Shadow and Betrayal

showfighting of animals or men, at least. Kirath led her to the back and through a thick wooden door. Another long room, this filled with whores lounging on chairs or cushions. The lamps were lower, the room almost shadowless. A fountain murmured at one wall. The painted eyes of women and boys turned as she entered, and then turned away again, returning to their conversations, as it became clear that neither she nor Kirath were clients come to choose from amongst them. A short hallway lined with doors turned at its end and stopped blind at a heavy wooden door, bound with iron. The door opened before them.
    Amat Kyaan stepped into the sudden squalor of the back house. A wide common room with tables. A long alcove at the side with cloth, leather, and sewing benches. Several doors led off, but it wasn’t clear to where.
    ‘This way,’ a man said. He was splendidly dressed, but had bad teeth. As he led them between the long rough-wood tables toward a thin door at the back, Amat gestured toward him with a pose of query, and Kirath nodded. The owner. Ovi Niit.
    The books, such as they were, sat on a low table in a back room. Amat’s spirits sank looking at them. Loose sheets or poorly bound ledgers of cheap paper. The entries were in half a dozen hands, and each seemed to have its own form. Sums had been written, crossed out, and written in again.
    ‘This is salvage work,’ she said, putting down a ledger.
    Ovi Niit leaned against the doorway behind her. Heavy-lidded eyes made him seem half-asleep and in the close quarters, he smelled of musk and old perfume. He was young enough, she guessed, to be her child.
    ‘I could put it in something like order in a moon’s turn. Perhaps a little more.’
    ‘If I needed it a moon from now, I’d have it done in a moon. I need it now,’ Ovi Niit said. Kirath, behind him, looked grave.
    ‘I can get an estimate in a week,’ Amat said. ‘It will only be rough. I won’t stand by it.’
    Ovi Niit considered her, and she felt a chill despite the heat of the night. He shifted his head from side to side as if considering his options.
    ‘An estimate in three days,’ the young man countered. ‘The work completed in two weeks.’
    ‘We aren’t haggling,’ Amat said taking a pose of correction that was brusque without edging over into insult. ‘I’m telling you how things are. There’s no doing this in two weeks. Three, if things went well, but more likely four. Demanding it in two is telling the sun to set in the morning.’
    There was a long silence, broken by Ovi Niit’s low chuckle.
    ‘Kirath tells me men are looking for you. They’re offering silver.’
    Amat took a pose of acknowledgment.
    ‘I’d expected you to be more eager to help,’ Ovi Niit said. His voice feigned hurt, but his eyes were passionless.
    ‘I’d be lying. That couldn’t help either of us.’
    Ovi Niit considered that, then took a pose of agreement. He turned to Kirath and nodded. His pose to Amat shifted to a request for her forbearance as he drew Kirath out and closed the door behind them. Amat leaned against the table, her palm pressed to her aching hip. The walk had loosened her muscles a bit, but she would still have given a week’s wages for the pot of salve in her apartments. In the common room, she heard Kirath laugh. He sounded relieved. It took some of the tightness out of Amat’s throat. Things must be going well. For a moment, a voice in the back of her mind suggested that perhaps it had all been a trick and Ovi Niit and Kirath were sending a runner to the moon-faced Oshai even while she waited here, oblivious. She put the thought aside. She was tired. The days in the hellish attic had worn her thin, that was all. In the common room, a door opened and closed, and a moment later Ovi Niit stepped back into the room.
    ‘I’ve given our mutual friend a few lengths of silver and sent him home,’ the young man said. ‘You’ll sleep with the whores. There’s a common meal at dawn, another at three hands past midday, and another at the second mark on the night candle.’
    Amat Kyaan took a pose of thanks. Ovi Niit responded with an acceptance so formal as to be sarcastic. When he struck, it was quick; she did not see the blow coming. The ring on his right hand cut her mouth, and she fell back, landing hard. Pain took her hip so fierce it seemed cold.
    ‘Three days to an estimate. Two weeks to a full balance. For every day you are late, I will have you cut,’ he said, his voice