Shadow and Betrayal by Abraham Daniel

Author:Abraham, Daniel [Abraham, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2010-06-02T22:00:00+00:00

BOOK TWO: A BETRAYAL IN WINTER

PROLOGUE

‘There’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 forty-five summers, groaned and opened his eyes. The sun, new-risen, set the paper-thin stone of the bedchamber windows glowing. Hiami sat beside him.

‘I’ve had the boy set out a good thick robe and your seal boots,’ 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’s a pump - the engineers can fix it or Bread and tea? Am I a prisoner? or Take that robe off, love - let’s have the mines care for themselves for a morning. But he said what he always did, what he knew she expected of him.

‘No time. I’ll eat 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 bad tidings.

‘It’s the Daikani 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. Something 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.

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