A Shadow In Summer (Long Price Quartet #1)

A Shadow In Summer (Long Price Quartet #1) Page 17

Marchat Wilsin woke from an uneasy sleep, soft footsteps in the corridor enough to disturb him. When the knock came, he was already sitting up. Epani pushed the door open and stepped in, his face drawn in the flickering light of the night candle.

"Wilsin-cha ..."

"It's him, isn't it?"

Epani took a pose of affirmation, and Marchat felt the dread that had troubled his sleep knot itself in his chest. He put on a brave show, pushing aside the netting with a sigh, pulling on a thick wool robe. Epani didn't speak. Amat, Marchat thought, would have said something.

He walked alone to his private hall. The door of it stood open, lantern light spilling out into the corridor. A black form passed in front of it, pacing, agitated, blocking out the light. The knot in Marchat Wilsin's chest grew solid - a stone in his belly. He drew himself up and walked in.

Seedless paced, his pale face as focused as a hunting cat's. His robe - black shot with red - blended with the darkness until he seemed a creature half of shadow. Marchat took a pose of welcome which the andat ignored except for the distant smile that touched his perfect lips.

"It was an accident," Marchat said. "They didn't know it was him. They were only supposed to kill the girl."

Seedless stopped. His face was perfectly calm, his eyes cool. Anger radiated from him like a fire.

"You hurt my boy," he said.

"Blame Amat, if you have to blame anyone," Wilsin said. "It's her vendetta that's driving this. She's trying to expose us. She's dedicating her life to it, so don't treat this like it's something I chose."

Seedless narrowed his eyes. Marchat forced himself not to look away.

"She's close," he said. "She's looking at shipments of pearls from Galtic ports and tying them to the payment. With the money she's offering, it's only a matter of time before she gets what she's looking for. Leaving Liat be would have been ... The girl could damage us. If it came before the Khai, she might damage us."

"And yet your old overseer hasn't taken her apprentice into her confidence?"

"Would you? Liat's a decent girl, but I wouldn't trust her with my laundry."

"You think she's incompetent?"

"No, I think she's young."

And that, oddly, seemed to touch something. The andat's anger shifted, lost its edge. Marchat took a free breath for the first time that night.

"So you chose to remove her from the field of play," Seedless said. "An accident of roof tiles."

"I didn't specify the tiles. Only that it should be plausible."

"You didn't tell them to avoid Maati?"

"I did. But gods! Those two are connected at the hip these days. The men ... grew impatient. They thought they could do the job without damaging the poet boy."

"They were wrong."

"I know. It won't happen again."

The andat flowed forward, lifting himself up to sit on the meeting table beside the lantern. Marchat took a step back before he knew he had done it. The andat's pale fingers laced together and it smiled, an expression of such malice and beauty that it could never have been mistaken for human.

"If Maati had died," Seedless said, its voice low as distant thunder, "every crop in Galt would fail. Every cow and ewe would go barren. Your people would die. Do you understand that? There wouldn't have been a bargain struck or threats made. It would simply have happened, and no one might ever have known why. That boy is precious to you, because while he lives, your people live."

"You can't mean that," Marchat said, but sickeningly, he knew the andat was quite serious. He shook his head and adopted a pose of acknowledgment that he prayed would move the conversation elsewhere, onto some subject that didn't dance so near the cliff edge. "We need a plan. What to do if Amat makes her case to the Khai. If we don't have our defense prepared, she may convince him. She's good that way."

"Yes. She's always impressed me."

"So," Marchat said, sitting, looking up at the dark form above him. "What are we going to do? If she finds the truth and the proof of it, what then?"

"Then I do as I'm told. I'm a slave. It works that way with me. And you? You get your head and your sex shipped back to the Galtic High Council as an explanation for why a generation of Galtic babies are dropping out of their mother's wombs. That's only a guess, of course. The Khai might be lenient," Seedless grinned, "and stones may float on water, but I wouldn't want to rely on it."

"It's not so bad as that," Marchat said. "If you say that Oshai and his men - "

"I won't do that," the andat said, dismissing him as casually as an unwanted drink. "If it comes before the Khai Saraykeht and they ask me, I'll tell them what they want to know."

Marchat laughed. He couldn't help it, but even as he did, he felt the blood rushing away from his face. Seedless tilted his head like a bird.

"You can't," Marchat said. "You're as deep in this as I am."

"Of course I'm not, Wilsin-kya. What are they going to do to me, eh? I'm the blood their city lives on. If our little conspiracy comes to light, you'll pay the price of it, not me. What we've done, you and I, was lovely. The look on Heshai's face when that baby hit the bowl was worth all the weeks and months it took to arrange it. Really, it was brilliantly done. But don't think because we did something together once that we're brothers now. I'm playing new games, with other players. And this time, you don't signify."

"You don't mean that," Marchat said. The andat stood, its arms crossed, and considered the lantern flame.

"It would be interesting, destroying a nation," Seedless said, more than half, it seemed, to himself. "I'm not certain how Heshai would take it. But ..."

The andat sighed and turned, stepping to Wilsin's chair and kneeling beside it. It seemed to Marchat that the andat smelled of incense and ashes. The pale hand pressed his knee and the vicious smile was like a blade held casually at his throat.

"... but, Wilsin-kya, don't make the mistake again of thinking that you or your people matter to me. Our paths have split. Do you understand me?"

"You can't," Wilsin said. "We've been in this together from the start - you and the Council both. Haven't we done everything that you asked?"

"Yes. I suppose you have."

"You owe us something," Wilsin said, ashamed at the desperation he heard in his own voice.

The andat considered this, then slowly stood and took a pose of thanks that carried nuances of both dismissal and mockery.

"Then take my thanks," the andat said. "Wilsin-cha, you have been insincere, selfish, and short-sighted as a flea, but you were the perfect tool for the work, and for that, I thank you. Hurt Maati again, and your nation dies. Interfere with my plans, and I'll tell Amat Kyaan the full story and save her her troubles. This game's moved past you, little man. It's too big. Stay out if it."

THE DREAM, if it was a dream, was painful and disjointed. Liat thought she heard someone crying, and thought it must be from the pain. But the pain was hers, and the weeping wasn't, so that could hardly be. She found herself in a rainstorm outside the temple, all the doors locked against her. She called and called, but no one opened the doors, and the patter of rain turned to the clicking of hail and the hailstones grew and grew until they were the size of a baby's fist, and all she could do was curl tight and let the ice strike her neck and the back of her head.

She woke - if the slow swimming up to lucidity was truly waking - with her head throbbing in pain. She lay on an unfamiliar bed - worked wood and brass - in a lavish room. A breeze came though the opened shutters and stirred the fine silk netting with the scent of rain. The rough cough and the clearing of a throat made her turn too quickly, and pain shot from her neck to her belly. She closed her eyes, overcome by it, and opened them to find the poet Heshai at the bedside in a pose of apology.

"I didn't see you were awake," he said, his wide mouth in a sheepish smile. "I'd have warned you I was here. You're in the Second Palace. I'd have taken you to the poet's house, but the physicians are nearer."

Liat tried to take a pose of casual forgiveness, but found that her right arm was strapped. She tried for the first time to understand where she was and how she'd come there. There had been something - a teahouse and Maati, and then ... something. She pressed her left palm to her eyes, willing the pain to stop and give her room to think. She heard the rustle of cloth pulled aside, and the mattress dipped to her left where the poet sat beside her.

"Maati?" she asked.

"Fine," the poet said. "You took the worst of it. He had his brain rattled around a bit for him, and a shard cut his scalp above the ear. The physician says it's not such a bad thing for a boy to bleed a little when he's young, though."

"What happened?"

"Gods. Of course. You wouldn't know. Loose tiles, two of them. The utkhaiem are fining the owner of the compound for not keeping his roof better repaired. Your shoulder and arm - no, don't move them. They're strapped like that for good cause. The first tile broke some bones rather badly. Once they found who Maati was, they brought you both to the Khai's palaces. The Khai's own physicians have been watching over you for the last three days. I asked for them myself."

Her mind seemed foggy. Simple as his explanation was, the details of the poet's words swam close, darted away. She took hold of one.

"Three days?" Liat asked. "I've been asleep for three days?"

"Not so much asleep," the poet admitted. "We've been giving you poppy milk for the pain. Maati's been here most of the time. I sent him off to rest this morning. I promised him I'd watch over you while he was gone. I have some tea, if you'd like it?"

Liat began to take a pose of thanks and the pain sang in her neck and shoulder. She paled and nodded. The poet stood slowly, trying, she could tell, not to jostle her. He was back in a moment, helping her to sip from a bowl of lemon tea, sweet with honey. Her stomach twisted at the intrusion, but her mouth and throat felt like the desert in a rainstorm. When he pulled the bowl back and helped her ease back down, Liat saw an odd expression on the poet's face - tenderness, she thought. She had always thought of Heshai as an ugly man, but in that light, at that moment, the wide lips and thinning hair seemed to transcend normal ideas of beauty. He looked strong and gentle. His movements were protective as a mother's and as fierce. Liat wondered why she'd never seen it before.

"I should thank you, in a way," he said. "You've given me a chance to give back part of what Maati's done for me. Not that we talk of it in those terms, of course."

"I don't understand."

The frog mouth spread into a rueful smile. "I know how much it cost him, caring for me while I was ill. It isn't the sort of thing you discuss, of course, but I can tell. It isn't easy watching the man who is supposed to be your master fall apart. And it isn't a simple thing to stand beside him while he pulls himself back together. Would you like more tea? The physician said you could have as much as you wanted, but that we'd want to go slowly with heavier foods."

"No. No more. Thank you. But I still don't see ..."

"You've made Maati happy these last few weeks," Heshai said, his voice softer. "That he let me take part in caring for you pays back a part of the time he cared for me."

"I didn't think you'd noticed how much it took from him," Liat said. The poet took a querying pose. "You seemed ... too busy with other things, I suppose. I'm sorry. It isn't my place to judge what you - "

"No, it's quite all right. I ... Maati and I haven't quite found our right level. I imagine there are some opinions you both hold of me. They're my fault. I earned them."

Liat closed her eyes, marshalling her thoughts, and when she opened them again, it was night, and she was alone.

She didn't remember falling asleep, but the night candle, burning steady in a glass lantern at her bedside, was past its halfway point, and heavy blankets covered her. Despite the pain, she pulled herself up, found and used the night pot, and crawled back to bed, exhausted. Sleep, however didn't return so easily. Her mind was clear, and her body, while aching and bruised at best and pain-bright at worst, at least felt very much her own. She lay in the dim light of the candle and listened to the small sounds of the night - wind sighing at the shutters, the occasional clicking of the walls as they cooled. The room smelled of mint and mulled wine. Someone had been drinking, she thought, or else the physicians had thought that being in air that smelled so pleasant would help her body heal. The first distant pangs of hunger were shifting in her belly.

As the candle burned lower, the night passing, Liat grew clearer, and more awake. She tested how much she could move without the pain coming on, and even walked around the room. Her arm and shoulder were still bound, and her ribs ached at her touch, but she could breathe deeply with only an ache. She could bring herself to sitting, and then stand. Walking was simple so long as she didn't bump into anything. She imagined Maati watching over her while she slept, ignoring his own wounds. And Heshai - more like a friend or father - sharing that burden. It was more, she knew, than the two had ever shared before, and she found herself both embarrassed and oddly proud of being the occasion of it.

A thick winter robe hung on a stand by the door, and Liat put it on, wrapping the cloth around her bandages and tying it one-handed. It took longer than she'd expected, but she managed it and was soon sitting in the chair that Maati and Heshai must have used in their vigil. When a servant girl arrived, Liat instructed her not to tell anyone that she'd risen. She wanted Maati to be surprised when he came. The girl took a pose of acknowledgment that held such respect and formality, Liat wondered whether Heshai had told them who she was, or if they were under the impression that she was some foreign princess.

When Maati came, he was alone. His robes were wrinkled and his hair unkempt. He came in quietly, stopping dead when he saw her bed empty, his chair inhabited. She rose as gracefully as she could and held out her good hand. He stepped forward and took it in his own, but didn't pull her close. His eyes were bloodshot and bright, and he released her hand before she let go of his. She smiled a question.

"Liat-cha," he said, and his voice was thick with distress. "I'm pleased you're feeling better."

"What's happened?"

"Good news. Otah-kvo's come back. He arrived last night with a letter from the Dai-kvo himself. It appears there is no andat to replace Seedless, so I'm to do anything necessary to support Heshai-kvo's well-being. But since he's already feeling so much better, I don't see that it amounts to much. It seems there's no one ready to take Heshai's place, and may not be for several years, you see, and so it's very important that ..."

He trailed off into silence, a smile on his lips and something entirely different in his eyes. Liat felt her heart die a little. She swallowed and nodded.

"Where is he?" Liat asked. "Where's Itani?"

"With Heshai-kvo. He came straight there when his ship arrived. It was very late, and he was tired. He wanted to come to you immediately, but I thought you would be asleep. He'll come later, when he wakes. Liat, I hope ... I mean, I didn't ..."

He looked down, shaking his head. When he looked up, his smile was rueful and raw, and tears streaked his face.

"We knew, didn't we, that it would be hard?" he said.

Liat walked forward, feeling as if something outside of her was moving her. Her hand cupped Maati's neck, and she leaned in, the crown of her head touching his. She could smell his tears, warm and salty and intimate. Her throat was too tight for speech.

"Heshai was very ..." Maati began, and she killed the words with kissing him. His lips, familiar now, responded. She could feel when they twisted into a grimace of pain against her. His mouth closed, and he stepped back. She wanted to hold him, to be held by him, the way a dropped stone wants to fall, but his expression forbade her. The boy was gone, and someone - a man with his face and his expression, but with something deep and painful and new in his eyes - was in his place.

"Liat-cha," he said. "Otah's back."

Liat took a breath and slowly let it out.

"Thank you, Maati-cha," she said, the honorific like ashes in her mouth. "Perhaps ... perhaps if I could join you all later in the day. I find I'm more tired than I thought."

"Of course," Maati said. "I'll send someone in to help you with your robe."

With her good hand, she took a pose of thanks. Maati replied with a simple response. Their eyes met, the gaze holding all the things they were not speaking. Her need, and his. His resolve. Morning rain tapped at the shutters like time passing behind them. Maati turned and left her, his back straight, his bearing formal and controlled.

For the space of a breath, she wanted to call him back. Pull him into the room, into the bed. She wanted to feel the warmth of him against her one last time. It wasn't fair that their bodies hadn't had the chance to say their farewells. And she would have, she thought, even with Itani ... even with Otah returned and sleeping in the poet's house that she now knew so well. She would have called, except that it would have broken her soul when Maati refused her. And she saw now that he would have.

Instead, she lay in the bed by herself, her flesh mending and her spirit ill. She had expected to feel torn between the two of them, but instead she was only shut out. The bond between Maati and Otah - the relationship of her two lovers - was deeper than what she had with either. She was losing each of them to the other, and the knowledge was like a stone in her throat.

MAATI SAT at the top of the bridge, the pond below him dark as tea. His belly was heavy, his chest so tight his shoulders shifted forward in a hunch. The breeze smelled of rain, though the sky was clear. The world seemed a dark, deadened place.

He had known, of course, that Liat wasn't truly his lover. What they had been to each other for those few, precious weeks was comfort and friendship. That was all. And with Otah back, everything could return to the way it had been - the way it should have been. Only Maati hadn't ached before the way he did now. The memory of Liat's body against him, her lips against his, hadn't haunted him. And Otah's long, thoughtful face hadn't made Maati sick with guilt.

And so, he thought, nothing would be what it had been. The idea that it could had been an illusion.

"You've done it, then?"

Maati turned to his left, back toward the palaces. Seedless stepped onto the bridge, dark robes shifting as he walked. The andat's expression was unreadable.

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

"You've broken it off with the darling Liat. Returned her whence she came, now that her laborer's back from his errand."

"I don't know what you mean," Maati repeated, turning back to stare at the cold, dark water. Seedless settled beside him. Their two faces reflected on the pond's surface, wavering and pale. Maati wished he had a stone to drop, something that would break the image.

"Bad answer," the andat said. "I'm not a fool. I can smell love when I'm up to my knees in it. It's hard, losing her."

"I haven't lost anything. It's only changed a bit. I knew it would."

"Well then," Seedless said gently. "That makes it easy, doesn't it. He's still resting, is he?"

"I don't know. I haven't gone to see him yet today."

"Gone to see him? It's your couch he's sleeping on."

"Still," Maati said with a shrug. "I'm not ready to see him again. Tonight, perhaps. Only not yet."

They were silent for a long moment. Crows barked from the treetops, hopping on twig-thin legs, their black wings outstretched. Somewhere in the water, koi shifted sluggishly, sending thin ripples to the surface.

"Would it help to say I'm sorry for it?" Seedless asked.

"Not particularly."

"Well, all the same."

"It's hard to think that you care, Seedless-cha. I'd have thought you'd be pleased."

"No. Not really. On the one hand, whether you think it or not, I don't have any deep love of your pain. Not yet, at least. Once you take Heshai's burden ... well, we'll neither of us have any choices then. And then, for my own selfish nature, all this brings you one step nearer to being like him. The woman you've loved and lost. The pain you carry with you. It's part of what drives him, and you're coming to know it now yourself."

"So when you say you're sorry for it, you mean that you think it might help me do my task?"

"Makes you wonder if the task's worth doing, doesn't it?" Seedless said, a smile in his voice more than his expression. "I doubt the Dai-kvo would share our concerns, though, eh?"

"No," Maati sighed. "No, he at least is certain of what's the right thing."

"Still, we're clever," Seedless said. "Well, you're not. You're busy being lovesick, but I'm clever. Perhaps I'll think of something."

Maati turned to look at the andat, but the smooth, pale face revealed nothing more than a distant amusement.

"Something in particular?" Maati asked, but Seedless didn't answer.

OTAH WOKE from a deep sleep to light slanting through half-opened shutters. For a moment, he forgot he had landed, his body still shifting from memory of the sea beneath him. Then the blond wood and incense, the scrolls and books, the scent and sound of winter rain recalled him to himself, and he stood. The wall-long shutters were closed, a fire burned low in its grate. Heshai and Maati were gone, but a plate of dried fruit and fresh bread sat on a table beside the letter from the Dai-kvo, its pages unsewn and spread. He sat alone and ate.

The journey back had been easy. The river bore him to Yalakeht and then a tradeship with a load of furs meant for Eddensea. He'd taken a position on the ship - passage in return for his work, and he'd done well enough by the captain and crew. Otah imagined they were now in the soft quarter spending what money they had. Indulging themselves before they began the weeks-long journey across the sea.

Heshai had seemed better, alert and attentive. It even seemed that Maati and his teacher had grown closer since Otah had left - brought together, perhaps, by the difficulties they had weathered. It might have been the bad news of Liat's injury or Otah's own weariness and sense of displacement, but there had seemed something more as well. A weariness in Maati's eyes that Otah recognized, but couldn't explain.

The first thing he needed, of course, was a bath. And then to see Liat. And then ... and then he wasn't sure. He had gone on his journey to the Dai-kvo, he had come back bearing news that seemed out of date when it arrived. According to Maati, Heshai-kvo had bested his illness without the aid of the Dai-kvo. The tragedy of the dead child was fading from the city's memory, replaced by other scandals - diseased cotton in the northern fields; a dyer who killed himself after losing a year's wages gambling; Liat's old overseer Amat Kyaan breaking with her house in favor of a business of her own in the soft quarter. The petty life-and-death battles of the sons of the Khaiem.

And so what had seemed of critical importance at the time, proved empty now that it was done. And his own personal journey had achieved little more. He could go, if he chose, to speak to Muhatia-cha this afternoon. Perhaps House Wilsin would take him back on to complete his indenture. Or there were other places in the city, work he could do that would pay for his food and shelter. The world was open before him. He could even have taken the letter from Orai Vaukheter and taken work as a courier if it weren't for Liat, and for Maati, and the life he'd built as Itani Noyga.

He ate strips of dried apple and plum, chewing the sweet flesh slowly as he thought and noticing the subtlety of the flavors as they changed. It wasn't so bad a life, Itani Noyga's. His work was simple, straightforward. He was good at it. With only a little more effort, he could find a position with a trading house, or the seafront authority, or any of a hundred places that would take a man with numbers and letters and an easy smile. And half a year ago, he would have thought it enough. Otah or Itani. It was still the question.

"You're up," a soft voice said. "And the men of the house are still out. That's good. We have things to talk about, you and I."

Seedless leaned against a bookshelf, his arms crossed and his dark eyes considering. Otah popped the last sliver of plum into his mouth and took a pose of greeting appropriate for someone of low station to a member of the utkhaiem. There was, so far as he knew, no etiquette appropriate for a common laborer to an andat. Seedless waved the pose away and flowed forward, his robes - blue and black - hissing cloth against cloth.

"Otah Machi," the andat said. "Otah Unbranded. The man too wise to be a poet and too stupid to take the brand. And here you are."

Otah met the glittering black gaze and felt the flush in his face. His words were ready, his hands already halfway to a pose of denial. Something in the perfect pale mask of a face stopped him. He lowered his arms.

"Good," Seedless said, "I was hoping we might dispense with that part. We're a little short of time just now."

"How did you find out?"

"I listened. I lied. The normal things anyone would do who wanted to know something hidden. You've seen Liat?"

"Not yet, no."

"You know what happened to her, though? The tiles?"

"Maati told me."

"It wasn't an accident," the andat said. "They were thrown."

Otah frowned, aware that Seedless was peering at him, reading his expressions and movement. He forced himself to remain casual.

"Was it you?"

"Me? Gods, no," Seedless said, sitting on a couch, his legs tucked up beneath him like they were old friends chatting. "In the first place I wouldn't have done it. In the second, I wouldn't have missed. No, it was Marchat Wilsin and his men."

Otah leaned forward, letting the smile he felt show on his face. The andat didn't move, even to breathe.

"You know there's no sane reason that I should believe anything you say."

"True," the andat said. "But hear me out first, and then you can disbelieve my little story entirely instead of just one bit at a time."

"There's no reason Wilsin-cha would want to hurt Liat."

"Yes, there is. His sins are creeping back to kill him, you see. That little incident with the island girl and her dead get? It was more than it seemed. Listen carefully when I say this. It's the kind of thing men are killed for knowing, so it's worth paying attention. The High Council of Galt arranged that little mess. Wilsin-cha helped. Amat Kyaan - his overseer - found out and is dedicating what's left of her life to prying the whole sordid thing open like it was shellfish. Wilsin-cha in his profoundly finite wisdom is cleaning up anything that might be of use to Amat-cha. Including Liat."

Otah took a pose of impatience and stood, looking for his cloak.

"I've had enough of this ..."

"I know who you are, boy. Sit back down or I'll end all your choices for you, and you can spend the rest of your life running from your brothers over a chair you don't even want to sit in."

Otah paused and then sat.

"Good. The Galtic Council had a plan to ally themselves with the andat. We poor suffering spirits get our freedom. The Galts kick out the supports that keep the cities of the Khaiem above the rest of the world. Then they roll over you like you were just another Westlands warden, only with more gold and fewer soldiers. It's a terrible plan."

"Is it?"

"Yes. Andat aren't predictable. That's what makes us the same, you and I. Ah, relax, Otah-cha. You look like I have a knife at your belly."

"I think you do," Otah said.

The andat leaned back, gesturing at the empty house around them - the crackling fire, the falling rain.

"There's no one to hear us. Anything we say to each other, you and I, is between us unless we choose otherwise."

"And I should trust you to keep quiet?"

"Of course not. Don't be an ass. But the less you say, the less I can repeat to others, eh? Right. Amat's near getting what she needs. And she won't stop. She's a pit hound at heart. Do you know what happens when she does?"

"She'll take it to the Khai."

"Yes!" the andat said, clapping his hands together once as if it were a festival game and Otah had earned a prize. "And what would he do?"

"I don't know."

"No? You disappoint me. He'd do something bloody and gaudy and out of all proportion. Something that sounded like a plague from the old epics. My guess - it's only my opinion, of course, but I consider myself fairly expert on the subject of unrestrained power - he'll turn me and Heshai against whatever Galtic women are carrying babes when he learns of it. It will be like pulling seeds out of a cotton bale. A thousand, maybe. More. Who can say?"

"It would break Heshai," Otah said. "Doing that."

"No. It wouldn't. It would bend him double, but it wouldn't break him. Seeing the one child die in front of him didn't do it, and tragedy fades with distance. Put it close enough to your eye, and a thumb can blot out a mountain. A few thousand dead Galt babies will hurt him, but he won't have to watch it happen. A few bottles of cheap wine, a few black months. And then he'll train Maati. Maati will have all the loneliness, all the self-hatred, all the pain of holding me in check for all the rest of his life. That's already happening. Heshai fell in love and lost her, and he's been chewed by guilt ever since. Maati will do the same."

"No, he won't," Otah said.

Seedless laughed.

"More the fool, you. But let it go. Let it go and look at the near term. Here's my promise, Otah of Machi. Amat will make her case. Liat may be killed before it comes before the Khai, or she may not, but Amat will make her case. Innocent blood will wash Galt. Maati will suffer to the end of his days. Oh, and I'll betray you to your family, though I think it's really very small of you to be concerned about that. Your problems don't amount to much, you know." Seedless paused. "Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

"Then you see why we have to act."

"We?"

"You and I, Otah. We can stop it. Together we can save them all. It's why I've come to you."

The andat's face was perfectly grave now, his hands floating up into a plea. Slowly, Otah took a pose that was a query. Wind rattled the shutters and a chill touched the back of Otah's neck.

"We can spare the people we love. Saraykeht will fall, but there's no helping that. The city will fall, and we will save Liat and Maati and all those babies and mothers who had nothing to do with this. All you have to do is kill a man who - and I swear this - would walk onto the blade if you only held it steady. You have to kill me."

"Kill you, or Heshai?"

"There isn't a difference."

Otah stood, and Seedless rose with him. The perfect face looked pained, and the pose of supplication Seedless took was profound.

"Please," he said. "I can tell you where he goes, how long he stays, how long it takes him to drink himself to sleep. All you'll need is - "

"No," Otah said. "Kill someone? On your word? No. I won't."

Seedless dropped his hands to his sides and shook his head in disappointment and disgust.

"Then you can watch everyone you care for suffer and die, and see if you prefer that. But if you're going to change your mind, do it quickly, my dear. Amat's closer than she knows. There isn't much time."