A Shadow in Summer Page 27

  “No, he won’t. He can’t.”

  “I think he can,” the andat replied.

  “It’s a full three weeks just to Yalakeht. Even if he took a fast boat up the river, he’d only just be arriving now.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Then I suppose I must be mistaken,” the andat said so mildly that Liat had no answer. Seedless laughed then and put his head in his hands.

  “What?” Liat asked.

  “I’ve been an idiot. Otah is the Otah-kvo that Maati told me of. He doesn’t wear a brand and he’s not a poet, so I never connected them. But if Maati’s sent him to see the Dai-kvo . . . Yes. He must be.”

  “I thought you knew all about Otah,” Liat said, her heart falling.

  “That may have been an exaggeration. Otah-kvo. A black robe who didn’t take the brand or become a poet. I think . . . I think I heard a story like that once. Well, a few questions of Heshai, and I’m sure I can dredge it up.”

  The horror of what she’d done flooded her. Liat didn’t sit so much as give way. The leaves crackled under her weight. The andat looked over to her, alarmed.

  “You tricked me,” she whispered.

  Seedless tilted his head with an odd, sensual smile as much pity as wonderment. He took a pose offering comfort.

  “It wasn’t you, Liat-kya. Maati told me all about it before he even knew who I was. If you’ve betrayed your heartmate tonight—and, really, I think there’s a strong argument that you have—it wasn’t with me. And whether you believe it or not, the secret’s safe.”

  “I don’t. I don’t believe you.”

  The andat smiled, and for a moment the sincerity in his face reminded her of Heshai-kvo.

  “Having a secret is like sitting at a roof’s edge with a rock, Liat. As long as you have the rock, you have the power of life and death over anyone below you. Drop the rock, and you’ve just got a nice view. I won’t spread your secret unless it brings me something, and as it stands, there’s no advantage to me. Unless things change, I won’t be telling any of your several secrets.”

  Liat took a pose of challenge.

  “Swear it,” she said.

  “To whom are you talking? How likely am I to be bound by an oath to you?”

  Liat let her arms fall to her sides.

  “I won’t betray you,” Seedless said, “because there’s no reason to, and because it would hurt Maati.”

  “Maati?”

  Seedless shrugged.

  “I’m fond of him. He’s . . . he’s young and he hasn’t lived in the world for very long, perhaps. But he has the talent and charm to escape this if he’s wise.”

  “You sound like Heshai when you say that.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Do you . . . I mean, you don’t really care about Maati. Do you?”

  Seedless stood. He moved with the grace and ease of a thrown stone. His robe hung from him, darker than the night. His face was the perfect white of a carnival mask, smooth as eggshell and as expressionless. The crickets increased their chirping songs until they were so loud, Liat was surprised that she could hear Seedless’ voice, speaking softly over them.

  “In ten years time, Liat-kya, look back at this—at what you and I said here, tonight. And when you do, ask yourself which of us was kinder to him.”

  15

  > + < The days passed with an exquisite discomfort in the village of the Dai-kvo. The clear air, the cold stone of the streets, the perfection, the maleness and austerity and beauty were like a dream. Otah moved through the alleyways and loitered with other men by the fire-keepers’ kilns, listening to gossip and the choir of windchimes. Messengers infested the village like moths, fluttering here and there. Speakers from every city, dressed in sumptuous robes and cloaks, appeared every day and vanished again. The water tasted strange from influence, the air smelled of power.

  While Otah had been lifting bales of cotton all day and pulling ticks out of his arms in the evenings, Maati had lived in these spaces. Otah went to his rooms each night, sick with waiting, and wondering who he would have been, had he taken the old Dai-kvo’s offer. And then, he would remember the school—the cruelty, the malice, the cold-hearted lessons and beatings and the laughter of the strong at the weak—and he wondered instead how Maati had brought himself to accept.

  In the afternoon of his fifth day, a man in the white robes of a high servant found him on the wide wooden deck of a teahouse.

  “You are the courier for Maati Vaupathai?” the servant asked, taking a pose both respectful and querying. Otah responded with an affirming pose. “The most high wishes to speak with you. Please come with me.”

  The library was worked in marble; tall shelves filled with scrolls and bound volumes lined the walls, and sunlight shone through banks of clerestory windows with glass clear as air. Tahi-kvo—the Dai-kvo—sat at long table of carved blackwood. An iron brazier warmed the room, smelling of white smoke and hot metal and incense. He looked up as the servant took a pose of completion and readiness so abjectly humble as to approach the ludicrous. Otah took no pose.

  “Go,” the Dai-kvo said, and the white-robed servant left, pulling the wide doors closed behind him. Otah stood as Tahi-kvo considered him from under frowning brows then pushed a sewn letter across the table. Otah stepped forward and took it, tucking it into his sleeve. They stood for a moment in silence.

  “You were stupid to come,” Tahi-kvo said, his tone matter-of-fact. “If your brothers find you’re alive they’ll stop eyeing each other and work in concert to kill you.”

  “I suppose they might. Will you tell them?”

  “No.” Tahi-kvo rose and stalked to a bookshelf, speaking over his shoulder as he went. “My master died, you know. The season after you left.”

  “I’m sorry,” Otah said.

  “Why did you come? Why you?”

  “Maati is a friend. And there was no one else who could be trusted.” The other reasons weren’t ones he would share with Tahi-kvo. They were his own.

  Tahi-kvo ran his fingers across the spines of the books. Even turned almost away, Otah could see the bitterness in his smile.

  “And he trusts you? He trusts Otah Machi? Well, he’s young. Perhaps he doesn’t know you so well as I do. Do you want to know what’s in this letter I’m sending with you?”

  “If he cares to tell me,” Otah said.

  The volume Tahi-kvo pulled down was ancient—bound in wood with clasps of metal and thick as a hand spread wide. He hefted it back and laid it on the table before he answered.

  “It says he mustn’t let Heshai lose control of his andat. It says there isn’t a replacement for it, and that there isn’t the prospect of one. If Seedless escapes, I have nothing to send, and Saraykeht becomes an oversized low town. That’s what it says.”

  Tahi-kvo’s eyebrows rose, challenging. Otah took a pose that accepted the lesson from a teacher—a pose he’d taken before, when he’d been a boy.

  “Every generation, it’s become more difficult,” Tahi-kvo said, angry, it seemed, at speaking the words. “There are fewer men who take up the mantle. The andat that escape are more and more difficult to recapture. Even the fourth-water ones like Seedless and Unstung. The time will come—not for me, I think, but for my successor or his—when the andat may fail us entirely. The Khaiem will be overrun by Galts and Westerman. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “Yes,” Otah said. “But not why.”

  “Because you had promise,” Tahi-kvo said bitterly. “And because I don’t like you. But I have to ask this. Otah Machi, have you come here with this letter because you’ve regretted your refusal? Was it an excuse to speak to me because you’re seeking the robes of a poet?”

  Otah didn’t laugh, though the questions seemed absurd. Absurd and—as they mixed in his mind with the sights and scents of the village—more than half sad. And beneath all that, perhaps he had. Perhaps he had needed to come here and see the path he had
chosen to know as a man whether he still believed in the choices he had made as a boy.

  “No,” he said.

  Tahi-kvo nodded, undid the clasps on the great book and opened it. It was in no script Otah had ever seen. The poet looked up at him, his gaze direct and unpleasant.

  “I thought not,” he said. “Go then. And don’t come back unless you decide you’re man enough to take on the work. I don’t have time to coddle children.”

  Otah took a pose of leave-taking, then hesitated.

  “I’m sorry, Tahi-kvo,” he said. “That your master died. That you had to live this way. All of it. I’m sorry the world’s the way it is.”

  “Blame the sun for setting,” the Dai-kvo said, not looking at him, not looking up.

  Otah turned and walked out. The magnificence of the palaces was amazing, rich even past the Khai Saraykeht. The wide avenues outside it were crowded in the late afternoon with men going about business of the highest importance, dressed in silks and woven linen and leather supple as skin. Otah took in the majesty of it and understood for the first time since he’d come the hollowness that lay beneath it. It was the same, he thought, as the emptiness in Heshai-kvo’s eyes. The one was truly a child of the other.

  He was surprised, as he walked down to the edge of the village, to find himself moved to sorrow. The few tears that escaped him might have been shed for Maati or Heshai, Tahi-kvo or the boys of his cohort scattered now into the world, the vanity of power or himself. The question that had carried him here—whether he was truly Otah Machi or Itani Noyga; son of the Khaiem or seafront laborer—was unresolved, but it was also answered.

  Either one, but never this.

  “WHEN?” MAJ DEMANDED, HER ARMS CROSSED. HER CHEEKS WERE RED AND flushed, her breath smelled of wine. “I’ve been weeks living with whores and you, their pimp. You told me that the men who killed my child would be brought to justice. Now tell me when.”

  The island girl moved quickly, scooping up a vase from Amat’s desk and throwing it against the far wall. The pottery shattered, flowers falling broken to the floor. The wet mark on the wall dripped and streaked. The guard was in the room almost before Amat could move, a knife the length of his forearm at the ready. Amat rose and pushed him back out despite his protests, closing the door behind him. Her hip ached badly. It had been getting worse these last weeks, and it added to everything else that made her irritable. Still, she held herself tall as she turned back to her sometime ally, sometime charge. The girl was breathing fast now, her chin jutting out, her arms pulled back. She looked like a little boy, daring someone to strike him. Amat smiled sweetly, took two slow strides, and slapped her smartly across the mouth.

  “I am working from before the sun comes up to half through the night for you,” Amat said. “I am keeping this filthy house so that I have the money we need to prosecute your case. I have ruined my life for you. And I haven’t asked thanks, have I? Only cooperation.”

  There were tears brimming in Maj’s pale eyes, streaking down her ruddy cheek. The anger that filled Amat’s chest like a fire lessened. Moving more slowly, she walked to the mess against the far wall and, slowly, painfully, knelt.

  “What I’m doing isn’t simple,” Amat said, not looking as she gathered the shards and broken flowers. “Wilsin-cha didn’t keep records that would tie him directly to the trade, and the ones that do exist are plausible whether he knew of the treachery or not. I have to show that he did. Otherwise, you may as well go home.”

  The floor creaked with Maj’s steps, but Amat didn’t look up. Amat made a sack from the hem of her robe, dropped in the shattered vase and laid in the soft petals afterwards. The flowers, though destroyed, smelled lovely. She found herself reluctant to crush them. Maj crouched down beside her and helped clean.

  “We’ve made progress,” Amat said, her voice softer now. She could hear the exhaustion in her own words. “I have records of all the transactions. The pearls that paid the Khai came on a Galtic ship, but I have to find which one.”

  “That will be enough?”

  “That will be a start,” Amat said. “But there will be more. Torish-cha has had men on the seafront, offering payment for information. Nothing’s come from it yet, but it will. These things take time.”

  Maj leaned close, placing a handful of debris into Amat’s makeshift bag. She meant well, Amat knew, but she buried the flowers all the same. Amat met her gaze. Maj tried to smile.

  “You’re drunk,” Amat said gently. “You should go and sleep. Things will look better in the morning.”

  “And worse again when night comes,” Maj said and shook her head, then lurched forward and kissed Amat’s mouth. As she left—awkward phrases in civilized languages passing between her and the guard at the door—Amat dropped the ruined vase into the small crate she kept beside her desk. Her flesh felt heavy, but there were books to be gone over, orders to place for the house and audits to be made.

  She was doing the work, she knew, of three women. Had she seen forty fewer summers, it might have been possible. Instead, each day seemed to bring collapse nearer. She woke in the morning to a list of things that had to be completed—for the comfort house and for the case she was building inch by inch against House Wilsin—and fell asleep every night with three or four items still undone and the creeping sense that she was forgetting something important.

  And the house, while it provided her the income she needed to pay for investigations and bribes and rewards, was just the pit of vipers that she’d been warned it would be. Mitat was her savior there—she knew the politics of the staff and had somehow won the trust of Torish Wite. Still, it seemed as if every decision had to be brought to Amat eventually. Whose indenture to end, whose to hold. What discipline to mete out against the women whose bodies were the produce she sold, what against the men who staffed the gambling tables and provided the wine and drugs. How to balance rule from respect and rule from fear. And Mitat, after all, had stolen from the house before ….

  The night candle—visibly longer now and made of harder wax than the ones that measured the short nights of summer—was near its halfway mark when Amat put down her pen. Three times she added a column of numbers, and three times had found different sums. She shrugged out of her robes and pulled the netting closed around the bed, asleep instantly, but troubled by dreams in which she recalled something critical a hand’s breadth too late.

  She woke to a polite scratch at her door. When she called out her permission, Mitat entered bearing a tray. Two thick slices of black bread and a bowl of bitter tea. Amat sat up, pulled the netting aside, and took a pose of gratitude as the red-haired woman put the tray on the bed beside her.

  “You’re looking nicely put together this morning,” Amat said.

  It was true. Mitat wore a formal robe of pale yellow that went nicely with her eyes. She looked well-rested, which Amat supposed also helped.

  “We have the payment to make to the watch,” Mitat said. “I was hoping you might let me join you.”

  Amat closed her eyes. The watch monies. Of course. It would have been very poor form to forget that, but she nearly had. The darkness behind her eyelids was comfortable, and she stayed there for a moment, wishing that she might crawl back to sleep.

  “Grandmother?”

  “Of course,” Amat said, opening her eyes again and reaching for the bowl of tea. “I could do with the company. But you’ll understand if I handle the money.”

  Mitat grinned.

  “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

  “Likely not. Get me a good robe, will you. There’s a blue with gray trim, I think, that should do for the occasion.”

  The streets of the soft quarter were quiet. Amat, her sleeve weighted by the boxed lengths of silver, leaned on her cane. The night’s rain had washed the air, and sunlight, pale as fresh butter, shone on the pavements and made the banners of the great comfort houses shimmer. The baker’s kilns filled the air with the scent of bread and smoke. Mitat walked b
eside her, acting as if the slow pace were the one she’d have chosen if she had been alone, avoiding the puddles of standing water where the street dipped, or where alleyways still disgorged a brown trickle of foul runoff. In the height of summer, the mixture of heat and damp would have been unbearable. Autumn’s forgiving cool made the morning nearly pleasant.

  Mitat filled in Amat Kyaan on the news of the house. Chiyan thought she might be pregnant. Torish-cha’s men resented that they were expected to pay for the use of the girls—other houses in the quarter included such services as part of the compensation. Two weavers were cheating at tiles, but no one had caught them at it as yet.

  “When we do, bring them to me,” Amat said. “If they aren’t willing to negotiate compensation with me, we’ll call the watch, but I’d rather have it stay private.”

  “Yes, grandmother.”

  “And send for Urrat from the street of beads. She’ll know if Chiyan’s carrying by looking at her, and she has some teas that’ll cure it if she is.”

  Mitat took a pose of agreement, but something in her expression—a softness, an amusement—made Amat respond with a query.

  “Ovi Niit would have taken her out back and kicked her until she bled,” Mitat said. “He would have said it was cheaper. I don’t think you know how much you’re respected, grandmother. The men, except Torish-cha and his, would still as soon see you hanged as not. But the girls all thank the gods that you came back.”

  “I haven’t made the place any better.”

  “Yes,” Mitat said, her voice accepting no denial. “You have. You don’t see how the—”

  The man lurched from the mouth of the alley and into Amat before she had time to respond. Her cane slipped as the drunkard staggered against her, and she stumbled. Pain shrieked from her knee to her hip, but her first impulse was to clutch the payment in her sleeve. The man, however, wasn’t a thief. The silver for the watch was still where it had been and the drunk was in a pose of profound apology.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Mitat demanded. Her chin was jutting out; her eyes burned. “It’s hardly mid-day. What kind of man is already drunk?”