Shadow and Betrayal

grand halls, and only a single client.
    But now that was changing, not in character, but in the particulars. The succession would have the same effect on the eight wives who remained, whoever took the seat. It would be time for them to leave - make the journey back to whatever city or family had sent them forth in the first place. The oldest of them, a sharp-tongued woman named Carai, would be returning to a high family in Yalakeht where the man who would choose her disposition had been a delighted toddler grinning and filling his pants the last time she’d seen him. Another woman - one of the recent ones hardly older than Idaan herself - had taken a lover in the court. She was being sent back to Chaburi-Tan, likely to be turned around and shipped off to another of the Khaiem or traded between the houses of the utkhaiem as a token of political alliance. Many of the wives had known each other for decades and would now scatter and lose the friends and companions they had known best. And on and on, every one of them a life shaped by a man’s will, constrained by tradition.
    Idaan walked through the wide, bright corridors, listened to these women preparing to depart when the inevitable news came, anticipating the grief in a way that was as hard as the grief itself. Perhaps harder. She accepted their congratulations on her marriage. She would be able to remain in the city, and should her man die before her, her family would be there to support her. She, at least, would never be uprooted. Hiami had never understood why Idaan had objected to this way of living. Idaan had never understood why these women hadn’t set the palaces on fire.
    Her own rooms were set in the back; small apartments with rich tapestries of white and gold on the walls. They might almost have been mistaken for the home of some merchant leader - the overseer of a great trading house, or a trade master who spoke with the voice of a city’s craftsmen. If only she had been born one of those. As she entered, one of her servants met her with an expression that suggested news. Idaan took a pose of query.
    ‘Adrah Vaunyogi is waiting to see you, Idaan-cha,’ the servant girl said. ‘It was approaching midday, so I’ve put him in the dining hall. There is food waiting. I hope I haven’t . . .’
    ‘No,’ Idaan said, ‘you did well. Please see that we’re left alone.’
    He sat at the long, wooden table, and he did not look up when she came in. Idaan was willing to ignore him as well as to be ignored, so she gathered a bowl of food from the platters - early grapes from the south, sticky with their own blood; hard, crumbling cheese with a ripe scent that was both appetizing and not; twice-baked flatbread that cracked sharply when she broke off a piece - and retired to a couch. She forced herself to forget that he was here, to look forward at the bare fire grate. Anger buoyed her up, and she clung to it.
    She heard it when he stood, heard his footsteps approaching. It was a little victory, but it pleased her. As he sat cross-legged on the floor before her, she raised an eyebrow and sketched a pose of welcome before choosing another grape.
    ‘I came last night,’ he said. ‘I was looking for you.’
    ‘I wasn’t here,’ she said.
    The pause was meant to injure her. Look how sad you’ve made me, Idaan. It was a child’s tactic, and that it partially worked infuriated her.
    ‘I’ve had trouble sleeping,’ she said. ‘I walk. Otherwise, I’d spend the whole night staring at netting and watching the candle burn down. No call for that.’
    Adrah sighed and nodded his head.
    ‘I’ve been troubled too,’ he said. ‘My father can’t reach the Galts. With Oshai . . . with what happened to him, he’s afraid they may withdraw their support.’
    ‘Your father is an old woman frightened there’s a snake in the night bucket,’ Idaan said, breaking a corner of her bread. ‘They may lie low now, but once it’s clear that you’re in position to become Khai, they’ll do what they promised. They’ve nothing to gain by not.’
    ‘Once I’m Khai, they’ll still own me,’ Adrah said. ‘They’ll know how I came there. They’ll be able to hold it over me. If they tell what they know, the gods only know what would happen.’
    Idaan took a bite of grape and cheese both - the sweet and the salt mingling pleasantly. When she spoke, she spoke around it.
    ‘They won’t. They won’t dare, Adrah. Give the worst: we’re exposed by the Galts.