Shadow and Betrayal Read Free Page A

to the school by breakfast.’

    Otah took a pose of enthusiastic agreement.

    ‘And, while this once I think we can forgive it, don’t make a habit of stealing from the kitchen. It upsets the cooks.’

     
    The letter came some weeks later, and Milah was the first to read it. Sitting in an upper room, his students abandoned for the moment, he read the careful script again and felt his face grow tight. When he had gone over it enough to know he could not have misunderstood, he tucked the folded paper into the sleeve of his robe and looked out the window. Winter was ending, and somehow the eternal renewal that was spring felt like an irony.

    He heard Tahi enter, recognizing his old friend’s footsteps.

    ‘There was a courier,’ Tahi said. ‘Ansha said there was a courier from the Dai-kvo . . .’

    Milah looked over his shoulder. His own feelings were echoed in Tahi’s round face.

    ‘From his attendant, actually.’

    ‘The Dai-kvo. Is he . . .’

    ‘No,’ Milah said, fishing out the letter. ‘Not dead. Only dying.’

    Tahi took the proffered pages, but didn’t look at them.

    ‘Of what?’

    ‘Time.’

    Tahi read the written words silently, then leaned against the wall with a sharp sigh.

    ‘It . . . it isn’t so bad as it could be,’ Tahi said.

    ‘No. Not yet. He will see the school again. Twice, perhaps.’

    ‘He shouldn’t come,’ Tahi snapped. ‘The visits are a formality. We know well enough which boys are ready. We can send them. He doesn’t have to—’

    Milah turned, interrupting him with a subtle pose that was a request for clarification and a mourning both. Tahi laughed bitterly and looked down.

    ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Still. I’d like the world better if we could carry a little of his weight for him. Even if it was only a short way.’

    Milah started to take a pose, but hesitated, stopped, only nodded.

    ‘Otah Machi?’ Tahi asked.

    ‘Maybe. We might have to call him for Otah. Not yet, though. The robes have hardly been on him. The others are still learning to accept him as an equal. Once he’s used to the power, then we’ll see. I won’t call the Dai-kvo until we’re certain.’

    ‘He’ll come next winter whether there’s a boy ready or not.’

    ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps he’ll die tonight. Or we will. No god made the world certain.’

    Tahi raised his hands in a pose of resignation.

     
    It was a warm night in late spring; the scent of green seemed to permeate the world. Otah and his friends sprawled on the hillside east of the school. Milah-kvo sat with them, still talking, still telling stories though their lectures for the day were done. Stories of the andat.

    ‘They are like . . . thoughts made real,’ Milah said, his hands moving in gestures which were not formal poses, but evoked a sense of wonder all the same. ‘Ideas tamed and given human shape. Take Water-Moving-Down. In the Old Empire, she was called Rain, then when Diit Amra recaptured her at the beginning of the War, they called her Seaward. But the thought, you see, was the same. And if you can hold that, you can stop rivers in their tracks. Or see that your crops get enough water, or flood your enemies. She was powerful.’

    ‘Could someone catch her again?’ Ansha - no longer Ansha-kvo to Otah - asked.

    Milah shook his head.

    ‘I doubt it. She’s been held and escaped too many times. I suppose someone might find a new way to describe her, but . . . it’s been tried.’

    There was a chill that even Otah felt at the words. Stories of the andat were like ghost tales, and the price a failed poet paid was always the gruesome ending of it.

    ‘What was her price?’ Nian Tomari asked, his voice hushed and eager.

    ‘The last poet who made the attempt was a generation before me. They say that when he failed, his belly swelled like a pregnant woman’s. When they cut him open, he was filled with ice and black seaweed.’

    The boys were quiet, imagining the scene - the poet’s