The common room was near empty, the whores out in the rooms plying their trade. A guardsman sat eating a roast chicken that smelled of garlic and rosemary. An old black dog lay curled in a corner, a leatherwork rod in the shape of a man’s sex chewed half to pieces between the bitch’s paws.
‘He’s gone out,’ the guard said. ‘In the front rooms, playing tiles.’
Amat nodded.
‘I wouldn’t go out to him, grandmother.’
‘I wouldn’t want to interrupt. Send Mitat to the office. I need someone to help me put the room back in order. Every meeting it’s like a storm’s come through.’
The guard took an amused pose of agreement. The sound of drums came suddenly from the street. Another night in the endless carnival of the soft quarter.
‘I’ll have her bring something for that wound,’ the guard said.
‘Thank you,’ Amat said, her voice polite, dispassionate: the voice of the woman she wanted them all to believe her to be. ‘That would be very kind of you.’
Mitat appeared in her doorway half a hand later. The wide, pale face littered with freckles looked hard. Amat smiled gently at her and took a pose of welcome.
‘I heard that he’d been to see you, grandmother.’
‘Yes, and so he has. Open those shutters for me, would you, dear? I was tall enough to get them myself when I came here, but I seem to have grown shorter.’
Mitat did so, and the pale moonlight added to the lantern on Amat’s desk. The papers weren’t in such bad order. Amat motioned the woman closer.
‘You have to go, grandmother,’ Mitat said. ‘Niit-cha is getting worse.’
‘Of course he is,’ Amat said. ‘He’s frightened. And he drinks too much. I need you. Now, tonight.’
Mitat took a pose of agreement. Amat smiled and took her hand. Behind Mitat, the little scar blemished the wall where he’d kicked it. Amat wondered in passing if the whoremaster would ever understand how much that mark had cost him. And Amat intended it to cost dear.
‘Who is the most valuable man here?’ Amat asked. ‘Niit-cha must have men who he trusts more than others, ne?’
‘The guards,’ Mitat began, but Amat waved the comment away.
‘Who does he trust like a brother?’
Mitat’s eyes narrowed. She’s caught scent of it, Amat thought, and smiled.
‘Black Rathvi,’ Mitat said. ‘He’s in charge of the house when Niitcha’s away.’
‘You know what his handwriting looks like?’
‘No,’ Mitat said. ‘But I know he took in two gold and seventy silver lengths from the high tables two nights ago. I heard him talking about it.’
Amat paged through the most recent ledger until she found the precise sum. It was a wide hand with poorly formed letters and a propensity for dropping the ends of words. She knew it well. Black Rathvi was a poor keeper of notes, and she’d been struggling with his entries since she’d started the project. She found herself ghoulishly pleased that he’d be suffering for his poor job keeping books.
‘I’ll need a cloak - a hooded one - perhaps two hands before daybreak, ’ Amat said.
‘You should leave now,’ Mitat said. ‘Niit-cha’s occupied for the moment, but he may—’
‘I’m not finished yet. Two hands before daybreak, I will be. You and your man should slow down for a time after Ovi Niit deals with Black Rathvi. At least several weeks. If he sees things get better, he’ll know he was right. You understand?’
Mitat took a pose of affirmation, but it wasn’t solid. Amat didn’t bother replying formally, only raised a single eyebrow and waited. Mitat looked away, and then back. There was something like hope and also like distrust in her eyes. The face of someone who wants to believe, but is afraid to.
‘Can you do it?’ Mitat asked.
‘Make the numbers point to Black Rathvi? Of course I can. This is what I do. Can you get me a cloak and safe passage at least as far as the street?’
‘If you can put those two at each other’s throats, I can do anything,’ Mitat said.
It took less time than she’d expected. The numbers were simple enough to manipulate once she knew what she wanted to do with them. She even changed a few of the entries on their original sheets, blacking out the scrawling hand and forging new figures. When she was finished, a good accountant would have been able to see the deception. But if Ovi Niit had had one of those, Amat would never have been there.
She spent the remaining time composing her letter of leave-taking. She kept the tone formal, using all the titles and honorary flourishes she would have for a very respected merchant or one of the lower of the utkhaiem. She expressed her thanks for the shelter and discretion Ovi Niit and his house had extended and expressed regret that she felt it in her best interest - now that her work was done - to leave inconspicuously. She had too much respect, she wrote, sneering as she did so, for Niit-cha’s sense of advantage to expect him not to sell a commodity for which he no longer had use. She then outlined her findings, implicating Black Rathvi without showing any sign that she knew his name or his role in the house.
She folded the letter twice and then at the corners in the style of a private message and wrote Ovi Niit’s name on the overleaf. It perched atop the papers and books, ready to be discovered. Amat sat a while longer, listening to the wild music and slurred voices of the street, waiting for Mitat to appear. The night candle consumed small mark after small mark, and Amat began to wonder whether something had gone wrong.
It hadn’t.
However the girl had arranged it, leaving the house was as simple as shrugging on the deep green cloak, taking up her cane, and stepping out the rear door and down a stone path to the open gate that led to the street. In the east, the blackness was starting to show the gray of charcoal, the weakest stars on the horizon failing. The moon, near full, had already set. The night traffic was over but for a few revelers pulling themselves back from their entertainments. Amat, for all the pain in her joints, wasn’t the slowest.
She paused at a corner stand and bought a meal of fresh greens and fried pork wrapped in almond skin and a bowl of tea. She ate as the sun rose, climbing like a god in the east. She was surprised by the calm she felt, the serenity. Her ordeal was, if not over, at least near its end. A few more days, and then whatever Marchat was doing would be done. And if she spent weeks in hell, she was strong enough, she saw, to come through it with grace.
She even believed the story until the girl running the stall asked if she’d want more tea. Amat almost wept at the small kindness. So perhaps she wasn’t quite so unscathed as she told herself.
She reached her apartments in the press of the morning. On a normal day, if she could recall those, she might have been setting forth just then. Or even a bit earlier. Off into her city, on the business of her house. She unlocked the door of her apartments, slipped in, and barred the door behind her. It was a risk, coming home without being sure of things with Marchat’s cruel business, but she needed money. And the stinging salve for her legs. And a fresh robe. And sleep. Gods, she needed sleep. But that would wait.
She gathered her things quickly and made for the door, struggling to get down the stairs. She had enough silver in her sleeve to buy a small house for a month. Surely it would be enough for a room and discretion for three or four days. If she could only . . .
No. No, of course she couldn’t. When she opened the door, three men blocked her. They had knives. The tallest moved in first, clamping a wide palm over her mouth and pushing her against the wall. The others slid in fast as shadows, and closed the door again. Amat closed her eyes. Her heart was racing, and she felt nauseated.
‘If you scream, we’ll have to kill you,’ the tall man said gently. It was so much worse for being said so carefully. Amat nodded, and he took his hand away. Their knives were still drawn.
‘I want to speak with Wilsin-cha,’ Amat said when she had collected herself enough to say anything.
‘Good that we’ve sent for him, then,’
one of the others said. ‘Why don’t you have a seat while we wait.’
Amat swallowed, hoping to ease the tightness in her throat. She took a pose that accepted the suggestion, turned and made her way again up the stairs to wait at her desk. Two of the men followed her. The third waited below. The sun had moved the width of two hands together when Marchat walked up the steps and into her rooms.
He looked older, she thought. Or perhaps not older, but worn. His hair hung limp on his brow. His robes fit him poorly, and a stain of egg yolk discolored the sleeve. He paced the length of the room twice, looking neither directly at her nor away. Amat, sitting at her desk, folded her hands on one knee and waited. Marchat stopped at the window, turned and gestured to the two thugs.
‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Wait downstairs.’
The two looked at one another, weighing, Amat saw, whether to obey him. These were not Marchat’s men, then. Not truly. They were the moon-faced Oshai’s perhaps. One shrugged, and the other turned back with a pose of acknowledgment before they both moved to the door and out. Amat listened to their footsteps fading.
Marchat looked out, down, she presumed, to the street. The heat of the day was thick. Sweat stained his armpits and dampened his brow.
‘You’re too early,’ he said at last, still not looking directly at her.
‘Am I?’
‘By three days.’
Amat took a pose of apology more casual than she felt. Silence held them until at last Marchat looked at her directly. She couldn’t read his expression - perhaps anger, perhaps sorrow, perhaps exhaustion. Her employer, the voice of her house, sighed.
‘Amat . . . Gods, things have been bad. Worse than I expected, and I didn’t think they’d be well.’
He walked to her, lowered himself onto the cushion that Liat usually occupied, and rested his head on his hands. Amat felt the urge to reach out, to touch him. She held the impulse in.
‘It’s nearly over,’ he continued. ‘I can convince Oshai and his men that it’s better to let you live. I can. But Amat. You have to help me.’
‘How?’
‘Tell me what you’re planning. What you’ve started or done or said that might stop the trade.’
Amat felt a slow smile pluck her lips, a low, warm burble of laughter bloom in her chest. Her shoulders shook and she took a pose of amazement. The absurdity of the question was like a wave lifting up a swimmer. Marchat looked confused.
‘What I’ve done to stop it?’ Amat asked. ‘Are you simple? I’ve run like my life depended on it, kept my head low and prayed that whatever you’d started, you could finish. Stop you? Gods, Marchat, I don’t know what you’re thinking.’
‘You’ve done nothing?’
‘I’ve been through hell. I’ve been beaten and threatened. Someone tried to light me on fire. I’ve seen more of the worst parts of the city than I’ve seen in years. I did quite a bit. I worked longer hours at harder tasks than you’ve ever gotten from me.’ The words were taking on a pace and rhythm of their own, flowing out of her faster and louder. Her face felt flushed. ‘And, in my spare moments, did I work out a plan to save the house’s honor and set the world to rights? Did I hire men to discover your precious client and warn the girl what you intend to do to her? No, you fat Galtic idiot, I did not. Had you been expecting me to?’
Amat found she was leaning forward, her chin jutting out. The anger made her feel better for the moment. More nearly in control. She recognized it was illusion, but she took comfort in it all the same. Marchat’s expression was sour.
‘What about Itani, then?’
‘Who?’
‘Itani. Liat’s boy.’
Amat took a dismissive pose.
‘What about him? I used him to discover where you were going, certainly, but you must know that by now. I didn’t speak with him then, and I certainly haven’t since.’
‘Then why has he gone out with the poet’s student three nights of the last five?’ Marchat demanded. His voice was hard as stone. He didn’t believe her.
‘I don’t know, Marchat-cha. Why don’t you ask him?’
Marchat shook his head, impatient, stood and turned his back on her. The anger that had held Amat up collapsed, and she was suddenly desperate that he believe her, that he understand. That he be on her side. She felt like a portman’s flag, switching one way to another with the shifting wind. If she’d been able to sleep before they spoke, if she hadn’t had to flee Ovi Niit’s house, if the world were only just or fair or explicable, she would have been able to be herself - calm, solid, grounded. She swallowed her need, disgusted by it and pretended that she was only calming herself from her rage, not folding.
‘Or,’ she said, stopping him as he reached the head of the stairs, ‘if you want to be clever about it, ask Liat.’
‘Liat?’
‘She’s the one who told me where the two of you had gone. Itani told her, and she told me. If you’re worried that Itani’s corrupting the poets against you, ask Liat.’
‘She’d suspect,’ Marchat said, but his tone begged to be proved wrong. Amat closed her eyes. They felt so good, closed. The darkness was so comfortable. Gods, she needed to rest.
‘No,’ Amat said. ‘She wouldn’t. Approach her as if you were scolding her. Tell her it’s unseemly for those kinds of friendships to bloom in the middle of a working trade, and ask her why they couldn’t wait until it was concluded. At the worst, she’ll hide the truth from you, but then you’ll know she has something she’s hiding.’
Her employer and friend of years hesitated, his mind turning the strategy over, looking for flaws. A breath of air smelling of the sea touched Amat’s face. She could see it in Marchat’s eyes when he accepted her suggestion.
‘You’ll have to stay here until it’s over,’ he said. ‘I’ll have Oshai’s men bring you food and drink. I still need to make my case to Oshai and the client, but I will make it work. You’ll be fine.’
Amat took an accepting pose. ‘I’ll be pleased being here,’ she said. Then, ‘Marchat? What is this all about?’
‘Money,’ he said. ‘Power. What else is there?’
And as he walked down the stairs, leaving her alone, it fit together like a peg slipping into its hole. It wasn’t about the child. It wasn’t about the girl. It was about the poet. And if it was about the poet, it was about the andat. If the poet Heshai lost control of his creation, if Seedless escaped, the cotton trade in Saraykeht would lose its advantage over other ports in the islands and the Westlands and Galt. Even when a new andat came, it wasn’t likely that it would be able to fuel the cotton trade as Seedless or Petals-Falling had.
Amat went to her window. The street below was full - men, women, dogs, carts. The roofs of the city stretched out to the east, and down to the south the seafront was full. Trade. The girl Maj would be sacrificed to shift the balance of trade away from Saraykeht. It was the only thing that made sense.
‘Oh, Marchat,’ she breathed. ‘What have you done?’
The teahouse was nearly empty. Two or three young men inside were still speaking in raised voices, their arguments inchoate and disjointed. Out in the front garden, an older man had fallen asleep beside the fountain, his long, slow breathing a counterpoint to the distant conversation. A lemon candle guttered and died, leaving only a long winding plume of smoke, gray against the night, and the scent of an extinguished wick. Otah felt the urge to light a fresh candle, but he didn’t act on it. On the bench beside him, Maati sighed.
‘Does it ever get cold here, Otah-kvo?’ Maati asked. ‘If we were with the Dai-kvo, we’d be shivering by now, even if it is midsummer. It’s midnight, and it’s almost hot as day.’
‘It’s the sea. It holds the heat in. And we’re too far south. It’s colder as you go north.’
‘North. Do you remember Machi?’
Visions took Otah. Stone walls thicker than a man’s height, stone towers reaching to a white sky, stone statues baked all day in the fires and then put in the children’s room to r
adiate their heat through the night.
He remembered being pulled through snow-choked streets on a sleigh, a sister whose name he no longer knew beside him, holding close for warmth. The scent of burning pine and hot stone and mulled wine.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not really.’
‘I don’t often look at the stars,’ Maati said. ‘Isn’t that odd?’
‘I suppose,’ Otah allowed.
‘I wonder whether Heshai does. He stays out half the time, you know. He wasn’t even there yesterday when I came in.’
‘You mean this morning?’
Maati frowned.
‘I suppose so. It wasn’t quite dawn when I got there. You should have seen Seedless stalking back and forth like a cat. He tried to get me to say where I’d been, but I wouldn’t talk. Not me. I wonder where Heshai-kvo goes all night.’