Shadow and Betrayal

and if the Khai couldn’t see his discomfort, they certainly could. In the clear space before them, one petitioner after another came before the Khai and made a plea.
    The worst had been a man from the Westlands demonstrating with a cart the size of a dog that carried a small fire that boiled water. Steam from the boiling water set the cart’s wheels in motion, and it had careened off into the crowd, its master chasing after it. The utkhaiem had laughed as the man warned that the Galts were creating larger models that they used as war machines. Whole wards had been overrun in less than a month’s time, he said.
    The Khai’s phrase had been ‘an army of teapots.’ Only Heshai-kvo, Maati noticed, hadn’t joined in the laughter. Not because he took the ridiculous man seriously, he thought, but because it pained him to see a man embarrass himself. The fine points of Galtic war strategies were of no consequence to the Khaiem. So long as the andat protected them, the wars of other nations were a curiosity, like the bones of ancient monsters.
    The most interesting was the second son of the Khai Udun. He held the court enraptured with his description of how his younger brother had attempted to poison him and their elder brother. The grisly detail of his elder brother’s death had Maati almost in tears, and the Khai Saraykeht had responded with a moving speech - easily four times as long as any other pronouncement he had made in the day - that poisons were not the weapons of the Khaiem, and that the powers of Saraykeht would come to the aid of justice in tracking down the killer.
    ‘Well,’ Seedless said as the crowd rose to its feet, cheering. ‘That settles which of Old Udun’s sons will be warming his chair once he’s gone. You’d almost think no one in our Most High Saraykeht’s ancestry had offered his brother a cup of bad wine.’
    Maati looked over at Heshai-kvo, expecting the poet to defend the Khai Saraykeht. But the poet only watched the son of the Khai Udun prostrate himself before the blackwood divan.
    ‘It’s all theater,’ Seedless went on, speaking softly enough that no one could hear him but Maati and Heshai. ‘Don’t forget that. This is no more than a long, drawn-out epic that no one composed, no one oversees, and no one plans. It’s why they keep falling back on fratricide. There’s precedent - everyone knows more or less what to expect. And they like to pretend that one of the old Khai’s sons is better than another.’
    ‘Be quiet,’ Heshai-kvo said, and the andat took a pose of apology but smirked at Maati as soon as Heshai-kvo turned away. The poet had had little to say. His demeanor had been grim from when they had first left the poet’s house that morning in the downpour. As the ceremonies moved on, his face seemed to grow more severe.
    Two firekeepers stood before the Khai to argue a fine point of city law, and the Khai commanded an ancient woman named Niania Tosogu, his court historian, to pass judgment. The old woman yammered for a time in a broken voice, retelling old stories of the summer cities that dated back to the first days of the Khaiate when the Empire had hardly fallen. Then without seeming to tie her stories in with the situation before her, she made an order that appeared to please no one. As the firekeepers sat, an old Galt in robes of green and bronze came forward. A girl Maati’s own age or perhaps a year more stood at his side. Her robes matched the old Galt’s, but where his demeanor seemed deeply respectful, the girl’s face and manner verged on haughty. Even as she took a pose of obeisance, her chin was lifted high, an eyebrow arched.
    ‘Ah, now she’s a lousy actress,’ Seedless murmured.
    Beside him, Heshai-kvo ignored the comment and sat forward, his eyes on the pair. Seedless leaned back, his attention as much on Heshai-kvo as the pair who stood before the Khai.
    ‘Marchat Wilsin,’ the Khai Saraykeht said, his voice carrying through the space as if he were an actor on a stage. ‘I have read your petition. House Wilsin has never entered the sad trade before.’
    ‘There are hard times in Galt, most high,’ the Galt said. He took a pose that, though formal, had the nuance of a beggar at the end of a street performance. ‘We have so many teapots to construct.’
    A ripple of laughter passed over the crowd, and the Khai took a pose acknowledging the jest. Heshai-kvo’s frown deepened.
    ‘Who will represent your house in the negotiation?’