A Betrayal in Winter - By Daniel Abraham Page 0,24
and she raised her chin. "I already find myself forgetting names I should remember," the poet continued. "It's most embarrassing."
"I will he pleased to remind you of my own, should it be required," she said. Her father's movement was almost too slight to see, but she caught it and cast her gaze down. Perhaps she had gone too far. But when the poet spoke, he seemed to have taken no offense.
"I expect I will remember yours, Idaan-cha. It would be very rude not to. I look forward to meeting your friends and seeing your city. Perhaps even more than closeting myself in your library."
He had to know. He had to. Except that she was not being led away under guard. She was not being taken to the quiet chambers and questioned. If he did not know, he must only suspect.
Let him suspect, then. She would get word to Adrah and the Galts. They would know better than she what to do with this NIaati Vaupathai. If he was a threat, he would be added to the list. I3iitrah, Danat, Kaiin, Otah, Maati. The men she would have to kill or have killed. She smiled at him gently, and he nodded to her. One more name could make little difference now, and he, at least, was no one she loved.
"WHEN ARE THEY SENDING YOU?" KIYAN ASKED AS SIZE POURED OUT THE bucket. Gray water flowed over the bricks that paved the small garden at the hack of the wayhouse. Otah took the longhandled brush and swept the water off to the sides, leaving the walkway deep red and glistening in the sunlight. He felt Kiyan's gaze on him, felt the question in the air. The gardens smelled of fresh turned earth. Spices for the kitchen grew here. In a few weeks, the place would be thick with growing things: basil and mint and thyme. He imagined scrubbing these bricks week after week over the span of years until they wore smooth or he died, and felt an irrational surge of fondness for the walkway. He smiled to himself.
"Itani?"
"I don't know. That is, I know they want me to go to Machi in two weeks time. Amiit Foss is sending half the couriers he has up there, it seems.
"Of course he is. It's where everything's happening."
"But I haven't decided to go."
The silence bore down on him now, and he turned. Kiyan stood in the doorway-in her doorway. Her crossed arms, her narrowed eyes, and the single frown-line drawn vertically between her brows, made Otah smile. He leaned on his brush.
"We need to talk, sweet," he said. "There are some things ... we have some business, I think, to attend to."
Kiyan answered by taking the brush from him, leaning it against the wall, and marching to a meeting room at the back of the house. It was small but formal, with a thick wooden door and a window that looked out on the corner of the interior courtyard. The sort of place she might give to a diplomat or a courier for an extra length of copper. The sort of place it would be difficult to be overheard. That was as it should be.
Kiyan sat carefully, her face as blank as that of a man playing tiles. Otah sat across from her, careful not to touch her hand. She was holding herself back, he knew. She was restraining herself from hoping until she knew, so that if what he said did not match what she longed to hear, the disappointment would not he so heavy. For a moment, his mind flickered back to a bathhouse in Saraykeht and another woman's eyes. He had had this conversation once before, and he doubted he would ever have it again.
"I don't want to go to the north," Otah said. "For more reasons than one.
"Why not?" Kiyan asked.
"Sweet, there are some things I haven't told you. Things about my family. About myself...."
And so he began, slowly, carefully, to tell the story. He was the son of the Khai Machi, but his sixth son. One of those cast out by his family and sent to the school where the sons of the Khaiem and utkhaiem struggled in hope of one day being selected to be poets and wield the power of the andat. He had been chosen once, and had walked away. Itani Noygu was the name he had chosen for himself, the man he had made of himself. But he was also Otah Machi.