‘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?’