And to his unease, Otah found that his refusal of the andat was not so certain a thing as he had though it.
For nearly a quarter candle, Amat and Mitat, Liat and sometimes even Torish Wite chewed and argued. The messengers were questioned, the letters they bore added to the growing stacks, and they were sent away with Amat’s replies tucked in their sleeves. Otah listened and watched as the arguments to be presented before the Khai Saraykeht became clearer. Proofs of billing, testimonies, collisions of dates and letters from Galt, and Maj—witness and centerpiece—to stand as the symbol of it all. And then the whole web of coincidence repeated a year earlier with some other girl who had taken fright, the story said, and escaped. There was no proof—no evidence which in itself showed anything. But like tile chips in a mosaic, the facts related to one another in a way that demanded a grim interpretation.
And only so much proof, of course, was required. Amat’s evidence need only capture the imagination of the court, and the avalanche would begin. What she said was true, and once the full powers of the court were involved, Heshai-kvo would be brought before it, and Seedless. And the andat, when forced, would have to speak the truth. He might even be pleased to, bringing in another wave of disaster as a second-best to his own release.
As the night passed—the moon moving unseen overhead—Liat began to flag. Amat noticed it and met Otah’s gaze.
“Liat-kya, I’m being terrible,” Amat said, taking a pose of apology. “You’re hurt and tired and I’ve been keeping you awake.”
Liat made some small protest, but its weakness was enough to show Amat’s argument valid. Otah moved to her and helped her to her feet, and Liat, sighing, leaned into him.
“There’s a cot made up upstairs,” Mitat said. “In Amat-cha’s rooms.”
“But where will ‘Tani sleep?”
“I’m fine, love,” he said before Amat—clearly surprised by the question—could think to offer hospitality. “I’ve a place with some of my old cohort. If I didn’t come back, they’d worry.”
It wasn’t true, but that hardly mattered. The prospect of staying at the comfort house while Amat’s plans reached fruition held no appeal. Only the sleepy distress in Liat’s eyes made him wish to stay, and then for her more than himself.
“I’ll stay until you’re asleep,” he said. It seemed to comfort her. They gave their goodnights and walked up the thick wooden stairs, moving slowly for Liat’s benefit. Otah heard the conversation begin again behind him, the plan moving forward.
He closed the door of Amat’s rooms behind him. The shutters were fast but the dull orange of torchlight from the street glowed at their seams. The night candle on Amat’s desk was past its half-mark. Its flame guttered as they passed. The cot was thick canvas stretched over wood with a mattress three fingers thick and netting strung over it even though there were few insects flying so late in the winter. With his arm still around Liat’s thin frame, their single shadow flickered against the wall.
“She hates me, I think,” Liat said, her voice low and calm.
“What are you talking about. Amat-cha was perfectly . . .”
“Not her. Maj.”
Otah was silent. He wanted to deny that too—to tell Liat that no one thought ill of her, that everything would be fine if only she’d let it. But he didn’t know it was true, or even if it would be wise to think it. They had thought no particular ill of Wilsin-cha, and Liat could have died for that. He felt his silence spread like cold. Liat shrugged him away and pulled at the ties of her cloak.
“Let me,” Otah said. Liat held still as he undid her cloak, folded it on the floor under her cot.
“My robe too?” she asked. In the near darkness, Otah felt her gaze as much as saw it. An illusion, perhaps. It might only have been something in the tone of her voice, an inflection recognized after months of being her lover, sharing her bed and her body. Otah hesitated for more reasons than one.
“Please,” Liat said.
“You’re hurt, love. It was hard enough even walking upstairs . . .”
“Itani.”
“It’s Amat-cha’s room. She could come up.”
“She won’t be up for hours. Help me with my robe. Please.”
Objections pushed for position, but Otah moved forward, drawn by her need and his own. Carefully, he untied the stays of her robes and drew them from her until she stood naked but for her straps and bandages. Even in the dim light, he could see where the bruises marked her skin. She took his hand and kissed it, then reached for the stays of his own robe. He did not stop her. It would have been cruel, and even if it hadn’t, he did not want to.
They made love slowly, carefully, and he thought as much in sorrow as in lust. Her skin was the color of dark honey in the candlelight, her hair black as crows. When they were both spent, Otah lay with his back to the chill wall, giving Liat as much room on the cot as she needed to be comfortable. Her eyes were only half-open, the corners of her mouth turned down. When she shivered, he half rose and pulled her blanket over her. He did not climb beneath it himself, though the warmth would have been welcome.
“You were gone for so long,” Liat said. “There were days I wondered if you were coming back.”
“Here I am.”
“Yes,” she said. “Here you are. What was it like? Tell me everything.”
And so he told her about the ship and the feeling of wood swaying underfoot, the creaking of rope and the constant noise of water. He told her about the courier with his jokes and stories of travelling, and the way Orai had known at once that he’d left a woman behind. About Yalakeht with its tall gray buildings and the thin lanes with iron gates at the mouth that could lock whole streets up for the night like a single apartment.
And he could have gone on—the road to the Dai-kvo’s village, the mountain, the town of only men, the Dai-kvo himself, the odd half-offer to take him back. He might even have gone as far as Seedless’ threats, and the realization he was still struggling with—that Itani Noyga would be exposed as the son of the Khai Machi. That if Seedless lived, Itani Noyga would have to die. But Liat’s breath was heavy, deep, and regular. When he lifted himself over her, she murmured something and curled herself deeper into the bedding. Otah pulled on his robes. The night candle was past the three-quarter mark, the darkness moving closer and closer to dawn. For the first time, he noticed the fatigue in his limbs. He would need to find someplace to sleep. A room, perhaps, or one of the sailor’s bunks down by the seafront where he’d be sharing a brazier with nine men who’d drunk themselves asleep the night before.
In the buttery light of the common room, the conversation was still going on, but to his surprise, the focus had shifted. Maj, an observer before like himself, was seated across from Amat Kyaan, stabbing at the tabletop with a finger and letting loose a long string of syllables with no clear break between them. Her face was flushed, and he could hear the anger in her voice without knowing the words. Anger and wine. Amat looked up at he descended the stairs. She looked older than usual.
Maj followed the old woman’s gaze, glanced up at the closed door behind him, and said something else. Amat replied in the same language, her voice calm but not placating. Maj stood, rattling the bench, and strode to Otah.
“Your woman sleeps?” Maj said.
“She’s asleep. Yes.”
“I have questions. Wake her,” Maj said, taking a pose that made the words a command. Her breath was a drunk’s. Over her shoulder, he saw Amat shake her head no. Otah took a pose of apology. The refusal seemed to break something in Maj, and tears brimmed in her eyes, streaked her cheeks.
“Weeks,” she said, her tone pleading. “I am waiting for weeks, and for nothing. There is no justice here. You people you have no justice.”
Mitat approached them and put her hand on the island girl’s arm. Maj pulled away and went to a different door, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. As the door closed behind her, Otah took a pose of query.
“She didn’t understand that th
e Khai Saraykeht might make his own investigation,” Mitat said. “She thought he’d act immediately. When she heard that there’d be another delay . . .”
“It isn’t entirely her fault,” Amat said. “This can’t have been easy for her, any of it.” The master of guard—a huge bear of a man—coughed. The way he and Amat considered each other was enough to tell Otah this wasn’t the first time the girl had been the subject of conversation. Amat continued, “It will all be finished soon enough. Or our part, at least. As long as she’s here to make the case before the Khai, we’ll have started the thing. If she goes home after that, she goes home.”
“And if she leaves before that?” Mitat asked, sitting on the table.
“She won’t,” Amat said. “She’s not well, but she won’t leave before someone answers for her child. And Liat. She’s resting?”
“Yes, Amat-cha,” Otah said, taking a pose of thanks. “She’s asleep.”
“Wilsin-cha will know by now that she’s not going back to his house,” Amat said. “She’ll need to stay inside until this is over.”
“Another one? And how long’s that going to be, grandmother?” Torish Wite asked.
Amat rested her head in her hands. She seemed smaller than she had been, diminished by fatigue and years, but not broken. Weary to her bones perhaps, but unbroken. In that moment, he found that he admired Liat’s old teacher very much.
“I’ll send a runner in the morning,” she said. “This time of year, it might take a week before we get an audience.”
“But we aren’t ready!” Mitat said. “We don’t even know where the first girl was kept or where she’s gone. We won’t have time to find her!”
“We have all the pieces,” Amat said. “And what we don’t have, the utkhaiem will find when the Khai looks into it. It isn’t all I’d hoped, but it will do. It will have to.”
18
> +
Epani’s letter floated now on the surface of the water. It was a warm bath, now that the half-hearted winter was upon them, and steam rose in wisps from the drowned paper. The ink had washed away as he’d watched it, threads of darkness like shadows fading into the clear water. It was over. There was nothing he could do now that would put the world back in its right shape, and in a strange way it was a relief. Night after night since Seedless, that miserable Khaiate god-ghost, had come to his apartments, Marchat had lain awake. He’d had a damn fine mind, once. But in the dark hours, he’d found nothing, no plan of action, no finessed stroke that would avoid the thing that had now come. And since there was no halting it, he could at least stop looking. He closed his eyes and let his head sink for a moment under the tiny lapping waves. Yes, it was a relief that at least now he wouldn’t have to try.
He lay underwater until his lungs began to burn, and then even a little longer, not wanting to leave this little moment of peace behind. But time and breath being what they were, he rose and tramped up out of the bath. The water streamed off his body leaving gooseflesh behind it, and he dried himself quickly as he walked into the changing room. The heat from a wide, black brazier combined with the vapors from the baths to make the air thick. Any chill at all would freeze these people. The summer cities couldn’t imagine cold, and after so many years here, perhaps he couldn’t either. As he pulled on his thick woolen robes, it struck Marchat that he didn’t remember the last time he’d seen snow. Whenever it had been, he hadn’t known it was the last time he ever would, or he’d have paid it more attention.
A pair of men came in together, round-faced, black-haired, speaking as much in gesture as with words. The same as all the others in Saraykeht. He was the one—pale skin, kinky hair, ridiculously full beard—who stood out. He’d lived here since he’d been a young man, and he’d never really become of the place. He’d always been waiting for the day when he’d be called back to Galt. It was a bitter thought. When the pair noticed him, they took poses of greeting which he returned without thinking. His hands simply knew what to do.
He walked back to the compound slowly. Not because of the dread, though the gods knew he wasn’t looking forward, but instead because his failure seemed to have washed his eyes. The sounds and scents of the city were fresh, unfamiliar. When he had been traveling as a young man, it had been like this coming home. The streets his family lived among had carried the same weight of familiarity and strangeness that Saraykeht now bore. At the time, he’d thought it was only that he had been away, but now he thought it was more that the travels he’d made back then had changed him, as the letter from Epani had changed him again just now. The city was the same, but he was a new man seeing it: The ancient stonework; the vines that rose on the walls and were pulled back every year only to crawl up again; the mixture of languages from all across the world that came to the seafront; the songs of the beggars and cry of birdcall.
Too soon, he was back at his own compound where the Galtic Tree stood as it always had in the main courtyard, the fountain splashing behind it. He wondered who would take the place once he’d gone. Some other poor bastard whom the family wanted rid of. Some boy desperate to prove his worth in the wealthiest, most isolated position in the house. If they didn’t tear the place down stone by stone and burn the rubble. That was another distinct possibility.
Epani waited in his private chambers, wringing his hands in distress. Marchat couldn’t bring himself to feel anything more than a mild annoyance at the man.
“Wilsin-cha, I’ve just heard. The audience was granted. Six days. It’s going to come in six days!”
Marchat put up his hand, palm out, and the cicada stopped whining.
“Send a runner to the palaces. One of the higher clerks. Or go yourself. Tell the Khai’s people that we expect Amat Kyaan’s audience to touch upon the private business of the house, and we want them to postpone her audience until we can be present with our response.”
“Yes, Wilsin-cha.”
“And bring me paper and a fresh inkblock,” Marchat said. “I have some letters to write.”
There must have been something in his tone—a certain gravity, perhaps—that reassured the overseer, because Epani dropped into a pose of acknowledgement and scurried out with a sense of relief that was almost palpable. Marchat followed him far enough to find a servant who could fetch him some mulled wine, then returned to his desk and prepared himself. The tiny flask in the thin drawer at his knee was made of silver, the stopper sealed with green wax. When he shook it, in clinked like some little piece of metal was hidden in it, and not a liquid at all. It was a distillation of the same drugs comfort houses in the soft quarter used to make exotic wines. But it was, of course, much too potent. This thumbfull in his palm was enough to make a man sleep forever. He closed his fingers over it.
This wasn’t how he’d wanted it. But it would do.
He put the flask back in its place as Epani-cha arrived, paper and inkblock and fresh pens in his hands. Marchat thanked him and sent him away, then turned to the blank page.
I am Marchat Wilsin of House Wilsin of Galt, he began then scraped his pen tip over the ink. I write this to confess my crimes and to explain them. I and I alone …
He paused. I and I alone. It was what he could do, of course. He could eat the sin and save those less innocent than himself from punishment. He might save Galt from the wrath of the Khaiem. For the first time since he’d read Epani’s scratched, fear-filled words, Marchat felt a pang of sorrow. It was a bad time, this, to be alone.
The servant arri
ved with his wine, and Marchat drank it slowly, looking at the few words he’d written. He’d invented the whole tale, of course. How he’d hoped to shift the balance of trade away from Saraykeht and so end his exile. How he had fed himself on foolish hopes and dreams and let his own evil nature carry him away. Then he’d apologize to the Khai for his sins, confess his cowardice, and commend his fortune to the island girl Maj who he had wronged and to Amat Kyaan whose loyalty to him had led her to suspect those in Galt who could command him, since she would not believe the sickness of the plan to be his own.
The last part was, he thought, a nice touch. Recasting Amat as a woman so loyal to him, so in love with him, that she didn’t see the truth clearly. He felt sure she’d appreciate the irony.
I and I alone.
He took the barely-started confession, blew on it to cure the ink, and set it aside for a time. There was no hurry. Any time in the next six days would suit as well perhaps more if the Khai let him stall Amat and cheat the world out of a few more sunsets. And there were other letters to write. Something to the family back in Galt, for instance. An apology to the High Council for his evil plans that the utkhaiem might intercept. Or something more personal. Something, perhaps, real.
He drew his pen across the ink, and set the metal nib to a fresh sheet.
Amat, my dear old friend. You see what I’m like? Even now, at this last stop on the trail, I’m too much the coward to use the right words. Amat, my love. Amat, who I never did tell my heart to for fear she’d laugh or, worse, be polite. Who ever would have thought we’d come to this?