‘Otah-kvo,’ Maati said as they reached the still-bustling space.
‘Itani.’
Maati took a pose of apology that seemed genuinely mortified. ‘Itani. I . . . there are things I would like to discuss with you, and we . . .’
‘I’ll find you,’ Otah promised. ‘But say nothing of this. Not to anyone. Especially not to the poet.’
‘No one.’
‘I’ll find you. Now go.’
Maati took a pose of farewell more formal than any poet had ever offered a laborer, and, reluctance showing in every movement, walked away. Otah saw an older woman in the robes of the utkhaiem considering him, her expression curious. He took a pose of obeisance toward her, turned, and walked out. The rain was breaking now, sunlight pressing down like a hand on his shoulder. The other servants who had borne gifts or poles for the canopy waited now in a garden set aside for them. Epani-cha, house master for Marchat Wilsin, sat with them, laughing and smiling. The formal hurdles of the day were cleared, and the men were light hearted. Tuui Anagath, an older man who had known Otah since almost before he had become Itani, for almost his whole false life, took a pose of welcome.
‘Did you hear?’ he asked as Otah drew close.
‘Hear what? No.’
‘The Khai is inviting a crew to hunt down Udun’s son, the poisoner. Half the utkhaiem are vying to join it. They’ll be on the little bastard like lice on a low-town whore.’
Otah took a pose of delight because he knew it was expected of him, then sat under a tree laden with tiny sweet-scented ornamental pears and listened. They were chattering with the prospect, all of them. These were men he knew, men he worked with. Men he trusted, some of them, though none so far as to tell them the truth. No one that far. They spoke of the death of the Khai Udun’s son like a pit fight. They didn’t care that the boy had been born into it. Otah knew that they couldn’t see the injustice. For men born low, eking out lengths of copper to buy tea and soup and sourbread, the Khaiem were to be envied, not pitied and not loved. They would each of them go back to quarters shared with other men or else tiny apartments bearing with them the memory of the sprawling palaces, the sweet garden, the songs of slaves. There was no room in their minds for sympathy for the families of wealth and power. For men, Otah thought sourly, like himself.
‘Eh?’ Epani-cha said, prodding Otah with the toe of his shoe. ‘What did you swallow, Itani? You look sorry.’
Otah forced a smile and laughed. He was good at that smiling and laughing. Being charming. He took a loose pose of apology.
‘Am I lowering the tone?’ he asked. ‘I just got thrown out of the palace. That’s all.’
‘Thrown out?’ Tuui Anagath asked, and the others turned, suddenly interested.
‘I was just there, minding myself and—’
‘And sniffing after Liat,’ one of the others laughed.
‘And apparently I attracted some attention. One of the women from House Tiyaan came to me and asked whether I was a factor for House Wilsin. I told her I wasn’t but for some reason she kept speaking with me. She was very pleasant. And apparently her lover took some offense to the conversation and spoke to the palace servants . . .’
Otah took a pose of innocent confusion that made the others laugh.
‘Poor, poor Itani,’ Tuui Anagath said. ‘Can’t keep the women away with a dagger. You should let us do you a favor, my boy. We could tell all the women you broke out in sores down there and had to spend three days a month in a poultice diaper.’
Otah laughed with them now. He’d won again. He was one of them, just a man like them in no way special. The jokes and stories went on for half a hand, then Otah stood, stretched, and turned to Epani-cha.
‘Will you have further need of me, Epani-cha?’
The thin man looked surprised, but took a pose of negation. Otah’s relationship with Liat was no secret, but living in the compound itself, Epani understood the extent of it better than the others. When Otah shifted to a pose of farewell, he matched it.
‘But Liat should be done with the poets shortly,’ Epani said. ‘You don’t want to wait for her?’
‘No,’ Otah said, and smiled.
Amat learned. She learned first about the fine workings of a comfort house - the balances between guard and gamesman and showfighter and whore, the rhythm that the business developed like the beat of a heart or the flow of a river. She learned, more specifically, how the money moved through it like blood. And so, she understood better what it was she was searching for in the crabbed scripts and obscure receipts. She also learned to fear Ovi Niit.
She had seen what happened when one of the other women displeased him. They were owned by the house, and so the watch extended no protection to them. They, unlike her, were easily replaced. She would not have taken their places for her weight in silver.
Two weeks from four. Or five. Two more, or three, before Marchat’s promised amnesty. She sat in the room, sweltering; the papers stood in piles. Her days were filled with the scratch of pen on paper, the distant voices of the soft quarter, the smell of cheap food and her own sweat and the weak yellow light from the high, thin window.
The knock, when it came, was soft. Tentative. Amat looked up. Ovi Niit or one of his guards wouldn’t have bothered. Amat jabbed her pen into its inkblock and stretched. Her joints cracked.
‘Come in,’ she said.
She had seen the girl before, but hadn’t heard her name. A smallish one. Young, with a birthmark at one eye that made her seem like a child’s drawing of tears. When she took a pose of apology, Amat saw half-healed marks on her wrists. She wondered which of the payments in her ledgers matched those small wounds.
‘Grandmother?’ It was the name by which they all called her.
‘What do you want,’ Amat asked, sorry for the harshness of her voice as she heard it. She massaged her hands.
‘I know you aren’t to be interrupted,’ the girl said. Her voice was nervous, but not, Amat thought, from fear of an old woman locked in a back closet. Ovi Niit must have given orders to leave her be. ‘But there’s a man. He’s at the door, asking for you.’
‘For me?’
The girl shifted to a pose of affirmation. Amat leaned back. Kirath. It could be Kirath. Or it could be one of the moon-faced Oshai’s minions come to find her and kill her. Ovi Niit might already be spending the gold lengths he’d earned for her death. Amat nodded as much to herself as to the girl.
‘What does he look like?’
‘Young. Handsome,’ she said, and smiled as if sharing a confidence.
Handsome, perhaps, but Kirath would never be young again. This was not him, then. Amat hefted her cane. As a weapon, it was nothing. She wasn’t strong enough now to run, even if her aching hip would have allowed it. There was no fleeing, but she could make it a siege. She sat with the panic, controlling it, until she was able to think a little; to speak without a tremble in her voice.
‘What’s your name, dear?’
‘Ibris,’ the girl said.
‘Good. Ibris. Listen very closely. Go out the front - not the back, the front. Find the watch. Tell them about this man. And tell them he was threatening a client.’
‘But he . . .’
‘Don’t question me,’ Amat said. ‘Go. Now!’
Years of command, years of assurance and confidence, served her now. The girl went, and when the door was closed behind her, Amat pushed the desk to block it. It was a sad, thin little barricade. She sat on it, adding her weight in hopes of slowing the man for the duration of a few extra heartbeats. If the watch came, they would stop him.
Or they wouldn’t. Likely they wouldn’t. She was a commodity here, bought and sold. And there was no one to say otherwise. She balled her swollen fists around her cane. Dignity be damned. If Marchat Wilsin and Oshai were going to take her down, she’d go down swinging.
Outside, she heard voices raised in anger. Ibris’s was among them. And then a young man shouted. And then the fire.
The torch spun like something thrown by a street juggler through the window opposite her. Amat watched it trace a lazy arc through the air, strike the wall and bounce back, falling. Falling on papers. The flame touched one pile, and the pages took fire.
She didn’t remember moving or calling out. She was simply there, stamping at the flames, the torch held above her, away from the books. The smoke was choking and her sandals gave little protection, but she kept on. Someone was forcing open the door, hardly slowed by her little barrier.
‘Sand!’ Amat shouted. ‘Bring sand!’
A woman’s voice, high with panic, called out, but Amat couldn’t make out the words. The floating embers started another stack of papers smoldering. The air seemed full of tiny burning bits of paper, floating like fireflies. Amat kept trying to stop it, to put it out. One particularly large fragment touched her leg, and the burning made her think for one long, sickening breath that her robe had caught fire.
The door burst open. Ibris and a red-haired Westland whore - Menat? Mitat? - burst in with pans of water in their hands.
‘No!’ Amat shouted as she rounded on them, swinging the torch. ‘Not water! Sand! Get sand!’
The women hesitated, the water sloshing. Ibris turned first, dropping her pan though thankfully not on the books or the desk. The red-haired one threw her pan of water in the direction of the flames, catching Amat in the spray, and then they were gone again.
By the time they returned with three of Ovi Niit’s house guards and two men of the watch, the fire was out. Only a tiny patch of tar on the wall still burned where the torch had struck on its way down. Amat handed the still-burning torch to a watchman. They questioned her, and then Ibris. Ovi Niit, when he returned, ranted like a madman in the common room, but thankfully his rage did not turn to her.
Hours of work were gone, perhaps irretrievably. There was no pushing herself now. What had been merely impossible before would have been laughable now, had there been any mirth to cut her misery. She straightened what there was to be straightened, and then sat in the near-dark. She couldn’t stop weeping, so she ignored her own sobs. There wasn’t time for it. She had to think, and the effort to stop her tears was more than she had to spare.
When, two or three hands later, the door opened, it wasn’t a guard or a watchman or a whore. It was Ovi Niit himself, eyes as wide as the heavy lids would permit, mouth thin as an inked line on paper. He stalked in, his gaze darting restlessly. Amat watched him the way she would have watched a feral dog.
‘How bad?’ he asked, his voice tight.
‘A setback, Niit-cha,’ she said. ‘A serious one, but . . . but only a setback.’
‘I want him. The man who did this. Who’s taking my money and burning my house? I want him broken. I’ll piss in his mouth.’
‘As you see fit, Niit-cha,’ Amat said. ‘But if you want it in a week’s time, you may as well cut me now. I can salvage this, but not quickly.’
A heartbeat’s pause, and he lunged forward. His breath smelled sickly sweet. Even in the dim light, she could see his teeth were rotten.
‘He is out there!’ Ovi Niit shrieked in her face. ‘Right now! And you want me to wait? You want to give him time? I want it tonight. Before morning. I want it now!’
That it was what she’d expected made it no easier. She took a pose of apology so steeped in irony that it couldn’t be mistaken. The wild eyes narrowed. Amat pushed up the sleeve of her robe until it bunched around her elbow.
‘Take out your knife,’ she said, baring the thin skin of her forearm to him. ‘Or give me the time to do the work well. After today, I don’t have a preference.’
Snake quick, he drew the blade and whipped it down. She flinched, but less than she’d expected to. The metal pressed into her skin but didn’t break it. It hurt, though, and if he pulled it, it would bite deep. In the long pause, the young man chuckled. It wasn’t the malefic sound of a torturer. It was something else. The whoremaster took the knife away.
‘Do the work, then,’ he said, sneering. But behind the contempt, Amat thought perhaps a ray of respect had entered his gaze. She took an acquiescing pose. Ovi Niit stalked out, leaving the door open behind him. Amat sat for a long moment, rubbing the white line the knife had left on her flesh, waiting for the tightness in her throat to ease. She’d done it. She’d won herself more time.
It was at least half a hand later that the scent of apples and roast pork brought her stomach to life. She couldn’t think how long it had been since she’d eaten. Leaning on her cane, she made her way to the wide tables. The benches were near full, the night’s work set to begin. News had traveled. She could see it in the eyes that didn’t meet hers. A space opened for her at the end of a bench, and she settled in. After the meal, she found Mitat, the Westland whore. The woman was in a dress of blue silk that clung to her body. The commodity wrapped for sale.
‘We need to speak,’ Amat said quietly. ‘Now.’
Mitat didn’t reply, but when Amat returned to her cell, the girl followed. That was enough. Amat sat. The room still stank of ashes and tar. The grit of fire sand scraped under their feet. It wasn’t the place she’d have chosen for this conversation, but it would do.
‘It was fortunate that you had water to hand this afternoon,’ Amat said. ‘And in pans.’
‘We didn’t need it,’ Mitat said. Her accent was slushy, and her vowels all slid at the ends. Westlands indeed. And to the north, Amat thought. A refugee from one of the Galtic incursions, most likely. And so, in a sense, they were there for the same reason.
‘I was lucky,’ Amat said. ‘If I’d gone out to see who was at the door, the fire might have spread. And even if you’d stopped it, the water would have ruined the books.’
Mitat shrugged, but her eyes darted to the door. It was a small thing, hardly noticeable in the dim light, but it was enough. Amat felt her suspicion settle into certainty. She took a firmer grip on her cane.
‘Close the door,’ she said. The woman hesitated, then did as she was told. ‘They questioned Ibris. She sounded upset.’
‘They had to speak to someone,’ Mitat said, crossing her arms.
‘Not you?’
‘I never saw him.’
‘Good planning,’ Amat said, taking an approving pose. ‘Still, an unfortunate day for Ibris.’
‘You have an accusation to make?’ Mitat asked. She didn’t look away now. Now, she was all hardness and bravado. Amat could almost smell the fear.
‘Do I have an accusation?’ Amat said, letting the words roll off her tongue slowly. She tilted her head, considering Mitat as if she were something to be purchased. Amat shook her head. ‘No. No accusation. I won’t tell him.’
‘Then I don’t have to kill you,’ Mitat said.
Amat smiled and shook her head, her hands taking a pose of reproof.
‘Badly played. Threats alienate me and admit your guilt at the same time. Those are just the wrong combination. Begin again,’ she said and settled herself like a street actor shifting roles. ‘I won’t tell him.’
The Westland girl narrowed her eyes, but there was an intelligence in them. That was good to see. Mitat stepped closer, uncrossed her arms. When she spoke, her voice was softer, wary, but less afraid.
‘What do you want?’ Mitat asked.
‘Much better. I want an ally in this pesthole. When the time comes that I have to make a play, you will back me. No questions, no hesitations. We will pretend that Ovi Niit still owns you, but now you answer to me. And for that you and your man . . . it is a man, isn’t it? Yes, I thought so. You and your man will be safe. Agreed?’
Mitat was silent. In the street, a man shouted out an obscenity and laughed. A beggar sang in a lovely, high voice, and Amat realized she’d been hearing that voice the better part of the day. Why hadn’t she noticed it before now? The whore nodded.
‘Good,’ Amat said. ‘No more fires, then. And Mitat? The next bookkeeper won’t be likely to make the same offer, so no interesting spices in my food ei
ther, eh?’
‘No, grandmother. Of course not.’
‘Well. Ah. I don’t suppose there’s anything more to say just now, is there?’
Liat slapped the girl’s wrist, annoyed. Maj pulled back her pale hands, speaking in the liquid syllables of her language. Liat shifted her weight from her right knee to her left. The tailor at her side said nothing, but there was amusement in the way he held the knotted cord against the girl’s bare thigh.
‘Tell her it’s just going to take longer if she keeps fidgeting,’ Liat said. ‘It isn’t as if none of us had seen a leg before.’
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