Maati woke to the sound of driving rain pattering against the shutters. The light that pressed in was cloud softened, with neither direction nor strength to tell him how long he'd slept. The night candle was now only a burnt wick. He pushed away the netting, shuddered, and rose. When he opened the shutters, it was as if the city was gone, vanished in gray. Even the outlines of the palaces were vague, but the surface of the pond was alive and dancing and the leaves of the nearby trees shone with bright wet green just turning to red at the veins. The rain against his face and chest was cool. Autumn was coming to Saraykeht.
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 Heshaikvo'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's 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 under an inch of water, 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.
It was a simple room - cot, desk, and wardrobe, cloth lantern and candle stand. Only the pile of books and scrolls and the quality of the furnishings marked it as different from a cell like her own. But then, Maati was only an apprentice. His role was much like her own with Amat. They were even very nearly the same age, though she found she often forgot that.
A murmur of voices reached her - the poet's and Maati's and then the soft, charming, chilling voice of Seedless. The poet barked something she couldn't make out, and then Maati, soothing him. She wanted to leave, to go back to her cell, to be away from the terrible tension in the air of the house. But the rain was growing worse. The pounding of water was joined now with an angry tapping. The wind had turned and allowed her to open Maati's shutters without flooding his room, and when she did, the landscape outside looked like it was covered with spiders' eggs: Tiny hailstones melting as quickly as they fell.
"Liat-cha," Maati said.
She turned, trying to pull the shutters closed and take a pose of apology at the same time, and managing neither.
"No, I'm sorry," Maati said. "I should have kept closer watch on him. But he's never tried to get out of his bed, much less leave the house."
"Is he resting now?"
"Something like it. He's gone to bed at least. Seedless ... you know about Seedless's box?"
"I'd heard rumor," Liat said.
Maati took a pose of confirmation and looked back over his shoulder, his expression troubled and weary. His brown poet's robes were still dripping at the sleeves.
"I'll go downstairs," she said.
"Why?"
"I thought you'd want some privacy to change," she said slowly, and was rewarded by a fierce blush as Maati took a pose of understanding.
"I'd forgotten ... I didn't even notice they were wet. Yes, of course, Liat-cha. I'll only be a moment."
She smiled and slapped his shoulder as she'd seen Itani's cohort do. The gesture felt surprisingly natural to her.
"I think we're past calling each other cha," she said.
He joined her quickly, changed into a robe of identical brown. They sat in the main room, candles lit to dispel the gloom of the weather. He sat across from her on a low wooden divan. His face was calm, but worn and tight about the mouth, even when he smiled. The strain of his master's collapse was written on his brow.
"Have you ... have you heard from him?" Maati asked.
"No," she said. "It's too early. He won't have reached Yalakeht by now. Soon, but not yet. And then it would take as many weeks as he's been gone to get a message back to us."
Maati took a pose of understanding, but impatience showed in it. She responded with a pose that asked after Maati's well-being. In another context, it would have been a formal nicety. Here, it seemed sincere.
"I'll be fine," he said. "It's only difficult not knowing what to do. When Otah-kvo comes back, everything will be all right."
"Will it?" Liat said, looking into the candle flame. "I hope you're right."
"Of course it will. The Dai-kvo knows more than any of us how to proceed. He'll pass it to Otah-kvo, and we'll ..."
The voice with its forced optimism faded. Liat looked back. Maati was sitting forward, rubbing his eyes with his fingers like an old, weary man.
"We'll do whatever the Dai-kvo tells us," Liat finished.
Maati took a rueful pose of agreement. A gust of wind rattled the great shuttered walls, and Liat pulled her robe tight around her, as if to protect herself from cold, though the room was perfectly warm.
"And you?" Maati asked. "Are things well at House Wilsin?"
"I don't know," Liat said. "Amat Kyaan's come back, and she tries to use me, but there doesn't seem to be as much to do as there once was. I think ... I think she doesn't trust me. I can't blame her, after what happened. And Wilsin-cha's the same way. They keep me busy, but not with anything serious. No one's actually told me I'm only a clerk again, but for how I've been spending my days, I may as well be."
"I'm sorry. It's wrong, though. It isn't your fault that this happened. You should just be - "
"Itani's going to leave me. Or Otah. Whichever. He's going to leave me," she said. She hadn't meant to, but the words had come out, like vomiting. She stared at her hands and they kept coming. "I don't think he knows it yet, but when he left, there was something in him. In the way he treated me that ... He isn't my first lover, and I've seen it before. It's just a kind of distance, and then it's something more, and then ..."
"I'm sure you're wrong," Maati said, and his voice sounded confident for the first time that day. "He won't."
"Everyone else has," she said.
"Not him."
"He went, though. He didn't only have to; he wanted to. He wanted to get away from me, and when he comes back, he'll have had time to think. And then ..."
"Liat-cha ... Liat. I know we haven't known each other before this, but Otah-kvo was my first teacher, and sometimes I think he was my best one. He's different from other people. And he loves you. He's told me as much."
"I don't know," Liat said.
"You love him, don't you?"
"I don't know," she said, and the silence after it was worse than walking through the rain. She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. "I love Itani. I know Itani. Otah, though? He's a son of the Khaiem. He's ... he isn't who I thought he was, and I'm just an apprentice overseer, and not likely to be that for long. How can we stay together when he's what he is, and I'm this?"
"You did when you were an overseer and he was just a laborer. This isn't any different."
"Of course it is," she said. "He always knew he was born to something higher than he was. I'm not. I'm just me."
"Otah-kvo is one of the wisest men I know," Maati said. "He isn't going to walk away from you."
"Why not?"
"Because," Maati said softly, "he's one of the wisest men I know."
She laughed, partly at the sincerity in the boy's voice, partly because she wanted so badly for it to be true, partly because her only other option was weeping. Maati moved to her, put his arm around her. He smelled of the cedar soap than Itani used to shave with. She leaned into his shoulder.
"These next weeks," she said when she'd gathered herself enough to speak. "They aren't going to be easy."
"No," Maati agreed and heaved a sigh. "No, they aren't."
"We can see each other through them, though. Can't we?" Liat said, trying to keep the pleading out of the words. The patter of the rain filled the silence, and Liat closed her eyes. It was Maati, at last, who had the courage to say what she hadn't been able to.
"I think I'm going to need a friend if I'm going to come through this," he said. "Perhaps we're in the same place. If I can help, if a half-ragged student poet who spends most of his days feeling like he's worn thin enough to see through can be of any comfort, I'd welcome the company."
"You don't have to."
"Neither do you, but I hope you will."
The kiss she gave him was brief and meant to be sisterly. If he caught his breath at it, she imagined he was only a little surprised and embarrassed. She smiled, and he did as well.
"We're a sorry pair," she said. "Itani ... he'll be back soon."
"Yes," Maati said. "And things will be better then."
THE DOOR burst open, and a body fell forward onto the meeting room floor. For a moment, the sounds of the teahouse penetrated - voices, music - and then Torish Wite and two of his men followed the man they'd pushed through and closed the door. Silence returned as if it had never gone. Amat, sitting at the long wooden table, gathered herself. The man beside her wore the simple robes of a firekeeper and the expression of someone deeply amused by a dogfight.
The fallen man rose unsteadily to his knees. A white cloth covered his head, and his thin arms were bound behind him. Torish Wite took him by the shoulder, lifted roughly, and nodded to one of his men. When the cloth was flipped away, Amat swallowed a knot of fear.
"This him?" Torish Wite asked.
"Yes," she said.
Ovi Niit's gaze swam. He had a glazed look that spoke of wine with strange spices as much as fear or anger. It took the space of three long breaths for his eyes to rest on her, for recognition to bloom there. Slowly, he struggled to his feet.
"Niit-cha," Amat said, taking a pose that opened a negotiation. "It has been some time."
The whoremaster answered with a string of obscenities that only stopped with Torish Wite's man stepping forward and striking him across the face. Amat folded her hands in her lap. A drop of blood appeared at the corner of Ovi Niit's mouth, bright as a jewel and distracting to her.
"If you do as I say, Niit-cha," she began again, "this needn't be an unpleasant affair."
He grinned, the blood smearing his crooked teeth. There was no fear in him. He laughed, and the sound itself seemed reckless. Amat wished that they'd found him when he was sober.
"I was never paid, Ovi-cha, for my time with you. I have chosen to take the price in a share of the house. In fact, I've chosen to buy you out." She took a sheaf of papers from her sleeve and placed them on the table. "I'm offering a fair price."
"There isn't enough money in the world," he spat. "I built that house up from three girls in an alley."
The firekeeper shifted in his seat. The distant smile on his lips didn't shift, but his eyes held a curiosity. Amat felt oddly out of her depth. This was a negotiation, after all, and to say she had the upper hand would be gross understatement, and yet she was at sea.
"You're going to kill me, you dust-cunt bitch. Because if you don't, I'll kill you."
"There's no need ..." she began, then stopped and took a pose of acceptance. Ovi Niit was right. It was only dressed as a negotiation. It was, in point of fact, a murder. For the first time, something like apprehension showed in his expression. His eyes shifted to the side, to Torish Wite.
"Whatever she's paying you, I'll triple it," Ovi Niit said.
"Amat-cha," the firekeeper said. "I appreciate the attempt, but it seems to me unlikely that this gentleman will sign the documents."
Amat sighed and took a pose of concurrence. In the common room someone shrieked with laughter. The sound was made faint by the thick stone walls. Like the call of a ghost.
"You can kill me, but you'll never break me," Ovi Niit said, pulling himself up proud as a pit-cock.
"I'll live with that," Amat said, and nodded. Torish Wite neatly kicked Ovi Niit's knees out, and the two other men stepped forward to hold him while their captain leaned over and looped a knotted cord over his head. An efficient flick of the wrist, and the cord was tight enough to dig into the flesh, buried. The whoremaster's face went deep red and darkening. Amat watched with a sick fascination. It took longer than she'd expected. When the men released it, the body fell like a sack of grain.
The firekeeper reached across the table, picked up the sheaf between his first finger and his thumb, and pulled them before him. As if there wasn't a fresh corpse on the floor, Amat turned to him.
"I suppose you know someone who can do a decent imitation of his chop?" the firekeeper said.
"I'll see it arranged," Amat said.
"Very well. If the watch asks, I'll swear to it that I stood witness at the transaction," the firekeeper said, taking a pen and a small silver inkbox from his sleeve. "You paid Niitcha his asking price, he accepted, and in fact seemed quite pleased."
"Do you think the watch will ask?"
The inkbox clicked open, the firekeeper's pen touched the inkblock and then the page, scratching with a sound like bird's feet.
"Of course they will," he said, sliding the papers back toward her. "They're the watch. They're paid to. But so long as you pay your share to them, let them sample your wares on occasion, and don't cause them trouble, I doubt they'll ask many. He didn't die in the soft quarter. Their honor isn't at stake."
Amat considered the firekeeper's signature for a moment, then took a small leather sack from her belt and handed it to him. He had the good taste not to count it there at the table, but she saw him weigh it before it disappeared into his sleeve.
"It's odd to hear the term honor associated with any of this," she said.
The firekeeper took a pose of polite correction, appropriate for a master to an apprentice not his own.
"If there were no honor at stake, Torish-cha would have killed you."
Torish Wite chuckled, and Amat took a pose of acknowledgment more casual than she felt. The firekeeper shifted to a pose of leave-taking to both Amat and Torish Wite and then, briefly, to the corpse of Ovi Niit. When the door closed behind him, Amat tucked the signed papers into her sleeve and considered the dead man. He was smaller than she remembered, and she wouldn't have said his arms were so thin. Collapsed on the floor, his last breath past him, he seemed oddly vulnerable. Amat wondered for the first time what Ovi Niit had been as a child, and whether he had a mother or a sister who would miss him now that he was gone. She guessed not.
"What do you want done with him?" Torish Wite asked.
"Whatever's convenient, I suppose."
"Do you want him found?"
"I don't care one way or the other," Amat said.
"It'll be easier for the watch to ignore any accusations against you if he vanishes," Torish Wite said, half to Amat, half to his men.
"We'll take care of it," one of the men said; the one who had held Ovi Niit's right arm as he died. Amat took a pose of thanks. The two men hefted the object that had been Ovi Niit between them and carried it out. She assumed they had a wheelbarrow in the alleyway.
"When are you taking the house?" Torish Wite asked when they had gone.
"Soon."
"You'll want protection for that. These soft quarter types aren't going to roll over and show their bellies just because you've got the right chop on the papers."
"Yes, I wanted to speak to you about that," Amat said, vaguely surprised at how distant she felt from the words. "I'm going to need guards for the house. Is that the sort of contract you'd be interested in?"
"Depends," Torish Wite said, but he smiled. It was only a matter of terms. That was a fine thing. Her gaze shifted to the space where Ovi Niit had lain. She told herself the unease was only the normal visceral shock of seeing a man die before her. That she now owned a comfort house - that she was going to make her money from selling the women and boys she'd recently shared table and sleeping quarters with - was nothing to think about. It was, after all, in the cause of justice.
Torish Wite shifted his weight, his movement snapping her back into the moment. He had a broad face and broad shoulders, scars on his chin and arms, and a smile that spoke of easy brutality. His gaze was considering and amused.
"Yes?"
"You're afraid of me, aren't you."
Amat smiled and affected boredom.
"Yes," she said. "But consider what happened to the last man who frightened me."
His expression soured.
"You're in over your head, you know."
She took a pose of acknowledgment, but with a stance that bordered on the defiant. She could see in his face that he understood every nuance. He respected her. It was what she'd hoped. She dropped the pose and leaned against the table.
"When I was very young," she said, "my sister pushed me off a rooftop. A high one. I have never been more certain that I was going to die. And I didn't scream. Because I knew it wouldn't help."
"And your point?"
"What I'm doing now may be harder than I'd wish. But I'm going to do it. Worrying about whether I can manage won't help."
He laughed. It was a low sound, and strangely shallow - like an axe on wood.
"You are a tough bitch," he said, making it a compliment.
No, I'm not, she thought, smiling, but it's good that you've misunderstood me.
