Shadow and Betrayal

his. He took the bowl of heated wine he had been given, sipped it, and spoke.
    ‘Otah-kvo and I met at the school, most high. He already wore the black robes awarded to those who had passed the first test when I met him. I . . . I was the occasion of his passing the second.’
    The Khai Machi nodded. It was an almost inhumanly graceful movement, like a bird or some finely wrought mechanism. Maati took it as a sign that he should continue.
    ‘He came to me after that. He . . . he taught me things about the school and about myself. He was, I think, the best teacher I have known. I doubt I would have been chosen to study with the Dai-kvo if it hadn’t been for him. But then he refused the chance to become a poet.’
    ‘And the brand,’ the Khai said. ‘He refused the brand. Perhaps he had ambitions even then.’
    He was a boy, and angry, Maati thought. He had beaten Tahi-kvo and Milah-kvo on his own terms. He’d refused their honors. Of course he didn’t accept disgrace.
    The utkhaiem high enough to express an opinion nodded among themselves as if a decision made in heat by a boy not yet twelve might explain a murder two decades later. Maati let it pass.
    ‘I met him again in Saraykeht,’ Maati said. ‘I had gone there to study under Heshai-kvo and the andat Removing-the-Part-That-Continues. Otah-kvo was living under an assumed name at the time, working as a laborer on the docks.’
    ‘And you recognized him?’
    ‘I did,’ Maati said.
    ‘And yet you did not denounce him?’ The old man’s voice wasn’t angry. Maati had expected anger. Outrage, perhaps. What he heard instead was gentler and more penetrating. When he looked up, the red-rimmed eyes were very much like Otah-kvo’s. Even if he had not known before, those eyes would have told him that this man was Otah’s father. He wondered briefly what his own father’s eyes had looked like and whether his resembled them, then forced his mind back to the matter at hand.
    ‘I did not, most high. I regarded him as my teacher, and . . . and I wished to understand the choices he had made. We became friends for a time. Before the death of the poet took me from the city.’
    ‘And do you call him your teacher still? You call him Otah-kvo. That is a title for a teacher, is it not?’
    Maati blushed. He hadn’t realized until then that he was doing it.
    ‘An old habit, most high. I was sixteen when I last saw Otah-cha. I’m thirty now. It has been almost half my life since I have spoken with him. I think of him as a person I once knew who told me some things I found of use at the time,’ Maati said, and sensing that the falsehood of those words might be clear, he continued with some that were more nearly true. ‘My loyalty is to the Dai-kvo.’
    ‘That is good,’ the Khai Machi said. ‘Tell me, then. How will you conduct this examination of my city?’
    ‘I am here to study the library of Machi,’ Maati said. ‘I will spend my mornings there, most high. After midday and in the evenings I will move through the city. I think . . . I think that if Otah-kvo is here it will not be difficult to find him.’
    The gray, thin lips smiled. Maati thought there was condescension in them. Perhaps even pity. He felt a blush rise in his cheeks, but kept his face still. He knew how he must appear to the Khai’s weary eyes, but he would not flinch and confirm the man’s worst suspicions. He swallowed once to loosen his throat.
    ‘You have great faith in yourself,’ the Khai Machi said. ‘You come to my city for the first time. You know nothing of its streets and tunnels, little of its history, and you say that finding my missing son will be easy for you.’
    ‘Rather, most high, I will make it easy for him to find me.’
    It might have been his imagination - he knew from experience that he was prone to see his own fears and hopes in other people instead of what was truly there - but Maati thought there might have been a flicker of approval on the old man’s face.
    ‘You will report to me,’ the Khai said. ‘When you find him, you will come to me before anyone else, and I will send word to the Dai-kvo. ’
    ‘As you command, most high,’ Maati lied. He had said that his loyalty lay with the Dai-kvo, but there was no advantage he could see to explaining all that meant here and now.
    The meeting continued for a short time. The Khai seemed as exhausted by it as Maati himself was. Afterward, a servant girl led him to his apartments within the palaces. Night