She smiled and slapped his shoulder as she’d seen Itani’s cohort do. The gesture felt surprisingly natural to her.
‘I think we’re past calling each other cha,’ she said.
He joined her quickly, changed into a robe of identical brown. They sat in the main room, candles lit to dispel the gloom of the weather. He sat across from her on a low wooden divan. His face was calm, but worn and tight about the mouth, even when he smiled. The strain of his master’s collapse was written on his brow.
‘Have you . . . have you heard from him?’ Maati asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s too early. He won’t have reached Yalakeht by now. Soon, but not yet. And then it would take as many weeks as he’s been gone to get a message back to us.’
Maati took a pose of understanding, but impatience showed in it. She responded with a pose that asked after Maati’s well-being. In another context, it would have been a formal nicety. Here, it seemed sincere.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘It’s only difficult not knowing what to do. When Otah-kvo comes back, everything will be all right.’
‘Will it?’ Liat said, looking into the candle flame. ‘I hope you’re right.’
‘Of course it will. The Dai-kvo knows more than any of us how to proceed. He’ll pass it to Otah-kvo, and we’ll . . .’
The voice with its forced optimism faded. Liat looked back. Maati was sitting forward, rubbing his eyes with his fingers like an old, weary man.
‘We’ll do whatever the Dai-kvo tells us,’ Liat finished.
Maati took a rueful pose of agreement. A gust of wind rattled the great shuttered walls, and Liat pulled her robe tight around her, as if to protect herself from cold, though the room was perfectly warm.
‘And you?’ Maati asked. ‘Are things well at House Wilsin?’
‘I don’t know,’ Liat said. ‘Amat Kyaan’s come back, and she tries to use me, but there doesn’t seem to be as much to do as there once was. I think . . . I think she doesn’t trust me. I can’t blame her, after what happened. And Wilsin-cha’s the same way. They keep me busy, but not with anything serious. No one’s actually told me I’m only a clerk again, but for how I’ve been spending my days, I may as well be.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s wrong, though. It isn’t your fault that this happened. You should just be—’
‘Itani’s going to leave me. Or Otah. Whichever. He’s going to leave me,’ she said. She hadn’t meant to, but the words had come out, like vomiting. She stared at her hands and they kept coming. ‘I don’t think he knows it yet, but when he left, there was something in him. In the way he treated me that . . . He isn’t my first lover, and I’ve seen it before. It’s just a kind of distance, and then it’s something more, and then . . .’
‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ Maati said, and his voice sounded confident for the first time that day. ‘He won’t.’
‘Everyone else has,’ she said.
‘Not him.’
‘He went, though. He didn’t only have to; he wanted to. He wanted to get away from me, and when he comes back, he’ll have had time to think. And then . . .’
‘Liat-cha . . . Liat. I know we haven’t known each other before this, but Otah-kvo was my first teacher, and sometimes I think he was my best one. He’s different from other people. And he loves you. He’s told me as much.’
‘I don’t know,’ Liat said.
‘You love him, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, and the silence after it was worse than walking through the rain. She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. ‘I love Itani. I know Itani. Otah, though? He’s a son of the Khaiem. He’s . . . he isn’t who I thought he was, and I’m just an apprentice overseer, and not likely to be that for long. How can we stay together when he’s what he is, and I’m this?’
‘You did when you were an overseer and he was just a laborer. This isn’t any different.’
‘Of course it is,’ she said. ‘He always knew he was born to something higher than he was. I’m not. I’m just me.’
‘Otah-kvo is one of the wisest men I know,’ Maati said. ‘He isn’t going to walk away from you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ Maati said softly, ‘he’s one of the wisest men I know.’
She laughed, partly at the sincerity in the boy’s voice, partly because she wanted so badly for it to be true, partly because her only other option was weeping. Maati moved to her, put his arm around her. He smelled of the cedar soap than Itani used to shave with. She leaned into his shoulder.
‘These next weeks,’ she said when she’d gathered herself enough to speak. ‘They aren’t going to be easy.’
‘No,’ Maati agreed and heaved a sigh. ‘No, they aren’t.’
‘We can see each other through them, though. Can’t we?’ Liat said, trying to keep the pleading out of the words. The patter of the rain filled the silence, and Liat closed her eyes. It was Maati, at last, who had the courage to say what she hadn’t been able to.
‘I think I’m going to need a friend if I’m going to come through this,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we’re in the same place. If I can help, if a half-ragged student poet who spends most of his days feeling like he’s worn thin enough to see through can be of any comfort, I’d welcome the company.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘Neither do you, but I hope you will.’
The kiss she gave him was brief and meant to be sisterly. If he caught his breath at it, she imagined he was only a little surprised and embarrassed. She smiled, and he did as well.
‘We’re a sorry pair,’ she said. ‘Itani . . . he’ll be back soon.’
‘Yes,’ Maati said. ‘And things will be better then.’
The door burst open, and a body fell forward onto the meeting room floor. For a moment, the sounds of the teahouse penetrated - voices, music - and then Torish Wite and two of his men followed the man they’d pushed through and closed the door. Silence returned as if it had never gone. Amat, sitting at the long wooden table, gathered herself. The man beside her wore the simple robes of a firekeeper and the expression of someone deeply amused by a dogfight.
The fallen man rose unsteadily to his knees. A white cloth covered his head, and his thin arms were bound behind him. Torish Wite took him by the shoulder, lifted roughly, and nodded to one of his men. When the cloth was flipped away, Amat swallowed a knot of fear.
‘This him?’ Torish Wite asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Ovi Niit’s gaze swam. He had a glazed look that spoke of wine with strange spices as much as fear or anger. It took the space of three long breaths for his eyes to rest on her, for recognition to bloom there. Slowly, he struggled to his feet.
‘Niit-cha,’ Amat said, taking a pose that opened a negotiation. ‘It has been some time.’
The whoremaster answered with a string of obscenities that only stopped with Torish Wite’s man stepping forward and striking him across the face. Amat folded her hands in her lap. A drop of blood appeared at the corner of Ovi Niit’s mouth, bright as a jewel and distracting to her.
‘If you do as I say, Niit-cha,’ she began again, ‘this needn’t be an unpleasant affair.’
He grinned, the blood smearing his crooked teeth. There was no fear in him. He laughed, and the sound itself seemed reckless. Amat wished that they’d found him when he was sober.
‘I was never paid, Ovi-cha, for my time with you. I have chosen to take the price in a share of the house. In fact, I’ve chosen to buy you out.’ She took a sheaf of papers from her sleeve and placed them on the table. ‘I’m offering a fair price.’
‘There isn’t enough money in the world,’ he spat. ‘I built that house up from three girls in an alley.’
The firekeeper shifted in his seat. The distant smile on his lips didn’t shift, but his eyes held a curiosity. Amat felt oddly out of her depth. This was a negotiation, after all, and to say she had the upper hand would be gross understatement, and yet she
was at sea.
‘You’re going to kill me, you dust-cunt bitch. Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you.’
‘There’s no need . . .’ she began, then stopped and took a pose of acceptance. Ovi Niit was right. It was only dressed as a negotiation. It was, in point of fact, a murder. For the first time, something like apprehension showed in his expression. His eyes shifted to the side, to Torish Wite.
‘Whatever she’s paying you, I’ll triple it,’ Ovi Niit said.
‘Amat-cha,’ the firekeeper said. ‘I appreciate the attempt, but it seems to me unlikely that this gentleman will sign the documents.’
Amat sighed and took a pose of concurrence. In the common room someone shrieked with laughter. The sound was made faint by the thick stone walls. Like the call of a ghost.
‘You can kill me, but you’ll never break me,’ Ovi Niit said, pulling himself up proud as a pit-cock.
‘I’ll live with that,’ Amat said, and nodded. Torish Wite neatly kicked Ovi Niit’s knees out, and the two other men stepped forward to hold him while their captain leaned over and looped a knotted cord over his head. An efficient flick of the wrist, and the cord was tight enough to dig into the flesh, buried. The whoremaster’s face went deep red and darkening. Amat watched with a sick fascination. It took longer than she’d expected. When the men released it, the body fell like a sack of grain.
The firekeeper reached across the table, picked up the sheaf between his first finger and his thumb, and pulled them before him. As if there wasn’t a fresh corpse on the floor, Amat turned to him.
‘I suppose you know someone who can do a decent imitation of his chop?’ the firekeeper said.
‘I’ll see it arranged,’ Amat said.
‘Very well. If the watch asks, I’ll swear to it that I stood witness at the transaction,’ the firekeeper said, taking a pen and a small silver inkbox from his sleeve. ‘You paid Niit-cha his asking price, he accepted, and in fact seemed quite pleased.’
‘Do you think the watch will ask?’
The inkbox clicked open, the firekeeper’s pen touched the inkblock and then the page, scratching with a sound like bird’s feet.
‘Of course they will,’ he said, sliding the papers back toward her. ‘They’re the watch. They’re paid to. But so long as you pay your share to them, let them sample your wares on occasion, and don’t cause them trouble, I doubt they’ll ask many. He didn’t die in the soft quarter. Their honor isn’t at stake.’
Amat considered the firekeeper’s signature for a moment, then took a small leather sack from her belt and handed it to him. He had the good taste not to count it there at the table, but she saw him weigh it before it disappeared into his sleeve.
‘It’s odd to hear the term honor associated with any of this,’ she said.
The firekeeper took a pose of polite correction, appropriate for a master to an apprentice not his own.
‘If there were no honor at stake, Torish-cha would have killed you.’
Torish Wite chuckled, and Amat took a pose of acknowledgment more casual than she felt. The firekeeper shifted to a pose of leave-taking to both Amat and Torish Wite and then, briefly, to the corpse of Ovi Niit. When the door closed behind him, Amat tucked the signed papers into her sleeve and considered the dead man. He was smaller than she remembered, and she wouldn’t have said his arms were so thin. Collapsed on the floor, his last breath past him, he seemed oddly vulnerable. Amat wondered for the first time what Ovi Niit had been as a child, and whether he had a mother or a sister who would miss him now that he was gone. She guessed not.
‘What do you want done with him?’ Torish Wite asked.
‘Whatever’s convenient, I suppose.’
‘Do you want him found?’
‘I don’t care one way or the other,’ Amat said.
‘It’ll be easier for the watch to ignore any accusations against you if he vanishes,’ Torish Wite said, half to Amat, half to his men.
‘We’ll take care of it,’ one of the men said; the one who had held Ovi Niit’s right arm as he died. Amat took a pose of thanks. The two men hefted the object that had been Ovi Niit between them and carried it out. She assumed they had a wheelbarrow in the alleyway.
‘When are you taking the house?’ Torish Wite asked when they had gone.
‘Soon.’
‘You’ll want protection for that. These soft-quarter types aren’t going to roll over and show their bellies just because you’ve got the right chop on the papers.’
‘Yes, I wanted to speak to you about that,’ Amat said, vaguely surprised at how distant she felt from the words. ‘I’m going to need guards for the house. Is that the sort of contract you’d be interested in?’
‘Depends,’ Torish Wite said, but he smiled. It was only a matter of terms. That was a fine thing. Her gaze shifted to the space where Ovi Niit had lain. She told herself the unease was only the normal visceral shock of seeing a man die before her. That she now owned a comfort house - that she was going to make her money from selling the women and boys she’d recently shared table and sleeping quarters with - was nothing to think about. It was, after all, in the cause of justice.
Torish Wite shifted his weight, his movement snapping her back into the moment. He had a broad face and broad shoulders, scars on his chin and arms, and a smile that spoke of easy brutality. His gaze was considering and amused.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re afraid of me, aren’t you.’
Amat smiled and affected boredom.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But consider what happened to the last man who frightened me.’
His expression soured.
‘You’re in over your head, you know.’
She took a pose of acknowledgment, but with a stance that bordered on the defiant. She could see in his face that he understood every nuance. He respected her. It was what she’d hoped. She dropped the pose and leaned against the table.
‘When I was very young,’ she said, ‘my sister pushed me off a rooftop. A high one. I have never been more certain that I was going to die. And I didn’t scream. Because I knew it wouldn’t help.’
‘And your point?’
‘What I’m doing now may be harder than I’d wish. But I’m going to do it. Worrying about whether I can manage won’t help.’
He laughed. It was a low sound, and strangely shallow - like an axe on wood.
‘You are a tough bitch,’ he said, making it a compliment.
No, I’m not, she thought, smiling, but it’s good that you’ve misunderstood me.
13
The ship passed the great island with its white watchtower and into the bay of Yalakeht on a cool, hazy morning. Otah stood at the railing and watched the land turn from outlines of pale hills to the green-gray of pine trees in autumn. The tall, gray buildings of Yalakeht nestled at the edge of the calmest of waters. The noise of their bayfront carried over the water, but muffled by the thick air like a conversation in a nearby room.
They reached land - signaled in by the dock master’s torches - just as the sun reached its peak in the sky. Otah had hardly put his feet to the cobbled streets before he heard the news. The bayfront seemed to buzz with it.
The third son of the Khai Udun had killed his remaining brother. They had found each other in Chaburi-Tan, and faced each other in a seafront street with knives. Or else the second son - whom Otah had seen in the court of the Khai Saraykeht - had been poisoned after all. Or he had ambushed his younger brother, only to have the fight slip from him. On the docks, on the streets, in the teahouses, the stories ran together and meshed with older, better-known tales, last year’s news, and wild imaginings newly formed of what might have happened. Otah found a seat in the back of a teahouse near the bayfront and listened as the stories unfolded. The youngest son would take his father’s place - a good sign. When a youngest son took power, it meant the line was vigorous. People said it meant the next Khai Udun would be especially talented and brave.
To Otah, it meant that he
had killed two of his brothers, and that the others, younger even than he was, had been cast out. They were wearing brands somewhere even now. Unless they were poets. Unless they were lucky enough to be poets like Heshai of Saraykeht.
‘Well, you’re looking sour,’ a familiar voice said.
‘Orai,’ Otah said, taking a pose of welcome. The courier sat down across from him, and raised a hand to the serving man. Moments later, two bowls of fish and rice appeared before them along with a pot of smoked tea and two ceramic teabowls of delicate green. Otah took a pose of correction to the serving man, but Orai stopped him.
‘It’s a tradition of my house. After a journey, we buy our travelling companions a meal.’
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