Shadow and Betrayal

early,’ he said at last, still not looking directly at her.
    ‘Am I?’
    ‘By three days.’
    Amat took a pose of apology more casual than she felt. Silence held them until at last Marchat looked at her directly. She couldn’t read his expression - perhaps anger, perhaps sorrow, perhaps exhaustion. Her employer, the voice of her house, sighed.
    ‘Amat . . . Gods, things have been bad. Worse than I expected, and I didn’t think they’d be well.’
    He walked to her, lowered himself onto the cushion that Liat usually occupied, and rested his head on his hands. Amat felt the urge to reach out, to touch him. She held the impulse in.
    ‘It’s nearly over,’ he continued. ‘I can convince Oshai and his men that it’s better to let you live. I can. But Amat. You have to help me.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘Tell me what you’re planning. What you’ve started or done or said that might stop the trade.’
    Amat felt a slow smile pluck her lips, a low, warm burble of laughter bloom in her chest. Her shoulders shook and she took a pose of amazement. The absurdity of the question was like a wave lifting up a swimmer. Marchat looked confused.
    ‘What I’ve done to stop it?’ Amat asked. ‘Are you simple? I’ve run like my life depended on it, kept my head low and prayed that whatever you’d started, you could finish. Stop you? Gods, Marchat, I don’t know what you’re thinking.’
    ‘You’ve done nothing?’
    ‘I’ve been through hell. I’ve been beaten and threatened. Someone tried to light me on fire. I’ve seen more of the worst parts of the city than I’ve seen in years. I did quite a bit. I worked longer hours at harder tasks than you’ve ever gotten from me.’ The words were taking on a pace and rhythm of their own, flowing out of her faster and louder. Her face felt flushed. ‘And, in my spare moments, did I work out a plan to save the house’s honor and set the world to rights? Did I hire men to discover your precious client and warn the girl what you intend to do to her? No, you fat Galtic idiot, I did not. Had you been expecting me to?’
    Amat found she was leaning forward, her chin jutting out. The anger made her feel better for the moment. More nearly in control. She recognized it was illusion, but she took comfort in it all the same. Marchat’s expression was sour.
    ‘What about Itani, then?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Itani. Liat’s boy.’
    Amat took a dismissive pose.
    ‘What about him? I used him to discover where you were going, certainly, but you must know that by now. I didn’t speak with him then, and I certainly haven’t since.’
    ‘Then why has he gone out with the poet’s student three nights of the last five?’ Marchat demanded. His voice was hard as stone. He didn’t believe her.
    ‘I don’t know, Marchat-cha. Why don’t you ask him?’
    Marchat shook his head, impatient, stood and turned his back on her. The anger that had held Amat up collapsed, and she was suddenly desperate that he believe her, that he understand. That he be on her side. She felt like a portman’s flag, switching one way to another with the shifting wind. If she’d been able to sleep before they spoke, if she hadn’t had to flee Ovi Niit’s house, if the world were only just or fair or explicable, she would have been able to be herself - calm, solid, grounded. She swallowed her need, disgusted by it and pretended that she was only calming herself from her rage, not folding.
    ‘Or,’ she said, stopping him as he reached the head of the stairs, ‘if you want to be clever about it, ask Liat.’
    ‘Liat?’
    ‘She’s the one who told me where the two of you had gone. Itani told her, and she told me. If you’re worried that Itani’s corrupting the poets against you, ask Liat.’
    ‘She’d suspect,’ Marchat said, but his tone begged to be proved wrong. Amat closed her eyes. They felt so good, closed. The darkness was so comfortable. Gods, she needed to rest.
    ‘No,’ Amat said. ‘She wouldn’t. Approach her as if you were scolding her. Tell her it’s unseemly for those kinds of friendships to bloom in the middle of a working trade, and ask her why they couldn’t wait until it was concluded. At the worst, she’ll hide the truth from you, but then you’ll know she has something she’s hiding.’
    Her employer and friend of years hesitated, his mind turning the strategy over, looking for flaws. A breath of air smelling of the sea touched Amat’s face. She could see it in Marchat’s eyes