"I'm not wrong, Adrah. You know I'm not wrong."
"There's a price for doing what you say, do you know that? I loved you
more than I loved anything. My father, my mother, my sisters, anything
or anyone. I did all of this because it was what you wanted."
"And not for any gain of your own? How selfless. Becoming Khai Machi
must be such a chore for you."
"You wouldn't have had me if my ambition didn't match yours," Adrah
said. "What I've become, I've become for you."
"That isn't fair," Idaan said.
Adrah whooped and turned in a wide circle, like a child playing before
an invisible audience.
"Fair! When did this become about fair? When someone finally asked you
to take some responsibility? You made the plans, love. This is yours,
Idaan! All of it's yours, and VOL] won't blame me that you've got to
live with it!"
He was breathing fast now, as if he'd been running, but she could see in
his shoulders and the corners of his mouth that the rage was failing. He
dropped his arms and looked at her. His breath slowed. His face relaxed.
They stood in silence, considering each other for what felt like half a
hand. There was no anger now and no sorrow. He only looked tired and
lost, very young and very old at once. He looked the way she felt. It
was as if the air they both breathed had changed. He was the one to look
away and break the silence.
"You know, love, you never said Cehmai wasn't your lover."
"He is," Idaan said, then shrugged. The battle was over. They were both
too thin now for any more damage to matter. "He has been for a few weeks."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Because he wasn't part of all this. Because he was clean."
"Because he is power, and you're drawn to that more than anything?"
Idaan hit back her first response and let the accusation sit. "Then she
nodded.
"Perhaps a bit of that, yes," she said.
Adrah sighed and leaned against the wall. Slowly, he slid down until he
was sitting on the floor, his arms resting on his knees.
"There is a list of houses and their women," he said. ""There was before
you and Cehmai took tip with each other. I argued against it, but my
father said it was just as an exercise. Just in case it was needed
later. Only tell me ... today, when he came ... you didn't ... the two
of you didn't ..."
Idaan laughed again, but this was a lower sound, gentler.
"No, I haven't lain down for another man in your house, Adrah-kya. I
can't say why I think that would be worse than what I have done, but I do."
Adrah nodded. She could see another question in the way he shifted his
eyes, the way he moved his hands. They had been lovers and conspirators
for years. She knew him as if he were her family, or a distant part of
herself. It didn't make her love him, but she remembered when she had.
"The first time I kissed you, you looked so frightened," she said. "Do
you remember that? It was the middle of winter, and we'd all gone
skating. "There must have been twenty of us. We all raced, and you won."