Shadow and Betrayal

mother handing him a cloth rabbit, sneaking it into his things so that his father wouldn’t see it. He remembered an older boy shouting - his brother, perhaps - that it wasn’t fair that Otah be sent away, and that he had felt guilty for causing so much anger. He remembered the name Oyin Frey, and an old man with a long white beard playing a drum and singing, but not who the man was or how he had known him.
    He couldn’t say which of the memories were truth, which were dreams he’d constructed himself. He wondered, if he were to travel back there, far in the north, whether these ghost memories would let him retrace paths he hadn’t walked in years - know the ways from nursery to kitchen to the tunnels beneath Machi - or if they would lead him astray, false as bog-lights.
    And the school - Tahi-kvo glowering at him, and the whirr of the lacquer rod. He had pushed those things away, pushed away the boy who had suffered those losses and humiliations, and now it was like being haunted. Haunted by who he might be and might have been.
    ‘I think I’ve upset you, Otah-kvo,’ Maati said quietly.
    Otah turned, taking a questioning pose. Maati’s brow furrowed and he looked down.
    ‘You haven’t spoken since we left the teahouse,’ Maati said. ‘If I’ve given offense . . .’
    Otah laughed, and the sound seemed to reassure Maati. On impulse, Otah put his arm around Maati’s shoulder as he might have around a dear friend or a brother.
    ‘I’m sorry. I seem to be doing this to everyone around me these days. No, Maati-kya, I’m not upset. You just make me think about things, and I must be out of practice. I get lost in them. And gods, but I’m tired.’
    ‘You could stay at the poet’s house if you don’t care to walk back to your quarters. There’s a perfectly good couch on the lower floor.’
    ‘No,’ Otah said. ‘If I don’t let Muhatia-cha scold me in the morning, he’ll get himself into a rage by midday.’
    Maati took a pose of understanding that also spoke of regret, and put his own arm around Otah’s shoulder. They walked together, talking now the same mixture of seriousness and jokes that they’d made yet another evening of. Maati was getting better at navigating the streets, and even when the route he chose wasn’t the fastest, Otah let him lead. He wondered, as they approached the monument of the Emperor Atami where three wide streets met, what it would have been like to grow up with a brother.
    ‘Otah?’ Maati said, his stride suddenly slowing. ‘That man there. The one in the cloak.’
    Otah glanced over. The man was walking away from them, heading to the east, and alone. Maati was right, though. It was the same man who’d been sleeping at the teahouse, or pretending to. Otah stepped away from Maati, freeing his arms in case he needed to fight. It wouldn’t have been the first time that someone from the palaces had been followed from a teahouse and assaulted for the copper they carried.
    ‘Come with me,’ Otah said and walked out to the middle of the wide area where the streets converged. Emperor Atami loomed above them, sad-eyed in the darkness. Otah turned slowly, considering each street, each building.
    ‘Otah-kvo?’ Maati said, his voice uncertain. ‘Was he following us?’
    There was no one there, only the too-familiar man retreating to the east. Otah counted twenty breaths, but no one appeared. No shadows moved. The night was empty.
    ‘Perhaps,’ he said, answering the question. ‘Probably. I don’t know. Let’s keep going. And if you see anything, tell me.’
    The rest of the distance to the palaces, Otah kept them on wide streets where they would see men coming. He would send Maati running for help and buy what time he could. A fine plan unless there were several of them or they had knives. But nothing happened, and Maati safely wished him good night.
    By the time Otah reached his own quarters, the fear he’d felt was gone, the bone-weariness taken back over. He fell onto his cot and pulled the netting closed. Exhaustion pressed him to the rough canvas of the cot. The snores and sleeping murmurs of his cohort should have lulled him to sleep. But tired as he was, sleep wouldn’t come. In the darkness, his mind turned from problem to problem - they’d been followed by someone who might still be tracking Maati; his indenture was almost over and he would be too weary to work when the dawn came; he had never told Liat of his past. As he turned his mind to one,