"She's a wonderful woman," Otah said, carefully. "Sometimes maybe a little difficult to trust, but still a good woman."
Maati nodded.
"Perhaps I should go," Otah said softly.
"I'm so sorry," Maati whispered to the fire. "Otahkvo, I am so very, very sorry."
"You didn't do anything that hasn't been done a thousand times before by a thousand different people."
"But I did it to you. I betrayed you. You love her."
"But I don't trust her," Otah said softly.
"Or me. Not any longer," Maati said.
"Or you," Otah agreed, and pulling his robes close around him, he walked out of the poet's house and into the darkness. He closed the door, paused, and then hit it hard enough to bloody his knuckle.
The pain in his chest was real, and the rage behind it. And also, strangely, an amusement and a sense of relief. He walked slowly down to the edge of the pond, wishing more than anything that the courier Orai had been on his way to Saraykeht instead of Machi. But the world was as it was. Maati and Liat had become lovers, and it was devouring Maati just as some other tragedy had broken his teacher. Amat Kyaan was pursuing her suit before the Khai Saraykeht in a matter of days. Everything Seedless had said to him appeared to be true. And so he stood in the chill by the koi pond, and he waited, throwing stones into the dark water, hearing them strike and sink and be forgotten. He knew the andat would come to him if he were only patient. It wasn't more than half a hand.
"He's told you, then," Seedless said.
The pale face hovered in the night air, a rueful smile on the perfect, sensual lips.
"You knew?"
"Gods. The world and everyone knew," the andat said, stepping up beside him to look out over the black water. "They were about as discreet as rutting elk. I was only hoping you wouldn't hear of it until you'd done me that little favor. It's a pity, really. But I think I bear up quite well under failure, don't you?"
Otah took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He thought perhaps he could see just the wisps of it in the cold. Beside him the andat didn't breathe because whatever it looked like, it was not a man.
"And . . . I have failed," Seedless said, his tone suddenly careful, probing. "Haven't I? I can spill your secrets, but that's hardly worth murder. And I can't expect you to kill a man in order to protect your faithless lover and the dear friend who bedded her, now can I?"
Otah saw again Maati's angry, self-loathing, empty expression and felt something twist in his belly. An impulse born in him as a child in a bare garden of half-turned earth, half a life ago. It didn't undo the hurt or the anger, but it complicated them.
"Someone told me once that you can love someone and not trust them, or you can bed someone and not trust them, but never both."
"I wouldn't know," the andat said. "My experience of love is actually fairly limited."
"Tell me what I need to know."
In the moonlight, pale hands took a pose that asked for clarification.
"You said you knew where he would be. How long it would take him to drink himself to sleep. Tell me."
"And you'll do what I asked?"
"Tell me what I need to know," Otah said, "and find out."
THE MORNING after Liat's arrival at the comfort house—two days ago now—she'd awakened to the small sounds of Amat Kyaan sleeping. Only the faintest edge of daylight came through the shutters—these were the rooms of an owl. The faintest scent of Itani had still haunted her bedding then. When she rose, aching and awkward and half-sorry for the sex she'd insisted on in the night, Amat woke and took her downstairs. The workings of the house were simple enough—the sleeping chambers where the whores were shelved like scrolls in their boxes, cheap cloth over the bunks instead of netting; the kitchens in the back; the wide bath used for washing clothes and bodies during the day, then refilled and scented with oils before the clients came at night. The front parts of the house Amat explained were forbidden to her. Until the case against House Wilsin was made, she wasn't to leave the comfort house, and she wasn't to be seen by the clients. The stakes were too high, and Wilsincha had resorted to violence once already.
Since then, Liat had slept, eaten, washed herself, sat at Amatcha's desk listening to musicians on the street below, but no word had come from Itani or from Maati. On her second night, Liat had sent out a message to the barracks where Itani's cohort slept. It had come back in the morning with a response from Muhatia-cha. Itani Noyga had left, breaking his indenture in violation of contract; he was not with the men of the house, nor was he welcome. Liat read the words with a sense of dread that approached illness. When she took it to Amat Kyaan, her old master had frowned and tucked the letter into her sleeve.