“They take back less money,” Amat said, her voice reasonable and calm, though she already knew that Mitat was right. “Those who work most, get most. And with that kind of liberty and the chance to earn more, we’ll attract women who want to work in a good house.”
Mitat stopped walking. She didn’t speak, but her guarded expression was enough. Amat closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat.
“Don’t beat them without cause,” Mitat said. “Don’t let anyone cut them where it would scar. Give them what they’re owed. That’s all you can do now, grandmother. In a year—two, perhaps—you could try something like this, but to do it now would be a sign of weakness.”
“Yes. I suppose it would. Thank you, Mitat-cha.”
When she opened her eyes again, the woman had taken a pose of concern. Amat answered with one of reassurance.
“You seem tired, grandmother.”
“It’s nothing.”
Mitat hesitated visibly, then handed back the papers. Before Amat could ask what was troubling her, steps came up the stairs and a polite knock interrupted them. Torish Wite stepped in, his expression guarded.
“There’s someone here to see you,” he said to Amat.
“Who?”
“Marchat Wilsin.”
Her belly went tight, but she only took in a deep breath.
“Is anyone with him?”
“No. He stinks a little of wine, but he’s unarmed and he’s come alone.”
“Where’s Maj?” she asked.
“Asleep. We’ve made your old cell a sleeping chamber for her.”
“Set a guard on her room. No one’s to go in, and she’s not to come out. I don’t want him knowing that we have her here.”
“You’re going to see him?” Mitat asked, her voice incredulous.
“He was my employer for decades,” Amat said, as if it were an answer to the question. “Torish-cha. I’ll want a man outside the door. If I call out, I want him in here immediately. If I don’t, I want privacy. We’ll finish our conversation later, Mitat.”
The pair retreated, closing the door behind them. Amat rose, taking up her cane and walking to the doors that opened onto the private deck. It had rained in the night, and the air was still thick with it. It was that, Amat told herself, that made it hard to breathe. The door opened behind her, then closed again. She didn’t turn at once. Across the deck, the soft quarter flowed street upon street, alley upon alley. Banners flew and beggars sang. It was a lovely city, even this part. This was why she was doing what she’d done. For this and for the girl Maj and the babe she’d lost. She steeled herself.
Marchat Wilsin stood at the doorway in a robe of green so deep and rich it seemed shot with black. His face was grayish, his eyes bloodshot. He looked frightened and lost, like a mouse surrounded by cats. He broke her heart.
“Hello, old friend,” she said. “Who’d have thought we’d end here, eh?”
“Why are you doing this, Amat?”
The pain in his voice almost cracked it. She felt the urge to go to him, comfort him. She wanted badly to touch his hand and tell him that everything would end well, in part because she knew that it wouldn’t. It occurred to her distantly that if she had let him profess love for her, she might not have been able to leave House Wilsin.
“What happened to the poet. To the girl. It was an attack,” she said. “You know it, and I do. You attacked Saraykeht.”
He walked forward, his hands out, palms up before him.
“I didn’t,” he said. “Amat, you have to see that this wasn’t my doing.”
“Can I offer you tea?” she asked.
Bewildered, he sank onto a divan and ran his hands through his hair in wordless distress. She remembered the man she’d first met—his dark hair, his foreign manners. He’d had an easy laugh back then, and power in his gaze. She poured a bowl of tea for him. When he didn’t take it from her hand, she left it on the low table at his knee and went back to her own desk.
“It didn’t work, Amat. It failed. The poet’s alive, the andat’s still held. They see that it can’t work, and so it won’t happen again, if you’ll only let this go.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because of what you did to Maj. She wanted that child. And because Saraykeht is my home. And because you betrayed me.”
Marchat flushed red and took a pose so sloppy it might have meant anything.
“Betrayed you? How did I betray you? I did everything to keep you clear of this. I warned you that Oshai was waiting for you. And when you came back I was the one who argued for keeping you alive. I risked my life for yours.”
“You made me part of this,” Amat said, surprised to hear the anger in her own voice, to feel the warmth in her face. “You did this and you put me in a position where I have to sacrifice everything—everything—in order to redeem myself. If I had known in time, I would have stopped it. You knew that when you asked me to find you a bodyguard. You hoped I’d find a way out.”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly then. I am now.”
“Are you? How can I do anything besides this, Marchat-kya? If I keep silent, it’s as much as saying I approve of the crime. And I don’t.”
His eyes shifted, his gaze going hard. Slowly, he lifted the bowl of tea to his lips and drank it down in one long draw. When he put the bowl down—ceramic clicking against the wooden table—he was once again the man she’d known. He had put his heart aside, she knew, and entered the negotiation that might save his life, his house. Might, if he could convince her, even save her from the path she’d chosen. She felt a half-smile touch her lips. A part of her hoped he might win.
“Granted, something wrong was done,” he said. “Granted, I had some part—though I didn’t have a choice in it. But put aside that I was coerced. Put aside that it was none of it my plan. Let me ask you this—what justice do you expect?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s for the Khai and his men to choose.”
He took a pose that showed his impatience with her.
“You know quite well the mercy he’ll show me and House Wilsin. And Galt as a whole. And it won’t be for Maj. It’ll be for himself.”
“It will be for his city.”
“And how much is a city worth, Amat? Even in the name of justice. If the Khai chooses to kill a thousand Galtic babies out of their mothers, is that a fair price for a city? If they starve because our croplands go sterile, is that a fair price? You want justice, Amat. I know that. But the end of this road is only vengeance.”
A breeze thick with the smell of the sea shifted the window cloths. The doors to the private deck shifted closed with a clack, and the room went dim.
“You’re thinking with your heart,” he continued. “What happened was terrible. I don’t deny it. We were caught up in something huge and grotesque and evil. But be clear of the cost. One child. How many women miscarry in a single year? How many lose their children from being beaten by their men, or from falling, or from illness? I can think of six in the last five months. What happened was wrong, Amat, and I swear to you I will do what I can to make it right again. But not at the cost of making things worse.”
He leaned forward. Her retort was finding its shape in her mind, but not quickly.
“They see now that it can’t work,” he said. “They weren’t able to be rid of Seedless when he was conspiring with them. They can see now that they’d never be able to coordinate freeing all of them at once. The experiment failed. Sure they may try something again someday, but not anytime soon. They’ll turn their efforts back to the Westlands, or maybe to the south, or the islands for the time being. The war won’t come here. Not unless they find some way to do it safely.”
Amat’s blood went cold, and she looked at her hands to avoid letting the shock show in her eyes. Trade, she had thought. With Seedless gone, trade would shift. Her city would suffer, and other cotton markets would flourish. She’d been thinking too small. Eight generation
s without war. Eight generations of the wealth that the andat commanded, the protection they gave. This was not trade. This was the first step toward invasion, and he thought she’d known it.
She forced herself to smile, to look up. Without the andat, the cities would fall. The wealth of the Khaiem would go to pay for what mercenaries they could hire. But faced with the soldiery of Galt, Amat doubted many companies would choose to fight for a clearly losing side, or would keep their contracts with the Khaiem if they made them.
Everything she knew would end.
“Come back to the house,” Marchat said. “It’s almost time for the end of season negotiations, and I need you there. I need you back.”
She called out sharply, and the guard was in the room. Marchat—her old friend, her employer, the hard-headed, funny, thoughtful man whose house had saved her from the streets, the man who loved her and had never had the courage to say it—looked lost. Amat took a pose of farewell appropriate to the beginning of a long absence. She was fairly sure he wouldn’t catch the nuance of permanence in it, but perhaps it was more for herself than him anyway.
“The past was a beautiful place, Marchat-kya,” she said. “I miss it already.”
And then, to the guard.
“See him out.”
HESHAI’S IMPROVEMENT, WHEN IT CAME, WAS SUDDEN AS A CHANGE IN THE weather. Liat was in the main room of the poet’s house peeling an orange. Maati had gone up to his room for something, telling her to wait there. The steps that descended behind her were slow and heavy, as if Maati were bearing a large and awkward burden. She turned, and instead found Heshai washed and shaved and wrapped in a formal robe.
Liat started to her feet and took a pose of greeting appropriate to one of a much higher station. On the seat where she’d been, the long golden length of peel still clung to the white flesh of the orange. The poet sketched a brief pose of welcome and moved over to her, his gaze on the fruit. His smile, when it came, was unsure, a configuration unfamiliar to the wide lips. Liat wondered whether she had ever seen the man laugh.
“I don’t suppose there’s enough of that to share with an old man?” he said. He seemed almost shy.
“Of course,” she said, picking up the orange and splitting off a section. He accepted it from her with a pose of thanks and popped it in his mouth. His skin was pale as the belly of a fish, and there were dark sacks under his eyes. He had grown thinner in the weeks since the sad trade had gone wrong. Still, when he grinned at her, his smile finding its confidence, she found herself smiling back. For a moment, she could see clearly what he had looked like as a child.
“You seem much better,” she said.
“Tired of moping around, I suppose,” he said. “I thought I might go out. I haven’t been to a good teahouse in some time.”
The lighter footsteps she knew came down the stairs behind them and stopped. Maati had forgotten the book in his hand. His mouth was open.
“Come down,” Heshai said. “It isn’t a private conversation. We were only sharing a bite. There’s enough for you too, I imagine.”
“Heshai-kvo . . .”
“I was just telling Liat-kya here that I’ve decided to stretch my legs this evening. I’ve been too much within myself. And tomorrow, there are things we should do. It’s past time we began your education in earnest, eh?”
Maati took a pose of agreement made clumsy by the volume in his hand, but Liat could see that he was hardly aware of it. She caught his gaze, encouraging him silently to be pleased, or if he wasn’t, to act as if he were.
“I will be ready, Heshai-kvo,” he said. If there was an edge to his voice, Heshai seemed not to hear it. He only took a pose of farewell to Liat more formal than her rank called for, and a subtler pose of congratulation to Maati that she was fairly certain she had not been meant to see, and then he was off. They sat on the steps up to the house and watched him striding over the bridge and along the path until it turned. Maati, beside her, was trembling with rage.
“I thought this was what we wanted,” Liat said, gently.
He snapped his head, her words pulling him back to the world.
“Not like this,” he said.
“He’s out of his bed. He’s going into the city.”
“It’s like nothing happened,” Maati said. “He’s acting like nothing happened. All these weeks, just vanished . . .”
Liat smoothed his neck with her palm. For a moment, Maati went tight, then, slowly, she felt him relax. He turned to her.
“You wanted an apology,” she said. “Or some recognition for what you did for him all this time.”
Maati put down the book on the step beside him and pulled his robe closer around him. For a long time, they didn’t speak. The trees were turning, the first fallen leaves covering the grounds. It wasn’t winter, but autumn had reached its center.
“It’s wrong of me,” Maati said, his voice thick with shame and anger. “I should accept that he’s improving and be pleased. But . . .”
“This may be the best he can do,” Liat said. “Give him time.”
Maati nodded and took her hand in his, their fingers laced. With her other hand, she reached across him and took up the book. It was old, and heavy for its size, bound in copper and leather.
“Read me that poem you were talking about,” she said.
Much later, the darkness fallen, Liat lay with Maati on his cot and listened to his breath. The breeze that stirred the netting raised gooseflesh on her arms, but he was soft and warm as a cat against her. She stroked his hair. She felt safe and content and sick with guilt. She had never been unfaithful to a lover before this. She had always imagined it would be difficult, that people would stare at her in the streets and talk of her in scandalized whispers. In the event, it seemed no one cared. The isolation that had come after Seedless and the baby—from Amat, from Wilsin-cha, from the people of the house, and worst from Itani—was easier to bear with Maati. And he could listen when she spoke about her part, her failings, the way she’d let the child die.
The night candle fluttered, and three slow moths beat at the walls of its glass lantern. Liat shifted and Maati murmured in his sleep and turned away from her. She parted the netting and stood naked, letting the cool of night wash over her. Their coupling had left her feeling sticky. She thought of going to a bathhouse, but the long walk through the city after dark and the prospect of leaving Maati behind failed to appeal. It would be better, she thought, to stay near, even if it meant being cold. She deserved, she supposed, a little discomfort for her sins. She pulled on her robe, but didn’t tie the fastenings.
In the darkness, stars spilled across the sky. The distant lights of the palaces, of the city, might almost not have been. Liat considered the crescent moon, its shining curve of light cupping a darkness of blotted stars. Frogs and crickets sang and the manicured grass at the side of the koi pond tickled the bottom of her feet. She looked around carefully before shrugging out of her robe. The water of the pond was no worse than she might find in the cold pool of a bathhouse. The fish darted away from her and then slowly returned. Reeds at the water’s edge rubbed against each other with a sound like hands on skin, disturbed by the waves of her movements.
Floating on her back, her legs kicking slowly, she thought of Itani. She didn’t feel as if she were betraying him, though she knew that she was. Maati and Itani—Otah—seemed to inhabit entirely different places in her heart. The one seemed so little related to the other. Itani was her heartmate, the man she’d shared her bed with for months. Maati was her friend, her confidant, her only support in a world empty even of the other man. For hours at a time and especially in his company, she could forget the guilt and the dread. She didn’t know how it could be like this: so easy and so difficult both.
The chill touched her bones, and she turned, swimming easily to the shore. The rich mud squelched between her toes. Against wet flesh, the air was much colder than the water had been. By the time she found her robe, she was shivering. The night around
her was silent, the insects and night birds gone still.
“There must be some etiquette to address situations like this,” Seedless said from the darkness, “but I’m sure I don’t know what it is.”
The andat’s face seemed hung in the air, the pale lips quirked in a smile both amused and grim. He moved forward as she pulled on her robe. His cloak—black shot with blue—seemed to weave in and out of the darkness. He pulled something bulky from a sleeve and held it out to her. A hair cloth.
“I brought this for you,” he said. “Once I understood what you were doing I thought you’d want it.”
Liat took it, falling into a pose of gratitude by reflex. The andat returned it dismissively, squatted on the grassy slope and, his arms resting on his knees, looked out over the pond.
“You got out of the torture box.”
“One of them. Heshai-kvo let me out. He’s been doing it for several days now on the condition that I promise to stay within sight of the house. I’ve sworn a sacred oath, though I imagine I’ll break it eventually. It’s why he’s improving. Locking away a part of yourself—especially a shameful one—gives that part power over all the rest. It’s the danger of splitting yourself in two, don’t you find?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Liat said.
Seedless smiled in genuine amusement.
“Dry your hair,” he said. “I’m not judging you, my dear. I’m a babykiller. You’re a girl of seventeen summers who’s taken a second lover. It hardly gives me the high ground.”
Liat wrapped her hair in the cloth and turned to leave, dry leaves stirring at her ankles. The words that stopped her were so soft, she might almost have imagined them.
“I know about Otah.”
She paused. As if on cue, the chorus of crickets began again.
“What do you know?” she asked.
“Enough.”
“How?”
“I’m clever. What do you intend to do when he comes back?”
Liat didn’t answer. The andat turned to consider her. He took a pose that unasked the question. Anger flashed in Liat’s breast.