Shadow and Betrayal

‘It’s close enough to be mistaken, but it isn’t him. Someone wants us to think him dead - someone willing to go to elaborate lengths. But that’s no more Otah Machi than I am.’
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Cehmai said.
    ‘Neither do I. But I can say this, someone wants the rumor of his death but not the actual thing. They’re buying time. Possibly time they can use to find who’s really done these things, then—’
    ‘We have to go back! You have to tell the Master of Tides!’
    Maati blinked. Cehmai’s face had gone red and he was pointing back toward the physician’s apartments. The boy was outraged.
    ‘If we do that,’ Maati said, ‘we spoil all the advantage. It can’t get out that—’
    ‘Are you blind? Gods! It is him. All the time it’s been him. This as much as proves it! Otah Machi came here to slaughter his family. To slaughter you. He has backers who could free him from the tower, and he has done everything that he’s been accused of. Buying time? He’s buying safety! Once everyone thinks him dead, they’ll stop looking. He’ll be free. You have to tell them the truth!’
    ‘Otah didn’t kill his father. Or his brothers. It’s someone else.’
    Cehmai was breathing hard and fast as a runner at the race’s end, but his voice was lower now, more controlled.
    ‘How do you know that?’ he asked.
    ‘I know Otah-kvo. I know what he would do, and—’
    ‘Is he innocent because he’s innocent, or because you love him?’ Cehmai demanded.
    ‘This isn’t the place to—’
    ‘Tell me! Say you have proof and not just that you wish the sky was red instead of blue, because otherwise you’re blinded and you’re letting him escape because of it. There were times I more than half believed you, Maati-kvo. But when I look at this I see nothing to suggest any conspiracy but his.’
    Maati rubbed the point between his eyes with his thumb, pressing hard to keep his annoyance at bay. He shouldn’t have spoken to the boy, but now that he had, there was nothing for it.
    ‘Your anger—’ he began, but Cehmai cut him off.
    ‘You’re risking people’s lives, Maati-kvo. You’re hanging them on the thought that you can’t be wrong about the upstart.’
    ‘Whose lives?’
    ‘The lives of people he would kill.’
    ‘There is no risk from Otah-kvo. You don’t understand.’
    ‘Then teach me.’ It was as much an insult as a challenge. Maati felt the blood rising to his cheeks even as his mind dissected Cehmai’s reaction. There was something to it, some reason for the violence and frustration of it, that didn’t make sense. The boy was reacting to something more than Maati knew. Maati swallowed his rage.
    ‘I’ll ask five days. Trust me for five days, and I will show you proof. Will that do?’
    He saw the struggle in Cehmai’s face. The impulse to refuse, to fight, to spread the news across the city that Otah Machi lived. And then the respect for his elders that had been ground into him from his first day in the school and for all the years since he’d taken the brown robes they shared. Maati waited, forcing himself to patience. And in the end, Cehmai nodded once, turned, and stalked away.
    Five days, Maati thought, shaking his head. I wonder what I thought to manage in that time. I should have asked for ten.
     
    The rains came in the early evening: lightning and the blue-gray bellies of cloudbank. The first few drops sounded like stones, and then the clouds broke with a sudden pounding - thousands of small drums rolling. Otah sat in the window and looked out at the courtyard as puddles appeared and danced white and clear. The trees twisted and shifted under gusts of wind and the weight of water. The little storms rarely lasted more than a hand and a half, but in that time, they seemed like doomsday, and they reminded Otah of being young, when everything had been full and torrential and brief. He wished now that he had the skill to draw this brief landscape before the clouds passed and it was gone. There was something beautiful in it, something worth preserving.
    ‘You’re looking better.’
    Otah shifted, glancing back into the room. Sinja was there, his long hair slicked down by the rain, his robes sodden. Otah took a welcoming pose as the commander strode across the room toward him, dripping as he came.
    ‘Brighter about the eyes, blood in your skin again. One would think you’d been eating, perhaps even walking around a bit.’
    ‘I feel better,’ Otah said.