A Betrayal in Winter (The Long Price Quartet Book 2) by Abraham Daniel

Author:Abraham, Daniel [Abraham, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2007-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

MAATI LAID his notes out on the wide table at the back of the library’s main chamber. The distant throbbing of trumpet and drum wasn’t so distracting here as in his rooms. Three times on the walk here, his sleeves heavy with paper and books, he’d been grabbed by some masked reveler and kissed. Twice, bowls of sweet wine had been forced into his hand. The palaces were a riot of dancing and song, and despite his best intentions, the memory of those three kisses drew his attention. It would be sweet to go out, to lose himself in that crowd, to find some woman willing to dance with him, and to take comfort in her body and her breath. It had been years since he had let himself be so young as that.

He turned himself to his puzzle. Danat, the man destined to be Khai Machi, had seemed the most likely to have engineered the rumors of Otah’s return. Certainly he had gained the most. Kaiin Machi, whose death had already given Maati three kisses, was the other possibility. Until he dug in. He had asked the servants and the slaves of each household every question he could think of. No, none of them recalled any consultations with a man who matched the assassin’s description. No, neither man had sent word or instruction since Maati’s own arrival. He’d asked their social enemies what they knew or guessed or speculated on.

Kaiin Machi had been a weak-lunged man, pale of face and watery of eye. He’d had a penchant for sleeping with servant girls, but hadn’t ever gotten a child on one—likely because he was infertile. Danat was a bully and a sneak, a man whose oaths meant nothing to him—and the killing of noble, scholarly Kaiin showed that. Danat’s triumph was the best of all possible outcomes or else the worst.

Searching for conspiracy in court gossip was like looking for raindrops in a thunderstorm. Everyone he spoke to seemed to have four or five suggestions of what might have happened, and of those, each half contradicted the other. By far, the most common assumption was that Otah had been the essential villain in all of it.

Maati had diagrammed the relationships of Danat and Kaiin with each of the high families—Kamau, Daikani, Radaani and a dozen more. Then with the great trading houses, with mistresses and rumored mistresses and the teahouses they liked best. At one point he’d even listed which horses each preferred to ride. The sad truth was that despite all these facts, all these words scribbled onto papers, referenced and checked, nothing pointed to either man as the author of Biitrah’s death, the attempt on Maati’s own life, or the slaughter of the assassin. He was either too dimwitted to see the pattern before him, it was too well hidden, or he was looking in the wrong place. Clearly neither man had been present in the city to direct the last two attacks, and there seemed to be no supporters in Machi who had managed the plans for them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.