Shadow and Betrayal

everything. He’s been my intermediary from the beginning. If he tells what he knows—’
    ‘If he does, he’ll be killed,’ Idaan said. ‘That he injured a poet is bad enough, but he murdered a son of the Khaiem without being a brother to him. He knows what would happen. His best hope is that someone intercedes for him. If he speaks what he knows, he dies badly.’
    ‘We have to free him,’ Adrah said. ‘We have to get him out. We have to show the Galts that we can protect them.’
    ‘We will,’ Idaan said. She drank down her tea. ‘The three of us. And I know how we’ll do it.’
    Adrah and his father looked at her as if she’d just spat out a serpent. She took a pose of query.
    ‘Shall we wait for the Galts to take action instead? They’ve already begun to distance themselves. Shall we take some members of your house into our confidence? Hire some armsmen to do it for us? Assume that our secrets will be safer the more people know?’
    ‘But . . .’ Adrah said.
    ‘If we falter, we fail,’ Idaan said. ‘I know the way to the cages. He’s kept underground now; if they move him to the towers, it gets harder. I asked that we meet in a place with a private exit. This garden. There is a way out of it?’
    Daaya took an acknowledging pose, but his face was pale as bread dough.
    ‘I thought there would be others you wished to consult,’ he said.
    ‘There’s nothing to consult over,’ Idaan said and pulled open the gifts she had brought to her new marriage. Three dark cloaks with deep hoods, three blades in dark leather sheaths, two unstrung hunter’s bows with dark-shafted arrows, two torches, a pot of smoke pitch and a bag to carry it. And beneath it, a wall stand of silver with the sigils of order and chaos worked in marble and bloodstone. Idaan passed the blades and cloaks to the men.
    ‘The servants will only know of the wall stand. These others we can give to Oshai to dispose of once we have him,’ Idaan said. ‘The smoke pitch we can use to frighten the armsmen at the cages. The bows and blades are for those that don’t flee.’
    ‘Idaan-kya,’ Adrah said, ‘this is madness, we can’t . . .’
    She slapped him before she knew she meant to. He pressed a palm to his cheek, and his eyes glistened. But there was anger in him too. That was good.
    ‘We do the thing now, while there are servants to swear it was not us. We do it quickly, and we live. We falter and wail like old women, and we die. Pick one.’
    Daaya Vaunyogi broke the silence by taking a cloak and pulling it on. His son looked to him, then to her, then, trembling, began to do the same.
    ‘You should have been born a man,’ her soon-to-be father said. There was disgust in his voice.
    The tunnels beneath the palaces were little traveled in spring. The long winter months trapped in the warrens that laced the earth below Machi made even the slaves yearn for daylight. Idaan knew them all. Long winter months stealing unchaperoned up these corridors to play on the river ice and snow-shrouded city streets had taught her how to move through them unseen. They passed the alcove where she and Janat Saya had kissed once, when they were both too young to think it more than something that they should wish to do. She led them through the thin servants’ passage she’d learned of when she was stealing fresh applecakes from the kitchens. Memories made the shadows seem like old friends from better times, when her mischief had been innocent.
    They made their way from tunnel to tunnel, passing through wide chambers unnoticed and passages so narrow they had to stoop and go singly. The weight of stone above them made the journey seem like traveling through a mine.
    They knew they were nearing the occupied parts of the tunnels as much by the smell of shit from the cages and acrid smoke as by the torchlight that danced at the corridor’s mouth. Thick timber beams framed the hall. Idaan paused. This was only a side gallery - little used, rarely trafficked. But it would do, she thought.
    ‘What now?’ Adrah asked. ‘We light the pitch? Simulate a fire?’
    Idaan took the pot from its bag and weighed it in her hands.
    ‘We simulate nothing, Adrah-kya,’ she said. She tossed the pot at the base of a thick timber support and tossed her lit torch onto the blackness. It sputtered for a moment, then caught. Idaan unslung the bow from her shoulder and draped a fold of the cloak over it. ‘Be ready.’
    She waited as the flames caught. If she