Shadow and Betrayal

at a dog fight. These boys in the school’s care were exempt from those wars at only the price of everything they had known in their short lives. And yet . . .
    ‘Disgrace is a thin gift,’ the Dai-kvo said.
    Tahi, his old student who had once been a boy like these, sighed.
    ‘It’s what we can offer.’
     
    The Dai-kvo left in the morning just after dawn, stepping through the great bronze doors that opened only for him. Otah stood in the ranks of his cohort, still holding a pose of farewell. Behind him, someone took the chance of scratching - Otah could hear the shifting sound of fingers against cloth. He didn’t look back. Two of the oldest of Milahkvo’s black robes pulled the great doors closed.
    In the dim winter light that filtered through high-set, narrow windows, Otah could see the bustle of the black robes taking charge of the cohorts. The day’s tasks varied. The morning might be spent working in the school - repairing walls or washing laundry or scraping ice from the garden walkways that no one seemed to travel besides the boys set to tend them. The evening would be spent in study. Numbers, letters, religion, history of the Old Empire, the Second Empire, the War, the cities of the Khaiem. And more often these last weeks, one of the two teachers would stand at the back of the room while one of the black robes lectured and questioned. Milah-kvo would sometimes interrupt and tell jokes or take the lecture himself, discussing things the black robes never spoke of. Tahi-kvo would only observe and punish. All of Otah’s cohort bore the marks of the lacquered stick.
    Riit-kvo, one of the oldest of the black robes, led Otah and his cohort to the cellars. For hours as the sun rose unseen, Otah swept dust from stones that seemed still cold from the last winter and then washed them with water and rags until his knuckles were raw. Then Riit-kvo called them to order, considered them, slapped one boy whose stance was not to his standards, and marched them to the dining hall. Otah looked neither forward nor back, but focused on the shoulders of the boy ahead of him.
    The midday meal was cold meat, yesterday’s bread, and a thin barley soup that Otah treasured because it was warm. Too soon, Riit called them to wash their bowls and knives and follow him. Otah found himself at the front of the line - an unenviable place - and so was the first to step into the cold listening room with its stone benches and narrow windows that had never known glass. Tahi-kvo was waiting there for them.
    None of them knew why the round-faced, scowling teacher had taken an interest in the cohort, though speculations were whispered in the dark of their barracks. The Dai-kvo had chosen one of them to go and study the secrets of the andat, to become one of the poets, gain power even higher than the Khaiem, and skip over the black robes of Milah-kvo entirely. Or one of their families had repented sending their child, however minor in the line of succession, to the school and was in negotiation to forgo the branding and take their disowned son back into the fold.
    Otah had listened, but believed none of the stories. They were the fantasies of the frightened and the weak, and he knew that if he clung to one, it would shatter him. Dwelling in the misery of the school and hoping for nothing beyond survival was the only way to keep his soul from flying apart. He would endure his term and be turned out into the world. This was his third year at the school. He was twelve now, and near the halfway point of his time. And today was another evil to be borne as the day before and the day ahead. To think too far in the past or the future was dangerous. Only when he let his dreams loose did he think of learning the secrets of the andat, and that happened so rarely as to call itself never.
    Riit-kvo, his eyes on the teacher at the back as much as on the students, began to declaim the parable of the Twin Dragons of Chaos. It was a story Otah knew, and he found his mind wandering. Through the stone arch of the window, Otah could see a crow hunched on a high branch. It reminded him of something he could not quite recall.
    ‘Which of the gods tames the spirits of water?’ Riit-kvo snapped. Otah pulled himself back to awareness and straightened his spine.
    Riit-kvo pointed to a thick-set boy across the room.
    ‘Oladac the Wanderer!’ the boy said, taking a pose of gratitude to one’s teacher.
    ‘And why were the spirits who stood by and neither fought