Shadow and Betrayal

a certain amount of theft, she expected - one jewel replaced by another of less value. A few lengths of silver gone despite the locks. It wasn’t likely, though, that if she called for them, her boxes would be empty. And in an emergency, that would be very nearly all Amat cared about.
    The boy took a pose of acknowledgment and retreated down the stairs. Amat understood what Saraykeht had taught her through Ovi Niit. She wouldn’t be caught without her wealth again. That it was a courtesy of the great families of the Empire before it collapsed gave her something like precedent. Annan wouldn’t believe that it was unrelated to Maj and the sad trade, but he would understand from her answer that she didn’t want him to gossip about it. That would suffice.
    For the next hand and a half, she went through the contracts, making notations here and there - one copy for herself, one for the house. So late in the season, there were few changes to be made in the wording. But each contract carried with it two or three letters outlining the completion or modifications of terms and definitions, and these were the sort of things that would sink a trading house if they weren’t watched. She went through the motions, checking the translations of the letters in Galtic and the Khaiate, noting discrepancies, or places where a word might have more than one meaning. It was what she’d done for years, and she did it now mechanically and without joy.
    When she reached the last one, she checked that the inks were dry, rolled the different documents in tubes tied with cloth ribbons, and packed them into a light satchel - there were too many to fit in her sleeves. She took her cane, then, and walked out into the city, heading north to the Wilsin compound. Away from the soft quarter.
    The agents of the utkhaiem were present when she arrived at the wide courtyard of the house. Servants in fine silks lounged at the edge of the fountain, talking among themselves and looking out past the statue of the Galtic Tree to the street. She hesitated when she saw them, fear pricking at her for no reason she could say. She pushed it aside the way she pushed all her feelings aside these recent days, and strode past them toward Marchat Wilsin’s meeting room.
    Epani Doru, Wilsin-cha’s rat-faced, obsequious master of house, sat before the wide wooden doors of the meeting room. When she came close, he rose, taking a pose of welcome just respectful enough to pretend he honored her position.
    ‘I’ve some issues I’d like Wilsin-cha to see,’ she said, taking an answering pose.
    ‘He’s meeting with men from the court,’ Epani said, his voice an apology.
    Amat glanced at the closed doors and sighed. She took a pose that asked for a duration. Epani answered vaguely, but with a sense that she would be lucky to see her employer’s face before sundown.
    ‘It can wait, then,’ Amat said. ‘It’s about the sad trade? Is that what they’re picking at him for?’
    ‘I assume so, Amat-cha,’ Epani said. ‘I understand from the servants that the Khai wants the whole thing addressed and forgotten as quickly as possible. There have been requests to lower tariffs.’
    Amat clucked and shook her head.
    ‘Sour trade, this whole issue,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry Wilsin-cha ever got involved in it.’
    Epani took a pose of agreement and mourning, but Amat thought for a moment there was something in the man’s expression. He knew, perhaps. Epani Doru might have been someone who Marchat took into his confidence the way he hadn’t taken her. An accomplice to the act. Amat noted her suspicion, tucked it away like a paper into a sleeve, and took a pose of query.
    ‘Liat?’
    ‘In the workrooms, I think,’ Epani said. ‘The utkhaiem didn’t ask to speak with her.’
    Amat didn’t reply. The workrooms of the compound were a bad place for someone of Liat’s rank to be. Preparing packets for the archives, copying documents, checking numbers - all the work done at the low slate tables was better suited for a new clerk, someone who had recently come to the house. Amat walked back to the stifling, still air and the smell of cheap lamp oil.
    Liat sat at a table by herself, hunched over. Amat paused, considering the girl. The too-round face had misplaced its youth; Amat could see in that moment what Liat would be when her beauty failed her. A woman, then, and not a lovely one. A dreadful weight of sympathy descended on Amat Kyaan, and she stepped