In the buttery light of the common room, the conversation was still going on, but to his surprise, the focus had shifted. Maj, an observer before like himself, was seated across from Amat Kyaan, stabbing at the tabletop with a finger and letting loose a long string of syllables with no clear break between them. Her face was flushed, and he could hear the anger in her voice without knowing the words. Anger and wine. Amat looked up at he descended the stairs. She looked older than usual.
Maj followed the old woman’s gaze, glanced up at the closed door behind him, and said something else. Amat replied in the same language, her voice calm but not placating. Maj stood, rattling the bench, and strode to Otah.
‘Your woman sleeps?’ Maj said.
‘She’s asleep. Yes.’
‘I have questions. Wake her,’ Maj said, taking a pose that made the words a command. Her breath was a drunk’s. Over her shoulder, he saw Amat shake her head no. Otah took a pose of apology. The refusal seemed to break something in Maj, and tears brimmed in her eyes, streaked her cheeks.
‘Weeks,’ she said, her tone pleading. ‘I am waiting for weeks, and for nothing. There is no justice here. You people have no justice.’
Mitat approached them and put her hand on the island girl’s arm. Maj pulled away and went to a different door, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. As the door closed behind her, Otah took a pose of query.
‘She didn’t understand that the Khai Saraykeht might make his own investigation,’ Mitat said. ‘She thought he’d act immediately. When she heard that there’d be another delay . . .’
‘It isn’t entirely her fault,’ Amat said. ‘This can’t have been easy for her, any of it.’ The master of guard - a huge bear of a man - coughed. The way he and Amat considered each other was enough to tell Otah this wasn’t the first time the girl had been the subject of conversation. Amat continued, ‘It will all be finished soon enough. Or our part, at least. As long as she’s here to make the case before the Khai, we’ll have started the thing. If she goes home after that, she goes home.’
‘And if she leaves before that?’ Mitat asked, sitting on the table.
‘She won’t,’ Amat said. ‘She’s not well, and she won’t leave before someone answers for her child. And Liat. She’s resting?’
‘Yes, Amat-cha,’ Otah said, taking a pose of thanks. ‘She’s asleep.’
‘Wilsin-cha will know by now that she’s not going back to his house,’ Amat said. ‘She’ll need to stay inside until this is over.’
‘Another one? And how long’s that going to be, grandmother?’ Torish Wite asked.
Amat rested her head in her hands. She seemed smaller than she had been, diminished by fatigue and years, but not broken. Weary to her bones perhaps, but unbroken. In that moment, Otah found that he admired Liat’s old teacher very much.
‘I’ll send a runner in the morning,’ she said. ‘This time of year, it might take a week before we get an audience.’
‘But we aren’t ready!’ Mitat said. ‘We don’t even know where the first girl was kept or where she’s gone. We won’t have time to find her!’
‘We have all the pieces,’ Amat said. ‘And what we don’t have, the utkhaiem will find when the Khai looks into it. It isn’t all I’d hoped, but it will do. It will have to.’
18
Marchat Wilsin had seen wildfires spread more slowly than the news. Amat Kyaan’s petition had reached the servants of the Master of Tides - an idiot title for an overfed secretary, he thought - just before dawn. By the time the sun had risen the width of two hands together, a messenger from the compound had come to the bathhouse with a message from Epani. The panicky twig of a man had scratched out the basic information from the petition, his letters so hasty they were hardly legible. Not that it mattered. The word of Amat Kyaan and her petition were enough. It was happening.
Epani’s letter floated now on the surface of the water. It was a warm bath, now that the half-hearted winter was upon them, and steam rose in wisps from the drowned paper. The ink had washed away as he’d watched it, threads of darkness like shadows fading into the clear water. It was over. There was nothing he could do now that would put the world back in its right shape, and in a strange way it was a relief. Night after night since Seedless, that miserable Khaiate god-ghost, had come to his apartments, Marchat had lain awake. He’d had a damn fine mind, once. But in the dark hours, he’d found nothing, no plan of action, no finessed stroke that would avoid the thing that had now come. And since there was no halting it, he could at least stop looking. He closed his eyes and let his head sink for a moment under the tiny lapping waves. Yes, it was a relief that at least now he wouldn’t have to try.
He lay underwater until his lungs began to burn, and then even a little longer, not wanting to leave this little moment of peace behind. But time and breath being what they were, he rose and tramped up out of the bath. The water streamed off his body leaving gooseflesh behind it, and he dried himself quickly as he walked into the changing room. The heat from a wide, black brazier combined with the vapors from the baths to make the air thick. Any chill at all would freeze these people. The summer cities couldn’t imagine cold, and after so many years here, perhaps he couldn’t either. As he pulled on his thick woolen robes, it struck Marchat that he didn’t remember the last time he’d seen snow. Whenever it had been, he hadn’t known it was the last time he ever would, or he’d have paid it more attention.
A pair of men came in together, round-faced, black-haired, speaking as much in gesture as with words. The same as all the others in Saraykeht. He was the one - pale skin, kinky hair, ridiculously full beard - who stood out. He’d lived here since he’d been a young man, and he’d never really become of the place. He’d always been waiting for the day when he’d be called back to Galt. It was a bitter thought. When the pair noticed him, they took poses of greeting which he returned without thinking. His hands simply knew what to do.
He walked back to the compound slowly. Not because of the dread, though the gods knew he wasn’t looking forward, but instead because his failure seemed to have washed his eyes. The sounds and scents of the city were fresh, unfamiliar. When he had been traveling as a young man, it had been like this coming home. The streets his family lived among had carried the same weight of familiarity and strangeness that Saraykeht now bore. At the time, he’d thought it was only that he had been away, but now he thought it was more that the travels he’d made back then had changed him, as the letter from Epani had changed him again just now. The city was the same, but he was a new man seeing it: The ancient stonework; the vines that rose on the walls and were pulled back every year only to crawl up again; the mixture of languages from all across the world that came to the seafront; the songs of the beggars and cries of birdcall.
Too soon, he was back at his own compound where the Galtic Tree stood as it always had in the main courtyard, the fountain splashing behind it. He wondered who would take the place once he’d gone. Some other poor bastard whom the family wanted rid of. Some boy desperate to prove his worth in the wealthiest, most isolated position in the house. If they didn’t tear the place down stone by stone and burn the rubble. That was another distinct possibility.
Epani waited in his private chambers, wringing his hands in distress. Marchat couldn’t bring himself to feel anything more than a mild annoyance at the man.
‘Wilsin-cha, I’ve just heard. The audience was granted. Six days. It’s going to come in six days!’
Marchat put up his hand, palm out, and the cicada stopped whining.
‘Send a runner to the palaces. One of the higher clerks. Or go yourself. Tell the Khai’s people that we expect Amat Kyaan’s audience to touch upon the private business of the house, and we want them to postpone her audience until we can be present with our response.’
‘Yes, Wilsin-cha.’
‘And bring me paper and a fresh inkblock,’ Marchat said. ‘I have some letters to write.’
There must have been something in
his tone - a certain gravity, perhaps - that reassured the overseer, because Epani dropped into a pose of acknowledgment and scurried out with a sense of relief that was almost palpable. Marchat followed him far enough to find a servant who could fetch him some mulled wine, then returned to his desk and prepared himself. The tiny flask in the thin drawer at his knee was made of silver, the stopper sealed with green wax. When he shook it, it clinked like some little piece of metal was hidden in it, and not a liquid at all. It was a distillation of the same drugs comfort houses in the soft quarter used to make exotic wines. But it was, of course, much too potent. This thimbleful in his palm was enough to make a man sleep forever. He closed his fingers over it.
This wasn’t how he’d wanted it. But it would do.
He put the flask back in its place as Epani-cha arrived, paper and inkblock and fresh pens in his hands. Marchat thanked him and sent him away, then turned to the blank page.
I am Marchat Wilsin of House Wilsin of Galt, he began, then scraped his pen tip over the ink. I write this to confess my crimes and to explain them. I and I alone . . .
He paused. I and I alone. It was what he could do, of course. He could eat the sin and save those less innocent than himself from punishment. He might save Galt from the wrath of the Khaiem. For the first time since he’d read Epani’s scratched, fear-filled words, Marchat felt a pang of sorrow. It was a bad time, this, to be alone.
The servant arrived with his wine, and Marchat drank it slowly, looking at the few words he’d written. He’d invented the whole tale, of course. How he’d hoped to shift the balance of trade away from Saraykeht and so end his exile. How he had fed himself on foolish hopes and dreams and let his own evil nature carry him away. Then he’d apologize to the Khai for his sins, confess his cowardice, and commend his fortune to the island girl Maj who he had wronged and to Amat Kyaan whose loyalty to him had led her to suspect those in Galt who could command him, since she would not believe the sickness of the plan to be his own.
The last part was, he thought, a nice touch. Recasting Amat as a woman so loyal to him, so in love with him, that she didn’t see the truth clearly. He felt sure she’d appreciate the irony.
I and I alone.
He took the barely started confession, blew on it to cure the ink, and set it aside for a time. There was no hurry. Any time in the next six days would suit as well, perhaps more if the Khai let him stall Amat and cheat the world out of a few more sunsets. And there were other letters to write. Something to the family back in Galt, for instance. An apology to the High Council for his evil plans that the utkhaiem might intercept. Or something more personal. Something, perhaps, real.
He drew his pen across the ink, and set the metal nib to a fresh sheet.Amat, my dear old friend. You see what I’m like? Even now, at this last stop on the trail, I’m too much the coward to use the right words. Amat, my love. Amat, who I never did tell my heart to for fear she’d laugh or, worse, be polite. Who ever would have thought we’d come to this?
Otah woke late in the afternoon from a heavy, troubled sleep. The room was empty - the inhabitants of the other bunks having gone their ways. The brazier was cool, but the sun glowed against a window covering of thin-stretched leather. He gathered his things from the narrow space between himself and the wall where someone would have had to reach over his sleeping body to steal them. Even so he checked. What money he’d had before, he had now. He dressed slowly, waiting for half-remembered dreams to dissolve and fade. There had been something about a flood, and feral dogs drowning in it.
The streets of the seafront were busy, even in winter. Ships arrived and departed by the spare handful, heading mostly south for other warm ports. The journey to Yalakeht would have been profoundly unpleasant, even now. At one of the tall, thin tables by the wharves, he bought a small sack of baked apple slices covered in butter and black sugar, tossing it from one hand to the other as the heat slapped his palms. He thought of Orai in Machi and the deep-biting cold of the far north. It would, he thought, make apples taste even better.
The scandal in every teahouse, around every firekeeper’s kiln, on the corners and in the streets, was the petition of Amat Kyaan to speak before the Khai. The petition to speak against House Wilsin. Otah listened and smiled his charming smile without ever once meaning it. She was going to disclose how the house had been evading taxes, one version said. Another had it that the sad trade that had gone wrong was more than just the work of the andat - a rival house had arranged it to discredit Wilsin, and Amat was now continuing the vendetta still in the pay of some unknown villain. Another that Amat would show that the island girl’s child had truly been Marchat Wilsin’s. Or the Khai Saraykeht’s. Or the get of some other Khai, killed so that the Khaiem wouldn’t have to suffer the possibility of a half-Nippu poet.
It was no more or less than any of the other thousand scandals and occasions of gossip that stirred the slow blood of the city. Even when he came across people he knew, faces he recognized, Otah kept his own counsel. It was coming soon enough, he thought.
The sun was falling in the west, vanishing into the low hills and cane fields, when Otah took himself up the wide streets toward the palaces of the Khai and through those high gardens to the poet’s house. Set off from the grandeur of the halls of the Khai and the utkhaiem, the poet’s house seemed small and close and curiously genuine in the failing light. Otah left the bare trees behind and walked over the wooden bridge, koi popping sluggishly at the water as he passed. Nothing ever froze here.
Before he’d reached the doors, Maati opened them. The waft of air that came with him was warm and scented with smoke and mulled wine. Maati took a pose of greeting appropriate for a student to an honored teacher, and Otah laughed and pushed his hands aside. It was only when Maati didn’t laugh in return that he saw the pose had been sincere. He took one of apology, but Maati only shook his head and gestured him inside.
The rooms were more cluttered than usual - books, papers, a pair of old boots, half the morning’s breakfast still uneaten. A small fire burned, and Maati sat down in one of the two chairs that faced it. Otah took the other.
‘You stayed with her last night?’ Maati asked.
‘Most of it,’ Otah said, leaning forward. ‘I rented a bunk by the seafront. I didn’t want to stay in the comfort house. You heard that Amat Kyaan . . .’
‘Yes. I think they brought word to Heshai-kvo before they told the Khai.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘He’s gone off to the soft quarter. I doubt he’ll come back soon.’
‘He’s going to Amat Kyaan?’
‘I doubt it. He seemed less like someone solving a problem than participating in it.’
‘Does he know? I mean, did you tell him what she was going to say?’
Maati made a sound half laugh, half groan.
‘Yes. He didn’t believe it. Or he did, but he wouldn’t admit to it. He said that justice wasn’t worth the price.’
‘I can’t think that’s true,’ Otah said. Then, ‘But maybe there’s no justice to be had.’
There was a long pause. There was a deep cup of wine, Otah saw, near the fire. A deep cup, but very little wine in it.
‘And how did you take the news?’ he asked.
Maati shrugged. He looked tired, unwell. His skin had a gray cast to it, and the bags under his eyes might have been from too much sleep or too little. Now that he thought to look for it, Maati’s head was shifting slightly, back and forth with the beating of his heart. He was drunk.
‘What’s the matter, Maati?’ he asked.
‘You should stay here,’ the boy said. ‘You shouldn’t sleep at the seafront or the comfort house. You’re welcome here.’
‘Thank you, but I think people would find it a little odd that—’
‘People,’ Maati said angrily, then became quiet. Otah stood, found the pot of wine warming over a small brazier, and pushed away the papers that lay too close to the glowing coals before he poured himself a bowl. Maati
was looking up at him, sheepish, when he returned to the chair.
‘I should have gotten that.’
‘It hardly matters. I’ve got it now. Are you well, Maati? You seem . . . bothered?’
‘I was thinking the same thing about you. Ever since you got back from the Dai-kvo, it’s seemed . . . difficult between us. Don’t you think?’
‘I suppose so,’ Otah said and sipped the wine. It was hot enough to blow across before he drank it, but it hadn’t been cooking so long that the spirit had been burned out of it. The warmth of it in his throat was comfortable. ‘It’s my fault. There are things I’ve been trying not to look at too closely. Orai said that sea travel changes you. Changes who you are.’
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