Shadow and Betrayal

the school, we didn’t—’
    The blow was so sudden, Maati didn’t really have time to feel it. He was on the ground. The stones of the street were rough against his skinned palms, and he was consumed by a sense of urgency whose object he could not immediately identify. Liat lay unmoving beside him. A roof tile - six hands square and three fingers deep of baked red clay - rested between them like an abandoned pillow. A scraping sound like rats in plaster walls caught Maati’s crippled attention and another tile fell, missing them both, detonating on the street at Liat’s side. Maati’s panic found its focus. He lurched toward her. Blood soaked her robe at the shoulder. Her eyes were closed.
    ‘Liat! Wake up! The tiles are loose!’
    She didn’t answer. Maati looked up, his hands shaking though he wasn’t aware of the fear, only of the terrible need to act immediately trapped against his uncertainty of what action to take. No other tile moved, but something - a bird, a squirrel, a man’s head? - ducked back over the roof’s lip. Maati put his hand on Liat’s body and willed his mind into something nearer to order. They were in danger here. They had to move away from the wall. And Liat couldn’t.
    Carefully he took her by the shoulders and dragged her. Each step made his ribs shriek, but he took her as far as the middle of the street before the pain was too much. Kneeling over her, fighting to breathe, Maati’s fear turned at last to panic. For a long airless moment, Maati convinced himself that she wasn’t breathing. A shifting of her bloody robe showed him otherwise. Help. They needed help.
    Maati stood and staggered. The street was empty, but a wide ironwork gate opened to rising marble steps and a pair of wide wooden doors. Maati pushed himself toward it, feeling as if he was at one remove from his own muscles, as if his body was a puppet he didn’t have the skill to use well. It seemed to him, hammering on the wide doors, that no one would ever come. He wiped the sweat from his brow only to discover it was blood.
    He was trying to decide whether he had the strength to go looking for another door, a firekeeper, a busier street, when the door swung open. An old man, thin as sticks, looked out at him. Maati took a pose that begged.
    ‘You have to help her,’ he said. ‘She’s hurt.’
    ‘Gods!’ the man said, moving forward, supporting Maati as he slid down to the steps. ‘Don’t move, my boy. Don’t move. Chiyan! Out here! Hurry! There’s children hurt!’
    Tell Otah-kvo , Maati thought, but was too weak to say. Find Otah-kvo and tell him. He’ll know what to do.
    He found himself in a well-lit parlor without recalling how he’d come there. A younger man was prodding at his head with something painful. He tried to push the man’s arm away, but he was nearly too weak to move. The man said something that Maati acknowledged and then immediately forgot. Someone helped him to drink a thin, bitter tea, and the world faded.

16
    M archat Wilsin woke from an uneasy sleep, soft footsteps in the corridor enough to disturb him. When the knock came, he was already sitting up. Epani pushed the door open and stepped in, his face drawn in the flickering light of the night candle.
    ‘Wilsin-cha . . .’
    ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
    Epani took a pose of affirmation, and Marchat felt the dread that had troubled his sleep knot itself in his chest. He put on a brave show, pushing aside the netting with a sigh, pulling on a thick wool robe. Epani didn’t speak. Amat, Marchat thought, would have said something.
    He walked alone to his private hall. The door of it stood open, lantern light spilling out into the corridor. A black form passed in front of it, pacing, agitated, blocking out the light. The knot in Marchat Wilsin’s chest grew solid - a stone in his belly. He drew himself up and walked in.
    Seedless paced, his pale face as focused as a hunting cat’s. His robe - black shot with red - blended with the darkness until he seemed a creature half of shadow. Marchat took a pose of welcome which the andat ignored except for the distant smile that touched his perfect lips.
    ‘It was an accident,’ Marchat said. ‘They didn’t know it was him. They were only supposed to kill the girl.’
    Seedless stopped. His face was perfectly calm, his eyes cool. Anger radiated from him like a fire.
    ‘You hurt my boy,’ he said.
    ‘Blame Amat, if you have to blame anyone,’ Wilsin said. ‘It’s her