Shadow and Betrayal

thing that could happen for the city would be to find him and put a knife through his belly. Him, and any children he’s got meantime.’
    Otah smiled because it was what a courier of House Siyanti would do. The younger man sniffed and sipped his bowl of tea. The woman shrugged, the motion setting small waves across the water.
    ‘It might do us well to have someone new running the city,’ she said. ‘It’s clear enough that nothing will change with either of the two choices we have now. Biitrah. He at least was interested in mechanism. The Galts have been doing more and more with their little devices, and we’d be fools to ignore what they’ve managed.’
    ‘Children’s toys,’ the older man said, waving the thought away.
    ‘Toys that have made them the greatest threat Eddensea and the Westlands have seen,’ the younger man said. ‘Their armies can move faster than anyone else’s. There isn’t a warden who hasn’t felt the bite of them. If they haven’t been invaded, they’ve had to offer tribute to the Lords Convocate, and that’s just as bad.’
    ‘The ward being sacked might disagree,’ Otah said, trying for a joke to lighten the mood.
    ‘The problem with the Galts,’ the woman said, ‘is they can’t hold what they take. Every year it’s another raid, another sack, another fleet carrying slaves and plunder back to Galt. But they never keep the land. They’d have much more money if they stayed and ruled the Westlands. Or Eymond. Or Eddensea.’
    ‘Then we’d have only them to trade with,’ the younger man said. ‘That’d be ugly.’
    ‘The Galts don’t have the andat,’ the older man said, and his tone carried the rest: they don’t have the andat, so they are not worth considering.
    ‘But if they did,’ Otah said, hoping to keep the subject away from himself and his family. ‘Or if we did not—’
    ‘If the sky dives into the sea, we’ll be fishing for birds,’ the older man said. ‘It’s this Otah Machi who’s uneasing things. I have it on good authority that Danat and Kaiin have actually called a truce between them until they can rout out the traitor.’
    ‘Traitor?’ Otah asked. ‘I hadn’t heard that of him.’
    ‘There are stories,’ the younger man said. ‘Nothing anyone has proved. Six years ago, the Khai fell ill, and for a few days, they thought he might die. Some people suspected poison.’
    ‘And hasn’t he turned to poison again? Look at Biitrah’s death,’ the younger man said. ‘And I tell you the Khai Machi hasn’t been himself since then, not truly. Even if Otah were to claim the chair, it’d be better to punish him for his crimes and raise up one of the high families. ’
    ‘It could have been bad fish,’ the woman said. ‘There was a lot of bad fish that year.’
    ‘No one believes that,’ the older man said.
    ‘Which of the others would be best for the city now that Biitrah is gone?’ Otah asked.
    The older man named Kaiin, and the younger man and woman Danat, in the same moment, the syllables grinding against each other in the warm, damp air, and they immediately fell to debate. Kaiin was a master negotiator; Danat was better thought of by the utkhaiem. Kaiin was prone to fits of temper, Danat to weeks of sloth. Each man, to hear it, was a paragon of virtue and little better than a street thug. Otah listened, interjected comments, asked questions crafted to keep the conversation alive and on its course. His mind was hardly there.
    When at last he made his excuses, the three debaters hardly paused in their wrangle. Otah dried himself by a brazier and collected his robes - laundered now, smelling of cedar oil and warm from the kiln. The streets were fuller than when he had gone into the bathhouse. The sun would fall early, disappearing behind the peaks to the west long before the sky grew dark, but it still hovered two hands above the mountainous horizon.
    Otah walked without knowing where he was walking to. The black cobbles and tall houses seemed familiar and exotic at the same time. The towers rose into the sky, glowing in the sunlight. At the intersection of three large streets, Otah found a courtyard with a great stone archway inlaid with wood and metal sigils of chaos and order. Harsh forge smoke from the east mixed with the greasy scent of a cart seller’s roasting duck and, for a moment, Otah was possessed by the memory of being a child no more than four summers old. The smoke scent wove with the taste of honeybread nearly