Shadow Gate

50

'Brought your shadow along, eh, Nallo?' said the vendor, scooping fried eel into her bowl.

She had walked down from Clan Hall into Toskala to haggle over a bed net, since no such item had been issued by the hall. With her purchase draped over her shoulders, she had stopped at her favorite stall for her favorite snack. Pil hung at her back.

'Sure you don't want some?' she asked him.

His shrug meant no.

'You can't just eat mutton and yoghurt,' she said, but he looked at her in that way he had that made her feel bad for teasing him. Then he scanned the street. It was dusk, when villagers settled after a hard day's labor. In Toskala, market stalls were still selling food, folk chattering and haggling, on their way with lamps lit. Olossi had seemed unimaginably complicated to a country girl. Toskala overwhelmed, so huge, so busy, so crowded, so packed with shops and squares and streets selling grains and pies and oil and kites and banners and cord and dried fish and cloth and fans until it made her dizzy. So much! And with a hostile army camped outside their gates and the population swollen with refugees, folk lived as on a knife's edge. She always felt someone was about to

jump out of the crowd and slug her. She liked having Pil at her back.

She chewed eel, sighing with pleasure. 'Good today,' she said to the vendor. 'Even if you raised your prices.'

The vendor was middle-aged and comfortably portly, wearing a mended tunic and broad-brimmed hat in case it rained. A small umbrella covered the pan and fire. 'My thanks. Spice and fuel sellers raised their price, eh? What am I to do?' She laughed too brightly. 'I hear tell they've sent reeves to Olo'osson, asking for help. You know anything about that?'

'I don't, and I couldn't say if I did.'

'That's fair enough.'

The neighboring vendor, selling noodles, broke in. 'Our defenses are strong enough to hold off that cursed army'

Under cover of this conversation, Pil tugged at her sleeve. 'I think we should go back,' he muttered.

'My thanks to you,' said Nallo, 'greetings of the dusk.'

She slurped down the last bits and set off, Pil striding alongside. 'What is it?' she asked.

Then she heard shouts rising over the twilight clamor.

Pil edged into a trot as folk looked up from their shopping and eating and chatting; foreheads wrinkled; a man harrumphed irritably; a child whined, 'Come on, Ma, come on.' The knife sharpener's whetstone creaked to a halt as he forgot to pump. A noodle vendor's ladle tipped sideways as she strained to hear, and the steaming noodles slithered out to plop on the ground.

'Move.' Pil broke into a run, pulling out his reeve's baton.

She fumbled as she slipped hers out of its loop. A tumult of shouting lifted as in a wave to wash over them. Dogs began barking and howling, the cry taken up throughout the city. Something had gone horribly wrong.

As they reached the Silk Street gate, Pil used his baton to shove folk aside as they cut across to the brick-paved walkway reserved for official business and hopped over the dividing rail. At first, the lane ran clear of traffic as far as they could see alongside Canal Street, and Pil ran full out with Nallo pounding along behind.

She glanced back. A surge like a rains-swollen flood roiled in their wake, people rushing toward Guardian Bridge. Was that a

person crumpling to the earth, trampled by the press of those stampeding behind? The hells! They'd be crushed.

The approach to the bridge lay in the open space where Bell Quarter and Flag Quarter ended at the locks. A crowd was always waiting for passage over the bridge. Pil ruthlessly drove through the people clogging the walkways, using the baton as leverage to prod people out of the way.

'Heya! Watch that-'

'Cursed reeves-'

One side of the bridge was roped off for official traffic, but the press of people trying to get over the bridge had spilled over. Pil tucked up beside the railing and smacked bodies to move them out of the way so he and Nallo could squeeze past. The bed net caught on something, or someone, and was dragged off her shoulders. She let it go.

It took forever to get over the span, and as they pushed down to the spur where the stairs that led up to Justice Square began, panic hit the square in front of the bridge. Screaming drowned all other sounds. Flailing bodies plunged into the spillway pool and the empty locks.

'Let in the water! Let in the water!' a voice cried.

'Release the locks!'

'They've breached the gates!'

Like a storm, riot crashed down: the clatter of weapons, the dogs gone wild, and most of all the terror of thousands wailing and roaring until she thought her heart would burst from fear. Within the bodies pushing toward the single gate guarding the stairs, she had lost Pil.

'Nallo!'

She spotted his topknot, and she brought her baton into play, slapping and whacking. 'I'm a reeve! Let me through!'

They fought their way to the gate, where a dozen frightened militiamen held the entrance, wicker shields overlapping to make a tight wall over the gap.

'What's going on?' demanded one lad, his voice breaking.

'We need to get to our eagles! Let us through!'

A slim crack opened. She and Pil squeezed past, and the crowd surged forward as the poor guardsmen tried to close up. They kept

moving up. With night coming down it was hard to see, but with the rail under one hand they could guide themselves. A thousand steps were carved into the rock, wide enough that some might descend as others ascended, although today everyone struggled upward. Those who were slow hugged the rock face, and those who were stronger climbed along the outer rail, shouting at anyone who didn't get out of their way. Winded and sucking air, she and Pil reached Justice Square at the crest of the promontory only to stumble over folk collapsed on the ground right in their way.

Guardsmen carrying lit brands came running. 'Move out of the way! Let those behind keep climbing!'

Pil staggered to the wide balcony that overlooked the city. The din rising off the city was indescribable, floodwaters drowning everything in its path. Lamps and torches flickered in the streets below like will-o'-the-wisps, darting at random.

'The hells,' Nallo muttered. 'Best we get to Clan Hall'

Four complexes fenced Justice Square, all swarming with lamplight. The night fire burned at the tip of the promontory beside Law Rock. They cut left to the gate into Clan Hall, and were immediately stopped by the reeve standing watch.

'Any more with you?' he demanded. 'Ah, the hells, thank the gods it's you, Nallo. Heya, Pil! What is going on down there?'

'Peddo?' she said. 'I thought you'd know something.'

'The gates have been breached,' said Pil. 'The army has attacked. There's panic'

'How can the gates be breached? They're reinforced, doubled ranks of walls, a second ditch and entrenchment…'

'Sometimes,' said Pil in a calm voice that cut through Peddo's mounting hysteria, 'the Qin commanders bribe a local man who is discontented to open the gates. Maybe here, also? It is the easy way.'

'No, that's not possible. Why would anyone betray-'

'Heya! Is that you, Peddo?'

'It is. Volias?'

'The same. We need a count of reeves. How many were caught down in the city – Nallo! By the Witherer's mercy!' He caught her arm, hugged her, and let go to slap Pil on the shoulder. 'The hells!' His voice broke, he sucked in air. 'The hells! It's what I think, isn't it? They've breached the gates.'

'We think so,' said Nallo.

'Good time to attack,' said Pil. 'No moon.'

'No moon means the eagles won't fly until dawn,' agreed Volias. 'Peddo, why are you on gate duty?'

'Likard sent me. Commander was called away, over to Assizes Tower. Some kind of council meeting, I don't know. Her, and Ofri, and the legates, and-'

'Every senior reeve not off duty, twelve all told. I've been looking for them. Listen, I sent those two new fawkner's assistants over here to hold the gate, although I don't see them here, curse them. You grab every reeve you can find, and have them kit out. Ready to go. We'll need to release all the eagles.'

'They'll not fly at night,' said Peddo.

'Maybe not, but it's better if they're not trapped.'

'What do you think is happening, Volias?'

'I don't know. Pil, you have military experience. You and Nallo come with me.'

'Where are you going?' asked Peddo.

'To Assizes Tower. To find out what in the hells the council is doing over there. And why in the hells they didn't ask for oil of naya sooner. Eiya!'

Peddo laughed, tight and tense. 'Didn't know you had it in you to prance around giving orders, Volias. Thought all you did was snipe.'

'You and your grandmother.' Volias slapped him on the chest.

Peddo swung at him.

'Stop it!' Nallo cried, and they both looked at her, and she realized they weren't fighting, they were just tipping back the lid to let a trickle of steam escape.

'And while you're at it,' added Volias, still shouting to be heard above the onslaught of noise, 'send Kesta to find Captain Ressi. Someone's got to block those steps.'

Usually at night Justice Square lay in peaceful slumber, deserted except for the rounds made by the fire watch. Tonight, the three reeves pushed through a churning crowd, every person arguing and complaining, no one in charge.

'We had to leave everything.'

'My children are hungry.'

'My children are in the city! I have to go back down.'

'What's happening?'

'Those cursed reeves have done nothing. They let the refugees flood us. They let the army march without resistance. They padded their own nests while others work. The Commander says she's in charge, and yet see what has happened-'

'And what in the hells have you ever done?' snapped Nallo to the man, dressed in his expensive silks with his hair done up in a rich man's threefold loops. 'Let me see the calluses on your clean hands, eh?'

Volias took her arm. 'Nallo, come on.'

'You pissing coward,' she shouted for good measure as they trotted off. The man waved his hands as though berating her and was then lost in the milling crowd.

Volias said nothing, not to scold, not to praise. He was mumbling under his breath as he let go of her arm, but she was pretty sure it was nothing to do with her or that gods-rotted whining fool behind them. Toskala's Assizes Tower rose higher than any structure she had ever seen, with its thick stone base and wooden tiers floating above. They ascended the wide ramp, lit by lamps hanging from tripods. Militia guards huddled in groups, talking as they glanced nervously into the night.

'What's that?' said Pil, gaze lifting.

Lights dipped in the sky. Folk scattered, and with their shrieks ringing close beside and the steady rumbling clamor from below, Nallo could not hear the clap of horses' hooves when the animals dropped down out of the sky and trotted to the ramp. A light steadier than a burning oil lamp gleamed from the hand of each Guardian, two men and two women.

She couldn't move. She couldn't even breathe, but when the four riders hit the base of the ramp, she grabbed a stunned Volias and yanked him to one side as the winged horses paced up the stone walkway and the militiamen leaped out of their way.

Guardians!

Everyone knew the tales. She wept to see them, so bright and beautiful, come to save the city. Guardians of justice. The servants of the gods.

Men cowered, or dropped to their knees. Some wept, while others covered their faces.

A ghost rode in their midst.

'The demon,' said Pil, quite clearly, if not very loud.

A pallid face turned in their direction, and its gaze caught Nallo. Sheh! For shame! The rice she had stolen from a neighbor's storehouse before she was married, and how she let her cousin take the blame and the whipping. That time she had slapped Jerad until he cried, and then bullied him into keeping quiet about it. How much she had resented her husband, although he'd only ever been kind, smiling gently sometimes as if he knew what a bad bargain he'd gotten but was determined to accept his fate gracefully. That was the worst of it, hating yourself and never being brave enough to change.

The demon released her, and she swayed, a sob convulsing her. The demon's gaze snapped to Pil, fierce with challenge.

Yet he faced her. 'I will not fear demons!'

She considered him with her flat demon gaze held over a shoulder until, passing upward and riding actually into the tower in the wake of the others, she vanished from sight.

'The hells!' said Volias. 'Are those Guardians?'

Away across the square, an eagle shrieked in fury. A man screamed, the pitch ripping high, then cut off.

Volias heaved, staggered, and retched, although nothing came up. 'Trouble,' he said hoarsely. 'Aui!' He collapsed, sprawling limp on the ground.

In Justice Square, a stilling hand had turned the crowd as into stone while the city below sank further into chaos.

Now that she was trapped, her purpose suspected, Marit felt a sense of peace. Let them do their worst!

She rode behind Lord Radas into a hall lined with benches. The Toskalan council sat in expectant assembly, everyone facing the woman cloaked in night who stood on the elevated speaker's platform holding the lacquered speaker's stick. They watched her as if she were holding their hearts in her hand and meant to decide whose she would crush.

The air in the room was sweat-drenched. The size and weight of the horses devoured space so the women and men seated on the

benches shrank back to give room. Marit knew the trick of quick assessment: there, twelve reeves, experienced men and women; a pair of militia captains and another dozen prosperous-looking council members, some of whom shifted nervously while the rest sat very still. Guardsmen stood behind the benches on which the reeves sat. A cloaked man stood in the shadows behind the speaker's platform, his face unfamiliar. Six Guardians assembled here. Kirit and her mare blocked the door; she watched the council through the reflection of her mirror, studying their faces.

Something terrible was going to happen.

'An ill day,' said she who wore the cloak of night. 'Trouble has risen to plague the Hundred. We the Guardians have returned on this day to restore peace.'

As in the old days with Flirt, when the raptor's excitement at a reckless maneuver had burned in her blood as well, Marit grinned as she took the plunge. She stood in her stirrups.

'Don't believe her! These are ones who command the army that assaults Toskala. As we are speaking, in the city below, the gates have been opened by traitors and your enemy marches in. Don't trust them!'

One of the reeves stood, an older man whose black hair was streaked with silver. 'Who are you? You look like a reeve who died twenty years ago. A dear friend of mine. Her eagle was slaughtered on the Iliyat Pass and yet her own body never found. Who are you?'

Lamplight flashed off a mirrored surface, illuminating his face. Aui! She hadn't recognized him. The years had not been kind, not in the way they had been to Joss. 'Kedi?'

'Marit? Eiya! You have the same voice! Yet you've not aged a day. Commander, this is a ghost or a demon. How can it wear Marit's face?'

'Marit!' said Lord Radas beside her. 'I recall you now. You are the foreseen traitor. "One among the Guardians will betray her companions".'

'Kedi, I beg you, believe me for the sake of the friendship we shared. They mean to betray you, they have already a plan in place, you are in danger-'

Of course they ran a hundred mey ahead of her down this road, swords and knives drawn before the words left her mouth.

A militia captain stabbed the man beside him. Three council members turned on their own. The guardsmen standing behind the reeves drove knives into unprotected backs. By the time she got her sword out, those not yet dead were being swarmed by the killers.

'Kedi!'

Lord Radas reined his horse into hers, forcing her back. She slid off one side as Warning flicked a wing half open, and crawled under the horse's belly. A tremor stirred beneath the planking, a whispering pulse she recognized as the tracery of a Guardian's altar hidden under the Assizes Tower. Her skin throbbed, goose-flesh rising.

Coming up, she found herself face-to-face with Miken, the spy. 'They caught me on the river,' he murmured, and his blood-soaked shame pressed like a blade at her throat.

I had to kill, in exchange for the lives of my sister and her children.

'They've lied to you,' she said.

She pushed past him, but the senior staff of Clan Hall were dead, dispatched cleanly. Despite being inside the tower, and with the riot of sound aloft in the air outside drowning out much else, she felt more than actually heard the distinctive squalls of eagles sundered from the bond that jesses them to their reeves.

Three of the killers knelt, heads bowed. A fourth was doubled over, fluid leaking out where he'd been stabbed by someone who had, briefly, fought back. Five guardsmen and merchants remained standing, weapons poised, but there was no one left to kill except a single gasping woman dressed in a merchant's tabard badged with a green sun.

'This isn't what I thought you meant!' she said accusingly to the air, or the cloaks, or the living captain – it was hard to be sure. 'This isn't what I intended, at all!'

'Someone must bear the blame.' Lord Radas touched his arrow to Miken's chest. 'You are all traitors. Murderers! Do you deny it?'

Miken sobbed.

'So are you judged,' said Lord Radas.

Miken exhaled sharply, his hand raised to grasp at a flicker of light that sparked before his face, then fell. He was dead.

'But you commanded us to kill them!' cried the militia captain.

'Did you commit the act?' asked the cloak of night from the speaker's platform.

Crouched by Kedi's lifeless body, Marit watched the murderers fall one by one, all but the merchant woman, who collapsed in a babble of hysteria. She rose, sheathing her sword.

'This one, who lied about her name, is also a traitor.' Lord Radas pointed his arrow at her.

'You can't kill me,' said Marit, edging toward Warning. 'I'm already dead.'

'It is time, Radas,' said the cloak of night, 'to grant our companions their full power. We are forced to pass judgement on one of our own, because of her deeds.'

'Folk who are accused are allowed a hearing at an assizes,' said Marit.

'We stand in an assizes court. We do not act out of haste. We will pass considered judgment, not like it happened the other time, long years ago, when those who had the majority acted out of spite and jealousy to condemn one who had done nothing wrong.'

'How long ago was that? Who did they judge, and what had that person done wrong?'

'I had done nothing to warrant obliteration! But the majority passed judgment out of fear and anger. So in their actions, I saw the truth of what they had become.'

'I can't argue with you,' said Marit, stepping over Miken's corpse. 'Words mean nothing when acts tell the true tale.'

'You know nothing,' she said. 'You only think you do. You think you are dead, but you are living. It is others who tell you you are dead, and you believe them, and by believing them you corrupt the strength the gods pour into their chosen vessels.'

'Maybe so,' agreed Marit, fingers tangling in Warning's mane. 'But if I know nothing, it's only because no one ever told me what became of the Guardians. And what became of me.'

'Because you refused to come to us in the beginning! You never trusted us, and therefore we can never trust you. There must be trust between Guardians. There must be unanimity. All must agree. And when one does not agree, when one cannot be trusted, then for the good of all, that one must be destroyed.'

'Agree about what is truth? Or just agree with you} With whatever you want, and whatever you have already decided?'

'Yordenas.' The cloak of night tossed a knife, blade flashing. He caught the dagger easily, as if the hilt had twisted into his hand by sorcery.

He yelped, as if its touch stung. 'I could have cut them down! Murderers and traitors! I could have punished them, if you'd given me my staff before.'

'Bevard.' She gave the green-cloaked man a pointed green stick, like a poor farmer's implement for digging out offending weeds. All were objects that pass judgment, that can sever spirit from flesh and that which is healthy from that which is diseased: a writing brush, a dagger, an arrow, a weeding stick. Even a mirror.

'A majority pass judgment on a renegade,' the woman said. 'Five, to judge one, standing on an altar, which completes their judgment.' She touched her brush to paper.

Yordenas advanced cautiously toward Mark with dagger raised. Lord Radas stretched out his arrow. The green-cloaked man hesitated, but when the women gestured, he, too, approached.

All this the ghost girl watched, her pale figure overlooked, ignored, forgotten.

'Kirit,' said Lord Radas. 'Remember what I told you. She's not one of us. She must be killed, so we can remain safe. We need your strength added to ours.'

She turned the mirror to reveal her own white face and blue eyes.

'In their actions, we see the truth of what they have become,' said the girl. 'You are not Guardians, seeking justice. You are demons. I will not be one of you.'

She reined her horse around.

Mark tugged on Warning's mane, ducked as the mare opened a wing, and jumped up belly-down over the saddle. Yordenas grabbed at her, and she kicked hard, connecting with flesh, hearing him grunt and stumble backward. Lord Radas's arrow jabbed her shoulder, but Warning, once she knew she was going to get her way, nipped and kicked to force a way to the entrance. Kirit crossed the threshold and clattered down the ramp. Mark cleared the door as the other horse took wing, bearing west-southwest over the Lesser Istri.

What if it had been Hari, instead of Kirit? Eiya! Would he have resisted, or joined the others and betrayed her? Killed her?

Spreading her wings, Warning leaped into the sky while below the hundreds gathered in Justice Square shouted and wept, their voices rising as if it was their cries that lifted her.