Long Price Quartet Book 1 - Chapter Eight

"After the fire, we agreed ..." Amat said, and the back of Ovi Niit's hand snapped her head to the side. She turned back slowly, tasting her own blood. Her lips tingled in the presentiment of pain, and a trickle of warmth going cool on her chin told the part of her mind that wasn't cringing in fear that one of his rings had cut her.
"Agreed," Ovi Niit spat. "We agree what I say we agree. If I change it, it changes. There's no agreement to be made."
He paced the length of the room. The evening sun pressed at the closed shutters, showing only their outlines. It was enough light to see by, enough to know that Ovi Niit's eyes were opened too wide - the stained whites showing all the way round. His lips moved as if he were on the verge of speaking.
"You're stalling!" he shouted, slamming his hand down on her desk. Amat balled her fists and willed herself to sit quietly. Anything she said would be a provocation. "You think that by stretching it out, you'll be safer. You think that by letting that thief take my money, you'll be better off. But you won't!"
With the last word, he kicked the wall. The plaster cracked where he'd struck it. Amat considered the damage - small lines radiating out from a flattened circle - and felt her mind shift. It was no bigger than an egg, and looking at it, she knew that sometime not long from now Ovi Niit wouldn't direct his rage at the walls. He would kill her, whether he meant to or not.
How odd, she thought as she felt the nausea descend on her, that it would be that little architectural wound that would resolve her when all his violence against people hadn't.
"I will have my answer by dawn," he shouted. "By dawn. If you don't do what I say, I'll cut off your thumbs and sell you for the five lengths of gold. It's not as if Oshai's going to care that you're damaged."
Amat took a pose of obeisance so abject that she was disgusted by it. But it came naturally to her hands. Ovi Niit grabbed her by a handful of hair and pulled her from her chair, spilling her papers and pens. He kicked over the desk and stalked out. As the door slammed shut behind him, Amat caught a glimpse of shocked faces.
She lay in the darkness, too tired and ill to weep. The stone floor was rough against her cheek. The blood from her cut face pulled on her skin as it dried. She'd have a scar. When her mind would obey her again, the room was utterly black. She forced herself to think. The days had blurred - bent over half-legible books from the moment she woke until the figures shifted on the page and her hands bent themselves into claws. And then to dream about it, and come back and begin again. And there had been no point. Ovi Niit was a thug and a wh.o.r.emaster. His fear and violence grew with the wine and drugs he took to ease them. He would have been pitiful from the right distance.
But days. The question was days.
She counted slowly, struggling to recall. Three weeks at least. More than that. It had to be more than that. Perhaps four. Not five. It was too early to be sure of Marchat's amnesty. She surprised herself by chuckling. If she'd counted wrong, the worst case would be that they found her face down in the river and Ovi Niit lost five lengths of gold. That wouldn't be so bad.
She pushed herself upright, then stood, breathing through the pain until she felt as little stooped as she could manage. When she was ready, she took up her cane and put on the expression she used when she wanted no one to see her true feelings. She was Amat Kyaan, after all, overseer of House Wilsin. Streetgirl of Saraykeht made good. Let them see that she was unbroken. If she could make the wh.o.r.es of the comfort house believe it, she would start to believe it again, too.
The common room was near empty, the wh.o.r.es out in the rooms plying their trade. A guardsman sat eating a roast chicken that smelled of garlic and rosemary. An old black dog lay curled in a corner, a leatherwork rod in the shape of a man's s.e.x chewed half to pieces between the b.i.t.c.h's paws.
"He's gone out," the guard said. "In the front rooms, playing tiles."
Amat nodded.
"I wouldn't go out to him, grandmother."
"I wouldn't want to interrupt. Send Mitat to the office. I need someone to help me put the room back in order. Every meeting it's like a storm's come through."
The guard took an amused pose of agreement. The sound of drums came suddenly from the street. Another night in the endless carnival of the soft quarter.
"I'll have her bring something for that wound," the guard said.
"Thank you," Amat said, her voice polite, dispa.s.sionate: the voice of the woman she wanted them all to believe her to be. "That would be very kind of you."
Mitat appeared in her doorway half a hand later. The wide, pale face littered with freckles looked hard. Amat smiled gently at her and took a pose of welcome.
"I heard that he'd been to see you, grandmother."
"Yes, and so he has. Open those shutters for me, would you, dear? I was tall enough to get them myself when I came here, but I seem to have grown shorter."
Mitat did so, and the pale moonlight added to the lantern on Amat's desk. The papers weren't in such bad order. Amat motioned the woman closer.
"You have to go, grandmother," Mitat said. "Niit-cha is getting worse."
"Of course he is," Amat said. "He's frightened. And he drinks too much. I need you. Now, tonight."
Mitat took a pose of agreement. Amat smiled and took her hand. In the wall behind Mitat, the little scar blemished the wall where he'd kicked it. Amat wondered in pa.s.sing if the wh.o.r.emaster would ever understand how much that mark had cost him. And Amat intended it to cost dear.
"Who is the most valuable man here?" Amat asked. "Niitcha must have men who he trusts more than others, ne?"
"The guards," Mitat began, but Amat waved the comment away.
"Who does he trust like a brother?"
Mitat's eyes narrowed. She's caught scent of it, Amat thought and smiled.
"Black Rathvi," Mitat said. "He's in charge of the house when Niit-cha's away."
"You know what his handwriting looks like?"
"No," Mitat said. "But I know he took in two gold and seventy silver lengths from the high tables two nights ago. I heard him talking about it."
Amat paged through the most recent ledger until she found the precise sum. It was a wide hand with poorly formed letters and a propensity for dropping the ends of words. She knew it well. Black Rathvi was a poor keeper of notes, and she'd been struggling with his entries since she'd started the project. She found herself ghoulishly pleased that he'd be suffering for his poor job keeping books.
"I'll need a cloak - a hooded one - perhaps two hands before daybreak," Amat said.
"You should leave now," Mitat said. "Niit-cha's occupied for the moment, but he may - "
"I'm not finished yet. Two hands before daybreak, I will be. You and your man should slow down for a time after Ovi Niit deals with Black Rathvi. At least several weeks. If he sees things get better, he'll know he was right. You understand?"
Mitat took a pose of affirmation, but it wasn't solid. Amat didn't bother replying formally, only raised a single eyebrow and waited. Mitat looked away, and then back. There was something like hope and also like distrust in her eyes. The face of someone who wants to believe, but is afraid to.
"Can you do it?" Mitat asked.
"Make the numbers point to Black Rathvi? Of course I can. This is what I do. Can you get me a cloak and safe pa.s.sage at least as far as the street?"
"If you can put those two at each other's throats, I can do anything," Mitat said.
It took less time than she'd expected. The numbers were simple enough to manipulate once she knew what she wanted to do with them. She even changed a few of the entries on their original sheets, blacking out the scrawling hand and forging new figures. When she was finished, a good accountant would have been able to see the deception. But if Ovi Niit had had one of those, Amat would never have been there.
She spent the remaining time composing her letter of leave-taking. She kept the tone formal, using all the t.i.tles and honorary flourishes she would have for a very respected merchant or one of the lower of the utkhaiem. She expressed her thanks for the shelter and discretion Ovi Niit and his house had extended and expressed regret that she felt it in her best interest - now that her work was done - to leave inconspicuously. She had too much respect, she wrote sneering as she did so, for Niit-cha's sense of advantage to expect him not to sell a commodity for which he no longer had use. She then outlined her findings, implicating Black Rathvi without showing any sign that she knew his name or his role in the house.
She folded the letter twice and then at the corners in the style of a private message and wrote Ovi Niit's name on the overleaf. It perched atop the papers and books, ready to be discovered. Amat sat a while longer, listening to the wild music and slurred voices of the street, waiting for Mitat to appear. The night candle consumed small mark after small mark, and Amat began to wonder whether something had gone wrong.
It hadn't.
However the girl had arranged it, leaving the house was as simple as shrugging on the deep green cloak, taking up her cane, and stepping out the rear door and down a stone path to the open gate that led to the street. In the east, the blackness was starting to show the gray of charcoal, the weakest stars on the horizon failing. The moon, near full, had already set. The night traffic was over but for a few revelers pulling themselves back from their entertainments. Amat, for all the pain in her joints, wasn't the slowest.
She paused at a corner stand and bought a meal of fresh greens and fried pork wrapped in almond skin and a bowl of tea. She ate as the sun rose, climbing like a G.o.d in the east. She was surprised by the calm she felt, the serenity. Her ordeal was, if not over, at least near its end. A few more days, and then whatever Marchat was doing would be done. And if she spent weeks in h.e.l.l, she was strong enough, she saw, to come through it with grace.
She even believed the story until the girl running the stall asked if she'd want more tea. Amat almost wept at the small kindness. So perhaps she wasn't quite so unscathed as she told herself.
She reached her apartments in the press of the morning. On a normal day, if she could recall those, she might have been setting forth just then. Or even a bit earlier. Off into her city, on the business of her house. She unlocked the door of her apartments, slipped in, and barred the door behind her. It was a risk, coming home without being sure of things with Marchat's cruel business, but she needed money. And the stinging salve for her legs. And a fresh robe. And sleep. G.o.ds, she needed sleep. But that would wait.
She gathered her things quickly and made for the door, struggling to get down the stairs. She had enough silver in her sleeve to buy a small house for a month. Surely it would be enough for a room and discretion for three or four days. If she could only ...
No. No, of course she couldn't. When she opened the door, three men blocked her. They had knives. The tallest moved in first, clamping a wide palm over her mouth and pushing her against the wall. The others slid in fast as shadows, and closed the door again. Amat closed her eyes. Her heart was racing, and she felt nauseated.
"If you scream, we'll have to kill you," the tall man said gently. It was so much worse for being said so carefully. Amat nodded, and he took his hand away. Their knives were still drawn.
"I want to speak with Wilsin-cha," Amat said when she had collected herself enough to say anything.
"Good that we've sent for him, then," one of the others said. "Why don't you have a seat while we wait."
Amat swallowed, hoping to ease the tightness in her throat. She took a pose that accepted the suggestion, turned and made her way again up the stairs to wait at her desk. Two of the men followed her. The third waited below. The sun had moved the width of two hands together when Mar-chat walked up the steps and into her rooms.
He looked older, she thought. Or perhaps not older, but worn. His hair hung limp on his brow. His robes fit him poorly, and a stain of egg yolk discolored the sleeve. He paced the length of the room twice, looking neither directly at her nor away. Amat, sitting at her desk, folded her hands on one knee and waited. Marchat stopped at the window, turned and gestured to the two thugs.
"Get out," he said. "Wait downstairs."
The two looked at one another, weighing, Amat saw, whether to obey him. These were not Marchat's men, then. Not truly. They were the moon-faced Oshai's perhaps. One shrugged, and the other turned back with a pose of acknowledgment before they both moved to the door and out. Amat listened to their footsteps fading.
Marchat looked out, down, she presumed, to the street. The heat of the day was thick. Sweat stained his armpits and dampened his brow.
"You're too early," he said at last, still not looking directly at her.
"Am I?"
"By three days."
Amat took a pose of apology more casual than she felt. Silence held them until at last Marchat looked at her directly. She couldn't read his expression - perhaps anger, perhaps sorrow, perhaps exhaustion. Her employer, the voice of her house, sighed.
"Amat ... G.o.ds, things have been bad. Worse than I expected, and I didn't think they'd be well."
He walked to her, lowered himself onto the cushion that Liat usually occupied, and rested his head on his hands. Amat felt the urge to reach out, to touch him. She held the impulse in.
"It's nearly over," he continued. "I can convince Oshai and his men that it's better to let you live. I can. But Amat. You have to help me."
"How?"
"Tell me what you're planning. What you've started or done or said that might stop the trade."
Amat felt a slow smile pluck her lips, a low, warm burble of laughter bloom in her chest. Her shoulders shook and she took a pose of amazement. The absurdity of the question was like a wave lifting up a swimmer. Marchat looked confused.
"What I've done to stop it?" Amat asked. "Are you simple? I've run like my life depended on it, kept my head low and prayed that whatever you'd started, you could finish. Stop you? G.o.ds, Marchat, I don't know what you're thinking."
"You've done nothing?"
"I've been through h.e.l.l. I've been beaten and threatened. Someone tried to light me on fire. I've seen more of the worst parts of the city than I've seen in years. I did quite a bit. I worked longer hours at harder tasks than you've ever gotten from me." The words were taking on a pace and rhythm of their own, flowing out of her faster and louder. Her face felt flushed. "And, in my spare moments, did I work out a plan to save the house's honor and set the world to rights? Did I hire men to discover your precious client and warn the girl what you intend to do to her? No, you fat Galtic idiot, I did not. Had you been expecting me to?"
Amat found she was leaning forward, her chin jutting out. The anger made her feel better for the moment. More nearly in control. She recognized it was illusion, but she took comfort in it all the same. Marchat's expression was sour.
"What about Itani, then?"
"Who?"
"Itani. Liat's boy."
Amat took a dismissive pose.
"What about him? I used him to discover where you were going, certainly, but you must know that by now. I didn't speak with him then, and I certainly haven't since."
"Then why has he gone out with the poet's student three nights of the last five?" Marchat demanded. His voice was hard as stone. He didn't believe her.
"I don't know, Marchat-cha. Why don't you ask him?"
Marchat shook his head, impatient, stood and turned his back on her. The anger that had held Amat up collapsed, and she was suddenly desperate that he believe her, that he understand. That he be on her side. She felt like a portman's flag, switching one way to another with the shifting wind. If she'd been able to sleep before they spoke, if she hadn't had to flee Ovi Niit's house, if the world were only just or fair or explicable, she would have been able to be herself - calm, solid, grounded. She swallowed her need, disgusted by it and pretended that she was only calming herself from her rage, not folding.
"Or," she said, stopping him as he reached the head of the stairs, "if you want to be clever about it, ask Liat."
"Liat?"
"She's the one who told me where the two of you had gone. Itani told her, and she told me. If you're worried that Itani's corrupting the poets against you, ask Liat."
"She'd suspect," Marchat said, but his tone begged to be proved wrong. Amat closed her eyes. They felt so good, closed. The darkness was so comfortable. G.o.ds, she needed to rest.
"No," Amat said. "She wouldn't. Approach her as if you were scolding her. Tell her it's unseemly for those kinds of friendships to bloom in the middle of a working trade, and ask her why they couldn't wait until it was concluded. At the worst, she'll hide the truth from you, but then you'll know she has something she's hiding."
Her employer and friend of years hesitated, his mind turning the strategy over, looking for flaws. A breath of air smelling of the sea touched Amat's face. She could see it in Marchat's eyes when he accepted her suggestion.
"You'll have to stay here until it's over," he said. "I'll have Oshai's men bring you food and drink. I still need to make my case to Oshai and the client, but I will make it work. You'll be fine."
Amat took an accepting pose. "I'll be pleased being here," she said. Then, "Marchat? What is this all about?"
"Money," he said. "Power. What else is there?"
And as he walked down the stairs, leaving her alone, it fit together like a peg slipping into its hole. It wasn't about the child. It wasn't about the girl. It was about the poet. And if it was about the poet, it was about the andat. If the poet Heshai lost control of his creation, if Seedless escaped, the cotton trade in Saraykeht would lose its advantage over other ports in the islands and the Westlands and Galt. Even when a new andat came, it wasn't likely that it would be able to fuel the cotton trade as Seedless or Petals-Falling had.
Amat went to her window. The street below was full - men, women, dogs, carts. The roofs of the city stretched out to the east, and down to the south the seafront was full. Trade. The girl Maj would be sacrificed to shift the balance of trade away from Saraykeht. It was the only thing that made sense.
"Oh, Marchat," she breathed. "What have you done?"
* * *
THE TEAHOUSE was nearly empty. Two or three young men inside were still speaking in raised voices, their arguments inchoate and disjointed. Out in the front garden, an older man had fallen asleep beside the fountain, his long, slow breathing a counterpoint to the distant conversation. A lemon candle guttered and died, leaving only a long winding plume of smoke, gray against the night, and the scent of an extinguished wick. Otah felt the urge to light a fresh candle, but he didn't act on it. On the bench beside him, Maati sighed.
"Does it ever get cold here, Otah-kvo?" Maati asked. "If we were with the Dai-kvo, we'd be shivering by now, even if it is midsummer. It's midnight, and it's almost hot as day."
"It's the sea. It holds the heat in. And we're too far south. It's colder as you go north."
"North. Do you remember Machi?"
Visions took Otah. Stone walls thicker than a man's height, stone towers reaching to a white sky, stone statues baked all day in the fires and then put in the children's room to radiate their heat through the night.
He remembered being pulled through snow-choked streets on a sleigh, a sister whose name he no longer knew beside him, holding close for warmth. The scent of burning pine and hot stone and mulled wine.
"No," he said. "Not really."
"I don't often look at the stars," Maati said. "Isn't that odd?"
"I suppose," Otah allowed.
"I wonder whether Heshai does. He stays out half the time, you know. He wasn't even there yesterday when I came in."
"You mean this morning?"
Maati frowned.
"I suppose so. It wasn't quite dawn when I got there. You should have seen Seedless stalking back and forth like a cat. He tried to get me to say where I'd been, but I wouldn't talk. Not me. I wonder where Heshai-kvo goes all night."
"The way Seedless wonders about you," Otah said. "You should start drinking water. You'll be worse for it if you don't."
Maati took a pose of acceptance, but didn't rise or go in for water. The sleeping man snored. Otah closed his eyes for a moment, testing how it felt. It was like falling backwards. He was too tired. He'd never make it though his shift with Muhatia-cha.
"I don't know how Heshai-kvo does it," Maati said, clearly thinking similar thoughts. "He's got a full day coming. I don't think I'll be able to do any more today than I did yesterday. I mean today. I don't know what I mean. It's easier to keep track when I sleep at night. What about you?"
"They can do without me," Otah said. "Muhatia-cha knows my indenture's almost over. He more than half expects me to ignore my duties. It isn't uncommon for someone who isn't renewing their contract."
"And aren't you?" Maati asked.
"I don't know."
Otah shifted his weight, turning to look at the young poet in the brown robes of his office. The moonlight made them seem black.
"I envy you," Maati said. "You know that, don't you?"
"You want to be directionless and unsure what you'll be doing to earn food in a half-year's time?"
"Yes," Maati said. "Yes, I think I do. You've friends. You've a place. You've possibilities. And ..."
"And?"
Even in the darkness, Otah could see Maati blush. He took a pose of apology as he spoke.
"You have Liat," Maati said. "She's beautiful."
"She is lovely. But there are any number of women at court. And you're the poet's student. There must be girls who'd take you for a lover."
"There are, I think. Maybe. I don't know, but ... I don't understand them. I've never known any - not at the school, and then not with the Dai-kvo. They're different."
"Yes," Otah said. "I suppose they are."
Liat. He'd seen her a handful of nights since the audience before the Khai. Since his discovery by Maati. She was busy enough preparing the woman Maj for the sad trade that she hadn't made an issue of his absence, but he had seen something growing in her questions and in her silence.
"Things aren't going so well with Liat," Otah said, surprised that he would admit it even as he spoke. Maati sat straight, pulling himself to some blurry attention. His look of concern was almost a parody of the emotion. He took a pose of query. Otah responded with one that begged ignorance, but let it fall away. "It isn't her. I've been ... I've been pulling away from her, I think."
"Why?" Maati asked. His incredulity was clear.
Otah wondered how he'd been drawn into this conversation. Maati seemed to have a talent for it, bringing him to say things he'd hardly had the courage to think through fully. It was having someone at last who might understand him. Someone who knew him for what he was, and who had suffered some of the same flavors of loss.
"I've never told Liat. About who I am. Do you think ... Maati, can you love someone and not trust them?"
"We're born to odd lives, Otah-kvo," Maati said, sounding suddenly older and more sorrowful. "If we waited for people we trusted, I think we might never love anyone."
They were silent for a long moment, then Maati rose.
"I'm going to get some water from the keep, and then find some place to leave him a little of my own," he said, breaking the somber mood. Otah smiled.
"Then we should go."
Maati took a pose that was both regret and agreement, then walked off with a gait for the most part steady. Otah stood, stretching his back and his legs, pulling his blood into action. He tossed a single length of silver onto the bench where they'd sat. It would more than cover their drinks and the bread and cheese they'd eaten. When Maati returned, they struck out for the north, toward the palaces. The streets of the city were moonlit, pale blue light except where a lantern burned at the entrance to a compound or a firekeeper's kiln added a ruddy touch. The calls of night birds, the chirping of crickets, the occasional voice of some other city dweller awake long after the day had ended accompanied them as they walked.
It was all as familiar as his own cot or the scent of the seafront, but the boy at his side also changed it. For almost a third of his life, Otah had been in Saraykeht. He knew the shapes of its streets. He knew which firekeepers could be trusted and which could be bought, which teahouses served equally to all its clientele and which saved the better goods for the higher cla.s.ses. And he knew his place in it. He would no more have thought about it than about breathing. Except for Maati.
The boy made him look at everything again, as if he were seeing it for the first time. The city, the streets, Liat, himself. Especially himself. Now the thing that he had measured his greatest success - the fact that he knew the city deeply and it did not know him - was harder and emptier than it had once been. And odd that it hadn't seemed so before.
And the memories curled and shifted deep in his mind; the unconnected impressions of a childhood he had thought forgotten, of a time before he'd been sent to the school. There was a face with dark hair and beard that might have been his father. A woman he remembered singing and bathing him when his body had been small enough for her to lift with one arm. He didn't know whether she was his mother or a nurse or a sister. But there had been a fire in the grate, and the tub had been worked copper, and he had been young and amazed by it.
And over the days and nights, other half-formed things had joined together in his mind. He remembered his mother handing him a cloth rabbit, sneaking it into his things so that his father wouldn't see it. He remembered an older boy shouting - his brother, perhaps - that it wasn't fair that Otah be sent away, and that he had felt guilty for causing so much anger. He remembered the name Oyin Frey, and an old man with a long white beard playing a drum and singing, but not who the man was or how he had known him.
He couldn't say which of the memories were truth, which were dreams he'd constructed himself. He wondered, if he were to travel back there, far in the north, whether these ghost memories would let him retrace paths he hadn't walked in years - know the ways from nursery to kitchen to the tunnels beneath Machi - or if they would lead him astray, false as bog-lights.
And the school - Tahi-kvo glowering at him, and the whirr of the lacquer rod. He had pushed those things away, pushed away the boy who had suffered those losses and humiliations, and now it was like being haunted. Haunted by who he might be and might have been.
"I think I've upset you, Otah-kvo," Maati said quietly.
Otah turned, taking a questioning pose. Maati's brow furrowed and he looked down.
"You haven't spoken since we left the teahouse," Maati said. "If I've given offense ..."
Otah laughed, and the sound seemed to rea.s.sure Maati. On impulse, Otah put his arm around Maati's shoulder as he might have around a dear friend or a brother.
"I'm sorry. I seem to be doing this to everyone around me these days. No, Maati-kya, I'm not upset. You just make me think about things, and I must be out of practice. I get lost in them. And G.o.ds, but I'm tired."
"You could stay at the poet's house if you don't care to walk back to your quarters. There's a perfectly good couch on the lower floor."
"No," Otah said. "If I don't let Muhatia-cha scold me in the morning, he'll get himself into a rage by midday."
Maati took a pose of understanding that also spoke of regret, and put his own arm around Otah's shoulder. They walked together, talking now the same mixture of seriousness and jokes that they'd made yet another evening of. Maati was getting better at navigating the streets, and even when the route he chose wasn't the fastest, Otah let him lead. He wondered, as they approached the monument of the Emperor Atami where three wide streets met, what it would have been like to grow up with a brother.
"Otah?" Maati said, his stride suddenly slowing. "That man there. The one in the cloak."
Otah glanced over. The man was walking away from them, heading to the east, and alone. Maati was right, though. It was the same man who'd been sleeping at the teahouse, or pretending to. Otah stepped away from Maati, freeing his arms in case he needed to fight. It wouldn't have been the first time that someone from the palaces had been followed from a teahouse and a.s.saulted for the copper they carried.
"Come with me," Otah said and walked out to the middle of the wide area where the streets converged. Emperor Atami loomed above them, sad-eyed in the darkness. Otah turned slowly, considering each street, each building.
"Otah-kvo?" Maati said, his voice uncertain. "Was he following us?"
There was no one there, only the too-familiar man retreating to the east. Otah counted twenty breaths, but no one appeared. No shadows moved. The night was empty.
"Perhaps," he said, answering the question. "Probably. I don't know. Let's keep going. And if you see anything, tell me."
The rest of the distance to the palaces, Otah kept them on wide streets where they would see men coming. He would send Maati running for help and buy what time he could. A fine plan unless there were several of them or they had knives. But nothing happened, and Maati safely wished him good night.
By the time Otah reached his own quarters, the fear he'd felt was gone, the bone-weariness taken back over. He fell onto his cot and pulled the netting closed. Exhaustion pressed him to the rough canvas of the cot. The snores and sleeping murmurs of his cohort should have lulled him to sleep. But tired as he was, sleep wouldn't come. In the darkness, his mind turned from problem to problem - they'd been followed by someone who might still be tracking Maati; his indenture was almost over and he would be too weary to work when the dawn came; he had never told Liat of his past. As he turned his mind to one, another distracted him, until he was only chasing his thoughts and being chased by them. He didn't notice when he slipped into dream.
* * *
LIAT LEFT Marchat Wilsin's offices with her spine straight and rage brewing. She walked through the compound to her cell without looking down and without catching anyone's gaze. She closed the door behind her, fastened the shutters so that no one could happen to look in, then sat at her desk and wept.
It was profoundly unfair. She had done everything she could - she'd studied the etiquette, she'd taken the island girl to all the appointments at their appointed times, she'd negotiated with the poet even when he'd made it perfectly clear that he'd be as pleased to have her out of the room - and it was Itani that defeated her. Itani!
She stripped off her outer robe, flinging it to the bed. She wrenched open her wardrobe and looked for another, a better one. One more expressive of wrath.
It's not entirely appropriate, Wilsin-cha still said in her mind. So close to a formal trade it might give the impression that the house was still seeking some advantage after the agreements had been made.
It might, she knew he'd meant, make her look like an idiot sending her lover to try to win favor. And worse, Itani - sweet, gentle, smiling Itani - hadn't even told her. The nights she'd spent working, imagining him with his cohort or in his quarters, waiting for her to complete her task with the sad trade, he'd been out spoiling things for her. Out with the student poet. He hadn't thought of what it would look like, what it would imply about her.
And he hadn't even told her.
She plucked a formal robe, red shot with black, pulled it on over her inner robes, and tied it fast. She braided her hair, pulling it back severely. When she was done, she lifted her chin as she imagined Amat Kyaan would have and stalked out into the city.
The streets were still bustling, the business day far from ended. The sun, still eight or nine hands above the horizon, pressed down and the air was wet and stifling and still, and it reeked of the sea. Itani would still be with his cohort, but she wasn't going to wait and risk letting her anger mellow. She would find out what Itani meant by this. She'd have an explanation for Wilsin-cha, and she'd have it now, before the trade was finished. Tomorrow was the only day left to make things right.
At his quarters, she found that he hadn't gone out with the others after all - he'd been out too late and pled illness when Muhatia-cha came to gather them. The club-foot boy who watched the quarters during the working hours a.s.sured her with obvious pleasure that Muhatia-cha had been viciously angry.
So whatever it was that Itani was up to, it was worth risking his indenture as well as her standing with Wilsin-cha. Liat thanked the club-foot boy and asked, with a formal pose, where she might find Itani-cha since he was not presently in his quarters. The boy shrugged and rattled off teahouses, bathhouses, and places of ease along the seafront. It was nearly two full hands before Liat tracked him down at a cheap bathhouse near the river, and her temper hadn't calmed.
She stalked into the bath without bothering to remove her robes. The great tiled walls echoed with conversations that quieted as she pa.s.sed. The men and women in the public baths considered her, but Liat only moved on, ignoring them. Pretending to ignore them. Acting as Amat would have. Itani had taken a private room to one side. She strode down the short corridor of rough, wet stone, paused, breathed deeply twice as if there was something in the thick, salt-scented air that might fortify her, and pushed her way in.
Itani sat in the pool as if at a table, bent slightly forward, his eyes on the surface of the water like a man lost in thought. He looked up as she slammed the door closed behind her, and his eyes spoke of weariness and preparedness. Liat took a pose of query that bordered on accusation.
"I meant to come look for you, love," he said.
"Oh really?" she said.
"Yes."
His eyes returned to the shifting surface of the water. His bare shoulders hunched forward. Liat stepped to the edge of the pool and stared down at him, willing his gaze up to hers. He didn't look.
"There's a conversation we need to have, love," he said. "We should have done before, I suppose, but ..."
"What are you thinking? Itani? What are you doing? Wilsin-cha just spent half a hand very quietly telling me that you've been making a fool of me before the utkhaiem. What are you doing with the poet's student?"
"Maati," Itani said, distantly. "He's named Maati."
If Liat had had anything to throw, she'd have launched it at Itani's bowed head. Instead, she let out an exasperated cry and stamped her foot. Itani looked up, his vision swimming into focus as if he was waking from a dream. He smiled his charming, open, warm smile.
"Itani. I'm humiliated before the whole court, and you - "
"How?"
"What?"
"How? How is my drinking at a teahouse with Maati humiliating to you?"
"It makes it look as if I were trying to leverage some advantage after the agreements are complete," she snapped.
Itani took a pose that requested clarification.
"Isn't that most of what goes on between the harvest and completing the contracts? I thought Amat Kyaan was always sending you with letters arguing over interpretations of language."
It was true, but it hadn't occurred to her when Wilsin-cha had been sitting across his table from her with that terrible expression of pity. Playing for advantage had never stopped because a contract had been signed.
"It's not the same," she said. "This is with the Khai. You don't do that with the Khai."
"I'm sorry, then," Itani said. "I didn't know. But I wasn't trying to change your negotiation."
"So what were you doing?"
Itani scooped up a double handful of water and poured it over his head. His long, northern face took on a look of utter calm, and he breathed deeply twice. He nodded to himself, coming to some private decision. When he spoke, his voice was almost conversational.
"I knew Maati when we were boys. We were at the school together."
"What school?"
"The school where the courts send their disowned sons. Where they choose the poets."
Liat frowned. Itani looked up.
"What were you doing there?" Liat asked. "You were a servant? You never told me you were a servant as a child."
"I was the son of the Khai Machi. The sixth son. My name was Otah Machi then. I only started calling myself Itani after I left, so that my family couldn't find me. I left without taking the brand, so it would have been dangerous to go by my true name."
His smile faltered, his gaze shifted. Liat didn't move - couldn't move. It was ridiculous. It was laughable. And yet she wasn't laughing. Her anger was gone like a candle snuffed by a strong wind, and she was only fighting to take in breath. It couldn't be true, but it was. She knew he wasn't lying. Before her and below her, Itani's eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. He coughed out something like mirth and wiped his eyes with the back of his bare hand.
"I've never told anyone," he said, "until now. Until you."
"You ..." Liat began, then had to stop, swallow, begin again. "You're the son of the Khai Machi?"
"I didn't tell you at first because I didn't know you. And then later because I hadn't before. But I love you. And I trust you. I do. And I want you to be with me. Will you forgive me?"
"Is this ... are you lying to me, 'Tani?"
"No," he said. "It's truth. You can ask Maati if you'd like. He knows as well."
Liat's throat was too tight to speak. Itani rose and lifted his arms up to her in supplication, the water flowing down his naked chest, fear in his eyes - fear that she would turn away from him. She melted down into the water, into his arms. Her robes, drinking in the water, were heavy as weights, but she didn't care. She pulled him to her, pulled him close, pressed her face against his. There were tears on their cheeks, but she didn't know whether they were hers or his. His arms surrounded her, lifted her, safe and strong and amazing.
"I knew," she said. "I knew you were something. I knew there was something about you. I always knew."
He kissed her then. It was unreal - like something out of an old epic story. She, Liat Chokavi, was the lover of the hidden child of the Khai Machi. He was hers. She pulled back from him, framing his face with her hands, staring at him as if seeing him for the first time.
"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said.
"Am I hurt?" she asked. "I could fly, love. I could fly."
He held her fiercely then, like a drowning man holding the plank that might save him. And she matched him before pulling off her ruined robes and letting them sink into the bath like water plants at their ankles. Skin to skin they stood, the bath cool around their hips, and Liat let her heart sing with the thought that one day, her lover might take his father's seat and power. One day, he might be Khai.