Shadow and Betrayal

  For the first time since he had left the Dai-kvo, Maati felt himself in a space the character of which he could understand. He waited for his teacher, prepared for whatever punishment awaited him. Darkness came late, and he lit the night candle as the sun set. The silence of the poet’s house was his only companion as he slept.

  In the morning, servants delivered a meal of sweet fruits, apple-bread still warm from the palace kitchens, and a pot of smoky, black tea. Maati ate alone, a feeling of dread stealing over him. Putting him here alone to wait might, he supposed, be another trick, another misdirection. Perhaps no one would ever come.

  He turned his attention to the disorder that filled the house. After leaving the bowls, cups and knives from his own meal out on the grass for the servants to retrieve, he gathered up so many abandoned dishes from about the house that the pile of them made it seem he had eaten twice. Scrolls opened so long that dust covered the script, he cleaned, furled, and returned to the cloth sleeves that he could find. Several he suspected were mismatched - a deep blue cloth denoting legal considerations holding a scroll of philosophy. He took some consolation that the scrolls on the shelves seemed equally haphazard.

  By the afternoon, twinges of resentment had begun to join the suspicion that he was once again being duped. Even as he swept the floors that had clearly gone neglected for weeks, he began almost to hope that this further abandonment was another plot by the andat. If it were only that Heshai-kvo had this little use for him, perhaps the Dai-kvo shouldn’t have let him come. Maati wondered if a poet had the option of refusing an apprentice. Perhaps this neglect was Heshai-kvo’s way of avoiding duties he otherwise couldn’t.

  It had been only a few weeks before that he had taken leave of the Dai-kvo, heading south along the river to Yalakeht and there by ship to the summer cities. It was his first time training under an acting poet, seeing one of the andat first hand, and eventually studying to one day take on the burden of the andat Seedless himself. I am a slave, my dear. The slave you hope to own.

  Maati pushed the dust out the door, shoving with his broom as much as sweeping. When the full heat of the day came on, Maati opened all the swinging walls, transforming the house into a kind of pavilion. A soft breeze ruffled the pages of books and the tassels of scrolls. Maati rested. A distant hunger troubled him, and he wondered how to signal from here for a palace servant to bring him something to eat. If Heshai-kvo were here, he could ask.

  His teacher arrived at last, at first a small figure, no larger than Maati’s thumb, trundling out from the palace. Then as he came nearer, Maati made out the wide face, the slanted, weak shoulders, the awkward belly. As he crossed the wooden bridge, the high color in the poet’s face - cheeks red as cherries and sheened in an unhealthy sweat - came clear. Maati rose and adopted a pose of welcome appropriate for a student to his master.

  Heshai’s rolling gait slowed as he came near. The wide mouth gaped as Heshai-kvo took in the space that had been his unkempt house. For the first time, Maati wondered if perhaps he had made a mistake in cleaning it. He felt a blush rising in his cheeks and shifted to a pose of apology.

  Heshai-kvo raised a hand before he could speak.

  ‘No. No, it’s . . . gods, boy. I don’t think the place has looked like this since I came here. Did you . . . there was a brown book, leatherbound, on that table over there. Where did it end up?’

  ‘I don’t know, Heshai-kvo,’ Maati said. ‘I will find it immediately.’

  ‘Don’t. No. It will rise to the surface eventually, I’m sure. Here. Come. Sit.’

  The poet moved awkwardly, like a man gout-plagued, but his joints, so far as Maati could make them out within the brown robes, were unswollen. Maati tried not to notice the stains of spilled food and drink on the poet’s sleeves and down the front of his robes. As he lowered himself painfully into a chair of black lacquer and white woven cane, the poet spoke.

  ‘We’ve gotten off to a bad start, haven’t we?’

  Maati took a pose of contrition, but the poet waved it away.

  ‘I’m looking forward to teaching you. I thought I should say so. But there’s little enough that I can do with you just now. Not until the harvests are all done. And that may not be for weeks. I’ll get to you when I have time. There’s quite a bit I’ll have to show you. The Dai-kvo can give you a good start, but holding one of the andat is much more than anything he’ll have told you. And Seedless . . . well, I haven’t done you any favors with Seedless, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’m grateful that you were willing to accept me, Heshai-kvo.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, well. That’s all to the good, then. Isn’t it. In the meantime, you should make use of your freedom. You understand? It can be a lovely city. Take . . . take your time with it, eh? Live a little before we lock you back down into all this being a poet nonsense, eh?’

  Maati took a pose appropriate to a student accepting instruction, though he could see in Heshai’s bloodshot eyes that this was not quite the reply the poet had hoped for. An awkward silence stretched between them, broken when Heshai forced a smile, stood, and clapped Maati on the shoulder.

  ‘Excellent,’ the poet said with such gusto that it was obvious he didn’t mean it. ‘I’ve got to switch these robes out for fresh. Busy, you know, busy. No time to rest.’

  No time to rest. And yet it was the afternoon, and the poet, his teacher, was still in yesterday’s clothes. No time to rest, nor to meet him when he arrived, nor to come to the house anytime in the night for fear of speaking to a new apprentice. Maati watched Heshai’s wide form retreat up the stairs, heard the footsteps tramping above him as the poet rushed through his ablutions. His head felt like it had been stuffed with wool as he tried to catalog all the things he might have done that would have pushed his teacher away.

  ‘Stings, doesn’t it? Not being wanted,’ a soft voice murmured behind him. Maati spun. Seedless stood on the opened porch in a robe of perfect black shot with an indigo so deep it was hard to see where it blended with the deeper darkness. The dark, mocking eyes considered him. Maati took no pose, spoke no words. Seedless nodded all the same, as if he had replied. ‘We can talk later, you and I.’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

  ‘All the better. I’ll talk. You can listen.’

  The poet Heshai clomped down the stairs, a fresh robe, brown silk over cream, in place. The stubble had been erased from his jowls. Poet and andat considered each other for a breathless moment, and then turned and walked together down the path. Maati watched them go - the small, awkward shape of the master; the slim, elegant shadow of the slave. They walked, Maati noticed, with the same pace, the same length of stride. They might almost have been old friends, but for the careful way they never brushed each other, even walking abreast.

  As they topped the rise of the bridge, Seedless looked back, and raised a perfect, pale hand to him in farewell.

  ‘She doesn’t know.’

  Marchat Wilsin half-rose from the bath, cool water streaming off his body. His expression was strange - anger, relief, something else more obscure than these. The young man he had been meeting with stared at Amat, open-mouthed with shock at seeing a clothed woman in the bathhouse. Amat restrained herself from making an obscene gesture at him.

  ‘Tsani-cha,’ Wilsin said, addressing the young man though his gaze was locked on Amat. ‘Forgive me. My overseer and I have pressing business. I will send a runner with the full proposal.’

  ‘But Wilsin-cha,’ the young man began, his voice trailing off when the old Galt turned to him. Amat saw something in Wilsin’s face that would have made her blanch too, had she been less fueled by her rage. The young man took a pose of thanks appropriate to closing an audience, hopped noisily out of the bath and strode out.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ Amat demanded, leaning on her cane. ‘Have you spoken with her?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. Close the door, Amat.’

  ‘She thinks—’

  ‘I said close the door; I meant close the do
or.’

  Amat paused, then limped over and slammed the wooden door shut. The sounds of the bathhouse faded. When she turned back, Wilsin was sitting on the edge of the recessed bath, his head in his hands. The bald spot at the top of his head was flushed pink. Amat moved forward.

  ‘What were you thinking, Amat?’

  ‘That this can’t be right,’ she said. ‘I met with the girl. She doesn’t know about the sad trade. She’s an innocent.’

  ‘She’s the only one in this whole damned city, then. Did you tell her? Did you warn her?’

  ‘Without knowing what this is? Of course not. When was the last time you knew me to act without understanding the situation?’

  ‘This morning,’ he snapped. ‘Now. Just now. Gods. And where did you learn to speak Nippu anyway?’

  Amat stood beside him and then slowly lowered herself to the blue-green tiles. Her hip flared painfully, but she pushed it out of her mind.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked. ‘You’re hiring the Khai to end a pregnancy, and the mother doesn’t know that’s what you’re doing? You’re killing a wanted child? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I can’t tell you. I can’t explain. I’m . . . I’m not allowed.’

  ‘At least promise me that the child is going to live. Can you promise me that?’

  He looked over at her, his pale eyes empty as a corpse.

  ‘Gods,’ Amat breathed.

  ‘I never wanted to come here,’ he said. ‘This city. That was my uncle’s idea. I wanted to run the tripled trade. Silver and iron from Eddensea south to Bakta for sugar and rum, then to Far Galt for cedar and spicewood and back to Eddensea. I wanted to fight pirates. Isn’t that ridiculous? Me. Fighting pirates.’

  ‘You will not make me feel sorry for you. Not now. You are Marchat Wilsin, and the voice of your house in Saraykeht. I have seen you stand strong before a mob of Westermen screaming for blood. You faced down a high judge when you thought he was wrong and called him fool to his face. Stop acting like a sick girl. We don’t have to do this. Refuse the contract.’

  Wilsin looked up, his chin raised, his shoulders squared. For a moment, she thought he might do as she asked. But when he spoke, his voice was defeated.

  ‘I can’t. The stakes are too high. I’ve already petitioned the Khai for an audience. It’s in motion, and I can’t stop it any more than I can make the tide come early.’

  Amat kicked off her sandals, raised the hem of her robes, and let her aching feet sink into the cool water. Light played on the surface, patterns of brightness and shadow flickering across Marchat’s chest and face. He was weeping. That more than anything else turned her rage to fear.

  ‘Then help me make sense of it. What is this child?’ Amat said. ‘Who is the father?’

  ‘No one. The child is no one. The father is no one. The girl is no one.’

  ‘Then why, Marchat? Why . . .’

  ‘I can’t tell you! Why won’t you hear me when I say that? Ah? I don’t get to tell you. Gods. Amat. Amat, why did you have to go out there?’

  ‘You wanted me to. Why else ask me to arrange a bodyguard? You told me of a meeting I wasn’t welcome to. You said there was house business, and then you said that you trusted me. How could you think I wouldn’t look?’

  He laughed with a sound like choking - mirthless and painful. His thick fingers grasped his knees, fingertips digging into pink flesh. Amat laid her cane aside and pressed her palm to his bent shoulder. Through the carved cedar blinds she heard someone on the street shriek and go silent.

  ‘The round-faced one - Oshai. He came, didn’t he? He told you I went there.’

  ‘Of course he did. He wanted to know if I’d sent you.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That I hadn’t.’

  ‘I see.’

  The silence stretched. She waited, willing him to speak, willing some words that would put it in some perspective less awful than it seemed. But Wilsin said nothing.

  ‘I’ll go back to my apartments,’ Amat said. ‘We can talk about this later.’

  She reached for her cane, but Wilsin’s hand trapped hers. There was something in his eyes now, an emotion. Fear. It was as if they’d been soaking in it instead of water. She could feel her own heart trip faster as his eyes searched hers.

  ‘Don’t. Don’t go home. He’ll be waiting for you.’

  For the space of four breaths together, they were silent. Amat had to swallow to loosen her throat.

  ‘Hide, Amat. Don’t tell me where you’ve gone. Keep your head low for . . . four weeks. Five. It’ll be over by then. And once it’s finished with, you’ll be safe. I can protect you then. You’re only in danger if they think you might stop it from happening. Once it’s done . . .’

  ‘I could go to the utkhaiem. I could tell them that something’s wrong. We could have Oshai in chains by nightfall, if . . .’

  Marchat shook his wooly, white head slowly, his gaze never leaving hers. Amat felt the strength go out of his fingers.

  ‘If this comes out to anyone, I’ll be killed. At least me. Probably others. Some of them innocents.’

  ‘I thought there was only one innocent in this city,’ Amat said, biting her words.

  ‘I’ll be killed.’

  Amat hesitated, then withdrew her arm and took a pose of acceptance. He let her stand. Her hip screamed. And her stinging ointment was all at her apartments. The unfairness of losing that small comfort struck her ridiculously hard; one insignificant detail in a world that had turned from solid to nightmare in a day.

  At the door, she stopped, her hand on the water-thick wood. She looked back at her employer. At her old friend. His face was stone.

  ‘You told me,’ she said, ‘because you wanted me to find a way to stop it. Didn’t you?’

  ‘I made a mistake because I was confused and upset and felt very much alone,’ he said. His voice was stronger now, more sure of himself. ‘I hadn’t thought it through. But it was a mistake, and I see the situation more clearly now. Do what I tell you, Amat, and we’ll both see the other side of this.’

  ‘It’s wrong. Whatever this is, it’s evil and it’s wrong.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  Amat nodded and closed the door behind her when she went.

  3

  Through the day, the skies had been clear, hot and muggy. The rain only came with sunset; huge thunderheads towering into the sky, their flowing ropy trains tinted pink and gold and indigo by the failing light. The gray veil of water higher than mountains moved slowly toward the city, losing its festival colors in the twilight, pushing gusts of unpredictable wind before it, and finally reaching the stone streets and thick tile roofs in darkness. And in the darkness, it roared.

  Liat lay her head on Itani’s bare chest and listened to it: the angry hiss of falling rain, the lower rumble - like a river or a flood - of water washing through the streets. Here, in her cell at the compound of House Wilsin, it wasn’t so bad. The streets outside were safe to walk through. Lower in the city - the soft quarter, the seafront, the warehouses - people would be trapped by it, staying in whatever shelter they had found until the rain slackened and the waters fell. She listened to the sound of water and her lover’s heartbeat, smelled the cool scent of rain mixed with the musk of sex. In the summer cities, even a night rain didn’t cool the air so much that she felt the need to cover her bare skin.

  ‘We need to find a stronger frame for your netting,’ Itani said, prodding the knot of fallen cloth with his toe. Liat remembered that it had come down sometime during the evening. She smiled. The sex had left her spent - her limbs warm and loose, as if her bones had gone soft, as if she were an ocean creature.

  ‘I love you, ’Tani,’ she said. His hand caressed the nape of her neck. He had rough hands - strong from his work and callused - but he used them gently when he chose. She looked up at him, his long face and unkempt hair. His smile. In the light of the night candle, his skin seemed to glow. ‘Don’t go home tonight. Stay
here, with me.’

  When he sighed, his breath lifted her head and settled it gently back down. ‘I can’t. I’ll stay until the rain fades a little. But Muhatiacha’s been watching me ever since you sent me out with Wilsin-cha. He’s just waiting for an excuse to break me down.’

  ‘He’s just jealous,’ Liat said.

  ‘No, he’s jealous and he’s in control of my wages,’ Itani said, a wry amusement in his voice. ‘That makes him more than just jealous.’

  ‘It isn’t fair. You’re smarter than he is. You know numbers and letters. All the others like you better than him. You should be the overseer.’

  ‘If I was the overseer, the others wouldn’t like me as much. If Little Kiri or Kaimati or Tanani thought I’d be docking their pay for being slow or arriving late, they’d say all the same things about me that they do about Muhatia. It’s just the way it is. Besides, I like what I do.’