A Shadow In Summer(49)

"No," he said. "Not really."

"I don't often look at the stars," Maati said. "Isn't that odd?"

"I suppose," Otah allowed.

"I wonder whether Heshai does. He stays out half the time, you know. He wasn't even there yesterday when I came in."

"You mean this morning?"

Maati frowned.

"I suppose so. It wasn't quite dawn when I got there. You should have seen Seedless stalking back and forth like a cat. He tried to get me to say where I'd been, but I wouldn't talk. Not me. I wonder where Heshaikvo goes all night."

"The way Seedless wonders about you," Otah said. "You should start drinking water. You'll be worse for it if you don't."

Maati took a pose of acceptance, but didn't rise or go in for water. The sleeping man snored. Otah closed his eyes for a moment, testing how it felt. It was like falling backwards. He was too tired. He'd never make it though his shift with Muhatia-cha.

"I don't know how Heshaikvo does it," Maati said, clearly thinking similar thoughts. "He's got a full day coming. I don't think I'll be able to do any more today than I did yesterday. I mean today. I don't know what I mean. It's easier to keep track when I sleep at night. What about you?"

"They can do without me," Otah said. "Muhatia-cha knows my indenture's almost over. He more than half expects me to ignore my duties. It isn't uncommon for someone who isn't renewing their contract."

"And aren't you?" Maati asked.

"I don't know."

Otah shifted his weight, turning to look at the young poet in the brown robes of his office. The moonlight made them seem black.

"I envy you," Maati said. "You know that, don't you?"

"You want to be directionless and unsure what you'll be doing to earn food in a half-year's time?"

"Yes," Maati said. "Yes, I think I do. You've friends. You've a place. You've possibilities. And . . ."

"And?"

Even in the darkness, Otah could see Maati blush. He took a pose of apology as he spoke.

"You have Liat," Maati said. "She's beautiful."

"She is lovely. But there are any number of women at court. And you're the poet's student. There must be girls who'd take you for a lover."

"There are, I think. Maybe. I don't know, but . . . I don't understand them. I've never known any—not at the school, and then not with the Dai-kvo. They're different."

"Yes," Otah said. "I suppose they are."

Liat. He'd seen her a handful of nights since the audience before the Khai. Since his discovery by Maati. She was busy enough preparing the woman Maj for the sad trade that she hadn't made an issue of his absence, but he had seen something growing in her questions and in her silence.

"Things aren't going so well with Liat," Otah said, surprised that he would admit it even as he spoke. Maati sat straight, pulling himself to some blurry attention. His look of concern was almost a parody of the emotion. He took a pose of query. Otah responded with one that begged ignorance, but let it fall away. "It isn't her. I've been . . . I've been pulling away from her, I think."

"Why?" Maati asked. His incredulity was clear.

Otah wondered how he'd been drawn into this conversation. Maati seemed to have a talent for it, bringing him to say things he'd hardly had the courage to think through fully. It was having someone at last who might understand him. Someone who knew him for what he was, and who had suffered some of the same flavors of loss.

"I've never told Liat. About who I am. Do you think . . . Maati, can you love someone and not trust them?"

"We're born to odd lives, Otahkvo," Maati said, sounding suddenly older and more sorrowful. "If we waited for people we trusted, I think we might never love anyone."

They were silent for a long moment, then Maati rose.

"I'm going to get some water from the keep, and then find some place to leave him a little of my own," he said, breaking the somber mood. Otah smiled.

"Then we should go."

Maati took a pose that was both regret and agreement, then walked off with a gait for the most part steady. Otah stood, stretching his back and his legs, pulling his blood into action. He tossed a single length of silver onto the bench where they'd sat. It would more than cover their drinks and the bread and cheese they'd eaten. When Maati returned, they struck out for the north, toward the palaces. The streets of the city were moonlit, pale blue light except where a lantern burned at the entrance to a compound or a firekeeper's kiln added a ruddy touch. The calls of night birds, the chirping of crickets, the occasional voice of some other city dweller awake long after the day had ended accompanied them as they walked.