"It was an accident," Marchat said. "They didn't know it was him. They were only supposed to kill the girl."
Seedless stopped. His face was perfectly calm, his eyes cool. Anger radiated from him like a fire.
"You hurt my boy," he said.
"Blame Amat, if you have to blame anyone," Wilsin said. "It's her vendetta that's driving this. She's trying to expose us. She's dedicating her life to it, so don't treat this like it's something I chose."
Seedless narrowed his eyes. Marchat forced himself not to look away.
"She's close," he said. "She's looking at shipments of pearls from Galtic ports and tying them to the payment. With the money she's offering, it's only a matter of time before she gets what she's looking for. Leaving Liat be would have been . . . The girl could damage us. If it came before the Khai, she might damage us."
"And yet your old overseer hasn't taken her apprentice into her confidence?"
"Would you? Liat's a decent girl, but I wouldn't trust her with my laundry."
"You think she's incompetent?"
"No, I think she's young."
And that, oddly, seemed to touch something. The andat's anger shifted, lost its edge. Marchat took a free breath for the first time that night.
"So you chose to remove her from the field of play," Seedless said. "An accident of roof tiles."
"I didn't specify the tiles. Only that it should be plausible."
"You didn't tell them to avoid Maati?"
"I did. But gods! Those two are connected at the hip these days. The men . . . grew impatient. They thought they could do the job without damaging the poet boy."
"They were wrong."
"I know. It won't happen again."
The andat flowed forward, lifting himself up to sit on the meeting table beside the lantern. Marchat took a step back before he knew he had done it. The andat's pale fingers laced together and it smiled, an expression of such malice and beauty that it could never have been mistaken for human.
"If Maati had died," Seedless said, its voice low as distant thunder, "every crop in Galt would fail. Every cow and ewe would go barren. Your people would die. Do you understand that? There wouldn't have been a bargain struck or threats made. It would simply have happened, and no one might ever have known why. That boy is precious to you, because while he lives, your people live."
"You can't mean that," Marchat said, but sickeningly, he knew the andat was quite serious. He shook his head and adopted a pose of acknowledgment that he prayed would move the conversation elsewhere, onto some subject that didn't dance so near the cliff edge. "We need a plan. What to do if Amat makes her case to the Khai. If we don't have our defense prepared, she may convince him. She's good that way."
"Yes. She's always impressed me."
"So," Marchat said, sitting, looking up at the dark form above him. "What are we going to do? If she finds the truth and the proof of it, what then?"
"Then I do as I'm told. I'm a slave. It works that way with me. And you? You get your head and your sex shipped back to the Galtic High Council as an explanation for why a generation of Galtic babies are dropping out of their mother's wombs. That's only a guess, of course. The Khai might be lenient," Seedless grinned, "and stones may float on water, but I wouldn't want to rely on it."
"It's not so bad as that," Marchat said. "If you say that Oshai and his men—"
"I won't do that," the andat said, dismissing him as casually as an unwanted drink. "If it comes before the Khai Saraykeht and they ask me, I'll tell them what they want to know."
Marchat laughed. He couldn't help it, but even as he did, he felt the blood rushing away from his face. Seedless tilted his head like a bird.
"You can't," Marchat said. "You're as deep in this as I am."
"Of course I'm not, Wilsin-kya. What are they going to do to me, eh? I'm the blood their city lives on. If our little conspiracy comes to light, you'll pay the price of it, not me. What we've done, you and I, was lovely. The look on Heshai's face when that baby hit the bowl was worth all the weeks and months it took to arrange it. Really, it was brilliantly done. But don't think because we did something together once that we're brothers now. I'm playing new games, with other players. And this time, you don't signify."
"You don't mean that," Marchat said. The andat stood, its arms crossed, and considered the lantern flame.
"It would be interesting, destroying a nation," Seedless said, more than half, it seemed, to himself. "I'm not certain how Heshai would take it. But . . ."
The andat sighed and turned, stepping to Wilsin's chair and kneeling beside it. It seemed to Marchat that the andat smelled of incense and ashes. The pale hand pressed his knee and the vicious smile was like a blade held casually at his throat.