Maati took a pose of confirmation and looked back over his shoulder, his expression troubled and weary. His brown poet's robes were still dripping at the sleeves.
"I'll go downstairs," she said.
"Why?"
"I thought you'd want some privacy to change," she said slowly, and was rewarded by a fierce blush as Maati took a pose of understanding.
"I'd forgotten . . . I didn't even notice they were wet. Yes, of course, Liat-cha. I'll only be a moment."
She smiled and slapped his shoulder as she'd seen Itani's cohort do. The gesture felt surprisingly natural to her.
"I think we're past calling each other cha," she said.
He joined her quickly, changed into a robe of identical brown. They sat in the main room, candles lit to dispel the gloom of the weather. He sat across from her on a low wooden divan. His face was calm, but worn and tight about the mouth, even when he smiled. The strain of his master's collapse was written on his brow.
"Have you . . . have you heard from him?" Maati asked.
"No," she said. "It's too early. He won't have reached Yalakeht by now. Soon, but not yet. And then it would take as many weeks as he's been gone to get a message back to us."
Maati took a pose of understanding, but impatience showed in it. She responded with a pose that asked after Maati's well-being. In another context, it would have been a formal nicety. Here, it seemed sincere.
"I'll be fine," he said. "It's only difficult not knowing what to do. When Otahkvo comes back, everything will be all right."
"Will it?" Liat said, looking into the candle flame. "I hope you're right."
"Of course it will. The Dai-kvo knows more than any of us how to proceed. He'll pass it to Otahkvo, and we'll . . ."
The voice with its forced optimism faded. Liat looked back. Maati was sitting forward, rubbing his eyes with his fingers like an old, weary man.
"We'll do whatever the Dai-kvo tells us," Liat finished.
Maati took a rueful pose of agreement. A gust of wind rattled the great shuttered walls, and Liat pulled her robe tight around her, as if to protect herself from cold, though the room was perfectly warm.
"And you?" Maati asked. "Are things well at House Wilsin?"
"I don't know," Liat said. "Amat Kyaan's come back, and she tries to use me, but there doesn't seem to be as much to do as there once was. I think . . . I think she doesn't trust me. I can't blame her, after what happened. And Wilsincha's the same way. They keep me busy, but not with anything serious. No one's actually told me I'm only a clerk again, but for how I've been spending my days, I may as well be."
"I'm sorry. It's wrong, though. It isn't your fault that this happened. You should just be—"
"Itani's going to leave me. Or Otah. Whichever. He's going to leave me," she said. She hadn't meant to, but the words had come out, like vomiting. She stared at her hands and they kept coming. "I don't think he knows it yet, but when he left, there was something in him. In the way he treated me that . . . He isn't my first lover, and I've seen it before. It's just a kind of distance, and then it's something more, and then . . ."
"I'm sure you're wrong," Maati said, and his voice sounded confident for the first time that day. "He won't."
"Everyone else has," she said.
"Not him."
"He went, though. He didn't only have to; he wanted to. He wanted to get away from me, and when he comes back, he'll have had time to think. And then . . ."
"Liat-cha . . . Liat. I know we haven't known each other before this, but Otahkvo was my first teacher, and sometimes I think he was my best one. He's different from other people. And he loves you. He's told me as much."
"I don't know," Liat said.
"You love him, don't you?"
"I don't know," she said, and the silence after it was worse than walking through the rain. She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. "I love Itani. I know Itani. Otah, though? He's a son of the Khaiem. He's . . . he isn't who I thought he was, and I'm just an apprentice overseer, and not likely to be that for long. How can we stay together when he's what he is, and I'm this?"
"You did when you were an overseer and he was just a laborer. This isn't any different."
"Of course it is," she said. "He always knew he was born to something higher than he was. I'm not. I'm just me."
"Otahkvo is one of the wisest men I know," Maati said. "He isn't going to walk away from you."
"Why not?"
"Because," Maati said softly, "he's one of the wisest men I know."
She laughed, partly at the sincerity in the boy's voice, partly because she wanted so badly for it to be true, partly because her only other option was weeping. Maati moved to her, put his arm around her. He smelled of the cedar soap than Itani used to shave with. She leaned into his shoulder.