Amat Kyaan took a pose of thanks. Ovi Niit responded with an acceptance so formal as to be sarcastic. When he struck, it was quick; she did not see the blow coming. The ring on his right hand cut her mouth, and she fell back, landing hard. Pain took her hip so fierce it seemed cold.
‘Three days to an estimate. Two weeks to a full balance. For every day you are late, I will have you cut,’ he said, his voice settled and calm. ‘If you tell me “how things are” again, I will sell you within that hour. And if you bleed on my floor, you’ll clean it, you shit-licking, wattle-necked, high-town cunt. Do you understand?’
The first bloom of emotion in her was only surprise, and then confusion, and then anger. He measured her, and she saw the hunger in him, waiting for her answer; the eagerness for her humiliation would have been pathetic - a child whipping dogs - if she hadn’t been on the end of it. She choked on her defiance and her pride. Her mouth felt thick with venom, though it was certainly only blood.
Bend now, she thought. This is no time to be stubborn. Bend now and live through this.
Amat Kyaan, chief overseer of House Wilsin, took a pose of gratitude and acceptance. The tears were easy to feign.
4
‘I can’t do this,’ Liat said over the splash of flowing water. ‘There’s too much.’
The washing floor was outside the barracks: a stone platform with an open pipe above it and a drain below. Itani stood naked in the flow, his hair plastered flat, scrubbing his hands and arms with pumice.
The sun, still likely three or four hands above the horizon, was nonetheless lost behind the buildings of the warehouse district. Now they were in shadow; soon it would be night. Liat on her bench leaned against the ivy-covered wall, plucking at the thick, waxy leaves.
‘Amat left everything half-done,’ she went on. ‘The contracts with Old Sanya. How was I to know they hadn’t been returned to him? It isn’t as if she told me to run them there. And the shipments to Obar State weren’t coordinated, so there are going to be three weeks with the third warehouse standing half-empty when it should be full. And every time something goes wrong, Wilsin-cha . . . he doesn’t say anything, but he keeps looking at me as though I might start drooling. I embarrass him.’
Itani stepped out from the artificial waterfall. His hands and arms were a dirty blue outlined in red where he had rubbed the skin almost raw. All his cohort had spent the day hauling dye to the dye yard, and all of them were marked by the labor. She looked at him in despair. His fingernails, she knew from experience, would look as if they were dirty until the dyes wore off. It might take weeks.
‘Has he said anything to you?’ Itani asked, wiping the water off his arms and chest.
‘Of course he has. I’m doing Amat’s work and preparing for the audience with the Khai besides.’
‘I meant, has he told you that you were doing poorly? Or is it only your own standards that aren’t being met?’
Liat felt herself flush, but took a pose of query. Itani frowned and pulled on fresh robes. The cloth clung to his legs.
‘You mean you think perhaps he wants an incompetent going before the Khai in his name?’ Liat demanded. ‘And why do you imagine he’d wish for that?’
‘I mean, is it possible that your expectations of yourself are higher than his? You’ve been put in this position without warning, and without the chance to prepare yourself with Amat-cha. Hold that in mind, and it seems to me you’ve been doing very well. Wilsin-cha knows all that too. If he isn’t telling you you’ve done poorly, perhaps it’s not so bad as it seems.’
‘So you think I have an excuse for things going badly,’ Liat said. ‘That’s thin comfort.’
Itani sighed in resignation as he sat down beside her. His hair was still dripping wet, and Liat moved a little away to keep the water from getting on her own robes. She could see in the way he kept his expression calm that he thought she was being unreasonably hard on herself, and her suspicion that he wasn’t wholly wrong only made her more impatient with him.
‘If you’d like, we can go to your cell for the evening. You can work on whatever it is that needs your attention,’ he offered.
‘And what would you do?’
‘Be there,’ he said, simply. ‘The others will understand.’
‘Yes, lovely,’ Liat said, sarcasm in her voice. ‘Refuse your cohort’s company because I have more important things than them. Let’s see what more they can say about me. They already think I look down on them.’
Itani sighed, leaning back into the ivy until he seemed to be sinking into the wall itself. The continual slap of water on stone muffled the sounds of the city. Any of the others could appear around the corner or from within the barracks at any moment, but still it felt as if they were alone together. It was usually a feeling Liat enjoyed. Just now, it was like a stone in her sandal.
‘You could tell me I’m wrong, if you liked,’ she said.
‘No. They do think that. But we could go anyway. What does it matter what they think? They’re only jealous of us. If we spend the evening preparing everything for Wilsin-cha, then in the morning—’
‘It doesn’t work like that. I can’t just put in an extra half-shift and make all the problems go away. It’s not like I’m shifting things around a warehouse. This is complex. It’s . . . it’s just not the sort of thing a laborer would understand.’
Itani nodded slowly, stirring the leaves that wreathed his head. The softness of his mouth went hard for a moment. He took a pose that accepted correction, but she could see the formality in his stance and recognize it for what it was.
‘Gods. Itani, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sure there are lots of things I don’t know about . . . lifting things. Or how to pull a cart. But this is hard. What Wilsin-cha wants of me is hard.’
And I’m failing, she thought, but didn’t say. Can’t you see I’m failing?
‘At least let me take your mind off it for tonight,’ Itani said, standing and offering her his hand. There was still a hardness in his eyes, however much he buried it. Liat stood but didn’t take his hand.
‘I’m going before the Khai in four days. Four days! I’m completely unprepared. Amat hasn’t told me anything about doing this. I’m not even sure when she’ll be back. And you think, what? A night out getting drunk with a bunch of laborers at a cheap teahouse is going to make me forget that? Honestly, ’Tani. It’s like you’re a stone. You don’t listen.’
‘I’ve been listening to you since you came. I’ve been doing nothing but.’
‘For all the good it’s done. I might as well have been a dog yapping at you for all you’ve understood.’
‘Liat,’ Itani said, his voice sharp, and then stopped. His face flushed, he stretched out his hands in a gesture of surrender. When he went on, his voice hummed with controlled anger. ‘I don’t know what you want from me. If you want my help to make this right, I’ll help you. If you want my company to take you away from it for a time, I’m willing . . .’
‘Willing? How charming,’ Liat began, but Itani wouldn’t be interrupted. He pressed on, raising his voice over hers.
‘. . . but if there is something else you want of me, I’m afraid this lowly laborer is simply too thick-witted to see it.’
Liat felt a knot in her throat, and raised her hands in a pose of withdrawal. A thick despair folded her heart. She looked at him - her Itani - goaded to rage. He didn’t see. He didn’t understand. How hard could it be to see how frightened she was?
‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said. Her voice was thick.
‘Liat.’
‘No,’ she said, wiping away tears with the sleeve of her robe as she turned. ‘It was the wrong thing for me to do. You go on. I’m going back to my cell.’
Itani, his anger not gone, but tempered by something softer, put a hand on her arm.
‘I can come with you if you like,’ he said.
For more of this? she didn’t say. She only shook her head, pulled gently away from him and started the
long walk up and to the north. Back to the compound without him. She stopped at a waterseller’s cart halfway there and drank cool water, limed and sugared, and waited to see whether Itani had followed her. He hadn’t, and she honestly couldn’t say whether she was more disappointed or relieved.
The woman - Anet Nyoa, her name was - held out a plum, taking at the same time a pose of offering. Maati accepted the fruit formally, and with a growing sense of discomfort. Heshai-kvo had been due back at the middle gardens from his private council with the Khai Saraykeht a half-hand past midday. It was almost two hands now, and Maati was still alone on his bench overlooking the tiled roofs of the city and the maze of paths through the palaces and gardens. And to make things more awkward, Anet Nyoa, daughter of some house of the utkhaiem Maati felt sure he should recognize, had stopped to speak with him. And offer him fruit. And at every moment that it seemed time for her to take leave, she found something more to say.
‘You seem young,’ she said. ‘I had pictured a poet as an older man.’
‘I’m only a student, Nyoa-cha,’ Maati said. ‘I’ve only just arrived.’
‘And how old are you?’
‘This is my sixteenth summer,’ he said.
The woman took a pose of appreciation that he didn’t entirely understand. It was a simple enough grammar, but he didn’t see what there was to appreciate about being a particular age. And there was something else in the way her eyes met his that made him feel that perhaps she had mistaken him for someone else.
‘And you, Nyoa-cha?’
‘My eighteenth,’ she said. ‘My family came to Saraykeht from Cetani when I was a girl. Where are your family?’
‘I have none,’ Maati said. ‘That is, when I was sent to the school, I . . . They are in Pathai, but I’m not . . . we aren’t family any longer. I’ve become a poet now.’
A note of sorrow came into her expression, and she leaned forward. Her hand touched his wrist.
‘That must be hard for you,’ she said, her gaze now very much locked with his. ‘Being alone like that.’
‘Not so bad,’ Maati said, willing his voice not to squeak. There was a scent coming from her robe - something rich and earthy just strong enough to catch through the floral riot of gardens. ‘That is, I’ve managed quite nicely.’
‘You’re brave to put such a strong face on it.’
And like the answer to a prayer, the andat’s perfect form stepped out from a minor hall at the far end of the garden. He wore a black robe shot with crimson and cut in the style of the Old Empire. Maati leaped up, tucked the plum into his sleeve, and took a pose of farewell.
‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘The andat has come, and I fear I am required.’
The woman took an answering pose that also held a nuance of regret, but Maati turned away and hurried down the path, white gravel crunching under his feet. He didn’t look back until he’d reached Seedless’ side.
‘Well, my dear. That was a hasty retreat.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Seedless raised a single black brow, and Maati felt himself blushing. But the andat took a pose that dismissed the subject and went on.
‘Heshai has left for the day. He says you’re to go back to the poet’s house and clean the bookshelves.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You’re getting better then,’ the andat said with a grin. ‘He’s just coming. The audience with the Khai ran long, but all the afternoon’s plans are still very much in place.’
Maati felt himself smile in return. Whatever else could be said of the andat, his advice about Heshai-kvo had been true. Maati had risen in the morning, ready to follow Heshai-kvo on whatever errands the Khai had set him that day. At first, the old poet had seemed uncomfortable, but by the middle of that first day, Maati found him more and more explaining what it was that the andat was called upon to do, how it fit with the high etiquette of the utkhaiem and the lesser courts; how, in fact, to conduct the business of the city. And in the days that followed, Seedless, watching, had taken a tone that was still sly, still shockingly irreverent, still too clever to trust, but not at all like the malefic prankster that Maati had first feared.
‘You should really leave the old man behind. I’m a much better teacher,’ Seedless said. ‘That girl, for example, I could teach you how to—’
‘Thank you, Seedless-cha, but I’ll take my lessons from Heshai-kvo.’
‘Not on that subject, you won’t. Not unless it’s learning how to strike a bargain with a soft-quarter whore.’
Maati took a dismissive pose, and Heshai-kvo stepped through an archway. His brows were furrowed and angry. His lips moved, continuing some conversation with himself or some imagined listener. When he looked up, meeting Maati’s pose of welcome, his smile seemed forced and brief.
‘I’ve a meeting with House Tiyan,’ the poet said. ‘Idiots have petitioned the Khai for a private session. Something about a Westlands contract. I don’t know.’
‘I would like to attend, if I may,’ Maati said. It had become something of a stock phrase over the last few days, and Heshai-kvo accepted it with the same distracted acquiescence that seemed to be his custom. The old poet turned to the south and began the walk downhill to the low palaces. Maati and Seedless walked behind. The city stretched below them. The gray and red roofs, the streets leading down to converge on the seafront, and beyond that the masts of the ships, and the sea, and the great expanse of sky dwarfing it all. It was like something from the imagination of a painter, too gaudy and perfect to be real. And almost inaudible over their footsteps on the gravel paths and the distant songs of garden slaves, Heshai-kvo muttered to himself, his hands twitching toward half-formed poses.
‘He was with the Khai,’ Seedless said, his voice very low. ‘It didn’t go well.’
‘What was the matter?’
It was Heshai-kvo who answered the question.
‘The Khai Saraykeht is a greedy, vain little shit,’ he said. ‘If you had to choose the essence of the problem, you could do worse than start there.’
Maati missed his step, and a shocked sound, half cough, half laugh, escaped him. When the poet turned to him, he tried to adopt a pose - any pose - but his hands couldn’t agree on where they should go.
‘What?’ the poet demanded.
‘The Khai . . . You just . . .’ Maati said.
‘He’s just a man,’ the poet said. ‘He eats and shits and talks in his sleep the same as anyone.’
‘But he’s the Khai.’
Heshai-kvo took a dismissive pose and turned his back to Maati and the andat. Seedless plucked Maati’s robe and motioned him to lean nearer. Keeping his eyes on the path and the poet before them, Maati did.
‘He asked the Khai to refuse a contract,’ Seedless whispered. ‘The Khai laughed at him and told him not to be such a child. Heshai had been planning his petition for days, and he wasn’t even allowed to present the whole argument. I wish you’d been there. It was really a lovely moment. But I suppose that’s why the old cow didn’t tell you about it. He doesn’t seem to enjoy having his student present when he’s humiliated. I imagine he’ll be getting quite drunk tonight.’
‘What contract?’
‘House Wilsin is acting as agent for the sad trade.’
‘Sad trade?’
‘Using us to pluck a child out of a womb,’ Seedless said. ‘It’s safer than teas, and it can be done nearer to the end of the woman’s term. And, to the Khai Saraykeht’s great pleasure, it’s expensive.’
‘Gods. And we do that?’
Seedless took a pose that implied the appreciation of a joke or irony. ‘We do what we are told, my dear. You and I are the puppets of puppets. ’
‘If the two of you could be put upon not to talk behind my back quite so loudly,’ Heshai snapped, ‘I would very much appreciate it.’
Maati fell instantly to a pose of apology, but the poet didn’t turn to see it. After a few steps, Maati let his hands fall to his sides. Se
edless said nothing, but raised a hand to his mouth and took a bite of something dark. A plum. Maati checked his sleeve, and indeed, it was empty. He took a pose that was both query and accusation - How? The andat smiled; his perfect, pale face lit with mischief and perhaps something else.
‘I’m clever,’ the andat said, and tossed the bitten fruit to him.
At the low palaces, a young man in the yellow and silver robes of House Tiyan greeted them and allowed himself to be led to a meeting room. They sat at a black-stained wooden table drinking cool water and eating fresh dates, the stones removed for them by the andat. Maati followed the negotiations with half his attention, his mind turning instead upon the dreadful anger and pain shallowly buried in his teacher’s voice and the echo of tacit pleasure in the andat’s. It seemed to him that the two emotions were balanced; that Heshai-kvo would never smile without some pang of discontent in Seedless’s heart, that the andat could only shine ecstatic if the poet were in despair. He imagined himself taking control of the andat, entering into that lifelong intimate struggle, and unease picked at him.