Shadow and Betrayal

smiled as if sharing a confidence.
    Handsome, perhaps, but Kirath would never be young again. This was not him, then. Amat hefted her cane. As a weapon, it was nothing. She wasn’t strong enough now to run, even if her aching hip would have allowed it. There was no fleeing, but she could make it a siege. She sat with the panic, controlling it, until she was able to think a little; to speak without a tremble in her voice.
    ‘What’s your name, dear?’
    ‘Ibris,’ the girl said.
    ‘Good. Ibris. Listen very closely. Go out the front - not the back, the front. Find the watch. Tell them about this man. And tell them he was threatening a client.’
    ‘But he . . .’
    ‘Don’t question me,’ Amat said. ‘Go. Now!’
    Years of command, years of assurance and confidence, served her now. The girl went, and when the door was closed behind her, Amat pushed the desk to block it. It was a sad, thin little barricade. She sat on it, adding her weight in hopes of slowing the man for the duration of a few extra heartbeats. If the watch came, they would stop him.
    Or they wouldn’t. Likely they wouldn’t. She was a commodity here, bought and sold. And there was no one to say otherwise. She balled her swollen fists around her cane. Dignity be damned. If Marchat Wilsin and Oshai were going to take her down, she’d go down swinging.
    Outside, she heard voices raised in anger. Ibris’s was among them. And then a young man shouted. And then the fire.
    The torch spun like something thrown by a street juggler through the window opposite her. Amat watched it trace a lazy arc through the air, strike the wall and bounce back, falling. Falling on papers. The flame touched one pile, and the pages took fire.
    She didn’t remember moving or calling out. She was simply there, stamping at the flames, the torch held above her, away from the books. The smoke was choking and her sandals gave little protection, but she kept on. Someone was forcing open the door, hardly slowed by her little barrier.
    ‘Sand!’ Amat shouted. ‘Bring sand!’
    A woman’s voice, high with panic, called out, but Amat couldn’t make out the words. The floating embers started another stack of papers smoldering. The air seemed full of tiny burning bits of paper, floating like fireflies. Amat kept trying to stop it, to put it out. One particularly large fragment touched her leg, and the burning made her think for one long, sickening breath that her robe had caught fire.
    The door burst open. Ibris and a red-haired Westland whore - Menat? Mitat? - burst in with pans of water in their hands.
    ‘No!’ Amat shouted as she rounded on them, swinging the torch. ‘Not water! Sand! Get sand!’
    The women hesitated, the water sloshing. Ibris turned first, dropping her pan though thankfully not on the books or the desk. The red-haired one threw her pan of water in the direction of the flames, catching Amat in the spray, and then they were gone again.
    By the time they returned with three of Ovi Niit’s house guards and two men of the watch, the fire was out. Only a tiny patch of tar on the wall still burned where the torch had struck on its way down. Amat handed the still-burning torch to a watchman. They questioned her, and then Ibris. Ovi Niit, when he returned, ranted like a madman in the common room, but thankfully his rage did not turn to her.
    Hours of work were gone, perhaps irretrievably. There was no pushing herself now. What had been merely impossible before would have been laughable now, had there been any mirth to cut her misery. She straightened what there was to be straightened, and then sat in the near-dark. She couldn’t stop weeping, so she ignored her own sobs. There wasn’t time for it. She had to think, and the effort to stop her tears was more than she had to spare.
    When, two or three hands later, the door opened, it wasn’t a guard or a watchman or a whore. It was Ovi Niit himself, eyes as wide as the heavy lids would permit, mouth thin as an inked line on paper. He stalked in, his gaze darting restlessly. Amat watched him the way she would have watched a feral dog.
    ‘How bad?’ he asked, his voice tight.
    ‘A setback, Niit-cha,’ she said. ‘A serious one, but . . . but only a setback.’
    ‘I want him. The man who did this. Who’s taking my money and burning my house? I want him broken. I’ll piss in his mouth.’
    ‘As you see fit, Niit-cha,’ Amat said. ‘But if you want it in a week’s time, you may as well cut me now. I