Shadow and Betrayal

Torish Wite said. ‘She went into the street yesterday. If she’d been mistaken for a whore, there’s no knowing how she’d have responded. And given the restraint she’s managed so far, we could have had the watch coming down our throats. We can’t have that.’
    Her rooms were dark, the windows and wide doors covered with tapestries that held in the heat as well as blocking the light. Downstairs, the girls and the children were all sleeping - even Mitat, even Maj. Only not Amat or Torish. She ached to rest, only not quite yet.
    ‘I’m aware of what we can and cannot have,’ Amat said. ‘I’ll see to it.’
    The thug, the murderer, the captain of her personal guard shook his head. His expression was grim.
    ‘With all respect, grandmother,’ he said. ‘But you’ve sung that song before. The island girl’s trouble. Another stern talking-to isn’t going to do more than the last one did.’
    Amat drew herself up, anger filling her chest partly because she knew what he said was true. She took a pose of query.
    ‘I had not known this was your house to run,’ she said.
    Torish shook his wide, bear-like head again, his eyes cast down in something like regret or shame.
    ‘It’s your house,’ he said. ‘But they’re my men. If you’re going to be putting them on the wrong side of the watch, there isn’t enough silver in the soft quarter to keep them here. I’m sorry.’
    ‘You’d break contracts?’
    ‘No. But I won’t renew. Not on those terms. This is one of the best contracts we’ve had, but I won’t take a fight I know we can’t win. You put that girl on a leash, or we can’t stay with you. And - truly, with all respect - you need us.’
    ‘She lost a child last summer,’ Amat said.
    ‘Bad things happen,’ Torish Wite said, his voice surprisingly gentle. ‘You move past them.’
    He was right, of course, and that was the galling thing. In his position, she would have done the same. Amat took a pose of acceptance.
    ‘I understand your position, Torish-cha. I’ll see to it that Maj doesn’t endanger your men or your contract with me. Give me a day or so, and I’ll see it done.’
    He nodded, turned, left her rooms. He had the grace not to ask what it was she intended. She wouldn’t have been able to say. Amat rose, took her cane, and walked out the doors to her deck. The rain had stopped, the whole great bowl of the sky white as bleached cotton. Seagulls screamed to one another, wheeling over the rooftops. She took a deep breath and let herself weep. The tears were as much about exhaustion as anything else, and they brought her no relief.
    Between the late hour of the morning and the rain that had fallen all the last day and through the night, the streets of the soft quarter were near deserted. The two boys, then, who came around the corner together caught her attention. The older was broad across the shoulders - a sailor or a laborer - with a long, northern face and a robe of formal cut. The younger boy at his side - smaller, softer - wore the brown robes of a poet. Amat knew as they stepped into the street that there would even now be no rest for her. She watched them until they came too near the comfort house to see without leaning over into the street, then went inside and composed herself. It took longer than she’d expected for the guard to come and announce them. Perhaps Torish-cha had seen how tired she felt.
    The older boy proved to be Itani Noyga, Liat’s vanished lover. The younger, of course, was the young poet Maati. Amat, seated at her desk, took a pose of welcome and gestured to chairs she’d had brought in for them. Both boys sat. It was an interesting contrast, the pair or them. Both were clearly in earnest, both wore expressions of perfect seriousness, but Itani’s eyes reminded her more of her own - focused out, on her, on the room, searching, it seemed, for something. The poet boy was like his master - brooding, turned inward. Like his master, or like Marchat Wilsin. Amat put her hands on her knees and leaned a degree forward.
    ‘And what business brings you young gentlemen?’ she asked. Her tone was light and pleasant and gave nothing away. Her subtlety was lost on them, though. The older boy, Itani, clearly wasn’t looking to finesse an advantage.
    ‘Amat-cha,’ he said. ‘I’m told you hope to prove that the High Council of Galt conspired with the andat Seedless when he killed the child out of the island girl last summer.’
    ‘I’m