“Wilsin-cha,” she said. “The shipping schedule.”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course. The schedule.”
Together, they went through the trivial issues of the day. A small fire in one of the weaver’s warehouses meant that they would be three thousand feet of thread short for the ship to Bakta. It was significant enough to warrant holding the ship, but they didn’t dare keep it too long—the season was turning. And then there was the issue of a persistent mildew in one of House Wilsin’s warehouses that had spoiled two bolts of silk, and had to be addressed before they dared to use the space again.
Amat laid out the options, made her suggestions, answered Wilsincha’s questions, and accepted his decisions. In the main part of the bathhouse, a man broke out in song, his voice joined—a little off-key—by two more. The warm breeze coming through the cedar trellis at the windows moved the surface of the water. Painful as it was, Amat felt herself grabbing at the details—the pinkness of Marchat’s pale skin, the thin crack in the side of the lacquer tray, the just-bitter taste of over-brewed tea. Like a squirrel, she thought, gathering nuts for the winter.
“Amat,” he said, when they were through and she started to rise. The hardness in his voice caught her, and she lowered herself back into the water. “There’s something . . . You and I, we’ve worked together for more years than I like to remember. You’ve always been . . . always been very professional. But I’ve felt that along with that, we’ve been friends. I know that I have held you in the highest regard. Gods, that sounds wrong. Highest regard? Gods. I’m doing this badly.”
He raised his hands from the water, fingertips wrinkled as raisins, and motioned vaguely. His face was tight and flushed. Amat frowned, confused, and then the realization washed over her like nausea. He was about to declare his love.
She put her head down, pressing a palm to her forehead. She couldn’t look up. Laughter that had as much to do with horror as mirth shook her gently. Of all the things she’d faced, of all the evils she’d steeled herself to walk through, this one had taken her blind. Marchat Wilsin thought he loved her. It was why he’d stood up to Oshai to save her. It was why she was alive. It was ridiculous.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have . . . Forget that. I didn’t . . . I sound like a half-wit schoolboy. Here’s the thing, Amat. I didn’t mean to be involved with this. These last days, I’ve been feeling a certain distance from you. And I’m afraid that you and I might have . . . lost something between us. Something that . . .”
It had to stop. She had to stop it.
“Wilsin-cha,” she said, and forced herself into a formal pose of respect appropriate to a superior in business. “I think perhaps it is too soon. The . . . the wounds are too fresh. Perhaps we might postpone this conversation.”
He took a pose of agreement that seemed to carry a relief almost as deep as her own. She shifted to a pose of leave-taking, which he returned. She didn’t meet his gaze as she left. In the dressing room, she pulled on her robes, washed her face, and leaned against the great granite basin, her hands clenched white on its rim, until her mind had stilled. With a long, deep, slow breath, she composed herself, then took up her cane and walked out into the streets, as if the world were not a broken place, and her path through it was not twisted.
She strode to the compound, her leg and hip hardly bothering her. She delivered the orders she had to give, made the arrangements she had discussed with Wilsin-cha. Liat, thankfully, was elsewhere. Amat’s day was difficult enough without adding the burden of Liat’s guilt and pain. And, of course, there was the decision of whether to take the girl with her when Amat left her old life behind.
When Amat had written the last entry in the house logs, she cleaned the nib on its cloth, laid the paper over the half-used inkblock, and walked south, toward the seafront. And not toward her apartments. She passed by the stalls and the ships, the watersellers and firekeepers and carts that sold strips of pork marinated in ginger and cumin. When she reached the wide mouth of the Nantan, she paused, considering the bronze form of the last emperor gazing out over the sea. His face was calm and, she thought, sorrowful. Shian Sho had watched the Empire fall, watched the devastation of war between high councilors who could wield poets and andat. How sad, she thought, to have had so much and been powerless to save it. For the first time in her life, she felt something more than awe or historical curiosity or familiarity with the image of the man eight generations dead. She walked to the base of the statue, reached out and rested her hand on the sun-hot metal of his foot almost painful to touch. When she turned away, her sorrow was not less, but it was accompanied by a strange lifting of her heart. A kinship, perhaps, with those who had struggled before her to save the cities they held dear. She walked toward the river, and the worst parts of the city. Her city. Hers.
The teahouse was rough—its shutters needed painting, the plaster of its walls was scored with the work of vandals cheaply repaired—but not decrepit. Its faults spoke of poverty, not abandonment. A man with the deep blue eyes and red hair of the Westlands leaned out of a window, trying not to seem to stare at her. Amat raised an eyebrow and walked through the blue-painted door and into the murk of the main room.
The smell of roast lamb and Westlands beer and cheap tobacco washed over her. The stone floor was smooth and clean, and the few men and women at their tables seemed to take little notice of her. The dogs under the tables shifted toward her and then away, equally incurious. Amat looked around with an expression that she hoped would be read as confidence and impatience. A dark-haired girl came to her before long, wiping her hands on her robe as she came. She took a pose of greeting which Amat returned.
“We have tables here,” the girl said. “Or perhaps you would care for a room in the back? We have a good view of the river, if . . .”
“I’m here to see a man named Torish Wite,” Amat said. “I was told that he would expect me.”
The girl fell into a pose of understanding without surprise or hesitation, turned, and led Amat back through a short corridor to an open door. Amat took a pose of thanks, and stepped through.
He was a big man, thick hair the color of honey, a rough scar on his chin. He didn’t rise as she came in, only watched her with a distant amusement. Amat took a pose appropriate to opening a negotiation.
“No,” the man said in the language of the Westlands. “If you want to talk to me, you can use words.”
Amat dropped her hands and sat. Torish Wite leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. The knife he wore at his belt was as long as Amat’s forearm. She felt fear tighten her throat. This man was strong, brutal, prone to violence. That was, after all, why she was here.
“I understand you have men for hire,” she said.
“Truth,” he agreed.
“I want a dozen of them.”
“For what?”
“I can’t tell you that yet.”
“Then you can’t have ’em.”
“I’m prepared to pay—”
“I don’t care what you’re prepared to pay. They’re my men, and I’m not sending them out unless I know what I’m sending them into. You can’t say, then you can’t have them.”
He looked away, already bored. Amat shook her head, pushing away her emotions. This was the time to think, not feel. The man was a businessman, even if what he traded in was violence. He had nothing to gain by building a reputation of spilling his client’s secrets.
“I am about to break with my house,” she said. After holding her intentions in silence for so long, it was strange to hear the words spoken. “I am going to be taking up a project that will put me in opposition to my previous employer. If I’m to succeed in it, I will have to secure a large and steady income.”
Torish Wite shifted forward, his arms resting on his knees. He was considering her now. He was curious. She had him.
“And how are you going to arrange that?” he asked.
“There is a man named Ovi Niit. He runs a comfort house
in the soft quarter. I mean to take it from him.”
12
> +
The days—nearly two weeks now—since Otah-kvo had left had taken on a rhythm. He would rise in the morning, and go and speak with Heshai-kvo. Some days, the poet would manage three or four exchanges. Others, they would only sit there under the baleful black stare of the andat, silent in his torture box. Maati coaxed his master to eat whatever meal the servants had brought from the palace kitchens: fruit pastries sticky with sugar, or rich, soupy bread puddings, or simple cheese and cut apple. And every morning, Heshai-kvo deigned to eat a mouthful or two, sip a bowl of tea. And then with a grunt, he would turn away, leaving only his wide back as company. Seedless never spoke, but Maati felt the weight of his attention like a hand on the back of his neck.
In the afternoon, he would walk in the gardens or read. And as sunset came, he would repeat the breakfast ritual with an evening meal that excited no more interest in the poet. Then, leaving the night candle lit, Maati would go to his own room, his own cot, light his candle, fasten his netting, and will himself to sleep. It was like a fever dream, repeated again and again, with small variations that seemed only to point out that nothing of substance changed.
He closed the shutters, took a clean robe, washed his face and shaved. There was little enough on his cheek for the razor to take, but it was a ritual. And it comforted him. He would have given anything he had to have Otah-kvo there to talk with.
He went down the stairs to the table where the breakfast had been left for him: honey bread and black tea. He took the tray and went back up and along the corridor to Heshai-kvo’s room. It was unbarred, and swung open at the touch of his burdened wrist.
The bed was empty. Netting fine as mist was thrown aside, the bedclothes in knots and bundles that didn’t hide the depression where the poet’s body had lain for days. Maati, trembling, put down the tray and walked to the abandoned bed. There was no note, no unfamiliar object, nothing to say what had happened, why his teacher was gone. Sickening images of the poet floating dead in the pond tugged at him, and he turned slowly, dreading to see the torture box empty. Seedless’ black eyes met his, and Maati let out the breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding.
The andat laughed.
“No such luck, my dear,” he said, his voice amused and calm. “The great poet is, to the best of my knowledge, still alive and in something near enough to his right mind not to have set me free.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t as if he asked my permission. You know, Maati-kya, it’s odd. We never seem to chat anymore.”
“Where did he go? What did he say?”
Seedless sighed.
“He didn’t say anything. He was just his own pathetic self—all the grace and will of a soiled washcloth—and then just after the last mark of the night candle, he got up like he’d remembered an appointment, pulled on his robes and left.”
Maati paced, fighting to slow his breath, to order his thoughts. There had to be something. Some sign that would tell him where Heshai had gone, what he would do.
“Call out the guards,” Seedless said, laughter in his voice. “The great poet has slipped his leash.”
“Be quiet!” Maati snapped. “I have to think.”
“Or you’ll do what? Punish me? Gods, Maati, look what they’re doing to me already. I can’t move. I can’t stretch. If I were a man, I’d be covered in my own shit, and nothing to do but try to push it out with my toes. What more were you planning to do?”
“Don’t. Just . . . don’t talk to me.”
“Why not, my dear? What did I do to upset you?”
“You killed a baby!” Maati shouted, shocked at his own anger.
In the shadows of his prison, the andat smiled sadly. The pale fingers wrapped the slats, and the pale flesh shifted an inch.
“The baby doesn’t mind,” Seedless said. “Ask it, see if it holds a grudge. What I did, I did to the woman. And to Heshai. And you know why I’ve done it.”
“You’re evil,” Maati said.
“I’m a prisoner and a slave held against my will. I’m forced to work for my captor when what I want is to be free. Free of this box, of this flesh, of this consciousness. It’s no more a moral impulse than you wanting to breathe. You’d sacrifice anyone, Maati, if you were drowning.”
Maati turned his back, running his hands down the empty sheets, looking for something—anything. It was only cloth. He had to go. He had to alert the Khai. Armsmen. They had to send armsmen out to search for Heshai and bring him back. Over the drumming of the rain, he heard the andat shift.
“I told you,” Seedless said, “that we wouldn’t always be friends.”
And from below them another voice called Maati’s name. A woman’s voice, tight with distress. Maati rushed down the stairs, three at a stride. Liat Chokavi stood in the main room. Her robes and hair were rain-soaked, clinging to her and making her seem younger than she had before. She held her hands tight. When she saw him, she took two steps forward, and Maati reached out, put his hand on hers.
“What is it,” he asked. “What’s happened?”
“The poet. Heshai. He’s at the compound. He’s raving, Maati. We can’t calm him. Epani-cha wanted to send for the utkhaiem, but I told him I’d come get you. He promised to wait.”
“Take me,” he said, and together they half-walked, half-ran out, across the wooden bridge—its timbers rain-slicked and blackened—through the palace gardens where the water bowed the limbs of trees and bent the flower blossoms to the ground, and then south, into the city. Liat kept hold of his hand, pulling him along. The pace was too fast for speaking, and Maati couldn’t imagine what he would say if he’d been able. His mind was too much taken with dread of what he would find when they arrived.
If Otah-kvo had been there, there would have been someone to ask, someone who would have known what to do. It struck Maati as he passed through the darkened streets that he’d had a teacher with him almost his whole life—someone who could guide him when the world got confusing. That was what teachers were supposed to be. Otah-kvo hadn’t even accepted the Dai-kvo and he was strong enough to know the right thing. It was monstrously wrong that Heshai was incapable of doing the same.
At the courtyard of the Galtic house, Liat stopped and Maati drew up beside her. The scene was worse than he had thought. The house was two stories built around the courtyard with a walkway on the second level that looked down on the metalwork statue of the Galtic Tree, the fountain overflowing in the downpour, and between them, sitting with his back to the street, his teacher. Around him were the signs of conflict—torn papers, spilled food. A crowd had gathered, robes in the colors of many houses ghosted in the shadows of doorways and on the upper walk, faces blurred by rain.
Maati put his hand on Liat’s hip and gently pushed her aside. The stone of the courtyard was an inch underwater, white foam tracing the pattern of drainage from the house out into the streets. Maati walked through it slowly, his sandals squelching.
Heshai looked confused. The rain plastered his long, thinning hair to his neck. His robe was thin—too thin for the weather—and the unhealthy pink of his skin showed through it. Maati squatted beside him, and saw the thick, wide mouth was moving slightly, as if whispering. Drops of water clung like dew to the moth-eaten beard.
“Heshai-kvo,” Maati said, taking a pose of entreaty. “Heshai-kvo, we should go
back.”
The bloodshot eyes with whites the color of old ivory turned to him, narrowed, and then recognition slowly lit the poet’s face. He put his thick-fingered hands on Maati’s knee, and shook his head.
“She isn’t here. She’s already gone,” Heshai said.
“Who isn’t here, Heshai-kvo?”
“The girl,” he snapped. “The island girl. The one. I thought if I could find her, you see, if I could explain my error . . .”
Maati fought the urge to shake him—take a handful of robe in each fist and rattle the old man until he came to his senses. Instead, he put his own hand over Heshai’s and kept his voice calm and steady.
“We should go.”
“If I could have explained, Maati . . . If I could just have explained that it was the andat that did the thing. That I would never have—”
“What good would it do?” Maati said, his anger and embarrassment slipping out, “Heshai-kvo, there aren’t any words you know that would apologize for what happened. And sitting here in the rain doesn’t help.”
Heshai frowned at the words as if confused, then looked down at the flowing water and up to the half-hidden faces. The frog-lips pursed.
“I’ve made an ass of myself, haven’t I?” Heshai asked in a perfectly rational voice.
“Yes,” Maati said, unable to bring himself to lie. “You have.”
Heshai nodded, and rose to his feet. His robe hung open, exposing his wrinkled breast. He took two unsteady steps before Maati moved close and put his arm around the man. As they passed into the street, Liat went to Heshai’s other side, taking his arm over her shoulder, sharing Maati’s burden. Maati felt Liat’s arm against his own behind Heshai’s wide back. Her hand clasped his forearm, and between them, they made a kind of cradle to lead the poet home.
THE ROBE MAATI LENT HER WHEN THEY ARRIVED BACK AT THE POET’S HOUSE was woven cotton and silk, the fabric thicker than her finger and soft as any she’d touched in years. She changed in his small room while he was busy with the poet. Her wet robes, she hung on a stand. She wrung the water out of her hair and braided it idly as she waited.