Shadow and Betrayal

shoulder, solid, firm, and cold.
    ‘Maati,’ the lovely, careful voice said so quietly that only the two of them could hear, ‘there’s something you should know. I’m not Heshai-kvo. ’
    Maati looked up. The dark eyes were on his, something like amusement in their depths.
    ‘Wh-who are you, then?’
    ‘A slave, my dear. The slave you hope to own.’
    Then the man who was not his teacher turned to the Khai Saraykeht and the spluttering, enraged poet. He took a pose of greeting more appropriate to acquaintances chanced upon at a teahouse than to the two most powerful men of the city. Maati, his hands trembling, took a much more formal stance.
    ‘What is this?’ the poet - the frog-mouthed Heshai-kvo, he had to be - demanded.
    ‘This?’ the man said, turning and considering Maati as if he were a sculpture pointed out at a fair. ‘It seems to be a boy. Or perhaps a young man. Fifteen summers? Maybe sixteen? It’s so hard to know what to call it at that age. I found it abandoned in the upper halls. Apparently it’s been wandering around there for days. No one else seems to have any use for it. May I keep it?’
    ‘Heshai,’ the Khai said. His voice was powerful. He seemed to speak in a conversational tone, but his voice carried like an actor’s. The displeasure in the syllables stung.
    ‘Oh,’ the man at Maati’s side said. ‘Have I displeased? Well, master, you’ve no one to blame but yourself.’
    ‘Silence!’ the poet snapped. Maati sensed as much as saw the man beside him go stiff. He chanced a glimpse at the perfect face. The features were fixed in pain, and slowly, as if fighting each movement, the elegant hands took forms of apology and self-surrender, the spine twisted into a pose of abject obeisance.
    ‘I come to do your bidding, Khai Saraykeht,’ the man - no, the andat, Seedless - said, his voice honey and ashes. ‘Command me as you will.’
    The Khai took a pose of acknowledgment, its nuances barely civil. The frog-mouthed poet looked at Maati and gestured pointedly to his own side. Maati scurried to the dais. The andat moved more slowly, but followed.
    ‘You should have waited,’ Heshai-kvo hissed. ‘This is a very busy time of year. I would have thought the Dai-kvo would teach you more patience.’
    Maati fell into a pose of abject apology.
    ‘Heshai-kvo, I was misled. I thought that he . . . that it . . . I am shamed by my error.’
    ‘As you should be,’ the poet snapped. ‘Just arriving like this, unintroduced and—’
    ‘Good and glorious Heshai,’ the Khai Saraykeht said, voice envenomed by sarcasm, ‘I understand that adding another pet to your collection must be trying. And indeed, I regret to interrupt, but . . .’
    The Khai gestured grandly at the bales of cotton. His hands were perfect, and his motion the most elegant Maati had ever seen, smooth and controlled and eloquent.
    Heshai-kvo briefly adopted a pose of regret, then turned to the beautiful man - Seedless, Sterile, andat. For a moment the two considered each other, some private, silent conversation passing between them. The andat curled his lip in something half sneer, half sorrow. Sweat dampened the teacher’s back, and he began trembling as if with a great effort. Then the andat turned and raised his arms theatrically to the cotton.
    A moment later, Maati heard a faint tick, like a single raindrop. And then more and more, until an invisible downpour filled the hall. From his position behind the Khai and the poet, he lowered himself, looking under the raised platform on which the bales lay. The parquet floor was covered with small black dots skittering and jumping as they struck one another. Cotton seed.
    ‘It is done,’ Heshai-kvo said, and Maati stood hurriedly.
    The Khai clapped his hands and rose, his movement like a dancer’s. His robes flowed through the air like something alive. For a moment Maati forgot himself and merely stood in awe.
    A pair of servants pulled wide the great doors, and began a low wail, calling the merchants and their laborers to come and take what was theirs. The utkhaiem took stations by the doors, prepared to collect the fees and taxes for each bale that left. The Khai stood on his dais, grave and beautiful, seeming more a ghost or god than Seedless, who more nearly was.
    ‘You should have waited,’ Heshai-kvo said again over the voices of the laborers and the din of the merchants at their business. ‘This is a very bad start for your training. A very bad