Shadow and Betrayal

and took a pose of welcome. His copper torc of office was lying discarded on the floor at his feet.
    ‘Cehmai-cha, to what do I owe this honor?’
    Cehmai frowned. ‘Are you angry with me?’ he asked.
    ‘Of course not, great poet. How could a poor man of books dare to feel angry with a personage like yourself?’
    ‘Gods,’ Cehmai said as he shifted a pile of papers from a wide chair. ‘I don’t know, Baarath-kya. Do tell me.’
    ‘Kya? Oh, you are too familiar with me, great poet. I would not suggest so deep a friendship as that with a man so humble as myself.’
    ‘You’re right,’ Cehmai said, sitting. ‘I was trying to flatter you. Did it work?’
    ‘You should have brought wine,’ the stout man said, taking his own seat. The false graciousness was gone, and a sour impatience in its place. ‘And come at an hour when living men could talk business. Isn’t it late for you to be wandering around like a dazed rabbit?’
    ‘There was a gathering at the rose pavilion. I was just going back to my apartments and I noticed the lights burning.’
    Baarath made a sound between a snort and a cough. Stone-Made-Soft gazed placidly at the marble walls, thoughtful as a lumberman judging the best way to fell a tree. Cehmai frowned at him, and the andat replied with a gesture more eloquent than any pose. Don’t blame me. He’s your friend, not mine.
    ‘I wanted to ask how things were proceeding with Maati Vaupathai,’ Cehmai said.
    ‘About time someone took an interest in that annoying, feckless idiot. I’ve met cows with more sense than he has.’
    ‘Not proceeding well, then?’
    ‘Who can tell? Weeks , it’s been. He’s only here about half the morning, and then he’s off dining with the dregs of the court, taking meetings with trading houses, and loafing about in the low towns. If I were the Dai-kvo, I’d pull that man back home and set him to plowing fields. I’ve eaten hens that were better scholars.’
    ‘Cows and hens. He’ll be a whole farmyard soon,’ Cehmai said, but his mind was elsewhere. ‘What does he study when he is here?’
    ‘Nothing in particular. He picks up whatever strikes him and spends a day with it, and then comes back the next for something totally unrelated. I haven’t told him about the Khai’s private archives, and he hasn’t bothered to ask. I was sure, you know, when he first came, that he was after something in the private archives. But now it’s like the library itself might as well not exist.’
    ‘Perhaps there is some pattern in what he’s looking at. A common thread that places them all together.’
    ‘You mean maybe poor old Baarath is too simple to see the picture when it’s being painted for him? I doubt it. I know this place better than any man alive. I’ve even made my own shelving system. I have read more of these books and seen more of their relationships than anyone. When I tell you he’s wandering about like tree fluff on a breezy day, it’s because he is .’
    Cehmai tried to feel surprise, and failed. The library was only an excuse. The Dai-kvo had sent Maati Vaupathai to examine the death of Biitrah Machi. That was clear. Why he would choose to do so was not. It wasn’t the poets’ business to take sides in the succession, only to work with - and sometimes cool the ambitions of - whichever son survived. The Khaiem administered the city, accepted the glory and tribute, passed judgment. The poets kept the cities from ever going to war one against the other, and fueled the industries that brought wealth from the Westlands and Galt, Bakta, and the east islands. But something had happened, or was happening, that had captured the Dai-kvo’s interest.
    And Maati Vaupathai was an odd poet. He held no post, trained under no one. He was old to attempt a new binding. By many standards, he was already a failure. The only thing Cehmai knew of him that stood out at all was that Maati had been in Saraykeht when that city’s poet was murdered and the andat set free. He thought of the man’s eyes, the darkness that they held, and a sense of unease troubled him.
    ‘I don’t know what the point of that sort of grammar would be,’ Baarath said. ‘Dalani Toygu’s was better for one thing, and half the length.’
    Cehmai realized that the Baarath had been talking this whole time, that the subject had changed, and in fact they were in the middle of a debate on a matter he couldn’t identify. All this without the need that he speak.
    ‘I suppose