Shadow and Betrayal

the trees were thick with their summer leaves. As it was, Amat felt as damp as if she’d walked out of a bathhouse, drenched in her own sweat. The sun pressed on her shoulders like a hand. And the trip back, she knew, would be worse.
    Men and women of the low towns took poses of greeting and deference as they passed her, universally heading into the city. They pushed handcarts of fruits and grains, chickens and ducks to sell to the compounds of the rich or the palaces or the open markets. Some carried loads on their backs. On one particularly rutted stretch of road, she passed an oxcart where it had slid into the roadside mud. One wheel was badly bent. The carter, a young man with tears in his eyes, was shouting and beating an ox who seemed barely to notice him. Amat’s practiced eye valued the wheel at three or four times the contents of the cart. Whoever the boy carter answered to - father, uncle, or farmer rich enough to own indentured labor - they wouldn’t be pleased to hear of this. Amat stepped around, careful how she placed her cane, and moved on.
    Low towns existed at the edges of all the cities of the Khaiem like swarms of flies. Outside the boundaries of the city, no particular law bound these men and women; the utkhaiem didn’t enforce peace or punish crimes. And still, a rough order was the rule. Disagreements were handled between the people or taken to a low judge who passed an opinion, which was followed more often than not. The traditions of generations were as complex and effective as the laws of the Empire. Amat felt no qualms about walking along the broken cobbles of the low road by herself, so long as it was in daylight and there was enough traffic to keep the dogs away.
    No qualms except for what she might find at the end.
    The low town itself was worse than she’d expected. Itani hadn’t mentioned the smell of shit or the thick, sticky mud of the roads. Dogs and pigs and chickens all shared the path with her. A girl perhaps two years old stood naked in a doorway as she passed, her eyes no more domesticated than the pigs’. Amat found herself struggling to imagine Marchat Wilsin, head of House Wilsin in Saraykeht, trudging through this squalor in the dead of night. But there was the house Itani had described to Liat, and then Liat to her. Amat stood in the ruined square and steeled herself. To be turned back now would be humiliating.
    So, she told herself, she wouldn’t be turned back. Simple as that.
    ‘Hai!’ Amat called, rapping the doorframe with her cane. Across the square, a dog barked, as if the hail had been intended for him. Something stirred in the gloom of the house. Amat stood back, cultivating impatience. She was the senior overseer of the house. She mustn’t go into this unsure of herself, and anger was a better mask than courtesy. She crossed her arms and waited.
    A man emerged, younger then she was, but still gray about the temples. His rough clothes inspired no confidence, and the knife at his belt shone. For the first time, Amat wondered if she had come unprepared. Perhaps if she’d made Itani accompany her . . . She raised her chin, considering the man as if he were a servant.
    The silence between them stretched.
    ‘What?’ the man demanded at last.
    ‘I’m here to see the woman,’ Amat Kyaan said. ‘Wilsin-cha wants an inventory of her health.’
    The man frowned, and his gaze passed over her head, nervously surveying the street.
    ‘You got the wrong place, grandmother. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    ‘I’m Amat Kyaan, senior overseer for House Wilsin. And if you don’t want to continue our conversation here in the open, you should invite me in.’
    He hesitated, hand twitching toward his knife and then away. He was caught, she could see. To let her in was an admission that some traffic was taking place. But turning her away risked the anger of his employer if Amat was who she said she was, and on the errand she claimed. Amat took a pose of query that implied the offer of assistance - not a pose she would wish to see from a superior.
    The knife man’s dilemma was solved when another form appeared. The newcomer looked like nothing very much, a round, pale face, hair unkempt as one woken from sleep. The annoyance in his expression seemed to mirror her own, but the knife man’s reaction was of visible relief. This was his overseer, then. Amat turned her attention to him.
    ‘This woman,’ the knife man said. ‘She says she’s Wilsin’s