"Ah, well. Never mind," his teacher said, as if he had been waiting for some answer. "Only Maati? Later on, I'd like you to think about this conversation."
Maati took a pose appropriate to a student accepting an assignment. As they drew nearer, the laborers and merchants moved aside to make room for them. Members of the utkhaiem were also there in fine robes and expensive jewelry. Maati caught sight of an older woman in a robe the color of the sky at dawn—the personal attendant of the Khai Saraykeht.
"The Khai is here?" Maati asked, his voice smaller than he would have liked.
"He attends sometimes. It makes the merchants feel he's paying attention to them. Silly trick, but it seems to work."
Maati swallowed, half at the prospect of seeing the Khai, half at the indifference in his teacher's voice. They passed through the arches and into the shade of the low hall. Warehouse-large, the hall was filled with bale upon bale of raw cotton stacked to the high ceiling. The only space was a narrow gap at the very top, thinner than a bale, and another of perhaps a hand's width at the bottom where metal frames held the cotton off the floor. What little space remained was peopled by the representatives of the merchant houses whose laborers waited outside and, on a dais, the Khai Saraykeht—a man in his middle years, his hair shot with gray, his eyes heavy-lidded. His attendants stood around him, following commands so subtle they approached invisibility. Maati felt the weight of the silence as they entered. Then a murmur moved through the hall, voices too low to make out words or even sentiments. The Khai raised an eyebrow and took a pose of query with an almost inhuman grace.
At his side stood a thick-bodied man, his wide frog-like mouth gaping open in what might have been horror or astonishment. He also wore the robe of a poet. Maati felt his teacher's hand on his shoulder, solid, firm, and cold.
"Maati," the lovely, careful voice said so quietly that only the two of them could hear, "there's something you should know. I'm not Heshaikvo."
Maati looked up. The dark eyes were on his, something like amusement in their depths.
"Wh-who are you, then?"
"A slave, my dear. The slave you hope to own."
Then the man who was not his teacher turned to the Khai Saraykeht and the spluttering, enraged poet. He took a pose of greeting more appropriate to acquaintances chanced upon at a teahouse than to the two most powerful men of the city. Maati, his hands trembling, took a much more formal stance.
"What is this?" the poet—the frog-mouthed Heshaikvo, he had to be—demanded.
"This?" the man said, turning and considering Maati as if he were a sculpture pointed out at a fair. "It seems to be a boy. Or perhaps a young man. Fifteen summers? Maybe sixteen? It's so hard to know what to call it at that age. I found it abandoned in the upper halls. Apparently it's been wandering around there for days. No one else seems to have any use for it. May I keep it?"
"Heshai," the Khai said. His voice was powerful. He seemed to speak in a conversational tone, but his voice carried like an actor's. The displeasure in the syllables stung.
"Oh," the man at Maati's side said. "Have I displeased? Well, master, you've no one to blame but yourself."
"Silence!" the poet snapped. Maati sensed as much as saw the man beside him go stiff. He chanced a glimpse at the perfect face. The features were fixed in pain, and slowly, as if fighting each movement, the elegant hands took forms of apology and self-surrender, the spine twisted into a pose of abject obeisance.
"I come to do your bidding, Khai Saraykeht," the man—no, the andat, Seedless—said, his voice honey and ashes. "Command me as you will."
The Khai took a pose of acknowledgment, its nuances barely civil. The frog-mouthed poet looked at Maati and gestured pointedly to his own side. Maati scurried to the dais. The andat moved more slowly, but followed.
"You should have waited," Heshaikvo hissed. "This is a very busy time of year. I would have thought the Dai-kvo would teach you more patience."
Maati fell into a pose of abject apology.
"Heshaikvo, I was misled. I thought that he . . . that it . . . I am shamed by my error."
"As you should be," the poet snapped. "Just arriving like this, unintroduced and—"
"Good and glorious Heshai," the Khai Saraykeht said, voice envenomed by sarcasm, "I understand that adding another pet to your collection must be trying. And indeed, I regret to interrupt, but . . ."
The Khai gestured grandly at the bales of cotton. His hands were perfect, and his motion the most elegant Maati had ever seen, smooth and controlled and eloquent.
Heshaikvo briefly adopted a pose of regret, then turned to the beautiful man—Seedless, Sterile, andat. For a moment the two considered each other, some private, silent conversation passing between them. The andat curled his lip in something half sneer, half sorrow. Sweat dampened the teacher's back, and he began trembling as if with a great effort. Then the andat turned and raised his arms theatrically to the cotton.