Shadow and Betrayal

ones, and let himself be led to the Khai Machi’s private chambers. He passed through several rooms on his way - a hall of worked marble the color of honey with a fountain running through it like a creek, a meeting chamber large enough to hold two dozen at a single table, then a smaller corridor that led to chambers of a more human size. Ahead of him, a woman passed from one side of the corridor to the other leaving the impression of night-black hair, warm brown skin, and robes the yellow of sunrise. One of the wives, Maati knew, of a man who had several.
    At last, the servant slid open a door of carved rosewood, and Maati stepped into a room hardly larger than his own bedroom. The old man sat on a couch, his feet toward the fire that burned in the grate. His robes were lush, the silks seeming to take up the firelight and dance with it. They seemed more alive than his flesh. Slowly, the Khai raised a clay pipe to his mouth and puffed on it thoughtfully. The smoke smelled rich and sweet as a cane field on fire.
    Maati took a pose of greeting as formal as high court. The Khai Machi raised an ancient eyebrow and only smiled. With the stem of the pipe, he pointed to the couch opposite him and nodded to Maati that he should sit.
    ‘They make me smoke this,’ the Khai said. ‘Whenever my belly troubles me, they say. I tell them they might as well make it air, burn it by the bushel in all the firekeepers’ kilns, but they only laugh as if it were wit, and I play along.’
    ‘Yes, most high.’
    There was a long pause as the Khai contemplated the flames. Maati waited, uncertain. He noticed the catch in the Khai Machi’s breath, as if it pained him. He had not noticed it before.
    ‘Your search for my outlaw son,’ the Khai said. ‘It is going well?’
    ‘It is early yet, most high. I have made myself visible. I have let it be known that I am looking into the death of your son.’
    ‘You still expect Otah to come to you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And if he does not?’
    ‘Then it will take more time, most high. But I will find him.’
    The old man nodded, then exhaled a plume of pale smoke. He took a pose of gratitude, his wasted hands holding the position with the grace of a lifetime’s practice.
    ‘His mother was a good woman. I miss her. Iyrah, her name was. She gave me Idaan too. She was glad to have a child of her own that she could keep.’
    Maati thought he saw the old man’s eyes glisten for a moment, lost as he was in old memories of which Maati could only guess the substance. Then the Khai sighed.
    ‘Idaan,’ the Khai said. ‘She’s treated you gently?’
    ‘She’s been nothing but kind,’ Maati said, ‘and very generous with her time.’
    The Khai shook his head, smiling more to himself than his audience.
    ‘That’s good. She was always unpredictable. Age has calmed her, I think. There was a time she would study outrages the way most girls study face paints and sandals. Always sneaking puppies into court or stealing dresses she fancied from her little friends. She relied on me to keep her safe, however far she flew,’ he said, smiling fondly. ‘A mischievous girl, my daughter, but good-hearted. I’m proud of her.’
    Then he sobered.
    ‘I am proud of all my children. It’s why I am not of one mind on this,’ the Khai said. ‘You would think that I should be, but I am not. With every day that the search continues, the truce holds, and Kaiin and Danat still live. I’ve known since I was old enough to know anything that if I took this chair, my sons would kill each other. It wasn’t so hard before I knew them, when they were only the idea of sons. But then they were Biitrah and Kaiin and Danat. And I don’t want any of them to die.’
    ‘But tradition, most high. If they did not—’
    ‘I know why they must,’ the Khai said. ‘I was only wishing. It’s something dying men do, I’m told. Sit with their regrets. It’s likely that which kills us as much as the sickness. I sometimes wish that this had all happened years ago. That they had slaughtered each other in their childhood. Then I might have at least one of them by me now. I had not wanted to die alone.’
    ‘You are not alone, most high. The whole court . . .’
    Maati broke off. The Khai Machi took a pose accepting correction, but the amusement in his eyes and the angle of his shoulders made a sarcasm of it. Maati nodded, accepting the old man’s point.
    ‘I can’t say which of them I would have wanted to live, though,’