Shadow and Betrayal

in. There were no shutters to close off the sky.
    He tried the door’s latch, but it had been barred from without, and the hinges were leather and worked iron. Not the sort of thing a man could take apart with teeth. Otah knelt by the bowl of water and drank from his cupped hand. He washed out the worst of his wounds, and left a third in the bowl. There was no knowing how long it might be before they saw fit to give him more. He wondered if there were birds that came up this high to rest, and whether he would be able to trap one. Not that he would have the chance to cook it - there was nothing to burn here, and no grate to burn it in. Otah ran his hands over his face, and despite himself, laughed. It seemed unlikely they would allow him anything sharp enough to shave with. He would die with this sad little beard.
    Otah stretched out in a corner, his arm thrown over his eyes, and tried to sleep, wondering as he did whether the sense of movement came from his own abused and exhausted body, or if it were true that so far up even stone swayed.
     
    Maati looked at the floor. His face was hard with frustration and anger.
    ‘If you want him dead, most high,’ he said, his voice measured and careful, ‘you might at least have the courtesy to kill him.’
    The Khai Machi raised the clay pipe to his lips. He seemed less to breathe the smoke in than to drink it. The sweet resin from it had turned every surface in the room slightly tacky to the touch. The servant in the blue and gold robes of a physician sat discreetly in a dim corner, pretending not to hear the business of the city. The rosewood door was closed behind them. Lanterns of sanded glass filled the room with soft light, rendering them all shadowless.
    ‘I’ve listened to you, Maati-cha. I didn’t end him there in the audience chamber. I am giving you the time you asked,’ the old man said. ‘Why do you keep pressing me?’
    ‘He has no blankets or fire. The guards have given him three meals in the last four days. And Danat will return before I’ve had word back from the Dai-kvo. If this is all you can offer, most high—’
    ‘You can state your case to Danat-cha as eloquently as you could to me,’ the Khai said.
    ‘There’ll be no point if Otah dies of cold or throws himself out the tower window before then,’ Maati said. ‘Let me take him food and a thick robe. Let me talk with him.’
    ‘It’s hopeless,’ the Khai said.
    ‘Then there’s nothing lost but my effort, and it will keep me from troubling you further.’
    ‘Your work here is complete, isn’t it? Why are you bothering me, Maati-cha? You were sent to find Otah. He’s found.’
    ‘I was sent to find if he was behind the death of Biitrah, and if he was not, to discover who was. I have not carried out that task. I won’t leave until I have.’
    The Khai’s expression soured, and he shook his head. His skin had grown thinner, the veins at his temples showing dark. When he leaned forward, tapping the bowl of his pipe against the side of the iron brazier with a sound like pebbles falling on stone, his grace could not hide his discomfort.
    ‘I begin to wonder, Maati-cha, whether you have been entirely honest with me. You say that there is no great love between you and my upstart son. You bring him to me, and for that reason alone, I believe you. Everything else you have done suggests the other. You argue that it was not he who arranged Biitrah’s death, though you have no suggestion who else might have. You ask for indulgences for the prisoner, you appeal to the Dai-kvo in hopes . . .’
    A sudden pain seemed to touch the old man’s features and one near-skeletal hand moved toward his belly.
    ‘There is a shadow in your city,’ Maati said. ‘You’ve called it by Otah’s name, but none of it shows any connection with Otah: not Biitrah, not the attack on me, not the murder of the assassin. None of the other couriers of any house report anything that would suggest he was more than he appeared. By his own word, he’d fled the city before the attack on me, and didn’t return before the assassin was killed. How is it that he arranged all these things with no one seeing him? No one knowing his name? How is it that, now he’s trapped, no one has offered to sell him in trade for their own lives?’
    ‘Who then?’
    ‘I don’t . . .’
    ‘Who else gained from these things?’
    ‘Your son, Danat,’ Maati said. ‘He broke the pact. If all this talk of Otah was a ploy to distract