"Are you blind? Gods! It is him. All the time it's been him. This as
much as proves it! Otah Machi came here to slaughter his family. To
slaughter you. He has hackers who could free him from the tower, and he
has done everything that he's been accused of. Buying time? He's buying
safety! Once everyone thinks him dead, they'll stop looking. He'll be
free. You have to tell them the truth!"
"Otah didn't kill his father. Or his brothers. It's someone else."
Cehmai was breathing hard and fast as a runner at the race's end, but
his voice was lower now, more controlled.
"How do you know that?" he asked.
"I know Otah-kvo. I know what he would do, and-"
"Is he innocent because he's innocent, or because you love him?" Cehmai
demanded.
"This 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