Shadow and Betrayal

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.’
    ‘Grandmother?’
    They had reached the common room - full now with women and boys in the costumes they wore, with the men who ran the games and wine, with the smell of fresh bread and roast lamb and with voices. Mitat stood at the door, her arms crossed. Amat took a querying pose.
    ‘Someone has to tell Maj,’ she said.
    Amat closed her eyes. Of course. As if all the rest wasn’t enough, someone would have to tell Maj. She would. If there was going to be a screaming fight, at least they could have it in Nippu. Amat took two long breaths and opened her eyes again. Mitat’s expression had softened into a rueful amusement.
    ‘I could have been a dancer,’ Amat said. ‘I was very graceful as a girl. I could have been a dancer, and then I would never have had to march through any of this piss.’
    ‘I can do it if you want,’ Mitat said. Amat only smiled, shook her head, and walked toward the door to the little room of Maj’s and the storm that was inescapably to be suffered.
     
    Otah Machi, the sixth son of the Khai Machi, sat at the end of the wharf and looked out over the ocean. The fading twilight left only the light of a half moon dancing on the tops of the waves. Behind him, the work of the seafront was finished for the day, and the amusements of night time - almost as loud - had begun. He ignored the activity, ate slices of hot ginger chicken from the thick paper cone he’d bought at a stand, and thought about nothing.
    He had two lengths of copper left to him. Years of work, years of making a life for himself in this city, and he had come to that - two lengths of copper. Enough to buy a bowl of wine, if he kept his standards low. Everything else, spent or lost or thrown away. But he was, at least, prepared. Below him, the tide was rising. It would fall again before the dawn came.
    The time had come.
    He walked the length of the seafront, throwing the spent paper soaked in grease and spices into a firekeeper’s kiln where it flared and blackened, lighting for a moment the faces of the men and women warming themselves at the fire. The warehouses were dark and closed, the wide street empty. Outside a teahouse, a woman sang piteously over a begging box with three times more money in it than Otah had in the world. He tossed in one of his copper lengths for luck.
    The soft quarter was much the same as any night. He was the one who was different. The drum and flute from the comfort houses, the smell of incense and stranger smokes, the melancholy eyes of women selling themselves from low parapets and high windows. It was as if he had come to the place for the first time - a traveler from a foreign land. There was time, he supposed, to turn aside. Even now, he could walk away from it all as he had from the school all those years before. He could walk away now and call it strength or purity. Or the calm of stone. He could call it that, but he would know the truth of it.
    The alley was where Seedless had said it would be, hidden almost in the shadows of the buildings that lined it. He paused there for a time. Far down in the darkness, a lantern glowed without illuminating anything but itself. A showfighter lumbered past, blood flowing from his scalp. Two sailors across the street pointed at the wounded man, laughing. Otah stepped into darkness.
    Mud and filth slid under his boots like a riverbed. The lantern grew nearer, but he reached the door the andat had described before he reached the light. He pressed his hand to it. The wood was solid, the lock was black iron. The light glimmering through at the edges of the shutters showed that a fire was burning within. The poet in his private apartments, the place where he