‘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 of 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.