The boundary arch on the low road east of Saraykeht was a short walk from the Wilsin compound. They reached it in about the time it took the crescent moon to shift the width of two of Marchat's thick fingers. Buildings and roads continued, splaying out into the high grasses and thick trees, but once they passed through the pale stone arch wide enough for three carts to pass through together and high as a tree, they had left the city.
"In Galt, there'd have been a wall," Marchat said.
The young man, Itani, took a pose of query.
"Around the city," Marchat said. "To protect it in time of war. We didn't have andat to aim at each other like your ancestors did. In Kirinton, where I was born, anytime you were bad, the Lord Watchman set you to repairing the wall."
"Can't have been pleasant," Itani agreed.
"What do they do in Saraykeht when a boy's caught stealing a pie?"
"I don't know."
"Never misbehaved as a child?"
Itani grinned. He had a strong smile.
"Rarely caught," Itani said. Marchat laughed.
They made an odd pair, he thought. Him, an old Galt with a walking staff as much to lean on as to swipe at dogs if the occasion arose, and this broad-backed, stone-armed young man in the rough canvas of a laborer. Not so odd, he hoped, as to attract attention.
"Noyga's your family name? Noyga. Yes. You work on Muhatia's crew, don't you?"
"He's a good man, Muhatia," Itani said.
"I hear he's a prick."
"That too," Itani agreed, in the same cheerful tone of voice. "A lot of the men don't like working with him. He's got a sharp tongue, and he hates running behind schedule."
"You don't mind him, though?"
Itani shrugged. It was another point in his favor. The boy disliked his overseer, that was clear, and yet here he was, alone with the head of the house and not willing to tell tales against him. It spoke well of him, and that was good for more than one reason. That he could trust Itani's discretion made his night one degree less awful.
"What else was different in Kirinton?" Itani asked, and as they walked, Marchat told him. Tales of the Galt of his childhood. The war with Eymond, the blackberry harvests, the midwinter bonfires when people brought their sins to be burned. The boy listened carefully, appreciatively. Granted, he was likely just currying favor, but he did it well. It wasn't far before Marchat felt the twinges of memories half-forgotten. He'd belonged somewhere once, before his uncle had sent him here.
The road was very little traveled, especially in the dead of night. The darkness made the uneven cobbles and then rutted dirt treacherous; the flies and night wasps were out in swarms, freed from torpor by the relative cool of the evening. Cicadas sang in the trees. The air smelled of moonrose and rain. No one in the few houses they passed that had candles and lanterns still burning seemed to show much curiosity, and it wasn't long before they were out, away from the last traces of Saraykeht. Tall grasses leaned close against the road, and twice groups of men passed them without comment or glance. Once something large shifted in the grass, but nothing emerged from it.
As they came nearer the low town, Marchat could feel his companion moving more slowly, hesitating. He couldn't say if the laborer was picking up on his own growing dread, or if there was some other issue. The first glimmering light of the low town was showing in the darkness when the man spoke.
"Marchat-cha, I was wondering ..."
Marchat tried to take a pose of polite encouragement, but the walking stick complicated things. Instead he said, "Yes?"
"I'm coming near to the end of my indenture," Itani said.
"Really? How old are you?"
"Twenty summers, but I signed on young."
"You must have. You'd have been, what? Fifteen?"
"There's a girl," the young man said, having trouble with the words. Embarrassed. "She's ... well, she's not a laborer. I think it's hard for her that I am. I'm not a scholar or a translator, but I have numbers and letters. I was wondering if you might know of any opportunities."
In the darkness, Marchat could see the boy's hands twisted into a pose of respect. So that was it.
"If you move up in the world, you think she'll like you better."
"It would make things easier for her," Itani said.
"And not for you?"
Again, the grin and this time a shrug with it.
"I lift things and put them back down," Itani said. "It's tiring sometimes, but it's not difficult."
"I don't know of anything just at hand. I'll see what I can find though."
"Thank you, Wilsin-cha."
They walked along another few paces. The light before them became a solid glow. A dog barked, but not so nearby as to be worrisome, and no other barks or howls answered it.
"She told you to ask me, didn't she?" Marchat asked.
"Yes," Itani agreed, the tension that had been in his voice gone.
"Are you in love with her?"
"Yes," the boy said, "I want her to be happy."
Those are two different answers, Marchat thought, but didn't say. He'd been that age once, and he remembered it well enough to know there was no point in pressing. They were in the low town proper now, anyway.
The streets here were muddy and smelled more of shit than moonrose. The buildings with their rotting thatch roofs and rough stone walls stood off at angles from the road. Two streets in, and so almost halfway though the town, a long, low house stood at the opening to a rough square. A lantern hung from a hook beside its door. Marchat motioned to Itani.
"Wait for me here," he said. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
Itani nodded his understanding. There was no hesitation or objection in his stance so far as Marchat could tell. It was more than he would have expected of himself if someone had told him to stand in this pesthole street in the black of night for some unknown stretch of time. Gods go with you, you poor bastard, Marchat thought. And with me, too, for that.
Inside, the house was dim. The ceiling was low, and though the walls were wide apart, the house had the feel of being too close. Like a cave. Part of that was the smell of mold and stale water, part the dim doorways and black arches that led to the inner rooms. A squat table ran the length of one wall, and two men stood against it. The larger, a thick-necked tough with a long knife hanging from his belt, eyed Marchat. The other, moon-faced and pleasant-looking, nodded welcome.
"Oshai," Marchat said by way of greeting.
"Welcome to our humble quarters," the moon-faced man said and smiled. Marchat disliked that smile, polite though it was. It was too much like the smile of someone helping you onto a sinking boat.
"Is it here?" Marchat asked.
Oshai nodded to a door set deeper in the gloom. A glimmer of candlelight showed its outline. Bad craftsmanship.
"He's been waiting," Oshai said.
Marchat grunted before walking deeper into the darkness. The wood of the door was water-rotted, the leather hinge loose and ungainly. Marchat had to lift the door by its handle to close it behind him. The meeting room was smaller, better lit, quiet. A night candle stood in a wall niche, burned past half. Several other candles burned on a small table. And sitting at the table itself was the andat. Seedless. Marchat's skin crawled as the thing considered him, black eyes shifting silently. The andat were unnerving under the best circumstances.
Marchat took a pose of greeting that the andat returned, then Seedless pushed out a stool and motioned to it. Marchat sat.
"You were able to come here without the poet's knowing?" Marchat asked.
"The great poet of Saraykeht is spending his evening drunk. As usual," Seedless replied, his voice conversational and smooth as cream. "He's beyond caring where I am or what I'm doing."
"And I hear the woman arrived?"
"Yes. Oshai says she's everything we need. Sweet-tempered, tractable, and profoundly credulous. She's unlikely to spook and run away like the last one. And she's from Nippu."
"Nippu?" Marchat said and curled his lip. "That's a backwater little island. Don't you think it might raise suspicion? I mean why would some farm bitch from a half-savage island come to Saraykeht just to drop her baby?"
"You'll think of something plausible," Seedless said, waving the objection away. "The point is she only speaks east island tongues. If she were from someplace with a real port, she might know a civilized language. Instead, you'll be using Oshai as her translator. It should be easy."
"My overseer may know the language."
"And you can't delegate this to someone who doesn't?" Seedless said. "Or are all of your employees brilliant translators?"
"Any idea who the father is?" Marchat said, shifting the subject.
Seedless made a gesture that wasn't a formal pose, but indicated the whole world and everything in it with a sweep of his delicate fingers.
"Who knows? Some passing fisherman. A tradesman. Someone who passed though her town and got her legs apart. No one who'll notice or care much if he does. He isn't important. And your part of the plan is progressing?"
"We're prepared. We have the payment ready. Pearls, mostly, and a hundred lengths of silver. It's the sort of thing an East Islander might pay with," Marchat said. "And there's no reason the Khai should look into it until the thing's been done."
"That's to the good, then," Seedless said. "Arrange the audience with the Khai. If all goes well, we won't have to speak again, you and I."
Marchat started to take a pose that expressed hope, but halfway in wondered if it might be taken the wrong way. He saw Seedless notice his hesitation. A thin smile graced the pale lips. Feeling an angry blush coming on, Marchat abandoned the pose.
"It will work, won't it?" he asked.
"It isn't the first babe I'll drop out before its time. This is what I am, Wilsin."
"No, I don't mean can you do it. I mean will it really break him? Heshai. He's taken the worst you could give him for years. Because if this little drama we're arranging doesn't work ... If there's any chance at all that it should fail and the Khai find out that Galts were conspiring to deprive him of his precious andat, the consequences could be huge."
Seedless shifted forward on his chair, his gaze fastened on nothing. Marchat had heard once that andat didn't breathe except to speak. He watched the unmoving ribs for a long moment while the andat was silent. The rumor appeared true. At last, the spirit drew in his breath and spoke.
"Heshai is about to kill a child whose mother loves it. There isn't anything worse than that. Not for him. Picture it. This island girl? He's going to watch the light die in her eyes and know that without him, it wouldn't have happened. You want to know will that break him? Wilsin-cha, it will snap him like a twig."
They were silent for a moment. The naked hunger on the andat's face made Marchat squirm on his stool. Then, as if they'd been speaking of nothing more intimate or dangerous than a sugar crop, Seedless leaned back and grinned.
"With the poet broken, you'll be rid of me, which is what you want," Seedless said, "and I won't exist anymore to care one way or the other. So we'll both have won."
"You sound like a suicide to me," Marchat said. "You want your own death."
"In a sense," Seedless agreed. "But it doesn't mean for me what it would for you. We aren't the same kind of beast, you and I."
"Agreed."
"Do you want to see her? She's asleep in the next room. If you're quiet ..."
"No, thank you," Marchat said, rising. "I'll arrange things with Oshai once I've scheduled the audience with the Khai. He and I can make the arrangements from there. If I could avoid seeing her at all before the day itself, that would be good."
"If good's the word," Seedless said, taking a pose of agreement and farewell.
Outside again, the night seemed cooler. Marchat pounded his walking stick against the ground, as if shaking dried mud off it, but really just to feel the sting in his fingers. His chest ached with something like dread. It was rotten, this business. Rotten and wrong and dangerous. And if he did anything to prevent it ... what then? The Galtic High Council would have him killed, to start. He couldn't stop it. He couldn't even bow out and let someone else take his part in it.
There was no way through this but through. At least he'd kept Amat out of it.
"Everything went well?" the boy Itani asked.
"Well enough," Marchat lied as he started off briskly into the darkness.
AMAT KYAAN had hoped to set out in the morning, before the day's heat was too thick. Liat had come to her with Itani's account of the route early enough, but the details were few and sketchy. Marchat and the boy hadn't gotten back to the compound until past the quarter candle, and his report to Liat hadn't been as thorough as it might have been had he known what use he had been put to. It had been enough to find which of the low towns they had visited and what sort of house they'd gone to.
Armed with those facts, it hadn't been so hard to find a contract that rented such a building, one that had been paid out of Wilsin's private funds and not those of the house proper. There were letters that spoke vaguely of a girl and a journey to Saraykeht, but the time it took to find that much cost Amat the better part of the morning. As she walked down the low road east of the city, the boundary arch grown small behind her, she felt her annoyance growing. Sweat ran down her spine, and her bad hip ached already.
In the cool just before dawn, it might almost have been a pleasant walk. The high grasses sang with cicadas, the trees were thick with their summer leaves. As it was, Amat felt as damp as if she'd walked out of a bathhouse, drenched in her own sweat. The sun pressed on her shoulders like a hand. And the trip back, she knew, would be worse.
Men and women of the low towns took poses of greeting and deference as they passed her, universally heading into the city. They pushed handcarts of fruits and grains, chickens and ducks to sell to the compounds of the rich or the palaces or the open markets. Some carried loads on their backs. On one particularly rutted stretch of road, she passed an oxcart where it had slid into the roadside mud. One wheel was badly bent. The carter, a young man with tears in his eyes, was shouting and beating an ox who seemed barely to notice him. Amat's practiced eye valued the wheel at three of four times the contents of the cart. Whoever the boy carter answered to - father, uncle, or farmer rich enough to own indentured labor - they wouldn't be pleased to hear of this. Amat stepped around, careful how she placed her cane, and moved on.
Low towns existed at the edges of all the cities of the Khaiem like swarms of flies. Outside the boundaries of the city, no particular law bound these men and women; the utkhaiem didn't enforce peace or punish crimes. And still, a rough order was the rule. Disagreements were handled between the people or taken to a low judge who passed an opinion, which was followed more often than not. The traditions of generations were as complex and effective as the laws of the Empire. Amat felt no qualms about walking along the broken cobbles of the low road by herself, so long as it was in daylight and there was enough traffic to keep the dogs away.
No qualms except for what she might find at the end.
The low town itself was worse than she'd expected. Itani hadn't mentioned the smell of shit or the thick, sticky mud of the roads. Dogs and pigs and chickens all shared the path with her. A girl perhaps two years old stood naked in a doorway as she passed, her eyes no more domesticated than the pigs'. Amat found herself struggling to imagine Marchat Wilsin, head of House Wilsin in Saraykeht, trudging through this squalor in the dead of night. But there was the house Itani had described to Liat, and then Liat to her. Amat stood in the ruined square and steeled herself. To be turned back now would be humiliating.
So, she told herself, she wouldn't be turned back. Simple as that.
"Hai!" Amat called, rapping the doorframe with her cane. Across the square, a dog barked, as if the hail had been intended for him. Something stirred in the gloom of the house. Amat stood back, cultivating impatience. She was the senior overseer of the house. She mustn't go into this unsure of herself, and anger was a better mask than courtesy. She crossed her arms and waited.
A man emerged, younger then she was, but still gray about the temples. His rough clothes inspired no confidence, and the knife at his belt shone. For the first time, Amat wondered if she had come unprepared. Perhaps if she'd made Itani accompany her ... She raised her chin, considering the man as if he were a servant.
The silence between them stretched.
"What?" the man demanded at last.
"I'm here to see the woman," Amat Kyaan said. "Wilsincha wants an inventory of her health."
The man frowned, and his gaze passed over her head, nervously surveying the street.
"You got the wrong place, grandmother. I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm Amat Kyaan, senior overseer for House Wilsin. And if you don't want to continue our conversation here in the open, you should invite me in."
He hesitated, hand twitching toward his knife and then away. He was caught, she could see. To let her in was an admission that some traffic was taking place. But turning her away risked the anger of his employer if Amat was who she said she was, and on the errand she claimed. Amat took a pose of query that implied the offer of assistance - not a pose she would wish to see from a superior.
The knife man's dilemma was solved when another form appeared. The newcomer looked like nothing very much, a round, pale face, hair unkempt as one woken from sleep. The annoyance in his expression seemed to mirror her own, but the knife man's reaction was of visible relief. This was his overseer, then. Amat turned her attention to him.
"This woman," the knife man said. "She says she's Wilsin's overseer."
The moon-faced man smiled pleasantly and took a pose of greeting to her even as he spoke to the other man.
"That would be because she is. Welcome, Kyaan-cha. Please come in."
Amat strode into the low house, the two men stepping back to let her pass. The round-faced man closed the door, deepening the gloom. As Amat's eyes adjusted to the darkness, details began to swim out of it. The wide, low main room, too bare to mark the house as a place where people actually lived. The moss growing at edge where wall met ceiling.
"I've come to see the client," Amat said. "Wilsin-cha wants to be sure she's well. If she miscarries during the negotiations, we'll all look fools."
"The client? Yes. Yes, of course," the round-faced man said, and something in his voice told Amat she'd stepped wrong. Still, he took a pose of obeisance and motioned her to the rear of the place. Down a short hallway, a door opened to a wooden porch. The light was thick and green, filtered through a canopy of trees. Insects droned and birds called, chattering to one another. And leaning against a half-rotten railing was a young woman. She was hardly older than Liat, her skin the milky pale of an islander. Golden hair trailed down her back, and her belly bulged over a pair of rough canvas laborer's pants. Half, perhaps three-quarters of the way through her term. Hearing them, she turned and smiled. Her eyes were blue as the sky, her lips thick. Eastern islands, Amat thought. Uman, or possibly Nippu.
"Forgive me, Kyaan-cha," the moon-faced man said. "My duties require me elsewhere. Miyama will be here to help you, should you require it."
Amat took a pose of thanks appropriate for a superior releasing an underling. The man replied with the correct form, but with a strange half-mocking cant to his wrists. He had thick hands, Amat noted, and strong shoulders. She turned away, waiting until the man's footsteps faded behind her. He would go, she guessed, to Saraykeht, to Wilsin. She hadn't managed to avoid suspicion, but by the time Marchat knew she'd discovered this place, it would be too late to shut her out of it. It would have to do.
"My name is Amat Kyaan," she said. "I'm here to inquire after your health. Marchat is a good man, but perhaps not so wise in women's matters."
The girl cocked her head, like listening to an unfamiliar song. Amat felt her smile fade a degree.
"You do know the Khaiate tongues?"
The girl giggled and said something. She spoke too quickly to follow precisely, but the words had the liquid feel of an east island language. Amat cleared her throat, and tried again, slowly in Nippu.
"My name is Amat Kyaan," she said.
"I'm Maj," the girl said, matching Amat's slow diction and exaggerating as if she were speaking to a child.
"You've come a long way to be here. I trust the travel went well?"
"It was hard at first," the girl said. "But the last three days, I've been able to keep food down."
The girl's hand strayed to her belly. Tiny, dark stretch-marks already marbled her skin. She was thin. If she went to term, she'd look like an egg on sticks. But, of course, she wouldn't go to term. Amat watched the pale fingers as they unconsciously caressed the rise and swell where the baby grew in darkness, and a sense of profound dislocation stole into her. This wasn't a noblewoman whose virginity wanted plausibility. This wasn't a child of wealth too fragile for blood teas. This didn't fit any of the hundred scenarios that had plagued Amat through the night.
She leaned against the wooden railing, taking some of the weight off her aching hip, put her cane aside, and crossed her hands.
"Marchat has told me so little of you," she said, struggling to find the vocabulary she needed. "How did you come to Saraykeht?"
The girl grinned and spun her tale. She spoke too quickly sometimes, and Amat had to make her repeat herself.
It seemed the father of her get had been a member of the utkhaiem - one of the great families of Saraykeht, near to the Khai himself. He'd been travelling in Nippu in disguise. He'd never revealed his true identity to her when he knew her, but though the affair had been brief, he had lost his heart to her. When he heard she was with child, he'd sent Oshai - the moon-faced man - to bring her here, to him. As soon as the politics of court allowed, he would return to her, marry her.
As improbability mounted on improbability, Amat nodded, encouraged, drew her out. And with each lie the girl repeated, sure of its truth, nausea grew in Amat. The girl was a fool. Beautiful, lovely, pleasant, and a fool. It was a story from the worst sort of wishing epic, but the girl, Maj, believed it.
She was being used, though for what, Amat couldn't imagine. And worse, she loved her child.
NOTHING WAS said to Maati. His belongings simply vanished from the room in which he had been living, and a servant girl led him down from the palace proper to a house nestled artfully in a stand of trees - the poet's house. An artificial pond divided it from the grounds. A wooden bridge spanned the water, arching sharply, like a cat's back. Koi - white and gold and scarlet - flowed and shifted beneath the water's skin as Maati passed over them.
Within, the house was as lavish as the palace, but on a more nearly human scale. The stairway that led up to the sleeping quarters was a rich, dark wood and inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl, but no more than two people could have walked abreast up its length. The great rooms at the front, with their hinged walls that could open onto the night air or close like a shutter, were cluttered with books and scrolls and diagrams sketched on cheap paper. An ink brick had stained the arm of a great silk-embroidered chair. The place smelled of tallow candles and old laundry.
For the first time since he had left the Dai-kvo, Maati felt himself in a space the character of which he could understand. He waited for his teacher, prepared for whatever punishment awaited him. Darkness came late, and he lit the night candle as the sun set. The silence of the poet's house was his only companion as he slept.
In the morning, servants delivered a meal of sweet fruits, apple-bread still warm from the palace kitchens, and a pot of smoky, black tea. Maati ate alone, a feeling of dread stealing over him. Putting him here alone to wait might, he supposed, be another trick, another misdirection. Perhaps no one would ever come.
He turned his attention to the disorder that filled the house. After leaving the bowls, cups and knives from his own meal out on the grass for the servants to retrieve, he gathered up so many abandoned dishes from about the house that the pile of them made it seem he had eaten twice. Scrolls opened so long that dust covered the script, he cleaned, furled, and returned to the cloth sleeves that he could find. Several he suspected were mismatched - a deep blue cloth denoting legal considerations holding a scroll of philosophy. He took some consolation that the scrolls on the shelves seemed equally haphazard.
By the afternoon, twinges of resentment had begun to join the suspicion that he was once again being duped. Even as he swept the floors that had clearly gone neglected for weeks, he began almost to hope that this further abandonment was another plot by the andat. If it were only that Heshai-kvo had this little use for him, perhaps the Dai-kvo shouldn't have let him come. Maati wondered if a poet had the option of refusing an apprentice. Perhaps this neglect was Heshai-kvo's way of avoiding duties he otherwise couldn't.
It had been only a few weeks before that he had taken leave of the Dai-kvo, heading south along the river to Yalakeht and there by ship to the summer cities. It was his first time training under an acting poet, seeing one of the andat first hand, and eventually studying to one day take on the burden of the andat Seedless himself. I am a slave, my dear. The slave you hope to own.
Maati pushed the dust out the door, shoving with his broom as much as sweeping. When the full heat of the day came on, Maati opened all the swinging walls, transforming the house into a kind of pavilion. A soft breeze ruffled the pages of books and the tassels of scrolls. Maati rested. A distant hunger troubled him, and he wondered how to signal from here for a palace servant to bring him something to eat. If Heshai-kvo were here, he could ask.
His teacher arrived at last, at first a small figure, no larger than Maati's thumb, trundling out from the palace. Then as he came nearer, Maati made out the wide face, the slanted, weak shoulders, the awkward belly. As he crossed the wooden bridge, the high color in the poet's face - cheeks red as cherries and sheened in an unhealthy sweat - came clear. Maati rose and adopted a pose of welcome appropriate for a student to his master.
Heshai's rolling gait slowed as he came near. The wide mouth gaped as Heshai-kvo took in the space that had been his unkempt house. For the first time, Maati wondered if perhaps he had made a mistake in cleaning it. He felt a blush rising in his cheeks and shifted to a pose of apology.
Heshai-kvo raised a hand before he could speak.
"No. No, it's ... gods, boy. I don't think the place has looked like this since I came here. Did you ... there was a brown book, leather-bound, on that table over there. Where did it end up?"
"I don't know, Heshai-kvo," Maati said. "I will find it immediately."
"Don't. No. It will rise to the surface eventually, I'm sure. Here. Come. Sit."
The poet moved awkwardly, like a man gout-plagued, but his joints, so far as Maati could make them out within the brown robes, were unswollen. Maati tried not to notice the stains of spilled food and drink on the poet's sleeves and down the front of his robes. As he lowered himself painfully into a chair of black lacquer and white woven cane, the poet spoke.
"We've gotten off to a bad start, haven't we?"
Maati took a pose of contrition, but the poet waved it away.
"I'm looking forward to teaching you. I thought I should say so. But there's little enough that I can do with you just now. Not until the harvests are all done. And that may not be for weeks. I'll get to you when I have time. There's quite a bit I'll have to show you. The Dai-kvo can give you a good start, but holding one of the andat is much more than anything he'll have told you. And Seedless ... well, I haven't done you any favors with Seedless, I'm afraid."
"I'm grateful that you were willing to accept me, Heshaikvo."
"Yes. Yes, well. That's all to the good, then. Isn't it. In the meantime, you should make use of your freedom. You understand? It can be a lovely city. Take ... take your time with it, eh? Live a little before we lock you back down into all this being a poet nonsense, eh?"
Maati took a pose appropriate to a student accepting instruction, though he could see in Heshai's bloodshot eyes that this was not quite the reply the poet had hoped for. An awkward silence stretched between them, broken when Heshai forced a smile, stood, and clapped Maati on the shoulder.
"Excellent," the poet said with such gusto that it was obvious he didn't mean it. "I've got to switch these robes out for fresh. Busy, you know, busy. No time to rest."
No time to rest. And yet it was the afternoon, and the poet, his teacher, was still in yesterday's clothes. No time to rest, nor to meet him when he arrived, nor to come to the house anytime in the night for fear of speaking to a new apprentice. Maati watched Heshai's wide form retreat up the stairs, heard the footsteps tramping above him as the poet rushed through his ablutions. His head felt like it had been stuffed with wool as he tried to catalog all the things he might have done that would have pushed his teacher away.
"Stings, doesn't it? Not being wanted," a soft voice murmured behind him. Maati spun. Seedless stood on the opened porch in a robe of perfect black shot with an indigo so deep it was hard to see where it blended with the deeper darkness. The dark, mocking eyes considered him. Maati took no pose, spoke no words. Seedless nodded all the same, as if he had replied. "We can talk later, you and I."
"I have nothing to say to you."
"All the better. I'll talk. You can listen."
The poet Heshai clomped down the stairs, a fresh robe, brown silk over cream, in place. The stubble had been erased from his jowls. Poet and andat considered each other for a breathless moment, and then turned and walked together down the path. Maati watched them go - the small, awkward shape of the master; the slim, elegant shadow of the slave. They walked, Maati noticed, with the same pace, the same length of stride. They might almost have been old friends, but for the careful way they never brushed each other, even walking abreast.
As they topped the rise of the bridge, Seedless looked back, and raised a perfect, pale hand to him in farewell.
"SHE DOESN'T KNOW."
Marchat Wilsin half-rose from the bath, cool water streaming off his body. His expression was strange - anger, relief, something else more obscure than these. The young man he had been meeting with stared at Amat, open-mouthed with shock at seeing a clothed woman in the bathhouse. Amat restrained herself from making an obscene gesture at him.
"Tsani-cha," Wilsin said, addressing the young man though his gaze was locked on Amat. "Forgive me. My overseer and I have pressing business. I will send a runner with the full proposal."
"But Wilsin-cha," the young man began, his voice trailing off when the old Galt turned to him. Amat saw something in Wilsin's face that would have made her blanch too, had she been less fueled by her rage. The young man took a pose of thanks appropriate to closing an audience, hopped noisily out of the bath and strode out.
"Have you seen her?" Amat demanded, leaning on her cane. "Have you spoken with her?"
"No, I haven't. Close the door, Amat."
"She thinks - "
"I said close the door; I meant close the door."
Amat paused, then limped over and slammed the wooden door shut. The sounds of the bathhouse faded. When she turned back, Wilsin was sitting on the edge of the recessed bath, his head in his hands. The bald spot at the top of his head was flushed pink. Amat moved forward.
"What were you thinking, Amat?"
"That this can't be right," she said. "I met with the girl. She doesn't know about the sad trade. She's an innocent."
"She's the only one in this whole damned city, then. Did you tell her? Did you warn her?"
"Without knowing what this is? Of course not. When was the last time you knew me to act without understanding the situation?"
"This morning," he snapped. "Now. Just now. Gods. And where did you learn to speak Nippu anyway?"
Amat stood beside him and then slowly lowered herself to the blue-green tiles. Her hip flared painfully, but she pushed it out of her mind.
"What is this?" she asked. "You're hiring the Khai to end a pregnancy, and the mother doesn't know that's what you're doing? You're killing a wanted child? It doesn't make sense."
"I can't tell you. I can't explain. I'm ... I'm not allowed."
"At least promise me that the child is going to live. Can you promise me that?"
He looked over at her, his pale eyes empty as a corpse.
"Gods," Amat breathed.
"I never wanted to come here," he said. "This city. That was my uncle's idea. I wanted to run the tripled trade. Silver and iron from Eddensea south to Bakta for sugar and rum, then to Far Galt for cedar and spicewood and back to Eddensea. I wanted to fight pirates. Isn't that ridiculous? Me. Fighting pirates."
"You will not make me feel sorry for you. Not now. You are Marchat Wilsin, and the voice of your house in Saraykeht. I have seen you stand strong before a mob of Westermen screaming for blood. You faced down a high judge when you thought he was wrong and called him fool to his face. Stop acting like a sick girl. We don't have to do this. Refuse the contract."
Wilsin looked up, his chin raised, his shoulders squared. For a moment, she thought he might do as she asked. But when he spoke, his voice was defeated.
"I can't. The stakes are too high. I've already petitioned the Khai for an audience. It's in motion, and I can't stop it any more than I can make the tide come early."
Amat kicked off her sandals, raised the hem of her robes, and let her aching feet sink into the cool water. Light played on the surface, patterns of brightness and shadow flickering across Marchat's chest and face. He was weeping. That more than anything else turned her rage to fear.
"Then help me make sense of it. What is this child?" Amat said. "Who is the father?"
"No one. The child is no one. The father is no one. The girl is no one."
"Then why, Marchat? Why ..."
"I can't tell you! Why won't you hear me when I say that? Ah? I don't get to tell you. Gods. Amat. Amat, why did you have to go out there?"
"You wanted me to. Why else ask me to arrange a bodyguard? You told me of a meeting I wasn't welcome to. You said there was house business, and then you said that you trusted me. How could you think I wouldn't look?"
He laughed with a sound like choking - mirthless and painful. His thick fingers grasped his knees, fingertips digging into pink flesh. Amat laid her cane aside and pressed her palm to his bent shoulder. Through the carved cedar blinds she heard someone on the street shriek and go silent.
"The round-faced one - Oshai. He came, didn't he? He told you I went there."
"Of course he did. He wanted to know if I'd sent you."
"What did you tell him?"
"That I hadn't."
"I see."
The silence stretched. She waited, willing him to speak, willing some words that would put it in some perspective less awful than it seemed. But Wilsin said nothing.
"I'll go back to my apartments," Amat said. "We can talk about this later."
She reached for her cane, but Wilsin's hand trapped hers. There was something in his eyes now, an emotion. Fear. It was as if they'd been soaking in it instead of water. She could feel her own heart trip faster as his eyes searched hers.
"Don't. Don't go home. He'll be waiting for you."
For the space of four breaths together, they were silent. Amat had to swallow to loosen her throat.
"Hide, Amat. Don't tell me where you've gone. Keep your head low for ... four weeks. Five. It'll be over by then. And once it's finished with, you'll be safe. I can protect you then. You're only in danger if they think you might stop it from happening. Once it's done ..."
"I could go to the utkhaiem. I could tell them that something's wrong. We could have Oshai in chains by nightfall, if ..."
Marchat shook his woolly, white head slowly, his gaze never leaving hers. Amat felt the strength go out of his fingers.
"If this comes out to anyone, I'll be killed. At least me. Probably others. Some of them innocents."
"I thought there was only one innocent in this city," Amat said, biting her words.
"I'll be killed."
Amat hesitated, then withdrew her arm and took a pose of acceptance. He let her stand. Her hip screamed. And her stinging ointment was all at her apartments. The unfairness of losing that small comfort struck her ridiculously hard; one insignificant detail in a world that had turned from solid to nightmare in a day.
At the door, she stopped, her hand on the water-thick wood. She looked back at her employer. At her old friend. His face was stone.
"You told me," she said, "because you wanted me to find a way to stop it. Didn't you?"
"I made a mistake because I was confused and upset and felt very much alone," he said. His voice was stronger now, more sure of himself. "I hadn't thought it through. But it was a mistake, and I see the situation more clearly now. Do what I tell you, Amat, and we'll both see the other side of this."
"It's wrong. Whatever this is, it's evil and it's wrong."
"Yes," he agreed.
Amat nodded and closed the door behind her when she went.