A Shadow In Summer(120)

"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.