Shadow Gate

27

'It's so ugly,' said Girish with his habitual giggle as he hauled her into the smoky interior of the narrow house and shoved her toward a stained couch hidden behind a screen. 'I don't know what you see in it, Ramda.' His hands were shaking with excitement as his voice rose in a petulant whine. 'What do you have for me today? You promised me something new.'

Ramda was a thin, nervous man who never looked directly at her. I te flicked a hand toward the curtained entrance to the back rooms, not watching as Girish pushed past the curtain and vanished.

'Here.' Ramda handed her a lit smoke.

She brought it to her lips and sucked. Warmth spread from tingling lips down into her throat. She sighed, taking another suck as the warmth spread throughout her body. When Ramda limped over and dropped his trousers, she took another suck and let him press her back onto the couch with its lumps and damp spots. After a while he finished. Other customers came and went in the main room, and sometimes after coin changed hands a man might step behind the screen and lie down on top of her, breath hot against her face. The ceiling of the hall was half obscured by threads of smoke that traced patterns along the wood. She followed their slow dance with her eyes, the way smoke crawled up the slope of the eaves or pooled beside brackets and beams. Coin jingled. Men laughed. Dice rolled. A child's thin scream penetrated the smoke, and for a moment all fell quiet.

Then they started up again, gaming, drinking, smoking, talking. She drowsed in the warmth.

An argument erupted in the main room. The warmth was beginning to wear off as the smoke lost its hold. Ramda never gave her more than one for herself, and every time the ache of its leaving prodded her like a fresh wound. She fumbled with the ties of her long jacket, closing it over her naked body. Shoved from the other side, the screen clattered down on top of her. She fell off the couch, found herself sitting on the loose trousers slaves wore, her thighs sticky.

'Come! Come!' Girish shouted at her as he wiped blood from his hands with a cloth. She struggled clumsily to get the trousers on, unable to remember having taken them off.

Ramda shuffled in behind him. 'Get out!' His hair was mussed as if he had combed it with his hands. 'That's the second one this month you damaged. I don't want you to come back.'

'You cheating dog! You said it was a new one, but I saw the same one last week over at Nonku's chop. I wanted a fresh one. One that will really be scared.' He grabbed her by the braids and tugged her. She tripped over the trousers, which she hadn't gotten up over her knees. The long jacket bunched and tangled around her hips. He slapped her once, twice, a third time. 'I hate you! I hate you!' He spat at her. 'You're the cause of all my trouble, demon!'

'Here, now,' said Ramda, hands trembling as he picked up the screen and set it aright. 'No need to hit it. It's just a slave.'

'It's a demon. I wanted a wife, and they gave me a demon because they are pigs and scorpions, my own relatives! They're just jealous because Mother loves me best.'

'You're drunk, Girish. Would you get out?'

'If you don't let me come back, you'll not get to poke her again, eh? And what of the other men? I know you sell her stinking flower while I'm inside, heh, heh.' He rubbed his fingers together as if he was feeling the texture of a coin. 'Don't think I don't know that you're padding your sleeve with a little coin on the side, selling the demon while I'm busy elsewhere, eh? Heh.'

She wrestled her trousers up and tied them, then tugged down the long jacket.

Ramda stared mournfully at her, remembered himself, and looked away. 'If you damage my goods, you can't come back, Girish. I can't keep replacing the things you break.'

Girish handed him coin. 'You can replace it. Here. Get some new ones this time.'

Ramda sighed, taking the coin. 'You're rich, suddenly. Did Father Mei increase your allowance?'

'My brother?' Girish dropped the bloodied cloth to the ground, spat on it. 'He begrudges every copper.'

He hooked the leash to the slave bracelet she wore on her right wrist and yanked her after him, out the door and into the alley. The sun's light staggered her; its heat was a blow. When she stumbled, he whipped her with the end of the leash.

'Come on! Come on!' He whipped her again, and again, smiling as she cowered. 'Put your hands down. Put your hands down.'

So she did, and let him strike her across the torso and shoulders, shuddering under the lash, until he grew tired of the sport of seeing her cower submissively before him.

'We're late. Stupid demon. Why do you*always make me late?'

She walked behind, her gaze fixed on the ground, as he hurried onto a side street and through town to the market. Now, seeing acquaintances, he was all gracious smiles, smooth greetings, heartfelt inquiries after aged relatives and promising children, and unctuous agreement with whispered diatribes against their Qin

overlords. Women in the marketplace flirted with him as he browsed their wares, because he was a good-looking young man from a respectable clan. But there was still a speck of blood on the palm of his right hand. There was always blood on his hands; she just pretended there wasn't. The smokes Ramda gave her hid her aches, but they couldn't hide the blood. They couldn't hide the screams.

'Eh, there is the lovely Mai. How are you faring, Niece?' He fetched up before a fruit stand. 'Have you sold your quota today? Ensnared a wealthy husband, eh?'

Father Mei's eldest daughter sold fruit in the market, and she stared placidly at Girish from under the shade of a parasol. 'Uncle Girish. Here you are. Sales are good today, although the peaches are a little underripe. Of course Father Mei will choose a suitable husband for me. Maybe next year.'

'You are such a stupid stupid girl, Mai,' he said with a grin. 'Here, give me a peach.'

He grabbed, but the girl snatched up a peach and pressed it into his hand before he could topple her neatly stacked pile. He sulked, then spotted a pair of young men strutting down another lane. 'Hei! Hei!' he called.

As he turned to go after them, Mai slipped a peach into her hand. 'Here, Cornflower. Something for you.'

Horrified, she tried to hand it back, but he was already trotting toward his friends, and the leash, tugged taut, forced her to stumble along after lest he whip her for slowing him down.

His friends greeted him with lively expressions of joy – obviously drunk – and they fell to talking about some race meant to be held out beyond the walls in a few days' time, not that any of the locals were allowed to ride horses on penalty of death, but they could bet on the Qin soldiers who would be racing for the honor of their individual companies. Glancing back, his smile twisted and a flare of anger widened his eyes.

'Did you steal that, demon?' He snatched the peach out of her hand. 'Whew! A nice ripe one. Here.' He offered it to his friends.

'Not after the demon touched it!'

He shrugged. 'Eh, you're right. Tainted now. Probably make any of us sick.' He squeezed it until juices began to run, then gave it a

heave up over the rooftops. They walked on, chattering, as she trailed behind, grateful she had not been beaten. At length the friends left him, and he made many twists and turns through back alleys and arrived at a tavern's back entrance. Slipping inside, he was stopped by two Qin soldiers lurking in the corridor.

'Chain the demon up outside,' they told him. 'The commander does not want the creature anywhere close.'

'Chain her outside, and anyone who sees her will know I came here and wonder why.'

They grunted, and settled on shoving her into a tiny storeroom. She sank down between two barrels, head resting against the wall. It was nothing more than a thin barrier of wood, and through it she heard Girish's whine and the calmer rumble of a man speaking with the Qin way of chopping off k's and swallowing r's.

'This man said this, this man said that…' Names and complaints rolled off Girish's tongue as the Qin officer questioned him for details of the most incriminating and treasonous remarks made by the inhabitants of Kartu Town.

She shut her eyes. If she did not think, she would not hurt. How many days until he went back to Ramda's? He usually could not afford to go more than once a month, so she had another passage of the moon to hunger for the smoke. She could still taste it in her mouth, but the warmth had drained out of her.

'Hei! Hei! Lazy demon!'

The leash flicked so hard against a breast that she gasped. Hurry. Hurry. She scrambled up, and he hit her a few more times as the Qin soldiers watched impassively. When he pulled her past them, they stepped back so as not to touch her. An open door revealed a man dressed in a golden tabard, sitting on a pillow as he sipped from a cup. He glanced up with his demon-scratched eyes. Seeing her, he made a warding sign and gave a signal, and an unseen servant closed the door.

Out on the street, folk stared as Girish strode past with her on a leash behind. The Mei demon, they called her. Girish liked their whispering and pointing. Today he hummed under his breath, always a bad sign. He rarely used her, and then only at night when he was particularly restless and couldn't sleep. His brothers, and the other males in the house, eyed her when they thought he was not

looking, and their desire pleased Girish, who dragged her everywhere with him on the leash so he could gloat that he held what others lusted after. Everyone knew what he was, but they stared as at the smoke on the ceiling and pretended not to see and hear, not as long as the blood did not touch them.

Despite its orderly environs, the slave and livestock market stank of piss, fear, manure, and despair. Giggling now, he strode to the open corrals behind his favorite warehouse.

'Master Girish! So nice to see you. Please, please, this way. What are you looking for?'

'Ah, eh, yes. My mother desires a few children, pretty ones, to decorate her chamber and wait on her. What do you have that's fresh and new, nothing damaged.'

She stared at her feet, browned by the sun. Long sleeves covered her pale arms, and loose trousers covered her pale legs, the jacket buttoned up to her neck. A cap shaded her face; he whipped her if she forgot to wear it. But her feet and hands might turn brown, resembling the color of human skin. She wondered that if she were to turn brown all over, if she would become human, but maybe a demon could never be human, no matter what it once had believed it was.

'Cousin! Cousin!'

Her ears puzzled over the strange word. Her mind made a funny twist, and suddenly she was staring at her feet in the middle of a dusty, stinking, filthy pit of demons wondering why she was hearing true speech again. She looked up. In the fenced area in front of her huddled about twenty children, very young, dressed in little more than rags and looking thin and dirty. She saw him immediately because his dark hair and coloring and features were instantly familiar. He was a boy of the tribes, no more than eleven years of age, someone like her taken as a slave and sold away into demon land.

'I like the look of that one,' said Girish, following her gaze. He pointed at the boy. 'Where's it from?'

The merchant shrugged. 'Western tribes. There are so many of them out there, and they're all savages. I bought it on the Qin borderlands. You can see it's not a demon, not like that one you have there. I'll purchase her from you. Female demons are rare, I don't mind saying.'

'Not for sale.' Girish had a hefty pouch of coin in his hand. She'd never seen him with so much coin. He was usually begging for more, but not now. With a satisfied smirk, he counted out silver into the merchant's open hand. 'Send that boy and the other three I indicated to Ramda's house. You know the place.'

The merchant frowned uneasily, scratched his ear with his free hand, and sighed as he closed his hand over the payment. 'If you say so, Master. It's just that Ramda's house is known for-'

'Eh? What's that?'

'Nothing, Master. I hear you can get a good smoke there. I'll have them there by this evening.'

A small voice trembled from the huddle of child slaves, speaking words no one but she could understand. 'Cousin! Can you hear me? Aren't you of the tribes?'

Girish yanked so hard on the leash she fell onto her buttocks. Laughing, he dragged on her so she had to scramble backward on heels and forearms trying to get turned around as he cut back through the slave market. Eventually he tired of the joke and let her clamber to her feet.

'Come on, come on.' He took a brisk pace, humming and giggling, until they reached the Mei compound.

'Mountain!' he shouted. 'Mountain! I want a bath. Right away, you fat oaf!' He slapped her. 'Demon, brew me some tea. You know how I like it.' He strode off.

She remained in the family courtyard, shaking as with a fever. The boy's hopeful, frightened, desperate gaze burned in her mind's eye.

One never knows what gifts a stranger will bring. She touched the beaded nets that capped the ends of her braids. The memory of the boy's gaze was enough to make her remember Mariya and Orphan and Kontas and the tribe, when after all this time she had forgotten.

'Cornflower?'

The master's youngest brother paused while walking across the paved courtyard. Shai was the worst of them, because he stared the most at her when he thought no one was looking.

'You look like you've been dragged through the dirt,' he added. Mercifully, he looked away. He had thick arms and strong hands,

these clenched now as he muttered. 'Why does everyone look away and say nothing when they know what is happening?'

She said nothing.

After a moment, with a mighty sigh of frustration, he walked into the house.

She knew what was happening, no matter how much she stared at the smoke curling along the ceiling. Enough. She would not give that boy to Girish, not him and not the others.

In the compound of the Mei clan, slaves padded silently about their tasks. Compared with the misery of the brothel and the nightmare of the caravan, it was not a bad life as long as you did not ignite Father Mei's legendary temper or get in the middle of a dispute between jealous wives or aggravate one of Grandmother's petty grievances. As long as you ignored what Girish was, and what he did.

She went back to the servants' court and washed her hands and feet and face. Afterward, in the kitchens, she brewed tea and padded with a cup and a tray to Father Mei's office. No one noticed her as she slipped inside, head bowed, to stand by the door waiting to present the cup; she had lived in the clan for many months, and although they would never be used to her, she no longer startled them. He was making accounts, something he did with a stick marking a tablet, and after a bit he raised his eyes and frowned.

'What are you doing here?'

The door opened and his two wives hurried in, shut the door, and began to squabble.

'You just think the Gandi-li clan isn't of great enough consequence for Mai.'

'I think the lad is more suitable for Ti, yes. If he can stand to hear her spout all day!'

'How dare you say Ti is worth less than Mai-!'

Father Mei slapped a hand on his desk. 'Why have you barged in here to disturb my peace? I did not send for you. And who sent her in?'

The two wives turned, saw her, looked at each other in the way of enemies who have just become allies, and took a big step away.

He said, 'What are you doing here, slave?'

She did not use her voice often. It was hard to find, and certainly

it was easier to understand the words of the demon tongue when spoken by others than to get them to come out of her own mouth. 'Father Mei. Pardon, I beg you. Master Girish is a bad man with a bad heart. He hurts children to make them cry. He ruts with them to make them cry-'

He rose, his expression hardening.

The younger wife hissed in fear and grasped her sister's hand. Yet the older wife pressed her lips together, looking first at her husband and then at Girish's slave.

'Do not speak of this again. You are a slave, and a demon. You do not have a voice.' Glancing at his elder wife, he frowned to see on her face an emotion he did not like. 'Get out!' he commanded, and they fled the room, the door snicking shut behind them. In the room lay silence. Beyond the door, no footsteps pattered away, as if they had paused to listen.

He moved around the desk, took the tray out of her hands, and closed one hand around her pale throat, his palm coarse and warm against her skin.

'If you speak of such things again,' he said, 'I will kill you.'

In demon land, anything can happen. In every meaningful way, she is already dead. Except for the one last angry spark that has reawakened.

There was a shrub whose name she did not know but that produced beautiful five-petaled pink flowers to adorn most every garden in Kartu Town. The old woman at the brothel had taught the girls to brew it for a purgative that would loosen their wombs if they inconveniently caught a man's seed. It had to be brewed in just the right proportions: too little, and you would just vomit; too much, and it would kill you, as it had killed the second-best-earning girl in the brothel, the one whose death had precipitated her sale to the caravan.

They were accustomed to her presence in the kitchens. Late in the evening, it was easy to take Girish a cup he was too drunk to recognize as different from his usual tea. Because the brew sickened and weakened him, he suffocated on his own vomit as she held him down. But his thrashing death throes woke others. Her back was to

the door of his chamber when it opened, and a woman screamed in a panic. Holding a lamp, Mountain stamped into the chamber while she sat beside the dead man and the half-empty pitcher. He blocked the door, so she could not escape. When the master's wives arrived, staring in shock and horror at the scene, she turned a calm gaze on them and, raising the pitcher, drank the rest.