"Only if you're fool enough to bring a torch," she said, but she pulled
her feet hack in from the abyss and hauled the great bronze-bound oaken
sky doors shut. For a moment, there was nothing-black darker than
closing her eyes-and then the scrape of a lantern's hood and the flame
of a single candle. Crates and boxes threw deep shadows on the stone
walls and carved cabinets. Adrah looked pale, even in the dim light.
Idaan found herself amused and annoyed-pulled between wanting to comfort
him and the desire to point out that it wasn't his family they were
killing. She wondered if he knew yet that she had taken the poet to bed
and whether he would care. And whether she did. He smiled nervously and
glanced around at the shadows.
"He hasn't come," Idaan said.
"He will. Don't worry," Adrah said, and then a moment later: "My father
has drafted a letter. Proposing our union. He's sending it to the Khai
tomorrow."
"Good," Idaan said. "We'll want that in place before everyone finishes
dying."
"Don't."
"If we can't speak of it to each other, Adrah-kya, when will we ever? It
isn't as if I can go to our friends or the priest." Idaan took a pose of
query to some imagined confidant. "Adrah's going to take me as his wife,
but it's important that we do it now, so that when I've finished
slaughtering my brothers, he can use me to press his suit to become the
new Khai without it seeming so clearly that I'm being traded at market.
And don't you love this new robe? It's Westlands silk."
She laughed bitterly. Adrah did not step back, quite, but he did pull away.
"What is it, Idaan-kya?" he said, and Idaan was surprised by the pain in
his voice. It sounded genuine. "Have I done something to make you angry
with me?"
For a moment, she saw herself through his eyes-cutting, ironic, cruel.
It wasn't who she had been with him. Once, before they had made this
bargain with Chaos, she had had the luxury of being soft and warm. She
had always been angry, only not with him. How lost he must feel.
Idaan leaned close and kissed him. For one terrible moment, she meant
it-the softness of his lips against hers stirring something within her
that cried out to hold and be held, to weep and wail and take com fort.
Her flesh also remembered the poet, the strange taste of another man's
skin, the illusion of hope and of safety that she'd felt in her betrayal
of the man who was destined to share her life.
"I'm not angry, sweet. Only tired. I'm very tired."
"This will pass, Idaan-kya. Remember that this part only lasts a while."
"And is what follows it better?"
He didn't answer.
The candle had hardly burned past another mark when the moonfaced
assassin appeared, moving like darkness itself in his back cotton robe.
He put down his lantern and took a pose of welcome before dusting a
crate with his sleeve and sitting. His expression was pleasant as a
fruit seller in a summer market. It only made Idaan like him less.
"So," Oshai said. "You called, I've come. What seems to be the problem?"