Shadow and Betrayal

thinking.
    ‘I got your message,’ Maati said. ‘I came as soon as I could. He isn’t here?’
    ‘No,’ Liat said. ‘I thought, since he stayed with you after he came back from the Dai-kvo, maybe he’d come to you and . . .’
    ‘He did,’ Maati said, and sat down. ‘After he brought you here, he took a bunk at the seafront. He came to see me last night.’
    ‘He didn’t stay?’
    Maati pressed his lips thin and looked away. She was aware of Maj, standing in the alcove, watching them, but the shame in Maati’s face was too profound for her to care what the islander made of this. Liat swallowed, trying to ease the tightness in her throat. Maati carefully, intentionally, released her hand from his. She let it drop to her side.
    ‘He found out?’ Liat asked, her voice small. ‘He knows what happened? ’
    ‘I told him,’ Maati said. ‘I had to. I thought he would come back here, that he’d be with you.’
    ‘No. He never did.’
    ‘Do you think . . . if Wilsin found him . . .’
    ‘Amat doesn’t think Wilsin would do anything against him. There’s nothing to gain from it. More likely, he only doesn’t want to see us.’
    Maati sank to a bench, his head in his hands. Liat sat beside him, her unwounded arm around his shoulders. Itani was gone, lost to her. She knew it like her own name. She rested her head against Maati, and closed her eyes, half-desperate with the fear that he would go as well.
    ‘Give him time,’ she murmured. ‘He needs time to think. That’s all. Everything is going to be fine.’
    ‘It isn’t,’ Maati said. His tone wasn’t despairing or angry, only matter-of-fact. ‘Everything is going to be broken, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’
    She closed her eyes, felt the rise and fall of his breath like waves coming to shore. Felt him shift as he turned to her and put his arms around her. Her wounds ached with the force of his embrace, but she would have bitten her tongue bloody before she complained. Instead she stroked his hair and wept.
    ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t stand to lose you both.’
    ‘I’ll stop breathing first,’ Maati said. ‘I swear I’ll stop breathing before I leave you. But I have to find Otah-kvo.’
    The painful, wonderful arms unwrapped, and Maati stood. His face was serious to the point of grave. He took her hand.
    ‘If Otah-kvo . . . if the two of you cannot reconcile . . . Liat, I would be less than whole without you. My life isn’t entirely my own - I have duties to the Dai-kvo and the Khaiem - but what is mine to choose, I’d have you be part of.’
    Liat blinked back tears.
    ‘You would choose me over him?’
    The words shook him, she could see that. For a moment, she wanted more than anything to unsay them, but time only moved forward. Maati met her gaze again.
    ‘I can’t lose either of you,’ he said. ‘What peace Otah-kvo and I make, if we can make any, is between the two of us. What I feel for you, Liat . . . I could sink my life on those rocks. You’ve become that much to me. If you stay with him, I will be your friend forever.’
    It was like pouring cool water on a burn. Liat felt herself sink back.
    ‘Go, then. Find him if you can and tell him how sorry I am. And whether you do or not, come back to me, Maati. Promise you’ll come back.’
    It was still some minutes before Maati tore himself away and headed out into the streets of the city. Liat, after he had gone, sat on the bench, her eyes closed, observing the roiling emotions in her breast. Guilt, yes, but also joy. Fear, but also relief. She loved Maati, she saw that now. As she had loved Itani once, when they had only just begun. It was because of this confusion that she didn’t notice for a long time that she was being watched.
    Maj stood in the alcove, one hand pressed to her lips, her eyes shining with tears. Liat stood slowly, and took a pose that was a query. Maj strode across the room to her, put her hands on Liat’s neck and - unnervingly - kissed her on the lips.
    ‘Poor rabbit,’ Maj said. ‘Poor stupid rabbit. Am very sorry. The boy and you together. It makes me think of the man who I was . . . of the father. Before, I call you stupid and selfish and weak because I am forgetting what it is to be young. I am young once, too, and I am not my best mind now. What I say to hurt you, I take back, yes?’
    Liat nodded, recognizing the apology in the words, if not the whole sense of them. Maj responded with a string of Nippu