"We've made progress," Amat said, her voice softer now. She could hear the exhaustion in her own words. "I have records of all the transactions. The pearls that paid the Khai came on a Galtic ship, but I have to find which one."
"That will be enough?"
"That will be a start," Amat said. "But there will be more. Torish-cha has had men on the seafront, offering payment for information. Nothing's come from it yet, but it will. These things take time."
Maj leaned close, placing a handful of debris into Amat's makeshift bag. She meant well, Amat knew, but she buried the flowers all the same. Amat met her gaze. Maj tried to smile.
"You're drunk," Amat said gently. "You should go and sleep. Things will look better in the morning."
"And worse again when night comes," Maj said and shook her head, then lurched forward and kissed Amat's mouth. As she left—awkward phrases in civilized languages passing between her and the guard at the door—Amat dropped the ruined vase into the small crate she kept beside her desk. Her flesh felt heavy, but there were books to be gone over, orders to place for the house and audits to be made.
She was doing the work, she knew, of three women. Had she seen forty fewer summers, it might have been possible. Instead, each day seemed to bring collapse nearer. She woke in the morning to a list of things that had to be completed—for the comfort house and for the case she was building inch by inch against House Wilsin—and fell asleep every night with three or four items still undone and the creeping sense that she was forgetting something important.
And the house, while it provided her the income she needed to pay for investigations and bribes and rewards, was just the pit of vipers that she'd been warned it would be. Mitat was her savior there—she knew the politics of the staff and had somehow won the trust of Torish Wite. Still, it seemed as if every decision had to be brought to Amat eventually. Whose indenture to end, whose to hold. What discipline to mete out against the women whose bodies were the produce she sold, what against the men who staffed the gambling tables and provided the wine and drugs. How to balance rule from respect and rule from fear. And Mitat, after all, had stolen from the house before. . . .
The night candle—visibly longer now and made of harder wax than the ones that measured the short nights of summer—was near its halfway mark when Amat put down her pen. Three times she added a column of numbers, and three times had found different sums. She shrugged out of her robes and pulled the netting closed around the bed, asleep instantly, but troubled by dreams in which she recalled something critical a hand's breadth too late.
She woke to a polite scratch at her door. When she called out her permission, Mitat entered bearing a tray. Two thick slices of black bread and a bowl of bitter tea. Amat sat up, pulled the netting aside, and took a pose of gratitude as the redhaired woman put the tray on the bed beside her.
"You're looking nicely put together this morning," Amat said.
It was true. Mitat wore a formal robe of pale yellow that went nicely with her eyes. She looked well-rested, which Amat supposed also helped.
"We have the payment to make to the watch," Mitat said. "I was hoping you might let me join you."
Amat closed her eyes. The watch monies. Of course. It would have been very poor form to forget that, but she nearly had. The darkness behind her eyelids was comfortable, and she stayed there for a moment, wishing that she might crawl back to sleep.
"Grandmother?"
"Of course," Amat said, opening her eyes again and reaching for the bowl of tea. "I could do with the company. But you'll understand if I handle the money."
Mitat grinned.
"You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"
"Likely not. Get me a good robe, will you. There's a blue with gray trim, I think, that should do for the occasion."
The streets of the soft quarter were quiet. Amat, her sleeve weighted by the boxed lengths of silver, leaned on her cane. The night's rain had washed the air, and sunlight, pale as fresh butter, shone on the pavements and made the banners of the great comfort houses shimmer. The baker's kilns filled the air with the scent of bread and smoke. Mitat walked beside her, acting as if the slow pace were the one she'd have chosen if she had been alone, avoiding the puddles of standing water where the street dipped, or where alleyways still disgorged a brown trickle of foul runoff. In the height of summer, the mixture of heat and damp would have been unbearable. Autumn's forgiving cool made the morning nearly pleasant.
Mitat filled in Amat Kyaan on the news of the house. Chiyan thought she might be pregnant. Torish-cha's men resented that they were expected to pay for the use of the girls—other houses in the quarter included such services as part of the compensation. Two weavers were cheating at tiles, but no one had caught them at it as yet.