bad enough, but he murdered a son of the Khaiem without being a brother
to him. He knows what would happen. His best hope is that someone
intercedes for him. If he speaks what he knows, he dies badly."
"We have to free him," Adrah said. "We ha-(- to get him out. We have to
show the Galts that we can protect them."
"We will," Idaan said. She drank down her tea. "The three of us. And I
know how we'll do it."
Adrah and his father looked at her as if she'd just spat out a serpent.
She took a pose of query.
"Shall we wait for the Galts to take action instead? They've already
begun to distance themselves. Shall we take some members of your house
into our confidence? Hire some armsmen to do it for us? Assume that our
secrets will be safer the more people know?"
"But ...... Adrah said.
"If we falter, we fail," Idaan said. "I know the way to the cages. He's
kept underground now; if they move him to the towers, it gets harder. I
asked that we meet in a place with a private exit. This garden. There is
a way out of it?"
Daaya took an acknowledging pose, but his face was pale as bread dough.
"I thought there would be others you wished to consult," he said.
"There's nothing to consult over," Idaan said and pulled open the gifts
she had brought to her new marriage. Three dark cloaks with deep hoods,
three blades in dark leather sheaths, two unstrung hunter's bows with
dark-shafted arrows, two torches, a pot of smoke pitch and a bag to
carry it. And beneath it, a wall stand of silver with the sigils of
order and chaos worked in marble and bloodstone. Idaan passed the blades
and cloaks to the men.
"The servants will only know of the wall stand. "These others we can
give to Oshai to dispose of once we have him," Idaan said. "The smoke
pitch we can use to frighten the armsmen at the cages. The bows and
blades are for those that don't flee."
"Idaan-kya," Adrah said, "this is madness, we can't. .
She slapped him before she knew she meant to. He pressed a palm to his
cheek, and his eyes glistened. But there was anger in him too. That was
good.
"We do the thing now, while there are servants to swear it was not us.
We do it quickly, and we live. We falter and wail like old women, and we
die. Pick one."
Daaya Vaunyogi broke the silence by taking a cloak and pulling it on.
His son looked to him, then to her, then, trembling began to do the same.
"You should have been born a man," her soon-to-be father said. There was
disgust in his voice.
The tunnels beneath the palaces were little traveled in spring. The long
winter months trapped in the warrens that laced the earth below Machi
made even the slaves yearn for daylight. Idaan knew them all. Long
winter months stealing unchaperoned up these corridors to play on the
river ice and snow-shrouded city streets had taught her how to move
through them unseen. They passed the alcove where she and Janat Saya had
kissed once, when they were both too young to think it more than