A Shadow In Summer (45 page)

"I don't mean to hurt you, my dear. But you look like someone's just stolen your puppy, and I thought a joke might brighten things. I'm sorry if I was wrong."

"Where's Heshai?"

The andat paused, looking out, as if the black eyes could see through the walls, through the trees, any distance to consider the poet where he lay. A thin smile curled its lips.

"Away," Seedless said. "In his torture box. The same as always, I suppose."

"He isn't here, though."

"No," Seedless said, simply.

"I need to speak to him."

Seedless sat on the couch beside him, considering him in silence, his expression as distant as the moon. The mourning robe wasn't new though it clearly hadn't seen great use. The cut was simple, the cloth coarse and unsoftened by pounding. From the way it sagged, it was clearly intended for a wider frame than Seedless's—it was clearly meant for Heshai. Seedless seemed to see him notice all this, and looked down, as if aware of his own robes for the first time.

"He had these made when his mother died," the andat said. "He was with the Dai-kvo at the time. He didn't see her pyre, but the news reached him. He keeps it around, I suppose, so that he won't have to buy another one should anybody else die."

"And what makes you wear it?"

Seedless shrugged, grinned, gestured with wide-spread hands that indicated everything and nothing.

"Respect for the dead," Seedless said, "Why else?"

"Everything's a joke to you," Maati said. The fatigue made his tongue thick, but if anything, he was farther from rest than before he'd come back to the house. The combination of exhaustion and restlessness felt like an illness. "Nothing matters."

"Not true," the andat said. "Just because something's a game, doesn't mean it isn't serious."

"Gods. Is there something in the way Heshaikvo made you that keeps you from making sense? You're like talking to smoke."

"I can speak to the point if you'd like," Seedless said. "Ask me what you want."

"I don't have anything to ask you, and you don't have anything to teach me," Maati said, rising. "I'm going to sleep. Tomorrow can't be worse than today was."

"Possibility is a wide field, dear.
Can't
is a word for small imaginations." Seedless said from behind him, but Maati didn't turn back.

His room was colder than the main room. He lit a small fire in the brazier before he pulled back the woolen blankets, pulled off his shoes, and tried again to sleep. The errands of the day ran through his mind, unstoppable and chaotic: Liat's distress and the warmth of her flesh, Otahkvo's last words to him and the searing remorse that they held. If only he could find him, if only he could speak with him again.

Half-awake, Maati began to catalog for himself the places he had been in the night, searching for a corner he knew of, but might have overlooked. And, as he pictured the night streets of Saraykeht, he found himself moving down them, knowing as he did that he was dreaming. Street and alley, square and court, until he was in places that were nowhere real in the city, searching for teahouses that didn't truly exist other than within his own frustration and despair, and aware all the time that this was a dream, but was not sleep.

He kicked off the blankets, desperate for some sense of freedom. But the little brazier wasn't equal to its work, and the cold soon brought him swimming back up into his full mind. He lay in the darkness and wept. When that brought no relief, he rose, changed into fresh robes, and stalked down the stairs.

Seedless had started a fire in the grate. A copper pot of wine was warming over it, filling the room with its rich scent. The andat sat in a wooden chair, a book open in his lap. The brown, leather-bound volume that told of his own creation and its errors. He didn't look up when Maati came in and walked over to the fire, warming his feet by the flames. When he spoke, he sounded weary.

"The spirit's burned out of it. You can drink as much as you'd like and not impair yourself."

"What's the point, then?" Maati asked.

"Comfort. It may taste a little strong, though. I thought you'd come down sooner, and it gets thick if it boils too long."

Maati turned his back to the andat and used an old copper ladle to fill his winebowl. When his took a sip, it tasted rich and hot and red. And, perversely, comforting.

"It's fine," he said.

He heard the hush of paper upon paper as, behind him, Seedless closed the book. The silence afterward went on so long that he looked back over his shoulder. The andat sat motionless as a statue; not even breath stirred the folds of his robe and his face betrayed nothing. His ribs shifted an inch, taking in air, and he spoke.

"What would you have said, if you'd found him?"

Maati shifted, sitting with his legs crossed, the warm bowl in his hands. He blew across it to cool it before he answered.

"I'd have asked his forgiveness."

"Would you have deserved it, do you think?"

"I don't know. Possibly not. What I did was wrong."

Seedless chuckled and leaned forward, lacing his long graceful fingers together.

"Of course it was," Seedless said. "Why would anyone ask forgiveness for something they'd done that was right? But tell me, since we're on the subject of judgment and clemency, why would you ask for something you don't deserve?"

"You sound like Heshaikvo."

"Of course I do, you're evading. If you don't like that question, leave it aside and answer me this instead. Would you forgive me? What I did was wrong, and I know it. Would you do for me what you'd ask of him?"

"Would you want me to?"

"Yes," Seedless said, and his voice was strangely plaintive. It wasn't an emotion Maati had ever seen in the andat before now. "Yes, I want to be forgiven."

Maati sipped the wine, then shook his head.

"You'd do it again, wouldn't you? If you could, you'd sacrifice anyone or anything to hurt Heshaikvo."

"You think that?"

"Yes."

Seedless bowed his head until his hair tipped over his hands.

"I suppose you're right," he said. "Fine, then this. Would you forgive Heshaikvo for his failings? As a teacher to you, as a poet in making something so dangerously flawed as myself. Really, pick anything—there's no end of ways in which he's wanting. Does he deserve mercy?"

"Perhaps," Maati said. "He didn't mean to do what he did."

"Ah! And because I planned, and he blundered, the child is more my wrong than his?"

"Yes."

"Then you've forgotten again what we are to each other, he and I. But let that be. If your laborer friend—you called him Otahkvo, by the way. You should be more careful of that. If Otahkvo did something wrong, if he committed some crime or helped someone else commit one, could you let that go?"

"You know . . . how did you . . ."

"I've known for weeks, dear. Don't let it worry you. I haven't told anyone. Answer the question; would you hold his crimes against him as you hold mine against me?"

"No, I don't think I would. Who told you that Otah was . . ."

Seedless leaned back and took a pose of triumph.

"And what's the difference between us, laborer and andat that you'll brush his sins aside and not my own?"

Maati smiled.

"You aren't him," he said.

"And you love him."

Maati took a pose of affirmation.

"And love is more important than justice," Seedless said.

"Sometimes. Yes."

Seedless smiled and nodded.

"What a terrible thought," he said. "That love and injustice should be married."

Maati shifted to a dismissive pose, and in reply the andat took the brown book back up, leafing through the handwritten pages as if looking for his place. Maati closed his eyes and breathed in the fumes of the wine. He felt profoundly comfortable, like sleep—true sleep—coming on. He felt himself rocking slowly, involuntarily shifting in time with his pulse. A sense of disquiet roused him and without opening his eyes again, he spoke.

"You mustn't tell anyone about Otahkvo. If his family finds him . . ."

"They won't," Seedless said. "At least not through me."

"I don't believe you."

"This time, you can. Heshaikvo did his best by you. Do you know that? For all his failings, and for all of mine, to the degree that our private war allowed it, we have taken care of you and . . ."

The andat broke off. Maati opened his eyes. The andat wasn't looking at him or the book, but out, to the south. It was as if his sight penetrated the walls, the trees, the distance, and took in some spectacle that held him. Maati couldn't help following his gaze, but there was nothing but the rooms of the house. When he glanced back, the andat's expression was exultant.

"What is it?" Maati asked, a cold dread at his back.

"It's Otahkvo," Seedless said. "He's forgiven you."

T
HE SINGLE
candle burned, marking the hours of the night. On the cot where Otah had left him, the poet slept, all color leached from his face by the dim light. The poet's mouth was open, his breath deep and regular. Maj, at his side, knelt, considering the sleeping man's face. Otah shut the door.

"Is him," Maj said, her voice low and tense. "Is the one who does this to me. To my baby."

Otah moved forward, careful not to rattle the bottles on the floor, not to make any sound that would wake the sleeper.

"Yes," he said. "It is."

Silently, Maj pulled a knife from her sleeve. It was a thin blade, long as her hand but thinner than a finger. Otah touched her wrist and shook his head.

"Quiet," he said. "It has to be quiet."

"So how?" she asked.

Otah fumbled for a moment in his own sleeve and drew out the cord. It was braided bamboo, thin and supple, but so strong it would have borne Otah's weight without snapping. Wooden grips at each end fit his fingers to keep it from cutting into his flesh when he pulled it tight. It was a thug's weapon. Otah saw it in his own hands as if from a distance. The dread in his belly had suffused through his body, through the world, and disconnected him from everything. He felt like a puppet, pulled by invisible strings.

"I hold him," Maj said. "You do this."

Otah looked at the sleeping man. There was no rage in him to carry him through, no hatred to justify it. For a moment, he thought of turning away, of rousing the man or calling out for the watch. It would be so simple, even now, to turn back. Maj seemed to read his thoughts. Her eyes, unnatural and pale, met his.

"You do this," she said again.

He would walk onto the blade
. . .

"His legs," Otah said. "I'll worry about his arms, but you keep him from kicking free."

Maj moved in so close to the cot, she seemed almost ready to crawl onto it with Heshai. Her hands flexed in the space above the bend of the poet's knees. Otah looped the cord, ready to drop it over the poet's head, his fingers in the curves that were made for them. He stepped forward. His foot brushed a bottle, the sound of glass rolling over stone louder than thunder in the silence. The poet lurched, lifted himself, less than half awake, up on his elbow.

As if his body had been expecting it, Otah dropped the cord into place and pulled. He was dimly aware of the soft sounds of Maj struggling, pulling, holding the poet down. The poet's hands were at his throat now, fingers digging for the cord that had vanished, almost, into the flesh. Otah's hands and arms ached, and the broad muscles across his shoulders burned as he drew the cord as tight as his strength allowed. The poet's face was dark with blood, his wide lips black. Otah closed his eyes, but didn't loose his grip. The struggle grew weaker. The flailing arms and clawing fingers became the soft slaps of a child, and then stopped. In the darkness behind his eyes, Otah still pulled, afraid that if he stopped too soon it would all have to be done again. There was a wet sound, and the smell of shit. His back knotted between his shoulder blades, but he counted a dozen breaths, and then a half dozen more, before he looked up.

Maj stood at the foot of the cot. Her robes were disarranged and a bad bruise was already blooming on her cheek. Her expression was as serene as a statue's. Otah released the cord, his fingers stiff. He kept his gaze high, not wanting to see the body. Not at any price.

"It's done," he said, his voice shaky. "We should go."

Maj said something, not to him but to the corpse between them. Her words were flowing and lovely and he didn't know what they meant. She turned and walked solemn and regal out of the room, leaving Otah to follow her. He hesitated at the doorway, caught between wanting to look back and not, between the horror of the thing he had done and the relief that it was over. Perversely, he felt guilty leaving Heshai like this without giving some farewell; it seemed rude.

"Thank you, Heshaikvo," he said at last, and took a pose appropriate for a pupil to an honored teacher. After a moment, he dropped his hands, stepped out, and closed the door.

The air of the alleyway was sharp and cold, rich with the threat of rain. For a brief, frightened moment, he thought he was alone, that Maj had gone, but the sound of her retching gave her away. He found her doubled over in the mud, weeping and being sick. He placed a hand on her back, reassuring and gentle, until the worst had passed. When she rose, he brushed off what he could of the mess and, his arm around her, led her out from the alleyway, to the west and down, towards the seafront and away at last from Saraykeht.

"W
HAT DO
you mean?" Maati asked. "How has Otahkvo . . ."

And then he stopped because, with a sound like a sigh and a scent like rain, Seedless had vanished, and only the mourning robes remained.

Chapter 20

Morning seemed like any other for nearly an hour, and then the news came. When Liat heard it humming through the comfort house—Maj gone, the poet killed—she ran to the palaces. She forgot her own safety, if there was safety to be had anywhere. When she finally crossed the wooden bridge over water tea-brown with dead leaves, her sides ached, her wounded shoulder throbbed with her heartbeat.

She didn't know what she would say. She didn't know how she would tell him.