Shadow and Betrayal

and trust that this will mark a change in your work. There are many tasks that a man in your position might take on to the benefit of all - we shall discuss these opportunities upon your return.
    The critical issue now is that you withdraw from Machi. We have performed our service to the Khai, and your continued presence would only serve to draw attention to the fact that he and whichever of his sons eventually takes his place were unable to discover the plot without aid. It is dangerous for the poets to involve themselves with the politics of the courts.
    For this reason, I now recall you to my side. You are to announce that you have found the citations in the library that I had desired, and must now return them to me. I will expect you within five weeks . . .
    It continued, though Maati did not. Baarath smiled and leaned forward in obvious interest as Maati tucked the letter into his own sleeve. After a moment’s silence, Baarath frowned.
    ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘If it’s the sort of thing you have to keep to yourself, I can certainly respect that.’
    ‘I knew you could, Baarath-cha. You’re a man of great discretion.’
    ‘You needn’t flatter me. I know my proper place. I only thought you might want someone to speak with. In case there were questions that someone with my knowledge of the court could answer for you.’
    ‘No,’ Maati said, taking a pose that offered thanks. ‘It’s on another matter entirely.’
    Maati sat with a pleasant, empty expression until Baarath huffed, stood, took a pose of leave-taking, and walked deeper into the galleries of the library. Maati turned back to his notes, but his mind would not stay focused on them. After half a hand of frustration and distress, he packed them quietly into his sleeve and took himself away.
    The sun shone bright and clear, but to the west, huge clouds rose white and proud into the highest reaches of the sky. There would be storms later - if not today, in the summer weeks to come. Maati imagined he could smell the rain in the air. He walked toward his rooms, and then past them and into a walled garden. The cherry trees had lost their flowers, the fruits forming and swelling toward ripeness. Netting covered the wide branches like a bed, keeping the birds from stealing the harvest. Maati walked in the dappled shade. The pangs from his belly were fewer now and farther between. The wounds were nearly healed.
    It would be easiest, of course, to do as he was told. The Dai-kvo had taken him back into his good graces, and the fact that things had gone awry since his last report could in no way be considered his responsibility. He had discovered Otah, and if it was through no skill of his own, that didn’t change the result. He had given Otah over to the Khai. Everything past that was court politics; even the murder of the Khai was nothing the Dai-kvo would want to become involved with.
    Maati could leave now with honor and let the utkhaiem follow his investigations or ignore them. The worst that would happen was that Otah would be found and slaughtered for something he had not done and an evil man would become the Khai Machi. It wouldn’t be the first time in the world that an innocent had suffered or that murder had been rewarded. The sun would still rise, winter would still become spring. And Maati would be restored to something like his right place among the poets. He might even be set over the school, set to teach boys like himself the lessons that he and Otah-kvo and Heshai-kvo and Cehmai had all learned. It would be something worth taking pride in.
    So why was it, he wondered, that he would not do as he was told? Why was the prospect of leaving and accepting the rewards he had dreamed of less appealing than staying, risking the Dai-kvo’s displeasure, and discovering what had truly happened to the Khai Machi? It wasn’t love of justice. It was more personal than that.
    Maati paused, closed his eyes, and considered the roiling anger in his breast. It was a familiar feeling, like an old companion or an illness so protracted it has become indistinguishable from health. He couldn’t say who he was angry with or why the banked rage demanded that he follow his own judgment over anyone else’s. He couldn’t even say what he hoped he would find.
    He plucked the Dai-kvo’s letter from his sleeve, read it again slowly from start to finish, and began to mentally compose his reply.
    Most high Dai-kvo, I hope you will forgive me, but the situation in