Shadow and Betrayal

of his. She smiled a question.
    ‘Liat-cha,’ he said, and his voice was thick with distress. ‘I’m pleased you’re feeling better.’
    ‘What’s happened?’
    ‘Good news. Otah-kvo’s come back. He arrived last night with a letter from the Dai-kvo himself. It appears there is no andat to replace Seedless, so I’m to do anything necessary to support Heshai-kvo’s well-being. But since he’s already feeling so much better, I don’t see that it amounts to much. It seems there’s no one ready to take Heshai’s place, and may not be for several years, you see, and so it’s very important that . . .’
    He trailed off into silence, a smile on his lips and something entirely different in his eyes. Liat felt her heart die a little. She swallowed and nodded.
    ‘Where is he?’ Liat asked. ‘Where’s Itani?’
    ‘With Heshai-kvo. He came straight there when his ship arrived. It was very late, and he was tired. He wanted to come to you immediately, but I thought you would be asleep. He’ll come later, when he wakes. Liat, I hope . . . I mean, I didn’t . . .’
    He looked down, shaking his head. When he looked up, his smile was rueful and raw, and tears streaked his face.
    ‘We knew, didn’t we, that it would be hard?’ he said.
    Liat walked forward, feeling as if something outside of her was moving her. Her hand cupped Maati’s neck, and she leaned in, the crown of her head touching his. She could smell his tears, warm and salty and intimate. Her throat was too tight for speech.
    ‘Heshai was very . . .’ Maati began, and she killed the words with kissing him. His lips, familiar now, responded. She could feel when they twisted into a grimace of pain against her. His mouth closed, and he stepped back. She wanted to hold him, to be held by him, the way a dropped stone wants to fall, but his expression forbade her. The boy was gone, and someone - a man with his face and his expression, but with something deep and painful and new in his eyes - was in his place.
    ‘Liat-cha,’ he said. ‘Otah’s back. ’
    Liat took a breath and slowly let it out.
    ‘Thank you, Maati-cha,’ she said, the honorific like ashes in her mouth. ‘Perhaps . . . perhaps if I could join you all later in the day. I find I’m more tired than I thought.’
    ‘Of course,’ Maati said. ‘I’ll send someone in to help you with your robe.’
    With her good hand, she took a pose of thanks. Maati replied with a simple response. Their eyes met, the gaze holding all the things they were not speaking. Her need, and his. His resolve. Morning rain tapped at the shutters like time passing behind them. Maati turned and left her, his back straight, his bearing formal and controlled.
    For the space of a breath, she wanted to call him back. Pull him into the room, into the bed. She wanted to feel the warmth of him against her one last time. It wasn’t fair that their bodies hadn’t had the chance to say their farewells. And she would have, she thought, even with Itani . . . even with Otah returned and sleeping in the poet’s house that she now knew so well. She would have called, except that it would have broken her soul when Maati refused her. And she saw now that he would have.
    Instead, she lay in the bed by herself, her flesh mending and her spirit ill. She had expected to feel torn between the two of them, but instead she was only shut out. The bond between Maati and Otah - the relationship of her two lovers - was deeper than what she had with either. She was losing each of them to the other, and the knowledge was like a stone in her throat.
     
    Maati sat at the top of the bridge, the pond below him dark as tea. His belly was heavy, his chest so tight his shoulders shifted forward in a hunch. The breeze smelled of rain, though the sky was clear. The world seemed a dark, deadened place.
    He had known, of course, that Liat wasn’t truly his lover. What they had been to each other for those few, precious weeks was comfort and friendship. That was all. And with Otah back, everything could return to the way it had been - the way it should have been. Only Maati hadn’t ached before the way he did now. The memory of Liat’s body against him, her lips against his, hadn’t haunted him. And Otah’s long, thoughtful face hadn’t made Maati sick with guilt.
    And so, he thought, nothing would be what it had been. The idea that it could had been an illusion.
    ‘You’ve done it, then?’
    Maati turned to his left, back toward the