Shadow and Betrayal

tunnel-world. The air was kept warm by a roaring fire in a stone grate, but the light was from the sun. The nurse, a young girl, no more than sixteen summers, sat dozing in her chair while the baby cooed and gurgled to itself. Maati stepped to the edge of the crib, and the child quieted, staring up at him with distrustful eyes, and then breaking into a wide toothless grin.
    ‘She’s only just started sleeping through the night,’ Kiyan said, speaking softly to keep from waking her servant. ‘And there were two weeks of colic that were close to hell. I don’t know what we’d have done with her if it hadn’t been for the nurses. She’s been doing better now. We’ve named her Eiah.’
    She reached down, scooped up her daughter, and settled her in her arms. It was a movement so natural as to seem inevitable. Maati remembered having done it himself, many years ago, in a very different place. Kiyan seemed almost to know his mind.
    ‘ ’Tani-kya said that if things went as you’d expected with the Dai-kvo you were thinking of seeking out your son. Nayiit?’
    ‘Nayiit,’ Maati agreed. ‘I sent letters to the places I knew to send them, but I haven’t heard back yet. I may not. But I’ll be here, in one place. If he and his mother want to find me, it won’t be difficult.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Kiyan said. ‘Not that it will be easy for them, only that . . .’
    Maati only shook his head. In Kiyan’s arms, the tiny girl with deep brown eyes grasped at air and gurgled, unaware, he knew, of all the blood and pain and betrayal that had gone into bringing her here.
    ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said.

    ‘Be reasonable!’
    Cehmai lay back in his bath. Beside him, Stone-Made-Soft had put its feet into the warm water and was gazing placidly out into the thick salt-scented steam that rose from the water and filled the bathhouse. Against the far wall, a group of young women was rising from the pool and walking back toward the dressing rooms, leaving a servant to fish the floating trays with their teapots and bowls from the small, bobbing waves. Baarath slapped the water impatiently.
    ‘You can look at naked girls later,’ he said. ‘This is important. If Maati-cha’s come back to help me catalog the library . . .’
    ‘He might quibble on “help you,”’ Cehmai said, and might as well have kept silent.
    ‘. . . then it’s clearly of critical importance to the Dai-kvo. I’ve heard the rumors. I know the Vaunyogi were looking to sell the library to some Westlands warden. That’s why Maati was sent here in the first place.’
    Cehmai closed his eyes. Rumors and speculation had run wild, and perhaps it would have been a kindness to correct Baarath. But Otah had asked him to keep silent, and the letters from the Dai-kvo had encouraged this strategy. If it were known what the Galts had done, what they had intended to do, it would mean the destruction of their nation: cities drowned, innocent men and women and children starved when a quiet word heavy with threat might suffice instead. There was always recourse to destruction. So long as one poet held one andat, they could find a path to ruin. So instead of slaughtering countless innocents, Cehmai put up with the excited, inaccurate speculation of his old friend and waited for the days to grow longer and warmer.
    ‘If the collection is split,’ Baraath went on, his voice dropping to a rough whisper, ‘we might overlook the very thing that made the library so important. You have to move your collection over to the library, or terrible things might happen.’
    ‘Terrible things like what?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Baraath said, his whisper turning peevish. ‘That’s what Maati-cha and I are trying to find out.’
    ‘Well, once you’ve gone through your collection and found nothing, the two of you can come to the poet’s house and look through mine.’
    ‘That would take years!’
    ‘I’ll make sure they’re well kept until then,’ Cehmai said. ‘Have you spoken with the Khai about his private collection?’
    ‘Who’d want that? It’s all copies of contracts and agreements from five generations ago. Unless it’s the most obscure etiquette ever to see sunlight. Anyone who wants that, let them have it. You’ve got all the good books. The philosophy, the grammars, the studies of the andat.’
    ‘It’s a hard life you lead,’ Cehmai said. ‘So close and still, no.’
    ‘You are an arrogant prig,’ Baraath said. ‘Everyone knows it, but