"We knew, didn't we, that it would be hard?" he said.
Liat walked forward, feeling as if something outside of her was moving her. Her hand cupped Maati's neck, and she leaned in, the crown of her head touching his. She could smell his tears, warm and salty and intimate. Her throat was too tight for speech.
"Heshai was very . . ." Maati began, and she killed the words with kissing him. His lips, familiar now, responded. She could feel when they twisted into a grimace of pain against her. His mouth closed, and he stepped back. She wanted to hold him, to be held by him, the way a dropped stone wants to fall, but his expression forbade her. The boy was gone, and someone—a man with his face and his expression, but with something deep and painful and new in his eyes—was in his place.
"Liat-cha," he said. "Otah's back."
Liat took a breath and slowly let it out.
"Thank you, Maati-cha," she said, the honorific like ashes in her mouth. "Perhaps . . . perhaps if I could join you all later in the day. I find I'm more tired than I thought."
"Of course," Maati said. "I'll send someone in to help you with your robe."
With her good hand, she took a pose of thanks. Maati replied with a simple response. Their eyes met, the gaze holding all the things they were not speaking. Her need, and his. His resolve. Morning rain tapped at the shutters like time passing behind them. Maati turned and left her, his back straight, his bearing formal and controlled.
For the space of a breath, she wanted to call him back. Pull him into the room, into the bed. She wanted to feel the warmth of him against her one last time. It wasn't fair that their bodies hadn't had the chance to say their farewells. And she would have, she thought, even with Itani . . . even with Otah returned and sleeping in the poet's house that she now knew so well. She would have called, except that it would have broken her soul when Maati refused her. And she saw now that he would have.
Instead, she lay in the bed by herself, her flesh mending and her spirit ill. She had expected to feel torn between the two of them, but instead she was only shut out. The bond between Maati and Otah—the relationship of her two lovers—was deeper than what she had with either. She was losing each of them to the other, and the knowledge was like a stone in her throat.
MAATI SAT at the top of the bridge, the pond below him dark as tea. His belly was heavy, his chest so tight his shoulders shifted forward in a hunch. The breeze smelled of rain, though the sky was clear. The world seemed a dark, deadened place.
He had known, of course, that Liat wasn't truly his lover. What they had been to each other for those few, precious weeks was comfort and friendship. That was all. And with Otah back, everything could return to the way it had been—the way it should have been. Only Maati hadn't ached before the way he did now. The memory of Liat's body against him, her lips against his, hadn't haunted him. And Otah's long, thoughtful face hadn't made Maati sick with guilt.
And so, he thought, nothing would be what it had been. The idea that it could had been an illusion.
"You've done it, then?"
Maati turned to his left, back toward the palaces. Seedless stepped onto the bridge, dark robes shifting as he walked. The andat's expression was unreadable.
"I don't know what you mean," Maati said.
"You've broken it off with the darling Liat. Returned her whence she came, now that her laborer's back from his errand."
"I don't know what you mean," Maati repeated, turning back to stare at the cold, dark water. Seedless settled beside him. Their two faces reflected on the pond's surface, wavering and pale. Maati wished he had a stone to drop, something that would break the image.
"Bad answer," the andat said. "I'm not a fool. I can smell love when I'm up to my knees in it. It's hard, losing her."
"I haven't lost anything. It's only changed a bit. I knew it would."
"Well then," Seedless said gently. "That makes it easy, doesn't it. He's still resting, is he?"
"I don't know. I haven't gone to see him yet today."
"Gone to see him? It's your couch he's sleeping on."
"Still," Maati said with a shrug. "I'm not ready to see him again. Tonight, perhaps. Only not yet."
They were silent for a long moment. Crows barked from the treetops, hopping on twig-thin legs, their black wings outstretched. Somewhere in the water, koi shifted sluggishly, sending thin ripples to the surface.
"Would it help to say I'm sorry for it?" Seedless asked.
"Not particularly."
"Well, all the same."
"It's hard to think that you care, Seedless-cha. I'd have thought you'd be pleased."
"No. Not really. On the one hand, whether you think it or not, I don't have any deep love of your pain. Not yet, at least. Once you take Heshai's burden . . . well, we'll neither of us have any choices then. And then, for my own selfish nature, all this brings you one step nearer to being like him. The woman you've loved and lost. The pain you carry with you. It's part of what drives him, and you're coming to know it now yourself."