Shadow and Betrayal

other on things like that. There’s a certain . . . what to call it . . . brotherhood? The miners take care of each other, whatever house they work for.’
    ‘Might we see the pumps?’
    ‘If you’d like,’ he said. ‘They’re back in the deeper parts of the mine. If you don’t mind walking down farther . . .’
    Maati forced a grin and did not look at the wide face of the andat turning toward him.
    ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Let’s go down.’
    The pumps, when he found them at last, were ingenious. A series of treadmills turned huge corkscrews that lifted the water up to pools where another corkscrew waited to lift it higher again. They did not keep the deepest tunnels dry - the walls there seemed to weep as Maati waded through warm, knee-high water - but they kept it clear enough to work. Machi had, Cehmai assured him, the deepest tunnels in the world. Maati did not ask if they were the safest.
    They found the mine’s overseer here in the depths. Voices seemed to carry better in the watery tunnels than up above, but Maati could not make out the words clearly until they were almost upon him. A small, thick-set man with a darkness to him that made Maati think of grime worked so deeply into skin that it would never come clean, he took a pose of welcome as they approached.
    ‘We’ve an honored guest come to the city,’ Cehmai said.
    ‘We’ve had many honored guests in the city ,’ the overseer said, with a grin. ‘Damn few in the bottom of the hole, though. There’s no palaces down here.’
    ‘But Machi’s fortunes rest on its mines,’ Maati said. ‘So in a sense these are the deepest cellars of the palaces. The ones where the best treasures are hidden.’
    The overseer grinned.
    ‘I like this one,’ he said to Cehmai. ‘He’s got a quick head on him.’
    ‘I heard about the pumps the Khai’s eldest son had designed,’ Maati said. ‘I was wondering if you could tell me of them?’
    The grin widened, and the overseer launched into an expansive and delighted discussion of water and mines and the difficulty of removing the one from the other. Maati listened, struggling to follow the vocabulary and grammar particular to the trade.
    ‘He had a gift for them,’ the overseer said, at last. His voice was melancholy. ‘We’ll keep at them, these pumps, and they’ll get better, but not like they would have with Biitrah-cha on them.’
    ‘He was here, I understand, on the day he was killed,’ Maati said. He saw the young poet’s head shift, turning to consider him, and he ignored it as he had the andat’s.
    ‘That’s truth. And I wish he’d stayed. His brothers aren’t bad men, but they aren’t miners. And . . . well, he’ll be missed.’
    ‘I had thought it odd, though,’ Maati said. ‘Whichever brother killed him, they had to know where he would be - that he would be called out here, and that the work would take so much of the day that he wouldn’t return to the city itself.’
    ‘I suppose that’s so,’ the overseer said.
    ‘Then someone knew your pumps would fail,’ Maati said.
    The lamplight flickered off the surface of the water, casting shadows up the overseer’s face as this sank in. Cehmai coughed. Maati said nothing, did not move, waited. If any man here had been involved with it, the overseer was most likely. But Maati saw no rage or wariness in his expression, only the slow blooming of implication that might be expected in a man who had not thought the murder through. So perhaps he could be used after all.
    ‘You’re saying someone sabotaged my pumps to get him out here,’ the overseer said at last.
    Maati wished deeply that Cehmai and his andat were not present - this was a thing better done alone. But the moment had arrived, and there was nothing to be done but go forward. The servants at least were far enough away not to overhear if he spoke softly. Maati dug in his sleeve and came out with a letter and a small leather pouch, heavy with silver lengths. He pressed them both into the surprised overseer’s hands.
    ‘If you should discover who did, I would very much like to speak with them before the officers of the utkhaiem or the head of your house. That letter will tell you how to find me.’
    The overseer tucked away the pouch and letter, taking a pose of thanks which Maati waved away. Cehmai and the andat were silent as stones.
    ‘And how long is it you’ve been working these mines?’ Maati asked, forcing a lightness to his tone he did not feel.