Shadow and Betrayal

she thought, to see through pose and smile both.
    ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, stepping close. His eyes were as dark as Adrah’s, but they were soft. They were young. There wasn’t any hatred there yet, or any pain. Or perhaps she only wished that was true. Her smile faltered.
    ‘Nothing,’ she said, and he took her hand. Here where they might be seen - where the children at least were sure to see them - he took her hand and she let him.
    ‘What’s happened?’ he repeated, his voice lower and closer. She shook her head.
    ‘My father is going to die,’ she said, her voice breaking on the words, her lips growing weak. ‘My father’s going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to help it. No way for me to stop it. And the only time crying makes me feel better is when I can do it with you. Isn’t that strange?’

8
    C ehmai rode up the wide track, switchbacking up the side of the mountain. The ore chute ran straight from the mine halfway up the mountain’s face to the carter’s base at its foot. When the path turned toward it, Cehmai considered the broad beams and pillars that held the chute smooth and even down the rough mountainside. When they turned away, he looked south to where the towers of Machi stood like reeds in the noonday sun. His head ached.
    ‘We do appreciate your coming, Cehmai-cha,’ the mine’s engineer said again. ‘With the new Khai come home, we thought everyone would put business off for a few days.’
    Cehmai didn’t bother taking a pose accepting the thanks as he had the first few times. Repetition had made it clear that the gratitude was less than wholly sincere. He only nodded and angled his horse around the next bend, swinging around to a view of the ore chute.
    There were six of them; Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft, the mine’s engineer, the overseer with the diagrams and contracts in a leather satchel on his hip, and two servants to carry the water and food. Normally there would have been twice as many people. Cehmai wondered how many miners would be in the tunnels, then found he didn’t particularly care, and returned to contemplating the ore chute and his headache.
    They had left before dawn, trekking to the Raadani mines. It had been arranged weeks before, and business and money carried a momentum that even stone didn’t. A landslide might overrun a city, but it only went down. Something had to have tremendous power to propel something as tired and heavy as he felt up the mountainside. Something in the back of his mind twitched at the thought - attention shifting of its own accord like an extra limb moving without his willing it.
    ‘Stop,’ Cehmai snapped.
    The overseer and engineer hesitated for a moment before Cehmai understood their confusion.
    ‘Not you,’ he said and gestured to Stone-Made-Soft. ‘Him. He was judging what it would take to start a landslide.’
    ‘Only as an exercise,’ the andat said, its low voice sounding both hurt and insincere. ‘I wasn’t going to do it.’
    The engineer looked up the slope with an expression that suggested Cehmai might not hear any more false thanks. Cehmai felt a spark of vindictive pleasure at the man’s unease and saw Stone-Made-Soft’s lips thin so slightly that no other man alive would have recognized the smile.
    Idaan had spent the first night of the festival with him, weeping and laughing, taking comfort and coupling until they had both fallen asleep in the middle of their pillow talk. The night candle had hardly burned down a full quarter mark when the servant had come, tapping on his door to wake him. He’d risen for the trek to the mines, and Idaan - alone in his bed - had turned, wrapping his bedclothes about her naked body, and watched him as if afraid he would tell her to leave. By the time he had found fresh robes, her eyelids had closed again and her breath was deep and slow. He’d paused for a moment, considering her sleeping face. With the paint worn off and the calm of sleep, she looked younger. Her lips, barely parted, looked too soft to bruise his own, and her skin glowed like honey in sunlight.
    But instead of slipping back into bed and sending out a servant for new apples, old cheese, and sugared almonds, he’d strapped on his boots and gone out to meet his obligations. His horse plodded along, flies buzzed about his face, and the path turned away from the ore chute and looked back toward the city.
    There would be celebrations from now until Idaan’s wedding to Adrah Vaunyogi.