Shadow and Betrayal

mixed and shifted and moved him.
    ‘Seedless-cha. I was wondering if I might ask you a question. Now, while we’re still friends.’
    ‘Now you’re playing on my sentiments,’ the andat said, amused. Maati took a pose of cheerful agreement and Seedless replied with acceptance. ‘Ask.’
    ‘You and Heshai-kvo are in a sense one thing, true?’
    ‘Sometimes the hand pulls the puppet, sometimes the puppet pulls the hand, but the string runs both ways. Yes.’
    ‘And you hate him.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Mustn’t you also hate yourself, then?’
    The andat shifted to a crouch and with the air of a man considering a painting, looked up at the poet’s house, dark now in the starlight. He was silent for so long that Maati began to wonder if he would answer at all. When he did speak, his voice was little above a whisper.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Always.’
    Maati waited, but the andat said nothing more. At last, Maati gathered his things and rose to go inside. He paused beside the unmoving andat and touched Seedless’ sleeve. The andat didn’t move, didn’t speak, accepted no more comfort than a stone would. Maati went to the house and lit the night candle and lemon candles to drive away the insects, and prepared himself for sleep.
    Heshai returned just before dawn, his robes stained and reeking of cheap wine. Maati helped him prepare for the audience, the sad trade, the ceremony. Fresh robes, washed hair, fresh-shaved chin. The redness of his eyes, Maati could do nothing for. Throughout, Seedless haunted the corners of the room, unusually silent. Heshai drank little, ate less, and as the sun topped the trees, lumbered out and down the path with Maati and Seedless following.
    It was a lovely day, clouds building over the sea and to the east, towering white as cotton and taller than mountains. The palaces were alive with servants and slaves and the utkhaiem moving gracefully about their business. And the poets, Maati supposed, moving about theirs.
    The party from House Wilsin was at the low hall before them. The pregnant girl stood outside, attended by servants, fidgeting with the skirts that were designed for the day, cut to protect her modesty but not catch the child as it left her. Maati felt the first real qualm pass over him. Heshai-kvo marched past woman and servants and slaves, his bloodshot eyes looking, Maati guessed, for Liat Chokavi who was, after all, overseeing the trade.
    They found her inside the hall, pacing and muttering to herself under her breath. She was dressed in white robes shot with blue: mourning colors. Her hair was pulled back to show the softness of her cheek, the curve of her neck. She was beautiful - the sort of woman that Otah-kvo would love and that would love him in return. Her gaze rose as they entered, the three of them, and she took a pose of greeting.
    ‘Can we do this thing?’ Heshai-kvo snapped, only now that Maati had known the man longer, he heard the pain underneath the gruff-ness. The dread.
    ‘The physician will be here shortly,’ Liat said.
    ‘He’s late?’
    ‘We’re early, Heshai-kvo,’ Maati said gently.
    The poet glared at him, then shrugged and moved to the far end of the hall to stare sullenly out the window. Seedless, meeting Maati’s gaze, pursed his lips, shrugged and walked out into the sunlight. Maati, left alone before the woman, took a pose of formal greeting which she returned.
    ‘Forgive Heshai-kvo,’ Maati said softly enough to keep his voice from carrying. ‘He hates the sad trade. It . . . it would be a very long story, and likely not worth the telling. Only don’t judge him too harshly from this.’
    ‘I won’t,’ Liat said. Her manner was softer, less formal. She seemed, in fact, on the verge of grinning. ‘Itani told me about it. He mentioned you as well.’
    ‘He has been very kind in . . . showing me the city,’ Maati said, taken by surprise. ‘I knew very little about Saraykeht before I came here.’
    Liat smiled and touched his sleeve.
    ‘I should thank you,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know when he would have gotten the courage to tell me about . . . about his family.’
    ‘Oh,’ Maati said. ‘Then he . . . you know?’
    She took a pose of confirmation that implied a complicity Maati found both thrilling and uneasing. The secret was now shared among three. And that was as many as could ever know. In a way, it bound them, he and Liat. Two people who shared some kind of love for Otah-kvo.
    ‘Perhaps we