Shadow Gate

31

Life wasn't too hard in the Qin compound in Olossi, not for a marriageable girl, anyway.

'I help you, Avisha,' Chaji said with a grin, unhooking the full

bucket and swinging it over the lip of the well. He set it down on the paving stones. Water slipped over the side to darken the stone.

'I thank you.' Avisha blushed, flattered by his attention.

'That one, too?' His smile crinkled his very pretty eyes as he nudged a second bucket with a booted foot. 'I fill. For a kiss.'

Avisha giggled, but she pressed a hand over her mouth and then, seeing the frown that darkened his face, wished she had not. If she made herself disagreeable, none would want her. Behind, footsteps slapped on the paving stones.

'Hu! Chaji, you don't do it for a price.' Jagi elbowed his comrade aside and slung the empty bucket onto the hook.

Chaji muttered, 'Like saying you want no meat when you eat it up with your eyes.'

Avisha felt her ears go hot, but Jagi pretended not to hear, muscular shoulders working as he turned the crank. The bucket splashed into the deep reservoir below, and he hauled it back up while Avisha kept her head down, Beneath half-lowered lashes she surveyed the two men – Chaji with his pretty eyes and pretty grin and Jagi with his broad and rather homely face – her own smile fighting against a fear that it would be unseemly to show how much she enjoyed being the center of their attention.

'I carry them for you,' Jagi said. 'To the kitchens?'

'That's right. Thank you.'

She followed him as he headed for the open gate. The well and the cisterns stood in a courtyard beyond the two gardens, at the highest point in the compound. A complicated system of troughs and pipes brought water from two large cisterns to the pool, the plantings, and the privies, an astounding display of wealth that Avisha still marveled at after weeks living in Olossi. This compound by itself was bigger than the temple complex in her village.

'So, you will marry me, yes?' Chaji paced alongside, hand tapping the ranks of damp cloth in all their bright colors hung on lines to dry. By the smaller cistern, two women pounded wet clothes on stones, pausing to eye Chaji. 'You are the prettiest of the girls. You are young. You work hard. The mistress favors you.'

Ahead, Jagi grunted under his breath, but he kept walking through the gate into the passage that separated the open-to-the-air kitchen from the living quarters. He turned left, under the kitchen's

tiled roof, where hirelings standing at long tables plucked chickens and chopped up haricots, onions, and apricots. In the kitchen yard, steam rose from pots of rice and fragrant barsh set over hearths. Ginger tea was brewing.

Avisha stepped up into the shade of the porch and slipped off her straw sandals, while Chaji bobbed on his toes oja the walk.

'Yes?' he asked, not coming after her. 'That is your answer? Yes?'

Looking back over her shoulder at him with just, she hoped, the right amount of promise, she pushed through the curtained entrance and promptly tripped over the handle of a broom. She sprawled, hitting her chin on the plank floor. Sitting up, she saw Sheyshi lazily pulling the broom straight.

'You bitch! You did that on purpose!'

The other girl stared at her with dull, angry, stupid cow eyes. A heap of swept dirt was piled by her dainty feet.

Avisha grabbed for the broom. 'I'll show you!'

Sheyshi yanked the broom away and backed behind the ranks of rolled-up bedding.

'Merciful God, gift me patience!' Priya walked into the room. Under her quelling gaze, the two girls looked away from each other. 'What happened here?'

'Nothing, verea,' said Avisha as she got to her feet. Although Priya was a slave and therefore not actually deserving of the respectful form of address, Avisha saw perfectly well how the mistress trusted her. 'I just tripped. The water buckets went to the kitchen. I can get more.'

Priya examined first her, then Sheyshi. 'Sheyshi, finish sweeping, then fold the mattresses properly and hang out the bedding. I'll have no bugs. Avisha, come with me.'

Rubbing her throbbing chin, Avisha followed Priya into the inner chambers, each one ornamented with painted scrolls hanging on the walls and a few well-chosen pieces of polished black-lacquer furniture that had, as it happened, belonged to the previous owners. They had been rich enough to own five chairs, and the mistress sat in a padded chair now as she regarded a pair of merchants seated in visitor's chairs. Mai received favored business associates in the chamber known as six-seasons-of-the-crane because of the six-paneled screen set against one wall.

Avisha waited beside the entrance as the mistress completed her business. She never got tired of studying the beautifully painted screen, with cranes dancing in a field of early-blooming pink-heart on one panel, or a bachelor flock staging for their journey to the drowsy swamps of Mar beneath white-petaled wish-vines symbolic of hopes of finding a good mate on another.

'Meanwhile, ver,' Mai was saying, 'it has come to my attention that your factor has changed the unit of measurement from a unit by log to one of standing timber.'

The man she addressed was considerably older, plump, with a primly pursed mouth. He glanced toward Chief Tuvi, who stood behind Mai's chair. 'It's the usual standard of sale, verea.'

Mai had a pleasing, cheerful voice, quite innocent of malice. 'Yet the original contract was made by unit of log. I can't help but wonder if standing timber may produce less log depending on defects within the trees themselves, which may not be detected until they are split and sawed for building. Really, ver, you have given us such fine quality and quantity of wood, that I would hate to have to ask my factor to begin negotiations with another house.' She smiled. Like the masterly painting of cranes on the screen, you could not help but admire beauty.

'Eh, ah,' said the merchant, stumbling over his tongue. Avisha was sure he had never had such a cold threat delivered so prettily. 'I am sure my factor made a mistake, verea. I'll speak to her at once.'

His glance toward the clerk would have scalded skin. And, indeed, Avisha could smell, from the kitchens, that the plucked chickens had been dumped into a pot of boiling water.

'You may speak to my factor in the office on your way out,' said Mai kindly.

'That would be the young man, who once was Master Feden's factor?'

'He serves our house. Was there something you wanted to say, ver?'

'Neh, neh. We'll be on our way.'

They sketched the formal farewells.

'I'm hungry,' said Mai once they were gone. 'I'll take cake and tea in the pavilion, and interview more women.'

'Perhaps you should rest, Mistress,' said Priya.

'I'm not tired. Just so hungry! I feel I ought to have some marriages arranged now that the settlement is rising in the Barrens.' As she rose, she turned a warm gaze on Avisha. 'What about you, Vish?'

'Oh, I don't know,' Avisha answered as her gaze skipped to the curtained entrance where Keshad might, if he left the office to consult the mistress, walk in at any moment. But Mai beckoned, so she followed her into the large garden where they sat on benches beneath the repainted pavilion and laughed and chattered as they ate bean curd buns so sweet Avisha could not finish even one while Mai devoured two without apparently noticing that she had done so.

A pair of girls watched over a dozen small children, the offspring of women Mai had hired to work in the compound. Their babble lightened an otherwise cloudy day as they, Zianna among them, splashed in the long pools or played thro wing-sticks on the stones. Chief Tuvi stood on the porch that ran the width of the garden. Mostly he scanned the garden, the walls, Mai, her attendants, but at intervals he paused to watch the children's play with a smile.

Jerad was slumped on a bench beneath the branches of a butternut tree. He slouched over to the pavilion and waited at the base of the steps.

'What is it, Jer?' Avisha asked.

'I want to go home.'

This ridiculous statement embarrassed her. 'Don't be ungrateful,' she said in a low voice, leaning down toward him. 'We're fortunate to have been shown so much favor.'

'You just like the pretty silk and the soldiers smiling at you. You don't care about Papa at all anymore, do you?'

'How dare you!' That Mai should overhear this only made it worse. She raised a hand, threatening a slap.

'Jerad,' said Mai. 'I'm going to cut the rest of the buns into pieces. Can you take them around and see that every child gets one? You'll have to make sure the greedy ones don't take more than one. They'll try. Especially that little Nanash. He's quite a sneak.'

'I don't like him,' said Jerad stoutly. 'He pinches when he thinks the adults aren't looking.'

'Well,' observed Mai as she sliced up the buns with a knife, 'I think he saw some very bad things, so naturally he is frightened all

the time. Just like you did, Jerad, only it seems you are able to treat others kindly instead of taking out your fear on them. That shows a good heart and a good nature.' She offered him the platter.

Eyes wide, he took it gravely. 'Yes, Auntie.' Shoulders straight, he marched off to distribute the sweets.

'Thank you,' mumbled Avisha, thoroughly ashamed.

'Hu! I grew up in a clan surrounded by siblings and cousins. You think that wasn't anything I didn't hear ten times a day?' She slurped her tea, set down the delicate cup – more fine than anything Avisha had ever handled in her life but everyday ware here – and called out. 'Chief! Another round of interviews now.'

'I'll separate out fourteen, Mistress. No more.'

'You'll need a rest afterward, Mistress,' added Priya.

'I am overwhelmed by superior numbers.' Mai smiled.

In the weeks she had lived in the household of the captain and his wife, Avisha had learned that Mai's smile hid more than it revealed.

Mai continued in a murmur meant only for Avisha's ears. 'Don't they see that the interviews are the worst part? I'd rather have them all done than drawn out over weeks.'

'More will keep coming,' said Avisha. 'Until all the Qin are married. As women hear, or decide to try their luck, or see how bolder women have fared.'

Mai sighed.

Priya leaned over, resting a dark hand on Mai's belly. 'Are you weary, Mistress?'

'Yes, but not tired!'

'Here they come,' said Avisha.

The Qin soldiers were never really off-duty, although as far as Avisha could tell they had a fair bit of leeway in going about their tasks. Rather more than a dozen men filtered into the courtyard, in addition to the guards who were on duty, as a group of hopeful women were herded into the far end of the garden and then cut out in family groups when it was their turn to come forward.

A pair of cousins dressed in gaudy town fashion wanted to know how much coin they would be paid to marry the outlanders. They were dismissed.

A poor widow who would soon be too old to bear children was given a string of vey and sent away.

A nervous girl came forward with her even more nervous uncle, and had little enough to say for herself, but when Avisha questioned her she relaxed enough to admit she could tailor.

'Come back tomorrow with samples of your work,' said Mai. 'If you are willing to set up housekeeping in the settlement we are building in the Barrens on the western shore of the Olo'o Sea, your skills will be useful. Think about it.'

Several of the Qin soldiers marked the girl with interested gazes as she and her uncle left.

A frowning woman strode forward, dragging a young woman pretty enough except for the splotchy red mark across her right cheek. 'This is my daughter. I would be happy to see her wed without any bride-price-'

Tuvi leaned down to speak in Mai's ear. 'With that demon's mark on her face, none of the men will take her.'

The girl saw, and interpreted, his expression, and hid her face with a hand.

'What will happen to her, verea?' Mai asked the mother.

The woman's disappointment was easy to see in the way her hand had tightened on the poor girl's wrist, as if the girl had been rude. 'Some of the clan have suggested selling her labor as a slave, but it would shame our family to have it known we'd been forced to do so. We haven't the dowry for her to go to the temple.'

Mai fished in her sleeve and pressed a gold cheyt into the woman's hand. The woman stared, too shocked to close her hand over it. 'See that she goes to the temple, for the sake of your clan's honor.'

An audible murmuring rose from the crowd of hopeful women. They shifted, moving back as Keshad pushed through and trotted up to the pavilion ahead of the next supplicants. He mounted the steps with a handsome frown on his face as he sketched a greeting to Mai. He did not even look at Avisha, but why should he? She was nothing to him! Nothing at all.

'Greetings of the day, verea.' A woman addressed Mai with the confidence of a person whose position is secure. She was dressed in a taloos of elaborately embroidered silk that proclaimed her wealth and station. 'I am Bettia, of Seven Fans House.'

'Greetings of the day, verea,' said Mai politely. Her gaze drifted to the young women standing behind Mistress Bettia. 'Who are these?'

The prettier girl was staring at the ground, but the other, eyes wide with shock, gaped at Keshad as her lips moved, forming his name. Avisha glanced at him, but he was fiddling with his factor's staff, a short wand about the length of his forearm whose narrow end was crowned with a band of ribbons and a pair of seals fixed to leather cords. He looked like he wanted to lash something, or someone.

'I'm a merchant, as you are, verea,' said Mistress Bettia in the manner of a confidante, 'but in the recent troubles two of my house's warehouses burned down with our stock inside. I find we cannot afford to keep the number of slaves we're accustomed to. I thought you might wish to purchase the remaining debt of these two. They're hard workers. They would make good wives.'

Avisha was pretty sure that Bettia was thinking, 'good wives for outlanders\ She wanted to knead her heel into that proud merchant's gold-slippered foot until the woman squealed for mercy.

Keshad bent down between them, a faint aroma of cloves wafting from him. Probably he washed and dressed his hair with an infusion of clove oil and other herbs. She wondered what it would be like to wash those lustrous curls.

'Don't take them,' he whispered.

Mai smiled. 'Mistress Bettia, I fear I cannot say yes to such a proposition. I have made a policy not to accept the entanglements of debt. Only free women need apply.'

'Had you advertised that before, and I missed it?' said Bettia with a shake of the head that brought attention to the cunning ornamentation of ivory combs and beaded braids that no doubt took her attendants half the morning to prepare. 'Yet I see here Master Feden's slave, now serving you as factor.' She made a crude show of looking surprised as she addressed the slave who had mouthed Kesh's name. 'Why, Nasia, you came from Feden's house, did you not?'

The slave mumbled something.

Chief Tuvi made a business of coughing, and Mistress Bettia looked at him. She blinked first, smiled as if she was in pain, collected her slaves, and retreated.

'What was meant by that performance?' Mai asked.

'She hopes to set spies in your midst.' Keshad's lovely eyes narrowed as he brooded. 'She's known for trading information as well

as fans, screens, scrolls, and lamp shades. Eyes and ears placed inside the house of the outlanders would be valuable, indeed.'

Mai considered this with no apparent change of expression, stroking the smooth silk that covered her bulging abdomen. Avisha, who knew her own face shouted every least thought and emotion, envied her that smooth countenance. 'Would it not be prudent to accept such a person into the house? Better to know who will be spreading tales than to have one sneak in who we do not know of.'

'There's truth to that,' said Tuvi. 'Let them think we don't know.'

'Maybe so,' said Keshad. 'If we don't give ourselves away. Also, verea, if you hand out charity in such a public way, you'll cause everyone to come just to eat out of your hand.'

'I felt sorry for the girl, knowing no one wanted her.'

'They will take advantage of your good nature, verea,' said Keshad passionately.

Chief Tuvi glanced at Kesh, and made a show of clearing his throat. 'Are you growing tired, Mistress?'

'No. Let's go on with the interviews.'

Jerad crept up to the edge of the pavilion and tugged at Avisha's arm. 'Vish? Can I go to the stables?'

The chief signaled a new family group to come forward. Mai smiled at the party of humble farmers – a father and daughters by the look of them. Keshad was pretending to look at his hands but was in fact studying Mai under lowered eyes.

Did Kesh love Mai? And why wouldn't he? Mai was beautiful, and kind, and well-mannered, and very clever.

'Vish!'

'No!' she whispered, wishing she could tweak one of Jerad's ears to make him stop bothering her at always the wrong moment. 'You'll just get in the way.'

He rolled his eyes as he tugged at a fold in her taloos. 'No, not by myself. Jagi said I could go with him and learn to groom a horse! Please.'

Jagi was standing by the small gate painted with a winged horse. He touched his forehead, saluting her. She flushed. 'All right,' she muttered. Jerad dashed off without replying, cutting so close past the new supplicants that they halted, trying not to look fools and yet also chuckling to see a child so free to run about the garden, which

was a reassuring thing when you thought of it: a local boy at ease among the fearsome soldiers.

Chaji was not in the garden, maybe because he had already chosen her. A few matches were already being spoken of, and one girl was supposedly pregnant, a thing that had infuriated Chief Tuvi so much he had beaten the soldier who admitted to the act and demanded the girl be sent away for being a bad influence. Mai had intervened, though, and instead the pair had been carted off to the settlement in the Barrens to begin married life together.

The Barrens did not sound like a nice place, dry and brown, but they could be no more barren than a place where both her mother and father had died and where she had no hope of building a home for herself and the children no matter how much she missed the ash swales, the song of water rushing over the pebbled river shore, the call of the larks that nested in the third lintel over the gate to the temple of Ilu. She did not want to go back without her father braiding cord in his shop and telling her the tales of the Hundred, which he so loved.

'That's done,' said Chief Tuvi. 'Will you rest now, Mistress?'

Mai walked down the garden to the porch and, pausing in its shade, accepted a cup of tea brought on a tray by Sheyshi. The stupid girl had a smudge on her nose.

'Thank you, Sheyshi,' said Mai, more kindly than the ill-tempered little tramp deserved.

As Mai moved into the house with Sheyshi padding at her heels like a devoted dog, Priya touched Avisha's arm. 'Sheyshi has not a lively spirit, as you do, Avisha. It is not surprising the mistress prefers your company to hers. That does not mean she cannot feel excluded. For so long she and I were the mistress's only female companions. She feels the loss of that intimacy. If you make an effort to be kind to her, it would speak well of your nature.'

Avisha hung her head, too shamed to reply, and Priya was too wise to keep beating that stake into the ground. They followed Mai into the spacious reception chamber with its mirrors and its painted rat screen, a lighthearted series of scenes of taloos- or jacket-clad rats at work counting coin and at play flying kites.

'I'm going to the livestock market,' said Mai to the chief.

He looked resignedly at Priya, and Priya shrugged. Caught by the

reflection in one of the mirrors, Avisha saw Keshad standing behind the others but looking at Mai. Avisha shivered. If only he would look at her in that way!

But he did not.

'Will you come, Avisha?' Mai asked.

She hesitated.

'Keshad, I would like your opinion as well. The sheep market is today, is it not?'

'It is, verea. This late in the day the best animals will already be sold.'

'I'm not buying,' said Mai. 'I want to see what the lesser quality of animal looks like.'

'I'll go.' Avisha glanced at Sheyshi's sour expression. 'Maybe Sheyshi would like to go, too.'

So it was arranged. Avisha went back into the garden to tell Zianna she was going out, but the little girl was napping. A contingent of guards was assembled, the big man pulled from his counting frame to accompany them, and another of Anji's senior men, Chief Deze, left in charge of the compound in Tuvi's absence. Sheyshi brought straw sandals suitable for a trip to the market.

They left the house through the warehouse, where women and children sat on the long benches, waiting their turn to be interviewed. The supplicants carried baskets and bags with rice balls and se leaves to eat during the long wait. Children dozed on the floor. Women looked up as they passed, eager to speak, but the escort of Qin soldiers intimidated them.

The sheep market lay down the hill outside the gates of the inner city, on open ground untouched by the building that consumed Olossi's outer districts. Mai was fascinated by the sheep. She and O'eki asked interminable questions of the herdsmen and farmers who had brought their lots to market. Keshad stuck next to the mistress.

It was odd to walk in public accompanied by the Qin. Chief Tuvi had detailed a dozen soldiers, and while they did not swagger or push, they cleared a path for Mai simply by being armed and alert. Avisha dropped back to where Chaji walked as part of the rear detail. He smiled briefly and then ignored her as his gaze roved the crowds.

Many glances were cast their way, not all kindly ones. A pair of men garbed in the homespun of farmers bent close over a ewe. By the way their eyes watched the Qin, they might have been whispering about the condition of her mouth or they might have been muttering complaints. A woman dragged her daughter out of the path of the Qin, as if she feared they would kidnap the girl.

'A blessing on you, verea. A blessing!' A beggar wearing a greasy red cap and ragged kilt trolled for alms, holding out an offering bowl.

The forward group reached an intersection. Avisha hurried to catch up as Tuvi shouted an order. The soldiers halted, blocking the intersection. Mai turned. Then she smiled.

Captain Anji and four soldiers strolled up the other avenue, which was lined with pens and booths selling songbirds, chickens, crickets in miniature cages. The crowd melted away to give them room. Conversations faded to silence as the two groups met, and merged.

'Will you attend me, husband?' Mai asked with a smile that made the captain grin, even though he was in public, and caused Keshad to look away.

'Of course,' the captain said. They went back the way she had come while she described to him the characteristics of the local breeds and the wet season problems with foot rot.

'If I know something, it is about sheep. I was meant to marry into a sheepherders' clan.'

'Where you would have been wasted.'

'They were wealthy.'

'I assure you,' said Anji with a smile that made Avisha blush even though it was not directed at her, 'they did not have as many sheep as my Qin clansmen. That our estate will have, if we acquire the core of a strong herd.'

'I am interested in this herd.' Mai indicated an extensive pen mostly emptied by sales. They entered into a protracted discussion with a clan that herded extensive flocks near Old Fort.

Avisha sidled up next to Keshad. She glanced toward Chaji, to see if he was watching her, but like the other soldiers he was scrutinizing the passers-by, the farmers deep in conversation, a pair of

laughing laborers carrying axes on their shoulders, the skulking dirty children.

'That was well done of you to spot those spies that merchant wanted to place in the house,' she said to Keshad.

He flicked a glance at her, as if surprised she could talk. 'Eh. Yes.'

'Eh, do you know, if you and your sister hadn't helped us over the river, I don't think we would have survived.'

'Probably not,' he said without looking at her.

'Have I made a proper thanks?'

'A hundred times over.'

'Oh. Ah. Have you news of your sister?'

He made a brushing motion with his hand, as at a pesky fly. Abruptly, he stiffened, and she took a step back, afraid he was going to say something cutting, but he was looking past the soldiers into the crowd.

'Avisha.' Mai touched Avisha's arm. 'It's best if you return to the compound.' The company had re-formed, ready to move on. 'We're going now to take afternoon cakes and tea with the Ri Amarah in their compound. They'll tell me today their decision, if Miravia can visit me in my own house. But since you're not allowed in the compound, you would just have to wait outside, so you might prefer to go back home.'

Avisha wondered if this was what Sheyshi felt like, pushed to one side. 'Are you sure you want to go? The Silvers cover their heads to conceal their horns!' When Mai laughed, Avisha went on determinedly. 'That's what everyone says.'

'The women don't have horns.'

'That doesn't mean the men don't have them. Everyone knows they do!'

'Every ignorant villager,' said Keshad over his shoulder.

Captain Anji had waited throughout, standing patiently behind his wife. 'Have you seen their uncovered heads, Keshad?'

'No.'

'Then you are only speculating. If you will, Keshad, return to the office with Avisha and have one of the clerks ink a contract, something I can take with me when I ride out to examine the herds. Come, Mai, I'll escort you personally. The Ri Amarah are honorable and trustworthy friends.'

He nodded at Avisha, who wished herself dead and her bones picked clean for having spoken so stupidly. Who was she to mock Sheyshi? At least Sheyshi kept her mouth shut.

'Open your mouth and prove yourself a fool,' she muttered as the company moved off en masse, the big man's head towering over the rest. They were talking about sheep again!

'Do they really have horns?' Chaji came to stand next to her. He indicated Keshad, who was fulminating, staring toward that same poor beggar with offering bowl held out in trembling hand as he limped through the crowd in the same general direction as the Qin company. An odd-looking man under the grime, and oddly familiar.

'Avisha,' said Keshad under his breath, 'here's a vey. Keep walking, split away from me. Then go say a pretty word to him and bend close and put it in his bowl, and afterward tell me if there is a mark in the bottom. Wait until he is out of our sight before you meet up with me.'

He had spoken to her! She did as she was told, angling away, pretending to be walking by herself, a simple village girl come to the city for the first time. Men smiled at her, in her pretty clothes and well-kept hair. Women eyed the cut and quality of her taloos.

'May the gods grant you blessings, holy one.' The beggar was old, thin, with a beaky nose and dark rodent's eyes that had an unpleasant glimmer. Then he moaned grateful noises, a few mumbled words that could have been anything. He reeked, as if he'd been sleeping in a smokehouse after having been rolled in dung. Whew!

She remembered where she'd seen him before.

She caught up with Keshad by the gates to the inner city, where he had paused to wait for her with the four Qin soldiers assigned to guard him.

'Well?' he demanded.

'It's a wooden bowl. There was a mark painted in the bottom, crossed knives linked under a circle.'

Keshad pressed a fist to his mouth, then lowered it.

'What means that?' asked Chaji, very serious now.

'That's what empire folk call a blessing bowl, for the god Beltak. Now, maybe he stole it, or maybe he found it, but maybe he didn't.'

Avisha bit her lip. 'Heya.' She hesitated. When Keshad gave her

a look of barely veiled disgust, she blurted out the rest. 'The very first day I came to the compound, I saw a beggar in a red cap in the courtyard. I'm sure maybe it was him.'

'Maybe he is a spy,' said Chaji. 'The captain warned us, maybe Red Hounds from the empire follow us over the mountains. You want, we kill him right now.' He grinned at Avisha. 'You want to watch? Very fast, we kill him.'

'You can't kill a holy beggar in the public street!' Keshad surveyed the street traffic, the gate guards staring at the Qin soldiers and factor and girl loitering in the sun, the laborers and market women pausing to whisper. A pair of raggedly dressed young men watched the Qin soldiers with what looked like admiration. 'Even if this one is a spy, no one seeing the impiety would know that. They'd only see outlanders killing a holy beggar.'

'The captain must know,' said Chaji. 'I send Seren and Tarn to follow the spy. Avisha, return to our own compound. Tell Chief Deze what we saw. You and I-' He indicated Keshad. '-we go to the Ri Amarah compound, find the captain.'

Avisha admired the swift way Chaji took control of the situation, but Keshad balked. 'Are you perhaps overreacting?'

The Qin were not in general demonstrative men. Chaji's look of scorn flashed quickly, and was hidden at once. 'From the empire, there is always danger to the captain. Even a tailman knows this. Avisha, you go quickly, yes?'

'Yes,' she said breathlessly, not sure if his dazzling gaze was offered in praise or just because he was tense.

'Eiya!' muttered Keshad. 'We'll do as you say, but I know the city better, I'll be able to retrace the spy's trail. Send the others to follow the captain. You and I follow the beggar.'

'You try to escape, maybe?' Chaji said with a grin. 'You try, I enjoy chasing you down.' He sent Seren and Tarn off after the captain, then grabbed Keshad's elbow and dragged him through the gate with Umar trotting behind, leaving her alone, the center of stares, a girl who consorted with outlanders and accepted their smiles.

'Trying to get a husband?' said a young laborer, passing her with a long-handled adze braced across his broad shoulders. 'I'll interview you, lass. They say the Qin soldiers have nubs instead of good

sharp tools. Don't waste that pretty face on them. Come by the carpenters' guild house. Ask for Keness.'

'Leave her be,' said his older companion. 'Don't insult the lass. Anyway, the outlanders saved us, in case you forgot.'

'I don't like the way they look. Cursed proud, if you ask me. Still, I suppose the coin is good, neh?'

She ran away into the crowd, tears burning. Of course the Qin didn't worry she would run away from them: the coin was good; she had no better option. No use crying about it. She was protecting the children and doing what she must, and it wasn't as if the Qin were so bad. Mai had been good to her! She was fortunate to have fallen in with them.

When she stopped sniffling she realized she had gone the wrong way and stumbled into a secondary market where men, women, and children were roped into lines. Labor gangs, being pressed into service. Half of them had fresh debt marks carved into the flesh by their left eyes, some still dribbling blood from a hasty job.

Their hard luck made her realize just how fortunate she was.

As men and women jostled her, she stopped, trying to remember in which direction lay the inner gate. Stunningly, an anonymous man groped her breasts. She shrieked, slapping out, but hit instead a woman carrying greens in baskets hanging from a pole balanced across her shoulders.

'Clumsy bitch! Sheh! And you a rich clan's daughter in such silks. Not that you'd know what hunger is.'

Babbling apologies, Avisha crouched, careful to keep her hem from dragging in the mud, and plucked the thick se leaves one by one out of the muck. The woman cursed at her until she shrank back, red-faced and sniveling, looking for a place to get out of the fray and catch her breath, but there was nowhere that people weren't moving, shoving, blustering, shouting.

'Heya! Ready to move, now! We march to the docks. No falling behind.' A factor brandished a whip as, from the saddle, he addressed a pathetic gang of laborers, young women and men with fresh debt marks and freshly shaven heads that made them look like Sapanasu's clerks, only in homespun, not the robes worn by the Lantern's hierophants.

She would not have recognized Nallo with all her hair gone, if the

woman standing in the second rank of the gang had not blanched and tried to cover her face.

'Heya!' The whip cracked a warning in the air. 'Look sharp! Stay in line! You'll find you're well treated in your new work if you keep discipline and remain orderly. Don't disappoint me, or your new masters.'

They marched off toward the docks down the main avenue, feet shuffling on churned earth. In their wake, the market traffic resumed, but Avisha stood as with feet planted, folk bumping into her, cutting around her, cursing her for getting in the way and would she please move on move on. She began to cry.

Nallo had sold her labor. She was now a slave

Kesh thought that probably the old man was just a beggar, fallen on hard times, a Sirniakan carter stuck in Olossi because his team foundered and afterward reduced to begging. It happened. But Chaji's urgency infected Kesh. It was odd that the girl had seen him hanging around the Qin compound weeks ago.

Their biggest problem was in how to move through the city without drawing attention, because of course everyone noticed two armed Qin soldiers. They would have to hope that the beggar's attention would be fixed on the large party he was following, which was certainly roiling the waters. And not just because of the Qin soldiers and the huge slave. Everyone must stop to stare at beauty as it passed.

The red cap slid sideways to the side of the thoroughfare as, far up ahead, the company stopped at a merchant's stall. From within the crowd, he could not see what the merchant was selling, but then the object she held in her hand caught sunlight and flashed.

Mirrors, for the vain to stare at their pretty faces.

The beggar loitered. Keshad glanced at Chaji and Umar, and they nodded. Very suspicious!

The company moved on, the black-clad soldiers opening a wedge through the crowd not so much by forcing it as by simply being there. For a moment, the crowd thinned in just such a pattern that he saw her lustrous black hair arranged in a complicated set of falls held up by combs and hairsticks. She was speaking to the captain, laughter in the lift of her chin.

He was not a fool. Compared with the Qin captain, he could be of no interest to her. He didn't even want anything from her anyway. It's just she was clever and lovely and close at hand to stare at, when his heart was already torn in half and thrown to the wild beasts to savage because he had lost his sister and his purpose in life in one dreadful change of fortune. Because Nasia, the slave-woman who had been his lover, had stared at him with recrimination in her face, even as he told Mai to turn Nasia away from her only hope of freedom.

'Lost him,' said Chaji as he shoved Keshad to get him moving.

'There he is,' said Umar, behind them. 'Beyond the gold awning.'

As they cut past noodle shops, the singsong of the flirting ladle girls drifted alongside appealing smells: 'hot and spicy! for the rains!', 'best qual-i-ty, best qual-i-ty', 'mushrooms and leeks, here's your mushrooms and leeks'. At a plank table, two men chopped radishes and purple-heart; over a brazier, a girl slip-fried them with pipe-shoots and salt in smoky sesame oil.

Chaji grabbed his elbow. 'There's Chief Tuvi, walking rear guard. Get moving.'

The larger party was walking up the shoemaker's lane, the long way around to the district where the Silvers lived if you didn't know the city as well as Keshad did. But the beggar's red cap moved past the shoemaker's lane and cut up the tailor's lane, so they climbed after him, pretending at intervals to look at fancily embroidered festival jackets selling cheap because in the wake of the attack the city had not mustered a festival this year.

'The captain is actually the half-brother of the Sirniakan emperor?' Kesh asked.

Chaji gave a curt shake of his head, which meant Keshad had stepped out of bounds by asking an inappropriate question, and kept walking.

'Lost him,' said Umar. 'Hu! There he is.'

They hurried through the bone-carvers' alley, in shadow under canvas slung between buildings. The carvings were polished to such a high gleam that they seemed alive in the dim light: winged horses, dancing lions, writhing salamanders, swimming dragons. Hugging the corner, they ventured onto a wider street. Uphill, Chief Tuvi's broad shoulders vanished around a sharp turn where the street split into three. A red cap slouched behind a pair of matrons.

'There,' said Umar, starting forward, but Chaji caught him by the tunic and tugged him short as a barrow filled with bricks rumbled by, pushed by a sweating man wearing a linen kilt and an unlaced sleeveless vest flapping back from his torso.

'He's working with a second man,' said Chaji. 'That one with a rag tied around his left arm, standing beneath the green awning, behind the rack of sandals. He's seen us.'

'The hells!' swore Keshad. 'Two of them!'

'Maybe more. Where are Seren and Tarn? Why haven't they caught up with the captain? It isn't like he's moving fast.'

A whistle blasted above the street noise. Chaji bolted, Umar at his heels, shoving past anyone in their way as they sprinted after the company. Keshad found his way blocked by the barrow-man, who was swearing as he struggled to stop the unbalanced barrow from spilling. Kesh grabbed the lip and pulled, and the man thumped it down on its legs with a curse.

'Sheh! Cursed outlanders!'

The red cap bobbed past, flowing downhill. Keshad pushed past the same pair of well-dressed matrons and followed the cap down the street. The beggar ducked behind passers-by, then twisted into an alley. Kesh sprinted after him, but negotiating the confines of the alley of combs was not so easy because the artisans recognized him, Master Feden's household having spent a good deal of coin on fancy combs and lacquered sticks and clasps. A small girl seated with legs dangling from a second story balcony watched his progress, her round face solemn as she tracked him.

Panting, he came out into the tailor's street. He scanned up the angling terraced steps and down toward the sprawl of the outer city seen through gaps in buildings. A red cap bobbed in the crowd, then stilled as the man stopped and looked back.

To make sure he was being followed.

Aui!'

Although similar in stature, this was a different man. He wore a subtly different twist of dirty kilted rags and had less of a bandylegged gait, a man who had spent less time on horseback than the first beggar. Now that Kesh thought of it, where did a beggar get bandy legs from riding horses so much, unless he was an outcast fosterling raised and later discarded by the lendings?

Where had they lost track of the first beggar? It could have been at any time after Avisha had tossed a vey in the man's bowl. Maybe down by the gold awning amid the clamor and slurp of the noodle stalls. Easy enough to slide one red cap in the place of another.

'Guards! Murder! Murder!'

The red-capped head was still turned to watch him, and Keshad knew absolutely that to run down past that man would be idiotic. He plunged back into the alley of the combs and halted in front of the stall of a woman he'd dealt with a hundred times.

'Where's your mistress?' he asked the lad overseeing the wares. 'Mistress Para!'

She was an attractive woman, her taloos wrapped around advanced pregnancy. But she was remarkably light on her feet as she emerged onto the porch with a cup in one hand and a tiny chisel in the other. 'Keshad!' She smiled. 'I heard you left the city.'

'Heya! My apologies. Can I cut through your house to the alley behind?' Beyond the bright opening of the alley, traffic passed on the tailor's street.

She was Air-touched like him; it gave them a measure of kinship. She stepped aside, and he sprang up the steps in his outdoor shoes and raced through the workshop while a pair of apprentices paused in their work to gape. He ran down the long corridor that fronted the living quarters. Emerging finally in the narrow kitchen yard, he pelted through an open gate into the fetid confines of the back alley.

He cut back toward the tailor's street and hurried down the terraced steps toward the commotion below, where men were still shouting for the guard. He hadn't meant to cut so close to the incident, but when he saw Seren leaning against a wall, holding his side as though injured, he shoved through the traffic and fetched up beside the young soldier, who was red-faced, breathing raggedly, and doubled over, barely able to keep his feet.

He didn't touch him. 'What happened?'

Seren was vomiting, his face gray with pain. The hand he had clutched to his stomach was slick with blood.

Beyond a gold awning where fry-ups were sizzling ran an exceeding narrow walk between three-story buildings, accounting houses

topped by apartments. A young militia man appeared in the gap. Seeing Kesh, he beckoned him over.

'Weren't you one of the Master Feden's slaves? Aren't you hired now by the outlanders? Best you come see.'

Back here the buildings were a maze, walkways barely wide enough to let a barrow pass. They turned a right corner, then a left, and in the center of a stone drainage ditch awash in spilling sewage and flowing blood lay the other Qin soldier, Tarn.

He was dead.