Shadow and Betrayal

someone to talk with, even if it was only a way to explore what he thought himself, wouldn’t be so bad a thing. The Dai-kvo hadn’t expressly forbidden that Cehmai know, and even if he had, the secret investigation had already sent Otah-kvo to flight, so any further subterfuge seemed pointless. And the fact was, he likely couldn’t find the answers alone.
    ‘You have saved my life once already.’
    ‘I thought it would be unfair to point that out,’ Cehmai said.
    Maati laughed, then stopped when the pain in his belly bloomed. He lay back, blowing air until he could think again. The pillows felt better than they should have. He’d done so little, and he was already tired. He glanced mistrustfully at the andat, then took a pose of acceptance.
    ‘Come back tonight, when I’ve rested,’ Maati said. ‘We’ll plan our strategy. I have to get my strength back, but there isn’t much time.’
    ‘May I ask one other thing, Maati-kvo?’
    Maati nodded, but his belly seemed to have grown more sensitive for the moment and he tried not to move more than that. It seemed laughing wasn’t a wise thing for him just now.
    ‘Who are Liat and Nayiit?’
    ‘My lover. Our son,’ Maati said. ‘I called out for them, did I? When I had the fever?’
    Cehmai nodded.
    ‘I do that often,’ Maati said. ‘Only not usually aloud.’

6
    T here were four great roads that connected the cities of the Khaiem, one named for each of the cardinal directions. The North Road that linked Cetani, Machi, and Amnat-Tan was not the worst, in part because there was no traffic in the winter, when the snows let men make a road wherever desire took them. Also the stones were damaged more by the cycle of thaw and frost that troubled the north only in spring and autumn. In high summer, it rarely froze, and for a third of the year it did not thaw. The West Road - far from the sea and not so far south as to keep the winters warm - required the most repair.
    ‘They’ll have crews of indentured slaves and laborers out in shifts,’ the old man in the cart beside Otah said, raising a finger as if his oratory was on par with the High Emperor’s, back when there had been an empire. ‘They start at one end, reset the stones until they reach the other, and begin again. It never ends.’
    Otah glanced across the cart at the young woman nursing her babe and rolled his eyes. She smiled and shrugged so slightly that their orator didn’t notice the movement. The cart lurched down into and up from another wide hole where the stones had shattered and not yet been replaced.
    ‘I have walked them all,’ the old man said, ‘though they’ve worn me more than I’ve worn them. Oh yes, much more than I’ve worn them.’
    He cackled, as he always seemed to when he made this observation. The little caravan - four carts hauled by old horses - was still six days from Cetani. Otah wondered whether his own legs were rested enough that he could start walking again.
    He had bought an old laborer’s robe of blue-gray wool from a rag shop, chopped his hair to change its shape, and let his thin beard start to grow in. Once his whiskers had been long enough to braid, but the east islanders he’d lived with had laughed at him and pretended to mistake him for a woman. After Cetani, it would take another twenty days to reach the docks outside Amnat-tan. And then, if he could find a fishing boat that would take him on, he would be among those men again, singing songs in a tongue he hadn’t tried out in years, explaining again, either with the truth or outrageous stories, why his marriage mark was only half done.
    He would die there - on the islands or on the sea - under whatever new name he chose for himself. Itani Noygu was gone. He had died in Machi. Another life was behind him, and the prospect of beginning again, alone in a foreign land, tired him more than the walking.
    ‘Now, southern wood’s too soft to really build with. The winters are too warm to really harden them. Up here there’s trees that would blunt a dozen axes before they fell,’ the old man said.
    ‘You know everything, don’t you, grandfather?’ Otah said. If his annoyance was in his voice, the old man noticed nothing, because he cackled again.
    ‘It’s because I’ve been everywhere and done everything,’ the old man said. ‘I even helped hunt down the Khai Amnat-Tan’s older brother when they had their last succession. There were a dozen of us, and it was the dead of winter. Your piss