A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) by Daniel Abraham Page B

sprinting around the wide grounds in nothing but their
    masks and long scarves trailing from their necks. The andat shifted like
    the first shudder of a landslide, then was still again. When it spoke,
    its voice was so soft that they would not be heard by the others.
     
    "It wouldn't he the first time the Dai-kvo had lied."
     
    "Or the first time I'd wondered why," Cehmai said. "It's his to decide
    what to say and to whom."
     
    "And yours?"
     
    "And mine to satisfy my curiosity. You heard what he said to the
    overseer in the mines. If he truly didn't want me to know, he would have
    lied better. Maati-kvo is looking into more than the library, and that's
    certain."
     
    The andat sighed. Stone-blade-Soft had no more need of breath than did a
    mountainside. The exhalation could only be a comment. Cehmai felt the
    subject of their conversation changing even before the andat spoke.
     
    "She's come."
     
    And there, dressed black as rooks and pale as mourning, Idaan Machi
    moved among the dancers. Her mask hid only part of her face and not her
    identity. Wrapped as he was by the darkness, she did not see him. Cehmai
    felt a lightening in his breast as he watched her move through the
    crowd, greeting friends and looking, he thought, for something or
    perhaps someone among them. She was not beautiful-well painted, but any
    number of the girls and women were more nearly perfect. She was not the
    most graceful, or the best spoken, or any of the hundred things that
    Cehmai thought of when he tried to explain to himself why this girl
    should fascinate him. The closest he could come was that she was
    interesting, and none of the others were.
     
    "It won't end well," the andat murmured.
     
    "It hasn't begun," Cehmai said. "How can something end when it hasn't
    even started?"
     
    Stone-blade-Soft sighed again, and Cehmai rose, tugging at his robes to
    smooth their lines. The music had paused and someone in the crowd
    laughed long and high.
     
    "Come back when you've finished and we'll carry on our conversation,"
    the andat said.
     
    Cchmai ignored the patience in its voice and strode forward, back into
    the light. The reed organ struck a chord just as he reached Idaan's
    side. He brushed her arm, and she turned-first annoyed and then
    surprised and then, he thought, pleased.
     
    "Idaan-cha," he said, the exaggerated formality acting as its opposite
    without taking him quite into the intimacy that the kya suffix would
    have suggested. "I'd almost thought you wouldn't be joining us."
     
    "I almost wasn't," she said. "I hadn't thought you'd be here."
     
    The organ set a beat, and the drums picked it up; the dance was
    beginning again. Cehmai held out a hand and, after a pause that took a
    thousand years and lasted perhaps a breath, Idaan took it. The music
    began in earnest, and Cehmai spun her, took her under his arm, and was
    turned by her. It was a wild tune, rich and fast with a rhythm like a
    racing heart. Around him the others were grinning, though not at him.
    Idaan laughed, and he laughed with her. The paving stones beneath them
    seemed to echo hack the song, and the sky above them received it.
     
    As they turned to face each other, he could see the flush in Idaan's
    check, and felt the same blood in his own, and then the music whirled
    them off again.
     
    In the center of the frenzy, someone took Cehmai's elbow from behind,
    and something round and hard was pressed into his hands. A man's voice
    whispered urgently in his ear.
     
    "Hold this."
     
    Cehmai faltered, confused, and the moment was gone. He was suddenly
    standing alone in a throng of people, holding an empty bowl-a thread of
    wine wetting the rim-while Adrah Vaunyogi took Idaan Machi through the
    steps and turns of the dance. The pair shifted away from him, left him
    behind. Cehmai felt the flush in his cheek brighten. He turned and
    walked through the shifting bodies, handing the bowl to a servant as he
    left.
     
    "He is her lover," the andat said.