A Shadow In Summer (Long Price Quartet #1)

A Shadow In Summer (Long Price Quartet #1) Page 15

The raft was big enough to carry eight people. It was pulled against the current by a team of four oxen, moving slowly but implacably along paths worn in the shore by generations of such passage. Otah slept in the back, wrapped in his cloak and in the rough wool blankets the boatman and his daughter provided. In the mornings, the daughter - a child of no more then nine summers - lit a brazier and cooked sweet rice with almond milk and cinnamon. At night, after they tied up, her father made a meal - most often a chicken and barley soup.

In the days spent in this routine, Otah had little to do besides watch the slow progress of trees moving past them, listen to the voices of the water and the oxen, and try to win over the daughter by telling jokes and singing with her or the boatman by asking him about life on the river and listening to his answers. By the time they reached the end of the last full day's journey, both boatman and child were comfortable with him. The boatman shared a bowl of plum wine with him after the other passengers had gone to sleep. They never mentioned the girl's mother, and Otah never asked.

The river journey ended at a low town larger than any Otah had seen since Yalakeht. It had wide, paved streets and houses as high as three stories that looked out across the river or into the branches of the pine forest that surrounded it. The wealth of the place was clear in its food, its buildings, the faces of its people. It was as if some nameless quarter of the cities of the Khaiem had been struck off and moved here, into the wilderness.

That the road to the Dai-kvo's village was well kept and broad didn't surprise him, but the discovery that - for a price higher than he wished to pay - he could hire a litter that would carry him the full day's steep, uphill journey and set him down at the door of the Dai-kvo's palaces did. He passed men in fine robes of wool and fur, envoys from the courts of the Khaiem or trading houses or other places, further away. Food stands at the roadside offered sumptuous fare at high prices for the great men who passed by or wheat gruel and chicken for the lower orders like himself.

Despite the wealth and luxury of the road, the first sight of the Dai-kvo's village took Otah's breath away. Carved into the stone of the mountain, the village was something half belonging to the world of men, half to the ocean and the sun and the great forces of the world. He stopped in the road and looked up at the glittering windows and streets, stairways and garrets and towers. A thin golden ribbon of a waterfall lay just within the structures, and warm light of the coming sunset made the stone around it glow like bronze. Chimes light as birdsong and deep as bells rang when the breeze stirred them. If the view had been designed to humble those who came to it, the designer could rest well. Maati, he realized, had lived in this place, studied in it. And he, Otah, had refused it. He wondered what it would have been like, coming down this road as a boy coming to his reward; what it would have been like to see this grandeur set out before him as if it were his right.

The path to the grand offices was easily found, and well peopled. Firekeepers - not members of the utkhaiem, but servants only of the Dai-kvo - kept kilns at the crossroads and teahouses and offered the promise of warmth and comfort in the falling night. Otah didn't pause at them.

He reached the grand offices: a high, arched hall open to the west so that the lowering sun set the white stone walls ablaze. Men - only men, Otah noted - paced through the hall on one errand or another, passing from one corridor to another, through doors of worked rosewood and oak. Otah had to stop a servant who was lighting lanterns to find the way to the Dai-kvo's overseer.

He was an old man with a kind face in the brown robes of a poet. When Otah approached his table, the overseer took a pose that was both welcome and query with a flowing grace that he had seen only in the Khai Saraykeht or the andat. Otah replied with a pose of greeting, and for an instant, he was a boy again in the cold, empty hallways of the school.

"I've come with a letter for the Dai-kvo," he said, pushing the memory aside. "From Maati Vaupathi in Saraykeht."

"Ah?" the overseer said, "Excellent. I will see that he gets it immediately."

The beautiful, old hand reached to him, open to accept the packet still in Otah's sleeve. Otah considered the withered fingers like carved wood, a sudden alarm growing in him.

"I had hoped to see the Dai-kvo myself," he said, and the overseer's expression changed to one of sympathy.

"The Dai-kvo is very busy, my friend. He hardly has time to speak to me, and I'm set to schedule his days. Give the letter to me, and I will see that he knows of it."

Otah pulled the letter out and handed it over, a profound disappointment blooming in his breast. It was obvious, of course, that the Dai-kvo wouldn't meet with simple couriers, however sensitive the letters they bore. He shouldn't have expected him to. Otah took a pose of gratitude.

"Will you be staying to carry a reply?"

"Yes," Otah said. "If there is one."

"I will send word tomorrow whether the most high intends to respond. Where will I find you?"

Otah took a pose of apology and explained that he had not taken rooms and didn't know the village. The overseer gave him a recommendation, directions, and the patience Otah imagined a grandfather might have for a well-loved but rather slow grandchild. It was twilight - the distant skyline glorious with the gold and purple of the just-set sun - when Otah returned to the street, his errand complete.

On the way back down, there was time to see the village more closely, though the light around him was fading. It struck him for the first time that he had seen no women since he had left the road. The firekeeper's kilns, the food carts and stalls, the inn to which he'd been directed - all were overseen by men. None of the people passing him in the steep, dim street had a woman's face.

And as he looked more closely, he found other signs, subtler ones, that the life of the Dai-kvo's village was unlike that of the ones he had known. The streets had none of the grime and dust of Saraykeht - no small plants or grasses pushed at the joints of the paving stones, no moss stained the corners of the walls. Even more than its singularity of gender, the unnatural perfection of the place made it seem foreign and unsettling and sterile.

He ate his dinner - venison and wine and fresh black bread - sitting alone at a low table with his back to the fire. A dark mood had descended on him. Visions of Liat and some small house, some simple work, bread cooked in his own kiln, meat roasted in his own kitchens seemed both ludicrous and powerful. He had done what he said he'd set out for. The letter was in the Dai-kvo's hands, or would be shortly.

But he had come for his own reasons too. He was Otah, the sixth son of the Khai Machi, who had walked away from the greatest power in all the nations. He had been offered the chance to control the andat and refused. For the first time, here in this false village, he imagined what that must be to his brothers, his teachers, the boys who had taken the offer gladly when it had been given. To men like Maati.

And so who was this Itani Noyga, this simple laborer with simple dreams? He had come halfway across the lands of the Khaiem, he realized, to answer that question, and instead he had handed an old man a packet of papers. He remembered, setting out from Saraykeht, that it had seemed an important adventure, not only to Heshai and Seedless, the Khai Machi and Saraykeht, but to himself personally. Now, he wasn't sure why he'd thought delivering a letter would mean more than delivering a letter.

He was given a small room, hardly large enough for the stretched-canvas cot and the candle on the table beside it. The blankets were warm and thick and soft. The mattress was clean and free of lice or fleas. The room smelled of cut cedar, and not rat piss or unbathed humanity. Small as it was, it was also perfect.

The candle was snuffed, and Otah more than half asleep when his door opened. A small man, bald as an egg, stepped in, a lantern held high. His round face was marked by two bushy eyebrows - black shot with white. Otah met his gaze, at first bleary, and then an instant later awake and alert. He took the pose of greeting he'd learned as a boy, he smiled sweetly and without sincerity.

"I am honored by your presence, most high Dai-kvo."

Tahi-kvo scowled and moved closer. He held the lantern close to Otah's face until the brightness of the flame made his old teacher shadowy. Otah didn't look away.

"It is you."

"Yes."

"Show me your hands," his old teacher said. Otah complied, and the lantern shifted, Tahi-kvo leaning close, examining the callused palms. He bent so close, Otah could feel the breath on his fingertips. The old man's eyes were going.

"It's true then," Tahi-kvo said. "You're a laborer."

Otah closed his hands. The words were no surprise, but the sting of them was. He would have thought he was beyond caring what opinion Tahi-kvo held. He smiled his charming smile like a mask and kept his voice mild and amused.

"I've picked my own path," he said.

"It was a poor choice."

"It was mine to make."

The old man - Tahi-kvo, the Dai-kvo, the most powerful man in the world - stood, shaking his head in disgust. His robes whispered as he moved - silk upon silk. He tilted his head like a malefic bird.

"I have consultations to make concerning the message you brought. It may take some days before I draft my reply."

Otah waited for the stab of words or the remembered whir of the lacquer rod, but Tahi only stood waiting. At length Otah took a pose of acceptance.

"I will wait for it," he said.

For a moment, something glittered in Tahi-kvo's eyes that might have been sorrow or impatience, and then without farewell, he was gone, the door closed behind him, and Otah lay back in his bed. The darkness was silent, except for the slowly retreating footsteps. They were long vanished before Otah's heart and breath slowed, before the heat in his blood cooled.

THE DAYS that followed were among the most difficult of Amat Kyaan's life. The comfort house was in disarray, and her coup only added to the chaos. Each individual person - whores, guards, the men at the tables, the men who sold wine, all of them - were testing her. Three times, fights had broken out. It seemed once a day that she was called on to stop some small liberty, and always with the plaintive explanation that Ovi Niit had allowed it. To hear it told now, he had been the most selfless and open-handed of men. Death had improved him. It was to be expected.

If that had been all, it might not have kept her awake in the nights. But also there was the transfer of Maj into the house. No one else spoke Nippu, and Maj hadn't picked up enough of the Khaiate tongue to make herself understood easily. Since she'd come, Amat had been interrupted for her needs, whatever they were, whenever they came.

Torish Wite, thankfully, had proved capable in more ways than she'd hoped. When she asked him, he had agreed to spread the word at the seafront that Amat Kyaan in the soft quarter was looking for information about shipments of pearls from Galt. Building the case against House Wilsin would be like leading a second life. The comfort house would fund it, once she had the place in order, but the time was more a burden than the money. She was not so young as she had been.

These early stages, at least, she could leave to the mercenary, though some nights, she would remember conversations she'd had with traders from the Westlands and the implications for trading with a freehold or ward that relied on paid soldiery. As long as she was in a position to offer these men girls and money, they would likely stay. If they ever became indispensable, she was doomed.

Her room, once Ovi Niit's, was spacious and wide and covered - desk, bed, and floor - with records and papers and plans. The morning sun sloped through windows whose thick, tight-fit shutters were meant to let her sleep until evening. She sipped from a bowl of tea while Mitat, her closest advisor in the things specifically of the house, paced the length of the room. The papers in her hands hissed as she shifted from one to another and back.

"It's too much," Mitat said. "I honestly never thought I'd say it, but you're giving them too much freedom. To choose which men they take? Amat-cha, with all respect, you're a whoremonger. When a man comes in with the silver, it's your place to give him a girl. Or a boy. Or three girls and a chicken, if that's what he's paid for. If the girls can refuse a client ..."

"They take back less money," Amat said, her voice reasonable and calm, though she already knew that Mitat was right. "Those who work most, get most. And with that kind of liberty and the chance to earn more, we'll attract women who want to work in a good house."

Mitat stopped walking. She didn't speak, but her guarded expression was enough. Amat closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat.

"Don't beat them without cause," Mitat said. "Don't let anyone cut them where it would scar. Give them what they're owed. That's all you can do now, grandmother. In a year - two, perhaps - you could try something like this, but to do it now would be a sign of weakness."

"Yes. I suppose it would. Thank you, Mitat-cha."

When she opened her eyes again, the woman had taken a pose of concern. Amat answered with one of reassurance.

"You seem tired, grandmother."

"It's nothing."

Mitat hesitated visibly, then handed back the papers. Before Amat could ask what was troubling her, steps came up the stairs and a polite knock interrupted them. Torish Wite stepped in, his expression guarded.

"There's someone here to see you," he said to Amat.

"Who?"

"Marchat Wilsin."

Her belly went tight, but she only took in a deep breath.

"Is anyone with him?"

"No. He stinks a little of wine, but he's unarmed and he's come alone."

"Where's Maj?" she asked.

"Asleep. We've made your old cell a sleeping chamber for her."

"Set a guard on her room. No one's to go in, and she's not to come out. I don't want him knowing that we have her here."

"You're going to see him?" Mitat asked, her voice incredulous.

"He was my employer for decades," Amat said, as if it were an answer to the question. "Torish-cha. I'll want a man outside the door. If I call out, I want him in here immediately. If I don't, I want privacy. We'll finish our conversation later, Mitat."

The pair retreated, closing the door behind them. Amat rose, taking up her cane and walking to the doors that opened onto the private deck. It had rained in the night, and the air was still thick with it. It was that, Amat told herself, that made it hard to breathe. The door opened behind her, then closed again. She didn't turn at once. Across the deck, the soft quarter flowed street upon street, alley upon alley. Banners flew and beggars sang. It was a lovely city, even this part. This was why she was doing what she'd done. For this and for the girl Maj and the babe she'd lost. She steeled herself.

Marchat Wilsin stood at the doorway in a robe of green so deep and rich it seemed shot with black. His face was grayish, his eyes bloodshot. He looked frightened and lost, like a mouse surrounded by cats. He broke her heart.

"Hello, old friend," she said. "Who'd have thought we'd end here, eh?"

"Why are you doing this, Amat?"

The pain in his voice almost cracked it. She felt the urge to go to him, comfort him. She wanted badly to touch his hand and tell him that everything would end well, in part because she knew that it wouldn't. It occurred to her distantly that if she had let him profess love for her, she might not have been able to leave House Wilsin.

"What happened to the poet. To the girl. It was an attack," she said. "You know it, and I do. You attacked Saraykeht."

He walked forward, his hands out, palms up before him.

"I didn't," he said. "Amat, you have to see that this wasn't my doing."

"Can I offer you tea?" she asked.

Bewildered, he sank onto a divan and ran his hands through his hair in wordless distress. She remembered the man she'd first met - his dark hair, his foreign manners. He'd had an easy laugh back then, and power in his gaze. She poured a bowl of tea for him. When he didn't take it from her hand, she left it on the low table at his knee and went back to her own desk.

"It didn't work, Amat. It failed. The poet's alive, the andat's still held. They see that it can't work, and so it won't happen again, if you'll only let this go."

"I can't," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because of what you did to Maj. She wanted that child. And because Saraykeht is my home. And because you betrayed me."

Marchat flushed red and took a pose so sloppy it might have meant anything.

"Betrayed you? How did I betray you? I did everything to keep you clear of this. I warned you that Oshai was waiting for you. And when you came back I was the one who argued for keeping you alive. I risked my life for yours."

"You made me part of this," Amat said, surprised to hear the anger in her own voice, to feel the warmth in her face. "You did this and you put me in a position where I have to sacrifice everything - everything - in order to redeem myself. If I had known in time, I would have stopped it. You knew that when you asked me to find you a bodyguard. You hoped I'd find a way out."

"I wasn't thinking clearly then. I am now."

"Are you? How can I do anything besides this, Marchatkya? If I keep silent, it's as much as saying I approve of the crime. And I don't."

His eyes shifted, his gaze going hard. Slowly, he lifted the bowl of tea to his lips and drank it down in one long draw. When he put the bowl down - ceramic clicking against the wooden table - he was once again the man she'd known. He had put his heart aside, she knew, and entered the negotiation that might save his life, his house. Might, if he could convince her, even save her from the path she'd chosen. She felt a half-smile touch her lips. A part of her hoped he might win.

"Granted, something wrong was done," he said. "Granted, I had some part - though I didn't have a choice in it. But put aside that I was coerced. Put aside that it was none of it my plan. Let me ask you this - what justice do you expect?"

"I don't know," she said. "That's for the Khai and his men to choose."

He took a pose that showed his impatience with her.

"You know quite well the mercy he'll show me and House Wilsin. And Galt as a whole. And it won't be for Maj. It'll be for himself."

"It will be for his city."

"And how much is a city worth, Amat? Even in the name of justice. If the Khai chooses to kill a thousand Galtic babies out of their mothers, is that a fair price for a city? If they starve because our croplands go sterile, is that a fair price? You want justice, Amat. I know that. But the end of this road is only vengeance."

A breeze thick with the smell of the sea shifted the window cloths. The doors to the private deck closed with a clack, and the room went dim.

"You're thinking with your heart," he continued. "What happened was terrible. I don't deny it. We were caught up in something huge and grotesque and evil. But be clear about the cost. One child. How many women miscarry in a single year? How many lose their children from being beaten by their men, or from falling, or from illness? I can think of six in the last five months. What happened was wrong, Amat, and I swear to you I will do what I can to make it right again. But not at the cost of making things worse."

He leaned forward. Her retort was finding its shape in her mind, but not quickly.

"They see now that it can't work," he said. "They weren't able to be rid of Seedless when he was conspiring with them. They can see now that they'd never be able to coordinate freeing all of them at once. The experiment failed. Sure they may try something again someday, but not anytime soon. They'll turn their efforts back to the Westlands, or maybe to the south, or the islands for the time being. The war won't come here. Not unless they find some way to do it safely."

Amat's blood went cold, and she looked at her hands to avoid letting the shock show in her eyes. Trade, she had thought. With Seedless gone, trade would shift. Her city would suffer, and other cotton markets would flourish. She'd been thinking too small. Eight generations without war. Eight generations of the wealth that the andat commanded, the protection they gave. This was not trade. This was the first step toward invasion, and he thought she'd known it.

She forced herself to smile, to look up. Without the andat, the cities would fall. The wealth of the Khaiem would go to pay for what mercenaries they could hire. But faced with the soldiery of Galt, Amat doubted many companies would choose to fight for a clearly losing side, or would keep their contracts with the Khaiem if they made them.

Everything she knew would end.

"Come back to the house," Marchat said. "It's almost time for the end of season negotiations, and I need you there. I need you back."

She called out sharply, and the guard was in the room. Marchat - her old friend, her employer, the hard-headed, funny, thoughtful man whose house had saved her from the streets, the man who loved her and had never had the courage to say it - looked lost. Amat took a pose of farewell appropriate to the beginning of a long absence. She was fairly sure he wouldn't catch the nuance of permanence in it, but perhaps it was more for herself than him anyway.

"The past was a beautiful place, Marchat-kya," she said. "I miss it already."

And then, to the guard.

"See him out."

HESHAI'S IMPROVEMENT, when it came, was sudden as a change in the weather. Liat was in the main room of the poet's house peeling an orange. Maati had gone up to his room for something, telling her to wait there. The steps that descended behind her were slow and heavy, as if Maati were bearing a large and awkward burden. She turned, and instead found Heshai washed and shaved and wrapped in a formal robe.

Liat started to her feet and took a pose of greeting appropriate to one of a much higher station. On the seat where she'd been, the long golden length of peel still clung to the white flesh of the orange. The poet sketched a brief pose of welcome and moved over to her, his gaze on the fruit. His smile, when it came, was unsure, a configuration unfamiliar to the wide lips. Liat wondered whether she had ever seen the man laugh.

"I don't suppose there's enough of that to share with an old man?" he said. He seemed almost shy.

"Of course," she said, picking up the orange and splitting off a section. He accepted it from her with a pose of thanks and popped it in his mouth. His skin was pale as the belly of a fish, and there were dark sacks under his eyes. He had grown thinner in the weeks since the sad trade had gone wrong. Still, when he grinned at her, his smile finding its confidence, she found herself smiling back. For a moment, she could see clearly what he had looked like as a child.

"You seem much better," she said.

"Tired of moping around, I suppose," he said. "I thought I might go out. I haven't been to a good teahouse in some time."

The lighter footsteps she knew came down the stairs behind them and stopped. Maati had forgotten the book in his hand. His mouth was open.

"Come down," Heshai said. "It isn't a private conversation. We were only sharing a bite. There's enough for you too, I imagine."

"Heshai-kvo ..."

"I was just telling Liat-kya here that I've decided to stretch my legs this evening. I've been too much within myself. And tomorrow, there are things we should do. It's past time we began your education in earnest, eh?"

Maati took a pose of agreement made clumsy by the volume in his hand, but Liat could see that he was hardly aware of it. She caught his gaze, encouraging him silently to be pleased, or if he wasn't, to act as if he were.

"I will be ready, Heshai-kvo," he said. If there was an edge to his voice, Heshai seemed not to hear it. He only took a pose of farewell to Liat more formal than her rank called for, and a subtler pose of congratulation to Maati that she was fairly certain she had not been meant to see, and then he was off. They sat on the steps up to the house and watched him striding over the bridge and along the path until it turned. Maati, beside her, was trembling with rage.

"I thought this was what we wanted," Liat said, gently.

He snapped his head, her words pulling him back to the world.

"Not like this," he said.

"He's out of his bed. He's going into the city."

"It's like nothing happened," Maati said. "He's acting like nothing happened. All these weeks, just vanished ..."

Liat smoothed his neck with her palm. For a moment, Maati went tight, then, slowly, she felt him relax. He turned to her.

"You wanted an apology," she said. "Or some recognition for what you did for him all this time."

Maati put down the book on the step beside him and pulled his robe closer around him. For a long time, they didn't speak. The trees were turning, the first fallen leaves covering the grounds. It wasn't winter, but autumn had reached its center.

"It's wrong of me," Maati said, his voice thick with shame and anger. "I should accept that he's improving and be pleased. But ..."

"This may be the best he can do," Liat said. "Give him time."

Maati nodded and took her hand in his, their fingers laced. With her other hand, she reached across him and took up the book. It was old, and heavy for its size, bound in copper and leather.

"Read me that poem you were talking about," she said.

Much later, the darkness fallen, Liat lay with Maati on his cot and listened to his breath. The breeze that stirred the netting raised gooseflesh on her arms, but he was soft and warm as a cat against her. She stroked his hair. She felt safe and content and sick with guilt. She had never been unfaithful to a lover before this. She had always imagined it would be difficult, that people would stare at her in the streets and talk of her in scandalized whispers. In the event, it seemed no one cared. The isolation that had come after Seedless and the baby - from Amat, from Wilsin-cha, from the people of the house, and worst from Itani - was easier to bear with Maati. And he could listen when she spoke about her part, her failings, the way she'd let the child die.

The night candle fluttered, and three slow moths beat at the walls of its glass lantern. Liat shifted and Maati murmured in his sleep and turned away from her. She parted the netting and stood naked, letting the cool of night wash over her. Their coupling had left her feeling sticky. She thought of going to a bathhouse, but the long walk through the city after dark and the prospect of leaving Maati behind failed to appeal. It would be better, she thought, to stay near, even if it meant being cold. She deserved, she supposed, a little discomfort for her sins. She pulled on her robe, but didn't tie the fastenings.

In the darkness, stars spilled across the sky. The distant lights of the palaces, of the city, might almost not have been. Liat considered the crescent moon, its shining curve of light cupping a darkness of blotted stars. Frogs and crickets sang and the manicured grass at the side of the koi pond tickled the bottoms of her feet. She looked around carefully before shrugging out of her robe. The water of the pond was no worse than she might find in the cold pool of a bathhouse. The fish darted away from her and then slowly returned. Reeds at the water's edge rubbed against each other with a sound like hands on skin, disturbed by the waves of her movements.

Floating on her back, her legs kicking slowly, she thought of Itani. She didn't feel as if she were betraying him, though she knew that she was. Maati and Itani - Otah - seemed to inhabit entirely different places in her heart. The one seemed so little related to the other. Itani was her heartmate, the man she'd shared her bed with for months. Maati was her friend, her confidant, her only support in a world empty even of the other man. For hours at a time and especially in his company, she could forget the guilt and the dread. She didn't know how it could be like this: so easy and so difficult both.

The chill touched her bones, and she turned, swimming easily to the shore. The rich mud squelched between her toes. Against wet flesh, the air was much colder than the water had been. By the time she found her robe, she was shivering. The night around her was silent, the insects and night birds gone still.

"There must be some etiquette to address situations like this," Seedless said from the darkness, "but I'm sure I don't know what it is."

The andat's face seemed hung in the air, the pale lips quirked in a smile both amused and grim. He moved forward as she pulled on her robe. His cloak - black shot with blue - seemed to weave in and out of the darkness. He pulled something bulky from a sleeve and held it out to her. A hair cloth.

"I brought this for you," he said. "Once I understood what you were doing I thought you'd want it."

Liat took it, falling into a pose of gratitude by reflex. The andat returned it dismissively, squatted on the grassy slope and, his arms resting on his knees, looked out over the pond.

"You got out of the torture box."

"One of them. Heshai-kvo let me out. He's been doing it for several days now on the condition that I promise to stay within sight of the house. I've sworn a sacred oath, though I imagine I'll break it eventually. It's why he's improving. Locking away a part of yourself - especially a shameful one - gives that part power over all the rest. It's the danger of splitting yourself in two, don't you find?"

"I don't know what you mean," Liat said.

Seedless smiled in genuine amusement.

"Dry your hair," he said. "I'm not judging you, my dear. I'm a babykiller. You're a girl of seventeen summers who's taken a second lover. It hardly gives me the high ground."

Liat wrapped her hair in the cloth and turned to leave, dry leaves stirring at her ankles. The words that stopped her were so soft, she might almost have imagined them.

"I know about Otah."

She paused. As if on cue, the chorus of crickets began again.

"What do you know?" she asked.

"Enough."

"How?"

"I'm clever. What do you intend to do when he comes back?"

Liat didn't answer. The andat turned to consider her. He took a pose that unasked the question. Anger flashed in Liat's breast.

"I love him. He's my heartmate."

"And Maati?"

"I love him, too."

"But he isn't your heartmate."

Liat didn't reply. In the dim light of moon and star, the andat smiled sadly and took a pose that expressed understanding and sympathy and acceptance.

"Maati and I ... we need each other. We're alone otherwise. Both of us are very, very alone."

"Well, at least that won't last. He'll be back very soon," Seedless said. "Tomorrow, perhaps. Or the day after."

"Who?"

"Otah."

Liat felt her breath go shallow. It was a sensation quite like fear.

"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."