A Betrayal in Winter - By Daniel Abraham Page 0,105
isn't the place to-"
""Tell me! Say you have proof and not just that you wish the sky was red instead of blue, because otherwise you're blinded and you're letting him escape because of it. There were times I more than half believed you, Maati-kvo. But when I look at this I see nothing to suggest any conspiracy but his."
Maati rubbed the point between his eyes with his thumb, pressing hard to keep his annoyance at bay. He shouldn't have spoken to the boy, but now that he had, there was nothing for it.
"Your anger-" he began, but Cehmai cut him off.
"You're risking people's lives, Maati-kvo. You're hanging them on the thought that you can't be wrong about the upstart."
"Whose lives?"
"The lives of people he would kill."
"'There is no risk from Otah-kvo. You don't understand."
"'T'hen teach me." It was as much an insult as a challenge. Maati felt the blood rising to his cheeks even as his mind dissected Cehmai's reaction. There was something to it, some reason for the violence and frustration of it, that didn't make sense. The boy was reacting to something more than Nlaati knew. Maati swallowed his rage.
"I'll ask five days. Trust me for five days, and I will show you proof. Will that do?"
He saw the struggle in Cehmai's face. The impulse to refuse, to fight, to spread the news across the city that Otah Machi lived. And then the respect for his elders that had been ground into him from his first day in the school and for all the years since he'd taken the brown robes they shared. Maati waited, forcing himself to patience. And in the end, Cehmai nodded once, turned, and stalked away.
Five days, Maati thought, shaking his head. I wonder what I thought to manage in that time. I should have asked for ten.
THE RAINS CAME IN THE EARLY EVENING: LIGHTNING AND THE BLUE-GRAY bellies of cloudbank. The first few drops sounded like stones, and then the clouds broke with a sudden pounding-thousands of small drums rolling. Otah sat in the window and looked out at the courtyard as puddles appeared and danced white and clear. The trees twisted and shifted under gusts of wind and the weight of water. The little storms rarely lasted more than a hand and a half, but in that time, they seemed like doomsday, and they reminded Otah of being young, when everything had been full and torrential and brief. He wished now that he had the skill to draw this brief landscape before the clouds passed and it was gone. There was something beautiful in it, something worth preserving.
"You're looking better."
Otah shifted, glancing back into the room. Sinja was there, his long hair slicked down by the rain, his robes sodden. Otah took a welcoming pose as the commander strode across the room toward him, dripping as he came.
"Brighter about the eyes, blood in your skin again. One would think you'd been eating, perhaps even walking around a bit."
"I feel better," Otah said. "That's truth."
"I didn't doubt you would. I've seen men far worse off than you pull through just fine. They've found your corpse, by the way. Identified it as you, just as we'd hoped. There are already half a hundred stories about how that came to be, and none of them near the truth. Amiit-cha is quite pleased, I think."
"I suppose it's worth being pleased over," Otah said.
"You don't seem overjoyed."
"Someone killed my father and my brothers and placed the blame on me. It just seems an odd time to celebrate."
Sinja didn't answer this, and for a moment, the two men sat in silence broken only by the rain. Then Otah spoke again. "Who was he? The man with my tattoo? Where did you find him?"
"He wasn't the sort of man the world will miss," Sinja said. "Amiit found him in a low town, and we arranged to purchase his indenture from the low magistrate before they hung him."
"What had he done?"
"I don't know. Killed someone. Raped a puppy. Whatever soothes your conscience, he did that."
"You really don't care."
"No," Sinja agreed. "And perhaps that makes me a bad person, but since I don't care about that, either ..."
He took a pose of completion, as if he had finished a demonstration. Otah nodded, then looked away.
"Too many people die over this," Otah said. "Too many lives wasted. It's an idiot system."
"This is nothing. You should see a real war. There is no bigger waste than that."