Shadow and Betrayal

certain that his guide and the dogs were well housed and fed. Even so, when the time came to sleep in a bed piled high with blankets and dogs, he often found himself as exhausted from the cold as from a full day’s work.
    What in summer would have been the journey of weeks took him from just before Candles Night almost halfway to the thaw. The days began to blend together - blazing bright white and then warm, close darkness - until he felt he was traveling through a dream and might wake at any moment.
    When at last the dark stone towers of Machi appeared in the distance - lines of ink on a pale parchment - it was difficult to believe. He had lost track of the days. He felt as if he had been traveling forever, or perhaps that he had only just begun. As they drew nearer, he opened his hood despite the stinging air and watched the towers thicken and take form.
    He didn’t know when they passed over the river. The bridge would have been no more than a rise in the snow, indistinguishable from a random drift. Still, they must have passed it, because they entered into the city itself. The high snow made the houses seemed shorter. Other dog teams yipped and called, pulled wide sledges filled with boxes or ore or the goods of trade; even the teeth of winter would not stop Machi. Maati even saw men with wide, leather-laced nets on their shoes and goods for sale strapped to their backs tramping down worn paths that led from one house to the next. He heard voices lifted in loud conversation and the barking of dogs and the murmur of the platform chains that rose up with the towers and shifted, scraping against the stone.
    The city seemed to have nothing in common with the one he had known, and still there was a beauty to it. It was stark and terrible, and the wide sky forgave it nothing, but he could imagine how someone might boast they lived here in the midst of the desolation and carved out a life worth living. Only the verdigris domes over the forges were free from snow, the fires never slackening enough to bow before the winter.
    On the way to the palace of the Khai Machi, his guide passed what had once been the palaces of the Vaunyogi. The broken walls jutted from the snow. He thought he could still make out scorch marks on the stones. There were no bodies now. The Vaunyogi were broken, and those who were not dead had scattered into the world where they would be wise never to mention their true names again. The bones of their house made Maati shiver in a way that had little to do with the biting air. Otah-kvo had done this, or ordered it done. It had been necessary, or so Maati told himself. He couldn’t think of another path, and still the ruins disturbed him.
    He entered the offices of the Master of Tides through the snow door, tramping up the slick painted wood of the ramp and into rooms he’d known in summer. When he had taken off his outer cloaks and let himself be led to the chamber where the servants of the Khai set schedules, Piyun See, the assistant to the Master of Tides, fell at once into a pose of welcome.
    ‘It’s a pleasure to have you back,’ he said. ‘The Khai mentioned that we should expect you. But he had thought you might be here earlier.’
    Though the air in the offices felt warm, the man’s breath was still visible. Maati’s ideas of cold had changed during his journey.
    ‘The way was slower than I’d hoped,’ Maati said.
    ‘The most high is in meetings and cannot be disturbed, but he has left us with instructions for your accommodation . . .’
    Maati felt a pang of disappointment. It was naïve of him to expect Otah-kvo to be there to greet him, and yet he had to admit that he had harbored hopes.
    ‘Whatever is most convenient will, I’m sure, suffice,’ Maati said.
    ‘Don’t bother yourself, Piyun-cha,’ a woman’s voice said from behind them. ‘I can see to this.’
    The changes of the previous months had left Kiyan untransformed. Her hair - black with its lacing of white - was tied back in a simple knot that seemed out of place above the ornate robes of a Khai’s wife. Her smile didn’t have the chill formal distance or false pleasure of a player at court intrigue. When she embraced him, her hair smelled of lavender oil. For all her position and the incarcerating power of being her husband’s wife she would, Maati thought, still look at home at a wayhouse watching over guests or haggling with the farmers, bakers and butchers at the market.
    But perhaps that was only his