A Betrayal in Winter
To Kat and Scarlet
This book and this series would not be as good if I hadn't had the help
of Walter Jon Williams, Melinda Snodgrass, Yvonne Coates, Sally Gwylan,
Emily Mah-Tippets, S. M. Stirling, Terry England, Ian "I regellis, Sage
Walker, and the other members of the New Mexico Critical Mass Workshop.
I also owe debts of gratitude to Shawna McCarthy and Danny Baror for
their enthusiasm and faith in the project, to James Frenkel for his
unstinting support and uncanny ability to take a decent manuscript and
make it better, and to 'lbm Doherty and the staff at Tor for their
kindness and support of a new author.
And I am especially indebted to Paul Park, who told me to write what I fear.
""]'here's a problem at the mines," his wife said. "One of your
treadmill pumps."
Biitrah Machi, the eldest son of the Khai Machi and a man of fortyfive
summers, groaned and opened his eyes. The sun, new-risen, set the
paper-thin stone of the bedchamber windows glowing. Iliarni sat beside him.
"I've had the boy set out a good thick robe and your seal hoots," she
said, carrying on her thought, "and sent him for tea and bread."
Biitrah sat up, pulling the blankets off and rising naked with a grunt.
A hundred things came to his half-sleeping mind. It'r a pump-the
engineers can fix it or Bread an,-1 tea? Ain I a prisoner? or Take that
robe off, dove-let's have the mines care for themselves fora morning.
But he said what he always did, what he knew she expected of him.
"No time. I'll cat once I'm there."
"Take care," she said. "I don't want to hear that one of your brothers
has finally killed you."
"When the time comes, I don't think they'll come after me with a
treadmill pump."
Still, he made a point to kiss her before he walked to his dressing
chamber, allowed the servants to array him in a robe of gray and violet,
stepped into the sealskin boots, and went out to meet the bearer of the
had tidings.
"It's the I)aikani mine, most high," the man said, taking a pose of
apology formal enough for a temple. "It failed in the night. They say
the lower passages are already half a man high with water."
Biitrah cursed, but took a pose of thanks all the same. Together, they
walked through the wide main hall of the Second Palace. The caves
shouldn't have been filling so quickly, even with a failed pump. Some
thing else had gone wrong. He tried to picture the shape of the Daikani
mines, but the excavations in the mountains and plains around Machi were
numbered in the dozens, and the details blurred. Perhaps four
ventilation shafts. Perhaps six. He would have to go and see.
His private guard stood ready, bent in poses of obeisance, as he came
out into the street. Ten men in ceremonial mail that for all its glitter
would turn a knife. Ceremonial swords and daggers honed sharp enough to
shave with. Each of his two brothers had a similar company, with a
similar purpose. And the time would come, he supposed, that it would
descend to that. But not today. Not yet. He had a pump to fix.
He stepped into the waiting chair, and four porters came out. As they
lifted him to their shoulders, he called out to the messenger.
"Follow close," he said, his hands flowing into a pose of command with
the ease of long practice. "I want to hear everything you know before we
get there."
They moved quickly through the grounds of the palaces-the famed towers
rising above them like forest trees above rabbits-and into the
black-cobbled streets of Machi. Servants and slaves took abject poses as
Biitrah passed. The few members of the utkhaiem awake and in the city
streets took less extreme stances, each appropriate to the difference in
rank between themselves and the man who might one day renounce his name
and become the Khai Machi.
Biitrah hardly noticed. His mind turned instead upon his passionthe
machinery of mining: water pumps and ore graves and hauling winches. He
guessed that they would reach the low town at the mouth of the mine
before the fast sun of early spring had moved the width of two hands.
They took the south road, the mountains behind them. They crossed the
sinuous stone bridge over the Tidat, the water below them still smelling
of its mother glacier. The plain spread before them, farmsteads and low
towns and meadows green with new wheat. Trees were already pushing forth
new growth. It wouldn't be many weeks before the lush spring took root,
grabbing at the daylight that the winter stole away. The messenger told
him what he could, but it was little enough, and before they had reached
the halfway point, a wind rose whuffling in Biitrah's ears and making
conversation impossible. The closer they came, the better he recalled
these particular mines. They weren't the first that House Daikani had
leased from the Khai-those had been the ones with six ventilation
shafts. "These had four. And slowly-more slowly than it once had-his
mind recalled the details, spreading the problem before him like
something written on slate or carved from stone.
By the time they reached the first outbuildings of the low town, his
fingers had grown numb, his nose had started to run from the cold, he
had four different guesses as to what might have gone wrong, and ten
questions in mind whose answers would determine whether he was correct.
He went directly to the mouth of the mine, forgetting to stop for even
bread and tea.
HIAMI SAT BY THE BRAZIER, KNOTTING A SCARF FROM SILK TIIREAD AND
LIStening to a slave boy sing old tunes of the l- mpire.
Almost-forgotten emperors loved and fought, lost, won, and died in the
high, rich voice. Poets and their slave spirits, the andat, waged their
private battles sometimes with deep sincerity and beauty, sometimes with
bedroom humor and bawdy rhymes-but all of them ancient. She couldn't
stand to hear anything written after the great war that had destroyed
those faraway palaces and broken those song-recalled lands. The new
songs were all about the battles of the Khaiem-three brothers who held
claim to the name of Khai. Two would die, one would forget his name and
doom his own sons to another cycle of blood. Whether they were laments
for the fallen or celebrations of the victors, she hated them. They
weren't songs that comforted her, and she didn't knot scarves unless she
needed comfort.
A servant came in, a young girl in austere robes almost the pale of
mourning, and took a ritual pose announcing a guest of status equal to
Hiami's.
"Idaan," the servant girl said, "Daughter to the Khai Machi."
"I know my husband's sister," Hiami snapped, not pausing in her