Shadow and Betrayal

did slaughter her family to elevate Adrah. It’s not something most girls would do.’
    ‘You’re not helping,’ Cehmai said.
    ‘It could be you’re just a part of her plan. She did fall into your bed awfully easily. Do you think they talk about it, the two of them? About what she can do to you or for you to win your support? Having the poet’s oath protecting you would be a powerful thing. And if you protect her, you protect them. You can’t suggest anything evil of the Vaunyogi now without drawing her into it.’
    ‘She isn’t like that!’
    Cehmai gathered his will, but before he could turn it on the andat, before he pushed the rage and the anger and the hurt into a force that would make the beast be quiet, Stone-Made-Soft smiled, leaned forward, and gently kissed Cehmai’s forehead. In all the years he’d held it, Cehmai had never seen the andat do anything of the sort.
    ‘No,’ it said. ‘She isn’t. She’s in terrible trouble, and she needs you to save her if you can. If she can be saved. And she trusts you. Standing with her is the only thing you could do and still be a decent man.’
    Cehmai glared at the wide face, the slow, calm eyes, searching for a shred of sarcasm. There was none.
    ‘Why are you trying to confuse me?’ he asked.
    The andat turned to look out the window and stood as still as a statue. Cehmai waited, but it didn’t shift, even to look at him. The rooms darkened and Cehmai lit lemon candles to keep the insects away. His mind was divided into a hundred different thoughts, each of them powerful and convincing and no two fitting together.
    When at last he went up to his bed, he couldn’t sleep. The blankets still smelled of her, of the two of them. Of love and sleep. Cehmai wrapped the sheets around himself and willed his mind to quiet, but the whirl of thoughts didn’t allow rest. Idaan loved him. She had had her own father killed. Maati had been right, all this time. It was his duty to tell what he knew, but he couldn’t. It was possible - she might have tricked him all along. He felt as cracked as river ice when a stone had been dropped through it; jagged fissures cut through him in all directions. There was no center of peace within him.
    And yet he must have drifted off, because the storm pulled him awake. Cehmai stumbled out of bed, pulling down half his netting with a soft ripping sound. He crawled to the corridor almost before he understood that the pitching and moaning, the shrieking and the nausea were all in the private space behind his eyes. It had never been so powerful.
    He fell as he went to the front of the house, barking his knee against the wall. The thick carpets were sickening to touch, the fibers seeming to writhe under his fingers like dry worms. Stone-Made-Soft sat at the gaming table. The white marble, the black basalt. A single white stone was shifted out of its beginning line.
    ‘Not now,’ Cehmai croaked.
    ‘Now,’ the andat said, its voice loud and low and undeniable.
    The room pitched and spun. Cehmai dragged himself to the table and tried to focus on the pieces. The game was simple enough. He’d played it a thousand times. He shifted a black stone forward. He felt he was still half dreaming. The stone he’d moved was Idaan. Stone-Made-Soft’s reply moved a token that was both its fourth column and also Otah Machi. Groggy with sleep and distress and annoyance and the angry pressure of the andat struggling against him, he didn’t understand how far things had gone until twelve moves later when he shifted a black stone one place to the left, and Stone-Made-Soft smiled.
    ‘Maybe she’ll still love you afterwards,’ the andat said. ‘Do you think she’ll care as much about your love when you’re just a man in a brown robe?’
    Cehmai looked at the stones, the shifting line of them, flowing and sinuous as a river, and he saw his mistake. Stone-Made-Soft pushed a white stone forward and the storm in Cehmai’s mind redoubled. He could hear his own breath rattling. He was sticky with the rancid sweat of effort and fear. He was losing. He couldn’t make himself think; controlling his own mind was like wrestling a beast - something large and angry and stronger than he was. In his confusion, Idaan and Adrah and the death of the Khai all seemed connected to the tokens glowing on the board. Each was enmeshed with the others, and all of them were lost. He could feel the andat pressing toward freedom and oblivion. All the generations of