Authors: Daniel Abraham

Shadow and Betrayal (47 page)

BOOK: Shadow and Betrayal

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‘I’m sorry,’ Liat said at last. ‘For what happened.’

‘Was your plan?’

‘No, I didn’t know anything about what was really happening.’

‘So, why sorry?’

‘I should have,’ Liat said. ‘I should have known and I didn’t.’

Maj looked up and put the loom aside.

‘And why did you not know?’ she said, her gaze steady and accusing.

‘I trusted Wilsin-cha,’ Liat said. ‘I thought he was doing what you wanted. I thought I was helping.’

‘And is this Wilsin who does this to you?’ Maj asked, gesturing at the bandages and straps on Liat’s shoulder.

‘His men. Or that’s what Amat-cha says.’

‘And you trust her?’

‘Of course. Don’t you?’

‘I am here for a season, more than a season. At home, when a man does something evil, the
kiopia
pass judgment and like this . . .’ Maj clapped her hands ‘. . . he is punished. Here, it is weeks living in a little room and waiting. Listening to nothing happen and waiting. And now, they say that the Khai, he may take his weeks to punish who killed my baby. Why wait except he doesn’t trust Amat Kyaan? And if he doesn’t why do I stay? Why am I waiting, if not for justice done?’

‘It’s complicated,’ Liat said. ‘It’s all complicated.’

Maj snorted with anger and impatience.

‘Is simple,’ she said. ‘I thought before perhaps you know back then, perhaps you come now to keep the thing from happening, but instead I think you are just stupid, selfish, weak girl. Go away. I am weaving.’

Liat stood, stung. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but there was nothing she could think to say. Maj spat casually on the floor at her feet.

Liat spent the next hours upstairs, out on the deck that overlooked the street, letting her rage cool. The winter sun was strong enough to warm her as long as the air was still. The slightest breeze was enough to chill her. High clouds traced scratch marks on the sky. Her heart was troubled, but she couldn’t tell any longer if it was Maj’s accusation, Itani and Maati, or the case about to go before the Khai that bothered her. Twice, she turned, prepared to go back down to Maj and demand an apology or else offer another of her own. Both times, she stopped before she had passed Amat Kyaan’s desk, swamped by her own uncertainties. She was still troubled, probing her thoughts in search of some little clarity, when a figure in the street caught her eye. The brown robe fluttered as Maati ran toward the house. His face was flushed. She felt her heart flutter in sudden dread. Something had happened.

She took the wide, wooden stairs three at a time, rushing down into the common room. She heard Maati’s voice outside the rear door, raised and arguing. Unbolting the door and pulling it open, she found one of the guards barring Maati’s way. Maati was in a pose of command, demanding that he be let in. When he saw her, he went silent, and his face paled. Liat touched the guard’s arm.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘He’s here for me.’

‘The old woman didn’t say anything about him,’ the guard said.

‘She didn’t know. Please. She’d want him to come through.’

The guard scowled, but stood aside. Maati came in. He looked ill - eyes glassy and bloodshot, skin gray. His robes were creased and wrinkled, as if they’d been slept in. Liat took his hand in her own without thinking.

‘I got your message,’ Maati said. ‘I came as soon as I could. He isn’t here?’

‘No,’ Liat said. ‘I thought, since he stayed with you after he came back from the Dai-kvo, maybe he’d come to you and . . .’

‘He did,’ Maati said, and sat down. ‘After he brought you here, he took a bunk at the seafront. He came to see me last night.’

‘He didn’t stay?’

Maati pressed his lips thin and looked away. She was aware of Maj, standing in the alcove, watching them, but the shame in Maati’s face was too profound for her to care what the islander made of this. Liat swallowed, trying to ease the tightness in her throat. Maati carefully, intentionally, released her hand from his. She let it drop to her side.

‘He found out?’ Liat asked, her voice small. ‘He knows what happened? ’

‘I told him,’ Maati said. ‘I had to. I thought he would come back here, that he’d be with you.’

‘No. He never did.’

‘Do you think . . . if Wilsin found him . . .’

‘Amat doesn’t think Wilsin would do anything against him. There’s nothing to gain from it. More likely, he only doesn’t want to see us.’

Maati sank to a bench, his head in his hands. Liat sat beside him, her unwounded arm around his shoulders. Itani was gone, lost to her. She knew it like her own name. She rested her head against Maati, and closed her eyes, half-desperate with the fear that he would go as well.

‘Give him time,’ she murmured. ‘He needs time to think. That’s all. Everything is going to be fine.’

‘It isn’t,’ Maati said. His tone wasn’t despairing or angry, only matter-of-fact. ‘Everything is going to be broken, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

She closed her eyes, felt the rise and fall of his breath like waves coming to shore. Felt him shift as he turned to her and put his arms around her. Her wounds ached with the force of his embrace, but she would have bitten her tongue bloody before she complained. Instead she stroked his hair and wept.

‘Don’t leave me,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t stand to lose you both.’

‘I’ll stop breathing first,’ Maati said. ‘I swear I’ll stop breathing before I leave you. But I have to find Otah-kvo.’

The painful, wonderful arms unwrapped, and Maati stood. His face was serious to the point of grave. He took her hand.

‘If Otah-kvo . . . if the two of you cannot reconcile . . . Liat, I would be less than whole without you. My life isn’t entirely my own - I have duties to the Dai-kvo and the Khaiem - but what is mine to choose, I’d have you be part of.’

Liat blinked back tears.

‘You would choose me over him?’

The words shook him, she could see that. For a moment, she wanted more than anything to unsay them, but time only moved forward. Maati met her gaze again.

‘I can’t lose either of you,’ he said. ‘What peace Otah-kvo and I make, if we can make any, is between the two of us. What I feel for you, Liat . . . I could sink my life on those rocks. You’ve become that much to me. If you stay with him, I will be your friend forever.’

It was like pouring cool water on a burn. Liat felt herself sink back.

‘Go, then. Find him if you can and tell him how sorry I am. And whether you do or not, come back to me, Maati. Promise you’ll come back.’

It was still some minutes before Maati tore himself away and headed out into the streets of the city. Liat, after he had gone, sat on the bench, her eyes closed, observing the roiling emotions in her breast. Guilt, yes, but also joy. Fear, but also relief. She loved Maati, she saw that now. As she had loved Itani once, when they had only just begun. It was because of this confusion that she didn’t notice for a long time that she was being watched.

Maj stood in the alcove, one hand pressed to her lips, her eyes shining with tears. Liat stood slowly, and took a pose that was a query. Maj strode across the room to her, put her hands on Liat’s neck and - unnervingly - kissed her on the lips.

‘Poor rabbit,’ Maj said. ‘Poor stupid rabbit. Am very sorry. The boy and you together. It makes me think of the man who I was . . . of the father. Before, I call you stupid and selfish and weak because I am forgetting what it is to be young. I am young once, too, and I am not my best mind now. What I say to hurt you, I take back, yes?’

Liat nodded, recognizing the apology in the words, if not the whole sense of them. Maj responded with a string of Nippu that Liat couldn’t follow, but she caught the words for
knowledge
and for
pain.
Maj patted Liat’s cheek gently and stepped away.

‘D
oes it bother you, grandmother?’ Mitat asked as they walked down the street. She spoke softly, so that the words stayed between the two of them, and not so far forward as the two mercenary guards before them or so far back as the two behind.

‘I can think of a half dozen things you might mean,’ Amat said.

‘Speaking against Wilsin.’

‘Of course it does,’ Amat said. ‘But it isn’t something I chose.’

‘It’s only that House Wilsin was good to you for so long . . . it was like family, wasn’t it? To make your own way now . . .’

Amat narrowed her eyes. Mitat flushed and took a pose of apology which she ignored.

‘This isn’t a conversation about me, is it?’ Amat asked.

‘Not entirely,’ Mitat said.

The breeze blowing in from the sea chilled her, and the sun, already falling to the horizon, did nothing more than stretch the shadows and redden the light. The banners over the watch house fluttered, the mutter of cloth like voices in another room. Her guards opened the door, nodded to the watchmen inside and gestured Amat and her aide, her friend, her first real ally in the whole sour business, through. Amat paused.

‘If you’re thinking of leaving, you and your man, I want two things of you. First, wait until the suit is presented. Second, let me make an offer for your time. If we can’t negotiate something, you can go with my blessings.’

‘The terms of my indenture were harsh, and you could . . .’

‘Oh don’t be an ass,’ Amat said. ‘That was between you and Ovi Niit. This is between us. Not the same thing at all.’

Mitat smiled - a little sadly, Amat thought - and took a pose that sealed an agreement. In the watch house, Amat paid her dues, signed and countersigned the documents, and took her copy for the records of the house. For another turn through the moon’s phases, she and her house were citizens in good standing of the soft quarter. She walked back to the house with her five companions, and yet also very much alone.

The scent of garlic sausages tempted her as they passed an old man and his cart, and Amat wished powerfully that she could stop, send away the men and their knives, and sit with Mitat talking as friends might. She could find what price the woman wanted to stay - whatever it was Amat expected she’d be willing to pay it. But the guards wouldn’t let them pause or be alone. Mitat wouldn’t have had it. Amat herself knew it would have been unwise - somewhere in the city, Marchat Wilsin had to be in a fever of desperation, and he’d proven willing to kill before this. Leaving the comfort house at all was a risk. And still, something like an ordinary life beckoned more seductively than any whore ever had.

One step at a time, Amat moved forward. There would be time later, she told herself, for all that. Later, when the Galts were revealed and her burden was passed on to someone else. When the child’s death was avenged and her city was safe and her conscience was clean. Then she could be herself again, if there was anything left of that woman. Or create herself again if there wasn’t.

The messenger waited for them at the front entrance of the house. He was a young man, not older than Liat, but he wore the colors of a high servant. A message, Amat knew with a sinking heart, from the Khai Saraykeht.

‘You,’ she said. ‘You’re looking for Amat Kyaan?’

The messenger - a young boy with narrow-set eyes and a thin nose - took a pose of acknowledgment and respect. It was a courtly pose.

‘You’ve found her,’ Amat said.

The boy plucked a letter from his sleeve sealed with the mark of the Khai Saraykeht. Amat tore it open there in the street. The script was as beautiful as any message from the palaces - calligraphy so ornate as to approach illegibility. Still, Amat had the practice to make it out. She sighed and took a pose of thanks and dismissal.

‘I understand,’ she said. ‘There’s no reply.’

‘What happened?’ Mitat asked as they walked into the house. ‘Something bad?’

‘No,’ Amat said. ‘Only the usual delays. The Khai is putting the audience back four days. Another party wishes to be present.’

‘Wilsin?’

‘I assume so. It serves us as much as him, really. We can use a few more days to prepare.’

Amat paused in the front room of the house, tapping the folded paper against the edge of a dice table. The sound of a young girl laughing came from the back, from the place where her whores waited to be chosen by one client or another. It was an odd thing to hear. Any hint of joy, it seemed, had become an odd thing to hear. If she were Marchat Wilsin, she’d try one last gesture - throw one last dart at the sky and hope for a miracle.

‘Get Torish-cha,’ Amat said. ‘I want to discuss security again. And have we had word from Liat’s boy? Itani?’

‘Nothing yet,’ the guard by the front door said. ‘The other one came by before.’

‘If either of them arrive, send them to see me.’

She walked through to the back, Mitat beside her.

‘It’s likely only a delay,’ Amat said, ‘but if he’s winning time for a reason, I want to be ready for it.’

BOOK: Shadow and Betrayal

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