Shadow and Betrayal Read Free

Milah-kvo would not see his trembling, or if he did would ascribe it to the cold.

    ‘Leaving before your term is complete, boy. You disgrace yourself.’

    Otah switched to a pose of thanks appropriate to the end of a lesson, but Milah-kvo waved the formality aside and sat in the snow, considering him with an interest that Otah found unnerving.

    ‘Why do it?’ Milah-kvo asked. ‘There’s still hope of redeeming yourself. You might still be found worthy. So why run away? Are you so much a coward?’

    Otah found his voice.

    ‘It would be cowardice that kept me, Milah-kvo.’

    ‘How so?’ The teacher’s voice held nothing of judgment or testing. It was like a friend asking a question because he truly did not know the answer.

    ‘There are no locks on hell,’ Otah said. It was the first time he had tried to express this to someone else, and it proved harder than he had expected. ‘If there aren’t locks, then what can hold anyone there besides fear that leaving might be worse?’

    ‘And you think the school is a kind of hell.’

    It was not a question, so Otah did not answer.

    ‘If you keep to this path, you’ll be the lowest of the low,’ Milah said. ‘A disgraced child without friend or ally. And without the brand to protect you, your older brothers may well track you down and kill you.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘Do you have someplace to go?’

    ‘The high road leads to Pathai and Nantani.’

    ‘Where you know no one.’

    Otah took a pose of agreement.

    ‘This doesn’t frighten you?’ the teacher asked.

    ‘It is the decision I’ve made.’ He could see the amusement in Milahkvo’s face at his answer.

    ‘Fair enough, but I think there’s an alternative you haven’t considered.’

    The teacher reached into his satchel and pulled out a small cloth bundle. He hefted it for a moment, considering, and dropped it on the snow between them. It was a black robe.

    Otah took a pose of intellectual inquiry. It was a failure of vocabulary, but Milah-kvo took his meaning.

    ‘Andat are powerful, Otah. Like small gods. And they don’t love being held to a single form. They fight it, and since the forms they have are a reflection of the poets who bind them . . . The world is full of willing victims - people who embrace the cruelty meted out against them. An andat formed from a mind like that would destroy the poet who bound it and escape. That you have chosen action is what the black robes mean.’

    ‘Then . . . the others . . . they all left the school too?’

    Milah laughed. Even in the cold, it was a warm sound.

    ‘No. No, you’ve all taken different paths. Ansha tried to wrestle Tahi-kvo’s stick away from him. Ranit Kiru asked forbidden questions, took the punishment for them, and asked again until Tahi beat him asleep. He was too sore to wear any robe at all for weeks, but his bruises were black enough. But you’ve each done something. If you choose to take up the robe, that is. Leave it, and really, this is just a conversation. Interesting maybe, but trivial.’

    ‘And if I take it?’

    ‘You will never be turned out of the school so long as you wear the black. You will help to teach the normal boys the lesson you’ve learned - to stand by your own strength.’

    Otah blinked, and something - some emotion he couldn’t put a name to - bloomed in his breast. His flight from the school took on a new meaning. It was a badge of his strength, the proof of his courage.

    ‘And the andat?’

    ‘And the andat,’ Milah-kvo said. ‘You’ll begin to learn of them in earnest. The Dai-kvo has never taken a student who wasn’t first a black robe at the school.’

    Otah stooped, his fingers numb with cold, and picked up the robe. He met Milah-kvo’s amused eyes and couldn’t keep from grinning. Milah-kvo laughed, stood and put an arm around Otah’s shoulder. It was the first kind act Otah could remember since he had come to the school.

    ‘Come on, then. If we start now, we may get back