Shadow and Betrayal

Armsmen. They had to send armsmen out to search for Heshai and bring him back. Over the drumming of the rain, he heard the andat shift.
    ‘I told you,’ Seedless said, ‘that we wouldn’t always be friends.’
    And from below them another voice called Maati’s name. A woman’s voice, tight with distress. Maati rushed down the stairs, three at a stride. Liat Chokavi stood in the main room. Her robes and hair were rain-soaked, clinging to her and making her seem younger than she had before. She held her hands tight. When she saw him, she took two steps forward, and Maati reached out, put his hand on hers.
    ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s happened?’
    ‘The poet. Heshai. He’s at the compound. He’s raving, Maati. We can’t calm him. Epani-cha wanted to send for the utkhaiem, but I told him I’d come get you. He promised to wait.’
    ‘Take me,’ he said, and together they half-walked, half-ran out, across the wooden bridge - its timbers rain-slicked and blackened - through the palace gardens where the water bowed the limbs of trees and bent the flower blossoms to the ground, and then south, into the city. Liat kept hold of his hand, pulling him along. The pace was too fast for speaking, and Maati couldn’t imagine what he would say if he’d been able. His mind was too much taken with dread of what he would find when they arrived.
    If Otah-kvo had been there, there would have been someone to ask, someone who would have known what to do. It struck Maati as he passed through the darkened streets that he’d had a teacher with him almost his whole life - someone who could guide him when the world got confusing. That was what teachers were supposed to be. Otah-kvo hadn’t even accepted the Dai-kvo and he was strong enough to know the right thing. It was monstrously wrong that Heshai was incapable of doing the same.
    At the courtyard of the Galtic house, Liat stopped and Maati drew up beside her. The scene was worse than he had thought. The house was two stories built around the courtyard with a walkway on the second level that looked down on the metalwork statue of the Galtic Tree, the fountain overflowing in the downpour, and between them, sitting with his back to the street, his teacher. Around him were the signs of conflict - torn papers, spilled food. A crowd had gathered, robes in the colors of many houses ghosted in the shadows of doorways and on the upper walk, faces blurred by rain.
    Maati put his hand on Liat’s hip and gently pushed her aside. The stone of the courtyard was under an inch of water, white foam tracing the pattern of drainage from the house out into the streets. Maati walked through it slowly, his sandals squelching.
    Heshai looked confused. The rain plastered his long, thinning hair to his neck. His robe was thin - too thin for the weather - and the unhealthy pink of his skin showed through it. Maati squatted beside him, and saw the thick, wide mouth was moving slightly, as if whispering. Drops of water clung like dew to the moth-eaten beard.
    ‘Heshai-kvo,’ Maati said, taking a pose of entreaty. ‘Heshai-kvo, we should go back.’
    The bloodshot eyes with whites the color of old ivory turned to him, narrowed, and then recognition slowly lit the poet’s face. He put his thick-fingered hands on Maati’s knee, and shook his head.
    ‘She isn’t here. She’s already gone,’ Heshai said.
    ‘Who isn’t here, Heshai-kvo?’
    ‘The girl,’ he snapped. ‘The island girl. The one. I thought if I could find her, you see, if I could explain my error . . .’
    Maati fought the urge to shake him - take a handful of robe in each fist and rattle the old man until he came to his senses. Instead, he put his own hand over Heshai’s and kept his voice calm and steady.
    ‘We should go.’
    ‘If I could have explained, Maati . . . If I could just have explained that it was the andat that did the thing. That I would never have—’
    ‘What good would it do?’ Maati said, his anger and embarrassment slipping out. ‘Heshai-kvo, there aren’t any words you know that would apologize for what happened. And sitting here in the rain doesn’t help.’
    Heshai frowned at the words as if confused, then looked down at the flowing water and up to the half-hidden faces. The frog-lips pursed.
    ‘I’ve made an ass of myself, haven’t I?’ Heshai asked in a perfectly rational voice.
    ‘Yes,’ Maati said, unable to bring himself to lie. ‘You have.’
    Heshai nodded, and rose to his