Shadow and Betrayal

ask you to speak for them, didn’t they?’
    ‘I suppose,’ Cehmai said.
    ‘And did you speak for them?’
    ‘No. Why should I?’
    ‘Because Idaan Machi is your lover,’ Maati said, his voice soft and full of pity.
    Cehmai felt the blood come into his face, his neck. The anger at everything that he had seen and heard pressed at him, and he let himself borrow certainty from the rage.
    ‘Idaan Machi is Adrah’s wife. No, I did not speak for Vaunyogi. Despite your experience, not everyone falls in love with the man who’s taken his lover.’
    Maati leaned back. The words had struck home, and Cehmai pressed on, following the one attack with another.
    ‘And forgive me, Maati-cha, but you seem in an odd position to take me to task for following my private affairs where they don’t have a place. You are still doing all this without the Dai-kvo’s knowledge?’
    ‘He might have a few of my letters,’ Maati-kvo said. ‘If not yet, then soon.’
    ‘But since you’re a man under those robes, on you go. I am doing as the Dai-kvo set me to do. I am carrying this great bastard around; I am keeping myself apart from the politics of the court; I’m not willing to stand accused of lighting candles while you’re busy burning the city down!’
    ‘Calling me a bastard seems harsh,’ Stone-Made-Soft said. ‘ I haven’t told you how to behave.’
    ‘Be quiet!’
    ‘If you think it will help,’ the andat said, its voice amused, and Cehmai turned the fury inward, pressing at the space where he and Stone-Made-Soft were one thing, pushing the storm into a smaller and smaller thing. He felt his hands in fists, felt his teeth ache with the pressure of his clenched jaw. And the andat, shifted, bent to his fire-bright will, knelt and cast down its gaze. He forced its hands into a pose of apology.
    ‘Cehmai-cha.’
    He turned on Maati. The wind was picking up, whipping their robes. The fluttering of cloth sounded like a sail.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Maati-kvo said. ‘I truly am very sorry. I know what it must mean to have these things questioned, but I have to know.’
    ‘Why? Why is my heart suddenly your business?’
    ‘Let me ask this another way,’ Maati said. ‘If you aren’t backing Vaunyogi, who is?’
    Cehmai blinked. His rage whirled, lost its coherence, and left him feeling weaker and confused. On the ground beside them, Stone-Made-Soft sighed and rose to its feet. Shaking its great head, it gestured to the green streaks on its robe.
    ‘The launderers won’t be pleased by that,’ it said.
    ‘What do you mean?’ Cehmai said, not to the andat, but to Maati-kvo. And yet, it was Stone-Made-Soft’s deep rough voice that answered him.
    ‘He’s asking you how badly Adrah Vaunyogi wants that chair. And he’s suggesting that Idaan-cha may have just married her father’s killer, all unaware. It seems a simple enough proposition to me. They aren’t going to blame you for these stains, you know. They never do.’
    Maati stood silently, peering at him, waiting. Cehmai held his hands together to stop their shaking.
    ‘You think that?’ he asked. ‘You think that Adrah might have arranged the wedding because he knew what was going to happen? You think Adrah killed them?’
    ‘I think it worth considering,’ Maati said.
    Cehmai looked down and pressed his lips together until they ached. If he didn’t - if he looked up, if he relaxed - he knew that he would smile. He knew what that would say about himself and his small, petty soul, so he swallowed and kept his head low until he could speak. Unbidden, he imagined himself exposing Adrah’s crime, rejoining Idaan with her sole remaining family. He imagined her eyes looking into his as he told her what Maati knew.
    ‘Tell me how I can help,’ he said.
     
    Maati sat in the first gallery, looking down into the great hall and waiting for the council to go on. It was a rare event, all the houses of the utkhaiem meeting without a Khai to whom they all answered, and they seemed both uncertain what the proper rituals were and unwilling to let the thing move quickly. It was nearly dark now, and candles were being set out on the dozen long tables below him and the speaker’s pulpit beyond them. The small flames were reflected in the parquet floor and the silvered glass on the walls below him. A second gallery rose above him, where women and children of the lower families and representatives of the trading houses could sit and observe. The architect had been