Shadow and Betrayal

the long stretch of the city to the south. Lemon candles filled the air with bright-smelling smoke that kept the worst of the gnats away and made the wine taste odd. In the street, a band of young men sang and danced while three women watched, laughing. Otah took a long drink of wine.
    ‘It isn’t what you’d expected either, is it?’
    ‘No,’ Maati admitted. ‘When you left I imagined . . . we all did . . .’
    ‘Imagined what?’
    Maati sighed, frowned, tried to find words for daydreams and secret stories he’d never precisely told himself. Otah-kvo had been the figure who’d shaped his life almost more than the Dai-kvo, certainly more than his father. He had imagined Otah-kvo forging a new order, a dark, dangerous, possibly libertine group that would be at odds with the Dai-kvo and the school, or perhaps its rival. Or else adventuring on the seas or in the turmoil of the wars in the Westlands. Maati would never have said it, but the common man his teacher had become was disappointing.
    ‘Something else,’ he said, taking a pose that kept the phrase vague.
    ‘It was hard. The first few months, I thought I’d starve. Those things they taught us about hunting and foraging? They work, but only barely. When I got a bowl of soup and half a loaf of stale bread for cleaning out a henhouse, I felt like I’d been given the best meal of my life.’
    Maati laughed. Otah smiled at him and shrugged.
    ‘And you?’ Otah asked, changing the subject. ‘Was the Dai-kvo’s village what you thought?’
    ‘I suppose so. It was more work than the school, but it was easier. Because there was a reason for it. It wasn’t just hard to be hard. We studied old grammars and the languages of the Empire. And the history of the andat and the poets who bound them, what the bindings were like. How they escaped. I didn’t know how much harder it is to bind the same andat a second time. I mean there are all the stories about some being captured three or four times, but I don’t . . .’
    Otah laughed. It was a warm sound, mirthful but not mocking. Maati took a pose of query. Otah responded with one of apology that nearly spilled his wine.
    ‘It’s just that you sound like you loved it,’ Otah said.
    ‘I did,’ Maati said. ‘It was fascinating. And I’m good at it, I think. My teachers seemed to feel that way. Heshai-kvo isn’t what I’d expected though.’
    ‘Him either, eh?’
    ‘No. But, Otah-kvo, why didn’t you go? When the Dai-kvo offered you a place with him, why did you refuse?’
    ‘Because what they did was wrong,’ Otah said, simply. ‘And I didn’t want any part of it.’
    Maati frowned into his wine. His reflection looked back at him from the dark, shining surface.
    ‘If you had it again, would you do the same?’ Maati asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Even if it meant just being a laborer?’
    Otah took two deep breaths, turned, and sat on the railing, considering Maati with dark, troubled eyes. His hands moved toward a pose that might have been accusation or demand or query, but that never took a final form.
    ‘Is this really so bad, what I do?’ Otah asked. ‘You, Liat. Everyone seems to think so. I started out as a child on the road with no family, no friends. I didn’t even dare use my real name. And I built something. I have work, and friends, and a lover. I have good food and shelter. And at night I can go and listen to poets or philosophers or singers, or I can go to bathhouses or teahouses, or out on the ocean in sailing boats. Is that so bad? It that so little ?’
    Maati was surprised by the pain in Otah’s voice, and perhaps by the desperation. He had the feeling that the words were only half meant for him. Still, he considered them. And their source.
    ‘Of course not,’ Maati said. ‘Something doesn’t have to be great to be worthy. If you’ve followed the calling of your heart, then what does it matter what anyone else thinks?’
    ‘It can matter. It can matter a great deal.’
    ‘Not if you’re certain,’ Maati said.
    ‘And someone, somewhere, is actually certain of the choices they made? Are you?’
    ‘No, I’m not,’ Maati said. It was easier than he’d expected, voicing this deepest of doubts. He’d never said it to anyone at the school or with the Dai-kvo. He’d have died before he said it to Heshai-kvo. But to Otah, it wasn’t such a hard thing to say. ‘But it’s done. I’ve made all my decisions already. Now it’s just seeing whether I’m strong enough to