them, I fell from favor. I was given duties that might as well have been
done by an educated slave. And you know, there was an odd kind of pride
about it for a while. I was given clothing, shelter, food for myself.
Only for myself. I thought of leaving. Of folding my robes on the bed
and running away as you did. I thought of you, the way you had chosen
your own shape for your life instead of the shapes that were offered
you. I thought I was doing the same. Gods, Otah-kvo, I wish you had been
here. All these years, I wish I had been able to talk to you. To someone.
"I'm sorry...."
Maati raised a hand to stop him.
"My son," Maati said, then his voice thickened, and he coughed and began
again. "Liat and I parted ways. My low status among the poets didn't
have the air of romance for her that I saw in it. And ... there were
other things. Raising my son called for money and time and I had little
to spare of either. My son is thirteen summers. Thirteen. She was
carrying him before we left Saraykeht."
Otah felt the words as if he'd been struck an unexpected blow-a
sensation of shock without source or location, and then the flood. Maati
glanced over at him and read his thoughts from his face, and he nodded.
"I know," Maati said. "She told me about bedding you that one time after
you came back, before you left again. Before Heshai-kvo died and
Seedless vanished. I suppose she was afraid that if I discovered it
someday and she hadn't said anything it would make things worse. She
told me the truth. And she swore that my son was mine. And I believe her."
"Do you?"
"Of course not. I mean, some days I did. When he was young and I could
hold him in one arm, I was sure that he was mine. And then some nights I
would wonder. And even in those times when I was sure that he was yours,
I still loved him. That was the worst of it. The nights I lay awake in a
village where women and children aren't allowed, in a tiny cell that
stank of the disapproval of everyone I had ever hoped to please. I knew
that I loved him, and that he wasn't mine. No, don't. Let me finish. I
couldn't be a father to him. And if I hadn't fathered him either, what
was there left but watching from a distance while this little creature
grew up and away from me without even knowing my heart was tucked in his
sleeve."
Maati wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand.
"Liat said she was tired of my always mourning, that the boy deserved
some joy; that she did too. So after that I didn't have them, and I
didn't have the respect of the people I saw and worked beside. I was
eaten by guilt over losing them, and having taken her from you. I
thought that she would have been happy with you. That you would have
been happy with her. If only I hadn't broken faith with you, the world
might have been right after all. And you might have stayed.
"And that has been my life until the day they called on me to hunt you.
"I see," Otah said.
"I have missed your company so badly, Otah-kya, and I have never hated
anyone more. I have been waiting for years to say that. So. Now I have,
what was it you wanted from me?"