A Shadow In Summer(26)

"You could tell me I'm wrong, if you liked," she said.

"No. They do think that. But we could go anyway. What does it matter what they think? They're only jealous of us. If we spend the evening preparing everything for Wilsincha, then in the morning—"

"It doesn't work like that. I can't just put in an extra half-shift and make all the problems go away. It's not like I'm shifting things around a warehouse. This is complex. It's . . . it's just not the sort of thing a laborer would understand."

Itani nodded slowly, stirring the leaves that wreathed his head. The softness of his mouth went hard for a moment. He took a pose that accepted correction, but she could see the formality in his stance and recognize it for what it was.

"Gods. Itani, I didn't mean it like that. I'm sure there are lots of things I don't know about . . . lifting things. Or how to pull a cart. But this is hard. What Wilsincha wants of me is hard."

And I'm failing, she thought, but didn't say. Can't you see I'm failing?

"At least let me take your mind off it for tonight," Itani said, standing and offering her his hand. There was still a hardness in his eyes, however much he buried it. Liat stood but didn't take his hand.

"I'm going before the Khai in four days. Four days! I'm completely unprepared. Amat hasn't told me anything about doing this. I'm not even sure when she'll be back. And you think, what? A night out getting drunk with a bunch of laborers at a cheap teahouse is going to make me forget that? Honestly, 'Tani. It's like you're a stone. You don't listen."

"I've been listening to you since you came. I've been doing nothing but."

"For all the good it's done. I might as well have been a dog yapping at you for all you've understood."

"Liat," Itani said, his voice sharp, and then stopped. His face flushed, he stretched out his hands in a gesture of surrender. When he went on, his voice hummed with controlled anger. "I don't know what you want from me. If you want my help to make this right, I'll help you. If you want my company to take you away from it for a time, I'm willing . . ."

"Willing? How charming," Liat began, but Itani wouldn't be interrupted. He pressed on, raising his voice over hers.

". . . but if there is something else you want of me, I'm afraid this lowly laborer is simply too thick-witted to see it."

Liat felt a knot in her throat, and raised her hands in a pose of withdrawal. A thick despair folded her heart. She looked at him—her Itani—goaded to rage. He didn't see. He didn't understand. How hard could it be to see how frightened she was?

"I shoudn't have come," she said. Her voice was thick.

"Liat."

"No," she said, wiping away tears with the sleeve of her robe as she turned. "It was the wrong thing for me to do. You go on. I'm going back to my cell."

Itani, his anger not gone, but tempered by something softer, put a hand on her arms.

"I can come with you if you like," he said.

For more of this? she didn't say. She only shook her head, pulled gently away from him and started the long walk up and to the north. Back to the compound without him. She stopped at a waterseller's cart halfway there and drank cool water, limed and sugared, and waited to see whether Itani had followed her. He hadn't, and she honestly couldn't say whether she was more disappointed or relieved.

THE WOMAN—Anet Nyoa, her name was—held out a plum, taking at the same time a pose of offering. Maati accepted the fruit formally, and with a growing sense of discomfort. Heshaikvo had been due back at the middle gardens from his private council with the Khai Saraykeht a half-hand past midday. It was almost two hands now, and Maati was still alone on his bench overlooking the tiled roofs of the city and the maze of paths through the palaces and gardens. And to make things more awkward, Anet Nyoa, daughter of some house of the utkhaiem Maati felt sure he should recognize, had stopped to speak with him. And offer him fruit. And at every moment that it seemed time for her to take leave, she found something more to say.

"You seem young," she said. "I had pictured a poet as an older man."

"I'm only a student, Nyoa-cha," Maati said. "I've only just arrived."

"And how old are you?"

"This is my sixteenth summer," he said.

The woman took a pose of appreciation that he didn't entirely understand. It was a simple enough grammar, but he didn't see what there was to appreciate about being a particular age. And there was something else in the way her eyes met his that made him feel that perhaps she had mistaken him for someone else.

"And you, Nyoa-cha?"

"My eighteenth," she said. "My family came to Saraykeht from Cetani when I was a girl. Where are your family?"