Shadow and Betrayal

breath, Idaan took it. The music began in earnest, and Cehmai spun her, took her under his arm, and was turned by her. It was a wild tune, rich and fast with a rhythm like a racing heart. Around him the others were grinning, though not at him. Idaan laughed, and he laughed with her. The paving stones beneath them seemed to echo back the song, and the sky above them received it.
    As they turned to face each other, he could see the flush in Idaan’s cheek, and felt the same blood in his own, and then the music whirled them off again.
    In the center of the frenzy, someone took Cehmai’s elbow from behind, and something round and hard was pressed into his hands. A man’s voice whispered urgently in his ear.
    ‘Hold this.’
    Cehmai faltered, confused, and the moment was gone. He was suddenly standing alone in a throng of people, holding an empty bowl - a thread of wine wetting the rim - while Adrah Vaunyogi took Idaan Machi through the steps and turns of the dance. The pair shifted away from him, left him behind. Cehmai felt the flush in his cheek brighten. He turned and walked through the shifting bodies, handing the bowl to a servant as he left.
    ‘He is her lover,’ the andat said. ‘Everyone knows it.’
    ‘I don’t,’ Cehmai said.
    ‘I just told you.’
    ‘You tell me things all the time; it doesn’t mean I agree to them.’
    ‘This thing you have in mind,’ Stone-Made-Soft said. ‘You shouldn’t do it.’
    Cehmai looked up into the calm gray eyes set in the wide, placid face. He felt his own head lift in defiance, even as he knew the words were truth. It was stupid and mean and petty. Adrah Vaunyogi wasn’t even entirely in the wrong. There was a perspective by which the little humiliation Cehmai had been dealt was a small price for flirting so openly with another man’s love.
    And yet.
    The andat nodded slowly and turned to consider the dancers. It was easy enough to pick out Idaan and Adrah. They were too far for Cehmai to be sure, but he liked to think she was frowning. It hardly mattered. Cehmai focused on Adrah’s movements - his feet, shifting in time with the drums while Idaan danced to the flutes. He doubled his attention, feeling it through his own body and also the constant storm at the back of his mind. In that instant he was both of them - a single being with two bodies and a permanent struggle at the heart. And then, at just the moment when Adrah’s foot came back to catch his weight, Cehmai reached out. The paving stone gave way, the smooth stone suddenly soft as mud, and Adrah stumbled backward and fell, landing on his rear, legs splayed. Cehmai waited a moment for the stone to flow back nearer to smooth, then let his consciousness return to its usual state. The storm that was Stone-Made-Soft was louder, more present in his mind, like the proud flesh where a thorn has scratched skin. And like a scratch, Cehmai knew it would subside.
    ‘We should go,’ Cehmai said, ‘before I’m tempted to do something childish.’
    The andat didn’t answer, and Cehmai led the way through the night-dark gardens. The music floated in the distance and then faded. Far from the kilns and dancing, the night was cold - not freezing, but near it. But the stars were brighter, and the moon glowed: a rim of silver that made the starless thumbprint darker by contrast. They passed by the temple and the counting house, the bathhouse and base of the great tower. The andat turned down a side path then, and paused when Cehmai did not follow.
    Stone-Made-Soft took a pose of query.
    ‘Is this not where you were going?’ it asked.
    Cehmai considered, and then smiled.
    ‘I suppose it is,’ he said, and followed the captive spirit down the curving pathway and up the wide, shallow steps that led to the library. The great stone doors were barred from within, but Cehmai followed the thin gravel path at the side of the building, keeping close to the wall. The windows of Baarath’s apartments glowed with more than a night candle’s light. Even with the night half gone, he was awake. The door slave was an ancient man, and Cehmai had to shake him by the shoulder before he woke, retreated into the apartments, and returned to lead them in.
    The apartments smelled of old wine, and the sandalwood resin that Baarath burned in his brazier. The tables and couches were covered with books and scrolls, and no cushion had escaped from some ink stain. Baarath, dressed in deep red robes thick as tapestry, rose from his desk