Shadow and Betrayal

torture box only crouched, fingers laced with the metal grate, the black eyes peering out. Maati pulled the netting back over his master and went downstairs. No one remained - only the remains of the offerings of sympathy and concern half consumed, and an eerie silence.
    Otah-kvo , he thought. Otah-kvo will know what to do. Please, please let Otah-kvo know what to do.
    He hurried, gathering an apple, some bread, and a jug of water, and taking them to the unmoving poet before changing into fresh robes and rushing out through the palace grounds to the street and down into the city. Halfway to the quarters where Otah-kvo’s cohort slept, he noticed he was weeping. He couldn’t say for certain when he’d begun.
     
    ‘Itani!’ Muhatia-cha barked. ‘Get down here!’
    Otah, high in the suffocating heat and darkness near the warehouse roof, grabbed the sides of his ladder and slid down. Muhatia-cha stood in the wide double doors that opened to the light and noise of the street. The overseer had a sour expression, but mixed with something - eagerness, perhaps, or curiosity. Otah stood before him with a pose appropriate to the completion of a task.
    ‘You’re wanted at the compound. I don’t know what good they think you’ll do there.’
    ‘Yes, Muhatia-cha.’
    ‘If this is just your lady love pulling you away from your duties, Itani, I’ll find out.’
    ‘I won’t be able to tell you unless I go,’ Otah pointed out and smiled his charming smile, thinking as he did that he’d never meant it less. Muhatia-cha’s expression softened slightly, and he waved Otah on.
    ‘Hai! Itani!’ Kaimati’s familiar voice called out. Otah turned. His old friend was pulling a cart to the warehouse door, but had paused, bracing the load against his knees. ‘Let us know what you find, eh?’
    Otah took a pose of agreement and turned away. It was an illusion, he knew, that the people he passed in the streets seemed to stare at him. There was no reason for the city as a whole to see him pass and think anything of him. Another laborer in a city full of men like him. That it wasn’t true did nothing to change the feeling. The sad trade had gone wrong. Liat was involved, as was Maati. For two days, he had seen neither. Liat’s cell at the compound had been empty, the poet’s house too full for him to think of approaching. Otah had made do with the gossip of the street and the bathhouse.
    The andat had broken loose and killed the girl as well as her babe; the child had actually been fathered by the poet or the Khai or, least probably, the andat Seedless himself; the poet had killed himself or been killed by the Khai or by the andat; the poet was lying sick at heart. Or the woman was. The stories seemed to bloom like blood poured in water - swirling in all directions and filling all mathematical possibilities. Every story that could be told, including - unremarkably among its legion of fellows - the truth, had been whispered in some corner of Saraykeht in the last day. He had slept poorly, and awakened unrefreshed. Now, he walked quickly, the afternoon sun pushing down on his shoulders and sweat pouring off him.
    He caught sight of Liat on the street outside the compound of House Wilsin. He recognized the shape of her body before he could see her face, could read the exhaustion in the slope of her shoulders. She wore mourning robes. He didn’t know if they were the same that she’d worn to the ceremony or if the grief was fresher than that. When she caught sight of him, she walked to him. Her eyes were sunken, her skin pale, her lips bloodless. She stepped into his embrace without speaking. It was unseemly, of course, a laborer holding an overseer this way - his cheek pressed to her forehead - in the street. It was too hot for the sensation to be pleasant. She held him fiercely, and he felt the deepness of her breath by the way she pressed against him.
    ‘What happened, love?’ he asked, but Liat only shook her head. Otah stroked her unbound hair and waited until, with a shuddering sigh, she pulled back. She didn’t release his hand, and he didn’t try to reclaim it.
    ‘Come to my cell,’ she said. ‘We can talk there.’
    The compound was subdued, men and women passing quickly though their duties as if nothing had happened, except for the air of tension. Liat led the way in silence, pushed open the door of her cell and pulled him into the shadows. A thin form lay on the cot, swathed in brown robes. Maati sat up,