Shadow and Betrayal

seemed to have grown heavier, thicker. It had been a mad hope, and even in its failure, at least Kiyan would be safe. It was past time, perhaps, that people stopped paying prices for knowing him.
    He could feel himself shaking. When he sat, his hands were perfectly still, though he could still feel the trembling in them.
    ‘So what are you going to do?’ Otah asked.
    ‘In a moment, I’m going to call in the armsmen that are waiting outside that door,’ Maati said, his voice deceptively calm. He was trembling as well. ‘I am going to bring you before the Khai, who will at some point decide either that you are a murderer who has killed his son Biitrah and put you to the sword, or else a legitimate child of Machi who should be set loose for one of your older brothers to kill. I will speak on your behalf, and any evidence I can find that suggests Biitrah’s murder wasn’t your work, I will present.’
    ‘Well, thank you for that, at least.’
    ‘Don’t,’ Maati said. ‘I’m doing it because it’s true. If I thought you’d arranged it, I’d have said that.’
    ‘Loyalty to the truth isn’t something to throw out either.’
    Maati took a pose that accepted the gratitude, and then dropped his hands to his sides.
    ‘There’s something you should know,’ Otah said. ‘It might . . . it seems to be your business. When I was in the islands, after Saraykeht, there was a woman. Not Maj. Another woman. I shared a bed with her for two, almost three years.’
    ‘Otah-kvo, I admire your conquests, but . . .’
    ‘She wanted a child. From me. But it never took. Almost three years, and she bled with the moon the whole time. I heard that after I left, she took up with a fisherman from a tribe to the north and had a baby girl.’
    ‘I see,’ Maati said, and there was something in his voice. A brightness. ‘Thank you, Otah-kvo.’
    ‘I missed you as well. I wish we had had more time. Or other circumstances. ’
    ‘As do I. But it isn’t ours to choose. Shall we do this thing?’
    ‘I don’t suppose I could shave first?’ Otah asked, touching his chin.
    ‘I don’t see how,’ Maati said, rising. ‘But perhaps we can get you some better robes.’
    Otah didn’t mean to laugh; it simply came out of him. And then Maati was laughing as well, and the birds startled around them, lifting up into the sky. Otah rose and took a pose of respect appropriate to the closing of a meeting. Maati responded in kind, and they walked together to the door. Maati slid it open, and Otah looked to see whether there was a gap in the men, a chance to dodge them and sprint out to the streets. He might as well have looked for a stone cloud. The armsmen seemed to have doubled in number, and two already had bare blades at the ready. The young poet - the one Maati said wasn’t his student - was there among them, his expression serious and concerned. Maati spoke as if the bulky men and their weapons weren’t there.
    ‘Cehmai-cha,’ he said. ‘Good that you’re here. I would like to introduce you to my old friend, Otah, the sixth son of the Khai Machi. Otah-kvo, this is Cehmai Tyan and that small mountain in the back is the andat Stone-Made-Soft which he controls. Cehmai assumed you were an assassin come to finish me off.’
    ‘I’m not,’ Otah said with a levity that seemed at odds with his situation, but which felt perfectly natural. ‘But I understand the misconception. It’s the beard. I’m usually better shaved.’
    Cehmai opened his mouth, closed it, and then took a formal pose of welcome. Maati turned to the armsmen.
    ‘Chain him,’ he said.
     
    Even at the height of morning, the wives’ quarters of the high palace were filled with the small somber activity of a street market starting to close at twilight. In the course of his life, the Khai Machi had taken eleven women as wives. Some had become friends, lovers, companions. Others had been little more than permanent guests in his house, sent as a means of assuring favor as one might send a good hunting dog or a talented slave. Idaan had heard that there were several of them with whom he had never shared a bed. It had been Biitrah’s wife, Hiami, who’d told her that, trying to explain to a young girl that the Khaiem had a different relationship to their women than other men had, that it was traditional. It hadn’t worked. Even the words the older woman had used - your father chooses not to - had proven her point that this was a comfort house with high ceilings,