A Shadow In Summer by Daniel Abraham Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    A moment later, Maati heard a faint tick, like a single raindrop. And then more and more, until an invisible downpour filled the hall. From his position behind the Khai and the poet, he lowered himself looking under the raised platform on which the bales lay. The parquet floor was covered with small black dots skittering and jumping as they struck one another. Cotton seed.
    "It is done," Heshaikvo said, and Maati stood hurriedly.
    The Khai clapped his hands and rose, his movement like a dancer's. His robes flowed through the air like something alive. For a moment Maati forgot himself and merely stood in awe.
    A pair of servants pulled wide the great doors, and began a low wail, calling the merchants and their laborers to come and take what was theirs. The utkhaiem took stations by the doors, prepared to collect the fees and taxes for each bale that left. The Khai stood on his dais, grave and beautiful, seeming more a ghost or god than Seedless, who more nearly was.
    "You should have waited," Heshaikvo said again over the voices of the laborers and the din of the merchants at their business. "This is a very bad start for your training. A
very
bad start."
    Once again, Maati took a pose of regret, but the poet—his teacher, his new master—turned away, leaving the pose unanswered. Maati stood slowly, his face hot with a blush equally embarrassment and anger, his hands at his sides. At the edge of the dais, the andat sat, his bone-pale hands in his lap. He met Maati's gaze, shrugged, and took a pose of profound apology that might have been genuine or deeply insincere; Maati had no way to tell.
    Before he could choose how to respond, Seedless smiled, lowered his hands and looked away.
    A MAT K YAAN sat at the second-floor window of her apartments, looking out over the city. The setting sun behind her reddened the walls of the soft quarter. Some comfort houses were already hanging out streamers and lamps, the glitter of the lights and the shimmering cloth competing with the glow of fireflies. A fruit seller rang her bell and sang her wares in a gentle melody. Amat Kyaan rubbed stinging salve into her knee and ankle, as she did every evening, to keep the pain at bay. It had been a long day, made longer by the nagging disquiet of her meeting with Marchat Wilsin. And even now, it wasn't finished. There was one more unpleasant task still to be done.
    This would be her fifty-eighth summer in the world, and every one had been spent in Saraykeht. Her earliest memories were of her father spinning cured cotton into fine, tough thread, humming to himself as he worked. He was many years dead now, as was her mother. Her