Shadow and Betrayal

crowd?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Cehmai. The poet boy. When you were running, you called his name.’
    ‘I did?’
    ‘Everyone heard it,’ Adrah said. ‘Everybody knows. At least you could keep it between us and not parade it all over the city!’
    ‘I didn’t mean to,’ she said. ‘I swear it, Adrah. I didn’t know I had.’
    He stepped back and spat, the spittle striking the wall beside him and dripping down toward the ground. His gaze locked on her, daring her to push him, to meet his anger with defiance or submission. Either would be devastating. Idaan felt herself go hard. It wasn’t unlike the feeling of seeing her father dying breath by breath, his belly rotting out and taking him with it.
    ‘It won’t get better, will it?’ she asked. ‘It will go on. It will change. But it will never get better than it is right now.’
    The dread in Adrah’s eyes told her she’d struck home. When he turned and stalked away, she didn’t try to stop him.
     
    Tell me, he’d said.
    I can’t, she’d replied.
    And now Cehmai sat on a chair, staring at the bare wall, and wished that he’d left it there. The hours since morning had been filled with a kind of anguish he’d never known. He’d told her he loved her. He did love her. But . . . Gods! She’d murdered her own family. She’d engineered her own father’s death and as much as sold the Khai’s library to the Galts. And the only thing that had saved her was that she loved him and he’d sworn he’d protect her. He’d sworn it.
    ‘What did you expect?’ Stone-Made-Soft asked.
    ‘That it was Adrah. That I’d be protecting her from the Vaunyogi,’ Cehmai said.
    ‘Well. Perhaps you should have been more specific.’
    The sun had passed behind the mountains, but the daylight hadn’t yet taken on the ruddy hues of sunset. This was not night but shadow. The andat stood at the window, looking out. A servant had come from the palaces earlier bearing a meal of roast chicken and rich, dark bread. The smell of it filled the house, though the platter had been set outside to be taken away. He hadn’t been able to eat.
    Cehmai could barely feel where the struggle in the back of his mind met the confusion at the front. Idaan. It had been Idaan all along.
    ‘You couldn’t have known,’ the andat said, its tone conciliatory. ‘And it isn’t as if she asked you to be part of the thing.’
    ‘You think she was using me.’
    ‘Yes. But since I’m a creature of your mind, it seems to follow that you’d think the same. She did extract a promise from you. You’re sworn to protect her.’
    ‘I love her.’
    ‘You’d better. If you don’t, then she told you all that under a false impression that you led her to believe. If she hadn’t truly thought she could trust you, she’d have kept her secrets to herself.’
    ‘I do love her.’
    ‘And that’s good,’ Stone-Made-Soft said. ‘Since all that blood she spilled is part yours now.’
    Cehmai leaned forward. His foot knocked over the thin porcelain bowl at his feet. The last dregs of the wine spilled to the floor, but he didn’t bother with it. Stained carpet was beneath his notice now. His head was stuffed with wool, and none of his thoughts seemed to connect. He thought of Idaan’s smile and the way she turned toward him, nestling into him as she slept. Her voice had been so soft, so quiet. And then, when she had asked him if he was horrified by her, there had been so much fear in her.
    He hadn’t been able to say yes. It had been there, waiting in his throat, and he’d swallowed it. He’d told her he loved her, and he hadn’t lied. But he hadn’t slept either. The andat’s wide hand turned the bowl upright and pressed a cloth onto the spill. Cehmai watched the red wick up into the white cloth.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said.
    Stone-Made-Soft took a brief, dismissive pose and lumbered away. Cehmai heard it pouring water into a basin to rinse the cloth, and felt a pang of shame. He was falling apart. The andat itself was taking care of him now. He was pathetic. Cehmai rose and stalked to the window. He felt as much as heard the andat come up behind him.
    ‘So,’ the andat said. ‘What are you going to do?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Do you think she’s got her legs around him now? Just at the moment, I mean,’ the andat said, its voice as calm and placid and distantly amused as always. ‘He is her husband. He must get her knees apart now and again. And she must enjoy him on some level. She