OTAH WOKE LATE IN THE AFTERNOON FROM A HEAVY, TROUBLED SLEEP. THE room was empty—the inhabitants of the other bunks having gone their ways. The brazier was cool, but the sun glowed against a window covering of thin-stretched leather. He gathered his things from the thin space between himself and the wall where someone would have had to reach over his sleeping body to steal them. Even so he checked. What money he’d had before, he had now. He dressed slowly, waiting for half-remembered dreams to dissolve and fade. There had been something about a flood, and feral dogs drowning in it.
The streets of the seafront were busy, even in winter. Ships arrived and departed by the spare handful, heading mostly south for other warm ports. The journey to Yalakeht would have been profoundly unpleasant, even now. At one of the tall, thin tables by the wharves, he bought a small sack of baked apple slices covered in butter and black sugar, tossing it from one hand to the other as the heat slapped his palms. He thought of Orai in Machi and the deep-biting cold of the far north. It would, he thought, make apples taste even better.
The scandal in every teahouse, around every firekeeper’s kiln, on the corners and in the streets, was the petition of Amat Kyaan to speak before the Khai. The petition to speak against House Wilsin. Otah listened and smiled his charming smile without ever once meaning it. She was going to disclose how the house had been evading taxes, one version said. Another had it that the sad trade that had gone wrong was more than just the work of the andat—a rival house had arranged it to discredit Wilsin, and Amat was now continuing the vendetta still in the pay of some unknown villain. Another that Amat would show that the island girl’s child had truly been Marchat Wilsin’s. Or the Khai Saraykeht’s. Or the get of some other Khai killed so that the Khaiem wouldn’t have to suffer the possibility of a half-Nippu poet.
It was no more or less than any of the other thousand scandals and occasions of gossip that stirred the slow blood of the city. Even when he came across people he knew, faces he recognized, Otah kept his own counsel. It was coming soon enough, he thought.
The sun was falling in the west, vanishing into the low hills and cane fields, when Otah took himself up the wide streets toward the palaces of the Khai and through those high gardens to the poet’s house. Set off from the grandeur of the halls of the Khai and the utkhaiem, the poet’s house seemed small and close and curiously genuine in the failing light. Otah left the bare trees behind and walked over the wooden bridge, koi popping sluggishly at the water as he passed. Nothing ever froze here.
Before he’d reached the doors, Maati opened them. The waft of air that came with him was warm and scented with smoke and mulled wine. Maati took a pose of greeting appropriate for a student to an honored teacher, and Otah laughed and pushed his hands aside. It was only when Maati didn’t laugh in return that he saw the pose had been sincere. He took one of apology, but Maati only shook his head and gestured him inside.
The rooms were more cluttered than usual—books, papers, a pair of old boots, half the morning’s breakfast still uneaten. A small fire burned, and Maati sat down in one of the two chairs that faced it. Otah took the other.
“You stayed with her last night?” Maati asked.
“Most of it,” Otah said, leaning forward. “I rented a bunk by the seafront. I didn’t want to stay in the comfort house. You heard that Amat Kyaan . . .”
“Yes. I think they brought word to Heshai-kvo before they told the Khai.”
“How did he take it?”
“He’s gone off to the soft quarter. I doubt he’ll come back soon.”
“He’s going to Amat Kyaan?”
“I doubt it. He seemed less like someone solving a problem than participating in it.”
“Does he know? I mean, did you tell him what she was going to say?”
Maati made a sound half laugh, half groan.
“Yes. He didn’t believe it. Or he did, but he wouldn’t admit to it. He said that justice wasn’t worth the price.”
“I can’t think that’s true,” Otah said. Then, “But maybe there’s no justice to be had.”
There was a long pause. There was a deep cup of wine, Otah saw, near the fire. A deep cup, but very little wine in it.
“And how did you take the news?” he asked.
Maati shrugged. He looked tired, unwell. His skin had a gray cast to it, and the bags under his eyes might have been from too much sleep or too little. Now that he thought to look for it, Maati’s head was shifting slightly, back and forth with the beating of his heart. He was drunk.
“What’s the matter, Maati?” he asked.
“You should stay here,” the boy said. “You shouldn’t sleep at the seafront or the comfort house. You’re welcome here.”
“Thank you, but I think people would find it a little odd that—”
“People,” Maati said angrily, then became quiet. Otah stood, found the pot of wine warming over a small brazier, and pushed away the papers that lay too close to the glowing coals before he poured himself a bowl. Maati was looking up at him, sheepish, when he returned to the chair.
“I should have gotten that.”
“It hardly matters. I’ve got it now. Are you well, Maati? You seem . . . bothered?”
“I was thinking the same thing about you. Ever since you got back from the Dai-kvo, it’s seemed . . . difficult between us. Don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” Otah said and sipped the wine. It was hot enough to blow across before he drank it, but it hadn’t been cooking so long that the spirit had been burned out of it. The warmth of it in his throat was comfortable. “It’s my fault. There are things I’ve been trying not to look at too closely. Orai said that sea travel changes you. Changes who you are.”
“It may not be only that,” Maati said softly.
“No?”
Maati sat forward, his elbows on his knees, and looked into the fire as he spoke. His voice was hard as slate.
“There’s something I promised not to speak of. And I’m going to break that promise. I’ve done something terrible, Otah-kvo. I didn’t mean to, and if I could undo it, I swear by all the gods I would. While you were away, Liat and I . . . there was no one else for us to speak with. We were the only two who knew all the truth. And so we spent time in each other’s company . . .”
I need you to stay, Liat had said before he’d left for the Dai-kvo. I need someone by my side.
And Seedless when he’d returned: Heshai fell in love and lost her, and he's been chewed by guilt ever since. Maati will do the same.
Otah sat back, his chair creaking under his shifting weight. With a rush like water poured from a spout, he knew what he was seeing, what had happened. He put down his bowl of wine. Maati was silent, shaking his head back and forth slowly. His face was flushed and although there was no thickness in his voice, no hidden sob in his breath, still a single tear hung from the tip of his nose. It would have been comical if it had been someone else.
“She’s a wonderful woman,” Otah said, carefully. “Sometimes maybe a little difficult to trust, but still a good woman.”
Maati nodded.
“Perhaps I should go,” Otah said softly.
“I’m so sorry,” Maati whispered to the fire. “Otah-kvo, I am so very, very sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything that hasn’t been done a thousand times before by a thousand different people.”
“But I did it to you. I betrayed you. You love her.”
“But I don’t trust her,” Otah said softly.
“Or me. Not any longer,” Maati said.
“Or you,” Otah agreed, and pulling his robes close around him, he walked out of the poet’s house and into the darkness. He closed the door, paused, and then hit it hard enough to bloody his knuckle.
The pain in his chest was real, and the rage behind it. And also, strangely, an amusement and a sense of relief. He walked slowly down to the edge of the pond, wishing more than anything that the courier Orai had been on his way to Saraykeht instead of Machi. But the
world was as it was. Maati and Liat had become lovers, and it was devouring Maati just as some other tragedy had broken his teacher. Amat Kyaan was pursuing her suit before the Khai Saraykeht in a matter of days. Everything Seedless had said to him appeared to be true. And so he stood in the chill by the koi pond, and he waited, throwing stones into the dark water, hearing them strike and sink and be forgotten. He knew the andat would come to him if he were only patient. It wasn’t more than half a hand.
“He’s told you, then,” Seedless said.
The pale face hovered in the night air, a rueful smile on the perfect, sensual lips.
“You knew?”
“Gods. The world and everyone knew,” the andat said, stepping up beside him to look out over the black water. “They were about as discreet as rutting elk. I was only hoping you wouldn’t hear of it until you’d done me that little favor. It’s a pity, really. But I think I bear up quite well under failure, don’t you?”
Otah took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He thought perhaps his could see just the wisps of it in the cold. Beside him the andat didn’t breathe because whatever it looked like, it was not a man.
“And . . . I have failed,” Seedless said, his tone suddenly careful, probing. “Haven’t I? I can spill your secrets, but that’s hardly worth murder. And I can’t expect you to kill a man in order to protect your faithless lover and the dear friend who bedded her, now can I?”
Otah saw again Maati’s angry, self-loathing, empty expression and felt something twist in his belly. An impulse born in him as a child in a bare garden of half-turned earth, half a life ago. It didn’t undo the hurt or the anger, but it complicated them.
“Someone told me once that you can love someone and not trust them, or you can bed someone and not trust them, but never both.”
“I wouldn’t know,” the andat said. “My experience of love is actually fairly limited.”
“Tell me what I need to know.”
In the moonlight, pale hands took a pose that asked for clarification.
“You said you knew where he would be. How long it would take him to drink himself to sleep. Tell me.”
“And you’ll do what I asked?”
“Tell me what I need to know,” Otah said, “and find out.”
THE MORNING AFTER LIAT’S ARRIVAL AT THE COMFORT HOUSE—TWO DAYS ago now—she’d awakened to the small sounds of Amat Kyaan sleeping. Only the faintest edge of daylight came through the shutters—these were the rooms of an owl. The faintest scent of Itani had still haunted her bedding then. When she rose, aching and awkward and half-sorry for the sex she’d insisted on in the night, Amat woke and took her downstairs. The workings of the house were simple enough—the sleeping chambers where the whores were shelved like scrolls in their boxes, cheap cloth over the bunks instead of netting; the kitchens in the back; the wide bath used for washing clothes and bodies during the day, then refilled and scented with oils before the clients came at night. The front parts of the house Amat explained were forbidden to her. Until the case against House Wilsin was made, she wasn’t to leave the comfort house, and she wasn’t to be seen by the clients. The stakes were too high, and Wilsin-cha had resorted to violence once already.
Since then, Liat had slept, eaten, washed herself, sat at Amat-cha’s desk listening to musicians on the street below, but no word had come from Itani or from Maati. On her second night, Liat had sent out a message to the barracks where Itani’s cohort slept. It had come back in the morning with a response from Muhatia-cha. Itani Noyga had left, breaking his indenture in violation of contract; he was not with the men of the house, nor was he welcome. Liat read the words with a sense of dread that approached illness. When she took it to Amat Kyaan, her old master had frowned and tucked the letter into her sleeve.
“What if Wilsin-cha’s killed him?” Liat said, trying to keep the panic she felt from her voice.
Amat Kyaan, sitting at her desk, took a reassuring pose.
“He wouldn’t. I have you and Maj to say what he would have said. Killing him would make our suit stronger, not weaker. And even then, I have the impression that your boy is able to take care of himself,” Amat said, but seeing how little the assurances comforted her, she went on. “Still I can have Torish-cha’s men ask after him.”
“He’d have come back if things were well.”
“Things aren’t well,” Amat said, her eyes hard and bright and tired. “But that doesn’t mean he’s in danger. Still, perhaps I should have had him stay as well. Have you sent to the poet’s boy? Perhaps Maati’s heard of him. He might even be staying there.”
Amat took her cane and rose, gesturing at the desk. Fresh paper and ink.
“I have some things to attend to,” she said. “Use what you need and we’ll send him a runner.”
Liat took a pose of gratitude and sat, but when she took up the pen, her hand trembled. The nib hovered just over the page, waiting, it seemed, to see which name she would write. In the end, it was Maati’s name on the outside leaf. She wanted to be sure that someone would read it.
With the runner gone, Liat found there was little to do but pace. At first, she walked the length of Amat’s rooms, then, as the day moved past its midpoint, her anxiety drove her downstairs. The common room smelled of roast pork and wine, and platters of bones still sat on the tables waiting to be cleared away. The whores were asleep, the men who worked the front rooms either sleeping in bunks as well or gone off to apartments away from the house. The soft quarter ran on a different day than the world Liat knew; daylight here meant rest and sleep. That Amat was awake and out of the house with Mitat and an armed escort meant that her old teacher was missing sleep. There were only five days until the case was to be made before the Khai Saraykeht.
Liat walked through the empty common room, stopping to scratch an old black dog behind the ears. It would be easy to step out the back as if going to the kitchens, and then out to the street. She imagined herself finding Itani, bringing him back to the safety of the comfort house. It was a bad idea, of course, and she wouldn’t go, but the dream of it was powerful. The dream that she could somehow make everything come out right.
It was a small sound—hardly more than a sigh—that caught her attention. It had come from the long alcove in the back, from among the sewing benches and piles of cloth and leather where, according to Amat Kyaan, the costumes and stage props of the house were created. Liat moved toward it, walking softly. Behind the unruly heaps of cloth and thread, she found Maj sitting cross-legged, her hair pulled back. Her hands worked with something in her lap, and her expression was of such focus that Liat was almost afraid to interrupt. When Maj’s hands shifted, she caught a glimpse of a tiny loom and black cloth.
“What is it?” Liat asked, pushed to speak by curiosity and her own buzzing, unfocused energy.
“Mourning cloth,” Maj said without looking up. Her accent was so thick, Liat wasn’t entirely sure she’d understood her until Maj continued. “For the dead child.”
Liat came closer. The cloth was thin and sheer, black worked with tiny beads of clear glass in a pattern of surprising subtlety. Folds of it rested beside Maj’s leg.
“It’s beautiful,” Liat said.
Maj shrugged. “It fills time. I am working on it for weeks now.”
Liat knelt. The pale eyes looked up at her, questioning—maybe challenging—then returned to the small loom. Liat watched Maj’s hands shifting thread and beads in near silence. It was very fine thread, the sort that might not make more than two or three hand-spans of cloth in a whole day’s work. Liat reached out and ran her fingers along the folds of finished cloth. It was as wide as her two hands together and long, she guessed, as Maj was tall.
“How long do you make it?”
“Until you finish,” Maj said. “Usually is something to make while the pain is fresh. When done with day’s work, make cloth. When wake up in the middle night, make cloth. When time comes you want to go sing with friends or swim in quarry pond and not make cl
oth, is time to stop weaving.”
“You’ve made these before. Mourning cloths.”
“For mother, for brother. I am much younger then,” Maj said, her voice heavy and tired. “Their cloth smaller.”
Liat sat, watching as Maj threaded beads and worked them into the black patterns, the loom quiet as breathing. Neither spoke for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” Liat said at last. “For what happened.”
“Was your plan?”
“No, I didn’t know anything about what was really happening.”
“So, why sorry?”
“I should have,” Liat said. “I should have known and I didn’t.”
Maj looked up and put the loom aside.
“And why did you not know?” she said, her gaze steady and accusing.
“I trusted Wilsin-cha,” Liat said. “I thought he was doing what you wanted. I thought I was helping.”
“And is this Wilsin who does this to you?” Maj asked, gesturing at the bandages and straps on Liat’s shoulder.
“His men. Or that’s what Amat-cha says.”
“And you trust her?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
“I am here for a season, more than a season. At home, when a man does something evil, the kiopia pass judgement and like this . . .” Maj clapped her hands “. . . he is punished. Here, it is weeks living in a little room and waiting. Listening to nothing happen and waiting. And now, they say that the Khai, he may take his weeks to punish who killed my baby. Why wait except he doesn’t trust Amat Kyaan? And if he doesn’t why do I stay? Why am I waiting, if not for justice done?”
“It’s complicated,” Liat said. “It’s all complicated.”
Maj snorted with anger and impatience.
“Is simple,” she said. “I thought before perhaps you know back then, perhaps you come now to keep the thing from happening, but instead I think you are just stupid, selfish, weak girl. Go away. I am weaving.”