A Shadow In Summer(66)

Amat reluctantly ended her list.

"And before that, I need you to take me to the woman," she said.

Liat froze, then took a pose of acknowledgment.

"I need to speak with her," Amat said, knowing as she said the words precisely how inadequate they were. For a moment, she was tempted to tell the full story, to lighten Liat's burden by whatever measure the truth could manage. But she swallowed it. She put compassion aside for the moment. Along with fear and anger and sorrow.

Liat led her to a private room in the back, not far from Marchat Wilsin's own. Amat knew the place. The delicate inlaid wood of the floor, the Galtic tapestries, the window lattices of carved bone. It was where House Wilsin kept its most honored guests. Amat didn't believe it was where the girl had slept before the crime. That she was here now was a sign of Marchat's pricked conscience.

Maj lay curled on the ledge before the window. Her pale fingers rested on the lattice; the strange dirty gold of her hair spilled down across her shoulders and halfway to the floor. She looked softer. Amat stood behind her and watched the rise and fall of her breath, slow but not so slow as sleep.

"I could stay, if you like," Liat said. "She can . . . I think she is better when there are people around who she knows. Familiar faces."

"No," Amat said, and the island girl shifted at the sound of her voice. The pale eyes looked over her with nothing like real interest. "No, Liat-kya, I think I've put enough on you for today. I can manage from here."

Liat took a pose of acceptance and left, closing the door behind her. Amat pulled a chair of woven cane near the island girl and lowered herself into it. Maj watched her. When Amat was settled, the chair creaking under even her slight weight, Maj spoke.

"You hurt her feelings," she said in the sibilant words of Nippu. "You sent her away, didn't you?"

"I did," Amat said. "I came to speak with you. Not her."

"I've told everything I know. I've told it to a hundred people. I won't do it again."

"I haven't come to ask you anything. I've come to tell."

A slow, mocking smile touched the wide, pale lips. The fair eyebrows rose.

"Have you come to tell me how to save my child?"

"No."

Maj shrugged, asking with motion what else could be worth hearing.

"Wilsincha is going to arrange your travel back to Nippu," Amat said. "I think it will happen within the week."

Maj nodded. Her eyes softened, and Amat knew she was seeing herself at home, imagining the things that had happened somehow undone. It seemed almost cruel to go on.

"I don't want you to go," Amat said. "I want you to stay here. In Saraykeht."

The pale eyes narrowed, and Maj lifted herself on one elbow, shifting to face Amat directly. Amat could see the distrust in her face and felt she understood it.

"What happened to you goes deeper than it appears," Amat said. "It was an attack on my city and its trade, and not only by the andat and Oshai. It won't be easy to show this for what it was, and if you leave . . . if you leave, I don't think I can."

"What can't you do?"

"Prove to the Khai that there were more people involved than he knows of now."

"Are you being paid to do this?"

"No."

"Then why?"

Amat drew in a breath, steadied herself, and met the girl's eyes.

"Because it's the right thing," Amat said. It was the first time she'd said the words aloud, and something in her released with them. Since the day she'd left Ovi Niit, she had been two women—the overseer of House Wilsin and also the woman who knew that she would have to have this conversation. Have this conversation and then follow it with all the actions it implied. She laced her fingers around one knee and smiled, a little sadly, at the relief she felt in being only one woman again. "What happened was wrong. They struck at my city. Mine. And my house was part of it. Because of that, I was part of it. Doing this will gain me nothing, Maj. I will lose a great deal that I hold dear. And I will do it with you or without you."

"It won't bring me back my child."

"No."

"Will it avenge him?"

"Yes. If I succeed."

"What would he do, your Khai? If you won."

"I don't know," Amat said. "Whatever he deems right. He might fine House Wilsin. Or he might burn it. He might exile Wilsincha."

"Or kill him?"

"Or kill him. He might turn Seedless against House Wilsin, or the Galtic Council. Or all of Galt. I don't know. But that's not for me to choose. All I can do is ask for his justice, and trust that the Khai will follow the right road afterward."

Maj turned back to the window, away from Amat. The pale fingers touched the latticework, traced the lines of it as if they were the curves of a beloved face. Amat swallowed to loosen the knot in her throat. Outside, a songbird called twice, then paused, and sang again.