At his side stood a thick-bodied man, his wide frog-like mouth gaping open in what might have been horror or astonishment. He also wore the robe of a poet. Maati felt his teacher’s hand on his shoulder, solid, firm, and cold.
“Maati,” the lovely, careful voice said so quietly that only the two of them could hear, “there’s something you should know. I’m not Heshai-kvo.”
Maati looked up. The dark eyes were on his, something like amusement in their depths.
“Wh-who are you, then?”
“A slave, my dear. The slave you hope to own.”
Then the man who was not his teacher turned to the Khai Saraykeht and the spluttering, enraged poet. He took a pose of greeting more appropriate to acquaintances chanced upon at a teahouse than the two most powerful men of the city. Maati, his hands trembling, took a much more formal stance.
“What is this?” the poet—the frog-mouthed Heshai-kvo, he had to be—demanded.
“This?” the man said, turning and considering Maati as if he were a sculpture pointed out at a fair. “It seems to be a boy. Or perhaps a young man. Fifteen summers? Maybe sixteen? It’s so hard to know what to call it at that age. I found it abandoned in the upper halls. Apparently it’s been wandering around there for days. No one else seems to have any use for it. May I keep it?”
“Heshai,” the Khai said. His voice was powerful. He seemed to speak in a conversational tone, but his voice carried like an actor’s. The displeasure in the syllables stung.
“Oh,” the man at Maati’s side said. “Have I displeased? Well, master, you’ve no one to blame but yourself.”
“Silence!” the poet snapped. Maati sensed as much as saw the man beside him go stiff. He chanced a glimpse at the perfect face. The features were fixed in pain, and slowly, as if fighting each movement, the elegant hands took forms of apology and self-surrender, the spine twisted into a pose of abject obeisance.
“I come to do your bidding, Khai Saraykeht,” the man—no, the andat, Seedless—said, his voice honey and ashes. “Command me as you will.”
The Khai took a pose of acknowledgement, its nuances barely civil. The frog-mouthed poet looked at Maati and gestured pointedly to his own side. Maati scurried to the dais. The andat moved more slowly, but followed.
“You should have waited,” Heshai-kvo hissed. “This is a very busy time of year. I would have thought the Dai-kvo would teach you more patience.”
Maati fell into a pose of abject apology.
“Heshai-kvo, I was misled. I thought that he . . . that it . . . I am shamed by my error.”
“As you should be,” the poet snapped. “Just arriving like this, unintroduced and—”
“Good and glorious Heshai,” the Khai Saraykeht said, voice envenomed by sarcasm, “I understand that adding another pet to your collection must be trying. And indeed, I regret to interrupt, but . . .”
The Khai gestured grandly at the bales of cotton. His hands were perfect, and his motion the most elegant Maati had ever seen, smooth and controlled and eloquent.
Heshai-kvo briefly adopted a pose of regret, then turned to the beautiful man—Seedless, Sterile, andat. For a moment the two considered each other, some private, silent conversation passing between them. The andat curled his lip in something half sneer, half sorrow. Sweat dampened the teacher’s back, and he began trembling as if with a great effort. Then the andat turned and raised his arms theatrically to the cotton.
A moment later, Maati heard a faint tick, like a single raindrop. And then more and more, until an invisible downpour filled the hall. From his position behind the Khai and the poet, he lowered himself looking under the raised platform on which the bales lay. The parquet floor was covered with small black dots skittering and jumping as they struck one another. Cotton seed.
“It is done,” Heshai-kvo said, and Maati stood hurriedly.
The Khai clapped his hands and rose, his movement like a dancer’s. His robes flowed through the air like something alive. For a moment Maati forgot himself and merely stood in awe.
A pair of servants pulled wide the great doors, and began a low wail, calling the merchants and their laborers to come and take what was theirs. The utkhaiem took stations by the doors, prepared to collect the fees and taxes for each bale that left. The Khai stood on his dais, grave and beautiful, seeming more a ghost or god than Seedless, who more nearly was.
“You should have waited,” Heshai-kvo said again over the voices of the laborers and the din of the merchants at their business. “This is a very bad start for your training. A very bad start.”
Once again, Maati took a pose of regret, but the poet—his teacher, his new master—turned away, leaving the pose unanswered. Maati stood slowly, his face hot with a blush equally embarrassment and anger, his hands at his sides. At the edge of the dais, the andat sat, his bone-pale hands in his lap. He met Maati’s gaze, shrugged, and took a pose of profound apology that might have been genuine or deeply insincere; Maati had no way to tell.
Before he could choose how to respond, Seedless smiled, lowered his hands and looked away.
AMAT KYAAN SAT AT THE SECOND-FLOOR WINDOW OF HER APARTMENTS, looking out over the city. The setting sun behind her reddened the walls of the soft quarter. Some comfort houses were already hanging out streamers and lamps, the glitter of the lights and the shimmering cloth competing with the glow of fireflies. A fruit seller rang her bell and sang her wares in a gentle melody. Amat Kyaan rubbed stinging salve into her knee and ankle, as she did every evening, to keep the pain at bay. It had been a long day, made longer by the nagging disquiet of her meeting with Marchat Wilsin. And even now, it wasn’t finished. There was one more unpleasant task still to be done.
This would be her fifty-eighth summer in the world, and every one had been spent in Saraykeht. Her earliest memories were of her father spinning cured cotton into fine, tough thread, humming to himself as he worked. He was many years dead now, as was her mother. Her sister, Sikhet, had vanished into the comfort houses of the soft quarter when she was only sixteen. Amat Kyaan liked to think she caught glimpses of her still—older, wiser, safe. More likely it was her own desire that her sister be well. Her better mind knew it was only wishes. There had been too many years for the two of them not to have come upon each other.
She felt some nights that she had lived her life as an apology for letting her sister vanish into the soft world. And perhaps it had started that way: her decision to work for a trading house, her rise through the invisible levels of power and wealth, had been meant to balance her sister’s assumed fall. But she was an older woman now, and everyone she might have apologized to was gone or dead. She had the status and the respect she needed to do as she pleased. She was no one’s sister, no one’s daughter, no one’s wife or mother. By standing still, she had come almost loose from the world, and she found the solitude suited her.
A grass tic shuffled across her arm, preparing to tap her skin. She caught it, cracked it between her thumbnails, and flicked the corpse out into the street. There were more lanterns lit now, and the callers of different establishments were setting out singers and flute players to tempt men—and occasionally even women—to their doors. A patrol of eight frowning thugs swaggered down the streets, their robes the colors of the great comfort houses. It was too early for there to be many people drunk on the streets—the patrol walked and grimaced only to let the patrons coming in see that they were there.
There was no place safer than the Saraykeht soft quarter at night, and no place more dangerous. Here alone, she suspected, of all the cities of the Khaiem, no one would be attacked, no one raped, no one killed except perhaps the whores and showfighters who worked there. For their clients, every opportunity to twist a mind with strange herbs, to empty a pocket with dice and khit tiles, or to cheapen sex as barter would be made available in perfect safety. It was a beautiful, toxic dream, and she feared it as she loved it. It was a part of her city.
The soft, tentative knock at her door didn’t start
le her. She had been dreading it as much as expecting it. She turned, taking up her cane, and walked down the long, curved stair to the street level. The door was barred, not from fear, but to keep drunken laborers from mistaking hers for a comfort house. She lifted the bar and swung the door aside.
Liat Chokavi stood in the street, jaw tight, eyes cast down. She was a lovely little thing—brown eyes the color of milky tea and golden skin, smooth as an eggshell. If the girl’s face was a little too round to be classically beautiful, her youth forgave her.
Amat Kyaan raised her left hand in a gesture that greeted her student. Liat adopted an answering pose of gratitude at being received, but the stance was undercut by the defensiveness of her body. Amat Kyaan suppressed a sigh and stood back, motioning the girl inside.
“I expected you earlier,” she said as she closed the door.
Liat walked to the foot of the stair, but there paused and turned in a formal pose of apology.
“Honored teacher,” she began, but Amat cut her off.
“Light the candles. I will be up in a moment.”
Liat hesitated, but then turned and went up. Amat Kyaan could trace the girl’s footsteps by the creaking of the timbers. She poured herself a cup of limed water, then went slowly up the stairs. The salve helped. Most days she woke able to convince herself that today there would be no trouble, and by nightfall her joints ached. Age was a coward and a thief, and she wasn’t about to let it get the better of her. Still, as she took the steps to her workroom, she trusted as much of her weight to the cane as she could.
Liat sat on the raised cushion beside Amat Kyaan’s oaken writing desk. Her legs were tucked up under her, her gaze on the floor. The lemon candles danced in a barely-felt breeze, the smoke driving away the worst of the flies. Amat sat at the window and arranged her robe as if she were preparing herself for work.
“Old Sanya must have had more objections than usual. He’s normally quite prompt. Give the changes here, let’s survey the damage, shall we?”
She held one hand out to the apprentice. A moment later, she lowered it.
“I misplaced the contracts,” Liat said, her voice a tight whisper. “I apologize. It is entirely my fault.”
Amat sipped her water. The lime made it taste cooler than it was.
“You misplaced the contracts?”
“Yes.”
Amat let the silence hang. The girl didn’t look up. A tear tracked down the round cheek.
“That isn’t good,” Amat said.
“Please don’t send me back to Chaburi-Tan,” the girl said. “My mother was so proud when I was accepted here and my father would—”
Amat raised a hand and the pleading stopped, Liat’s gaze fixed on the floor. With a sigh, Amat pulled a bundle of papers from her sleeve and tossed them at Liat’s knees.
At least the girl hadn’t lied about it.
“One of the laborers found this between the bales from the Innis harvest,” Amat said. “I gave him your week’s wages as a reward.”
Liat had the pages in her hands, and Amat watched the tension flow out of her, Liat’s body collapsing on itself.
“Thank you,” the girl said. Amat assumed she meant some god and not herself.
“I don’t suppose I need to tell you what would have happened if these had come out? It would have destroyed every concession House Wilsin has had from Sanya’s weavers in the last year.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“And do you have any idea how the contract might have fallen out of your sleeve? The warehouse seems an odd place to have lost them.”
Liat blushed furiously and looked away. Amat knew that she had guessed correctly. It should have made her angry, but all she really felt was a kind of nostalgic sympathy. Liat was in the middle of her seventeenth summer, and some mistakes were easier to make at that age.
“Did you at least do something to make sure you aren’t giving him a child?”
Liat’s gaze flickered up at Amat and then away, fast as a mouse. The girl swallowed. Even the tips of her ears were crimson. She pretended to brush a fly off her leg.
“I got some teas from Chisen Wat,” she said at last, and softly.
“Gods! Her? She’s as likely to poison you by mistake. Go to Urrat on the Street of Beads. She’s the one I always saw. You can tell her I sent you.”
When Liat looked at her this time, the girl neither spoke nor looked away. She’d shocked her. And, as Amat felt the first rush of blood in her own cheeks, maybe she’d shocked herself a little, too. Amat took a pose of query.
“What? You think I was born before they invented sex? Go see Urrat. Maybe we can keep you from the worst parts of being young and stupid. Leaving contracts in your love nest. Which one was it, anyway? Still Itani Noyga?”
“Itani’s my heartmate,” Liat protested.
“Yes, yes. Of course.”
He was a good-looking boy, Itani. Amat had seen him several times, mostly on occasions that involved prying her apprentice away from him and his cohort. He had a long face and broad shoulders, and was maybe a little too clever to be working as a laborer. He knew his letters and numbers. If he’d had more ambition, there might have been other work for a boy like that …
Amat frowned, her body taking a subtle tension even before the thought was fully in her mind. Itani Noyga, with his broad shoulders and strong legs. Certainly there was other work he could be put to. Driving away feral dogs, for example, and convincing roadside thugs to hunt for easier prey than Marchat Wilsin. Marchat wouldn’t be keeping track of who each of his laborers were sharing pillows with.
And pillows were sometimes the best places to talk.
“Amat-cha? Are you all right?”
“Itani. Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. Likely back at his quarters. Or maybe a teahouse.”
“Do you think you could find him?”
Liat nodded. Amat gestured for a block of ink, and Liat rose, took one from the shelf and brought it to her desk. Amat took a length of paper and took a moment to calm herself before she began writing. The pen sounded as dry as a bird claw on pavement.
“There’s an errand I want Itani for. Marchat Wilsin needs a bodyguard tonight. He’s going to a meeting in one of the low towns at the half-candle, and he wants someone to walk with him. I don’t know how long the meeting will last, but I can’t assume it will be brief. I’ll tell his overseer to release him from duty tomorrow.”
She took another sheet of paper, scraped the pen across the ink and began a second letter. Liat, at her shoulder, read the words as she wrote them.
“This one, I want you to deliver to Rinat Lyanita after you find Itani,” Amat said as she wrote. “If Itani doesn’t know that he’s to go, Rinat will do. I don’t want Marchat waiting for someone who never arrives.”
“Yes, Amat-cha, but . . .”
Amat blew on the ink to cure it. Liat’s words failed, and she took no pose, but a single vertical line appeared between her brows. Amat tested the ink. It smudged only a little. Good enough for the task at hand. She folded both orders and sealed them with hard wax. There wasn’t time to sew the seams.
“Ask it,” Amat said. “And stop scowling. You’ll give yourself a headache.”
“The mistake was mine, Amat-cha. It isn’t Itani’s fault that I lost the contracts. Punishing him for my error is . . .”
“It isn’t a punishment, Liat-kya,” Amat said, using the familiar -kya to reassure her. “I just need him to do me this favor. And, when he comes back tomorrow, I want him to tell you all about the journey. What town he went to, who was there, how long the meeting went. Everything he can remember. Not to anyone else; just to you. And then you to me.”
Liat took the papers and tucked them into her sleeve. The line was still between her brows. Amat wanted to reach over and smooth it out with her thumb, like it was a stray mark on paper. The girl was thinking too much. Perhaps this was a poor idea after all. Perhaps she should take the orders
back.
But then she wouldn’t discover what business Marchat Wilsin was doing without her.
“Can you do this for me, Liat-kya?”
“Of course, but . . . is something going on, Amat-cha?”
“Yes, but don’t concern yourself with it. Just do as I ask, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Liat took a pose of acceptance and leave-taking. Amat responded with thanks and dismissal appropriate for a supervisor to an apprentice. Liat went down the stairs, and Amat heard her close the door behind her as she went. Outside, the fireflies shone and vanished, brighter now as twilight dimmed the city. She watched the streets: the firekeeper at the corner with his banked kiln, the young men in groups heading west into the soft quarter, ready to trade lengths of silver and copper for pleasures that would be gone by morning. And there, among them, Liat Chokavi walking briskly to the east, toward the warehouses and laborers’ quarters, the dyeworks and the weavers.
Amat watched until the girl vanished around a corner, passing beyond recall, then she went down and barred her door.
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