Shadow and Betrayal

I’m waiting for from the west. I won’t be sending you out for a month at least, so you can have some time to spend your money. Unless . . .’
    The overseer’s eyes narrowed. His hands took a pose of query.
    ‘I just dislike the cold,’ Otah said, making a joke to cover his unease. ‘I grew up in Saraykeht. It seemed like water never froze there.’
    ‘It’s a hard life,’ Amiit said. ‘I can try to give the commissions to other men, if you’d prefer.’
    And have them wonder why it was that I wouldn’t go , Otah thought. He took a pose of thanks that also implied rejection.
    ‘I’ll take what there is,’ he said. ‘And heavy wool robes besides.’
    ‘It really isn’t so bad up there in summer,’ Amiit said. ‘It’s the winters that break your stones.’
    ‘Then by all means, send someone else in the winter.’
    They exchanged a few final pleasantries, and Otah left the name of Kiyan’s wayhouse as the place to send for him, if he was needed. He spent the afternoon in a teahouse at the edge of the warehouse district, talking with old acquaintances and trading news. He kept an ear out for word from Machi, but there was nothing fresh. The eldest son had been poisoned, and his remaining brothers had gone to ground. No one knew where they were nor which had begun the traditional struggle. There were only a few murmurs of the near-forgotten sixth son, but every time he heard his old name, it was like hearing a distant, threatening noise.
    He returned to the wayhouse as darkness began to thicken the treetops and the streets fell into twilight, brooding. It wasn’t safe, of course, to take a commission in Machi, but neither could he safely refuse one. Not without a reason. He knew when gossip and speculation had grown hot enough to melt like sugar and stick. There would be a dozen reports of Otah Machi from all over the cities, and likely beyond as well. If even a suggestion was made that he was not who he presented himself to be, he ran the risk of being exposed, dragged into the constant, empty, vicious drama of succession. He would sacrifice quite a lot to keep that from happening. Going north, doing his work, and returning was what he would have done, had he been the man he claimed to be. And so perhaps it was the wiser strategy.
    And also he wondered what sort of man his father was. What sort of man his brother had been. Whether his mother had wept when she sent her boy away to the school where the excess sons of the high familes became poets or fell forever from grace.
    As he entered the courtyard, his dark reverie was interrupted by laughter and music from the main hall, and the scent of roast pork and baked yams mixed with the pine resin. When he stepped in, Old Mani slapped an earthenware bowl of wine into his hands and steered him to a bench by the fire. There were a good number of travelers - merchants from the great cities, farmers from the low towns, travelers each with a story and a past and a tale to tell, if only they were asked the right questions in the right ways.
    It was later, the warm air busy with conversation, that Otah caught sight of Kiyan across the wide hall. She had on a working woman’s robes, her hair tied back, but the expression on her face and the angle of her body spoke of a deep contentment and satisfaction. She knew her place was here, and she was proud of it.
    Otah found himself suddenly stilled by a longing for her unlike the simple lust that he was accustomed to. He imagined himself feeling the same satisfaction that he saw in her. The same sense of having a place in the world. She turned to him as if he had spoken and tilted her head - not an actual formal pose, but nonetheless a question.
    He smiled in reply. This that she offered was, he suspected, a life worth living.
     
    Cehmai Tyan’s dreams, whenever the time came to renew his life’s struggle, took the same form. A normal dream - meaningless, strange, and trivial - would shift. Something small would happen that carried a weight of fear and dread out of all proportion. This time, he dreamt he was walking in a street fair, trying to find a stall with food he liked, when a young girl appeared at his side. As he saw her, his sleeping mind had already started to rebel. She held out her hand, the palm painted the green of summer grass, and he woke himself trying to scream.
    Gasping as if he had run a race, he rose, pulled on the simple brown robes of a poet, and walked to the main room of the house. The