Read Online A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) by Daniel Abraham - Free Book Online Page B

upstart house like
    yours would do well to boast a friendship with Cehmai."
     
    "I think being married to a daughter of the Khai will be quite enough,
    thank you," Adrah said, "and your brothers aren't dead yet, in case
    you'd forgotten."
     
    "No. I remember."
     
    "I don't want you acting strangely. Things are too delicate just now for
    you to start attracting attention. You are my lover, and if you are off
    half the time drinking rice wine with the poet, people won't be saying
    that I have strong friendship with him. They'll be saying that he's
    cuckolding me, and that Vaunyogi is the wrong house to draw a new Khai
    from."
     
    "So you don't want me seeing him, or you just want more discretion when
    I do?" Idaan asked.
     
    That stopped him. His eyes, deep brown with flecks of red and green,
    peered into hers. A sudden memory, powerful as illness, swept over her
    of a winter night when they had met in the tunnels. He had gazed at her
    then by firelight, had been no further from her than he was now. She
    wondered how these could be those same eyes. Her hand rose as if by
    itself and stroked his cheek. He folded his hands around hers.
     
    "I'm sorry," she said, ashamed of the catch in her voice. "I don't want
    to quarrel with you."
     
    "What are you doing, little one?" he asked. "Don't you see how dangerous
    this is that we're doing? Everything rests on it."
     
    "I know. I remember the stories. It's strange, don't you think, that my
    brothers can slaughter each other and all the people do is applaud, but
    if I take a hand, it's a crime worse than anything."
     
    "You're a woman," he said, as if that explained everything.
     
    "And you," she said calmly, almost lovingly, "are a schemer and an agent
    of the Galts. So perhaps we deserve each other."
     
    She felt him stiffen and then force the tension away. His smile was
    crooked. She felt something warm in her breast-painful and sad and warm
    as the first sip of rum on a midwinter night. She wondered if it might
    be hatred, and if it were, whether it was for herself or this man before
    her.
     
    "It's going to be fine," he said.
     
    "I know," she said. "I knew it would be hard. It's the ways it's hard
    that surprise me. I don't know how I should act or who I should be. I
    don't know where the normal grief that anyone would feel stops or turns
    into something else." She shook her head. "This seemed simpler when we
    were only talking about it."
     
    "I know, love. It will be simple again, I promise you. It's only this in
    the middle that feels complicated."
     
    "I don't know how they do it," she said. "I don't know how they kill one
    another. I dream about him, you know. I dream that I am walking through
    the gardens or the palaces and I see him in among a crowd of people."
    Tears came to her eyes unbidden, flowing warm and thick down her cheeks,
    but her voice, when she continued, was steady and calm as a woman
    predicting the weather. "He's always happy in the dreams. He's always
    forgiven me."
     
    "I'm sorry," he said. "I know you loved him."
     
    Idaan nodded, but didn't speak.
     
    "Be strong, love. It will be over soon. It will all be finished very soon.
     
    She wiped the tears away with the hack of her hand, her knuckles
    darkened where her paints were running, and pulled him close. He seemed
    to hold back for a moment, then folded against her, his arms around her
    trembling shoulders. He was warm and the smell of sage and violet was
    mixed now with his skin-the particular musk of his body that she had
    treasured once above all other scents. He murmured small comforts into
    her ears and stroked her hair as she wept.
     
    "Is it too late?" she asked. "Can we stop it, Adrah? Can we take it all
    hack?"
     
    He kissed her eyes, his lips soft as a girl's. His voice was calm and
    implacable and hard as stone. When she heard it, she knew he had been
    thinking himself down the same pathways and had come to the same place.
     
    "No, love. It's too late. It was too late as