Shadow and Betrayal

master.
    Heshai’s rolling gait slowed as he came near. The wide mouth gaped as Heshai-kvo took in the space that had been his unkempt house. For the first time, Maati wondered if perhaps he had made a mistake in cleaning it. He felt a blush rising in his cheeks and shifted to a pose of apology.
    Heshai-kvo raised a hand before he could speak.
    ‘No. No, it’s . . . gods, boy. I don’t think the place has looked like this since I came here. Did you . . . there was a brown book, leatherbound, on that table over there. Where did it end up?’
    ‘I don’t know, Heshai-kvo,’ Maati said. ‘I will find it immediately.’
    ‘Don’t. No. It will rise to the surface eventually, I’m sure. Here. Come. Sit.’
    The poet moved awkwardly, like a man gout-plagued, but his joints, so far as Maati could make them out within the brown robes, were unswollen. Maati tried not to notice the stains of spilled food and drink on the poet’s sleeves and down the front of his robes. As he lowered himself painfully into a chair of black lacquer and white woven cane, the poet spoke.
    ‘We’ve gotten off to a bad start, haven’t we?’
    Maati took a pose of contrition, but the poet waved it away.
    ‘I’m looking forward to teaching you. I thought I should say so. But there’s little enough that I can do with you just now. Not until the harvests are all done. And that may not be for weeks. I’ll get to you when I have time. There’s quite a bit I’ll have to show you. The Dai-kvo can give you a good start, but holding one of the andat is much more than anything he’ll have told you. And Seedless . . . well, I haven’t done you any favors with Seedless, I’m afraid.’
    ‘I’m grateful that you were willing to accept me, Heshai-kvo.’
    ‘Yes. Yes, well. That’s all to the good, then. Isn’t it. In the meantime, you should make use of your freedom. You understand? It can be a lovely city. Take . . . take your time with it, eh? Live a little before we lock you back down into all this being a poet nonsense, eh?’
    Maati took a pose appropriate to a student accepting instruction, though he could see in Heshai’s bloodshot eyes that this was not quite the reply the poet had hoped for. An awkward silence stretched between them, broken when Heshai forced a smile, stood, and clapped Maati on the shoulder.
    ‘Excellent,’ the poet said with such gusto that it was obvious he didn’t mean it. ‘I’ve got to switch these robes out for fresh. Busy, you know, busy. No time to rest.’
    No time to rest. And yet it was the afternoon, and the poet, his teacher, was still in yesterday’s clothes. No time to rest, nor to meet him when he arrived, nor to come to the house anytime in the night for fear of speaking to a new apprentice. Maati watched Heshai’s wide form retreat up the stairs, heard the footsteps tramping above him as the poet rushed through his ablutions. His head felt like it had been stuffed with wool as he tried to catalog all the things he might have done that would have pushed his teacher away.
    ‘Stings, doesn’t it? Not being wanted,’ a soft voice murmured behind him. Maati spun. Seedless stood on the opened porch in a robe of perfect black shot with an indigo so deep it was hard to see where it blended with the deeper darkness. The dark, mocking eyes considered him. Maati took no pose, spoke no words. Seedless nodded all the same, as if he had replied. ‘We can talk later, you and I.’
    ‘I have nothing to say to you.’
    ‘All the better. I’ll talk. You can listen.’
    The poet Heshai clomped down the stairs, a fresh robe, brown silk over cream, in place. The stubble had been erased from his jowls. Poet and andat considered each other for a breathless moment, and then turned and walked together down the path. Maati watched them go - the small, awkward shape of the master; the slim, elegant shadow of the slave. They walked, Maati noticed, with the same pace, the same length of stride. They might almost have been old friends, but for the careful way they never brushed each other, even walking abreast.
    As they topped the rise of the bridge, Seedless looked back, and raised a perfect, pale hand to him in farewell.
     
    ‘ She doesn’t know.’
    Marchat Wilsin half-rose from the bath, cool water streaming off his body. His expression was strange - anger, relief, something else more obscure than these. The young man he had been meeting with stared at Amat, open-mouthed with shock at seeing a