Shadow and Betrayal

for myself. Only for myself. I thought of leaving. Of folding my robes on the bed and running away as you did. I thought of you, the way you had chosen your own shape for your life instead of the shapes that were offered you. I thought I was doing the same. Gods, Otah-kvo, I wish you had been here. All these years, I wish I had been able to talk to you. To someone.’
    ‘I’m sorry . . .’
    Maati raised a hand to stop him.
    ‘My son,’ Maati said, then his voice thickened, and he coughed and began again. ‘Liat and I parted ways. My low status among the poets didn’t have the air of romance for her that I saw in it. And . . . there were other things. Raising my son called for money and time and I had little to spare of either. My son is thirteen summers. Thirteen. She was carrying him before we left Saraykeht.’
    Otah felt the words as if he’d been struck an unexpected blow - a sensation of shock without source or location, and then the flood. Maati glanced over at him and read his thoughts from his face, and he nodded.
    ‘I know,’ Maati said. ‘She told me about bedding you that one time after you came back, before you left again. Before Heshai-kvo died and Seedless vanished. I suppose she was afraid that if I discovered it someday and she hadn’t said anything it would make things worse. She told me the truth. And she swore that my son was mine. And I believe her.’
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘Of course not. I mean, some days I did. When he was young and I could hold him in one arm, I was sure that he was mine. And then some nights I would wonder. And even in those times when I was sure that he was yours, I still loved him. That was the worst of it. The nights I lay awake in a village where women and children aren’t allowed, in a tiny cell that stank of the disapproval of everyone I had ever hoped to please. I knew that I loved him, and that he wasn’t mine. No, don’t. Let me finish. I couldn’t be a father to him. And if I hadn’t fathered him either, what was there left but watching from a distance while this little creature grew up and away from me without even knowing my heart was tucked in his sleeve.’
    Maati wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand.
    ‘Liat said she was tired of my always mourning, that the boy deserved some joy; that she did too. So after that I didn’t have them, and I didn’t have the respect of the people I saw and worked beside. I was eaten by guilt over losing them, and having taken her from you. I thought that she would have been happy with you. That you would have been happy with her. If only I hadn’t broken faith with you, the world might have been right after all. And you might have stayed.
    ‘And that has been my life until the day they called on me to hunt you.’
    ‘I see,’ Otah said.
    ‘I have missed your company so badly, Otah-kya, and I have never hated anyone more. I have been waiting for years to say that. So. Now I have, what was it you wanted from me?’
    Otah caught his breath.
    ‘I wanted your help,’ he said. ‘There’s a woman. She was my lover once. When I told her . . . when I told her about my family, my past, she turned me out. She was afraid that knowing me would put her and the people she was responsible for in danger.’
    ‘She’s wise, then,’ Maati said.
    ‘I hoped you would help me protect her,’ Otah said. His heart was a lump of cold lead. ‘Perhaps that was optimistic.’
    Maati laughed. The sound was hollow.
    ‘And how would I do that?’ Maati asked. ‘Kill your brothers for you? Tell the Khai that the Dai-kvo had decreed that she was not to be harmed? I don’t have that power. I don’t have any power at all. This was my chance at redemption. They called upon me to hunt you because I knew your face, and I failed at that until you walked into the palaces and asked to speak with me.’
    ‘Go to my father with me. I refused the brand, but I won’t now. I’ll renounce my claim to the chair in front of anyone he wants, only don’t let him kill me before I do it.’
    Maati looked across at him. The sparrow returned for a moment to perch between them.
    ‘It won’t work,’ he said. ‘Renunciation isn’t a simple thing, and once you’ve stepped outside of form, stepping back in . . .’
    ‘But . . .’
    ‘They won’t believe you. And even if they did, they’d still fear you enough to see you dead.’
    Otah took a deep breath, and then slowly let it out, letting his head sink into his hands. The air itself