin. He, the oldest of them, had met Hiami and followed his brothers’ example last. He had two daughters, grown and now themselves married. And so here he and his brothers were. None of them had seen fewer than forty summers. None of them hated the other two. None of them wanted what would come next. And still, it would come. Better that the slaughter had happened when they were boys, stupid the way boys are. Better that their deaths had come before they carried the weight of so much life behind them. He was too old to become a killer.
    Sleep came