Shadow and Betrayal

strong, though. I thought you’d come down sooner, and it gets thick if it boils too long.’
    Maati turned his back to the andat and used an old copper ladle to fill his winebowl. When he took a sip, it tasted rich and hot and red. And, perversely, comforting.
    ‘It’s fine,’ he said.
    He heard the hush of paper upon paper as, behind him, Seedless closed the book. The silence afterward went on so long that he looked back over his shoulder. The andat sat motionless as a statue; not even breath stirred the folds of his robe and his face betrayed nothing. His ribs shifted an inch, taking in air, and he spoke.
    ‘What would you have said, if you’d found him?’
    Maati shifted, sitting with his legs crossed, the warm bowl in his hands. He blew across it to cool it before he answered.
    ‘I’d have asked his forgiveness.’
    ‘Would you have deserved it, do you think?’
    ‘I don’t know. Possibly not. What I did was wrong.’
    Seedless chuckled and leaned forward, lacing his long graceful fingers together.
    ‘Of course it was,’ Seedless said. ‘Why would anyone ask forgiveness for something they’d done that was right? But tell me, since we’re on the subject of judgment and clemency, why would you ask for something you don’t deserve?’
    ‘You sound like Heshai-kvo.’
    ‘Of course I do, you’re evading. If you don’t like that question, leave it aside and answer me this instead. Would you forgive me? What I did was wrong, and I know it. Would you do for me what you’d ask of him?’
    ‘Would you want me to?’
    ‘Yes,’ Seedless said, and his voice was strangely plaintive. It wasn’t an emotion Maati had ever seen in the andat before now. ‘Yes, I want to be forgiven.’
    Maati sipped the wine, then shook his head.
    ‘You’d do it again, wouldn’t you? If you could, you’d sacrifice anyone or anything to hurt Heshai-kvo.’
    ‘You think that?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Seedless bowed his head until his hair tipped over his hands.
    ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘Fine, then this. Would you forgive Heshai-kvo for his failings? As a teacher to you, as a poet in making something so dangerously flawed as myself. Really, pick anything - there’s no end of ways in which he’s wanting. Does he deserve mercy?’
    ‘Perhaps,’ Maati said. ‘He didn’t mean to do what he did.’
    ‘Ah! And because I planned, and he blundered, the child is more my wrong than his?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then you’ve forgotten again what we are to each other, he and I. But let that be. If your laborer friend - you called him Otah-kvo, by the way. You should be more careful of that. If Otah-kvo did something wrong, if he committed some crime or helped someone else commit one, could you let that go?’
    ‘You know . . . how did you . . .’
    ‘I’ve known for weeks, dear. Don’t let it worry you. I haven’t told anyone. Answer the question; would you hold his crimes against him as you hold mine against me?’
    ‘No, I don’t think I would. Who told you that Otah was . . .’
    Seedless leaned back and took a pose of triumph.
    ‘And what’s the difference between us, laborer and andat, that you’ll brush his sins aside and not my own?’
    Maati smiled.
    ‘You aren’t him,’ he said.
    ‘And you love him.’
    Maati took a pose of affirmation.
    ‘And love is more important than justice,’ Seedless said.
    ‘Sometimes. Yes.’
    Seedless smiled and nodded.
    ‘What a terrible thought,’ he said. ‘That love and injustice should be married.’
    Maati shifted to a dismissive pose, and in reply the andat took the brown book back up, leafing through the handwritten pages as if looking for his place. Maati closed his eyes and breathed in the fumes of the wine. He felt profoundly comfortable, like sleep - true sleep - coming on. He felt himself rocking slowly, involuntarily shifting in time with his pulse. A sense of disquiet roused him and without opening his eyes again, he spoke.
    ‘You mustn’t tell anyone about Otah-kvo. If his family finds him . . .’
    ‘They won’t,’ Seedless said. ‘At least not through me.’
    ‘I don’t believe you.’
    ‘This time, you can. Heshai-kvo did his best by you. Do you know that? For all his failings, and for all of mine, to the degree that our private war allowed it, we have taken care of you and . . .’
    The andat broke off. Maati opened his eyes. The andat wasn’t looking at him or the book, but out, to the south. It was as if his sight penetrated the