Shadow and Betrayal

carrying it, gone because of him.
    ‘It’s your move,’ the andat said.
    ‘I can’t,’ Cehmai said. His own voice sounded distant.
    ‘I can wait as long as you care to,’ it said. ‘Just tell me when you think it’ll get easier.’
    ‘You knew this would happen,’ Cehmai said. ‘You knew.’
    ‘Chaos has a smell to it,’ the andat agreed. ‘Move.’
    Cehmai tried to study the board, but every line he could see led to failure. He closed his eyes and rubbed them until ghosts bloomed in the darkness, but when he reopened them, it was no better. The sickness grew in his belly. He felt he was falling. The knock on the door behind him was something of a different world, a memory from some other life, until the voice came.
    ‘I know you’re in there! You won’t believe what’s happened. Half the utkhaiem are spotty with welts. Open the door!’
    ‘Baarath!’
    Cehmai didn’t know how loud he’d called - it might have been a whisper or a scream. But it was enough. The librarian appeared beside him. The stout man’s eyes were wide, his lips thin.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ Baarath asked. ‘Are you sick? Gods, Cehmai . . . Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll have a physician—’
    ‘Paper. Bring me paper. And ink.’
    ‘It’s your move !’ the andat shouted, and Baarath seemed about to bolt.
    ‘Hurry,’ Cehmai said.
    It was a week, a month, a year of struggle before the paper and ink brick appeared at his side. He could no longer tell whether the andat was shouting to him in the real world or only within their shared mind. The game pulled at him, sucking like a whirlpool. The stones shifted with significance beyond their own, and confusion built on confusion in waves so that Cehmai grasped his one thought until it was a certainty.
    There was too much. There was more than he could survive. The only choice was to simplify the panoply of conflicts warring within him; there wasn’t room for them all. He had to fix things, and if he couldn’t make them right, he could at least make them end.
    He didn’t let himself feel the sorrow or the horror or the guilt as he scratched out a note - brief and clear as he could manage. The letters were shaky, the grammar poor. Idaan and the Vaunyogi and the Galts. Everything he knew written in short, unadorned phrases. He dropped the pen to the floor and pressed the paper into Baarath’s hand.
    ‘Maati,’ Cehmai said. ‘Take it to Maati. Now.’
    Baarath read the letter, and whatever blood had remained in his face drained from it now.
    ‘This . . . this isn’t . . .’
    ‘Run!’ Cehmai screamed, and Baarath was off, faster than Cehmai could have gone if he’d tried, Idaan’s doom in his hands. Cehmai closed his eyes. That was over, then. That was decided, and for good or ill, he was committed. The stones now could be only stones.
    He pulled himself back to the game board. Stone-Made-Soft had gone silent again. The storm was as fierce as it had ever been, but Cehmai found he also had some greater degree of strength against it. He forced himself along every line he could imagine, shifting the stones in his mind until at last he pushed one black token forward. Stone-Made-Soft didn’t pause. It shifted a white stone behind the black that had just moved, trapping it. Cehmai took a long deep breath and shifted a black stone on the far end of the board back one space.
    The andat stretched out its wide fingers, then paused. The storm shifted, lessened. Stone-Made-Soft smiled ruefully and pulled back its hand. The wide brow furrowed.
    ‘Good sacrifice,’ it said.
    Cehmai leaned back. His body was shuddering with exhaustion and effort and perhaps something else more to do with Baarath running through the night. The andat moved a piece forward. It was the obvious move, but it was doomed. They had to play it out, but the game was as good as finished. Cehmai moved a black token.
    ‘I think she does love you,’ the andat said. ‘And you did swear you’d protect her.’
    ‘She killed two men and plotted her own father’s slaughter,’ Cehmai said.
    ‘You love her. I know you do.’
    ‘I know it too,’ Cehmai said, and then a long moment later, ‘It’s your move.’

14
    R ain came in from the south. By midmorning, tall clouds of billowing white and yellow and gray had filled the wide sky of the valley. When the sun, had it been visible, would have reached the top of its arc, the rain poured down on the city like an upended bucket. The black cobbled streets were