Shadow and Betrayal

their positions or left entirely. The red-haired woman was still at her seat near the stairs; the fat girl was gone. A guard - not the same man as before, but of the same breed - caught her eye and nodded toward her workroom at the back. She took a pose of thanks, squared her shoulders and went in.
    Ovi Niit sat at her table. His hooded eyes made him look torpid, or perhaps he had been drinking his own wines. His robes were of expensive silks and well-cut, but he still managed to look like an unmade bed. He glanced up as she came in, falling into a pose of welcome so formal as to be a mockery. Still, she replied with respect.
    ‘I heard what was being offered for you,’ Ovi Niit said. ‘They’ve spread the word all through the seafront. You’re an expensive piece of flesh.’
    The sound of his voice made her mouth dry with fear and shame at the fear. She was Amat Kyaan. She had been hiding fear and loneliness and weakness since before the thug seated at her desk had been born. It was one of her first skills.
    ‘How much?’ she asked, keeping her tone light and disinterested.
    ‘Sixty lengths of silver for where you’re sleeping. Five lengths of gold if someone takes you to Oshai’s men. Five lengths of gold is a lot of money.’
    ‘You’re tempted,’ Amat said.
    The young man smiled slowly and put down the paper he’d been reading.
    ‘As one merchant to another, I only suggest that you make your presence in my house worth more than the market rate,’ he said. ‘I have to wonder what you did to become so valuable.’
    She only smiled, and wondered what ideas were shifting behind those half-dead eyes. How he could trade her, no doubt. He was weighing where his greatest profit might come.
    ‘You have my report?’ Ovi Niit asked. She nodded and pulled the papers from her sleeve.
    ‘It’s only a rough estimate. I’ll need to confer with you more next time, to be sure I’ve understood the mechanisms of your trade. But it’s enough for your purposes, I think.’
    ‘And what would a half-dead bitch like you know about my purposes? ’ he asked. His voice held no rancor, but Amat still felt her throat close. She forced a confidence into her tone that she didn’t feel.
    ‘From those numbers? I know what you must have suspected. Or else why would you have gone through the trouble to have me here? Someone in your organization is stealing from you.’ Ovi Niit frowned as he looked at her numbers, but he didn’t deny her. ‘And it would be worth more than five lengths of gold, I think, to have me find out who.’

5
    T he day of the grand audience came gray and wet. After the ceremonies at the temple, Liat and Marchat Wilsin had to wait their turn to leave, the families of the utkhaiem all taking precedence. Even the firekeepers, lowest of the utkhaiem, outranked a merchant here and at the grand audience. Epani-cha brought them fresh bread and fruit while they waited and directed Liat toward a private room where several women were taking advantage of the delay to relieve themselves.
    The morning rain had not stopped, but it had slackened. The sun had not appeared, but the clouds above them had lost their brooding gray for a white that promised blue skies by nightfall. And heat. The canopy bearers met them in their turn and House Wilsin took its place in the parade to the palace of the grand audience.
    There were no walls, precisely. The canopies fell behind as they reached the first arches, and walked, it seemed to Liat, into a wide forest of marble columns. The ceiling was so far above them and so light, it seemed hard to believe that they were sheltered - that the pillars held up stone instead of the white bowl of the cloudy sky. The hall of the grand audience was built to seem like a clearing in the stone forest. The Khai sat alone on a great divan of carved blackwood, calm and austere - his counselors and servants would not join him until after the audience proper had begun. Now, he alone commanded the open space before him. The utkhaiem surrounding the presentation floor like the audience at a performance spoke to each other in the lowest voices. Wilsin-cha seemed to know just where they should be, and steered her gently to a bench among other traders.
    ‘Liat,’ he said as they sat. ‘Trade is hard sometimes. I mean, the things you’re called on to do. They aren’t always what you’d wish.’
    ‘I understand that, Wilsin-cha,’ she said, adopting an air of confidence she only partly felt.