Shadow and Betrayal

with the gods nor against them consigned to a lower hell than the servants of chaos?’
    Again Riit-kvo pointed.
    ‘Because they should have fought alongside the gods!’ the boy shouted.
    It was a wrong answer. Because they were cowards, Otah thought, and knew he was correct. Tahi’s lacquered rod whirred and struck the boy hard on the shoulder. Riit-kvo smirked and returned to his story.
    After the class, there was another brief work detail for which Tahi-kvo did not join them. Then the evening meal, and then the end of another day. Otah was grateful to crawl into his bunk and pull the thin blanket up to his neck. In the winter, many of the boys slept in their robes against the cold, and Otah was among that number. Despite all this, he preferred the winter. During the warmer times, he would still wake some mornings having forgotten where he was, expecting to see the walls of his father’s home, hear the voices of his older brothers - Biitrah, Danat, and Kaiin. Perhaps see his mother’s smile. The rush of memory was worse than any blow of Tahi-kvo’s rod, and he bent his will toward erasing the memories he had of his family. He was not loved or wanted in his home, and he understood that thinking too much about this truth would kill him.
    As he drifted toward sleep, Riit-kvo’s harsh voice murmuring the lesson of the spirits who refused to fight spun through his mind. They were cowards, consigned to the deepest and coldest hell.
    When the question came, his eyes flew open. He sat up. The other boys were all in their cots. One, not far from him, was crying in his sleep. It was not an unusual sound. The words still burned in Otah’s mind. The coward spirits, consigned to hell.
    And what keeps them there? his quiet inner voice asked him. Why do they remain in hell?
    He lay awake for hours, his mind racing.
     
    The teachers’ quarters opened on a common room. Shelves lined the walls, filled with books and scrolls. A fire pit glowed with coals prepared for them by the most honored of Milah-kvo’s black-robed boys. The wide gap of a window - glazed double to hold out the cold of winter, the heat of the summer - looked out over the roadway leading south to the high road. Tahi sat now, warming his feet at the fire and staring out into the cold plain beyond. Milah opened the door behind him and strode in.
    ‘I expected you earlier,’ Tahi said.
    Milah briefly took a pose of apology.
    ‘Annat Ryota was complaining about the kitchen flue smoking again,’ he said.
    Tahi grunted.
    ‘Sit. The fire’s warm.’
    ‘Fires often are,’ Milah agreed, his tone dry and mocking. Tahi managed a thin smile as his companion took a seat.
    ‘What did he make of your boys?’ Tahi asked.
    ‘Much the same as last year. They have seen through the veil and now lead their brothers toward knowledge,’ Milah said, but his hands were in a pose of gentle mockery. ‘They are petty tyrants to a man. Any andat strong enough to be worth holding would eat them before their hearts beat twice.’
    ‘Pity.’
    ‘Hardly a surprise. And yours?’
    Tahi chewed for a moment at his lower lip and leaned forward. He could feel Milah’s gaze on him.
    ‘Otah Machi disgraced himself,’ Tahi said. ‘But he accepted the punishment well. The Dai-kvo thinks he may have promise.’
    Milah shifted. When Tahi looked over, the teacher had taken a pose of query. Tahi considered the implicit question, then nodded.
    ‘There have been some other signs,’ Tahi said. ‘I think you should put a watch over him. I hate to lose him to you, in a way.’
    ‘You like him.’
    Tahi took a pose of acknowledgment that held the nuance of a confession of failure.
    ‘I may be cruel, old friend,’ Tahi said, dropping into the familiar, ‘but you’re heartless.’
    The fair-haired teacher laughed, and Tahi couldn’t help but join him. They sat silent then for a while, each in his own thoughts. Milah rose, shrugged off his thick woolen top robe. Beneath it he still wore the formal silks from his audience yesterday with the Dai-kvo. Tahi poured them both bowls of rice wine.
    ‘It was good to see him again,’ Milah said sometime later. There was a melancholy note in his voice. Tahi took a pose of agreement, then sipped his wine.
    ‘He looked so old ,’ Tahi said.
     
    Otah’s plan, such as it was, took little preparation, and yet nearly three weeks passed between the moment he understood the parable of the spirits who stood aside and the night when he took