Shadow and Betrayal

didn’t move. Maati felt the skin at the back of his neck tighten. He picked one turning of the alleyway and walked down it briskly until the dark figure reached the intersection as well and turned after him. Then Maati ran. The alley spilled out into another street, this less populous. The smoke of the forges made the air acrid and hazy. Maati raced toward them. There would be men there - smiths and tradesmen, but also firekeepers and armsmen.
    When he reached the mouth where the street spilled out onto a major throughway, he looked back. The street behind him was empty. His steps slowed, and he stopped, scanning the doorways, the rooftops. There was nothing. His pursuer - if that was what he had been - had vanished. Maati waited there until he’d caught his breath, then let himself laugh. No one was coming. No one had followed. It was easy to see how a man could be eaten by his fears. He turned to the metalworkers’ quarter.
    The streets widened here, with shops and stalls facing out, filled with the tools of the metal trades as much as their products. The forges and smiths’ houses were marked by the greened copper roofs, the pillars of smoke, the sounds of yelling voices and hammers striking anvils. The businesses around them - sellers of hammers and tongs, suppliers of ore and wax blocks and slaked lime - all did their work loudly and expansively, waving hands in mock fury and shouting even when there was no call to. Maati made his way to a teahouse near the center of the district where sellers and workers mixed. He asked after House Siyanti, where their couriers might be found, what was known of them. The brown poet’s robes granted him an unearned respect, but also wariness. It was three hands before he found an answer - the overseer of a consortium of silversmiths had had word from House Siyanti. The courier had said the signed contracts could be delivered to House Nan, but only after they’d been sewn and sealed. Maati gave the man two lengths of silver and his thanks and had started away before he realized he would also need better directions. An older man in a red and yellow robe with a face round and pale as the moon overheard his questions and offered to guide him there.
    ‘You’re Maati Vaupathai,’ the moon-faced man said as they walked. ‘I’ve heard about you.’
    ‘Nothing scandalous, I hope,’ Maati said.
    ‘Speculations,’ the man said. ‘The Khaiem run on gossip and wine more than gold or silver. My name is Oshai. It’s a pleasure to meet a poet.’
    They turned south, leaving the smoke and cacophony behind them. As they stepped into a smaller, quieter street, Maati looked back, half expecting to see the looming figure in the dark robes. There was nothing.
    ‘Rumor has it you’ve come to look at the library,’ Oshai said.
    ‘That’s truth. The Dai-kvo sent me to do research for him.’
    ‘Pity you’ve come at such a delicate time. Succession. It’s never an easy thing.’
    ‘It doesn’t affect me,’ Maati said. ‘Court politics rarely reach the scrolls on the back shelves.’
    ‘I hear the Khai has books that date back to the Empire. Before the war.’
    ‘He does. Some of them are older than the copies the Dai-kvo has. Though, in all, the Dai-kvo’s libraries are larger.’
    ‘He’s wise to look as far afield as he can, though,’ Oshai said. ‘You never know what you might find. Was there something in particular he expected our Khai to have?’
    ‘It’s complex,’ Maati said. ‘No offense, it’s just . . .’
    Oshai smiled and waved the words away. There was something odd about his face - a weariness or an emptiness around his eyes.
    ‘I’m sure there are many things that poets know that I can’t comprehend, ’ the guide said. ‘Here, there’s a faster way down through here.’
    Oshai moved forward, taking Maati by the elbow and leading him down a narrow street. The houses around them were poorer than those near the palaces or even the metalworkers’ quarter. Shutters showed the splinters of many seasons. The doors on the street level and the second-floor snow doors both tended to have cheap leather hinges rather than worked metal. Few people were on the street, and few windows open. Oshai seemed perfectly at ease despite his heightened pace so Maati pushed his uncertainty away.
    ‘I’ve never been in the library myself,’ Oshai said. ‘I’ve heard impressive things of it. The power of all those minds, and all that time. It isn’t something