The thick man in the stained brown robe shook his head and bowed, his pose elegant and abasing.
“It is my fault,” he said, his words slurred. “Entirely my fault. I’ve made an ass of myself.”
Amat clutched Mitat’s arm, silencing her, and stepped forward despite the raging ache in her leg. The drunkard bowed lower, shaking his head. Amat almost reached out to touch him—making certain that this wasn’t a dream, that she wasn’t back in her bed still waiting for her bread and tea.
“Heshai-cha?”
The poet looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and weary. The whites were yellow. He stank of wine and something worse. He seemed slowly to focus on her, and then, a heartbeat later, to recognize her face. He went gray.
“I’m fine, Heshai-cha. No damage done. But what brings—”
“I know you. You work for House Wilsin. You . . . you knew that girl?”
“Maj,” Amat said. “Her name is Maj. She’s being well taken care of, but you and I need to speak. What happened wasn’t all it seemed. The andat had other parties who—”
“No! No, I was entirely to blame! It was my failing!”
The shutters of a window across the street opened with a clack and a curious face appeared. Heshai took a pose of regret spoiled only by his slight wavering, like a willow in a breeze. His lips hardened, and his eyes, when he opened them, were black. He looked at her as if she’d insulted him, and in that moment, Amat could see that the andat Seedless with his beautiful face and perfect voice had indeed been drawn from this man.
“I am making an ass of myself,” he said. He bowed stiffly to her and to Mitat, turned, and strode unsteadily away.
“Gods!” Mitat said, looking after the wide, retreating back. “What was that?”
“The poet of Saraykeht,” Amat said. She turned to consider the alley from which he’d emerged. It was thin—hardly more than a slit between buildings—unpaved, muddy and stinking of garbage.
“What’s down there?” Amat asked.
“I don’t know.”
Amat hesitated, dreading what she knew she had to do next. If the mud was as foul as it smelled, the hems of her robe would be unsavable.
“Come,” she said.
The apartment wasn’t hard to find. The poet’s unsteady footsteps had left fresh, sliding marks. The doorway was fitted with an iron lock, the shutters over the thin window beside it were barred from the inside. Amat, her curiosity too roused to stop now, rapped on the closed door and called, but no one came.
“Sometimes, if they don’t want to be seen in the houses, men take rooms,” Mitat said.
“Like this?”
“Better, usually,” Mitat allowed. “None of the girls I know would want to follow a man down an alley like this one. If the payment was high enough, perhaps . . .”
Amat pressed her hand against the door. The wood was solid, sound. The lock, she imagined, could be forced, if she could find the right tools. If there was something in this sad secret place that was worth knowing. Something like dread touched her throat.
“Grandmother. We should go.”
Amat took a pose of agreement, turning back toward the street. Curiosity balanced relief at being away from the private room of the poet of Saraykeht. She found herself wondering, as they walked to the offices of the watch, what lay behind that door, how it might relate to her quiet war, and whether she wanted to discover it.
WINTER CAME TO THE SUMMER CITIES. THE LAST LEAVES FELL, LEAVING bare trees to sleep through the long nights. Cold mists rose, filling the streets with air turned to milk. Maati wore heavier robes—silk and combed wool. But not his heaviest. Even the depths of a Saraykeht winter were milder than a chilly spring in the north. Some nights Maati walked through the streets with Liat, his arm around her, and both of them hunched against the cold, but it was a rare thing to see his own breath in the air. In Pathai as a child, at the school, then with the Dai-kvo, Maati had spent most of his life colder than this, but the constant heat of the high seasons of Saraykeht had thinned his blood. He felt the cold more deeply now than he remembered it.
Heshai-kvo’s return to health seemed to have ended the affair of the dead child in the minds of the utkhaiem. Over the weeks—the terribly short weeks—Heshai had taken him to private dinners and public feasts, had presented him to high families, and made it clear through word and action that Liat was welcome—was always welcome—at the poet’s house. That Seedless had been given a kind of freedom seemed to displease the Khai Saraykeht and his nearest men, but no words were said and no action taken. So long as the poet was well enough to assuage the general unease, all was close enough to well.
The teahouse they had retreated to, he and Liat, was near the edge of the city proper. Buildings and streets ran further out, north along the river, but it was in this quarter that the original city touched the newer buildings. Newer buildings, Maati reflected, older than his grandfather’s grandfather. And still they took the name.
They’d taken a private room hardly larger than a closet, with a small table and a bench against the wall that they both shared. Light and music and the scent of roast pork drifted though carved wood lacework, and a small brazier hung above them, radiating heat like a black iron sun.
Liat poured hot tea into her bowl, and then without asking, into his. Maati took a pose of thanks, and lifted the fine porcelain to his lips. The steam smelled rich and smoky, and Liat leaned against him, the familiar weight of her body comforting as blankets.
“He’ll be back soon,” Maati said.
Liat didn’t stiffen, but stilled. He sipped his tea, burning his lips a little. He felt her shrug as much as seeing it.
“Let’s not talk of it,” she said.
“I can’t keep on with this once he’s come back. Half the time I feel like I’ve killed something as it stands. When he’s here . . .”
“When he’s here we’ll have him with us,” Liat said softly. “We both will. I’ll have him as a lover, you’ll have him as a friend. We’ll none of us be alone.”
“I’m not entirely hoping for it,” Maati said.
“Parts will be difficult. Let’s not talk about it. It’ll come soon enough without borrowing it now.” Maati took a pose of agreement, but a moment later Liat sighed and took his arm.
“I didn’t mean to be cruel. . . .”
“You haven’t been,” Maati said.
“You’re kind to say so.”
In the front of the house a woman or a child began singing—the voice high and sweet and pure. The talking voices stilled and gave the song their silence. It was one that Maati had heard before many times, a traditional ballad of love found and lost that dated back to the days when the Empire still stood. Maati sat back, his spine pressing into the wall behind him, and laid his arm across Liat’s shoulders. His head swam with emotions that he could only partly name. He closed his eyes and let the ancient words and old grammars wash over him. He felt Liat shudder. When he looked, her face was flushed, her mouth drawn tight. Tears glistened in her eyes.
“Let’s go home,” he said, and she nodded. He took six lengths of copper from a pouch in his sleeve and left them in a row on the table—it would more than cover the charges. Together, they rose, pushed aside the door and slipped out. The song continued on as they stepped out into the darkness. The moon was just past new, and the streets were dark except for the torches at crossroads where large streets met, and, elsewhere, lit by the kilns of the firekeepers. They walked arm in arm, heading north.
“Why do they call you poets?” Liat asked. “You don’t really declaim poetry. Or, I mean, we have, but not as what you do for the Khai.”
“There are other terms,” Maati said. “You could also call us shapers or makers. Thought-weavers. It’s from the binding.”
“The andat. They’re poems?”
“They’re like poems. They’re translations of an idea into a form that includes volition. When you take a letter in the Khaiate tongue and translate it into Galti
c, there are different ways you could word it, to get the right meaning. The binding is like translating a letter perfectly from one language to another. You make it clear, and the parts that aren’t there—if there isn’t quite the right word in Galtic, for instance—you create them so that the whole thing holds together. The old grammars are very good for that work.”
“What do you do with it? With the description?”
“You hold it in your mind. Forever.”
The words lapsed. They walked. The high walls of the warehouse district stopped and the lower buildings of the weavers took up. The palaces at the top of the city glittered with lanterns and torches, like the field of stars pulled down and overlapping the earth until they were obscured again by high walls, now of the homes of merchants and lesser trading houses.
“Have you ever been in the summer cities for Candles Night?” Liat asked.
“No,” Maati said. “I’ve seen the Dai-kvo’s village, though. It was beautiful there. All the streets were lined with people, and the light made the whole mountain feel like a temple.”
“You’ll like it here,” Liat said. “There’s likely more wine involved than with the Dai-kvo.”
Maati smiled in the darkness and pulled her small, warm body closer to him.
“I imagine so,” he said. “At the school, we didn’t—”
The blow was so sudden, Maati didn’t really have time to feel it. He was on the ground. The stones of the street were rough against his skinned palms, and he was consumed by a sense of urgency whose object he could not immediately identify. Liat lay unmoving beside him. A roof tile—six hands square and three fingers deep of baked red clay—rested between them like an abandoned pillow. A scraping sound like rats in plaster walls caught Maati’s crippled attention and another tile fell, missing them both, detonating on the street at Liat’s side. Maati’s panic found its focus. He lurched toward her. Blood soaked her robe at the shoulder. Her eyes were closed.
“Liat! Wake up! The tiles are loose!”
She didn’t answer. Maati looked up, his hands shaking though he wasn’t aware of the fear, only of the terrible need to act immediately trapped against his uncertainty of what action to take. No other tile moved, but something—a bird, a squirrel, a man’s head?—ducked back over the roof’s lip. Maati put his hand on Liat’s body and willed his mind into something nearer to order. They were in danger here. They had to move away from the wall. And Liat couldn’t.
Carefully he took her by the shoulders and dragged her. Each step made his ribs shriek, but he took her as far as the middle of the street before the pain was too much. Kneeling over her, fighting to breathe, Maati’s fear turned at last to panic. For a long airless moment, Maati convinced himself that she wasn’t breathing. A shifting of her bloody robe showed him otherwise. Help. They needed help.
Maati stood and staggered. The street was empty, but a wide ironwork gate opened to rising marble steps and a pair of wide wooden doors. Maati pushed himself toward it, feeling as if he was at one remove from his own muscles, as if his body was a puppet he didn’t have the skill to use well. It seemed to him, hammering on the wide doors, that no one would ever come. He wiped the sweat from his brow only to discover it was blood.
He was trying to decide whether he had the strength to go looking for another door, a firekeeper, a busier street, when the door swung open. An old man, thin as sticks, looked out at him. Maati took a pose that begged.
“You have to help her,” he said. “She’s hurt.”
“Gods!” the man said, moving forward, supporting Maati as he slid down to the steps. “Don’t move, my boy. Don’t move. Chiyan! Out here! Hurry! There’s children hurt!”
Tell Otah-kvo, Maati thought, but was too weak to say. Find Otah-kvo and tell him. He’ll know what to do.
He found himself in a well-lit parlor without recalling how he’d come there. A younger man was prodding at his head with something painful. He tried to push the man’s arm away, but he was nearly too weak to move. The man said something that Maati acknowledged and then immediately forgot. Someone helped him to drink a thin, bitter tea, and the world faded.
16
> +
“Wilsin-cha . . .”
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
Epani took a pose of affirmation, and Marchat felt the dread that had troubled his sleep knot itself in his chest. He put on a brave show, pushing aside the netting with a sigh, pulling on a thick wool robe. Epani didn’t speak. Amat, Marchat thought, would have said something.
He walked alone to his private hall. The door of it stood open, lantern light spilling out into the corridor. A black form passed in front of it, pacing, agitated, blocking out the light. The knot in Marchat Wilsin’s chest grew solid—a stone in his belly. He drew himself up and walked in.
Seedless paced, his pale face as focused as a hunting cat’s. His robe—black shot with red—blended with the darkness until he seemed a creature half of shadow. Marchat took a pose of welcome which the andat ignored except for the distant smile that touched his perfect lips.
“It was an accident,” Marchat said. “They didn’t know it was him. They were only supposed to kill the girl.”
Seedless stopped. His face was perfectly calm, his eyes cool. Anger radiated from him like a fire.
“You hurt my boy,” he said.
“Blame Amat, if you have to blame anyone,” Wilsin said. “It’s her vendetta that’s driving this. She’s trying to expose us. She’s dedicating her life to it, so don’t treat this like it’s something I chose.”
Seedless narrowed his eyes. Marchat forced himself not to look away.
“She’s close,” he said. “She’s looking at shipments of pearls from Galtic ports and tying them to the payment. With the money she’s offering, it’s a matter of time before she gets what she’s looking for. Leaving Liat be would have been . . . The girl could damage us. If it came before the Khai, she might damage us.”
“And yet your old overseer hasn’t taken her apprentice into confidence?”
“Would you? Liat’s a decent girl, but I wouldn’t trust her with my laundry.”
“You think she’s incompetent?”
“No, I think she’s young.”
And that, oddly, seemed to touch something. The andat’s anger shifted, lost its edge. Marchat took a free breath for the first time that night.
“So you chose to remove her from the field of play,” Seedless said. “An accident of roof tiles.”
“I didn’t specify the tiles. Only that it should be plausible.”
“You didn’t tell them to avoid Maati?”
“I did. But gods! Those two are connected at the hip these days. The men . . . grew impatient. They thought they could do the job without damaging the poet boy.”
“They were wrong.”
“I know. It won’t happen again.”
The andat flowed forward, lifting himself up to sit on the meeting table beside the lantern. Marchat took a step back before he knew he had done it. The andat’s pale fingers laced together and it smiled, an expression of such malice and beauty that it could never have been mistaken for human.
“If Maati had died,” Seedless said, its voice low as distant thunder, “every crop in Galt would fail. Every cow and ewe would go barren. Your people would die. Do you understand that? There wouldn’t have been a bargain struck or threats made. It would simply have happened, and no one might ever have known why. That boy is precious to you, because while he lives, your people live.”
“You can’t mean that,” Marchat said, but sickeningly, he knew the andat was quite serious. He shook his head and adopted a pose of acknowledgement that he prayed would move the conversation elsewhere, onto some subject that didn’t dance so near the cliff edge.
“We need a plan. What to do if Amat makes her case to the Khai. If we don’t have our defense prepared, she may convince him. She’s good that way.”
“Yes. She’s always impressed me.”
“So,” Marchat said, sitting, looking up at the dark form above him. “What are we going to do? If she finds the truth and the proof of it, what then?”
“Then I do as I’m told. I’m a slave. It works that way with me. And you? You get your head and your sex shipped back to the Galtic High Council as an explanation for why a generation of Galtic babies are dropping out of their mother’s wombs. That’s only a guess, of course. The Khai might be lenient,” Seedless grinned, “and stones may float on water, but I wouldn’t want to rely on it.”
“It’s not so bad as that,” Marchat said. “If you say that Oshai and his men—”
“I won’t do that,” the andat said, dismissing him as casually as an unwanted drink. “If it comes before the Khai Saraykeht and they ask me, I’ll tell them what they want to know.”
Marchat laughed. He couldn’t help it, but even as he did, he felt the blood rushing away from his face. Seedless tilted his head like a bird.
“You can’t,” Marchat said. “You’re as deep in this as I am.”
“Of course I’m not, Wilsin-kya. What are they going to do to me, eh? I’m the blood their city lives on. If our little conspiracy comes to light, you’ll pay the price of it, not me. What we’ve done, you and I, was lovely. The look on Heshai’s face when that baby hit the bowl was worth all the weeks and months it took to arrange it. Really, it was brilliantly done. But don’t think because we did something together once that we’re brothers now. I’m playing new games, with other players. And this time, you don’t signify.”
“You don’t mean that,” Marchat said. The andat stood, its arms crossed, and considered the lantern flame.
“It would be interesting, destroying a nation,” Seedless said, more than half, it seemed, to himself. “I’m not certain how Heshai would take it. But . . .”