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The boundary arch on the low road east of Saraykeht was a short walk from the Wilsin compound They reached it in about the time it took the crescent ers Buildings and roads continued, splaying out into the high grasses and thick trees, but once they passed through the pale stone arch wide enough for three carts to pass through together and high as a tree, they had left the city
"In Galt, there&039;d have been a wall," Marchat said
The young man, Itani, took a pose of query
"Around the city," Marchat said "To protect it in time of war We didn&039;t have andat to aim at each other like your ancestors did In Kirinton, where I was born, anyti the wall"
"Can&039;t have been pleasant," Itani agreed
"What do they do in Saraykeht when a boy&039;s caught stealing a pie?"
"I don&039;t know"
"Neversmile
"Rarely caught," Itani said Marchat laughed
Theystaff as s if the occasion arose, and this broad-backed, stone-arh canvas of a laborer Not so odd, he hoped, as to attract attention
"Noyga&039;s your faa Yes You work on Muhatia&039;s crew, don&039;t you?"
"He&039;s a good man, Muhatia," Itani said
"I hear he&039;s a prick"
"That too," Itani agreed, in the same cheerful tone of voice "A lot of the ot a sharp tongue, and he hates running behind schedule"
"You don&039;t ed It was another point in his favor The boy disliked his overseer, that was clear, and yet here he was, alone with the head of the house and not willing to tell tales against hiood for more than one reason That he could trust Itani&039;s discretion ree less awful
"What else was different in Kirinton?" Itani asked, and as they walked, Marchat told him Tales of the Galt of his childhood The ith Eymond, the blackberry harvests, the ht their sins to be burned The boy listened carefully, appreciatively Granted, he was likely just currying favor, but he did it well It wasn&039;t far before Marchat felt the twinges of ed somewhere once, before his uncle had sent him here
The road was very little traveled, especially in the dead of night The darkness made the uneven cobbles and then rutted dirt treacherous; the flies and night wasps were out in swar Cicadas sang in the trees The air smelled of moonrose and rain No one in the few houses they passed that had candles and lanterns still burning see before they were out, away froainst the road, and twice groups of e shifted in the grass, but nothing eed from it
As they came nearer the lon, Marchat could feel his co He couldn&039;t say if the laborer was picking up on his own growing dread, or if there was soht of the loas showing in the darkness when the"
Marchat tried to take a pose of polite encourages Instead he said, "Yes?"
"I&039; near to the end of my indenture," Itani said
"Really? How old are you?"
"Twenty su"
"You must have You&039;d have been, what? Fifteen?"
"There&039;s a girl," the youngtrouble with the words Embarrassed "She&039;swell, she&039;s not a laborer I think it&039;s hard for her that I am I&039;m not a scholar or a translator, but I have nuht know of any opportunities"
In the darkness, Marchat could see the boy&039;s hands twisted into a pose of respect So that was it
"If you move up in the world, you think she&039;ll like you better"
"It would s easier for her," Itani said
"And not for you?"
Again, the grin and this tis and put the sometimes, but it&039;s not difficult"
"I don&039;t know of anything just at hand I&039;ll see what I can find though"
"Thank you, Wilsin-cha"
They walked along another few paces The light before the barked, but not so nearby as to be worrisome, and no other barks or howls answered it
"She told you to ask reed, the tension that had been in his voice gone
"Are you in love with her?"
"Yes," the boy said, "I want her to be happy"
Those are two different answers, Marchat thought, but didn&039;t say He&039;d been that age once, and he re They were in the lon proper now, anyway
The streets here were s with their rotting thatch roofs and rough stone walls stood off at angles froh the town, a long, low house stood at the opening to a rough square A lantern hung from a hook beside its door Marchat motioned to Itani
"Wait for me here," he said "I&039;ll be back as soon as I can"
Itani nodded his understanding There was no hesitation or objection in his stance so far as Marchat could tell It was more than he would have expected of himself if someone had told hiht for soo with you, you poor bastard, Marchat thought And withwas low, and though the walls ide apart, the house had the feel of being too close Like a cave Part of that was the smell of mold and stale water, part the dim doorways and black arches that led to the inner rooth of one wall, and two h with a long knife hanging from his belt, eyed Marchat The other, , nodded welco
"Welcome to our humble quarters," the moon-faced h it was It was tooboat
"Is it here?" Marchat asked
Oshai nodded to a door set deeper in the glooht showed its outline Bad craftsrunted before walking deeper into the darkness The wood of the door ater-rotted, the leather hinge loose and ungainly Marchat had to lift the door by its handle to close it behind hiht candle stood in a wall niche, burned past half Several other candles burned on a s at the table itself was the andat Seedless Marchat&039;s skin crawled as the thing considered hi under the best circu that the andat returned, then Seedless pushed out a stool and motioned to it Marchat sat
"You were able to co?" Marchat asked
"The great poet of Saraykeht is spending his evening drunk As usual," Seedless replied, his voice conversational and s where I a"
"And I hear the wo we need Sweet-tempered, tractable, and profoundly credulous She&039;s unlikely to spook and run away like the last one And she&039;s from Nippu"
"Nippu?" Marchat said and curled his lip "That&039;s a backwater little island Don&039;t you think it ht raise suspicion? I e island come to Saraykeht just to drop her baby?"
"You&039;ll think of so the objection away "The point is she only speaks east island tongues If she were frouage Instead, you&039;ll be using Oshai as her translator It should be easy"
"My overseer ate this to someone who doesn&039;t?" Seedless said "Or are all of your employees brilliant translators?"
"Any idea who the father is?" Marchat said, shifting the subject
Seedless esture that wasn&039;t a for in it with a sweep of his delicate fingers
"Who knows? Soh her town and got her legs apart No one who&039;ll notice or care much if he does He isn&039;t i?"
"We&039;re prepared We have the payths of silver It&039;s the sort of thing an East Islander ht pay with," Marchat said "And there&039;s no reason the Khai should look into it until the thing&039;s been done"
"That&039;s to the good, then," Seedless said "Arrange the audience with the Khai If all goes well, on&039;t have to speak again, you and I"
Marchat started to take a pose that expressed hope, but halfway in wondered if itway He saw Seedless notice his hesitation A thin s on, Marchat abandoned the pose
"It ork, won&039;t it?" he asked
"It isn&039;t the first babe I&039;ll drop out before its time This is what I am, Wilsin"
"No, I don&039;t mean can you do it I mean will it really break hiive hi doesn&039;t workIf there&039;s any chance at all that it should fail and the Khai find out that Galts were conspiring to deprive hie"
Seedless shifted forward on his chair, his gaze fastened on nothing Marchat had heard once that andat didn&039;t breathe except to speak He watched the un moment while the andat was silent The rumor appeared true At last, the spirit drew in his breath and spoke
"Heshai is about to kill a child whoseworse than that Not for hi to watch the light die in her eyes and know that without him, it wouldn&039;t have happened You want to knoill that break hi"
They were silent for a er on the andat&039;s face made Marchat squir of nothing ar crop, Seedless leaned back and grinned
"With the poet broken, you&039;ll be rid of me, which is what you want," Seedless said, "and I won&039;t exist anymore to care one way or the other So we&039;ll both have won"
"You sound like a suicide to me," Marchat said "You want your own death"
"In a sense," Seedless agreed "But it doesn&039;t mean for me what it would for you We aren&039;t the sareed"
"Do you want to see her? She&039;s asleep in the next room If you&039;re quiet "
"No, thank you," Marchat said, rising "I&039;ll arrange things with Oshai once I&039;ve scheduled the audience with the Khai He and I canher at all before the day itself, that would be good"
"If good&039;s the word," Seedless said, taking a pose of agreeht seeround, as if shaking dried ers His chest ached with so like dread It was rotten, this business Rotten and wrong and dangerous And if he did anything to prevent itwhat then? The Galtic High Council would have him killed, to start He couldn&039;t stop it He couldn&039;t even bow out and let soh this but through At least he&039;d kept A ell?" the boy Itani asked
"Well enough," Marchat lied as he started off briskly into the darkness
AMAT KYAAN had hoped to set out in the , before the day&039;s heat was too thick Liat had coh, but the details were few and sketchy Marchat and the boy hadn&039;t gotten back to the compound until past the quarter candle, and his report to Liat hadn&039;t been as thorough as it ht have been had he knohat use he had been put to It had been enough to find which of the lons they had visited and what sort of house they&039;d gone to
Armed with those facts, it hadn&039;t been so hard to find a contract that rented such a building, one that had been paid out of Wilsin&039;s private funds and not those of the house proper There were letters that spoke vaguely of a girl and a journey to Saraykeht, but the time it took to find thatAs she walked down the low road east of the city, the boundary arch grown s Sweat ran down her spine, and her bad hip ached already
In the cool just before dawn, itwith cicadas, the trees were thick with their summer leaves As it was, Amat felt as damp as if she&039;d walked out of a bathhouse, drenched in her oeat The sun pressed on her shoulders like a hand And the trip back, she kneould be worse
Men and wo and deference as they passed her, universally heading into the city They pushed handcarts of fruits and grains, chickens and ducks to sell to the compounds of the rich or the palaces or the open markets Some carried loads on their backs On one particularly rutted stretch of road, she passed an oxcart where it had slid into the roadsidean ox who seemed barely to notice him Amat&039;s practiced eye valued the wheel at three of four times the contents of the cart Whoever the boy carter answered to - father, uncle, or farh to own indentured labor - they wouldn&039;t be pleased to hear of this Amat stepped around, careful how she placed her cane, and es of all the cities of the Khaiem like swarms of flies Outside the boundaries of the city, no particular law bound these men and women; the utkhaiem didn&039;t enforce peace or punish crireee who passed an opinion, which was followed enerations were as complex and effective as the laws of the E the broken cobbles of the low road by herself, so long as it was in daylight and there was enough traffic to keep the dogs away
No qualht find at the end
The lon itself orse than she&039;d expected Itani hadn&039;t mentioned the ss and pigs and chickens all shared the path with her A girl perhaps two years old stood naked in a doorway as she passed, her eyes no s&039; Aine Marchat Wilsin, head of House Wilsin in Saraykeht, trudging through this squalor in the dead of night But there was the house Itani had described to Liat, and then Liat to her Amat stood in the ruined square and steeled herself To be turned back noould be hu
So, she told herself, she wouldn&039;t be turned back Si the doorfra barked, as if the hail had been intended for hiloo impatience She was the senior overseer of the house She er was a better mask than courtesy She crossed her arer then she was, but still gray about the teh clothes inspired no confidence, and the knife at his belt shone For the first time, Amat wondered if she had come unprepared Perhaps if she&039;dthe man as if he were a servant
The silence between them stretched
"What?" the man demanded at last
"I&039;m here to see the woman," Amat Kyaan said "Wilsincha wants an inventory of her health"
The aze passed over her head, nervously surveying the street
"You got the wrong place, grand about"
"I&039;m Amat Kyaan, senior overseer for House Wilsin And if you don&039;t want to continue our conversation here in the open, you should invitetoward his knife and then away He was caught, she could see To let her in was an ad her away risked the anger of his employer if Amat ho she said she was, and on the errand she claimed Amat took a pose of query that implied the offer of assistance - not a pose she would wish to see from a superior
The knife man&039;s dilemma was solved when another for very much, a round, pale face, hair unkempt as one woken from sleep The annoyance in his expression seemed to mirror her own, but the knife man&039;s reaction was of visible relief This was his overseer, then Amat turned her attention to him
"This woman," the knife man said "She says she&039;s Wilsin&039;s overseer"
Theto her even as he spoke to the other man