Shadow and Betrayal

Across the deck, the soft quarter flowed street upon street, alley upon alley. Banners flew and beggars sang. It was a lovely city, even this part. This was why she was doing what she’d done. For this and for the girl Maj and the babe she’d lost. She steeled herself.
    Marchat Wilsin stood at the doorway in a robe of green so deep and rich it seemed shot with black. His face was grayish, his eyes bloodshot. He looked frightened and lost, like a mouse surrounded by cats. He broke her heart.
    ‘Hello, old friend,’ she said. ‘Who’d have thought we’d end here, eh?’
    ‘Why are you doing this, Amat?’
    The pain in his voice almost cracked it. She felt the urge to go to him, comfort him. She wanted badly to touch his hand and tell him that everything would end well, in part because she knew that it wouldn’t. It occurred to her distantly that if she had let him profess love for her, she might not have been able to leave House Wilsin.
    ‘What happened to the poet. To the girl. It was an attack,’ she said. ‘You know it, and I do. You attacked Saraykeht.’
    He walked forward, his hands out, palms up before him.
    ‘ I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Amat, you have to see that this wasn’t my doing.’
    ‘Can I offer you tea?’ she asked.
    Bewildered, he sank onto a divan and ran his hands through his hair in wordless distress. She remembered the man she’d first met - his dark hair, his foreign manners. He’d had an easy laugh back then, and power in his gaze. She poured a bowl of tea for him. When he didn’t take it from her hand, she left it on the low table at his knee and went back to her own desk.
    ‘It didn’t work, Amat. It failed. The poet’s alive, the andat’s still held. They see that it can’t work, and so it won’t happen again, if you’ll only let this go.’
    ‘I can’t,’ she said.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because of what you did to Maj. She wanted that child. And because Saraykeht is my home. And because you betrayed me.’
    Marchat flushed red and took a pose so sloppy it might have meant anything.
    ‘Betrayed you? How did I betray you? I did everything to keep you clear of this. I warned you that Oshai was waiting for you. And when you came back I was the one who argued for keeping you alive. I risked my life for yours.’
    ‘You made me part of this,’ Amat said, surprised to hear the anger in her own voice, to feel the warmth in her face. ‘You did this and you put me in a position where I have to sacrifice everything - everything - in order to redeem myself. If I had known in time, I would have stopped it. You knew that when you asked me to find you a bodyguard. You hoped I’d find a way out.’
    ‘I wasn’t thinking clearly then. I am now.’
    ‘Are you? How can I do anything besides this, Marchat-kya? If I keep silent, it’s as much as saying I approve of the crime. And I don’t.’
    His eyes shifted, his gaze going hard. Slowly, he lifted the bowl of tea to his lips and drank it down in one long draw. When he put the bowl down - ceramic clicking against the wooden table - he was once again the man she’d known. He had put his heart aside, she knew, and entered the negotiation that might save his life, his house. Might, if he could convince her, even save her from the path she’d chosen. She felt a half-smile touch her lips. A part of her hoped he might win.
    ‘Granted, something wrong was done,’ he said. ‘Granted, I had some part - though I didn’t have a choice in it. But put aside that I was coerced. Put aside that it was none of it my plan. Let me ask you this - what justice do you expect?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘That’s for the Khai and his men to choose.’
    He took a pose that showed his impatience with her.
    ‘You know quite well the mercy he’ll show me and House Wilsin. And Galt as a whole. And it won’t be for Maj. It’ll be for himself.’
    ‘It will be for his city.’
    ‘And how much is a city worth, Amat? Even in the name of justice. If the Khai chooses to kill a thousand Galtic babies out of their mothers, is that a fair price for a city? If they starve because our croplands go sterile, is that a fair price? You want justice, Amat. I know that. But the end of this road is only vengeance.’
    A breeze thick with the smell of the sea shifted the window cloths. The doors to the private deck closed with a clack, and the room went dim.
    ‘You’re thinking with your heart,’ he continued. ‘What happened was terrible. I