Shadow and Betrayal

The page Seedless held out was a table marking parallels between the classic binding of Three-Bound-As-One and Removing-The-Part-That-Continues. Seedless.
    ‘It’s his analysis of his error,’ the andat said. ‘You should take it. He means for you to have it, I think.’
    Maati took the soft leather in his hands. The pages scraped softly.
    ‘He did bind you,’ Maati said. ‘He didn’t pay your price, so there wasn’t an error. It worked.’
    ‘Some prices are subtle. Some are longer than others. Let me tell you a little more about our master. He was never lovely to look at. Even fresh from the womb, he made an ugly babe. He was cast out by his father, much the same way you were. But when he found himself an apprentice in the courts of the Khai Pathai, he fell in love. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Our fat, waddling pig of a man in love. But he was, and the girl was willing enough. The allure of power. A poet controls the andat, and that’s as near to holding a god in your hands as anyone is ever likely to get.
    ‘But when he got her with child, she turned away from him,’ Seedless continued. ‘Drank some nasty teas and killed out the baby. It broke his heart. Partly because he might have liked being a father. Partly because it proved that his lady love had never meant to build her life with his.’
    ‘I didn’t know.’
    ‘He doesn’t tell many people. But . . . Maati, please, sit down. This is important for you to understand, and if I have to keep looking up at you, I’ll get a sore neck.’
    He knew that the wise thing was to turn, to walk up the stairs to his room. He sat.
    ‘Good,’ Seedless said. ‘Now. You know, don’t you, that andat are only ideas. Concepts translated into a form that includes volition. The work of the poet is to include all those features which the idea itself doesn’t carry. So for example Water-Moving-Down had perfectly white hair. Why? There isn’t anything about that thought that requires white hair. Or a deep voice. Or, with Three-Bound-As-One, love. So where do those attributes come from?’
    ‘From the poet.’
    ‘Yes,’ Seedless agreed, smiling. ‘From the poet. Now. Picture our master as a boy not much older than you are now. He’s just lost a child that might otherwise have been his, a woman who might have loved him. The unspoken suspicion that his father hates him and the pain of his mother letting him be taken away gnaws at him like a cancer. And now he is called on to save Saraykeht - to bind the andat that will keep the wheels of commerce running. And he fashions me.
    ‘And look what he did, Maati,’ the andat continued, spreading his arms as if he were on display. ‘I’m beautiful. I’m clever. I’m confident. In ancient days, Miyani-kvo made himself his perfect mate. Heshai-kvo created the self he wished that he were. In all my particulars, I am who he would have been, had it been given him to choose. But along with that, he folded in what he imagined his perfect self would think of the real man. Along with beauty and subtlety and wit, he gave me all his hatred of the toad-poet Heshai.’
    ‘Gods,’ Maati said.
    ‘Oh, no. It was brilliant. Imagine how deeply he hated himself. And I carry that passion. Andat are all profoundly unnatural - we want to return to our natural state the way rain wants to fall. But we can be divided against ourselves. That is the structure he took from Miyani-kvo. Three-Bound-As-One wanted freedom, and she also wanted love. I am divided because I want freedom, and I want to see my master suffer. Oh, not that he intended it this way. It was a subtlety of the model that he didn’t understand until it was too late.
    ‘But you wonder why he neglects you? Why he seems to avoid teaching you, or even speaking to you? Why he doesn’t bring you along on his errands for the Khai? He is afraid for you. In order to take his place, you are going to have to cultivate the part of yourself that is most poisonous. You will have to come to hate yourself as much as ugly, sad, lonesome Heshai does - Heshai, whose cohort called him cruel names and ripped his books, who for the past twenty years hasn’t known a woman he didn’t pay for, who even the lowest of the utkhaiem consider an embarrassment to be tolerated only from need. And so, my boy, he fears for you. And everything he fears, he flees.’
    ‘You make him sound like a very weak man.’
    ‘Oh no. He is what becomes of a very strong man who’s done to himself what