A Shadow In Summer (25 page)

He hurried, gathering an apple, some bread, and a jug of water, and taking them to the unmoving poet before changing into fresh robes and rushing out through the palace grounds to the street and down into the city. Halfway to the quarters where Otahkvo's cohort slept, he noticed he was weeping. He couldn't say for certain when he'd begun.

"I
TANI
!" M
UHATIA-CHA
barked. "Get down here!"

Otah, high in the suffocating heat and darkness near the warehouse roof, grabbed the sides of his ladder and slid down. Muhatia-cha stood in the wide double doors that opened to the light and noise of the street. The overseer had a sour expression, but mixed with something—eagerness, perhaps, or curiosity. Otah stood before him with a pose appropriate to the completion of a task.

"You're wanted at the compound. I don't know what good they think you'll do there."

"Yes, Muhatia-cha."

"If this is just your lady love pulling you away from your duties, Itani, I'll find out."

"I won't be able to tell you unless I go," Otah pointed out and smiled his charming smile, thinking as he did that he'd never meant it less. Muhatia-cha's expression softened slightly, and he waved Otah on.

"Hai! Itani!" Kaimati's familiar voice called out. Otah turned. His old friend was pulling a cart to the warehouse door, but had paused, bracing the load against his knees. "Let us know what you find, eh?"

Otah took a pose of agreement and turned away. It was an illusion, he knew, that the people he passed in the streets seemed to stare at him. There was no reason for the city as a whole to see him pass and think anything of him. Another laborer in a city full of men like him. That it wasn't true did nothing to change the feeling. The sad trade had gone wrong. Liat was involved, as was Maati. For two days, he had seen neither. Liat's cell at the compound had been empty, the poet's house too full for him to think of approaching. Otah had made do with the gossip of the street and the bathhouse.

The andat had broken loose and killed the girl as well as her babe; the child had actually been fathered by the poet himself or the Khai or, least probably, the andat Seedless himself; the poet had killed himself or been killed by the Khai or by the andat; the poet was lying sick at heart. Or the woman was. The stories seemed to bloom like blood poured in water—swirling in all directions and filling all mathematical possibilities. Every story that could be told, including—unremarkably among its legion of fellows—the truth, had been whispered in some corner of Saraykeht in the last day. He had slept poorly, and awakened unrefreshed. Now, he walked quickly, the afternoon sun pushing down on his shoulders and sweat pouring off him.

He caught sight of Liat on the street outside the compound of House Wilsin. He recognized the shape of her body before he could see her face, could read the exhaustion in the slope of her shoulders. She wore mourning robes. He didn't know if they were the same that she'd worn to the ceremony or if the grief was fresher than that. When she caught sight of him, she walked to him. Her eyes were sunken, her skin pale, her lips bloodless. She stepped into his embrace without speaking. It was unseemly, of course, a laborer holding an overseer this way—his cheek pressed to her forehead—in the street. It was too hot for the sensation to be pleasant. She held him fiercely, and he felt the deepness of her breath by the way she pressed against him.

"What happened, love?" he asked, but Liat only shook her head. Otah stroked her unbound hair and waited until, with a shuddering sigh, she pulled back. She didn't release his hand, and he didn't try to reclaim it.

"Come to my cell," she said. "We can talk there."

The compound was subdued, men and women passing quickly though their duties as if nothing had happened, except for the air of tension. Liat led the way in silence, pushed open the door of her cell and pulled him into the shadows. A thin form lay on the cot, swathed in brown robes. Maati sat up, blinking sleep out of his eyes.

"Otahkvo?" the boy asked.

"He came this morning looking for you," Liat said, letting go of Otah's hand at last and sitting at her desk. "I don't think he'd eaten or had anything to drink since it happened. I brought him here, gave him an apple and some water, put him to bed, and sent a runner to Muhatia-cha."

"I'm sorry," Maati said. "I didn't know where to find you, and I thought Liat-cha might . . ."

"It was a fine plan," Otah said. "It worked. But what happened?"

Maati looked down, and Liat spoke. Her voice was hard as slate and as gray. Speaking softly, she told the story: she'd been fooled by the translator Oshai and the andat at the price of Maj and her babe. Maati took the narrative up: the poet was ill, eating little, drinking less, never leaving his bed. And the Khai, in his anger, had locked Seedless away. As detail grew upon detail, problem upon problem, Otah felt his chest grow tighter. Liat wouldn't meet his gaze, and Otah wished Maati were elsewhere, so that he could take her in his arms. But he also knew there was nowhere else that Maati could turn. It was right that he'd come here. When Maati's voice trailed off at last, Otah realized the boy was looking at him, waiting for something. For a decision.

"So he admitted to it," Otah said, thinking as he spoke. "Seedless confessed to the Khai."

Maati took a pose of confirmation.

"Why?" Otah asked. "Did he really think it would break Heshaikvo's spirit? That he'd be freed?"

"Of course he did," Liat snapped, but Maati took a more thoughtful expression and shook his head.

"Seedless hates Heshai," Maati said. "It was a flaw in the translation. Or else not a flaw but . . . a part of it. He may have only done it because he knew how badly Heshai would be hurt."

"Heshai?" Liat demanded. "How badly
Heshai
would be hurt? What about Maj? She didn't do anything to deserve this. Nothing!"

"Seedless . . . doesn't care about her," Maati said.

"Will Heshai release him?" Otah asked. "Did it work?"

Maati took a pose that both professed ignorance and apologized for it. "He's not well. And I don't know what confining Seedless will do to him—"

"Who cares?" Liat said. Her voice was bitter. "What does it matter whether Heshai suffers? Why shouldn't he? He's the one who controls the andat. If he was so busy whoring and drinking that he couldn't be bothered to do his work, then he ought to be punished."

"That's not the issue, love," Otah said, his gaze still on Maati.

"Yes, it is," she said.

"If the poet wastes away and dies or if this drives him to take his own life, the andat goes free. Unless . . ."

"I'm not ready," Maati said. "I've only just arrived here, really. A student might study under a full poet for years before he's ready to take on the burden. And even then sometimes people just aren't the right ones. I might not be able to hold Seedless at all."

"Would you try?"

It took a long time before Maati answered, and when he did, his voice was small.

"If I failed, I'd pay his price."

"What's his price?" Liat asked.

"I don't know," Maati said. "The only way to find out is to fail. Death, most likely. But . . . I could try. If there was no one else to."

"That's insane," Liat said, looking to Otah for support. "He can't do that. It would be like asking him to jump off a cliff and see if he could learn to fly on the way down."

"There isn't the choice. There aren't very many successful bindings. There aren't many poets who even try them. There may be no replacement for Seedless, and even if there were, it might not work well with the cotton trade," Maati said. He looked pale and ill. "If no one else can take the poet's place, it's my duty—"

"It hasn't come to that. With luck, it won't," Otah said. "Perhaps there's another poet who's better suited for the task. Or some other andat that could take Seedless' place if he escaped—"

"We could send to the Dai-kvo," Liat said. "He'd know."

"I can't go," Maati said. "I can't leave Heshaikvo here."

"You can write," Liat said. "Send a courier."

"Can you do that?" Otah asked. "Write it all out, everything: the sad trade, Seedless, how the Khai's responded. What you're afraid may happen. All of it."

Maati nodded.

"How long?" Otah asked.

"I could have it tomorrow. In the morning."

Otah closed his eyes. His belly felt heavy with dread, his hands trembling as if he were about to attack a man or else be attacked. Someone had to carry the message, and it couldn't be Maati. It would be him. He would do it himself. The resolve was simply there, like a decision that had been made long before.

Tahi-kvo's face loomed up in his imagination, and with it, the sense of the school—its cold, bruising days and nights, the emptiness and the cruelty and the sense he had had, however briefly, of belonging. The anger rose in him again, as if it had only been banked all these years. Someone would have to go to the Dai-kvo, and Otah was ready to see the man again.

"Bring it here then," he said. "To Liat's cell. There are always ships leaving for Yalakeht this time of year. I'll find a berth on one."

"You're not going," Liat said. "You can't. Your indenture . . ."

Otah opened the door and moved to one side. He walked Maati out to the passage with a pose that was both a thanks and a promise.

"You're sure of this?" Maati asked.

Otah nodded, then turned away again. When they were alone, the cell fell back into twilight.

"You can't go," Liat said. "I need you to stay. I need someone . . . someone by my side. What happened to Maj, what happened to her baby . . . it was my fault. I let that happen."

He moved to her, sitting on her desk, stroking her silk-smooth cheek with his knuckles. She leaned into him, taking his hand in both of hers and pressing it to her chest.

"I have to. Not just for this. My past is up there. It's the right thing."

"She hasn't stopped crying. She sleeps and she wakes up crying. I went to see her when the utkhaiem released me. She was the first person I went to see. And when she looks at me, and I remember what she was like before . . . I thought she was callous. I thought she didn't care. I didn't see it."

Otah slid down, kneeling on the floor, and put his arms around her.

"The reason you're going," Liat whispered. "It isn't because of me, is it? It isn't to get away from me?"

Otah sat, her head cradled against his shoulder. He could feel his mind working just below the level of thought—what he would need to do, the steps he would have to take. He stroked her hair, smooth as water.

"Of course not, love," he said.

"Because you'll be a great man one day. I can tell. And I'm just an idiot girl who can't keep monsters like Oshai from . . . gods. 'Tani. I didn't see it. I didn't
see
it."

She wept, the sobs shaking her as he cooed and rocked her gently. He rested his chin on her bent head, curling her into him. She smelled of musk and tears. He held her until the sobbing quieted, until his arms ached. Her head lay heavy against him and her breath was almost slow as sleep.

"You're exhausted, love," he said. "Come to bed. You need sleep."

"No," she said, rousing. "No, stay with me. You can't go now."

Gently, he lifted her and carried her to her cot. He sat beside her, her hand wrapping his like vine on brick.

"Three weeks to Yalakeht," he said. "Then maybe two weeks upriver and a day or two on foot. Less than that coming back, since the river trip will be going with the water on the way down. I'll be back before winter, love."

In the light pressing in at the shutters and the door, he could see her eyes, bleary with grief and exhaustion, seeking his. Her face was unlined, relaxed, halfway asleep already.

"You're excited to go," she said. "You
want
to."

And, of course, that was the truth. Otah pressed his palm to her lips, closing them. To her eyes. This wasn't a conversation he was ready to have. Or perhaps only not with her.

He kissed her forehead and waited until she was asleep before he quietly opened her door and stepped out into the light.

Chapter 11

Amat woke in the darkness, her breath fast, her heart pounding. In her dream, Ovi Niit had been kicking in her door, and even when she'd pulled herself up from sleep's dark waters, it took some time for her to feel certain that the booming reports from the dream hadn't been real. Slowly, the panic waned, and she lay back. Above her, the netting glowed like new copper in the light from the night candle and then slowly became brighter and paler as the cool blue light of dawn crept in through the opened windows. The shutters shifted in the sea-scented breeze.

Her desk was piled with papers. Ink bricks hollowed from use stacked one on another at the head of the stairs, waiting to be carried away. The affairs of the house had fallen into near chaos while she was away. She had spent long nights looking over lists and ledgers and telling herself that she cared for them all the way she once had. That House Wilsin and her work for it had not been poisoned.

Amat sighed, sat up, and pushed the netting aside. Her world since her resurrection had been much the same—nightmares until dawn, gray and empty work and messages and meetings until sunset. At one point, seeing the strain on her face at the end of the day, Marchat had offered to send her away for a week to Chaburitan once the season was over. The house could cover the expenses, he said. And she let herself imagine that time—away from Saraykeht and the seafront and her desk and the soft quarter—though the fantasy was washed by melancholy. It could never actually happen, but it would have been nice.

Instead, Amat Kyaan rose from her bed, pulled on clean robes, and walked out, leaning on her cane, to the corner stall where a girl from the low towns sold fresh berries wrapped in sweet frybread. It was good enough as a meal to see her through to midday. She ate it as she walked back to her apartments, trying to order her day in her mind, but finding it hard to concentrate on shifting meetings and duties back and forth. Simply leaving her mind blank and empty was so much easier.