Shadow Gate

39

In the Barrens, underground, lamplight flickered. Nallo ceased cutting on the face of the tunnel immediately and crawled with mattock in hand back past the second lamp and toward the bottom of the shaft. She crouched under the hole, a hand gripping the rope in case she needed to tug for a lift out. Down the tunnel, the flame dimmed, pulsed twice, and flared to a steady flame. Behind her, Mas was using the back of his spade to tamp down the debris in a

bucket, seemingly unconcerned. He'd done similar work before. He had an instinct for danger.

'Doesn't it get to you?' If she thought too much about the space in which they crouched, she'd scream.

'Neh. We're getting four times the rate of buyout toward our debt contracts as the ones working aboveground. Even the lads taking the extra shift of militia training only get half rates of what we do. It's worth it. I might stay on after I've paid off my debt, work for coin.'

'They'll be working on these irrigation channels for years.'

'So they will. I can make a tidy sum, hope to start a house of my own.' He moved up beside her with the bucket. 'Let me get this hooked up. You want me to do cutting?'

She refused to show weakness, although her shoulders and legs and back ached. The supervisor had told her this was man's work, best fit for short men so the tunnel roof didn't have to be cut very high, but a strong woman could fit into narrower spaces than most men. She had proved her worth. Wiping sweat from her brow, she returned to the face of the tunnel. Behind, the winch creaked as the full bucket was hauled up. Mas began to fill another.

She cut with the mattock, checking her direction by lining up on the two lamps. He shoveled and filled. Later, they switched out. Increasingly they heard the faint hammering vibrations of the team working in their direction from the shaft ahead, but they remained yet a fair distance apart. The winch reeled up full buckets and lowered empty ones. The work would have been monotonous, if not for the memory of the fall that last week had buried two men, and the water that had drowned the boy from Old Fort before that, and the old man who had asphyxiated when they'd sunk their first attempt at a mother well.

The second shift was lowered on the rope. Nallo and Mas chose to walk out along the conduit toward the mouth about half a mey distant. The gentle pitch and clay floor made the journey an easy one; shafts offered light and air about every two hundred paces. Mas was a scrawny older man, toughened by years of hard labor.

'You going to try for the militia, Nallo?'

'Neh. I'm too tired after my shift to do any drilling. The Qin don't want women in the miiitia units anyway. What about you?'

'Neh, I'm too old for that.' He halted in the darkest part midway between two shafts. 'Eihi! We've got debris here.'

She swore under her breath, thrilled by discomfiting fear. As she bent to shovel at the tiny hills of debris heaped along the floor, he probed the ceiling for a breach. A grain spat onto her neck, followed by a hissing spill that got under her tunic, crawling along her spine.

'Seems like nothing,' he said, 'just a bit of loose-'

The sound crackled like a body turning over on a bed of pebbles. Mas grabbed at her.

'Move!'

She bent for the buckets, but he yanked harder as, in a downpour, loose material rained down. She ran with head bent under the low ceiling. A soft rumble expanded behind her and a cloud of dust nipped at her heels.

And faded.

Mas jogged on a ways farther, then halted to spit debris out of his mouth.

'Shouldn't we keep moving?'

'Neh, this is well packed, we dug this section ourselves if you recall.'

Her neck was clammy, and her hands were hot. 'I'll like to get out.'

'Cursed fools were supposed to reinforce that area. Don't know what they're thinking not to have done it yet.'

'Can we get out?' She was starting to shake.

'Eh, sure.' As they walked mouth-ward, he chatted on like nothing had happened. 'Listen, what I said before? About starting up my own house? I'll need a wife. You interested?'

She licked grit from her lips and thought about slapping him upside the back of the head. She was strong enough that it would really hurt him. 'Eh, that's a kindness, Mas. I'm not interested, thanks.'

'Well, then, what with there being no Devouring temple to visit, if you had a thought about a bit of sharing?'

Maybe a month's hard labor had mellowed her. Maybe it was knowing he had likely saved her life back there. Maybe it was just that the stone-lined mouth loomed before them, sun bright beyond

the dim confines of the underground conduit down which water would someday flow to irrigate fields. As they ducked out through the stone-framed mouth of the conduit and blinked in the hard sunlight, she managed a polite reply.

T appreciate you asking, but I don't want to get in trouble with the Qin.'

Mas scratched dust from his scant beard. He looked across the flat depression that would become a reservoir and toward the higher practice ground where four black-clad Qin soldiers were forming up the trainees – men just off shift – into ranks. 'Neh, I suppose I don't neither. They're hard, that's for sure. If fair. They don't overcharge us for sleeping space and food, like some masters do. Water's steep, though.'

She tried in vain to slap dust off her tunic and kilted-up trousers, but she was coated in the sandy grit that passed for soil in these parts. Mas led her over to the supervisor's pavilion, and they got a hearing from the overseer, O'eki. The big man – an outlander – listened to Mas's detailed recounting with the resignation of a man who hears this every day.

'Hu! You got off easy. Maybe you'd like to set the reinforcement yourself, Mas. You're the best at it.'

'If I get the same hazard pay as for digging the face.'

'Come back at twilight. I'll let you know then.'

They got into line by the supervisor's pavilion, waiting to turn in their mattock and spade. The four men ahead of them, coming off their own shift change, took sword-length wooden batons in exchange and trotted out to the formation. She walked away toward the canvas barracks. Mas kept pace beside her until they reached the canvas screens that set off the entrance to the women's barracks.

'If you're sure…' He was an ordinary fellow, without any least distinguishing characteristics except that, like her, he'd had some pressing reason to sell his labor to the Qin. He'd never said what it was, but then again, neither had she. 'I just meant to say-'

'Sorry!'

He winced, so she knew she'd snapped.

'I'm just shaking after that,' she added.

'Eh, truly, the murderer does get to people that way'

'And I'm tired.' And I'll never be interested in you, or maybe in any man.

He sighed.

'Truth is, Mas,' she added, for once thinking to spare him a bit of misery, 'I really don't care to test the Qin's patience. You know how they are, all prim and dainty.'

'Surely I do. Strange notions, they've got. Men sleep in one barracks tent and women in another, and once curfew falls, no mixing. Those who disobey are sent home, or whipped. Eiya! No use ruining your hopes for buying out your debt and gathering a nest egg of coin, just for an afternoon's pleasure.'

She managed a smile, however insincere. Once safe within the women's area, she measured out her ration of wash water, which was only enough to wash her face and hands and even then not get off the grime. Coated with grit, she lay down on the blanket assigned to her, and she thought not of her husband, that kind and patient man who had never treated her with anything except gentle forbearance, but of the hierodule they had briefly traveled with. So be it. She was here, slaving in the Barrens, and no doubt that cursed interfering reeve had captured Zubaidit and taken her back to Olossi to serve out her own sentence for theft and debt-breaking. They'd not meet again. That's just how it was. She could never expect anything in life but leavings and scraps.

She hoped that Avisha and the children were doing well, but even that was out of her hands. After leaving Argent Hall, she had eked out a living doing day labor. In the meantime she had asked around at the Qin compound until she'd found out that a girl matching Avisha's description had been taken in to the household of the captain's wife. So at least they were being cared for. She'd heard a rumor that the captain's wife had come to live here in the Barrens, in the settlement, but since debt slaves remained in their camp, she'd never seen her. Even if it were true, what was the point of seeing Avisha and the children? She could do nothing for them, and no doubt it would upset them, as it had that day when Avisha had seen her in the labour gang in Olossi.

The hells! She could not rest, although she was weary to the bone and still feeling in her skin the way the cloud of soil and debris had raced alter her like a monstrous lilu with mouth gaped wide to

devour her. Digging was hard, dangerous work. Men like Mas called the shaft and conduit 'the murderer', because men did die to bring water to barren settlements.

But the hard, dangerous work meant she didn't have to think about what she did not have, what she could not do, and how those cursed reeves had tried to trick her into enslaving herself to their cursed halls. If she was going to walk into debt slavery, at least she had done it of her own choice, with her eyes open to the consequences.

But which would be worse? Suffocating under a mass of dirt as it forced its way down your throat and nostrils? Or having your head ripped off by a bad-tempered eagle?

She wiped yet more dust from her brow. Or maybe she was just smearing it together with sweat to make herself a mottled complexion. Through a gap in the canvas, she watched the sun settle westward toward hazy peaks. Stamps and shouts from the practice ground marked the pace of the training. Men who showed promise would be allowed to join the Qin militia, an elite group being trained in the strictest and most arduous standard imaginable, and despite or perhaps because of this, young men did put in second shifts for the chance to be as tough as the sauntering Qin soldiers.

Nearby, women worked with cheerful banter in the kitchens. A pair of mules came in with fresh laundry from the washing house a couple of mey inland, closer to a good water source, where other female debt slaves worked. The shaded ground beneath the canvas grew stuffy. She dozed off.

As she often did these days after working underground, she dreamed of flying. The land below her dangling feet is seen as hollows and rises, a patchwork of color and texture like a rumpled blanket but breathtaking in each distinct detail. A tiny deer springs across a clearing, followed by a fawn. A man in a red cap crouches alone by a campfire. A wagon drawn by droving beasts glides down a road, accompanied by a trio of walking men more like ants than human beings. Black thunderclouds pile up over mountains, building strength, and after lightning flashes, a blue burst of light bolts into existence, winks coquettishly, and vanishes.

Thunder boomed, waking her. Shouts woke the alarm bell, rung

thrice. Running footsteps scraped on the ground outside. She scrambled to the entrance of the women's compound, where debt slaves gathered.

'What happened?'

'A shaft fell in,' said one of the women. Her hands were coated with grease. They watched as the men training on the practice ground ran for the supervisor's pavilion, grabbing spades and mattocks and rushing upland. A pair of Qin soldiers rode their horses inland, with a second man astride each carrying digging implements.

'Think it's worth it?' asked the woman with greasy hands. 'Men dying for water?'

'They'll get irrigation all along here,' said her companion. 'Lookya-'

Hillward, the ground sloped in rugged stair-steps cut with gullies and ridges, a light dry soil. Seaward, they looked over level ground whose soil was built up by the accumulation of rainwater coursing down from higher ground during the wet season, which came here only during the Flood Rains, and fanning out to form stretches of richer soil suitable for planting, if only there was a steady supply of water. The mountains hoarded water, if it could be exploited. The Qin meant to do so.

Eagles circled above the distant shoreline. Off to the right snaked the low berm that ringed the quickly growing settlement and fort owned by the Qin outlanders. A pair of rowed cogs were coming in, headed for the shallow bay where they would beach and unload.

'Neh, there. Lookya!'

Thunderclouds boiled over a high mountain ridge to the northwest. A speck swooped out of the storm and, faster than seemed possible, glided close and, then, right over them.

The hells!

She began shaking harder than in the aftermath of the collapse. Best run and hide, and yet her feet took her out pace after pace until she found herself in the deserted parade ground as an eagle plummeted as on its death plunge and, pulling up at the last, thumped hard onto the dirt.

Tumna.' Her heart raced as her voice choked.

The eagle glared at her from beneath ridged brows, as if to say, 'Why did you abandon me?'

'They tried to force me, like when Uncle dragged me to Old Cross to sell my labor. What did you expect me to do?'

'Heya!' Mas signaled from the edge of the parade ground. 'Get back, Nallo. That thing could rip your head off!'

She was so fixed on Tumna's accusing stare that she did not notice the other eagles coming in until one landed with a delicate braking flutter of wings a safe distance away. Its harness held a reeve and a second person, hitched in front in a tangle of lines quickly unhooked. The woman walked out from under the hooked beak of the other raptor. Tumna swiveled her head to stare at the intruder, but the woman sketched a broad gesture, a signal that kept the bird in her place.

'You're Nallo.' She carried a mass of lines and hooks draped over her right arm. 'I'm Arda, training master of Naya Hall. That's what they call the training hall here. I hear Joss ran you off with some nonsense about reeves being slaves and how you best be grateful for shelter over your head and so on. He's astoundingly sanctimonious.'

'He was a self-satisfied ass, it's true,' said Nallo, warming to her but remaining cautious.

Arda looked her up and down in a way that made Nallo alert, and surprised, because she was more used to men looking her over that way – and then dismissing her. But Arda smiled, as if she liked what she saw. 'He's a good reeve, but he's vain, if you ask me. Always thinking women will come round to his way of thinking just because he's got a handsome smile and a handsome face. Cursed tiresome, if you ask me.'

Nallo's amusement at this plain speaking quickly sputtered. 'How did you track me down?'

'I didn't. Tumna did.' Arda nodded toward the raptor, now preening her wing feathers and seeming to ignore them. 'She turned up a week ago at Naya Hall and began sweeps of the area, which told me that she'd tracked you. But there are hundreds of laborers brought here with Qin coin to build and dig. So I tracked her, tracking you. I have a proposition for you.'

'So did Marshal Joss. Only his was more like an ultimatum.'

it does make you wonder how he manages to sweet-talk women into his bed, doesn't it? I'm just glad I'm not fashioned that way, to be susceptible to his charm.' She smiled, and Nallo blushed as Arda

went on. 'I don't care whether you become a reeve or not, Nallo. That's your business, not mine. But I need my eagles jessed. An unjessed eagle not retired to the wild lands is an unpredictable eagle. Anyway, I need all the reeves I can get. In case you didn't know, we're living in troubled times.'

'My husband was murdered by that army.'

'I'm sorry to hear of it. Plenty more will suffer if we can't act. Here's my proposition. I don't care what you choose. Just fly first, and then tell me what you've decided.'

Nallo felt every grain of dirt stuck to her sweaty skin. She remembered the spill of dirt on her shoulders as the ceiling gave way. She thought of crouching at the base of a narrow shaft, hoping to be hauled up before the air choked her as it sometimes choked out lamp flames.

She thought of her dreams.

'I have a debt contract,' she said.

'If you choose the reeve hall, the Qin will release you. If you don't, you can come right back to whatever exciting work you're doing here.' She studied Nallo closely. 'And I must say, we have a better water allowance at the hall. You can get a decent bath. For that matter, on your day off you can fly to Olossi and get a real bath in a real bathhouse. Cold scrub, hot soak, and all.'

Nallo shut her eyes, woozy at the memory of a cold scrub and hot hot water in which to soak away all the angry voices that gnawed.

'Just one flight,' she said, knowing it was a trap. Yet Tumna did sit there waiting for her, the only creature in the world who had actually gone to the trouble to seek her out on purpose.

Despite Tumna's fearsome reputation, Arda showed no fear of the eagle as she beckoned Nallo closer. 'Help me get the harness slung.'

'I'm flying her?'

'Of course. I'll show you how to rig this.'

'Didn't she rip off her last reeve's head?'

'Yes, and disemboweled him, too. He had turned against his reeve's oath and, besides that, didn't treat her properly when she was injured. I don't blame her one bit. Did us a favor, I should think.'

'That's a coldhearted way of looking at it.'

'I train reeves. Nothing burns me more than a reeve who doesn't care properly for her eagle. I'd sooner feast a reeve who had betrayed all her companions but placed her eagle's welfare above her own, than one who neglected her raptor. Treat Tumna as she deserves, and she'll repay your loyalty with her own. She's a short-tempered, irritable bird, it's true, but we all have our quirks. I suppose my lack of sentimentality is mine. So. Are you going to help me, or should I leave? If I go now, I'm not coming back.'

Maybe Arda was just playing on her contrary nature, or maybe it was that Tumna looked healthy and strong, no trace of injury like the other times Nallo had encountered her. Maybe it was the dreams, or the raptor's undeniable beauty and edge of danger.

'All right.'

Arda walked over and showed her how to get into the harness. 'It won't be the best fit. Reeves are measured for their harness to make sure there's no chafing. But it'll do. You can tighten it – that's right. Your feet go there – that's the training bar – so you can adjust your weight in flight. You're ready. I'll show you how to hook in.'

She walked in under the cruel beak, right up to where the talons could puncture her. If Arda showed no fear, Nallo certainly was not going to. She followed her in under Tumna's shadow. The raptor huffed, straightening. Her feathers were gorgeous, golden-brown, splashed with white highlights. She wore a jess on each ankle and her own harness fastened over the shoulders and across the breast so it did not impede the wings. Working slowly and with the greatest patience, Arda showed Nallo how to hook the various tethers that allowed the bird to fly and the reeve to tuck in beneath.

'You get the best view. Free hands for signaling or to hold a weapon. As you saw, you can hook another person in front of you without oversetting the balance, although not every raptor is strong enough to manage two. With training, you'll learn how to hook in and out quickly.'

'I didn't promise to become a reeve!'

'No need to rip my head off!' Then she grinned, leaned in, and kissed Nallo on the cheek. Nallo flushed like she hadn't since -well – since ever. With a laugh, Arda backed away. 'Just one flight. That's all I ask.'

'Oh, gods,' murmured Nallo, as she realized she was well and truly hooked in. The rush went to her head, and then the raptor pushed so hard that Nallo thought her feet and her head were in two different places. Her feet slipped off the training bar, and she flailed, sure she was about to plunge to her death. Gripping the straps with knuckles gone white, she couldn't breathe. The powerful beat of Tumna's wings drowned out everything in the world except the plunge of the earth away from under her and, when she could see again, the many upturned faces staring as she rose. Air thrummed against her body. Tumna stopped beating her wings, simply held them out in that vast wingspan, and Nallo choked out a gulped cry, only they did not fall. They were rising as though in the hand of the gods, the earth dropping away to reveal the patterns of human handiwork below: the alluvial fan where the conduit had its exit; the holes marking the shafts; the gullies and hills. A pale berm, like rope, ran all around a hill where a brick palisade was also going up, plus many canvas tents and awnings to shelter the hundreds of folk now living and working here. The reeve hall was little more than canvas barracks for the reeves and fawkners, with massive perches set like skeletal trees rising off into the wilderness over a distance too broad for her to measure.

An eagle plunged past, the reeve in its harness whipping a flag signal at her that she did not understand. Tumna kept going, heading for the mountains. Off to her right the sea spread flat with the sun's light gilding the waters. Eihi! So beautiful!

The winds rumbled at crosscurrents as they rose over the foothills, heading straight into the black clouds. Thunder muttered above the mighty peaks. Lightning spiked.

'I don't-! I don't-!'

She had no cursed idea what to do; she was at the raptor's mercy, likely to get her head ripped off or-

She screamed as Tumna folded her wings and plunged down, down, down, wind shrieking in her ears. The wings unfurled, and they jerked up hard and Nallo began to laugh and sob together as the raptor found another rising stream of air and they sailed up along the face of the massive peaks of the thunderheads until the hair on her neck rose.

A dazzling form of blue light – not lightning – sizzled into being an arrow's shot away. It winked, and vanished.

Winked back, and vanished.

Winked back, and vanished.

All in the space of her taking in a shocked and heaving breath and letting it out.

The hells! It had eyes, of a kind, and it was looking at her.

It winked into being, and it boomed – like a laugh! – and vanished.

Tumna cut right, and they beat away from the face of the storm and glided down on the winds running before it. They dipped toward a valley cut deep into the foothills. Threads of light spun where a waterfall spilled over a cliff to cut a pool. A stream gushed through luxuriant vegetation. That same prickling feeling crawled on her skin, as though they were about to plunge back into the storm, but instead Tumna swept a wide turn and headed back toward the east. The sea glimmered in the distance. Nallo could not spot the settlement, but a strange web of light sparked to their left where two rocky hills joined in a saddle. Tumna swooped, and thumped down on the bare ground of the saddleback ridge.

Nallo was still laughing and crying as she wiped her eyes and looked around. Wind roared over the span of earth. A pattern carved into the rock glittered, tracing a labyrinth. Aui! Her skin went cold and she thought she would faint.

The eagle had brought her to a Guardian's altar.

'We can't stay here, Tumna! It's forbidden!'

On one side, an overhang offered shelter. Coals and ash smoldered in a fire pit, wood stacked neatly against one wall. Someone was living here, where all were forbidden to walk. All except Guardians.

'The hells! Move! Move!' She tugged on the uppermost jesses.

Tumna thrust, and they were up again, battered in the swirling currents, turning toward the sea. The winds fronting the storm buffeted them as they glided east, and once over the water the eagle had to beat her wings. It was getting dark, the setting sun occluded by the storm rolling out of the Spires. She banked, and ahead Nallo saw the flickering lights of watch fires and of scattered lamps and torches being lit against the gloom.

They sailed in over the settlement, and with a dainty dip Tumna landed by the reeve quarters. Nallo pulled her feet up out of reflex and, slowly, lowered herself within the angle of the harness to stand, legs shaking, on earth.

She swayed there, dazed, as folk called and Arda came out with a pair of fawkners to tend to the bird. They unhooked her and led her, unresisting and unable to speak, to a big tent covered in canvas, just in time, because rain began to fall, drumming on the taut canvas roof. Nallo hoped that everyone working in the conduit was out for the night but she didn't say so because she could not talk.

Arda sat her down on a bench and handed her a cup. The sharply spiced cordial scalded her throat. She coughed, blinking away tears.

Reeves – mostly young men and a few women and older men -came running in under cover. Out beyond the roped-back entrance a stocky black-haired young man who looked remarkably like one of the Qin soldiers – only he was dressed in reeve's leathers – was speaking with evident intensity to a pair of black-clad Qin soldiers. They shrugged and turned away, leaving him alone in the rain while everyone else laughed and talked around plank tables set up as an eating hall.

'You don't have to fly again if you choose not to.' Arda poured cordial from a pitcher into the empty cup and sipped.

'I – I – I saw-' She wiped rain from her brow and blinked as another pair of lamps flared. The gods! This place was lit like they had oil to spare, and surely they did. Thunder boomed. 'I saw a fireling, just like in the tales. It boomed, like thunder only so much smaller. Like it was laughing at me.'

Nallo hadn't thought she could say anything that would surprise that competent woman, but the trainer's face went blank as she blew out breath between pursed lips. 'Eihi!'

'You don't believe me!'

'Don't snap at me! I'm shaking my head because I do believe you. Here, now.' Her gaze slipped away and her eyes narrowed. 'What's he doing here?'

Nallo turned.

Volias sauntered up. 'Greetings of the day to you, too, my darling Arda.' He made a gesture of rudely passing a kiss before turning to Nallo. 'Listen, Nallo, 1 have a proposition.'

'Volias,' said Arda with a sour grimace, 'why you think she'd be interested in your ugly-'

'Neh, neh, not that kind of proposition. I'm not Joss, am I? Listen, Nallo.' With a bright grin, like Jerad when he'd caught a fish, he straddled the bench, grabbed the cup out of Arda's hand, and drained it in one go. 'Whew!' He screwed up his mouth, squinting. 'That's strong stuff!' He set down the cup. 'Listen, Nallo, I know you're angry about Joss and how he handled things, so I had a talk with the commander in Clan Hall. Plus in addition this trouble with Pil has got to be solved, so-'

'What are you doing here?' demanded Nallo.

He shut his mouth, ceased talking, and flushed.

Arda smirked. 'Heard we'd tracked Tumna, did you, Volias?' She looked at Nallo. 'He's been flying in and out of Argent Hall for weeks now, riding messages down from Clan Hall. He has become a pest, always asking if there's been any news of you and is anyone looking, like he thinks we're cursed fools who can't do a thing right. You followed me here!'

'I can't help worrying,' muttered Volias without looking up. 'Just like Joss to use too tight a rein. He must be honest in the very wrong way when maybe it would be better to let a person work things through with a bit of – I don't know-'

'A bit of dishonesty?' asked Arda with a laugh.

Nallo didn't know who to warm to, and who to snap at. 'You knew, didn't you?' she said to Arda. 'That once I flew, I would want to fly again.'

Volias let out a whistle of breath. 'So that's how you did it.'

Arda said, 'It does happen that way, often enough. How do you suppose I feel, Nallo? I'd have given anything to be chosen by an eagle. It's all I ever wanted. But it never happened. So I've dedicated my life to training those lucky enough to be jessed.'

'To be slaves?'

She raised her hands, palms out, in the exact gesture she'd used to signal Tumna to lift. 'I'm not treading that path, girl. Don't even try me.'

Volias poured the last of the cordial into the cup and shoved it in front of Nallo. 'You refuse to become a reeve because you say it's like being forced to sell your labor as a slave. And yet you go

ahead, so I hear, and sell your labor as a slave, working for the outlanders. So wouldn't it make more sense to have remained a reeve, with autonomy, a hall filled with comrades, responsibility and authority?'

Nallo did not take the cup. 'I myself chose to sell my labor. You at the hall – the marshal, everyone – made the choice for me.'

'We made no choice. The eagle made its choice.'

She shook her head. 'Do you know how I got married? My father came up to me when I brought in the goats one afternoon and said, "Nallo, the clan has sealed a contract for you to marry a ropemaker in a village on the West Track. About ten days' walk from here. You'll leave tomorrow."'

Arda shrugged. 'A story heard a hundred times. How are you different from most other lads and lasses married out to benefit the clan?'

Volias picked up the cup, thought better of drinking, and set it back down, turning it halfway and leaving his hands cupped around its curve. 'I can see you may have felt roped – heh – into a bad situation. But Arda is right, as much as I hate to admit it.' Arda rolled her eyes. 'That's how contracts are arranged between clans.'

She was boiling now, remembering the way her father had turned away with relief at finally being rid of her. 'I didn't even get to meet him beforehand. No one asked if it was what I wanted.'

'Was he cruel?' asked Arda suddenly. 'Did he mistreat you?'

Volias pushed the cup closer to Nallo and removed his hand.

'No. He was a good man.' She picked up the cup and gulped down the cordial, glad of how the spicy aftertaste burned her mouth and made her eyes water. 'The truth is, he got the worse part of the bargain, but he never said one word in complaint.'

'Ah,' murmured Volias.

'Ah! What's that mean?'

'The hells! Just a way of making noise come out my throat. No need to rip my head off.' As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he winced.

'A smooth talker,' said Arda, 'which accounts for his success with women.'

Nallo said, 'Tumna killed her reeve.'

'Yes,' said Volias. 'And from everything I hear, he'd earned death.

I am not a good man, not like your dead husband, may he rest beyond the Spirit Gate. But I do not fear Trouble.'

'These days everyone fears trouble,' said Nallo tartly.

'No, I mean, my eagle. Her name is Trouble. Now I admit she is a particularly good-natured bird, besides being as everyone acknowledges the most beautiful eagle known to be alive in the entire Hundred.'

Nallo laughed. 'You're boasting.'

Arda sighed.

'It is not boasting if it is true. Like that Qin captain. You have to admit his wife is a lovely creature.'

'I never saw her,' said Nallo, thinking of Avisha and the children, and finding another tear on her cheek.

'And by all accounts a canny merchant,' added Arda, 'capable of twisting the knife with a smile and a compliment that makes you not even feel the pain. I think what Volias is saying is that no one could believe Trouble chose him when she could have had her pick of any decent person.'

Volias grinned, and Nallo saw that he cared nothing for what people said about him and Trouble, because he had her, and they didn't. 'Listen, Nallo. As I said, I have a proposition. I'm taking Pil back to Clan Hall to get his training. You come, too. Then you're away from all this, and you can make up your own mind. I admit that Arda is the best trainer we've got, but Ofri's experienced and cursed mellow, and a good man, for that matter.'

Arda propped her chin on a hand as she examined Volias with a frown. 'What's your angle?'

He wasn't a handsome man, but when he wasn't sneering, he had a nice face. 'Get her away from Joss. He's the one who put her back up.'

'You two must give up your feud. It bores the rest of us.'

He turned a shoulder to Arda and fixed so warm a gaze on Nallo that she tried another swallow just to get the cup between her and his face. Arda reached across the table and patted Nallo's other wrist, stroking it teasingly, and Nallo shifted, feeling in that touch a promise that pleased her.

Volias sighed and rose. 'I guess I'm too late.'

'No,' said Nallo, without pulling away from Arda's pleasant

touch. 'Just to be clear, I don't want any other kind of proposition from you. But if I go to Clan Hall, then maybe it'll seem like I'm starting new, of my own choice.'

Thunder boomed overhead, and the rain pounded harder. Laughing reeves and hirelings dashed in under the cover of the canvas hall. Even Pil slouched in, looking like a drowned Rat, and with arms folded across his chest sank down on a bench alone, brooding.

'To be up there like that -I can't imagine never going aloft again.'

'Jessed,' said Volias, with heat or mockery. He was just speaking the truth.

Tumna had chosen her, and now they were bound.

The boom of thunder and the downpour that followed came as a relief to Mai after weeks enduring the dusty heat and dreary isolation of the Barrens, all too similar to the days of her childhood in Kartu Town. How far away the markets of Olossi seemed now. She pressed a hand over her swollen abdomen. The baby lay quiet, undisturbed by the storm. But she sighed, clutching a message brought midday by a reeve from Argent Hall.

She sat on a humble bench on a raised porch in the shelter of one of only four proper buildings in the entire settlement. From this vantage, sited advantageously on the slope, she watched rain make a haze of air, listened to its drumming on tile roof, on canvas, on dirt. Water tracked runnels into every crack and low spot, headed for the flat plain beyond the lower berm where in years to come fields would flourish if the massive irrigation project proved successful. An eagle spiraled in, battered by turbulence as it made for the training ground on Eagle Hill to the north. The rain was so dense she could not even see the hill where ancient ruins surrounded a rich vein of naya sinks. Water rushed down the gully, a muted roar rather like the thoughts in her head.

Soon it would be too dark to see. But since she could not read, it scarcely mattered. Priya had twice read out Miravia's message.

' "Strangely, the terrible situation in the Hundred in which so many suffer works to my benefit. Contracts can be delivered by paying a fee to reeves flying between the halls, but bodies must travel

by land. The uncles will not risk bodily harm coming to me by sending me on unsafe roads, even if they think nothing of those other harms that may come to me when the marriage is finally sealed. It's true that it says in the law that a girl must not be forced into marriage against her will, but were I to refuse, that would ruin my hopes of marriage forever, since no one else will want-me because I will have proven myself to have a rebellious temperament. It will furthermore put a stain on my family's trading contacts with other Ri Amarah houses, and in the hopes my cousins cherish of contracting respectable marriages. For me to refuse would be to betray my family. My despair must remain in my heart. Yet while a person may hope to hide their face from the presence of the Hidden One, we are not hidden from that gaze eyen if we believe that because we cannot see that which is hidden, that it therefore does not exist."'

Priya pushed past the curtained entrance – there were no actual walls, only canvas strung from beams – and offered Mai a bowl of rice covered with bean curd, slip-fried vegetables, and a red sauce swimming with slices of fish.

'Here, Mistress. You must be hungry.'

'I am.' She tucked the folded rice paper into her belt and accepted the bowl. Although the smell made her mouth water, she did not eat.

'You are still upset about the message.'

'I am.'

'Yet you accepted a marriage not of your choosing.'

Mai looked up. Sheyshi shivered behind Priya, holding a burning lamp whose light spilled around them. 'Did you become a priestess at the temple by your choice, or of your clan's choosing?'

'A meaningless question, Mistress. I came to the temple because it was the will of the Merciful One that I offer prayers there. Who spoke what words means nothing.'

Lightning flashed, and thunder cracked right over them. They all jumped, and Sheyshi yelped in surprise, bringing Avisha running from inside.

'What happened? Sheyshi, what did you do} Here, let me take the lamp. You're shaking so hard you're going to drop it.'

'No!' Sheyshi jerked the lamp away, and oil spilled, hissing on the planks.

'You two go inside and see after the children,' said Priya sternly, taking the lamp from Sheyshi. 'The noise has woken them.'

Mai ate, listening to the anxious questions of children as rain pounded on the roof and spat in under the porch's eaves. Canvas thrummed, tugging on ropes.

'Does the storm frighten you, Mistress?'

'No. I like it. The rain will cut the dust. I'm so tired of tasting grit.'

'You wish the captain returns soon?'

'Of course. It was easier to wait in Olossi. Still, there is more than enough to do here. After all, I must build a thriving settlement so I can have a market to enjoy.'

Priya bent to kiss her cheek, lips cool on her skin, her breath smelling faintly of cloves. 'Will you eat a second portion?'

Mai handed her the empty bowl. 'Yes, I will. Do you think it is too early to allow those of the men who have particular women in mind to settle their betrothals?'

'The chief is having a difficult time keeping them in line, because the women here do not hesitate to have sex whenever they desire.'

'That's what I was thinking. Get them settled before they get restless, and into trouble.' As she shifted, the rice paper crackled, echoed by thunder rolling away over the water. 'Miravia hasn't such freedom.'

'You must accept that you cannot change certain things, Mistress, and bend your energy to those you can affect.'

Mai rose with dawn's bell, after sleeping with the canvas walls rolled halfway up to admit some breeze into the inner chambers which would otherwise become stifling. The breath of morning had a special beauty, the sun rising over the flat waters and the Spires glinting as light sparked on ice-clad peaks. The clouds had vanished, although there was a constant, streaming mist above the peaks and a smear of pink-tinged white along the eastern horizon. The air was for the moment moist and cool. Sheep and goats grazed beyond the berm under the watchful eye of young shepherds, the children of women brave – or desperate – enough to travel to this barren reach to attempt a new life under the suzerainty of outlanders.

With her usual escort, Mai walked down the track, dodging carts pushed up by workmen, into what was already being called the lower town, although it looked more like a camp with many square tents and larger barracks built of hempen canvas tied over scaffolding. In the Barrens, wood was precious, so most of the building was in brick, and those few structures whose walls reached full height had canvas slung taut for a roof.

This early, Qin soldiers strolled the market lane, many gathered by the noodle sellers to eat before they began their training or patrolling for the day.

'A little bland today,' she said as she and Priya sampled a cup from one of the stalls. She smiled at the young woman who wielded the ladle. 'Running out of spice again, Darda?'

'But there's plenty of fish!' replied the girl cheerfully. She was young, strong, with a wide smile that displayed a full set of teeth. Good health mattered. Mai had been careful to favor women who looked robust and energetic. 'I'm hoping the next boat brings more spice. Wish I could get shoots, but it's not worth the coin to ship them in, can't turn a profit, and they rot. The edible kind don't grow out here. That girl Avisha in your household told me she means to plant a garden when the fields go in. I've already told her what I'd buy.'

'Hear any news of your family?'

Her brows furrowed. 'It's kind of you to ask, verea, but I don't suppose I ever will. Even if they got away safely and made it to my kin, it's not likely they could go all the way to Olossi to ask after me. It's kind of you to think of keeping a list at the compound for those who do come looking.'

'I lost an uncle that way. It's hard not to know what happened to him.'

The girl sighed. 'It's my younger brother I worry about most. I suppose he is dead, that he might be better dead than suffering, but then I must hope he will walk up alive and tease me like he was used to do.' Her frown transformed abruptly to a brighter smile, lamp-lit as the songs called it. A Qin soldier, an older and very steady man, came up with his bowl to buy his morning's meal.

Mai retreated. 'I sense an interest there,' she said to Chief Tuvi as they paused to look in on a tailor's shop, a weaver's shed, a rope

and braid maker, and a pair of shops whose proprietors shaped household items out of clay.

'You have a talent for finding skillful women,' said the chief as he eyed a young woman who had thrown down a square of cloth beside the thoroughfare and, shading herself under an umbrella propped up between stacked bricks, was doing a brisk business with needle and thread repairing torn taloos, tunics, trousers, and other items of clothing. She was so intent on her mending that she did not look up as they passed, only paused as their shadows altered her light, then started up again with neat, even stitches.

'It's true I've favored women with skills, and ones who are interested in establishing shops. That way they can maintain their families and grow their clans, while leaving their husbands free to fight and herd. All of which suits Anji's purpose.'

Chief Tuvi nodded. 'It's a good site. Isolated. Hard for an invading army to attack us here without ruining their own supply lines and running out of water. We are scouting the routes up into the mountains, looking for fallback positions, a defensible refuge, better water sources.'

'Yet it will be prohibitively expensive to ship in all our foodstuffs, even with the trade in oil of naya. We can't flood the market with a commodity that is currently high-priced because it is so hard to obtain.'

'There's plenty of fish,' said Tuvi, and they both laughed. 'We'll run sheep and goats in the uplands. Its decent grazing land. If O'eki and the engineers can construct the conduit, we will have a steady supply of water and be able to maintain fields for the locals to work. Then the settlement will be viable beyond the spring in the gully. We could stay here a good long time.'

'I lave you picked out a wife, Tuvi?'

He sighed. 'I left a good wife at home. It's hard to think about taking a new one when I think of her wondering what's become of me. Still, that Avisha is a pretty girl.'

Mai shook her head. 'No, Tuvi. You'll get bored of her. And you intimidate her. Let her go to someone who will enjoy her chatter.'

'Hu! That's telling me! Do you have someone in mind for me, then? Or must I bide a bachelor for the rest of my days?'

'I'll keep an eye out. For you, Tuvi-lo, someone special only.'

He laughed.

The noodle-maker came out to greet Mai, her face whitened with flour dust. Mai nodded toward the laborers out in back, muscular men stripped to their kilts and wearing faded caps to protect their eyes from the sun. They were adding on a second room out of brick.

'Expanding already?'.

'I've had to hire on four more workers to keep up with the demand. But I've had some trouble with men drinking and fighting.'

'Bring your complaint to the next assizes.'

'I will, verea. As it happens, I'm hoping to send for my auntie and cousins. With your permission, verea.'

'I'll be pleased to see them here if they are as industrious as you.'

'You've offered us a chance to change our circumstances, verea. We won't forget it.'

Priya stayed behind to haggle over a delivery of noodles to the captain's house, while Mai and her escort walked on. At the lower gate, she stood in a patch of shade as she surveyed the alluvial fan that spread toward the bay, its darker earth cut by shallow streambeds from the seasonal flow. A brickyard spread mountain-ward, sun-drying bricks laid in ranks. On the coastal side, fish racks stretched as far as she could see. Children crouched where women filleted caught fish, stringing fish heads. Where stonework marked the end of the underground channel, the color of the soil had darkened in a wide skirt.

'Did the reservoir take water from the rains?' she asked. 'Is the underground channel going to work?'

Tuvi squinted, but said nothing.

Priya said, 'It will take many years for the entire conduit to be dug. There was such a channel in Kartu Town, bringing water down off Dezara Mountain.'

'That's where O'eki earned coin, didn't he?' said Mai. 'The channel had to be repaired and cleaned out.'

'Dangerous work,' said Priya. 'But he supervises now. Others take the risk.'

Down on the flat land, fields might bloom, although the landscape looked dusty and brown. Last night's storm had been the first substantial precipitation since she had arrived weeks ago. The season of Flower Rains was giving way to that of Flood Rains.

'Strange to think of this place as becoming green,' Mai said. 'I would love an orchard, with sunfruit and almonds. And white-stone fruit. If it will grow here. Maybe it is too hot.'

She wiped sweat from her brow. A stream of laborers hauled materials up into town. They wore kilts or long jackets much worn and faded, their caps sewn of scraps of material in every color: peacock green, dingy brown, clay red, fig yellow. Some acknowledged her with a nod; others ignored her. She noted those with a morning spring in their step, and those with a slump in their shoulders despite the early hour. She felt compassion for the weary, but in another part of her mind she toted up the cost of maintaining laborers who were not as strong. Shelter, now that they had set up the barracks tents, demanded little coin to maintain, but food enough to fuel labor did not come cheaply, since much had to be brought in from Olossi. She wanted her outlay on foodstuffs to be used at maximum efficiency, with strong workers, not lagging ones. Rice was easy to transport, but quantities of fresh water to boil it in remained problematic. All in all, the difficulties of this holding seemed overwhelming despite Chief Tuvi's assessment of its superior defensive capabilities.

Yet that did not mean that strangers did not on occasion walk into the settlement, seeking employment or, perhaps, less tangible goals.

'Is that a priest? An envoy of Ilu, by his clothing.'

A man was climbing the road. He was a man of mature years, not yet elderly, and dressed in a bright blue cloak, dark-red trousers, and a tunic dyed a brilliant saffron yellow. As he approached the gates he looked up, saw her, and smiled as though they were old friends. She smiled back. He did look familiar, but she could not place where she had seen him.

'Greetings of the dawn,' she called, abruptly sure that her day would pass without undue troubles to disturb her.

The guards shifted to take up flanking stations, but the envoy of Ilu flashed no weapons and made no threatening gesture.

'Greetings of the dawn.' As he halted in a neighboring patch of shade along the raised gateway, he mopped his brow and chuckled in an amiable manner. 'Whew! Hot today, despite the storm last night, neh?'

'So it is,' she agreed.

'Where did you come from?' asked the chief.

'I walked down from north of here. That way lies the Ireni Valley. Isolated country.'

'Why are you here?'

'Why does any envoy of Ilu walk the land? I come to pass on what little news I have, and to take away news in turn, if any have news to share. I can bide at the temple of Ilu here. If there is one. Where do the locals make their offerings?'

'We have no temples,' said Tuvi.

'None are built yet,' added Mai hastily, not wanting to offend the man. 'Some among us say prayers to the Merciful One. How the rest manage their prayers and offerings I do not know.'

'Is it forbidden to build temples to the gods?' he asked, although his tone remained congenial.

'Not at all. But you see, holy one, that we must first build shelter and set up our markets and walls.'

'Folk must eat,' added Tuvi, 'and they wish to sleep with some surety they will not be murdered at their rest. Surely the gods do not begrudge us that much.'

'Not at all, ver. And with the Flood Rains entering, you'll certainly wish for shelter. You are outlanders.'

'Given title to this land,' said Mai. 'It is all perfectly legal, holy one. Perhaps you could advise me on where temples might be most properly sited.'

'A worthy endeavor. I would be willing to bide a few days before going on my way. There's a substantial ruin a few mey distant. Do you know it?'

'I do,' said Mai. 'There are substantial sinks of naya there, and a cave where a flame burns without cease. But the city fell into ruin long ago.'

'You know the place, truly.'

'A Qin soldier was murdered there by a demon several months ago,' said the chief.

'A demon! Eiya! I'll avoid it henceforth, then. My thanks for the warning, ver.' Yet somehow, he did not seem surprised. 'What is the other thing you wished to consult me on, verea?'

'I was just thinking – you're the first holy priest who has walked

out this way – a long way, I admit! I don't know what the proper customs are for the marriage ceremony, beyond a contract.'

'That's simple enough, verea. But you'll need established temples here, nothing elaborate. An altar with a single attendant will do. However, no marriage can be sanctified without the proper offerings being made to each of the gods. Surely any of the local women who live here could have told you that.' He reached into the sleeve of his robe and produced a sunfruit, small but perfectly ripe. This offering he presented.

'Thank you!' Mai blushed as she accepted it. 'Where did you get this, holy one?'

'North of here, about twenty mey distant, there lies a deep valley of particular fertility nestled in the high foothills. Hard to spot from the ground, and difficult to enter. Now if you will, verea, I'll take my leave and go into camp, see if any wish to arrange evening prayers.'

'Take a meal with me tomorrow, holy one,' Mai called after him. He acknowledged her invitation with a wave as he strode up the hill into the lower town.

The fruit was perfectly ripe, fresh, moist, and sweet without tartness.

The chief meanwhile took his hand off his sword hilt and called over one of the guards. After a consultation, the soldier hurried after the envoy.

'I recognize him, Mistress, said Tuvi. 'He walked with the caravan most of the way over the Kandaran Pass, and at some juncture left us and walked on ahead. He might be a holy man. I hear some among them walk into the empire to buy silk for their temples. Or he might be somewhat else.'

'He can't be a spy for the Red Hounds, surely. He's local, a Hundred man.'

'Locals can be bought. I'm not saying he was. He might be what he seems. I'm saying it's best to observe caution.'

She thought of the demon who had ridden into her house and murdered two Qin soldiers. Indeed, the demon's actions had sent Mai and her household into exile in the Barrens.

'I'll be cautious,' she assured Tuvi. 'Yet I have so many fine guards that I cannot help but feel well protected.'

He smiled.

'When do you think Anji will return?'

'That I cannot say. Yet look who approaches. A reeve may bring a message from the captain.'

'Chief Tuvi?' The reeve wore a cap against the glare. He looked Mai up and down in a way that made the chief place himself between them.

'I am. You are?'

'This is the captain's wife, I take it. For once I must say that Joss did not exaggerate.'

The words had no charm, and she wondered whether he meant them to cut, or whether he could not manage to utter a pleasing compliment because he expected it to be thrown back in his face.

'I don't know your name,' said Mai in as pleasant a voice she could muster, although his sneer set her on edge.

'I'm Volias.'

'Greetings of the dawn, Volias.' She was careful to seem warm without being effusive. In the market, she would have to work doubly hard to overcome his readiness to take offense, his surety that he would be rejected or mocked. 'Are you come from Argent Hall? I am anxious to hear news of the captain.'

His shoulders relaxed slightly. 'I came through Argent Hall, but I've no message from the captain for you, verea. I'm here from Clan Hall.' He shifted his gaze to the chief. 'I'm taking the lad, Pil, like you requested, Chief Tuvi. It's been agreed he can train at Clan Hall.'

Tuvi nodded.

'Why?' Mai asked. 'Is there a problem because he is Qin?'

'Pil is no longer appropriate for the Qin troop,' said Tuvi.

'Because he is an eagle rider, not a horseman? I thought Anji agreed that if the eagle chose him, then he would be allowed to train as a reeve.'

'That's not why.'

In the Mei household, she had learned when a man's expression told you he had nothing more to say on a subject. So she smiled with her blandest face, and nodded politely at the waiting reeve to show he could leave.

He blinked, as though the sun had gotten in his eyes. 'Listen, verea. I have got news for you, now that I think of it.'

'From the captain?' The eagerness broke in her voice. She coughed to control it, smoothed a hand over her belly. In answer, the baby moved rather like a fish might slip around within grasping hands.

'Neh, I never saw the captain. These days I mostly fly messages between Clan Hall, Nessumara, and Argent Hall. Joss some weeks past told me to keep an eye open for a scouting party sent out by the temples and council. Naturally they've been keeping under cover, so I didn't expect-'

'Did you see Shai?'

The reeve's frown made her heart go chill.

'It happened that I spotted the scouts outside Horn, combing through the remains from a battle fought a few years back. It was a stupid thing to do, coming to earth. A band of men attacked them. I had to fly out immediately. I don't know what happened. Likely they hid. There was plenty of cover.'

The chief caught Mai under the elbow. He whistled sharply, and said to a guard, 'Priya's in the market. Also, a drink.'

The reeve's words kept stinging. 'Maybe I alerted the bandits, or maybe they were already stalking them. I'm sorry if my flying in to warn them brought about the attack.'

'Best you find a place to sit down, Mistress,' said Tuvi in a firm voice.

'I warned him about the demon, though,' finished the reeve.

As the sun rises, shade retreats. Light lanced her eyes, and one moment she was standing, and the next seated awkwardly on the ground with Chief Tuvi kneeling beside her.

'There, now, Mistress. We'll get you a cup of rice wine. Then we'll take you back to the house.'

Down here she had settled back into shadow, but her head still hurt as though she had been standing in the sun all day. 'What did 1 do?' she whispered.

'You wisely sent warning,' said the chief sternly, 'given the serious nature of the demon's threat. As for the rest, the scouts knew the risks. Those you are not responsible for.'

But his words, like the shade, offered no comfort.