A Shadow In Summer(13)

No qualms except for what she might find at the end.

The low town itself was worse than she'd expected. Itani hadn't mentioned the smell of shit or the thick, sticky mud of the roads. Dogs 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 more domesticated than the pigs'. Amat found herself struggling to imagine 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 now would be humiliating.

So, she told herself, she wouldn't be turned back. Simple as that.

"Hai!" Amat called, rapping the doorframe with her cane. Across the square, a dog barked, as if the hail had been intended for him. Something stirred in the gloom of the house. Amat stood back, cultivating impatience. She was the senior overseer of the house. She mustn't go into this unsure of herself, and anger was a better mask than courtesy. She crossed her arms and waited.

A man emerged, younger then she was, but still gray about the temples. His rough 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'd made Itani accompany her . . . She raised her chin, considering the man as if he were a servant.

The silence between them stretched.

"What?" the man demanded at last.

"I'm here to see the woman," Amat Kyaan said. "Wilsincha wants an inventory of her health."

The man frowned, and his gaze passed over her head, nervously surveying the street.

"You got the wrong place, grandmother. I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm Amat Kyaan, senior overseer for House Wilsin. And if you don't want to continue our conversation here in the open, you should invite me in."

He hesitated, hand twitching toward his knife and then away. He was caught, she could see. To let her in was an admission that some traffic was taking place. But turning her away risked the anger of his employer if Amat was who 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's dilemma was solved when another form appeared. The newcomer looked like nothing 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'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's Wilsin's overseer."

The moon-faced man smiled pleasantly and took a pose of greeting to her even as he spoke to the other man.

"That would be because she is. Welcome, Kyaancha. Please come in."

Amat strode into the low house, the two men stepping back to let her pass. The round-faced man closed the door, deepening the gloom. As Amat's eyes adjusted to the darkness, details began to swim out of it. The wide, low main room, too bare to mark the house as a place where people actually lived. The moss growing at edge where wall met ceiling.

"I've come to see the client," Amat said. "Wilsincha wants to be sure she's well. If she miscarries during the negotiations, we'll all look fools."

"The client? Yes. Yes, of course," the round-faced man said, and something in his voice told Amat she'd stepped wrong. Still, he took a pose of obeisance and motioned her to the rear of the place. Down a short hallway, a door opened to a wooden porch. The light was thick and green, filtered through a canopy of trees. Insects droned and birds called, chattering to one another. And leaning against a half-rotten railing was a young woman. She was hardly older than Liat, her skin the milky pale of an islander. Golden hair trailed down her back, and her belly bulged over a pair of rough canvas laborer's pants. Half, perhaps three-quarters of the way through her term. Hearing them, she turned and smiled. Her eyes were blue as the sky, her lips thick. Eastern islands, Amat thought. Uman, or possibly Nippu.

"Forgive me, Kyaancha," the moon-faced man said. "My duties require me elsewhere. Miyama will be here to help you, should you require it."

Amat took a pose of thanks appropriate for a superior releasing an underling. The man replied with the correct form, but with a strange half-mocking cant to his wrists. He had thick hands, Amat noted, and strong shoulders. She turned away, waiting until the man's footsteps faded behind her. He would go, she guessed, to Saraykeht, to Wilsin. She hadn't managed to avoid suspicion, but by the time Marchat knew she'd discovered this place, it would be too late to shut her out of it. It would have to do.