Shadow and Betrayal

by Abraham Daniel

  ‘You’re drunk,’ Amat said gently. ‘You should go and sleep. Things will look better in the morning.’

  ‘And worse again when night comes,’ Maj said and shook her head, then lurched forward and kissed Amat’s mouth. As she left - awkward phrases in civilized languages passing between her and the guard at the door - Amat dropped the ruined vase into the small crate she kept beside her desk. Her flesh felt heavy, but there were books to be gone over, orders to place for the house and audits to be made.

  She was doing the work, she knew, of three women. Had she seen forty fewer summers, it might have been possible. Instead, each day seemed to bring collapse nearer. She woke in the morning to a list of things that had to be completed - for the comfort house and for the case she was building inch by inch against House Wilsin - and fell asleep every night with three or four items still undone and the creeping sense that she was forgetting something important.

  And the house, while it provided her the income she needed to pay for investigations and bribes and rewards, was just the pit of vipers that she’d been warned it would be. Mitat was her savior there - she knew the politics of the staff and had somehow won the trust of Torish Wite. Still, it seemed as if every decision had to be brought to Amat eventually. Whose indenture to end, whose to hold. What discipline to mete out against the women whose bodies were the produce she sold, what against the men who staffed the gambling tables and provided the wine and drugs. How to balance rule from respect and rule from fear. And Mitat, after all, had stolen from the house before . . .

  The night candle - visibly longer now and made of harder wax than the ones that measured the short nights of summer - was near its halfway mark when Amat put down her pen. Three times she had added a column of numbers, and three times had found different sums. She shrugged out of her robes and pulled the netting closed around the bed, asleep instantly, but troubled by dreams in which she recalled something critical a hand’s breadth too late.

  She woke to a polite scratch at her door. When she called out her permission, Mitat entered bearing a tray. Two thick slices of black bread and a bowl of bitter tea. Amat sat up, pulled the netting aside, and took a pose of gratitude as the red-haired woman put the tray on the bed beside her.

  ‘You’re looking nicely put together this morning,’ Amat said.

  It was true. Mitat wore a formal robe of pale yellow that went nicely with her eyes. She looked well-rested, which Amat supposed also helped.

  ‘We have the payment to make to the watch,’ Mitat said. ‘I was hoping you might let me join you.’

  Amat closed her eyes. The watch monies. Of course. It would have been very poor form to forget that, but she nearly had. The darkness behind her eyelids was comfortable, and she stayed there for a moment, wishing that she might crawl back to sleep.

  ‘Grandmother?’

  ‘Of course,’ Amat said, opening her eyes again and reaching for the bowl of tea. ‘I could do with the company. But you’ll understand if I handle the money.’

  Mitat grinned.

  ‘You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?’

  ‘Likely not. Get me a good robe, will you. There’s a blue with gray trim, I think, that should do for the occasion.’

  The streets of the soft quarter were quiet. Amat, her sleeve weighted by the boxed lengths of silver, leaned on her cane. The night’s rain had washed the air, and sunlight, pale as fresh butter, shone on the pavements and made the banners of the great comfort houses shimmer. The bakers’ kilns filled the air with the scent of bread and smoke. Mitat walked beside her, acting as if the slow pace were the one she’d have chosen if she had been alone, avoiding the puddles of standing water where the street dipped, or where alleyways still disgorged a brown trickle of foul runoff. In the height of summer, the mixture of heat and damp would have been unbearable. Autumn’s forgiving cool made the morning nearly pleasant.

  Mitat filled in Amat Kyaan on the news of the house. Chiyan thought she might be pregnant. Torish-cha’s men resented that they were expected to pay for the use of the girls - other houses in the quarter included such services as part of the compensation. Two weavers were cheating at tiles, but no one had caught them at it as yet.

  ‘When we do, bring them to me,’ Amat said. ‘If they aren’t willing to negotiate compensation with me, we’ll call the watch, but I’d rather have it stay private.’

  ‘Yes, grandmother.’

  ‘And send for Urrat from the street of beads. She’ll know if Chiyan’s carrying by looking at her, and she has some teas that’ll cure it if she is.’

  Mitat took a pose of agreement, but something in her expression - a softness, an amusement - made Amat respond with a query.

  ‘Ovi Niit would have taken her out back and kicked her until she bled,’ Mitat said. ‘He would have said it was cheaper. I don’t think you know how much you’re respected, grandmother. The men, except Torish-cha and his, would still as soon see you hanged as not. But the girls all thank the gods that you came back.’

  ‘I haven’t made the place any better.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mitat said, her voice accepting no denial. ‘You have. You don’t see how the—’

  The man lurched from the mouth of the alley and into Amat before she had time to respond. Her cane slipped as the drunkard staggered against her, and she stumbled. Pain shrieked from her knee to her hip, but her first impulse was to clutch the payment in her sleeve. The man, however, wasn’t a thief. The silver for the watch was still where it had been and the drunk was in a pose of profound apology.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Mitat demanded. Her chin was jutting out; her eyes burned. ‘It’s hardly mid-day. What kind of man is already drunk?’

  The thick man in the stained brown robe shook his head and bowed, his pose elegant and abasing.

  ‘It is my fault,’ he said, his words slurred. ‘Entirely my fault. I’ve made an ass of myself.’

  Amat clutched Mitat’s arm, silencing her, and stepped forward despite the raging ache in her leg. The drunkard bowed lower, shaking his head. Amat almost reached out to touch him - making certain that this wasn’t a dream, that she wasn’t back in her bed still waiting for her bread and tea.

  ‘Heshai-cha?’

  The poet looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and weary. The whites were yellow. He stank of wine and something worse. He seemed slowly to focus on her, and then, a heartbeat later, to recognize her face. He went gray.

  ‘I’m fine, Heshai-cha. No damage done. But what brings—’

  ‘I know you. You work for House Wilsin. You . . . you knew that girl?’

  ‘Maj,’ Amat said. ‘Her name is Maj. She’s being well taken care of, but you and I need to speak. What happened wasn’t all it seemed. The andat had other parties who—’

  ‘No! No, I was entirely to blame! It was my failing!’

  The shutters of a window across the street opened with a clack and a curious face appeared. Heshai took a pose of regret spoiled only by his slight wavering, like a willow in a breeze. His lips hardened, and his eyes, when he opened them, were black. He looked at her as if she’d insulted him, and in that moment, Amat could see that the andat Seedless with his beautiful face and perfect voice had indeed been drawn from this man.

  ‘I am making an ass of myself,’ he said. He bowed stiffly to her and to Mitat, turned, and strode unsteadily away.

  ‘Gods!’ Mitat said, looking after the wide, retreating back. ‘What was that?’

  ‘The poet of Saraykeht,’ Amat said. She turned to consider the alley from which he’d emerged. It was thin - hardly more than a slit between buildings - unpaved, muddy and stinking of garbage.

  ‘What’s down there?’ Amat asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Amat hesitated, dreading what she knew she had to do next. If the mud was as foul as it smelled, the hems of her robe would be unsavable.

  ‘Come,’ she said.

  The apartment wasn’t hard to find. The poet’s unste
ady footsteps had left fresh, sliding marks. The doorway was fitted with an iron lock, the shutters over the thin window beside it were barred from the inside. Amat, her curiosity too roused to stop now, rapped on the closed door and called, but no one came.

  ‘Sometimes, if they don’t want to be seen in the houses, men take rooms,’ Mitat said.

  ‘Like this?’

  ‘Better, usually,’ Mitat allowed. ‘None of the girls I know would want to follow a man down an alley like this one. If the payment was high enough, perhaps . . .’

  Amat pressed her hand against the door. The wood was solid, sound. The lock, she imagined, could be forced, if she could find the right tools. If there was something in this sad secret place that was worth knowing. Something like dread touched her throat.

  ‘Grandmother. We should go.’

  Amat took a pose of agreement, turning back toward the street. Curiosity balanced relief at being away from the private room of the poet of Saraykeht. She found herself wondering, as they walked to the offices of the watch, what lay behind that door, how it might relate to her quiet war, and whether she wanted to discover it.

  Winter came to the summer cities. The last leaves fell, leaving bare trees to sleep through the long nights. Cold mists rose, filling the streets with air turned to milk. Maati wore heavier robes - silk and combed wool. But not his heaviest. Even the depths of a Saraykeht winter were milder than a chilly spring in the north. Some nights Maati walked through the streets with Liat, his arm around her, and both of them hunched against the cold, but it was a rare thing to see his own breath in the air. In Pathai as a child, at the school, then with the Dai-kvo, Maati had spent most of his life colder than this, but the constant heat of the high seasons of Saraykeht had thinned his blood. He felt the cold more deeply now than he remembered it.

  Heshai-kvo’s return to health seemed to have ended the affair of the dead child in the minds of the utkhaiem. Over the weeks - the terribly short weeks - Heshai had taken him to private dinners and public feasts, had presented him to high families, and made it clear through word and action that Liat was welcome - was always welcome - at the poet’s house. That Seedless had been given a kind of freedom seemed to displease the Khai Saraykeht and his nearest men, but no words were said and no action taken. So long as the poet was well enough to assuage the general unease, all was close enough to well.

  The teahouse they had retreated to, he and Liat, was near the edge of the city proper. Buildings and streets ran further out, north along the river, but it was in this quarter that the original city touched the newer buildings. Newer buildings, Maati reflected, older than his grandfather’s grandfather. And still they took the name.

  They’d taken a private room hardly larger than a closet, with a small table and a bench against the wall that they both shared. Light and music and the scent of roast pork drifted though carved wood lacework, and a small brazier hung above them, radiating heat like a black iron sun.

  Liat poured hot tea into her bowl, and then without asking, into his. Maati took a pose of thanks, and lifted the fine porcelain to his lips. The steam smelled rich and smoky, and Liat leaned against him, the familiar weight of her body comforting as blankets.

  ‘He’ll be back soon,’ Maati said.

  Liat didn’t stiffen, but stilled. He sipped his tea, burning his lips a little. He felt her shrug as much as seeing it.

  ‘Let’s not talk of it,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t keep on with this once he’s come back. As it stands, half the time I feel like I’ve killed something. When he’s here . . .’

  ‘When he’s here we’ll have him with us,’ Liat said softly. ‘We both will. I’ll have him as a lover, you’ll have him as a friend. We’ll none of us be alone.’

  ‘I’m not entirely hoping for it,’ Maati said.

  ‘Parts will be difficult. Let’s not talk about it. It’ll come soon enough without borrowing it now.’ Maati took a pose of agreement, but a moment later Liat sighed and took his arm.

  ‘I didn’t mean to be cruel . . .’

  ‘You haven’t been,’ Maati said.

  ‘You’re kind to say so.’

  In the front of the house a woman or a child began singing - the voice high and sweet and pure. The talking voices stilled and gave the song their silence. It was one that Maati had heard before many times, a traditional ballad of love found and lost that dated back to the days when the Empire still stood. Maati sat back, his spine pressing into the wall behind him, and laid his arm across Liat’s shoulders. His head swam with emotions that he could only partly name. He closed his eyes and let the ancient words and old grammars wash over him. He felt Liat shudder. When he looked, her face was flushed, her mouth drawn tight. Tears glistened in her eyes.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said, and she nodded. He took six lengths of copper from a pouch in his sleeve and left them in a row on the table - it would more than cover the charges. Together, they rose, pushed aside the door and slipped out. The song continued on as they stepped out into the darkness. The moon was just past new, and the streets were dark except for the torches at crossroads where large streets met, and, elsewhere, lit by the kilns of the firekeepers. They walked arm in arm, heading north.

  ‘Why do they call you poets?’ Liat asked. ‘You don’t really declaim poetry. I mean, we have, but not as what you do for the Khai.’

  ‘There are other terms,’ Maati said. ‘You could also call us shapers or makers. Thought-weavers. It’s from the binding.’

  ‘The andat. They’re poems?’

  ‘They’re like poems. They’re translations of an idea into a form that includes volition. When you take a letter in the Khaiate tongue and translate it into Galtic, there are different ways you could word it, to get the right meaning. The binding is like translating a letter perfectly from one language to another. You make it clear, and the parts that aren’t there - if there isn’t quite the right word in Galtic, for instance - you create them so that the whole thing holds together. The old grammars are very good for that work.’

  ‘What do you do with it? With the description?’

  ‘You hold it in your mind. Forever.’

  The words lapsed. They walked. The high walls of the warehouse district stopped and the lower buildings of the weavers took up. The palaces at the top of the city glittered with lanterns and torches, like the field of stars pulled down and overlapping the earth until they were obscured again by high walls, now of the homes of merchants and lesser trading houses.

  ‘Have you ever been in the summer cities for Candles Night?’ Liat asked.

  ‘No,’ Maati said. ‘I’ve seen the Dai-kvo’s village, though. It was beautiful there. All the streets were lined with people, and the light made the whole mountain feel like a temple.’

  ‘You’ll like it here,’ Liat said. ‘There’s likely more wine involved than with the Dai-kvo.’

  Maati smiled in the darkness and pulled her small, warm body closer to him.

  ‘I imagine so,’ he said. ‘At the school, we didn’t—’

  The blow was so sudden, Maati didn’t really have time to feel it. He was on the ground. The stones of the street were rough against his skinned palms, and he was consumed by a sense of urgency whose object he could not immediately identify. Liat lay unmoving beside him. A roof tile - six hands square and three fingers deep of baked red clay - rested between them like an abandoned pillow. A scraping sound like rats in plaster walls caught Maati’s crippled attention and another tile fell, missing them both, detonating on the street at Liat’s side. Maati’s panic found its focus. He lurched toward her. Blood soaked her robe at the shoulder. Her eyes were closed.

  ‘Liat! Wake up! The tiles are loose!’

  She didn’t answer. Maati looked up, his hands shaking though he wasn’t aware of the fear, only of the terrible need to act immediately trapped against his uncertainty of what action to take. No other tile moved, but something - a bird, a squirrel, a man’s head? - ducked back over the r
oof’s lip. Maati put his hand on Liat’s body and willed his mind into something nearer to order. They were in danger here. They had to move away from the wall. And Liat couldn’t.

  Carefully he took her by the shoulders and dragged her. Each step made his ribs shriek, but he took her as far as the middle of the street before the pain was too much. Kneeling over her, fighting to breathe, Maati’s fear turned at last to panic. For a long airless moment, Maati convinced himself that she wasn’t breathing. A shifting of her bloody robe showed him otherwise. Help. They needed help.

  Maati stood and staggered. The street was empty, but a wide ironwork gate opened to rising marble steps and a pair of wide wooden doors. Maati pushed himself toward it, feeling as if he was at one remove from his own muscles, as if his body was a puppet he didn’t have the skill to use well. It seemed to him, hammering on the wide doors, that no one would ever come. He wiped the sweat from his brow only to discover it was blood.