“Really?”
“No,” the courier said, “but I think I have more money than you do, and as it happens the fish here is really quite good.”
The serving man hovered, looking uncomfortable, until Otah laughed.
“At least let me pay my half,” Otah said, but Orai took a pose of deferment: next time.
“So, Itani,” he said. “This is the end? Or how far upriver is your sister?”
“A day or so by boat,” Otah lied. “Two days walking. Or so she tells me. I’ve never been.”
“A few days more, and you could see the poet’s village. You’ve never been there, have you?”
“No,” Otah said.
“It’s worth the extra travel, if you can spare it. The houses of the Dai-kvo are actually built into the living rock. They say it’s based on the school of the ancients in the old Empire, though I don’t suppose there’s much left of those ruins to compare. It’s a good story.”
“I suppose.”
The fish was very good—bright with lemon, hot with pepper. Otah realized after a few mouthfuls that he had really been very hungry.
“And now that you’re at the end of your first journey over water, what do you think of it?”
“It’s strange,” Otah said. “The world still feels like it’s moving”
“Yes. It does stop after a while. More than that, though. There was a saying when I was young that sea journeys are like women—they change you. And none so much as the first.”
“I don’t know about that,” Otah said. “I seem to be more or less the same man I was in Saraykeht. Ten fingers, ten toes. No flippers.”
“Perhaps it’s just a saying, then.”
Orai poured himself another bowl of tea and held it in his hands, blowing across it to cool it. Otah finished the last of the rice and leaned back to find the courier’s gaze on him, considering. He replied with a pose of query that seemed to pull Orai out of a half-dream.
“I have to confess, Itani, it isn’t precisely chance that I found you here. The fish really is very good, but I found you by asking after you. I’ve been working for House Siyanti for eight years, and traveling for five of those. I think it’s taught me a few things and I’ll flatter myself to say I think I’m a good judge of character. These last weeks, on the ship, you’ve stuck me as an interesting man. You’re smart, but you hide the fact. You’re driven, but I don’t think you know yet what you’re driven toward. And you like travel. You have a gift for it.”
“You’re just saying that because I didn’t get sick the way you did,” Otah said, trying to lighten the mood.
“Being able to eat your first day on ship is a gift. Don’t underestimate it. But all this time, it’s occurred to me that you have the makings of a good courier. And I hold enough influence in the house now, that if you wanted a letter of introduction, I think I might be able to help you with it. You wouldn’t be trusted with important work at the start, but that doesn’t make seeing the cities any less. It’s not an easy life, but it’s an interesting one. And it might suit you.”
Otah cocked his head and felt a flush rising in him equally gratification and embarrassment. The courier sipped his tea, letting the moment stretch until Otah took a pose that encompassed both gratitude and refusal.
“I belong in Saraykeht,” he said. “There are things there I need to see through.”
“Your indenture. I understand. But that’s going to end before much longer.”
“There’s more than that, though. I have friends there.”
“And the girl,” Orai said.
“Yes. Liat. I . . . I don’t think she’d enjoy having a lover who was always elsewhere.”
Orai took a pose of understanding that seemed to include a reservation, a question on the verge of being formed. When he did speak, it was in fact a question, though perhaps not the one he’d wanted to ask.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty summers.”
“And she’s . . . ?”
“Seventeen.”
“And you love her,” Orai said. Otah could hear the almost-covered disappointment in the words. “She’s your heartmate.”
“I don’t know that. But I have to find out, don’t I?”
Orai grinned and took a pose that conceded the point, then, hesitating, he plucked something from his sleeve. It was a letter sewn closed and sealed with hard green wax stamped with an ornate seal.
“I took the chance that you’d accept my suggestion,” the courier said, passing the letter across the table. “If it turns out this amazing young woman doesn’t own your heart after all, consider the offer open.”
Otah dropped it into his own sleeve and took a pose of thanks. He felt an unreasonable trust for this man, and an ease that three week’s acquaintance—even in the close quarters of a ship—couldn’t explain. Perhaps, he thought, it was only the change of his first sea voyage.
“Orai,” he said, “have you ever been in love?”
“Yes. Several times, and with some very good women.”
“Can you love someone you don’t trust?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “I have a sister I wouldn’t lend two copper lengths if I wanted them back. The problem loving someone you don’t trust is finding the right distance.”
“The right distance.”
“With my sister, we love each other best from different cities. If we had to share a house, it wouldn’t go so gracefully.”
“But a lover. A heartmate.”
Orai shook his head.
“In my experience, you can bed a woman and mistrust her or you can love a woman and mistrust her, but not all three at once.”
Otah sipped his tea. It had gone tepid. Orai waited, his boyish face with its graying beard serious. Two men left from another table, and the cold draft from the briefly opened door made Otah shiver. He put down the green bowl and set his hands together on the table. His head felt thick, his mind stuffed with wool.
“Before I left Saraykeht,” he said slowly, “I told Liat some things. About my family.”
“But not because you trust her?”
“Because I love her and I thought I ought to trust her.”
He looked up, his gaze meeting Orai’s. The courier took a pose of understanding and sympathy. Otah replied with one that surrendered to greater forces—gods or fate or weight of circumstances. There seemed little more to say. Orai rose.
“Keep hold of that letter,” he said. “And whatever happens, good luck to you. You’ve been a good man to travel with, and that’s a rare thing.”
“Thank you,” Otah said.
The courier pulled his robes closed about him and left. Otah finished his bowl of tea before he also quit the teahouse. The bay of Yalakeht was wide and calm and still before him; the port that ended his first journey over the sea. His mind unquiet, he turned to the north and west, walking through the wet, narrow streets to the river gate, and some days beyond that, the Dai-kvo.
“THIS IS SHIT!” THE ONE-EYED MAN SHOUTED AND THREW THE PAPERS ON the floor. His face was flushed, and the scarring that webbed his cheeks shone white. Amat could feel the others in the room agreeing, though she never took her gaze from this—Ovi Niit’s unappointed spokesman. “He would never have done this.”
The front room of the comfort house was crowded, though none of the people there were patrons. It was far too early for one thing. The soft quarter wasn’t awake in the day. And the watch had closed the house at her request. They were with her still. Big scowling men wearing the colors of the great comfort houses as a symbol of their loyalty to no one house, but the soft quarter itself. The protecting soldiery of vice.
Behind Amat, where she couldn’t see them, Torish Wite and his men stood, waiting. And arrayed before her, leaning against walls or sitting on the tables and chairs, were the guards and gambling chiefs and whores of Ovi Niit’s house. Amat caught herself, and couldn’t entirely stop the smile. Her house. It was a mistake to think of it as the dead man??
?s.
“He did,” she said. “If he didn’t tell you, perhaps you weren’t as close as you’d thought. And you can burn those papers and eat the ashes if you like. It won’t change anything.”
The one-eyed man turned to the watch captain, taking a pose of imprecation. The captain—a dark-eyed man with a thin, braided beard—took no answering pose.
“They’re forged,” the one-eyed man said. “They’re forged and you know it. If Niit-cha was going to sell out, it wouldn’t be to a high town cunt like her.”
“I’ve spoken to the firekeep that signed witness,” the captain said.
“Who was it?” a thin, gray-haired man asked. One of the tiles men.
“Marat Golu. Firekeeper for the weaver’s quarter.”
A murmur ran through the room. Amat felt her belly go tight. That was a detail she would have preferred to leave quiet. The tiles man was clever.
“Gods!” the one-eyed man said. “Him? We have girls that are more expensive.”
Amat took a pose that asked clarification. Her hands were steady as stone, her voice pleasant.
“Are you suggesting that one of the utkhaiem is engaging in fraud?”
“Yes I am!” the one-eyed man roared. The tiles man pursed his lips, but stayed silent. “Bhadat Coll was Niit-cha’s second now Black Rathvi’s gone, and if Niit-cha’s dead, the house should be his.”
“Niit-cha isn’t dead,” Amat said. “This house and everyone it have been bought and paid for. You can read the contracts yourselves, if you can read.”
“You can roll your contracts up and fuck them,” the one-eyed man shouted. There was a fleck of white at the corner of his mouth. The violence in him was just this side of breaking out. Amat rubbed her thumb and finger together, a dry sound. Part of her mind was wrapped in panic, in visceral, animal fear. The other parts of her mind were what had made her the overseer of a great house.
“Gentlemen of the watch,” she said. “I’m releasing this man from his indenture. Would you see him to the street.”
It had the effect she’d hoped for. The one-eyed man shouted something that might have had words in it, or might only have been rage. A blade appeared in his hand, plucked from his sleeve, and he leaped for her. She forced herself not to flinch as the watchmen cut him down.
The silence that fell was absolute. She surveyed the denizens of her house—her house—judging as best she could what they thought, what they felt. Many of these men were watching their lives shatter before them. In the women, the boys, disbelief, confusion, perhaps a sliver of hope. Two of Torish-cha’s men gathered up the dying man and hauled him out. The watch wiped their blades, and their captain, fingers pulling thoughtfully at his beard, turned to the survivors.
“Let me make this clear,” he said. “The watch recognizes this contract as valid. The house is the lawful property of Amat Kyaan. Any agreements are hers to enforce, and any disagreements that threaten the peace of the quarter, we’ll be dealing with.”
The tiles man shifted, his brows furrowed, his hands twitching toward some half-formed pose.
“Let’s not be stupid about this,” the captain said, his eyes, Amat saw, locked on the tiles man. There was a moment of tension, and then it was over. It was rotten as last month’s meat, and everyone knew it. And it didn’t matter. With the watch behind her, she’d stolen it fairly.
“The house will be closed tonight,” Amat announced. “Torish-cha and his men are to be acting as guards. Any of you with weapons will turn them over now. Anyone besides them found with a weapon will be punished. Anyone using a weapon will be blinded and turned out on the street. Remember, you’re my property now, until your indentures are complete or I release you. I’m going to ask the watch to stay until a search of the house is complete. Torish-cha?”
From behind her, the men moved forward. The captain moved over to her. His leathers stank.
“You’ve got yourself a handful of vipers,” he said as her thugs and cutthroats disarmed Ovi Niit’s thugs and cutthroats. “Are you certain you want this?”
“It’s mine now. Good or ill.”
“The watch will back you, but they won’t like it. Whatever you did, you did outside the quarter, but some people think this kind of thing is poor form. Your troubles aren’t over.”
“Transitions are always hard,” she said, taking a pose of agreement so casual it became a dismissal. The captain shook his head and moved away.
The search went on, moving from room to room with an efficiency that spoke of experience. Amat followed slowly, considering the worn mattresses, the storage chambers in casual disarray. The house was kept no better than its books. That would change. Everything would change. Nothing would be spared.
Sorrow, as powerful as it was unexpected, stung her eyes. She brushed the tears away. This wasn’t the time for it. There would never be a time for it. Not in her lifetime.
The search complete, the watch gone, Amat gathered her people—her vipers—in the common room at the back. The speech she’d prepared, rehearsed a thousand times in her mind, seemed suddenly limp; words that had seemed commanding were petty and weak. Standing at the head of one long table, she drew breath and slowly let it out.
“Well . . .” she said.
In the pause, the voice came from the crowd.
“Grandmother? Is it really you?”
It was a boy of five or six summers. He had been sleeping on a bench one morning, she remembered, when she’d come out of her hellish little cell for a plate of barley gruel and pork. He’d snored.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve come back.”
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, HESHAI DIDN’T IMPROVE, BUT NEITHER DID he seem to grow worse. His patchy beard grew fuller, his weight fell for a time and then slowly returned. He would rouse himself now to wander the house, though he didn’t leave it, except to lumber down to the pond at night and stare into the black depths. Maati knew—because who else would take the time to care—that Heshai ate less at night than in the mornings, that he changed to clean robes if they were given him, that he might bathe if a bath was drawn, or he might not.
Thankfully the cotton harvest was complete, and there was nothing official the poet had been called on to perform. Physicians came from the Khai, but Heshai refused to see them. Servants who tried to approach the poet soon learned to ask their questions of Maati. Sometimes Maati acted as go between, sometimes, he just made the decisions himself.
For his own life, Maati found himself floating. Unless he was engaged in the daily maintenance of his invalid master, there was no direction for him that he didn’t choose, and so he found that his days had grown to follow his emotions. If he felt frightened or overwhelmed, he studied Heshai’s brown book, searching for insights that might serve him later if he were called on to hold Seedless. If he felt guilty, he sat by Heshai and tried to coax him into conversation. If he felt lonesome—and he often felt lonesome—he sought out Liat Chokavi. Sometimes he dreamed of her, and of that one brief kiss.
If his feelings for her were complex, it was only because she was beautiful and his friend and Otah-kvo’s lover. There was no harm in it, because nothing could come from it. And so, she was his friend, his only friend in the city.
It was because he had become so familiar with her habits and the places where she spent her days that, when the news came—carried by a palace slave with his morning meal—Maati found her so easily. The clearing was west of the seafront and faced a thin stretch of beach she’d shown him one night. Half-leaved trees and the curve of the shore hid the city. Liat sat on a natural bench of stone, leaning against a slab of granite half her height, and looking at the waves without seeing them. Maati moved forward, his feet crackling in the fallen leaves. Liat turned once, and seeing it was him, turned back to the water without speaking. He smoothed a clear spot beside her on the bench and sat.
“It’s true then?” he asked. “Amat Kyaan quit the house?”
Liat nodded.
“Wilsin-cha must be fur
ious.”
She shrugged. Maati sat forward, his elbows on his knees. The waves gathered and washed the sand, each receding into the rush of the next. Gulls wheeled and screamed to the east and a huge Galtic ship floated at anchor on the horizon. They were the only signs of the city. He stirred the pile of dry leaves below them with his heel, exposing the dark soil beneath them.
“Did you know?”
“She didn’t tell me,” Liat said, and her voice was calm and blasted and empty. “She just went. Her apartments were empty except for a box of house papers and a letter to Wilsin-cha.”
“So it wasn’t only you, at least. She hadn’t told anyone. Do you know why she left?”
“No,” Liat said. “I blame myself for it. If I had done better, if I hadn’t embarrassed the house . . .”
“You did what Wilsin-cha asked you to do. If the trade had been what it seemed, they’d be calling your praises for it.”
“Perhaps,” Liat said. “It hardly matters. She’s gone. Wilsin-cha doesn’t have any faith in me. I’m an apprentice without a master.”
“Well. We’re both that, at least.”
She coughed out a single laugh.
“I suppose we are,” she said, and scooped up his hand, holding it in her own. Maati’s heart raced, and something like panic made his mouth taste like copper. Something like panic, only glorious. He didn’t move, didn’t do anything that might make Liat untwine her fingers from his.
“Where do you think he is?” Maati asked, calling up the spirit of their friend—his master, her heartmate—to show that he understood that this moment, her hand in his, wasn’t something inappropriate. It was only friendship.
“He’ll have reached Yalakeht. He might even be there by now,” Liat said. “Or at least close, if he’s not.”
“He’ll be back soon, then.”
“Not for weeks,” Liat said.
“It’s a long time.”
“Heshai-kvo. He’s not better?”
“He’s not better. He’s not worse. He sleeps too much. He eats too little. His beard . . .”
“It’s not improving?”
“Longer. Not better. He really ought to shave it off.”