There was no place safer than the Saraykeht soft quarter at night, and no place more dangerous. Here alone, she suspected, of all the cities of the Khaiem, no one would be attacked, no one raped, no one killed except perhaps the whores and showfighters who worked there. For their clients, every opportunity to twist a mind with strange herbs, to empty a pocket with dice and khit tiles, or to cheapen sex as barter would be made available in perfect safety. It was a beautiful, toxic dream, and she feared it as she loved it. It was a part of her city.
The soft, tentative knock at her door didn’t startle her. She had been dreading it as much as expecting it. She turned, taking up her cane, and walked down the long, curved stair to the street level. The door was barred, not from fear, but to keep drunken laborers from mistaking hers for a comfort house. She lifted the bar and swung the door aside.
Liat Chokavi stood in the street, jaw tight, eyes cast down. She was a lovely little thing - brown eyes the color of milky tea and golden skin, smooth as an eggshell. If the girl’s face was a little too round to be classically beautiful, her youth forgave her.
Amat Kyaan raised her left hand in a gesture that greeted her student. Liat adopted an answering pose of gratitude at being received, but the stance was undercut by the defensiveness of her body. Amat Kyaan suppressed a sigh and stood back, motioning the girl inside.
‘I expected you earlier,’ she said as she closed the door.
Liat walked to the foot of the stair, but there paused and turned in a formal pose of apology.
‘Honored teacher,’ she began, but Amat cut her off.
‘Light the candles. I will be up in a moment.’
Liat hesitated, but then turned and went up. Amat Kyaan could trace the girl’s footsteps by the creaking of the timbers. She poured herself a cup of limed water, then went slowly up the stairs. The salve helped. Most days she woke able to convince herself that today there would be no trouble, and by nightfall her joints ached. Age was a coward and a thief, and she wasn’t about to let it get the better of her. Still, as she took the steps to her workroom, she trusted as much of her weight to the cane as she could.
Liat sat on the raised cushion beside Amat Kyaan’s oaken writing desk. Her legs were tucked up under her, her gaze on the floor. The lemon candles danced in a barely felt breeze, the smoke driving away the worst of the flies. Amat sat at the window and arranged her robe as if she were preparing herself for work.
‘Old Sanya must have had more objections than usual. He’s normally quite prompt. Give the changes here, let’s survey the damage, shall we?’
She held one hand out to the apprentice. A moment later, she lowered it.
‘I misplaced the contracts,’ Liat said, her voice a tight whisper. ‘I apologize. It is entirely my fault.’
Amat sipped her water. The lime made it taste cooler than it was.
‘You misplaced the contracts?’
‘Yes.’
Amat let the silence hang. The girl didn’t look up. A tear tracked down the round cheek.
‘That isn’t good,’ Amat said.
‘Please don’t send me back to Chaburi-tan,’ the girl said. ‘My mother was so proud when I was accepted here and my father would—’
Amat raised a hand and the pleading stopped, Liat’s gaze fixed on the floor. With a sigh, Amat pulled a bundle of papers from her sleeve and tossed them at Liat’s knees.
At least the girl hadn’t lied about it.
‘One of the laborers found this between the bales from the Innis harvest,’ Amat said. ‘I gave him your week’s wages as a reward.’
Liat had the pages in her hands, and Amat watched the tension flow out of her, Liat’s body collapsing on itself.
‘Thank you,’ the girl said. Amat assumed she meant some god and not herself.
‘I don’t suppose I need to tell you what would have happened if these had come out? It would have destroyed every concession House Wilsin has had from Sanya’s weavers in the last year.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I really am.’
‘And do you have any idea how the contracts might have fallen out of your sleeve? The warehouse seems an odd place to have lost them.’
Liat blushed furiously and looked away. Amat knew that she had guessed correctly. It should have made her angry, but all she really felt was a kind of nostalgic sympathy. Liat was in the middle of her seventeenth summer, and some mistakes were easier to make at that age.
‘Did you at least do something to make sure you aren’t giving him a child?’
Liat’s gaze flickered up at Amat and then away, fast as a mouse. The girl swallowed. Even the tips of her ears were crimson. She pretended to brush a fly off her leg.
‘I got some teas from Chisen Wat,’ she said at last, and softly.
‘Gods! Her? She’s as likely to poison you by mistake. Go to Urrat on the Street of Beads. She’s the one I always saw. You can tell her I sent you.’
When Liat looked at her this time, the girl neither spoke nor looked away. She’d shocked her. And, as Amat felt the first rush of blood in her own cheeks, maybe she’d shocked herself a little, too. Amat took a pose of query.
‘What? You think I was born before they invented sex? Go see Urrat. Maybe we can keep you from the worst parts of being young and stupid. Leaving contracts in your love nest. Which one was it, anyway? Still Itani Noyga?’
‘Itani’s my heartmate,’ Liat protested.
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’
He was a good-looking boy, Itani. Amat had seen him several times, mostly on occasions that involved prying her apprentice away from him and his cohort. He had a long face and broad shoulders, and was maybe a little too clever to be working as a laborer. He knew his letters and numbers. If he’d had more ambition, there might have been other work for a boy like that . . .
Amat frowned, her body taking a subtle tension even before the thought was fully in her mind. Itani Noyga, with his broad shoulders and strong legs. Certainly there was other work he could be put to. Driving away feral dogs, for example, and convincing roadside thugs to hunt for easier prey than Marchat Wilsin. Marchat wouldn’t be keeping track of who each of his laborers was sharing pillows with.
And pillows were sometimes the best places to talk.
‘Amat-cha? Are you all right?’
‘Itani. Where is he now?’
‘I don’t know. Likely back at his quarters. Or maybe a teahouse.’
‘Do you think you could find him?’
Liat nodded. Amat gestured for a block of ink, and Liat rose, took one from the shelf and brought it to her desk. Amat took a length of paper and took a moment to calm herself before she began writing. The pen sounded as dry as a bird claw on pavement.
‘There’s an errand I want Itani for. Marchat Wilsin needs a bodyguard tonight. He’s going to a meeting in one of the low towns at the half-candle, and he wants someone to walk with him. I don’t know how long the meeting will last, but I can’t assume it will be brief. I’ll tell his overseer to release him from duty tomorrow.’
She took another sheet of paper, scraped the pen across the ink and began a second letter. Liat, at her shoulder, read the words as she wrote them.
‘This one, I want you to deliver to Rinat Lyanita after you find Itani,’ Amat said as she wrote. ‘If Itani doesn’t know that he’s to go, Rinat will do. I don’t want Marchat waiting for someone who never arrives.’
‘Yes, Amat-cha, but . . .’
Amat blew on the ink to cure it. Liat’s words failed, and she took no pose, but a single vertical line appeared between her brows. Amat tested the ink. It smudged only a little. Good enough for the task at hand. She folded both orders and sealed them with hard wax. There wasn’t time to sew the seams.
‘Ask it,’ Amat said. ‘And stop scowling. You’ll give yourself a headache.’
‘The mistake was mine, Amat-cha. It isn’t Itani’s fault that I lost the contracts. Punishing him for my error is . . .’
‘It isn’t a punishment
, Liat-kya,’ Amat said, using the familiar -kya to reassure her. ‘I just need him to do me this favor. And, when he comes back tomorrow, I want him to tell you all about the journey. What town he went to, who was there, how long the meeting went. Everything he can remember. Not to anyone else; just to you. And then you to me.’
Liat took the papers and tucked them into her sleeve. The line was still between her brows. Amat wanted to reach over and smooth it out with her thumb, like it was a stray mark on paper. The girl was thinking too much. Perhaps this was a poor idea after all. Perhaps she should take the orders back.
But then she wouldn’t discover what business Marchat Wilsin was doing without her.
‘Can you do this for me, Liat-kya?’
‘Of course, but . . . is something going on, Amat-cha?’
‘Yes, but don’t concern yourself with it. Just do as I ask, and I’ll take care of the rest.’
Liat took a pose of acceptance and leave-taking. Amat responded with thanks and dismissal appropriate for a supervisor to an apprentice. Liat went down the stairs, and Amat heard her close the door behind her as she went. Outside, the fireflies shone and vanished, brighter now as twilight dimmed the city. She watched the streets: the firekeeper at the corner with his banked kiln, the young men in groups heading west into the soft quarter, ready to trade lengths of silver and copper for pleasures that would be gone by morning. And there, among them, Liat Chokavi walking briskly to the east, toward the warehouses and laborers’ quarters, the dyeworks and the weavers.
Amat watched until the girl vanished around a corner, passing beyond recall, then she went down and barred her door.
2
The boundary arch on the low road east of Saraykeht was a short walk from the Wilsin compound. They reached it in about the time it took the crescent moon to shift the width of two of Marchat’s thick fingers. Buildings and roads continued, splaying out into the high grasses and thick trees, but once they passed through the pale stone arch wide enough for three carts to pass through together and high as a tree, they had left the city.
‘In Galt, there’d have been a wall,’ Marchat said.
The young man, Itani, took a pose of query.
‘Around the city,’ Marchat said. ‘To protect it in time of war. We didn’t have andat to aim at each other like your ancestors did. In Kirinton, where I was born, anytime you were bad, the Lord Watchman set you to repairing the wall.’
‘Can’t have been pleasant,’ Itani agreed.
‘What do they do in Saraykeht when a boy’s caught stealing a pie?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Never misbehaved as a child?’
Itani grinned. He had a strong smile.
‘Rarely caught,’ Itani said. Marchat laughed.
They made an odd pair, he thought. Him, an old Galt with a walking staff as much to lean on as to swipe at dogs if the occasion arose, and this broad-backed, stone-armed young man in the rough canvas of a laborer. Not so odd, he hoped, as to attract attention.
‘Noyga’s your family name? Noyga. Yes. You work on Muhatia’s crew, don’t you?’
‘He’s a good man, Muhatia,’ Itani said.
‘I hear he’s a prick.’
‘That too,’ Itani agreed, in the same cheerful tone of voice. ‘A lot of the men don’t like working with him. He’s got a sharp tongue, and he hates running behind schedule.’
‘You don’t mind him, though?’
Itani shrugged. It was another point in his favor. The boy disliked his overseer, that was clear, and yet here he was, alone with the head of the house and not willing to tell tales against him. It spoke well of him, and that was good for more than one reason. That he could trust Itani’s discretion made his night one degree less awful.
‘What else was different in Kirinton?’ Itani asked, and as they walked, Marchat told him. Tales of the Galt of his childhood. The war with Eymond, the blackberry harvests, the midwinter bonfires when people brought their sins to be burned. The boy listened carefully, appreciatively. Granted, he was likely just currying favor, but he did it well. It wasn’t far before Marchat felt the twinges of memories half-forgotten. He’d belonged somewhere once, before his uncle had sent him here.
The road was very little traveled, especially in the dead of night. The darkness made the uneven cobbles and then rutted dirt treacherous; the flies and night wasps were out in swarms, freed from torpor by the relative cool of the evening. Cicadas sang in the trees. The air smelled of moonrose and rain. No one in the few houses they passed that had candles and lanterns still burning seemed to show much curiosity, and it wasn’t long before they were out, away from the last traces of Saraykeht. Tall grasses leaned close against the road, and twice groups of men passed them without comment or glance. Once something large shifted in the grass, but nothing emerged from it.
As they came nearer the low town, Marchat could feel his companion moving more slowly, hesitating. He couldn’t say if the laborer was picking up on his own growing dread, or if there was some other issue. The first glimmering light of the low town was showing in the darkness when the man spoke.
‘Marchat-cha, I was wondering . . .’
Marchat tried to take a pose of polite encouragement, but the walking stick complicated things. Instead he said, ‘Yes?’
‘I’m coming near to the end of my indenture,’ Itani said.
‘Really? How old are you?’
‘Twenty summers, but I signed on young.’
‘You must have. You’d have been, what? Fifteen?’
‘There’s a girl,’ the young man said, having trouble with the words. Embarrassed. ‘She’s . . . well, she’s not a laborer. I think it’s hard for her that I am. I’m not a scholar or a translator, but I have numbers and letters. I was wondering if you might know of any opportunities.’
In the darkness, Marchat could see the boy’s hands twisted into a pose of respect. So that was it.
‘If you move up in the world, you think she’ll like you better.’
‘It would make things easier for her,’ Itani said.
‘And not for you?’
Again, the grin, and this time a shrug with it.
‘I lift things and put them back down,’ Itani said. ‘It’s tiring sometimes, but it’s not difficult.’
‘I don’t know of anything just at hand. I’ll see what I can find though.’
‘Thank you, Wilsin-cha.’
They walked along another few paces. The light before them became a solid glow. A dog barked, but not so nearby as to be worrisome, and no other barks or howls answered it.
‘She told you to ask me, didn’t she?’ Marchat asked.
‘Yes,’ Itani agreed, the tension that had been in his voice gone.
‘Are you in love with her?’
‘Yes,’ the boy said, ‘I want her to be happy.’
Those are two different answers, Marchat thought, but didn’t say. He’d been that age once, and he remembered it well enough to know there was no point in pressing. They were in the low town proper now, anyway.
The streets here were muddy and smelled more of shit than moonrose. The buildings with their rotting thatch roofs and rough stone walls stood off at angles from the road. Two streets in, and so almost halfway though the town, a long, low house stood at the opening to a rough square. A lantern hung from a hook beside its door. Marchat motioned to Itani.
‘Wait for me here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
Itani nodded his understanding. There was no hesitation or objection in his stance so far as Marchat could tell. It was more than he would have expected of himself if someone had told him to stand in this pesthole street in the black of night for some unknown stretch of time. Gods go with you, you poor bastard, Marchat thought. And with me, too, for that.
Inside, the house was dim. The ceiling was low, and though the walls were wide apart, the house had the feel of being too close. Like a cave. Part of that was the smell of mold and stale water, par
t the dim doorways and black arches that led to the inner rooms. A squat table ran the length of one wall, and two men stood against it. The larger, a thick-necked tough with a long knife hanging from his belt, eyed Marchat. The other, moon-faced and pleasant-looking, nodded welcome.
‘Oshai,’ Marchat said by way of greeting.
‘Welcome to our humble quarters,’ the moon-faced man said and smiled. Marchat disliked that smile, polite though it was. It was too much like the smile of someone helping you onto a sinking boat.