Shadow and Betrayal

forward.
    ‘Amat-cha,’ Liat said when she looked up. She took a pose of apology. ‘I didn’t know you had need of me. I would have—’
    ‘I didn’t know it either,’ Amat said. ‘No fault of yours. Now, what are you working on?’
    ‘Shipments from the Westlands. I was just copying the records for the archive.’
    Amat considered the pages. Liat’s handwriting was clean, legible. Amat remembered days in close heat looking over numbers much like these. She felt her smile tighten.
    ‘Wilsin-cha set you to this?’ Amat asked.
    ‘No. No one did. Only I ran out of work, and I wanted to be useful. I’m . . . I don’t like being idle these days. It just feels . . .’
    ‘Don’t carry it,’ Amat said, still pretending to look at the written numbers. ‘It isn’t yours.’
    Liat took a questioning pose. Amat handed her back the pages.
    ‘It’s nothing you did wrong,’ Amat said.
    ‘You’re kind.’
    ‘No. Not really. There was nothing you could have done to prevent this, Liat. You were tricked. The girl was tricked. The poet and the Khai.’
    ‘Wilsin-cha was tricked,’ Liat said, adding to the list.
    Or trapped , Amat thought, but said nothing. Liat rallied herself to smile and took a pose of gratitude.
    ‘It helps to hear someone say it,’ the girl said. ‘Itani does when he’s here, but I can’t always believe him. But with him going . . .’
    ‘Going?’
    ‘North,’ Liat said, startling as if she’d said more than she’d meant. ‘He’s going north to see his sister. And . . . and I already miss him.’
    ‘Of course you do. He’s your heartmate, after all,’ Amat said, teasing gently, but the weariness and dread in Liat’s gaze deepened. Amat took a deep breath and put a hand on Liat’s shoulder.
    ‘Come with me,’ Amat said. ‘I have some things I need of you. But someplace cooler, eh?’
    Amat led her to a meeting room on the north side of the compound where the windows were in shade and laid the tasks before her. She’d meant to give Liat as little as she could, but seeing her now, she added three or four small things that she’d intended to let rest. Liat needed something now. Work was thin comfort, but it was what she had to offer. Liat listened closely, ferociously.
    Amat reluctantly ended her list.
    ‘And before that, I need you to take me to the woman,’ she said.
    Liat froze, then took a pose of acknowledgment.
    ‘I need to speak with her,’ Amat said, knowing as she said the words precisely how inadequate they were. For a moment, she was tempted to tell the full story, to lighten Liat’s burden by whatever measure the truth could manage. But she swallowed it. She put compassion aside for the moment. Along with fear and anger and sorrow.
    Liat led her to a private room in the back, not far from Marchat Wilsin’s own. Amat knew the place. The delicate inlaid wood of the floor, the Galtic tapestries, the window lattices of carved bone. It was where House Wilsin kept its most honored guests. Amat didn’t believe it was where the girl had slept before the crime. That she was here now was a sign of Marchat’s pricked conscience.
    Maj lay curled on the ledge before the window. Her pale fingers rested on the lattice; the strange dirty gold of her hair spilled down across her shoulders and halfway to the floor. She looked softer. Amat stood behind her and watched the rise and fall of her breath, slow but not so slow as sleep.
    ‘I could stay, if you like,’ Liat said. ‘She can . . . I think she is better when there are people around who she knows. Familiar faces.’
    ‘No,’ Amat said, and the island girl shifted at the sound of her voice. The pale eyes looked over her with nothing like real interest. ‘No, Liat-kya, I think I’ve put enough on you for today. I can manage from here.’
    Liat took a pose of acceptance and left, closing the door behind her. Amat pulled a chair of woven cane near the island girl and lowered herself into it. Maj watched her. When Amat was settled, the chair creaking under even her slight weight, Maj spoke.
    ‘You hurt her feelings,’ she said in the sibilant words of Nippu. ‘You sent her away, didn’t you?’
    ‘I did,’ Amat said. ‘I came to speak with you. Not her.’
    ‘I’ve told everything I know. I’ve told it to a hundred people. I won’t do it again.’
    ‘I haven’t come to ask you anything. I’ve come to tell.’
    A slow, mocking smile touched the wide, pale lips. The fair eyebrows rose.
    ‘Have you