Shadow and Betrayal

the floor, the screaming began.
    Idaan’s composure broke, and she leaned forward. The men at the tables nearest the thing waved their arms and fled, shrieking and pounding at the air. Voices buzzed and a cloud of pale, moving smoke rose toward the galleries.
    No. The buzzing was not voices, the cloud was not smoke. These were wasps. The bundle on the council floor had been a nest wrapped in cloth and wax. The first of the insects buzzed past her, a glimpse of black and yellow. She turned and ran.
    Bodies filled the corridors, panic pressing them together until there was no air, no space. People screamed and cursed - men, women, children. Their shrill voices mixed with the angry buzz. She was pushed from all sides. An elbow dug into her back. The surge of the crowd pressed the breath from her. She was suffocating, and insects filled the air above her. Idaan felt something bite the flesh at the back of her neck like a hot iron burning her. She screamed and tried to reach back to bat the thing away, but there was no room to move her arm, no air. She lashed out at whoever, whatever was near. The crowd was a single, huge, biting beast and Idaan flailed and shrieked, her mind lost to fear and pain and confusion.
    Stepping into the open air of the street was like waking from a nightmare. The bodies around her thinned, becoming only themselves again. The fierce buzz of tiny wings was gone, the cries of pain and terror replaced by the groans of the stung. People were still streaming out of the palace, arms flapping, but others were sitting on benches or else the ground. Servants and slaves were rushing about, tending to the hurt and the humiliated. Idaan felt the back of her neck - three angry bumps were already forming.
    ‘It’s a poor omen,’ a man in the red robes of the needle wrights said. ‘Something more’s going on than meets the eye if someone’s willing to attack the council to keep old Kamau from talking.’
    ‘What could he have said?’ the man’s companion asked.
    ‘I don’t know, but you can be sure whatever it was, he’ll be saying something else tomorrow. Someone wanted him stopped. Unless this is about Adrah Vaunyogi. It could be that someone wants him closed down.’
    ‘Then why loose the things when his critics were about to speak?’
    ‘Good point. Perhaps . . .’
    Idaan moved on down the street. It was like the aftermath of some gentle, bloodless battle. People bound bruised limbs. Slaves brought plasters to suck out the wasps’ venom. But already, all down the wide street, the talk had turned back to the business of the council.
    Her neck was burning now, but she pushed the pain aside. There would be no decision made today. That was clear. Kamau or Vaunani had disrupted the proceedings to get more time. It had to be that. It couldn’t be more, except that of course it could. The fear was different now, deeper and more complex. Almost like nausea.
    Adrah was leaning against the wall at the mouth of an alleyway. His father was sitting beside him, a serving girl dabbing white paste on the angry welts that covered his arms and face. Idaan went to her husband. His eyes were hard and shallow as stones.
    ‘May I speak with you, Adrah-kya?’ she said softly.
    Adrah looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, then at his father. He nodded toward the shadows of the alley behind him, and Idaan followed him until the noises of the street were vague and distant.
    ‘It was Otah,’ she said. ‘He did this. He knows.’
    ‘Are you about to tell me that he’s planned it all from the start again? It was a cheap, desperate trick. It won’t matter, except that anyone who doesn’t like us will say we did it, and anyone who has a grudge against our enemies will put it to them. Nothing changes.’
    ‘Who would do it?’
    Adrah shook his head, impatient, and turned to walk back out into the street and noise and light. ‘Anyone might have. There’s no point trying to solve every puzzle in the world.’
    ‘Don’t be stupid, Adrah. Someone’s acted against—’
    The violence and suddenness of his movement was shocking. He was walking away, his back to her, and then a heartbeat later, there was no more room between them than the width of a leaf. His face was twisted, flushed, possessed by anger.
    ‘Don’t be stupid ? Is that what you said?’
    Idaan took a step back, her feet unsteady beneath her.
    ‘How do you mean, stupid, Idaan? Stupid like calling out my lover’s name in a