In the darkness, stars spilled across the sky. The distant lights of the palaces, of the city, might almost not have been. Liat considered the crescent moon, its shining curve of light cupping a darkness of blotted stars. Frogs and crickets sang and the manicured grass at the side of the koi pond tickled the bottoms of her feet. She looked around carefully before shrugging out of her robe. The water of the pond was no worse than she might find in the cold pool of a bathhouse. The fish darted away from her and then slowly returned. Reeds at the water’s edge rubbed against each other with a sound like hands on skin, disturbed by the waves of her movements.
Floating on her back, her legs kicking slowly, she thought of Itani. She didn’t feel as if she were betraying him, though she knew that she was. Maati and Itani - Otah - seemed to inhabit entirely different places in her heart. The one seemed so little related to the other. Itani was her heartmate, the man she’d shared her bed with for months. Maati was her friend, her confidant, her only support in a world empty even of the other man. For hours at a time and especially in his company, she could forget the guilt and the dread. She didn’t know how it could be like this: so easy and so difficult both.
The chill touched her bones, and she turned, swimming easily to the shore. The rich mud squelched between her toes. Against wet flesh, the air was much colder than the water had been. By the time she found her robe, she was shivering. The night around her was silent, the insects and night birds gone still.
‘There must be some etiquette to address situations like this,’ Seedless said from the darkness, ‘but I’m sure I don’t know what it is.’
The andat’s face seemed hung in the air, the pale lips quirked in a smile both amused and grim. He moved forward as she pulled on her robe. His cloak - black shot with blue - seemed to weave in and out of the darkness. He pulled something bulky from a sleeve and held it out to her. A hair cloth.
‘I brought this for you,’ he said. ‘Once I understood what you were doing I thought you’d want it.’
Liat took it, falling into a pose of gratitude by reflex. The andat returned it dismissively, squatted on the grassy slope and, his arms resting on his knees, looked out over the pond.
‘You got out of the torture box.’
‘One of them. Heshai-kvo let me out. He’s been doing it for several days now on the condition that I promise to stay within sight of the house. I’ve sworn a sacred oath, though I imagine I’ll break it eventually. It’s why he’s improving. Locking away a part of yourself - especially a shameful one - gives that part power over all the rest. It’s the danger of splitting yourself in two, don’t you find?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Liat said.
Seedless smiled in genuine amusement.
‘Dry your hair,’ he said. ‘I’m not judging you, my dear. I’m a babykiller. You’re a girl of seventeen summers who’s taken a second lover. It hardly gives me the high ground.’
Liat wrapped her hair in the cloth and turned to leave, dry leaves stirring at her ankles. The words that stopped her were so soft, she might almost have imagined them.
‘I know about Otah.’
She paused. As if on cue, the chorus of crickets began again.
‘What do you know?’ she asked.
‘Enough.’
‘How?’
‘I’m clever. What do you intend to do when he comes back?’
Liat didn’t answer. The andat turned to consider her. He took a pose that unasked the question. Anger flashed in Liat’s breast.
‘I love him. He’s my heartmate.’
‘And Maati?’
‘I love him, too.’
‘But he isn’t your heartmate.’
Liat didn’t reply. In the dim light of moon and star, the andat smiled sadly and took a pose that expressed understanding and sympathy and acceptance.
‘Maati and I . . . we need each other. We’re alone otherwise. Both of us are very, very alone.’
‘Well, at least that won’t last. He’ll be back very soon,’ Seedless said. ‘Tomorrow, perhaps. Or the day after.’
‘Who?’
‘Otah.’
Liat felt her breath go shallow. It was a sensation quite like fear.
‘No, he won’t. He can’t.’
‘I think he can,’ the andat replied.
‘It’s a full three weeks just to Yalakeht. Even if he took a fast boat up the river, he’d only just be arriving now.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Then I suppose I must be mistaken,’ the andat said so mildly that Liat had no answer. Seedless laughed then and put his head in his hands.
‘What?’ Liat asked.
‘I’ve been an idiot. Otah is the Otah-kvo that Maati told me of. He doesn’t wear a brand and he’s not a poet, so I never connected them. But if Maati’s sent him to see the Dai-kvo . . . Yes. He must be.’
‘I thought you knew all about Otah,’ Liat said, her heart falling.
‘That may have been an exaggeration. Otah-kvo. A black robe who didn’t take the brand or become a poet. I think . . . I think I heard a story like that once. Well, a few questions of Heshai, and I’m sure I can dredge it up.’
The horror of what she’d done flooded her. Liat didn’t sit so much as give way. The leaves crackled under her weight. The andat looked over to her, alarmed.
‘You tricked me,’ she whispered.
Seedless tilted his head with an odd, sensual smile as much pity as wonderment. He took a pose offering comfort.
‘It wasn’t you, Liat-kya. Maati told me all about it before he even knew who I was. If you’ve betrayed your heartmate tonight - and, really, I think there’s a strong argument that you have - it wasn’t with me. And whether you believe it or not, the secret’s safe.’
‘I don’t. I don’t believe you.’
The andat smiled, and for a moment the sincerity in his face reminded her of Heshai-kvo.
‘Having a secret is like sitting at a roof’s edge with a rock, Liat. As long as you have the rock, you have the power of life and death over anyone below you. Drop the rock, and you’ve just got a nice view. I won’t spread your secret unless it brings me something, and as it stands, there’s no advantage to me. Unless things change, I won’t be telling any of your several secrets.’
Liat took a pose of challenge.
‘Swear it,’ she said.
‘To whom are you talking? How likely am I to be bound by an oath to you?’
Liat let her arms fall to her sides.
‘I won’t betray you,’ Seedless said, ‘because there’s no reason to, and because it would hurt Maati.’
‘Maati?’
Seedless shrugged.
‘I’m fond of him. He’s . . . he’s young and he hasn’t lived in the world for very long, perhaps. But he has the talent and charm to escape this if he’s wise.’
‘You sound like Heshai when you say that.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Do you . . . I mean, you don’t really care about Maati. Do you?’
Seedless stood. He moved with the grace and ease of a thrown stone. His robe hung from him, darker than the night. His face was the perfect white of a carnival mask, smooth as eggshell and as expressionless. The crickets increased their chirping songs until they were so loud, Liat was surprised that she could hear Seedless’ voice, speaking softly over them.
‘In ten years’ time, Liat-kya, look back at this - at what you and I said here, tonight. And when you do, ask yourself which of us was kinder to him.’
15
The days passed with an exquisite discomfort in the village of the Dai-kvo. The clear air, the cold stone of the streets, the perfection, the maleness and austerity and beauty were like a dream. Otah moved through the alleyways and loitered with other men by the firekeepers’ kilns, listening to gossip and the choir of windchimes. Messengers infested the village like moths, fluttering here and there. Speakers from every city, dressed in sump
tuous robes and cloaks, appeared every day and vanished again. The water tasted strange from influence, the air smelled of power.
While Otah had been lifting bales of cotton all day and pulling ticks out of his arms in the evenings, Maati had lived in these spaces. Otah went to his rooms each night, sick with waiting, and wondering who he would have been, had he taken the old Dai-kvo’s offer. And then, he would remember the school - the cruelty, the malice, the cold-hearted lessons and beatings and the laughter of the strong at the weak - and he wondered instead how Maati had brought himself to accept.
In the afternoon of his fifth day, a man in the white robes of a high servant found him on the wide wooden deck of a teahouse.
‘You are the courier for Maati Vaupathai?’ the servant asked, taking a pose both respectful and querying. Otah responded with an affirming pose. ‘The most high wishes to speak with you. Please come with me.’
The library was worked in marble; tall shelves filled with scrolls and bound volumes lined the walls, and sunlight shone through banks of clerestory windows with glass clear as air. Tahi-kvo - the Dai-kvo - sat at a long table of carved blackwood. An iron brazier warmed the room, smelling of white smoke and hot metal and incense. He looked up as the servant took a pose of completion and readiness so abjectly humble as to approach the ludicrous. Otah took no pose.
‘Go,’ the Dai-kvo said, and the white-robed servant left, pulling the wide doors closed behind him. Otah stood as Tahi-kvo considered him from under frowning brows then pushed a sewn letter across the table. Otah stepped forward and took it, tucking it into his sleeve. They stood for a moment in silence.
‘You were stupid to come,’ Tahi-kvo said, his tone matter-of-fact. ‘If your brothers find you’re alive they’ll stop eyeing each other and work in concert to kill you.’
‘I suppose they might. Will you tell them?’
‘No.’ Tahi-kvo rose and stalked to a bookshelf, speaking over his shoulder as he went. ‘My master died, you know. The season after you left.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Otah said.
‘Why did you come? Why you?’
‘Maati is a friend. And there was no one else who could be trusted.’ The other reasons weren’t ones he would share with Tahi-kvo. They were his own.
Tahi-kvo ran his fingers across the spines of the books. Even turned almost away, Otah could see the bitterness in his smile.
‘And he trusts you? He trusts Otah Machi? Well, he’s young. Perhaps he doesn’t know you so well as I do. Do you want to know what’s in this letter I’m sending with you?’
‘If he cares to tell me,’ Otah said.
The volume Tahi-kvo pulled down was ancient - bound in wood with clasps of metal and thick as a hand spread wide. He hefted it back and laid it on the table before he answered.
‘It says he mustn’t let Heshai lose control of his andat. It says there isn’t a replacement for it, and that there isn’t the prospect of one. If Seedless escapes, I have nothing to send, and Saraykeht becomes an oversized low town. That’s what it says.’
Tahi-kvo’s eyebrows rose, challenging. Otah took a pose that accepted the lesson from a teacher - a pose he’d taken before, when he’d been a boy.
‘Every generation, it’s become more difficult,’ Tahi-kvo said, angry, it seemed, at speaking the words. ‘There are fewer men who take up the mantle. The andat that escape are more and more difficult to recapture. Even the fourth-water ones like Seedless and Unstung. The time will come - not for me, I think, but for my successor or his - when the andat may fail us entirely. The Khaiem will be overrun by Galts and Westermen. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’
‘Yes,’ Otah said. ‘But not why.’
‘Because you had promise,’ Tahi-kvo said bitterly. ‘And because I don’t like you. But I have to ask this. Otah Machi, have you come here with this letter because you’ve regretted your refusal? Was it an excuse to speak to me because you’re seeking the robes of a poet?’
Otah didn’t laugh, though the questions seemed absurd. Absurd and - as they mixed in his mind with the sights and scents of the village - more than half sad. And beneath all that, perhaps he had. Perhaps he had needed to come here and see the path he had not chosen to know as a man whether he still believed in the choices he had made as a boy.
‘No,’ he said.
Tahi-kvo nodded, undid the clasps on the great book and opened it. It was in no script Otah had ever seen. The poet looked up at him, his gaze direct and unpleasant.
‘I thought not,’ he said. ‘Go then. And don’t come back unless you decide you’re man enough to take on the work. I don’t have time to coddle children.’
Otah took a pose of leave-taking, then hesitated.
‘I’m sorry, Tahi-kvo,’ he said. ‘That your master died. That you had to live this way. All of it. I’m sorry the world’s the way it is.’
‘Blame the sun for setting,’ the Dai-kvo said, not looking at him, not looking up.
Otah turned and walked out. The magnificence of the palace was amazing, rich even past the Khai Saraykeht. The wide avenues outside it were crowded in the late afternoon with men going about business of the highest importance, dressed in silks and woven linen and leather supple as skin. Otah took in the majesty of it and understood for the first time since he’d come the hollowness that lay beneath it. It was the same, he thought, as the emptiness in Heshai-kvo’s eyes. The one was truly a child of the other.
He was surprised, as he walked down to the edge of the village, to find himself moved to sorrow. The few tears that escaped him might have been shed for Maati or Heshai, Tahi-kvo or the boys of his cohort scattered now into the world, the vanity of power or himself. The question that had carried him here - whether he was truly Otah Machi or Itani Noyga; son of the Khaiem or seafront laborer - was unresolved, but it was also answered.
Either one, but never this.
‘When?’ Maj demanded, her arms crossed. Her cheeks were red and flushed, her breath smelled of wine. ‘I’ve been weeks living with whores and you, their pimp. You told me that the men who killed my child would be brought to justice. Now tell me when.’
The island girl moved quickly, scooping up a vase from Amat’s desk and throwing it against the far wall. The pottery shattered, flowers falling broken to the floor. The wet mark on the wall dripped and streaked. The guard was in the room almost before Amat could move, a knife the length of his forearm at the ready. Amat rose and pushed him back out despite his protests, closing the door behind him. Her hip ached badly. It had been getting worse these last weeks, and it added to everything else that made her irritable. Still, she held herself tall as she turned back to her sometime ally, sometime charge. The girl was breathing fast now, her chin jutting out, her arms pulled back. She looked like a little boy, daring someone to strike him. Amat smiled sweetly, took two slow strides, and slapped her smartly across the mouth.
‘I am working from before the sun comes up to half through the night for you,’ Amat said. ‘I am keeping this filthy house so that I have the money we need to prosecute your case. I have ruined my life for you. And I haven’t asked thanks, have I? Only cooperation.’
There were tears brimming in Maj’s pale eyes, streaking down her ruddy cheeks. The anger that filled Amat’s chest like a fire lessened. Moving more slowly, she walked to the mess against the far wall and, slowly, painfully, knelt.
‘What I’m doing isn’t simple,’ Amat said, not looking as she gathered the shards and broken flowers. ‘Wilsin-cha didn’t keep records that would tie him directly to the trade, and the ones that do exist are plausible whether he knew of the treachery or not. I have to show that he did. Otherwise, you may as well go home.’
The floor creaked with Maj’s steps, but Amat didn’t look up. Amat made a sack from the hem of her robe, dropped in the shattered vase and laid in the soft petals afterwards. The flowers, though destroyed, smelled lovely. She found herself reluctant to crush them. Maj crouched down beside her and helped clean.
‘We’ve made progress,’ Amat said, her voice softer now. She could hear the exhaustion in her own words. ‘I have records of all the transactions. The pearls that paid the Khai came on a Galtic ship, but I have to find which one.’
‘That will be enough?’
‘That will be a start,’ Amat said. ‘But there will be more. Torish-cha has had men on the seafront, offering payment for information. Nothing’s come from it yet, but it will. These things take time.’
Maj leaned close, placing a handful of debris into Amat’s makeshift bag. She meant well, Amat knew, but she buried the flowers all the same. Amat met her gaze. Maj tried to smile.