Maati looked over to his teacher. Heshai-kvo stood at the window, still as a statue, his expression bleak. Seedless leaned against the wall near the wide double doors of the entrance, his arms folded, staring at the poet’s back. The perfect attention reminded Maati of a feral dog tracking its prey.
The physician arrived at the appointed hour with his retinue. Maj, blushing and pulling at her skirts, was brought inside, and Liat took her post beside her as Maati took his with Heshai-kvo and Seedless. The servants and slaves retreated a respectful distance, and the wide doors were closed. Heshai-kvo seemed bent as if he were carrying a load. He gestured to Liat, and she stepped forward and adopted a pose appropriate to the opening of a formal occasion.
‘Heshai-cha,’ she said. ‘I come before you as the representative of House Wilsin in this matter. My client has paid the Khai’s fee and the accountancy has weighed her payment and found it in accordance with our arrangement. We now ask that you complete your part of the contract.’
‘Have you asked her if she’s sure?’ Heshai-kvo asked. His words were not formal, and he took no pose with them. His lips were pressed thin and his face grayish. ‘Is she certain?’
Liat blinked, startled, Maati thought, by the despair in his teacher’s voice. He wished now that he had explained to Liat why this was so hard for Heshai. Or perhaps it didn’t matter. Really, it only needed to be finished and behind them.
‘Yes,’ Liat said, also breaking with the formality of the ceremony.
‘Ask her again,’ Heshai said, half demanding, half pleading. ‘Ask if there isn’t another way.’
A glimmer of stark terror lit Liat’s eyes and vanished. Maati understood. It was not one of the phrases she’d been taught. She had no way to comply. She raised her chin, her eyes narrowing in a way that made her look haughty and condescending, but Maati thought he could see the panic in her.
‘Heshai-kvo,’ he said, softly. ‘Please, may we finish this thing?’
His teacher looked over, first annoyed, then sadly resigned. He took a pose that retracted the request. Liat’s eyes shifted to Maati’s with a look of gratitude. The physician took his cue and stepped forward, certifying that the woman was in good health, and that the removal of the child posed no great risk to her well-being. Heshai took a pose that thanked him. The physician led Maj to the split-seated stool and sat her in it, then silently placed the silver bowl beneath her.
‘I hate this,’ Heshai murmured, his voice so low that no one could hear him besides Maati and Seedless. Then he took a formal pose and declaimed: ‘In the name of the Khai Saraykeht and the Dai-kvo, I put myself at your service.’
Liat turned to the girl and spoke in liquid syllables. Maj frowned and her wide, pale lips pursed. Then she nodded and said something in return. Liat shifted back to the poet and took a pose of acceptance.
‘You’re ready?’ Heshai asked, his eyes on Maj’s. The island girl tilted her head, as if hearing a sound she almost recognized. Heshai raised his eyebrows and sighed. Without any visible bidding, Seedless stepped forward, graceful as a dancer. There was a light in his eyes, something like joy. Maati felt an inexplicable twist in his belly.
‘No need to struggle, old friend,’ Seedless said. ‘I promised your apprentice that I wouldn’t make you fight me for this one. And you see, I can keep my word when it suits me.’
The silver bowl chimed like an orange had been dropped in it. Maati looked over, and then away. The thing in the bowl was only settling, he told himself, not moving. Not moving.
And with an audible intake of breath, the island girl began to scream. The pale blue eyes were open so wide, Maati could see the whites all the way around the iris. Her wide lips pulled back until they were thin as string. Maj bent down, and her hands would have touched the thing in the bowl, cradled it, if the physician had not whisked it away. Liat could only hold the woman’s hands and look at her, confused, while shriek after shriek echoed in the empty spaces of the hall.
‘What?’ Heshai-kvo said, his voice fearful and small. ‘What happened? ’
10
A mat Kyaan walked the length of the seafront with the feeling of a woman half-awakened from nightmare. The morning sun made the waters too bright to look at. Ships rested at the docks, taking on cloth or oils or sugar or else putting off brazil blocks and indigo, wheat and rye, wine and Eddensea marble. The thin stalls still barked with commerce, banners shifting in the breeze. The gulls still wheeled and complained. It was like walking into a memory. She had passed this way every day for years. How quickly it had become unfamiliar.
Leaning on her cane, she passed the wide mouth of the Nantan and into the warehouse district. The traffic patterns in the streets had changed - the rhythm of the city had shifted as it did from season to season. The mad rush of harvest was behind them, and though the year’s work was still far from ended, the city had a sense of completion. The great trick that made Saraykeht the center of all cotton trade had been performed once more, and now normal men and women would spend their hours and days changing that advantage into power and wealth and prestige.
She could also feel its unease. Something had happened to the poet. Only listening from her window during the evening, she’d heard three or four different stories about what had happened. Every conversation she walked past was the same - something had happened to the poet. Something to do with House Wilsin and the sad trade. Something terrible. The young men and women in the street smiled as they told each other, excited by the sense of crisis and too young or too poor or too ignorant for the news of yesterday’s events to sicken them with dread. That was for older people. People who understood.
Amat breathed deeply, catching the scent of the sea, the perfume of grilling meat at the stalls, the unpleasant stench of the dyers’ vats that reached even from several streets away. Her city, with its high summer behind it. In her heart, she still found it hard to believe that she had returned to it, that she was not still entombed in the back office of Ovi Niit’s comfort house. And as she walked, leaning heavily on her cane, she tried not to wonder what the men and women said about her as she passed.
At the bathhouse, the guards looked at her curiously as they took their poses. She didn’t even respond, only walked forward into the tiled rooms with their echoes and the scent of cedar and fresh water. She shrugged off her robes and went past the public baths to Marchat Wilsin’s little room at the back, just as she always had.
He looked terrible.
‘Too hot,’ he said as she lowered herself into the water. The lacquer tray danced a little on the waves she stirred, but didn’t spill the tea.
‘You always say that,’ Amat Kyaan said. Marchat sighed and looked away. There were bags under his eyes, dark as bruises. His face, scowl-set, held a grayish cast. Amat leaned forward and pulled the tea closer.
‘So,’ she said. ‘I take it things went well.’
‘Don’t.’
Amat sipped tea from her bowl and considered him. Her employer, her friend.
‘Then what is there left for us to say?’ she asked.
‘There’s business,’ Marchat said. ‘The same as always.’
‘Business, then. I take it that things went well.’
He shot an annoyed glance at her, then looked away.
‘Couldn’t we start with the contracts with the dyers?’
‘If you’d like,’ Amat said. ‘Was there something pressing with them?’
Her voice carried the whole load of sarcasm to cover the outrage and anger. And fear. Marchat took a clumsy pose of surrender and acquiescence before reaching over and taking his own bowl of tea from the tray.
‘I’m going to a meeting with the Khai and several of the higher utkhaiem. Spend the whole damn time falling on my sword over the sad trade. I’ve promised a full investigation.’
‘And what are you going to find?’
‘The truth, I imagine. That’s the secret of a good lie, you know. Coming to a place where you believe it yourself. I expect o
ur investigation - or anyone else’s - will show it was Oshai, the translator. He and his men plotted the whole thing under the direction of the andat Seedless. They found the girl, they brought her to us under false pretenses. I have letters of introduction that I’ll turn over to the Khai’s men. They’ll discover that the letters are forged. House Wilsin will be looked upon as a collection of dupes. At best, it will take us years to recover our reputation.’
‘It’s a small price,’ Amat said. ‘What if they find Oshai?’
‘They won’t.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Yes,’ Wilsin said with a great sigh. ‘I’m sure.’
‘And Liat?’
‘Still being questioned,’ Marchat said. ‘I imagine she’ll be out by the end of the day. We’ll need to do something for her. To make this right. She’s not going to come out of this with a reputation for competence intact. They’ve already spoken with the island girl. She didn’t have anything very coherent to say, I’m afraid. But it’s over, Amat. That’s really the only bright thing I can say of the whole stinking business. The worst that was going to happen has happened, and now we can get to cleaning up after it and moving on.’
‘And what’s the truth?’
‘What I told you,’ he said. ‘That’s the truth. It’s the only truth that matters.’
‘No. The real truth. Who sent those pearls? And don’t tell me the spirit conjured them out of the sea.’
‘Who knows?’ Marchat said. ‘Oshai told us they were from Nippu, from the girl’s family. We had no reason to think otherwise.’
Amat slapped the water. She felt the rage pulling her brow together. Marchat met her anger with his. His pale face flushed red, his chin slid forward belligerently like a boy in a play yard.
‘I am saving you,’ he said. ‘And I am saving the house. I am doing everything I can to kill this thing and bury it, and by all the gods, Amat, I know as well as you that it was rotten, but what do you want me to do about it? Trot up to the Khai and apologize? Where did the pearls come from? Galt, Amat. They came from Acton and Lanniston and Cole. Who arranged the thing? Galts. And who will pay for this if that story is proved instead of mine? I’ll be killed. You’ll be exiled if you’re lucky. The house will be destroyed. And do you think it’ll stop there, Amat? Do you? Because I don’t.’
‘It was evil, Marchat.’
‘Yes. Yes, it was evil. Yes, it was wrong,’ he said, motioning so violently that his tea splashed, the red tint of if diffusing quickly in the bath. ‘But it was decided before anyone consulted us. By the time you or I or any of us were told, it was already too late. It needed doing, and so we’ve done it.
‘Tell me, Amat, what happens if you’re the Khai Saraykeht and you find out your pet god’s been conspiring with your trade rivals? Do you stop with the tools, because that’s all we are. Tools. Or do you teach a lesson to the Galts that they won’t soon forget? We haven’t got any andat of our own, so there’s nothing to restrain you. We can’t hit back. Do our crops fail? Do all the women with child in Galt lose their children over this? They’re as innocent as that island girl, Amat. They’ve done as little to deserve that as she has.’
‘Lower your voice,’ Amat said. ‘Someone will hear you.’
Marchat leaned back, glancing nervously at the windows, the door. Amat shook her head.
‘That was a pretty speech,’ she said. ‘Did you practice it?’
‘Some, yes.’
‘And who were you hoping to convince with it? Me, or yourself?’
‘Us,’ he said. ‘Both of us. It’s true, you know. The price would be worse than the crime, and innocent people would suffer.’
Amat considered him. He wanted so badly for it to be true, for her to agree. He was like a child, a boy. It made her feel weighted down.
‘I suppose it is,’ she said. ‘So. Where do we go from here?’
‘We clean up. We try to limit the damage. Ah, and one thing. The boy Itani? Do you know why the young poet would call him Otah?’
Amat let herself be distracted. She turned the name over in her mind, searching for some recollection. Nothing came. She put her bowl of tea on the side of the bath and took a pose pleading ignorance.
‘It sounds like a northern name,’ she said. ‘When did he use it?’
‘I had a man follow them. He overheard them speaking.’
‘It doesn’t match anything Liat’s told me of him.’
‘Well. Well, we’ll keep a finger on it and see if it moves. Damned strange, but nothing’s come from it yet.’
‘What about Maj?’
‘Who? Oh, the girl. Yes. We’ll need to keep her close for another week or two. Then I’ll have her taken home. There’s a trading company making a run to the east at about the right time. If the Khai’s men are done with her, I’ll pay her passage with them. Otherwise, it may be longer.’
‘But you’ll see her back home safely.’
‘It’s what I can do,’ Marchat said.
They sat in silence for a long minute. Amat’s heart felt like lead in her breast. Marchat was as still as if he’d drunk poison. Poor Wilsin-cha, she thought. He’s trying so hard to make this conscionable, but he’s too wise to believe his own arguments.
‘So, then,’ she said, softly. ‘The contracts with the dyers. Where do we stand with them?’
Marchat’s gaze met hers, a faint smile on his bushy lips. For almost two hands, he brought her up to date on the small doings of House Wilsin. The agreements they’d negotiated with Old Sanya and the dyers, the problems with the shipments from Obar State, the tax statements under review by the utkhaiem. Amat listened, and without meaning to she moved back into the rhythm of her work. The parts of her mind that held the doings of the house slid back into use, and she pictured all the issues Wilsin-cha brought up and how they would affect each other. She asked questions to confirm that she’d understood and to challenge Marchat to think things through with her. And for a while, she could almost pretend that nothing had happened, that she still felt what she had, that the house she had served so long was still what it had been to her. Almost, but not entirely.
When she left, her fingertips were wrinkled from the baths and her mind was clearer. She had several full days’ work before her just to put things back in order. And after that the work of the autumn: first House Wilsin’s - she felt she owed Marchat that much - and then perhaps also her own.
The poet’s house had been full for two days now, ever since Heshai had taken to his bed. Utkhaiem and servants of the Khai and representatives from the great trading houses came to call. They came at all hours. They brought food and drink and thinly veiled curiosity and tacit recrimination. Maati welcomed them as they came, accepted their gifts, saw them to whatever seats were available. He held poses of gratitude until his shoulders ached. He wanted nothing more than to turn them out - all of them.
The first night had been the worst. Maati had stood outside the door of Heshai-kvo’s room and pounded and demanded and begged until the night candle was half-burned. And when the door finally scraped open, it was Seedless who had unbarred it.
Heshai had lain on his cot, his eyes fixed on nothing, his skin pale, his lips slack. The white netting around him reminded Maati of a funeral shroud. He had had to touch the poet’s shoulder before Heshai’s distracted gaze flickered over to him and then away. Maati took a chair beside him, and stayed there until morning.
Through the night, Seedless had paced the room like a cat looking for a way under a woodpile. Sometimes he laughed to himself. Once, when Maati had drifted into an uneasy sleep, he woke to find the andat on the bed, bent over until his pale lips almost brushed Heshai’s ear - Seedless whispering fast, sharp syllables too quietly for Maati to make sense of them. The poet’s face was contorted as if in pain and flushed bright red. In the long moment before Maati shouted and pushed the andat away, their gazes locked, and Maati saw Seedless smile even as he murmured his poison.
When the morning c
ame, and the first pounding of visitors, Heshai roused himself enough to order Maati down to greet them. The bar had slid home behind him, and the stream of people had hardly slackened since. They stayed until the first quarter of the night candle had burned, and a new wave arrived before dawn.
‘I bring greetings from Annan Tiyan of House Tiyan,’ an older man said loudly as he stood on the threshold. He had to speak up for his words to carry over the conversation behind Maati. ‘We had heard of the poet’s ill health and wished . . .’
Maati took a brief pose of welcome and gratitude that he didn’t begin to mean and ushered the man in. The flock of carrion crows gabbled and talked and waited, Maati knew, for news of Heshai. Maati only took the food they’d brought and laid it out for them to eat, poured their gift wine into bowls as hospitality. And upstairs, Heshai . . . It didn’t bear thinking about. A regal man in fine silk robes motioned Maati over and asked him gently what he could do to help the poet in his time of need.
Shadow and Betrayal Page 20