Shadow and Betrayal

there was a way out of this blasted, dim, hell-bound coffin of a room, she knew she’d have made sense of it by now. She’d been chewing on it for three days.
    Three days. The beginning of four weeks. Or five. She rolled to her side and lifted the flask of water Kirath, her once-lover, had brought her that morning. It was more than half emptied. She had to be more careful. She sipped the blood-hot water and lay back down. Night would come.
    And with an aching slowness, night came. In the darkness, it was only a change in the sounds below her, the drifting scent of an evening meal, the slightest cooling of her little prison. She needed no more to tell her to prepare. She sat in the darkness by the trapdoor until she heard Kirath approaching, moving the thin ladder, climbing up. Amat raised the door, and Kirath rose from the darkness, a hooded lantern in one hand. Before she could speak, he gestured for silence and then that she should follow. Climbing down the ladder sent pain through her hip and knee like nails, but even so the motion was better than staying still. She followed him as quietly as she could through the darkened house and out the back door to a small, ivied garden. The summer breeze against her face, even thick and warm as it was, was a relief. Fresh water in earthenware bowls, fresh bread, cheese, and fruit sat on a stone bench, and Amat wolfed them as Kirath spoke.
    ‘I may have found something,’ he said. There was gravel in his voice now that had not been there when he’d been a young man. ‘A comfort house in the soft quarter. Not one of the best, either. But the owner is looking for someone to audit the books, put them in order. I mentioned that I knew someone who might be willing to take on the work in exchange for a discreet place to live for a few weeks. He’s interested.’
    ‘Can he be trusted?’
    ‘Ovi Niit? I don’t know. He pays for his wine up front, but . . . Perhaps if I keep looking. In a few more days . . . There’s a caravan going north next week, I might . . .’
    ‘No,’ Amat said. ‘Not another day up there. Not if I can avoid it.’
    Kirath ran a hand over his bald pate. His expression in the dim lantern light seemed both relieved and anxious. He wanted her quit of his home as badly as she wished to be quit of it.
    ‘I can take you there tonight then, if you like,’ he offered. The soft quarter was a long walk from Kirath’s little compound. Amat took another mouthful of bread and considered. It would ache badly, but with her cane and Kirath both to lean on, she thought she could do the thing. She nodded her affirmation.
    ‘I’ll get your things, then.’
    ‘And a hooded robe,’ Amat said.
    Amat had never felt as conspicuous as during the walk to the soft quarter. The streets seemed damnably full for so late at night. But then, it was the harvest, and the city was at its most alive. That she herself hadn’t spent summer nights in the teahouses and midnight street fairs for years didn’t mean such things had stopped. The city had not changed; she had.
    They navigated past a corner where a firekeeper had opened his kiln and put on a show, tossing handfuls of powder into the flames, making them dance blue and green and startling white. Sweat sheened the firekeeper’s skin, but he was grinning. And the watchers - back far enough that the heat didn’t cook them - applauded him on. Amat recognized two weavers sitting in the street, talking, and watching the show, but they didn’t notice her.
    The comfort house itself, when they reached it, was awash with activity. Even in the street outside it, men gathered, talking and drinking. She stood a little way down the street at the mouth of an alleyway while Kirath went in. The house itself was built in two levels. The front was the lower, a single story but with a pavilion on the roof and blue and silver cloths hanging down the pale stucco walls. The back part of the house carried a second story and a high wall that might encompass a garden in the back. Certainly a kitchen. There were, however, few windows, and those there were were thin and cut high in the wall. For privacy, perhaps. Or to keep anyone from climbing out them.
    Kirath appeared in the main doorway, silhouetted by the brightness within, and waved her over. Leaning on her cane, she came.
    Within, the main room was awash in gamblers at their tables - cards, dice, tiles, stones. The air was thick with the smoke of strange leaves and flowers. No