Shadow and Betrayal

keep appeared, carrying a bundle of cloth. Kiyan stood, accepted the bundle, and took a pose that expressed her gratitude only slightly hampered by her burden. The keep left without speaking, and Kiyan pulled the cloth apart - two thin gray hooded cloaks that would cover their robes and hide their faces. She handed one to Maati and pulled the other on.
    When they were both ready, Kiyan dug awkwardly in her doubled sleeve for a moment before coming out with four lengths of silver that she left on the table. Seeing Maati’s surprise, she smiled.
    ‘We didn’t ask for the food and wine,’ she said. ‘It’s rude to underpay. ’
    ‘The grapes were sour,’ Maati said.
    Kiyan considered this for a moment and scooped one silver length back into her sleeve. They didn’t leave through the front door or out to the alley, but descended a narrow stairway into the tunnels beneath the city. Someone - the keep or one of Kiyan’s conspirators - had left a lit lantern for them. Kiyan took it in hand and strode into the black tunnels as assured as a woman who had walked this maze her whole life. Maati kept close to her, dread pricking at him for the first time.
    The descent seemed as deep as the mines in the plain. The stairs were worn smooth by generations of footsteps, the path they traveled inhabited by the memory of men and women long dead. At length the stairs gave way to a wide, tiled hallway shrouded in darkness. Kiyan’s small lantern lit only part way up the deep blue and worked gold of the walls, the darkness above them more profound than a moonless sky.
    The mouths of galleries and halls seemed to gape and close as they passed. Maati could see the scorch marks rising up the walls where torches had been set during some past winter, the smoke staining the tiles. A breath seemed to move through the dim air, like the earth exhaling.
    The tunnels seemed empty except for them. No glimmer of light came from the doors and passages they passed, no voices however distant competed with the rustle of their robes. At a branching of the great hallway, Kiyan hesitated, then bore left. A pair of great brass gates opened onto a space like a garden, the plants all designed from silk, the birds perched on the branches dead and dust-covered.
    ‘Unreal, isn’t it?’ Kiyan said as she picked her way across the sterile terrain. ‘I think they must go a little mad in the winters down here. All those months without seeing the sunlight.’
    ‘I suppose,’ Maati said.
    After the garden, they went down a series of corridors so narrow that Maati could place his palms on both walls without stretching. Kiyan came to a high wooden doorway with brass fittings that was barred from within. She passed the lantern to Maati and knocked a complex pattern. A scraping sound spoke of the bar being lifted, and then the door swung in. Three men with blades in their hands stood. The center one smiled, stepped back and silently gestured them through.
    Lanterns filled the stone-walled passage with warm, buttery light and the scent of burnt oil. There was no door at the end, only an archway that opened out into a wide, tall space that smelled of sweat and damp wool and torch smoke. A storehouse, then, with the door frames stuffed with rope to keep out even a glimmer of light.
    Half a dozen men stopped their conversations as Kiyan led him across the empty space to the overseer’s office - a shack within the structure that glowed from within.
    Kiyan opened the office door and stood aside, smiling encouragement to Maati as he stepped past her and into the small room. A desk. Four chairs. A stand for scrolls. A map of the winter cities nailed to the wall. Three lanterns. And Otah-kvo rising now from his seat.
    He was still thin, but there was an energy about him - in the way he held his shoulders and his hands. In the way he moved.
    ‘You’re looking well for a dead man,’ Maati said.
    ‘Feeling better than expected, too,’ Otah said, and a smile spread across his long, northern face. ‘Thank you for coming.’
    ‘How could I not?’ Maati drew one of the chairs close to him and sat, his fingers laced around one knee. ‘So you’ve chosen to take the city after all?’
    Otah hesitated a moment, then sat. He rubbed the desktop with his open palm - a dry sound - and his brow furrowed.
    ‘I don’t see my option,’ he said at last. ‘That sounds convenient, I know. But . . . you said before that you’d realized I had nothing to do with Biitrah’s