The andat sighed and turned, stepping to Wilsin’s chair and kneeling beside it. It seemed to Marchat that the andat smelled of incense and ashes. The pale hand pressed his knee and the vicious smile was like a blade held casually at his throat.
“. . . but, Wilsin-kya, don’t make the mistake again of thinking that you or your people matter to me. Our paths have split. Do you understand me?”
“You can’t,” Wilsin said. “We’ve been in this together from the start—you and the Council both. Haven’t we done everything that you asked?”
“Yes. I suppose you have.”
“You owe us something,” Wilsin said, ashamed at the desperation he heard in his own voice.
The andat considered this, then slowly stood and took a pose of thanks that carried nuances of both dismissal and mockery.
“Then take my thanks,” the andat said. “Wilsin-cha, you have been insincere, selfish, and short-sighted as a flea, but you were the perfect tool for the work, and for that, I thank you. Hurt Maati again, and your nation dies. Interfere with my plans, and I’ll tell Amat Kyaan the full story and save her her troubles. This game’s moved past you, little man. It’s too big. Stay out if it.”
THE DREAM, IF IT WAS A DREAM, WAS PAINFUL AND DISJOINTED. LIAT thought she heard someone crying, and thought it must be from the pain. But the pain was hers, and the weeping wasn’t, so that could hardly be. She found herself in a rainstorm outside the temple, all the doors locked against her. She called and called, but no one opened the doors, and the patter of rain turned to the clicking of hail and the hailstones grew and grew until they were the size of a baby’s fist, and all she could do was curl tight and let the ice strike her neck and the back of her head.
She woke—if the slow swimming up to lucidity was truly waking—with her head throbbing in pain. She lay on an unfamiliar bed—worked wood and brass—in a lavish room. A breeze came though the opened shutters and stirred the fine silk netting with the scent of rain. The rough cough and the clearing of a throat made her turn too quickly, and pain shot from her neck to her belly. She closed her eyes, overcome by it, and opened them to find the poet Heshai at the bedside in a pose of apology.
“I didn’t see you were awake,” he said, his wide mouth in a sheepish smile. “I’d have warned you I was here. You’re in the Second Palace. I’d have taken you to the poet’s house, but the physicians are nearer.”
Liat tried to take a pose of casual forgiveness, but found that her right arm was strapped. She tried for the first time to understand where she was and how she’d come there. There had been something—a teahouse and Maati, and then . . . something. She pressed her left palm to her eyes, willing the pain to stop and give her room to think. She heard the rustle of cloth pulled aside, and the mattress dipped to her left where the poet sat beside her.
“Maati?” she asked.
“Fine,” the poet said. “You took the worst of it. He had his brain rattled around a bit for him, and a shard cut his scalp above the ear. The physician says it’s not such a bad thing for a boy to bleed a little when he’s young, though.”
“What happened?”
“Gods. Of course. You wouldn’t know. Loose tiles, two of them. The utkhaiem are fining the owner of the compound for not keeping his roof better repaired. Your shoulder and arm—no, don’t move them. They’re strapped like that for good cause. The first tile broke some bones rather badly. Once they found who Maati was, they brought you both to the Khai’s palaces. The Khai’s own physicians have been watching over you for the last three days. I asked for them myself.”
Her mind seemed foggy. Simple as his explanation was, the details of the poet’s words swam close, darted away. She took hold of one.
“Three days?” Liat asked. “I’ve been asleep for three days?”
“Not so much asleep,” the poet admitted. “We’ve been giving you poppy milk for the pain. Maati’s been here most of the time. I sent him off to rest this morning. I promised him I’d watch over you while he was gone. I have some tea, if you’d like it?”
Liat began to take a pose of thanks and the pain sang in her neck and shoulder. She paled and nodded. The poet stood slowly, trying, she could tell, not to jostle her. He was back in a moment, helping her to sip from a bowl of lemon tea, sweet with honey. Her stomach twisted at the intrusion, but her mouth and throat felt like the desert in a rainstorm. When he pulled the bowl back and helped her ease back down, Liat saw an odd expression on the poet’s face—tenderness, she thought. She had always thought of Heshai as an ugly man, but in that light, at that moment, the wide lips and thinning hair seemed to transcend normal ideas of beauty. He looked strong and gentle. His movements were protective as a mother’s and as fierce. Liat wondered why she’d never seen it before.
“I should thank you, in a way,” he said. “You’ve given me a chance to give back part of what Maati’s done for me. Not that we talk of it in those terms, of course.”
“I don’t understand.”
The frog mouth spread into a rueful smile. “I know how much it cost him, caring for me while I was ill. It isn’t the sort of thing you discuss, of course, but I can tell. It isn’t easy watching the man who is supposed to be your master fall apart. And it isn’t a simple thing to stand beside him while he pulls himself back together. Would you like more tea? The physician said you could have as much as you wanted, but that we’d want to go slowly with heavier foods.”
“No. No more. Thank you. But I still don’t see . . .”
“You’ve made Maati happy these last few weeks,” Heshai said, his voice softer. “That he let me take part in caring for you pays back a part of the time he cared for me.”
“I didn’t think you’d noticed how much it took from him,” Liat said. The poet took a querying pose. “You seemed . . . too busy with other things, I suppose. I’m sorry. It isn’t my place to judge what you—”
“No, it’s quite all right. I . . . Maati and I haven’t quite found our right level. I imagine there are some opinions you both hold of me. They’re my fault. I earned them.”
Liat closed her eyes, marshalling her thoughts, and when she opened them again, it was night, and she was alone.
She didn’t remember falling asleep, but the night candle, burning steady in a glass lantern at her bedside, was past its halfway point, and heavy blankets covered her. Despite the pain, she pulled herself up, found and used the night pot, and crawled back to bed, exhausted. Sleep, however didn’t return so easily. Her mind was clear, and her body, while aching and bruised at best and pain-bright at worst, at least felt very much her own. She lay in the dim light of the candle and listened to the small sounds of the night—wind sighing at the shutters, the occasional clicking of the walls as they cooled. The room smelled of mint and mulled wine. Someone had been drinking, she thought, or else the physicians had thought that being in air that smelled so pleasant would help her body heal. The first distant pangs of hunger were shifting in her belly.
As the candle burned lower, the night passing, Liat grew clearer, and more awake. She tested how much she could move without the pain coming on, and even walked around the room. Her arm and shoulder were still bound, and her ribs ached to touch, but she could breathe deeply with only an ache. She could bring herself to sitting, and then stand. Walking was simple so long as she didn’t bump into anything. She imagined Maati watching over her while she slept, ignoring his own wounds. And Heshai—more like a friend or father—sharing that burden. It was more, she knew, than the two had ever shared before, and she found herself both embarrassed and oddly proud of being the occasion of it.
A thick winter robe hung on a stand by the door, and Liat put it on, wrapping the cloth around her bandages and tying it one-handed. It took longer than she’d expected, but she managed it and was soon sitting in the chair that Maati and Heshai must have used in their vigil. When a servant girl arrived, Liat instructed her not to tell anyone that she’d risen. She wanted Maati to be surprised when he came. The gi
rl took a pose of acknowledgement that held such respect and formality, Liat wondered whether Heshai had told them who she was, or if they were under the impression that she was some foreign princess.
When Maati came, he was alone. His robes were wrinkled and his hair unkempt. He came in quietly, stopping dead when he saw her bed empty, his chair inhabited. She rose as gracefully as she could and held out her good hand. He stepped forward and took it in his own, but didn’t pull her close. His eyes were bloodshot and bright, and he released her hand before she let go of his. She smiled a question.
“Liat-cha,” he said, and his voice was thick with distress. “I’m pleased you’re feeling better.”
“What’s happened?”
“Good news. Otah-kvo’s come back. He arrived last night with a letter from the Dai-kvo himself. It appears there is no andat to replace Seedless, so I’m to do anything necessary to support Heshai-kvo’s well-being. But since he’s already feeling so much better, I don’t see that it amounts to much. It seems there’s no one ready to take Heshai’s place, and may not be for several years, you see, and so it’s very important that . . .”
He trailed off into silence, a smile on his lips and something entirely different in his eyes. Liat felt her heart die a little. She swallowed and nodded.
“Where is he?” Liat asked. “Where’s Itani?”
“With Heshai-kvo. He came straight there when his ship arrived. It was very late, and he was tired. He wanted to come to you immediately, but I thought you would be asleep. He’ll come later, when he wakes. Liat, I hope . . . I mean, I didn’t . . .”
He looked down, shaking his head. When he looked up, his smile was rueful and raw, and tears streaked his face.
“We knew, didn’t we, that it would be hard?” he said.
Liat walked forward, feeling as if something outside of her was moving her. Her hand cupped Maati’s neck, and she leaned in, the crown of her head touching his. She could smell his tears, warm and salty and intimate. Her throat was too tight for speech.
“Heshai was very . . .” Maati began, and she killed the words with kissing him. His lips, familiar now, responded. She could feel when they twisted into a grimace of pain against her. His mouth closed, and he stepped back. She wanted to hold him, to be held by him, the way a dropped stone wants to fall, but his expression forbade her. The boy was gone, and someone—a man with his face and his expression, but with something deep and painful and new in his eyes—was in his place.
“Liat-cha,” he said. “Otah’s back.”
Liat took a breath and slowly let it out.
“Thank you, Maati-cha,” she said, the honorific like ashes in her mouth. “Perhaps . . . perhaps if I could join you all later in the day. I find I’m more tired than I thought.”
“Of course,” Maati said. “I’ll send someone in to help you with your robe.”
With her good hand, she took a pose of thanks. Maati replied with a simple response. Their eyes met, the gaze holding all the things they were not speaking. Her need, and his. His resolve. Morning rain tapped at the shutters like time passing behind them. Maati turned and left her, his back straight, his bearing formal and controlled.
For the space of a breath, she wanted to call him back. Pull him into the room, into the bed. She wanted to feel the warmth of him against her one last time. It wasn’t fair that their bodies hadn’t had the chance to say their farewells. And she would have, she thought, even with Itani . . . even with Otah returned and sleeping in the poet’s house that she knew now so well. She would have called, except that it would have broken her soul when Maati refused her. And she saw now that he would have.
Instead, she lay in the bed by herself, her flesh mending and her spirit ill. She had expected to feel torn between the two of them, but instead she was only shut out. The bond between Maati and Otah—the relationship of her two lovers—was deeper than what she had with either. She was losing each of them to the other, and the knowledge was like a stone in her throat.
MAATI SAT AT THE TOP OF THE BRIDGE, THE POND BELOW HIM DARK AS TEA. His belly was heavy, his chest so tight his shoulders shifted forward in a hunch. The breeze smelled of rain, though the sky was clear. The world seemed a dark, deadened place.
He had known, of course, that Liat wasn’t truly his lover. What they had been to each other for those few, precious weeks was comfort and friendship. That was all. And with Otah back, everything could return to the way it had been—the way it should have been. Only Maati hadn’t ached before the way he did now. The memory of Liat’s body against him, her lips against his, hadn’t haunted him. And Otah’s long, thoughtful face hadn’t made Maati sick with guilt.
And so, he thought, nothing would be what it had been. The idea that it could had been an illusion.
“You’ve done it, then?”
Maati turned to his left, back toward the palaces. Seedless stepped onto the bridge, dark robes shifting as he walked. The andat’s expression was unreadable.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Maati said.
“You’ve broken it off with the darling Liat. Returned her from whence she came, now that her laborer’s back from his errand.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Maati repeated, turning back to stare that the cold, dark water. Seedless settled beside him. Their two faces reflected on the pond’s surface, wavering and pale. Maati wished he had a stone to drop, something that would break the image.
“Bad answer,” the andat said. “I’m not a fool. I can smell love when I’m up to my knees in it. It’s hard, losing her.”
“I haven’t lost anything. It’s only changed a bit. I knew it would.”
“Well then,” Seedless said gently. “That makes it easy, doesn’t it. He’s still resting, is he?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t gone to see him yet today.”
“Gone to see him? It’s your couch he’s sleeping on.”
“Still,” Maati said with a shrug. “I’m not ready to see him again. Tonight, perhaps. Only not yet.”
They were silent for a long moment. Crows barked from the treetops, hopping on twig-thin legs, their black wings outstretched. Somewhere in the water, koi shifted sluggishly, sending thin ripples to the surface.
“Would it help to say I’m sorry for it?” Seedless asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Well, all the same.”
“It’s hard to think that you care, Seedless-cha. I’d have thought you’d be pleased.”
“No. Not really. On the one hand, whether you think it or not, I don’t have any deep love of your pain. Not yet, at least. Once you take Heshai’s burden . . . well, we’ll neither of us have any choices then. And then, for my own selfish nature, all this brings you one step nearer to being like him. The woman you’ve loved and lost. The pain you carry with you. It’s part of what drives him, and you’re coming to know it now yourself.”
“So when you say you’re sorry for it, you mean that you think it might help me do my task?”
“Makes you wonder if the task’s worth doing, doesn’t it?” Seedless said, a smile in his voice more than his expression. “I doubt the Dai-kvo would share our concerns, though, eh?”
“No,” Maati sighed. “No, he at least is certain of what’s the right thing.”
“Still, we’re clever,” Seedless said. “Well, you’re not. You’re busy being lovesick, but I’m clever. Perhaps I’ll think of something.”
Maati turned to look at the andat, but the smooth, pale face revealed nothing more than a distant amusement.
“Something in particular?” Maati asked, but Seedless didn’t answer.
OTAH WOKE FROM A DEEP SLEEP TO LIGHT SLANTING THROUGH HALF-opened shutters. For a moment, he forgot he had landed, his body still shifting from memory of the sea beneath him. Then the blond wood and incense, the scrolls and books, the scent and sound of winter rain recalled him to himself, and he stood. The wall-long shutters were closed, a fire burned low in its grate. Heshai and Maati
were gone, but a plate of dried fruit and fresh bread sat on a table beside the letter from the Dai-kvo, its pages unsewn and spread. He sat alone and ate.
The journey back had been easy. The river bore him to Yalakeht and then a tradeship with a load of furs meant for Eddensea. He’d taken a position on the ship—passage in return for his work, and he’d done well enough by the captain and crew. Otah imagined they were now in the soft quarter spending what money they had. Indulging themselves before they began the weeks-long journey across the sea.
Heshai had seemed better, alert and attentive. It even seemed that Maati and his teacher had grown closer since Otah had left—brought together, perhaps, by the difficulties they had weathered. It might have been the bad news of Liat’s injury or Otah’s own weariness and sense of displacement, but there had seemed something more as well. A weariness in Maati’s eyes that Otah recognized, but couldn’t explain.
The first thing he needed, of course, was a bath. And then to see Liat. And then . . . and then he wasn’t sure. He had gone on his journey to the Dai-kvo, he had come back bearing news that seemed out of date when it arrived. According to Maati, Heshai-kvo had bested his illness without the aid of the Dai-kvo. The tragedy of the dead child was fading from the city’s memory, replaced by other scandals—diseased cotton in the northern fields; a dyer who killed himself after losing a year’s wages gambling; Liat’s old overseer Amat Kyaan breaking with her house in favor of a business of her own in the soft quarter. The petty life-and-death battles of the sons of the Khaiem.
And so what had seemed of critical importance at the time, proved empty now that it was done. And his own personal journey had achieved little more. He could go, if he chose, to speak to Muhatia-cha this afternoon. Perhaps House Wilsin would take him back on to complete his indenture. Or there were other places in the city, work he could do that would pay for his food and shelter. The world was open before him. He could even have taken the letter from Orai Vaukheter and taken work as a courier if it weren’t for Liat, and for Maati, and the life he’d built as Itani Noyga.