Shadow and Betrayal

poet looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and weary. The whites were yellow. He stank of wine and something worse. He seemed slowly to focus on her, and then, a heartbeat later, to recognize her face. He went gray.
    ‘I’m fine, Heshai-cha. No damage done. But what brings—’
    ‘I know you. You work for House Wilsin. You . . . you knew that girl?’
    ‘Maj,’ Amat said. ‘Her name is Maj. She’s being well taken care of, but you and I need to speak. What happened wasn’t all it seemed. The andat had other parties who—’
    ‘No! No, I was entirely to blame! It was my failing!’
    The shutters of a window across the street opened with a clack and a curious face appeared. Heshai took a pose of regret spoiled only by his slight wavering, like a willow in a breeze. His lips hardened, and his eyes, when he opened them, were black. He looked at her as if she’d insulted him, and in that moment, Amat could see that the andat Seedless with his beautiful face and perfect voice had indeed been drawn from this man.
    ‘I am making an ass of myself,’ he said. He bowed stiffly to her and to Mitat, turned, and strode unsteadily away.
    ‘Gods!’ Mitat said, looking after the wide, retreating back. ‘What was that?’
    ‘The poet of Saraykeht,’ Amat said. She turned to consider the alley from which he’d emerged. It was thin - hardly more than a slit between buildings - unpaved, muddy and stinking of garbage.
    ‘What’s down there?’ Amat asked.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Amat hesitated, dreading what she knew she had to do next. If the mud was as foul as it smelled, the hems of her robe would be unsavable.
    ‘Come,’ she said.
    The apartment wasn’t hard to find. The poet’s unsteady footsteps had left fresh, sliding marks. The doorway was fitted with an iron lock, the shutters over the thin window beside it were barred from the inside. Amat, her curiosity too roused to stop now, rapped on the closed door and called, but no one came.
    ‘Sometimes, if they don’t want to be seen in the houses, men take rooms,’ Mitat said.
    ‘Like this?’
    ‘Better, usually,’ Mitat allowed. ‘None of the girls I know would want to follow a man down an alley like this one. If the payment was high enough, perhaps . . .’
    Amat pressed her hand against the door. The wood was solid, sound. The lock, she imagined, could be forced, if she could find the right tools. If there was something in this sad secret place that was worth knowing. Something like dread touched her throat.
    ‘Grandmother. We should go.’
    Amat took a pose of agreement, turning back toward the street. Curiosity balanced relief at being away from the private room of the poet of Saraykeht. She found herself wondering, as they walked to the offices of the watch, what lay behind that door, how it might relate to her quiet war, and whether she wanted to discover it.
     
    Winter came to the summer cities. The last leaves fell, leaving bare trees to sleep through the long nights. Cold mists rose, filling the streets with air turned to milk. Maati wore heavier robes - silk and combed wool. But not his heaviest. Even the depths of a Saraykeht winter were milder than a chilly spring in the north. Some nights Maati walked through the streets with Liat, his arm around her, and both of them hunched against the cold, but it was a rare thing to see his own breath in the air. In Pathai as a child, at the school, then with the Dai-kvo, Maati had spent most of his life colder than this, but the constant heat of the high seasons of Saraykeht had thinned his blood. He felt the cold more deeply now than he remembered it.
    Heshai-kvo’s return to health seemed to have ended the affair of the dead child in the minds of the utkhaiem. Over the weeks - the terribly short weeks - Heshai had taken him to private dinners and public feasts, had presented him to high families, and made it clear through word and action that Liat was welcome - was always welcome - at the poet’s house. That Seedless had been given a kind of freedom seemed to displease the Khai Saraykeht and his nearest men, but no words were said and no action taken. So long as the poet was well enough to assuage the general unease, all was close enough to well.
    The teahouse they had retreated to, he and Liat, was near the edge of the city proper. Buildings and streets ran further out, north along the river, but it was in this quarter that the original city touched the newer buildings. Newer buildings, Maati