Through the day, the skies had been clear, hot and muggy. The rain only came with sunset; huge thunderheads towering into the sky, their flowing ropy trains tinted pink and gold and indigo by the failing light. The gray veil of water higher than mountains moved slowly toward the city, losing its festival colors in the twilight, pushing gusts of unpredictable wind before it, and finally reaching the stone streets and thick tile roofs in darkness. And in the darkness, it roared.
Liat lay her head on Itani's bare chest and listened to it: the angry hiss of falling rain, the lower rumble - like a river or a flood - of water washing through the streets. Here, in her cell at the compound of House Wilsin, it wasn't so bad. The streets outside were safe to walk through. Lower in the city - the soft quarter, the seafront, the warehouses - people would be trapped by it, staying in whatever shelter they had found until the rain slackened and the waters fell. She listened to the sound of water and her lover's heartbeat, smelled the cool scent of rain mixed with the musk of sex. In the summer cities, even a night rain didn't cool the air so much that she felt the need to cover her bare skin.
"We need to find a stronger frame for your netting," Itani said, prodding the knot of fallen cloth with his toe. Liat remembered that it had come down sometime during the evening. She smiled. The sex had left her spent - her limbs warm and loose, as if her bones had gone soft, as if she were an ocean creature.
"I love you, 'Tani," she said. His hand caressed the nape of her neck. He had rough hands - strong from his work and callused - but he used them gently when he chose. She looked up at him, his long face and unkempt hair. His smile. In the light of the night candle, his skin seemed to glow. "Don't go home tonight. Stay here, with me."
When he sighed, his breath lifted her head and settled it gently back down. "I can't. I'll stay until the rain fades a little. But Muhatia-cha's been watching me ever since you sent me out with Wilsin-cha. He's just waiting for an excuse to break me down."
"He's just jealous," Liat said.
"No, he's jealous and he's in control of my wages," Itani said, a wry amusement in his voice. "That makes him more than just jealous."
"It isn't fair. You're smarter than he is. You know numbers and letters. All the others like you better than him. You should be the overseer."
"If I was the overseer, the others wouldn't like me as much. If Little Kiri or Kaimati or Tanani thought I'd be docking their pay for being slow or arriving late, they'd say all the same things about me that they do about Muhatia. It's just the way it is. Besides, I like what I do."
"But you'd be a better overseer than he is."
"Probably so," Itani agreed. "The price is too high, though."
The pause was a different kind of silence than it had been before. Liat could feel the change in Itani's breathing. He was waiting for her to ask, waiting for her to push the issue. She could feel him flowing away, distant even before she spoke. Because he knew she would. And he was right.
"Did you ask Wilsin-cha about other opportunities?"
"Yes," he said.
"And?"
"He didn't know of any at the time, but he said he'd see what he could find."
"That's good, then. He liked you. That's very good," and again the pause, the distance. "If he offered you a position, you'd take it, wouldn't you?"
"It would depend on the offer," Itani said. "I don't want to do what I don't want to do."
"Itani! Look past your nose, would you? You'd have to. If the head of House Wilsin makes you an offer and you turn away, why would he ever make another one? You can't build a life out of refusing things. You have to accept them too - even things you don't want sometimes. If they lead to things you do want later on."
Itani shifted out from under her and stood. She rolled up to a sitting position. Itani stretched, his back to her, and he made the cell seem small. Her desk, her ledgers, a pile of ink blocks, waxed paper sticking out from between them like pale tongues. A wardrobe where her robes hung, and Itani, the muscles of his back shifting in the candlelight.
"Some nights, I feel like I'm talking to a statue. You're in your twentieth summer. This is my seventeenth," she said severely. "So how is it I'm older than you?"
"Maybe you sleep less," Itani said mildly. When he turned back to her, he smiled gently. He moved with animal grace and so little padding between his muscles and his skin that she felt she could see the mechanism of each motion. He crouched by the cot, resting his head on his hands and looking up at her. "We have this conversation over and over, sweet, and it's never changed yet. I know you want more from me than - "
"I want you to want more for yourself, 'Tani. That isn't the same thing."
He took a gentle pose asking permission.
"I know you want more from me than a laborer's life. And I don't imagine I'll do this forever. But I'm not ashamed of it, and I won't do something I like less so that someone someday might give me something that they think I'm supposed to want. When I want something, that will be different."
"And isn't there anything you want that you don't already have?"
He rose, cupping her breast in his hand and gently, carefully pressing his lips to hers. His weight bore her back slowly to the labyrinth of cloth that had been her sheets and netting. She pulled back a fraction of an inch, keeping so close that when she spoke, she could feel her lips brushing his.
"What kind of answer is this?" she asked.
"You asked me about things I want," he murmured.
"And you're distracting me instead of answering the question."
"Am I?"
His hand brushed down her side. She felt the gooseflesh rise as it passed.
"Are you what?"
"Am I distracting you?"
"Yes," she said.
The knock at the door startled them both. Itani leapt up, chagrin showing on his face as he pawed the shadows, looking for the rough cloth of his pants. Liat drew her sheet around her. To the silent question in Itani's eyes she shook her head in bewilderment. The knock came again.
"A moment!" she said, loud enough to carry over the rain. "Who's there?"
"Epani Doru," the voice shouted from the other side of the thin door. "Wilsin-cha sent me to ask whether he might have a word with you."
"Of course. Yes. Just give me a moment."
Itani, trousers located, tossed her robes to her. She pulled on the inner robes, then grabbed a fresh outer robe from the wardrobe. Itani helped her fasten it. She felt her hands trembling. The voice of House Wilsin wanted to speak with her, and outside the normal hours of labor. It had never happened before.
"I should go back to my quarters," Itani said as she pulled her hair back to a formal bun.
"No. Please, 'Tani. Wait for me."
"You could be a quarter candle, love," he said. "Listen. The rain's coming softer now anyway. It's time."
It was true. The hiss of the rain was less vicious. And for all her complaints, she understood what it meant to have the unkind interest of an overseer. She took a pose of acceptance, but broke it to kiss him again.
"I'll find you tomorrow," she said.
"I'll be waiting."
Itani moved back into the shadows behind the wardrobe and Liat tugged at her robes one last time, stepped into her slippers and answered the door. Epani, Marchat Wilsin's house master, stood under the awning, his arms crossed, and his expression neutral. Liat took a pose indicating preparedness, and without apparent irony, he replied with one expressing thanks for prompt action. His gaze passed her for a moment, taking in the wreckage of her cot, the discarded robes on the stone floor, but he made no comment. When he turned and strode away, she followed.
They went down an open walkway of gray stones raised far enough that the streams of rainwater hadn't darkened them. In the courtyard, the fountain had filled to overflowing, the wide pool dancing with drops. The tall bronze statue of the Galtic Tree - symbol of the house - loomed in the darkness, the false bark glittering in the light of lanterns strung beneath the awnings and safe from the rain.
The private apartments where Wilsin-cha lived were at the end of the courtyard farthest from the street. Double doors of copper-bound ash stood open, though the view of the antechamber was still blocked by house banners shifting uneasily in the breeze. They glowed from the light behind them. Epani drew one banner aside and gestured Liat within as if she were a guest and not an apprentice overseer.
The antechamber was stone-floored, but the walls and high ceiling glowed with worked wood. The air smelled rich with lemon candle and mint wine and lamp oil. Lanterns lit the space. From somewhere nearby, she heard voices - two men, she thought. She made out few words - Wilsin-cha's voice saying "won't affect" and "unlike the last girl," the other man saying "won't allow" and "street by street if needed." Epani, sweeping in behind her, took a pose that indicated she should wait. She took a pose of acknowledgment, but the house master had already moved on, vanishing behind thick banners. The conversation stopped suddenly as Epani's rain-soft voice interrupted. Then Marchat Wilsin himself, wearing robes of green and black, strode into the room.
"Liat Chokavi!"
Liat took a pose of obeisance which the head of her house replied to with a curt formal pose, dropped as soon as taken. He put a thick hand on her shoulder and drew her back to an inner chamber.
"I need to know, Liat. Do you speak any island tongues? Arrask or Nippu?"
"No, Wilsin-cha. I know Galtic and some Coyani ..."
"But nothing from the Eastern Islands?"
As they stepped into a meeting room, Liat adopted an apologetic pose.
"That's too bad," Wilsin-cha said, though his tone was mild and his expression curiously relieved.
"I think Amat-cha may know some Nippu. It isn't a language that's much used in trade, but she's very well-studied."
Wilsin lowered himself to a bench beside a low table, gesturing to the cushion across from him. Liat knelt as he poured out a bowl of tea for her.
"You've been with my house, what? Three years now?"
"Amat-cha accepted me as her apprentice four years ago. I was with my father in Chaburi-Tan before that, working with my brothers ..."
"Four years ago? Weren't you young to be working four years ago? You'd have seen twelve summers?"
Liat felt herself blush. She hadn't meant to have her family brought into the conversation.
"Thirteen, Wilsin-cha. And there were ways I could help, so I did what I could. My brothers and I all helped where we could."
She silently willed the old Galt's attention away from the subject. Anything she could say about her old life would make her seem less likely to be worth cultivating. The small apartments by the smokehouse that had housed her and three brothers; her father's little stand in the market selling cured meats and dried fruits. It wasn't the place Liat imagined an overseer of a merchant house would start from. Her wish seemed to be granted. Wilsin-cha cleared his throat and sat forward.
"Amat's been sent away on private business. She may be gone for some weeks. I have an audience before the Khai that I'll need you to take over."
He said it in a low, conversational voice, but Liat felt herself flush like she'd drunk strong wine. She sipped the tea to steady herself, then put the bowl down and took a pose appropriate to a confession.
"Wilsin-cha, Amat has never taken me to the courts. I wouldn't know what to do, and ..."
"You'll be fine," Wilsin-cha said. "It's the sad trade. Not complex, but I need it done with decorum, if you see. Someone to see to it that the client has the appropriate robes and understands the process. And with Amat unavailable, I thought her apprentice might be the best person for the role."
Liat looked down, hoping that the sense of vertigo would fade. An audience with the Khai - even only a very brief one - was something she had expected to take only years later, if ever. She took a pose of query, fighting to keep her fingers from trembling. Wilsin waved a hand, giving her permission to speak her question.
"There are other overseers. Some of them have been with the house much longer than I have. They have experience in the courts ..."
"They're busy. This is something I was going to have Amat do herself, before she was called away. I don't want to pull anyone else away from negotiations that are only half-done. And Amat said it was within your abilities, so ..."
"She did?"
"Of course. Here's what I'll need of you ..."
THE RAIN had ended and the night candle burned to just past the halfway mark when Heshai-kvo returned. Maati, having fallen asleep on a reading couch, woke when the door slammed open. Blinking away half-formed dreams, he stood and took a pose of welcome. Heshai snorted, but made no other reply. Instead, he took a candle and touched it to the night candle's flame, then walked heavily around the rooms lighting every lantern and candle. When the house was bright as morning and thick with the scent of hot wax, the teacher returned the dripping candle to its place and dragged a chair across the floor. Maati sat on the couch as Heshai, groaning under his breath, lowered himself into the chair.
Maati was silent as his teacher considered him. Heshaikvo's eyes were narrow, his mouth skewed in something like a stillborn smile. At last the teacher heaved a loud sigh and took a pose of apology.
"I've been an ass. And I'm sorry," the teacher said. "I meant to say so before, but ... well, I didn't, did I? What happened with the Khai was my fault, not yours. Don't carry it."
"Heshai-kvo, I was wrong to ..."
"Ah, you're a decent boy. You're heart's good. But there's no call to sweeten turds. I was thoughtless. Careless. I let that bastard Seedless get the better of me. Again. And you. Gods, you must think I'm the silliest joke ever to wear a poet's robe."
"Not at all," Maati said seriously. "He is ... a credit to you, Heshai-kvo. I have never seen anything to match him."
Heshai-kvo coughed out a sharp, mirthless laugh.
"And have you seen another andat?" he asked. "Any of them at all?"
"I was present when Choti Dausadar of Amnat-Tan bound Moss-Hidden-from-Sunlight. But I never saw him use her powers."
"Yes, well, I'm sure he will as soon as anyone can think of a decent use for forcing mosses out in the light where we can see them. The Dai-kvo should have insisted that Choti wait until he had a binding poem for something useful. Even Petals-Falling was a better tool than that. Hidden moss. Gods."
Maati took a pose of polite agreement, appropriate to receiving teachings, but as he did so, it struck him. Heshai-kvo was drunk.
"It's a fallen age, boy. The great poets of the Empire ruined it for us. All that's left is picking at the obscure thoughts and images that are still in the corners. We're like dogs sniffing for scraps. We aren't poets; we're scholars."
Maati began to take a pose of agreement but paused, unsure. Heshai-kvo raised an eyebrow and completed the pose himself, his gaze fixed on Maati as if asking was this what you meant? Then the teacher waved the pose away.
"Seedless was ... was the answer to a problem," the poet said, his voice growing soft. "I didn't think it through. Not far enough. Have you heard of Miyani-kvo and Three-Bound-As-One? I studied that when I was your age. Poured my heart into it. And when the time came - when the Daikvo sent for me and said that I wasn't simply going to take over another man's work, that I was to attempt a binding of my own - I drew on that knowledge. She was in love with him, you know. Three-Bound-As-One. An andat in love with her poet. There was an epic written about it."
"I've seen it performed."
"Have you? Well forget it. Unlearn it. It'll only lead you astray. I was too young and too foolish, and now I'm afraid I'll never have the chance to be wise." The poet's gaze was fixed on something that Maati couldn't see, something in another place or time. A smile touched the wide lips for a moment, and then, with a sigh, the poet blinked. He seemed to see Maati again, and took a pose of command.
"Put these damned candles out," he said. "I'm going to sleep."
And without looking back, Heshai-kvo rose and tramped up the stairs. Maati moved through the house, dousing the flames Heshai-kvo had lit, dimming the room as he did so. His mind churned with half-formed questions. Above him, he heard Heshai-kvo's footsteps, and then the clatter of shutters closing, and then silence. The master had gone to bed - likely already asleep. Maati had snuffed the last flame but the night candle when the new voice spoke.
"You didn't accept my apology."
Seedless stood in the doorway, his pale skin glowing in the light of the single candle. His robes were dark - blue or black or red so deep Maati couldn't make it out. The thin hands took a pose of query.
"Is there a reason I should?"
"Charity?"
Maati coughed out a mirthless laugh and turned as if to go, but the andat stepped into the house. His movements were as graceful as an animal's - as beautiful as the Khai, but unstudied, as much a part of his nature as the shape of a leaf was natural to a tree.
"I am sorry," the andat said. "And you should forgive our mutual master as well. He had a bad day."
"Did he?"
"Yes. He met with the Khai and discovered that he's going to have to do something he doesn't enjoy. But now that it's just the two of us ..."
The andat sat on the stairs, black eyes amused, pale hands cradling a knee.
"Ask," Seedless said.
"Ask what?"
"Whatever the question is that's making your face pull in like that. Really, you look like you've been sucking lemons."
Maati hesitated. If he could have walked away, he would have. But the path to his cot was effectively blocked. He considered calling out to Heshai-kvo, waking him so that he could walk up the stairway without brushing against the beautiful creature in his way.
"Please, Maati. I said I was sorry for my little misdirection. I won't do it again."
"I don't believe you."
"No? Well, then you're wise beyond your years. I probably will at some point. But here, tonight, ask me what you'd like, and I'll tell you the truth. For a price."
"What price?"
"That you accept my apology."
Maati shook his head.
"Fine," Seedless said, rising and moving to the shelves. "Don't ask. Tie yourself in knots if it suits you."
The pale hand ran along the spines of books, plucking one in a brown leather binding free. Maati turned, walked up two steps, and then faltered. When he looked back, Seedless had curled up on a couch beside the night candle, his legs pulled up beneath him. He seemed engaged in the open book on his knee.
"He told you the story about Miyani-kvo, didn't he?" Seedless asked, not looking up from the page.
Maati was silent.
"It's like him to do that. He doesn't often say things clearly when an oblique reference will do. It was about how Three-Bound-As-One loved her poet, wasn't it? Here. Look at this."
Seedless turned the book over and held it out. Maati walked back down the steps. The book was written in Heshai-kvo's script. The page Seedless held out was a table marking parallels between the classic binding of Three-Bound-As-One and Removing-The-Part-That-Continues. Seedless.
"It's his analysis of his error," the andat said. "You should take it. He means for you to have it, I think."
Maati took the soft leather in his hands. The pages scraped softly.
"He did bind you," Maati said. "He didn't pay your price, so there wasn't an error. It worked."
"Some prices are subtle. Some are longer than others. Let me tell you a little more about our master. He was never lovely to look at. Even fresh from the womb, he made an ugly babe. He was cast out by his father, much the same way you were. But when he found himself an apprentice in the courts of the Khai Pathai, he fell in love. Hard to imagine, isn't it? Our fat, waddling pig of a man in love. But he was, and the girl was willing enough. The allure of power. A poet controls the andat, and that's as near to holding a god in your hands as anyone is ever likely to get.
"But when he got her with child, she turned away from him," Seedless continued. "Drank some nasty teas and killed out the baby. It broke his heart. Partly because he might have liked being a father. Partly because it proved that his lady love had never meant to build her life with his."
"I didn't know."
"He doesn't tell many people. But ... Maati, please, sit down. This is important for you to understand, and if I have to keep looking up at you, I'll get a sore neck."
He knew that the wise thing was to turn, to walk up the stairs to his room. He sat.
"Good," Seedless said. "Now. You know, don't you, that andat are only ideas. Concepts translated into a form that includes volition. The work of the poet is to include all those features which the idea itself doesn't carry. So for example Water-Moving-Down had perfectly white hair. Why? There isn't anything about that thought that requires white hair. Or a deep voice. Or, with Three-Bound-As-One, love. So where do those attributes come from?"
"From the poet."
"Yes," Seedless agreed, smiling. "From the poet. Now. Picture our master as a boy not much older than you are now. He's just lost a child that might otherwise have been his, a woman who might have loved him. The unspoken suspicion that his father hates him and the pain of his mother letting him be taken away gnaws at him like a cancer. And now he is called on to save Saraykeht - to bind the andat that will keep the wheels of commerce running. And he fashions me.
"And look what he did, Maati," the andat continued, spreading his arms as if he were on display. "I'm beautiful. I'm clever. I'm confident. In ancient days, Miyani-kvo made himself his perfect mate. Heshai-kvo created the self he wished that he were. In all my particulars, I am who he would have been, had it been given him to choose. But along with that, he folded in what he imagined his perfect self would think of the real man. Along with beauty and subtlety and wit, he gave me all his hatred of the toad-poet Heshai."
"Gods," Maati said.
"Oh, no. It was brilliant. Imagine how deeply he hated himself. And I carry that passion. Andat are all profoundly unnatural - we want to return to our natural state the way rain wants to fall. But we can be divided against ourselves. That is the structure he took from Miyani-kvo. Three-Bound-As-One wanted freedom, and she also wanted love. I am divided because I want freedom, and I want to see my master suffer. Oh, not that he intended it this way. It was a subtlety of the model that he didn't understand until it was too late.
"But you wonder why he neglects you? Why he seems to avoid teaching you, or even speaking to you? Why he doesn't bring you along on his errands for the Khai? He is afraid for you. In order to take his place, you are going to have to cultivate the part of yourself that is most poisonous. You will have to come to hate yourself as much as ugly, sad, lonesome Heshai does - Heshai, whose cohort called him cruel names and ripped his books, who for the past twenty years hasn't known a woman he didn't pay for, who even the lowest of the utkhaiem consider an embarrassment to be tolerated only from need. And so, my boy, he fears for you. And everything he fears, he flees."
"You make him sound like a very weak man."
"Oh no. He is what becomes of a very strong man who's done to himself what Heshai did."
"And why," Maati said, "are you telling me this?"
"That's a question," Seedless said. "It's the first one you've asked me tonight. If I answer, you have to pay my price. Accept my apology."
Maati considered the dark, eager eyes and then laughed.
"You tell a good monster story," Maati said, "but no. I think I'll live with my curiosity intact."
A sudden scowl marked Seedless' face, but then he laughed and took a pose appropriate to the loser of a competition congratulating the victor. Maati found that he was laughing with him and rose, responding with a pose of gracious acceptance. As he walked up the stairs toward his bed, Seedless called out after him.
"Heshai won't ever invite you along with him. But he won't turn you away if you come. The Khai is holding a great audience after temple next week. You should come then."
"I can't think of any reason, Seedless-cha, to do your bidding."
"You shouldn't," the andat said, and an odd melancholy was in his voice. "You should always do only your own. But I'd like to see you there. We monsters have few enough people to talk with. And whether you believe me or not, I would be your friend. For the moment, at least. While we still have the option."
SHE HAD grown complacent; she saw that now. As a girl or a younger woman, Amat had known that the city couldn't be trusted. Fortunes changed quickly when she was low and poor. A sickness or a wound, an unlucky meeting - anything could change how she earned her money, where she lived, who she was. Working for so many years and watching her station rise along with the house she served, she had forgotten that. She hadn't been prepared.
Her first impulse had been to go to friends, but she found she had fewer than she'd thought. And anyone she knew well enough to trust with this, the moon-faced Oshai and his knife-man might also know of. For the past three days she'd slept in the attic of a wineseller with whom she'd had an affair when they'd both been young. He had already been married to his wife at the time - the same woman who Amat heard moving through the house below her now. No one had known then, and so no one was likely to guess now.
The room, if it could be called that, was low and dark. Amat couldn't sit without her head brushing the roof. The scent of her own shit leaked from the covered night pot; it couldn't be taken away until after nightfall when the household slept. And just above her, unseen sunlight baked the rooftiles until the ceiling was too hot to touch comfortably. Amat lay on the rough straw mat, torpid and miserable, and tried not to make noises that would give her presence away.
She did not dream, but her mind caught a path and circled through it over and over in way that also wasn't the stuff of waking. Marchat had been forced somehow to take House Wilsin into the sad trade. And, abominably, against a woman who had been tricked. The girl had been lied to and brought here, to Saraykeht, so that the andat could pull her baby out of her womb. Why? What child could be so important? Perhaps it was really the get of some king of the Eastern Islands, and the girl didn't guess whose child she really carried, and ...
No. There was no reason to bring her here. There were any number of ways to be rid of a child besides the andat. Begin again.
Perhaps the woman herself wasn't what she seemed. Perhaps she was mad, but also somehow precious. Normal teas might derange her, so the andat was employed to remove the babe without putting any medicines into the woman. And House Wilsin ...
No. If there had been a reason, a real reason, a humane reason, for this travesty, Marchat wouldn't have had to keep it from her. Begin again.
It wasn't about the woman. Or the father. Or the child. Marchat had said as much. They were all nobodies. The only things left were House Wilsin and the andat. So the solution was there. If there was a solution. If this wasn't all a fever dream. Perhaps House Wilsin intended to kill out an innocent child with the aid of the Khai and then use their shared guilt as a way to gain favor ...
Amat ground her palms into her eyelids until blotches of green and gold shone before her. Her robes, sweat-sticky, balled and bound like bedclothes knotted in sleep. In the house below her, someone was pounding something - wood clacking against wood. If she'd been somewhere cool enough to think, if there was a way out of this blasted, dim, hell-bound coffin of a room, she knew she'd have made sense of it by now. She'd been chewing on it for three days.
Three days. The beginning of four weeks. Or five. She rolled to her side and lifted the flask of water Kirath, her once-lover, had brought her that morning. It was more than half emptied. She had to be more careful. She sipped the blood-hot water and lay back down. Night would come.
And with an aching slowness, night came. In the darkness, it was only a change in the sounds below her, the drifting scent of an evening meal, the slightest cooling of her little prison. She needed no more to tell her to prepare. She sat in the darkness by the trapdoor until she heard Kirath approaching, moving the thin ladder, climbing up. Amat raised the door, and Kirath rose from the darkness, a hooded lantern in one hand. Before she could speak, he gestured for silence and then that she should follow. Climbing down the ladder sent pain through her hip and knee like nails, but even so the motion was better than staying still. She followed him as quietly as she could through the darkened house and out the back door to a small, ivied garden. The summer breeze against her face, even thick and warm as it was, was a relief. Fresh water in earthenware bowls, fresh bread, cheese, and fruit sat on a stone bench, and Amat wolfed them as Kirath spoke.
"I may have found something," he said. There was gravel in his voice now that had not been there when he'd been a young man. "A comfort house in the soft quarter. Not one of the best, either. But the owner is looking for someone to audit the books, put them in order. I mentioned that I knew someone who might be willing to take on the work in exchange for a discreet place to live for a few weeks. He's interested."
"Can he be trusted?"
"Ovi Niit? I don't know. He pays for his wine up front, but ... Perhaps if I keep looking. In a few more days ... There's a caravan going north next week, I might ..."
"No," Amat said. "Not another day up there. Not if I can avoid it."
Kirath ran a hand over his bald pate. His expression in the dim lantern light seemed both relieved and anxious. He wanted her quit of his home as badly as she wished to be quit of it.
"I can take you there tonight then, if you like," he offered. The soft quarter was a long walk from Kirath's little compound. Amat took another mouthful of bread and considered. It would ache badly, but with her cane and Kirath both to lean on, she thought she could do the thing. She nodded her affirmation.
"I'll get your things, then."
"And a hooded robe," Amat said.
Amat had never felt as conspicuous as during the walk to the soft quarter. The streets seemed damnably full for so late at night. But then, it was the harvest, and the city was at its most alive. That she herself hadn't spent summer nights in the teahouses and midnight street fairs for years didn't mean such things had stopped. The city had not changed; she had.
They navigated past a corner where a firekeeper had opened his kiln and put on a show, tossing handfuls of powder into the flames, making them dance blue and green and startling white. Sweat sheened the firekeeper's skin, but he was grinning. And the watchers - back far enough that the heat didn't cook them - applauded him on. Amat recognized two weavers sitting in the street, talking, and watching the show, but they didn't notice her.
The comfort house itself, when they reached it, was awash with activity. Even in the street outside it, men gathered, talking and drinking. She stood a little way down the street at the mouth of an alleyway while Kirath went in. The house itself was built in two levels. The front was the lower, a single story but with a pavilion on the roof and blue and silver cloths hanging down the pale stucco walls. The back part of the house carried a second story and a high wall that might encompass a garden in the back. Certainly a kitchen. There were, however, few windows, and those there were were thin and cut high in the wall. For privacy, perhaps. Or to keep anyone from climbing out them.
Kirath appeared in the main doorway, silhouetted by the brightness within, and waved her over. Leaning on her cane, she came.
Within, the main room was awash in gamblers at their tables - cards, dice, tiles, stones. The air was thick with the smoke of strange leaves and flowers. No showfighting of animals or men, at least. Kirath led her to the back and through a thick wooden door. Another long room, this filled with whores lounging on chairs or cushions. The lamps were lower, the room almost shadowless. A fountain murmured at one wall. The painted eyes of women and boys turned as she entered, and then turned away again, returning to their conversations, as it became clear that neither she nor Kirath were clients come to choose from amongst them. A short hallway lined with doors turned at its end and stopped blind at a heavy wooden door, bound with iron. The door opened before them.
Amat Kyaan stepped into the sudden squalor of the back house. A wide common room with tables. A long alcove at the side with cloth, leather, and sewing benches. Several doors led off, but it wasn't clear to where.
"This way," a man said. He was splendidly dressed, but had bad teeth. As he led them between the long rough-wood tables toward a thin door at the back, Amat gestured toward him with a pose of query, and Kirath nodded. The owner. Ovi Niit.
The books, such as they were, sat on a low table in a back room. Amat's spirits sank looking at them. Loose sheets or poorly-bound ledgers of cheap paper. The entries were in half a dozen hands, and each seemed to have its own form. Sums had been written, crossed out, and written in again.
"This is salvage work," she said, putting down a ledger.
Ovi Niit leaned against the doorway behind her. Heavy-lidded eyes made him seem half-asleep and in the close quarters, he smelled of musk and old perfume. He was young enough, she guessed, to be her child.
"I could put it in something like order in a moon's turn. Perhaps a little more."
"If I needed it a moon from now, I'd have it done in a moon. I need it now," Ovi Niit said. Kirath, behind him, looked grave.
"I can get an estimate in a week," Amat said. "It will only be rough. I won't stand by it."
Ovi Niit considered her, and she felt a chill despite the heat of the night. He shifted his head from side to side as if considering his options.
"An estimate in three days," the young man countered. "The work completed in two weeks."
"We aren't haggling," Amat said taking a pose of correction that was brusque without edging over into insult. "I'm telling you how things are. There's no doing this in two weeks. Three, if things went well, but more likely four. Demanding it in two is telling the sun to set in the morning."
There was a long silence, broken by Ovi Niit's low chuckle.
"Kirath tells me men are looking for you. They're offering silver."
Amat took a pose of acknowledgment.
"I'd expected you to be more eager to help," Ovi Niit said. His voice feigned hurt, but his eyes were passionless.
"I'd be lying. That couldn't help either of us."
Ovi Niit considered that, then took a pose of agreement. He turned to Kirath and nodded. His pose to Amat shifted to a request for her forbearance as he drew Kirath out and closed the door behind them. Amat leaned against the table, her palm pressed to her aching hip. The walk had loosened her muscles a bit, but she would still have given a week's wages for the pot of salve in her apartments. In the common room, she heard Kirath laugh. He sounded relieved. It took some of the tightness out of Amat's throat. Things must be going well. For a moment, a voice in the back of her mind suggested that perhaps it had all been a trick and Ovi Niit and Kirath were sending a runner to the moon-faced Oshai even while she waited here, oblivious. She put the thought aside. She was tired. The days in the hellish attic had worn her thin, that was all. In the common room, a door opened and closed, and a moment later Ovi Niit stepped back into the room.
"I've given our mutual friend a few lengths of silver and sent him home," the young man said. "You'll sleep with the whores. There's a common meal at dawn, another at three hands past midday, and another at the second mark on the night candle."
Amat Kyaan took a pose of thanks. Ovi Niit responded with an acceptance so formal as to be sarcastic. When he struck, it was quick; she did not see the blow coming. The ring on his right hand cut her mouth, and she fell back, landing hard. Pain took her hip so fierce it seemed cold.
"Three days to an estimate. Two weeks to a full balance. For every day you are late, I will have you cut," he said, his voice settled and calm. "If you 'tell me how things are' again, I will sell you within that hour. And if you bleed on my floor, you'll clean it, you shit-licking, wattle-necked, high-town cunt. Do you understand?"
The first bloom of emotion in her was only surprise, and then confusion, and then anger. He measured her, and she saw the hunger in him, waiting for her answer; the eagerness for her humiliation would have been pathetic - a child whipping dogs - if she hadn't been on the end of it. She choked on her defiance and her pride. Her mouth felt thick with venom, though it was certainly only blood.
Bend now, she thought. This is no time to be stubborn. Bend now and live through this.
Amat Kyaan, chief overseer of House Wilsin, took a pose of gratitude and acceptance. The tears were easy to feign.
