Shadow and Betrayal

the Khai asked.
    ‘I will, most high,’ the girl said, stepping forward. ‘I am Liat Chokavi, assistant to Amat Kyaan. While she is away, she has asked that I oversee this trade.’
    ‘And is the woman you represent here as well?’
    The old Galt looked uncomfortable at the question, but did not hesitate to answer.
    ‘She is, most high. Her grasp of the Khaiate tongue is very thin, but we have a translator for her if you wish to speak with her.’
    ‘I do,’ the Khai said. Maati’s gaze shifted back to the crowd where a young woman in silk robes walked forward on the arm of a pleasant, round-faced man in the simple, dark robes of a servant. The woman’s eyes were incredibly pale, her skin terribly white. Her robes were cut to hide her bulging belly. Beside him, Heshai tensed, sitting forward with a complex expression.
    The woman reached the Galt and his girl overseer, smiling and nodding to them at her translator’s prompting.
    ‘You come before my court to ask my assistance,’ the Khai intoned.
    The woman’s face turned toward him like a child seeing fire. She seemed to Maati to be entranced. Her translator murmured to her. She glanced at him, no more than a flicker, and then her eyes returned to the Khai. She answered the man at her side.
    ‘Most high,’ the translator said. ‘My lady presents herself as Maj of Toniabi of Nippu and thanks you for the gift of this audience and your assistance in this hour of her distress.’
    ‘And you accept House Wilsin as your representative before me?’ the Khai said, as if the woman had spoken herself.
    Again the whispered conference, again the tiny shift of gaze to the translator and back to the Khai. She spoke softly, Maati could hardly make out the sounds, but her voice was somehow musical and fluid.
    ‘She does, most high,’ the translator said.
    ‘This is acceptable,’ the Khai said. ‘I accept the offered price, and I grant Liat Chokavi an audience with the poet Heshai to arrange the details.’
    Man and girl took a pose of gratitude and the four of them faded back into the crowd. Heshai let out a long, low, hissing sigh. Seedless steepled his fingers and pressed them to his lips. There was a smile behind them.
    ‘Well,’ Heshai-kvo said. ‘There’s no avoiding it now. I’d hoped . . .’
    The poet took a dismissive pose, as if waving away dreams or lost possibilities. Maati shifted again on his cushion, his left leg numb from sitting. The audiences went on for another hand and a half, one small matter after another, until the Khai rose, took a pose that formally ended all audience, and with the flute and drum playing the traditional song, the leader and voice of the city strode out. The counselors followed him, Maati following Heshai’s lead, though the poet seemed only half interested in the proceedings. Together, the three walked past the forest of pillars to a great oaken door, and through it to a lesser hall formed, it seemed, as the hub of a hundred corridors and stairways. A quartet of slaves sang gentle harmony in an upper gallery, their voices sorrowful and lovely. Heshai sat on a low bench, studying the air before him. Seedless stood several paces away, his arms crossed, and still as a statue. The sense of despair was palpable.
    Maati walked slowly to his teacher. The poet’s gaze flickered up to him and then away. Maati took a pose that asked forgiveness even before he spoke.
    ‘I don’t understand, Heshai-kvo. There must be a way to refuse the trade. If the Dai-kvo . . .’
    ‘If the Dai-kvo starts overseeing the small work of the Khaiem, let’s call him Emperor and be done with it,’ Heshai-kvo said. ‘And then in a generation or so we’ll see how well he’s done training new poets. We’re degenerate enough without asking for incompetence as well. No, the Dai-kvo won’t step in over something like this.’
    Maati knelt. Members of the utkhaiem began to come through the hall, some conferring over scrolls and stacks of paper.
    ‘You could refuse.’
    ‘And what would they say of me then?’ Heshai managed a wan smile. ‘No, it’s nothing, Maati-kya. It’s an old man being stupidly nostalgic. This is an unpleasant thing, I’ll admit that. But it is what I do.’
    ‘Killing superfluous children out of rich women,’ Seedless said, his voice as impudent, but with an edge to it Maati hadn’t heard before. ‘Just part of the day’s work, isn’t it?’
    Heshai looked up, anger in his expression. His hands balled into