Shadow and Betrayal

across the sky before the two came to the door, silhouetted. Baarath swayed like a drunkard, but Cehmai, though he laughed as loud and sang as poorly, didn’t waver. She watched as Baarath took a sloppy pose of farewell and stumbled off along the path. Cehmai watched him go, then looked back into the house, shaking his head.
    Idaan rose and stepped out of the shadows.
    She saw Cehmai catch sight of her, and she waited. He might have another guest - he might wave her away, and she would have to go back through the night to her own apartments, her own bed. The thought filled her with black dread until the poet put one hand out to her, and with the other motioned toward the light within his house.
    Stone-Made-Soft brooded over a game of stones, its massive head cupped in a hand twice the size of her own. The white stones, she noticed, had lost badly. The andat looked up slowly and, its curiosity satisfied, it turned back to the ended game. The scent of mulled wine filled the air. Cehmai closed the door behind her, and then set about fastening the shutters.
    ‘I didn’t expect to see you,’ the poet said.
    ‘Do you want me to leave?’
    There were a hundred things he could have said. Graceful ways to say yes, or graceless ways to deny it. He only turned to her with the slightest smile and went back to his task. Idaan sat on a low couch and steeled herself. She couldn’t say why she was driven to do this, only that the impulse was much like draping her legs out the sky doors, and that it was what she had chosen to do.
    ‘Daaya Vaunyogi is approaching the Khai tomorrow. He is going to petition that Adrah and I be married.’
    Cehmai paused, sighed, turned to her. His expression was melancholy, but not sorrowful. He was like an old man, she thought, amused by the world and his own role in it. There was a strength in him, and an acceptance.
    ‘I understand,’ he said.
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘He is of a good house, their bloodlines—’
    ‘And he’s well off and likely to oversee his family’s house when his father passes. And he’s a good enough man, for what he is. It isn’t that I can’t imagine why he would choose to marry you, or you him. But, given the context, there are other questions.’
    ‘I love him,’ Idaan said. ‘We have planned to do this for . . . we have been lovers for almost two years.’
    Cehmai sat beside a brazier, and looked at her with the patience of a man studying a puzzle. The coals had burned down to a fine white ash.
    ‘And you’ve come to be sure I never speak of what happened the other night. To tell me that it can never happen again.’
    The sense of vertigo returned, her feet held over the abyss.
    ‘No,’ she said.
    ‘You’ve come to stay the night?’
    ‘If you’ll have me, yes.’
    The poet looked down, his hands laced together before him. A cricket sang, and then another. The air seemed thin.
    ‘Idaan-kya, I think it might be better if—’
    ‘Then lend me a couch and a blanket. If you . . . let me stay here as a friend might. We are friends, at least? Only don’t make me go back to my rooms. I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be with people and I can’t stand being alone. And I . . . I like it here.’
    She took a pose of supplication. Cehmai rose and for a moment she was sure he would refuse. She almost hoped he would. Scoot forward, no more effort than sitting up, and then the sound of wind. But Cehmai took a pose that accepted her. She swallowed, the tightness in her throat lessening.
    ‘I’ll be back. The shutters . . . it might be awkward if someone were to happen by and see you here.’
    ‘Thank you, Cehmai-kya.’
    He leaned forward and kissed her mouth, neither passionate nor chaste, then sighed again and went to the back of the house. She heard the rattle of wood as he closed the windows against the night. Idaan looked at her hands, watching them tremble as she might watch a waterfall or a rare bird. An effect of nature, outside herself. The andat shifted and turned to look at her. She felt her brows rise, daring the thing to speak. Its voice was the low rumble of a landslide.
    ‘I have seen generations pass, girl. I’ve seen young men die of age. I don’t know what you are doing, but I know this. It will end in chaos. For him, and for you.’
    Stone-Made-Soft went silent again, stiller than any real man, not even the pulse of breath in it. She glared into the wide, placid face and took a pose of challenge.
    ‘It that a