Read A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) for Free Online Page A

stall on the broad central plaza and traded
    two lengths of copper for a thick wedge of honey bread and a bowl of
    black, smoky tea. Around him, the city slowly came awakethe streets and
    canals filling with traders and merchants, beggars singing at the
    corners or in small rafts tied at the water's edge, laborers hauling
    wagons along the wide flagstoned streets, and birds bright as shafts of
    sunlight-blue and red and yellow, green as grass, and pink as dawn. Udun
    was a city of birds, and their chatter and shriek and song filled the
    air as he ate.
     
    The compound of House Siyanti was in the better part of the city, just
    downstream from the palaces, where the water was not yet fouled by the
    wastes of thirty thousand men and women and children. The red brick
    buildings rose up three stories high, and a private canal was filled
    with barges in the red and silver of the house. The stylized emblem of
    the sun and stars had been worked into the brick archway that led to the
    central courtyard, and Otah passed beneath it with a feeling like coming
    home.
     
    Amiit Foss, the overseer for the house couriers, was in his offices,
    ordering around three apprentices with sharp words and insults, but no
    blows. Otah stepped in and took a pose of greeting.
     
    "Ah! The missing Itani. Did you know the word for half-wit in the tongue
    of the Empire was itani-nah?"
     
    "All respect, Amiit-cha, but no it wasn't."
     
    The overseer grinned. One of the apprentices-a girl of perhaps thirteen
    summers-whispered something angrily, and the boy next to her giggled.
     
    "Fine," the overseer said. "You two. I need the ciphers rechecked on
    last week's letters."
     
    "But I wasn't the one . . . ," the girl protested. The overseer took a
    pose that commanded her silence, and the pair, glowering at each other,
    stalked away.
     
    "I get them when they're just growing old enough to flirt," Amiit said,
    sighing. "Come back to the meeting rooms. The journey took longer than
    I'd expected."
     
    "There were some delays," Otah said as he followed the older man hack.
    "Chaburi-'Ian isn't as tightly run as it was last time I was out there."
     
    "No?"
     
    "There are refugees from the Westlands."
     
    "There are always refugees from the Westlands."
     
    "Not this many," Otah said. "There are rumors that the Khai ChaburiTan
    is going to restrict the number of Westlanders allowed on the island."
     
    Amiit paused, his hands on the carved wood door of the meeting rooms.
    Otah could almost see the implications of this thought working
    themselves out behind the overseer's eyes. A moment later, Amiit looked
    up, raised his eyebrows in appreciation, and pushed the doors open.
     
    Half the day was spent in the raw silk chairs of the meeting rooms while
    Amiit took Otah's report and accepted the letters-sewn shut and written
    in cipher-that Otah had carried with him.
     
    It had taken Otah some time to understand all that being a courier
    implied. When he had first arrived in Udun six years before, hungry,
    lost and half-haunted by the memories he carried with him, he had still
    believed that he would simply be carrying letters and small packages
    from one place to another, perhaps waiting for a response, and then
    taking those to where they were expected. It would have been as right to
    say that a farmer throws some seeds in the earth and returns a few
    months later to sec what's grown. He had been lucky. His ability to win
    friends easily had served him, and he had been instructed in what the
    couriers called the gentleman's trade: how to gather information that
    might be of use to the house, how to read the activity of a street
    corner or market, and how to know from that the mood of a city. How to
    break ciphers and re-sew letters. How to appear to drink more wine than
    you actually did, and question travelers on the road without seeming to.
     
    He understood now that the gentleman's trade was one that asked a
    lifetime to truly master, and though he was