Shadow and Betrayal

to sleep in his arms. But he stepped back, gently out of her reach. She took a pose of regret and farewell. He answered with a pose so gentle and complex - thankfulness, requesting patience, expressing affection - that it neared poetry. He walked backwards slowly, fading into the shadows where the moon didn’t reach, but with his eyes on her. She sighed, shook herself, and went to her cell. It would be a long day tomorrow, and the ceremony still just over a week away.
    Liat didn’t notice she wasn’t alone until she was nearly to her door. The pregnant girl, Maj, was on the walkway and unescorted. She wore a loose gown that barely covered her breasts and a pair of workman’s trousers cut at the knee. Her swollen belly pressed out, bare in the moonlight.
    To Liat’s surprise, the girl took a pose of greeting. It was rough and child-like, but recognizable.
    ‘Hello,’ Maj said, her accent so thick as to almost bury the word.
    Liat fell into an answering pose immediately and felt a smile growing on her lips. The girl Maj almost glowed with pleasure.
    ‘You’ve been learning to speak,’ Liat said. Maj’s face clouded, her smile faltered, and she shrugged - a gesture that carried its load of meaning without language.
    ‘Hello,’ Maj said again, taking the same pose as before. Her expression said that this was all that there was. Liat nodded, smiled again, and took the girl by the arm. Maj shifted Liat’s hand, lacing their fingers together as if they were young girls walking together after temple. Liat walked back to the guest quarters where Maj was being housed until after the ceremony.
    ‘It’s a good start,’ Liat said as they walked. She knew that the words were likely meaningless to the island girl, but she spoke them all the same. ‘Keep practicing, and we’ll make a civilized woman of you. Just give it time.’

7
    Two days later, after his work was complete and his friends had gone to their night’s entertainments, Otah stepped out from his quarters and considered. The city streets were gaudy with sunset. Orange light warmed the walls and roofs, even as the first stars began to glimmer in the deep cobalt of the eastern sky. Otah stood in the street and watched the change come. Fireflies danced like candles. The songs of beggars changed as the traffic of night came out. The soft quarter lay to his right, lit like a carnival as it was every night. The seafront was before him, though hidden by the barracks of other labor cohorts like his own, employed by other houses. And somewhere far to his left, off past the edge of the city, the great river flowed, bearing water from the north. He rubbed his hands together slowly as the light reddened, then grayed. The sun vanished again, and the stars came out, shining over the city. Liat was in her cell, he supposed, to the north and uphill. And beyond her, the palaces of the Khai.
    The streets changed as he walked north. The laborers’ quarter was actually quite small, and Otah left it behind him quickly, barracks giving way to the shops of small merchants and free traders. Then came the weavers’ compounds, windows candle-lit, and the clack of looms filling the streets as they would even later into the night. He passed groups of men and of women, passed through the street of beads and the blood quarter where physicians and pretenders vied to care for the sick and injured, selling services, as everything in Saraykeht was for trade.
    The compounds of the great houses rose up like small villages. Streets grew wider near them, and walls taller. The firekeepers at their kilns wore better robes than their fellows lower in the city. Otah paused at the corner that would have taken him to House Wilsin, through the familiar spaces to Liat’s side. It would be so easy, he thought, to go there. He stood for the space of ten heartbeats, standing at the intersection like the statue of some forgotten man of the Empire, before going north. His hands were balled in fists.
    The palaces grew up like a city of their own, above the city inhabited by mere humans. The scents of sewage and bodies and meat cooking at teahouses vanished and those of gardens and incense took their places. The paths changed from stone to marble or sand or fine gravel. The songs of beggars gave way to the songs of slaves, almost it seemed without losing the melody. The great halls stood empty and dark or else lit like lanterns from within. Servants and slaves moved along the paths with the quiet