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As the stone towers of Machi dominated the cold cities of the north, so the seafront of Saraykeht dominated the summer cities in the south The wharves stood out into the clear waters of the bay, ships from the other port cities of the Khaie them were also the low, shallow ships of the Westlands and the tall, deep sailing ships of the Galts, so strung with canvas they see the seafront streets, vendors of all different cities and lands sold wares frohtly colored cloths and banners, each calling out to the passers-by over the cries of seagulls and the grues, a hundred dialects, creoles, and pidgins danced in the hot, still air, and she knew them all
Amat Kyaan, senior overseer for the Galtic House Wilsin, picked her way through the croith a cane despite the sureness of her steps She savored the play of gra sand tag Knowing how to speak and what to say was her strength It was the skill that had taken her fro the colors of an honorable, if foreign, house and threading her way through the press of bodies and baled cotton to awith her ee of the soft quarter to Mar-chat Wilsin&039;s favorite bathhouse that wouldn&039;t have braved the seafront Still, whenever her s took her to the bathhouse, this was the way she picked The seafront was, after all, the pride and symbol of her city
She paused in the square at the ray-bricked street that e of the warehouse quarter The ancient bronze statue of Shian Sho, the last great e out across the sea, as if in enerations now, except for the cities of the Khaie h hite, oily bales Sohed, some shouted, some worked with a dreadful seriousness Soe of the seasonal work Others were indentured to houses or individual merchants A feere slaves And all of them were beautiful - even the fat and the aard Youthofthan the finest robes of the Khaiem, maybe because it wasn&039;t considered How uess that their sex was on display to an old wo for a ?
All of thehed, lifted her cane, and moved on
The sun had risen perhaps half the width of one hand when she reached her destination The bathhouses were inland, clustered near the banks of the Qiit and the aqueducts Marchat Wilsin preferred one of the suards knew her by sight and took aard poses of welco this particular place because it let hie She sketched a pose of welcon house had never been sireeressive and successful in war They held lands as wide and fertile as the Eht; they could command the respect and fear of other nations But the assureements could be enforced by blades, that threat of invasion or blockade otiation - failed in the cities of the Khaieht send their troops to Eddensea or their ships to Bakta, but when called upon for subtlety, they floundered Galt ht conquer the rest of the world if it chose; it would still bow before the andat Marchat Wilsin had lived long enough in Saraykeht to have accepted the bruise on his people&039;s arrogance Indulging his eccentricities, such as doing business in a bathhouse, was a small price
The air inside was cooler, and ornate orked screens blocked the hile still letting the occasional cedar-scented breeze through Voices echoed off the hard floors and walls So, the tones of his voice ringing like a bell Aed out of her robe and pulled off her sandals The cool air felt good against her bare skin She took a drink of chilled water froranite basin, and - as naked as anyone else - walked through the public baths filled withone another, to the private rooms at the back To Marchat Wilsin&039;s corner roohter
"It&039;s too hot in this pisshole of a city," Wilsin-cha growled as she entered the roo at his white, wooly chest He had been a thinner man when she had first met him His hair and beard had been dark "It&039;s like so a hot towel over your face"
"Only in the summer," Amat said and she laid her cane beside the water and carefully slipped in The ripples rocked the floating lacquer tray with its bowls of tea, but didn&039;t spill it "If it was any further north, you&039;d spend all winter coe of pace, at least"
He lifted a pink and wrinkled hand from the water and pushed the tray over toward her The tea was fresh and seasoned with ainst the tiled lip of the pool
"So what&039;s the news?" Marchat asked, bringing their s were going fairly well The ship unloaded The contracts with the weavers were nearly couities of translation from Galtic into the Khaiate that still troubled her And worse, the harvest of the northern fields was late
"Will they be here in tio in front of the andat?"
A
"No"
Marchat cursed under his breath "Eddensea can ship us a season&039;s bales, but we can&039;t get our own plants picked?"
"Apparently not"
"How short does it leave us?"
"Our space will be nine-tenths full"
Marchat scowled and stared at the air, seeing i the ehed
"Is there any chance of speaking with the Khai on it? Renegotiating our terms?"
"None," Amat said
Marchat made an impatient noise in the back of his throat
"This is why I hate dealing with you people In Eymond or Bakta, there&039;d be room to talk at least"
"Because you&039;d have soldiers sitting outside the wall," Amat said, dryly
"Exactly And then they&039;d find room to talk See if one of the other houses is overstocked," he said
"Chadhami is But Tiyan and Yaanani are in competition for a contract with a Western lord If one could ht seal the issue We could charge them for the earlier session with the andat, and then take part of their space later when our crop cootiated the house&039;s strategy for some time Which little alliance to make, and how it could most profitably be broken later, should the need arise
Amat knew more than she said, of course That was her job - to hold everything about the company clear in her mind, present her employer hat he needed to know, and deal herself with the things beneath his notice The center of it all, of course, was the cotton trade The complex web of relationships - weavers and dyers and sail houses, alum miners - that made Saraykeht one of the richest cities in the world And, as with all the cities of the Khaiem, free from threat of war, unlike Galt and Eddensea and Bakta; the Westlands and the Eastern Islands They were protected by their poets and the powers they wielded, and that protection allowed conferences like this one, allowed theame of trade and barter
Once their decisions had been ed a ti business from a bathhouse was an affectation Wilsin-cha could only take so far, and dripping water on freshly-inked contracts here she drew the line She knew he understood that As she rose, prepared to face the remainder of her day, he held up a hand to stop her
"There&039;s one other thing," he said She lowered herself back into the water "I need a bodyguard this evening just before the half candle Nothing serious, just sos off"
Amat tilted her head His voice was cal her eyes She held up her hands in a pose of query
"I have a ," he said, "in one of the lons"
"Co her voice neutral
He nodded
"I see," she said Then, after a moment, "I&039;ll be at the compound at the half candle, then"
"No A to swat off animals and oing to do for uard with me"
"Just send him to me," Wilsin said with a final air "I&039;ll take care of it froin conducting trade withoutsohed, it sent a ripple that spilled some of the tea
"It&039;s a sensitive issue, A care of ive you all the details when I can, but "
"But?"
"It&039;s difficult There are so to have to keep quiet about"
"Why?"
"It&039;s the sad trade," he said "The girl&039;s well enough along in the pregnancy that she&039;s showing And there are so rid of the baby that I need to address discreetly"
Amat felt herself bristle, but kept her tone calm as she spoke
"Ah I see Well, then If you feel you can&039;t trust my discretion, I suppose you&039;d best not talk to ht recommend someone else to take my position"
He slapped the water impatiently Amat crossed her arms It was a bluff in the sense that they both knew the house would struggle badly without her, and that she would be worse off without her position in it - it wasn&039;t a threat meant seriously But she was the overseer of the house, and A kept outside her own business Marchat&039;s pale face flushed red, but whether with annoyance or shame, she wasn&039;t sure
"Don&039;t break my stones over this one, Amat I don&039;t like it any better than you do, but I can&039;t play this one any differently than I am There is a trade I&039;ll see to it I&039;ll petition the Khai Saraykeht for use of his andat I&039;ll see the girl&039;s taken care of before and after, and I&039;ll see that everyone who needs paying gets paid I was in business before you signed on, you know And I a"
"I was just going to say the sa, pointed the other way You&039;ve consulted me on your affairs for twenty years If I haven&039;t done so to earn your mistrust - "
"You haven&039;t"
"Then why shut me out of this when you never have before?"
"If I could tell you that, I wouldn&039;t have to shut you out of it," Marchat said "Just take it that it&039;s not my choice"
"Your uncle asked that I be left out? Or is it the client?"
"I need a bodyguard At the half-candle"
Areement that also held a nuance of annoyance He wouldn&039;t catch the secondshe did when he&039;d upset her She rose, and he scooped the lacquer tray closer and poured himself more tea
"The client Can you tell me who she is?" Amat asked
"No Thank you, Aain, she dried herself and dressed The street, when she stepped into it, see, than when she went in She turned toward the House Wilsin compound, to the north and uphill She had to pause at a waterseller&039;s stall, buy herself a drink, and rest in the shade to collect her thoughts The sad trade - using the andat to end a pregnancy - wasn&039;t the sort of business House Wilsin had undertaken before now, though other houses had acted as brokers in soe in policy, and why the secrecy, and why Marchat Wilsin would have told her to arrange for the bodyguard if he hadn&039;t wanted her, on so, his heart in his throat The pale-skinnedin every nuance of his stance Maati&039;s hands didn&039;t tremble; he had trained for years, first at the school and then with the Dai-kvo His body kne to hide anxiety
The man in poet&039;s robes stopped, an expression half approval, half a that was neither the warmest nor the least formal With the reply made, Maati let his hands fall to his sides and stood His first real thought, now that the shock of his teacher&039;s sudden appearance was fading, was that he hadn&039;t expected Heshai-kvo to be so young, or so beautiful
"What is your name, boy?" the man asked His voice was cool and hard
"Maati Vaupathi," Maati said, crisply "Once the tenth son of Nicha Vaupathi, and now the youngest of the poets"
"Ah A westerner It&039;s still in your accent"
The teacher sat in theseat, his ar Maati The roo worriso, seemed suddenly squalid with the black-haired e, shifting in the hot breeze of late afternoon, seemed dirty beside the poet&039;s skin The man smiled, his expression not entirely kind Maati took a pose of obeisance appropriate to a student before his teacher
"I have come, Heshai-kvo, by the order of the Dai-kvo to learn from you, if you will havelike ere dancers Sit there On the bed I have so his legs beneath him in the formal way a student did in a lecture before the Dai-kvo Theabout it
"So Maati You cao?"
"Seven, Heshai-kvo"
"Seven And yet no one came to meet you No one came to collect you or show you the poet&039;s house It&039;s a long tinore his student, don&039;t you think?"
It was exactly what Maati had thought, several times, but he didn&039;t ad a lesson
"I thought so at first But as time passed, I saw that it was a kind of test, Heshai-kvo"
A tiny shosted across the perfect lips, and Maati felt a rush of pleasure that he had guessed right His new teacher hter
"I thought at first that it ht be a test of my patience To see whether I could be trusted not to hurry things when it wasn&039;t my place But later I decided that the real test was how I spentpatient and idle wouldn&039;t teach est library in the summer cities"
"You spent your time in the library?"
Maati took a pose of confirmation, unsure what to make of the teacher&039;s tone
"These are the palaces of the Khai Saraykeht, Maati-kya," he said with sudden farounds, the palaces, the long flow of streets and red tile roofs that sprawled to the sea "There are scores of utkhaieht passes here without a play being perfor And you spent all your tiroup of the utkhaiem They were from the westfrom Pathai I lived there before I went to the school"
"And you thought they ht have news of your fah it could have been Maati pressed his lips thinner, embarrassed, and repeated the pose of confirht seemed sympathetic
"And what did you learn in your productive, studious days with Saraykeht&039;s books"
"I studied the history of the city and its andat"
The elegant fingers made a motion that both approved and invited him to continue The dark eyes held an interest that told Maati he had done well
"I learned, for example, that the Dai-kvo - the last one - sent you here when Iana-kvo failed to hold Petals-Falling-Away after the old poet, Miat-kvo, died"
"And tell -Away had been used to speed cotton harvests for the previous fifty years," Maati said, pleased to know the answer "It could et the fibers With the loss, the city needed another way toit to cloth - better and faster than they could in Galt or the Westlands, or else the traders e You had captured Re-The-Part-That-Continues Called Sterile in the North, or Seedless in the summer cities With it, the merchant houses can contract with the Khai, and they won&039;t have to co to harvest, the cotton can still get to the spinners more quickly here than anywhere else Now the other nations and cities actually send their raw cotton here Then the weavers come here, because the raw cotton is here And the dyers and the tailors because of the weavers All the needle trades"
"Yes And so Saraykeht holds its place, with only a few ers and so a pose of confirmation with a softness to the wrists that confused Maati "But then, blood&039;s only blood, ne?"
The silence went on until Maati, unco to break it
"You also rid the summer cities of rats and snakes"
Thelike a s
"Yes At the price of drawing Galts and Westerreement less formal than before, and his teacher seemed not to mind In fact, he seemed almost pleased
"I also learned a lot about the particular needle trades," Maati said "I wasn&039;t sure how much you needed to know about what happens with the cotton once you&039;re done with it And sailing I read a book about sailing"
"But you didn&039;t actually go to the seafront, did you?"
"No"
The teacher took a pose of acceptance that wasn&039;t approval or disapproval, but so of both
"All this froh the school very young, so youtests Tellgames?"
"YouI&039;m sorry, Heshai-kvo It&039;syou really want to know that?"
"It can be telling Especially since you don&039;t want to say Do you?"
Maati took a pose of apology He kept his eyes dohile he spoke, but he didn&039;t lie
"When I got to the school - I was still aer cohorts - there was an older boy who said soardens, and my hands were too soft I couldn&039;t do the work And the black robe as tending us - Otah-kvo, his name was - was very upset with me But then, when I told him why I hadn&039;t been able to do as he asked, he tried to comfort me And he told me that if I had worked harder, it wouldn&039;t have helped That was just before he left the school"
"So? You mean someone told you? That hardly seeh He didn&039;t tell s about the school That it wasn&039;t what it looked like And the things he saidAnd then "
"And once you knew to look, it wasn&039;t hard to see I understand"