“What happened, love?” he asked, but Liat only shook her head. Otah stroked her unbound hair and waited until, with a shuddering sigh, she pulled back. She didn’t release his hand, and he didn’t try to reclaim it.
“Come to my cell,” she said. “We can talk there.”
The compound was subdued, men and women passing quickly though their duties as if nothing had happened, except for the air of tension. Liat led the way in silence, pushed open the door of her cell and pulled him into the shadows. A thin form lay on the cot, swathed in brown robes. Maati sat up, blinking sleep out of his eyes.
“Otah-kvo?” the boy asked.
“He came this morning looking for you,” Liat said, letting go of Otah’s hand at last and sitting at her desk. “I don’t think he’d eaten or had anything to drink since it happened. I brought him here, gave him an apple and some water, put him to bed, and sent a runner to Muhatia-cha.”
“I’m sorry,” Maati said. “I didn’t know where to find you, and I thought Liat-cha might . . .”
“It was a fine plan,” Otah said. “It worked. But what happened?”
Maati looked down, and Liat spoke. Her voice was hard as slate and as gray. Speaking softly, she told the story: she’d been fooled by the translator Oshai and the andat at the price of Maj and her babe. Maati took the narrative up: the poet was ill, eating little, drinking less, never leaving his bed. And the Khai, in his anger, had locked Seedless away. As detail grew upon detail, problem upon problem, Otah felt his chest grow tighter. Liat wouldn’t meet his gaze, and Otah wished Maati were elsewhere, so that he could take her in his arms. But he also knew there was nowhere else that Maati could turn. It was right that he’d come here. When Maati’s voice trailed off at last, Otah realized the boy was looking at him, waiting for something. For a decision.
“So he admitted to it,” Otah said, thinking as he spoke. “Seedless confessed to the Khai.”
Maati took a pose of confirmation.
“Why?” Otah asked. “Did he really think it would break Heshai-kvo’s spirit? That he’d be freed?”
“Of course he did,” Liat snapped, but Maati took a more thoughtful expression and shook his head.
“Seedless hates Heshai,” Maati said. “It was a flaw in the translation. Or else not a flaw but . . . a part of it. He may have only done it because he knew how badly Heshai would be hurt.”
“Heshai?” Liat demanded. “How badly Heshai would be hurt? What about Maj? She didn’t do anything to deserve this. Nothing!”
“Seedless . . . doesn’t care about her,” Maati said.
“Will Heshai release him?” Otah asked. “Did it work?”
Maati took a pose that both professed ignorance and apologized for it. “He’s not well. And I don’t know what confining Seedless will do to him—”
“Who cares?” Liat said. Her voice was bitter. “What does it matter whether Heshai suffers? Why shouldn’t he? He’s the one who controls the andat. If he was so busy whoring and drinking that he couldn’t be bothered to do his work, then he ought to be punished.”
“That’s not the issue, love,” Otah said, his gaze still on Maati.
“Yes, it is,” she said.
“If the poet wastes away and dies or if this drives him to take his own life, the andat goes free. Unless . . .”
“I’m not ready,” Maati said. “I’ve only just arrived here, really. A student might study under a full poet for years before he’s ready to take on the burden. And even then sometimes people just aren’t the right ones. I might not be able to hold Seedless at all.”
“Would you try?”
It took a long time before Maati answered, and when he did, his voice was small.
“If I failed, I’d pay his price.”
“What’s his price?” Liat asked.
“I don’t know,” Maati said. “The only way to find out is to fail. Death, most likely. But . . . I could try. If there was no one else to.”
“That’s insane,” Liat said, looking to Otah for support. “He can’t do that. It would be like asking him to jump off a cliff and see if he could learn to fly on the way down.”
“There isn’t the choice. There aren’t very many successful bindings. There aren’t many poets who even try them. There may be no replacement for Seedless, and even if there were, it might not work well with the cotton trade,” Maati said. He looked pale and ill. “If no one else can take the poet’s place, it’s my duty—”
“It hasn’t come to that. With luck, it won’t,” Otah said. “Perhaps there’s another poet who’s better suited for the task. Or some other andat that could take Seedless’ place if he escaped—”
“We could send to the Dai-kvo,” Liat said. “He’d know.”
“I can’t go,” Maati said. “I can’t leave Heshai-kvo here.”
“You can write,” Liat said. “Send a courier.”
“Can you do that?” Otah asked. “Write it all out, everything: the sad trade, Seedless, how the Khai’s responded. What you’re afraid may happen. All of it.”
Maati nodded.
“How long?” Otah asked.
“I could have it tomorrow. In the morning.”
Otah closed his eyes. His belly felt heavy with dread, his hands trembling as if he were about to attack a man or else be attacked. Someone had to carry the message, and it couldn’t be Maati. It would be him. He would do it himself. The resolve was simply there, like a decision that had been made long before.
Tahi-kvo’s face loomed up in his imagination, and with it, the sense of the school—its cold, bruising days and nights, the emptiness and the cruelty and the sense he had had, however briefly, of belonging. The anger rose in him again, as if it had only been banked all these years. Someone would have to go to the Dai-kvo, and Otah was ready to see the man again.
“Bring it here then,” he said. “To Liat’s cell. There are always ships leaving for Yalakeht this time of year. I’ll find a berth on one.”
“You’re not going,” Liat said. “You can’t. Your indenture . . .”
Otah opened the door and moved to one side. He walked Maati out to the passage with a pose that was both a thanks and a promise.
“You’re sure of this?” Maati asked.
Otah nodded, then turned away again. When they were alone, the cell fell back into twilight.
“You can’t go,” Liat said. “I need you to stay. I need someone . . . someone by my side. What happened to Maj, what happened to her baby . . . it was my fault. I let that happen.”
He moved to her, sitting on her desk, stroking her silk-smooth cheek with his knuckles. She leaned into him, taking his hand in both of hers and pressing it to her chest.
“I have to. Not just for this. My past is up there. It’s the right thing.”
“She hasn’t stopped crying. She sleeps and she wakes up crying. I went to see her when the utkhaiem released me. She was the first person I went to see. And when she looks at me, and I remember what she was like before . . . I thought she was callous. I thought she didn’t care. I didn’t see it.”
Otah slid down, kneeling on the floor, and put his arms around her.
“The reason you’re going,” Liat whispered. “It isn’t because of me, is it? It isn’t to get away from me?”
Otah sat, her head cradled against his shoulder. He could feel his mind working just below the level of thought—what he would need to do, the steps he would have to take. He stroked her hair, smooth as water.
“Of course not, love,” he said.
“Because you’ll be a great man one day. I can tell. And I’m just an idiot girl who can’t keep monsters like Oshai from . . . gods. ‘Tani. I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it.”
She wept, the sobs shaking her as he cooed and rocked her gently. He rested his chin on her bent head, curling her into him. She smelled of musk and tears. He held her until the sobbing quieted, until his arms ached. Her head lay heavy against him and her breath was almost slow as sleep.
“You’re
exhausted, love,” he said. “Come to bed. You need sleep.”
“No,” she said, rousing. “No, stay with me. You can’t go now.”
Gently, he lifted her and carried her to her cot. He sat beside her, her hand wrapping his like vine on brick.
“Three weeks to Yalakeht,” he said. “Then maybe two weeks up-river and a day or two on foot. Less than that coming back, since the river trip will be going with the water on the way down. I’ll be back before winter, love.”
In the light pressing in at the shutters and the door, he could see her eyes, bleary with grief and exhaustion, seeking his. Her face was unlined, relaxed, halfway asleep already.
“You’re excited to go,” she said. “You want to.”
And, of course, that was the truth. Otah pressed his palm to her lips, closing them. To her eyes. This wasn’t a conversation he was ready to have. Or perhaps only not with her.
He kissed her forehead and waited until she was asleep before he quietly opened her door and stepped out into the light.
11
> +
Her desk was piled with papers. Ink bricks hollowed from use stacked one on another at the head of the stairs, waiting to be carried away. The affairs of the house had fallen into near chaos while she was away. She had spent long nights looking over lists and ledgers and telling herself that she cared for them all the way she once had. That House Wilsin and her work for it had not been poisoned.
Amat sighed, sat up, and pushed the netting aside. Her world since her resurrection had been much the same—nightmares until dawn, gray and empty work and messages and meetings until sunset. At one point, seeing the strain on her face at the end of the day, Marchat had offered to send her away for a week to Chaburi-Tan once the season was over. The house could cover the expenses, he said. And she let herself imagine that time—away from Saraykeht and the seafront and her desk and the soft quarter—though the fantasy was washed by melancholy. It could never actually happen, but it would have been nice.
Instead, Amat Kyaan rose from her bed, pulled on clean robes, and walked out, leaning on her cane, to the corner stall where a girl from the low towns sold fresh berries wrapped in sweet frybread. It was good enough as a meal to see her through to midday. She ate it as she walked back to her apartments, trying to order her day in her mind, but finding it hard to concentrate on shifting meetings and duties back and forth. Simply leaving her mind blank and empty was so much easier.
Her time since the sad trade and her banishment had felt like being ill. She’d moved through her days without feeling them, unable to concentrate, uninterested in her work. Something had broken in her, and pretending it back to fixed wasn’t working. She’d half known it wouldn’t, and her mind had made plans for her almost without her knowing it.
The man waiting at her door was wearing robes of yellow and silver—the colors of House Tiyan. He was young—sixteen, perhaps seventeen summers. Liat’s age. An apprentice, then, but the apprentice of someone high in House Tiyan. There was only one errand that could mean. Amat shifted her schedule in her mind and popped the last of the berry-soaked frybread into her mouth. The young man, seeing her, fell into a pose of greeting appropriate for an honored elder. Amat responded.
“Kyaan-cha,” the boy said, “I come on behalf of Annan Tiyan . . .”
“Of course you do,” she said, opening her door. “Come inside. You have the listings?”
He hesitated behind her for only a moment. Amat went slowly up the stairs. Her hip was much better since she’d returned to her apartments with her stinging ointment and her own bed. She paused at her basin, washing the red stains from her food off her fingertips before she began handling papers. When she reached her desk, she turned and sat. The boy stood before her. He’d taken the paper from his sleeve—the one she’d sent to his master. She held out her hand, and he gave it to her.
The receipt was signed. Amat smiled and tucked the paper into her own sleeve. It would go with her papers later. The papers she was going to take with her, not the ones for House Wilsin. The box was on the desk under a pile of contracts. Amat shifted it out, into her lap. Dark wood banded by iron, and heavy with jewels and lengths of silver. She handed it to the boy.
“My master . . .” the boy began. “That is, Amat Kyaan-cha, I was wondering if . . .”
“Annan wants to know why I’m having him hold the package,” she said, “and he wanted you to find out without making it obvious you were asking.”
The boy blushed furiously. Amat took a pose that dismissed the issue.
“It’s rude of him, but I’d have done the same in his place. You may tell him that I have always followed Imperial form by caching such things with trusted friends. One of the people who had been doing me this favor is leaving the city, though, so it was time to find a new holder. And, of course, if he should ever care to, I would be pleased to return the favor. It’s got nothing to do with that poor island girl.”
It wasn’t true, of course, but it was convenient. This was the fourth such box she’d sent out to men and women in the city to whom she felt she might be able to appeal if circumstances turned against her again. The receipt was only as good as the honor of the people she stowed the boxes with. And there would be a certain amount of theft, she expected—one jewel replaced by another of less value. A few lengths of silver gone despite the locks. It wasn’t likely, though, that if she called for them, her boxes would be empty. And in an emergency, that would be very nearly all Amat cared about.
The boy took a pose of acknowledgement and retreated down the stairs. Amat understood what Saraykeht had taught her through Ovi Niit. She wouldn’t be caught without her wealth again. That it was a courtesy of the great families of the Empire before it collapsed gave her something like precedent. Annan wouldn’t believe that it was unrelated to Maj and the sad trade, but he would understand from her answer that she didn’t want him to gossip about it. That would suffice.
For the next hand and a half, she went through the contracts, making notations here and there—one copy for herself, one for the house. So late in the season, there were few changes to be made in the wording. But each contract carried with it two or three letters outlining the completion or modifications of terms and definitions, and these were the sort of things that would sink a trading house if they weren’t watched. She went through the motions, checking the translations of the letters in Galtic and the Khaiate, noting discrepancies, or places where a word might have more than one meaning. It was what she’d done for years, and she did it now mechanically and without joy.
When she reached the last one, she checked that the inks were dry, rolled the different documents in tubes tied with cloth ribbons, and packed them into a light satchel—there were too many to fit in her sleeves. She took her cane, then, and walked out into the city, heading north to the Wilsin compound. Away from the soft quarter.
The agents of the utkhaiem were present when she arrived at the wide courtyard of the house. Servants in fine silks lounged at the edge of the fountain, talking among themselves and looking out past the statue of the Galtic Tree to the street. She hesitated when she saw them, fear pricking at her for no reason she could say. She pushed it aside the way she pushed all her feelings aside these recent days, and strode past them toward Marchat Wilsin’s meeting room.
Epani Doru, Wilsin-cha’s rat-faced, obsequious master of house, sat before the wide wooden doors of the meeting room. When she came close, he rose taking a pose of welcome just res
pectful enough to pretend he honored her position.
“I’ve some issues I’d like Wilsin-cha to see,” she said, taking an answering pose.
“He’s meeting with men from the court,” Epani said, his voice an apology.
Amat glanced at the closed doors and sighed. She took a pose that asked for a duration. Epani answered vaguely, but with a sense that she would be lucky to see her employer’s face before sundown.
“It can wait, then,” Amat said. “It’s about the sad trade? Is that what they’re picking at him for?”
“I assume so, Amat-cha,” Epani said. “I understand from the servants that the Khai wants the whole thing addressed and forgotten as quickly as possible. There have been requests to lower tariffs.”
Amat clucked and shook her head.
“Sour trade, this whole issue,” she said. “I’m sorry Wilsin-cha ever got involved in it.”
Epani took a pose of agreement and mourning, but Amat thought for a moment there was something in the man’s expression. He knew, perhaps. Epani Doru might have been someone who Marchat took into his confidence the way he hadn’t taken her. An accomplice to the act. Amat noted her suspicion, tucked it away like a paper into a sleeve, and took a pose of query.
“Liat?”
“In the workrooms, I think,” Epani said. “The utkhaiem didn’t ask to speak with her.”
Amat didn’t reply. The workrooms of the compound were a bad place for someone of Liat’s rank to be. Preparing packets for the archives, copying documents, checking numbers—all the work done at the low slate tables was better suited for a new clerk, someone who had recently come to the house. Amat walked back to the stifling, still air and the smell of cheap lamp oil.
Liat sat at a table by herself, hunched over. Amat paused, considering the girl. The too-round face had misplaced its youth; Amat could see in that moment what Liat would be when her beauty failed her. A woman, then, and not a lovely one. A dreadful weight of sympathy descended on Amat Kyaan, and she stepped forward.
“Amat-cha,” Liat said when she looked up. She took a pose of apology. “I didn’t know you had need of me. I would have—”