Shadow Gate

51

in the settlement, men and women ringed the council square, weaving a song to accompany the bridal couples who walked a circuit of the seven altars to present offerings to the gods.

A garland of flowers.

A handful of rice.

Nai, wrapped in se leaves.

Silk as your banner.

Build a bouse! Build a bouse!

Walk this path into the next day.

Flowers were hard to come by in the Barrens, even during the rainy season, but the reeves on training sweeps had discovered the lush valley hidden deep in the foothills mentioned by the envoy. With so many marriages waiting on a proper feast day, and every person in the settlement dreaming of a festival to interrupt the steady grind of labor, Mai had asked the reeves to fetch the appropriate offerings and assigned a propitious day after consultation with holy priests from the temples in Olossi.

She stood on the porch of the house with Anji, fanning herself as they watched the procession wind away from the benches. Twenty-seven couples in turn offered spikes of purple twilight-stupor at the flat boulder sacred to Hasibal. Bright red blooms of blood-star and falling-shields woven into necklaces draped the stone walls of the Thunderer's enclosure. They strewed petals beneath the Herald's gate, a path from west to east. The procession, accompanied by the singers, continued down to the market square.

Mai folded up her fan and, taking Anji's arm for balance, indicated the steps. 'Now they'll go to the Lantern, the Witherer, the Lady, and the Merciless One. Then we'll gather here in front of our house for rice wine and a feast.'

The kitchen yard was bustling, but he scanned the settlement sprawling below, the brick wall, the embankment, the green fields and, beyond all, the pale countryside, dotted with herds of sheep and tendrils of smoke where shepherds had set camps. Above, eagles circled. 'Should you walk so far?'

'Would I be healthier if I lay in bed? Is that how Qin women spend their days when they are pregnant?'

His grin, like the day, was bright. 'No, it is not. But you are getting very big, close to your time. Naturally, I worry. I have spoken to the Ri Amarah women. Maybe, after all, I must return you by ship to Olossi, so you can give birth surrounded by their medicine and sorcery.'

'I wish you had thought of that before you exiled me here.'

'Maybe so, but I am impressed with what you have built.'

More people – the entire settlement, really, except for the women cooking in the kitchens – had fallen in behind the procession as the singers switched rhythms and began to chant a complicated and somewhat lewd tale that everyone seemed to know, about a blind woodcarver and the blacksmith who courted her by forging fine tools for her use. Voices were raised in answer to the singers, punctuating the long descriptive verses with quick refrains: 'Too sharp!' 'Too dull!' 'Just right!'

Mai surveyed the settlement. 'I have not built it. They are the ones who built it.'

'Yours is the overseeing hand that guides them.' He looked at Tuvi, and the chief nodded. They began walking down, guards ahead and behind, Priya and Sheyshi following. 'That girl who knew about herbs and plants – why did she refuse Tuvi?'

'They wouldn't have suited. I have someone else in mind for Chief Tuvi.'

'Do you? Does he know?'

'Of course not! These matters must be dealt with more subtly.'

'So it seems.'

She braced her hand on his elbow as they negotiated a rough

patch of ground. Taking a breath, she ventured onto new ground. 'I hear a rumor that you fought a battle.'

'Was that meant to be subtle?'

'No. But I worry, so if you tell me the details, then I'll worry less because I will not be weaving stories in my own mind to pass the days while I wait for you to return.'

'You are right to wish to know details.'

He sketched the scene: night on the river, the demon he had faced, the battle that came afterward, the old villager who had died. Anji had been very brave, and foolhardy, she supposed, but perhaps he would not measure it as foolishness but rather as prudence. Know your enemy if you want to defeat him. It had worked out this time. That was all you could really hope for.

The Lantern's one-room counting house was ringed by twenty-seven stone cups filled with oil, the last one taking fire as Avisha and Jagi touched the wick with a burning stick, an offering of Sapanasu's fire. A new song rose as the procession descended to the gate, everyone clapping.

' "Empty your basket! Don't carry stones! Heya! Heya! Today we celebrate."'

'Our children will know these songs well,' said Mai, 'even if we stumble through them.'

Beyond the gate, laborers from the fields and reeves and soldiers from the barracks joined them, the sung responses turning deep with so many male voices. They marched to the Witherer's altar and draped the thatched roof with curtains of green leaves strung on fishing line while Mai and Anji observed from a distance. Priya offered Mai juice. Sheyshi held an umbrella over her head to keep off the sun. Anji tilted his head back to watch the eagles overhead, marking, Mai supposed, the pattern of their sweeps. Chief Tuvi watched the crowd.

'I thought we made it clear that we wanted no temple raised to their Merciless One, not in our settlement,' said Anji as they walked behind the procession toward the irrigation ponds. The singers formed up on either side of a walled garden.

'It's only a garden, planted with useful medicinal herbs and other spices. And it's all the way out here by the irrigation ponds.'

'Near the training grounds and the laborers' camp.' He frowned. 'It's trouble, if you ask me.'

She snapped open her fan. 'Would it be less trouble if a merchant opened up a brothel? There are plenty of men here, just like in Kartu.'

'Has that old woman been to see you? She's dangerous.'

She laughed. 'Anji! No, the Hieros has not visited, although I am sure I would enjoy her conversation, since so few interesting people travel to the Barrens. I am bereft of company, which I was not in Olossi.' She fluttered her fan.

'Hu! I am struck.'

Her belly tightened. She sucked in a breath and let it out as the contraction released its grip.

'Mai? Are you well?'

'It's nothing. It comes and goes, not often. Priya says it is perfectly normal.'

'She is a trained midwife?'

'She attended births in our household in Kartu. Before that, she read texts written about medical matters.'

'I am sure she did, but I will breathe more easily when you are shipped off to the Ri Amarah. Tomorrow, at first light.'

So suddenly he changed his mind! She might have spent the last months in company with Miravia, and yet as she watched the couples enter the garden and pour rice wine onto the soil, she could not regret seeing the settlement expand and ripen. In the months to come, more Qin soldiers would cycle through and, she hoped, find wives, while meantime Anji had told her that another dozen or so men at other forts and stations looked ready to marry. Now they could truly say they were building homes in the Hundred.

Everyone was laughing, clapping rhythms. 'Aiyiyi! Aiyiyi! Bring me… to a good family, bring me… to a warm hearth.'

There were almost a thousand folk living in the various nearby camps or within the walled town with its market and burgeoning crafts and artisan quarter. So many! Anji halted, and his guards stopped, and she watched as the procession paced farther away toward the sapling Ladytree about half a mey distant down the track that led south along the shore of the sea, to other places and other villages not under Qin control.

'Too many people,' said Anji. 'Too far from the gate. We'll go back now, Mai.'

She sighed and, fanning herself, went without protest. Anyway, her feet were swollen, and she was really getting hot as the long afternoon baked the earth. As they trudged past the irrigation ponds, the cheerful shouts and singing faded into the shimmering heat-haze behind them. The barracks and training grounds lay empty. Everyone had followed the procession, except for the soldiers on watch.

'What about this valley the reeves found?' Anji asked. 'Who has been there?'

'Only the reeves. They say you can only fly in and out. It's lush and beautiful, so they say.'

'I'll ask Marshal Joss.'

'I thought I would see him here today, since he brought you in yesterday.'

'He's on patrol. For a man who charms women so readily, I'm surprised he never married.'

'There's a tale fit for a song. A sad, sad song.'

'Not one I'm likely to enjoy.'

She tapped him on the arm with the folded fan. 'I forgive you for finding the old songs ridiculous, Anji. But I love them.'

To her surprise, he kissed her lightly on the cheek. Certainly his Qin escort looked as startled as she was herself at such a bold, public gesture.

'Captain?' inquired Chief Tuvi with a look of concern.

'The heat has overcome me, Tuvi-lo,' said Anji with a laugh.

An eagle plummeted out of the sky. Mai shrieked, caught by surprise. Her belly contracted, and she bent over as the muscle clenched with an iron grip around her middle.

'Priya, help me!' Anji supported her as Priya held her other arm. 'Tuvi, that eagle is Scar. Go see what Joss wants. I want a cart for Mai-'

'It's easing. I can walk. A cart would jolt me worse.'

'Let's move,' said Anji as she straightened.

They halted in the shadow of the gate to wait for the reeve sprinting down from the empty market square where his huge eagle had landed.

'What is it, Marshal?' Anji called.

He shook his head, handsome face creased with a deadly frown. 'Trouble.' Then he had to stop to catch his breath.

'Call the alert,' said Anji.

The reeve heaved a pair of breaths, trying to get enough air to speak. 'Wait, wait! Give me a moment.'

Anji waited.

'A group of perhaps two hundred armed men. About three mey south of here. Riding hard up the main tracks They must have worked their way at night northward through the wilderness and only now broken cover.'

'Soldiers?'

'Outlanders. Wearing red sashes or some such garb.'

'The Red Hounds? Riding in such numbers?' He swore, such an ugly word that Mai flinched away and he did not even notice.

Tuvi said, 'We did not expect a show of force, captain.'

'Where are the agents we suspect?'

'All under observation. But they would have heard the plans for the wedding festival and could easily have passed out a message.'

'And I arrived only yesterday, with no prior warning.' Anji shook his head. 'We should have expected them to strike today. Tuvi.'

'Anji-hosh.'

'Now the soldiers you've trained will prove their worth. We'll call a general alert, and proceed as we discussed.'

'They'll know you're on to them,' said Joss.

'It is a game of hounds and wolves, Joss. We knew the agents of the Red Hounds would penetrate this settlement, despite all our precautions, so the Hieros lent us certain of her agents to keep track of their agents.'

'Aui! You never told me!'

'The fewer who know, the less can be spoken. Now they strike, seeing an opening, hoping and perhaps believing we do not suspect. They're taking a risk with an open attack knowing we have eagles who can spot them-' Abruptly, he grasped Mai's arm, harder than she expected, pinching her skin. 'It's a feint, Tuvi. To make us careless. Joss, can you take Mai out of here? If I know she is safe, then I do not fear them.'

'Anji?'

No fears, Mai. We are prepared for them.'

'For poisoned knives? Why not poisoned arrows?'

'Even so, Mai. Therefore, you must go immediately.'

'I'll take her myself,' said Joss.

'Too bad about the marriages!' she said, really angry now. 'How unfair to interrupt the festival! Now it will have to be done all over again.'

'If they've placed all the offerings, verea,' said Joss, 'then the ceremony is complete. The feast can be celebrated later. Will you come with me?'

She burst into tears and, hating herself for the weakness, sucked them down. 'Yes. Of course. I'll do whatever is necessary.'

Anji had never told her! He and Tuvi had kept secret from her all along the troubles they foresaw!

'Take her to the Ri Amarah,' said Anji.

'I would attend the mistress as well,' said Priya.

Joss nodded. 'I'll assign a second reeve to convey you, verea.'

'Mai, be strong.' Anji released her, turned away and, with the chief and his guardsmen around him, took off at a run.

Sheyshi began to weep noisily. 'Do you leave me behind, Mistress? Do you leave me?'

'Hush,' snapped Priya.

Mai was shaking, but she began walking up into town, Joss beside her.

'Easier to make a quick break,' he said, 'than drag out the parting. And if it makes it any easier, he didn't tell me either about this secondary arrangement he made with the Hieros. A secretive man, your husband.'

She wanted to defend Anji, or agree with Joss, but she was already out of breath. A second reeve landed in the market square. A woman ran to them.

'Marshal! Did you hear the news? There's a party of about two hundred men spotted two mey south on the track.'

'Saw it myself. Miyara, you'll be transporting Priya to Olossi. Hitch her in now, but make a detour to the camp and give Arda these directions.'

Pain gripped her midsection so tightly that she did not hear as Joss continued.

Then it faded. -just make sure she coordinates the hall's actions with Captain Anji. Are you well, verea?' He took Mai's arm.

'Yes,' she said, shaking him off. She had lost all that hard-won equilibrium, her market face burning away in the face of trouble.

Sheyshi trailed behind, irritating everyone with her wails. 'Mistress, let me help you.'

'No! I'm fine.'

They reached the market square. Mai panted and puffed as the marshal hooked into his harness. To walk under the shadow of the huge eagle took courage, but Anji had done it, so she could, too. Then the harness had to be adjusted to fit over her distended belly, but at least the sling under her hips supported her weight comfortably. Priya was being hooked in by the female reeve. Sheyshi slunk away, still bawling, a Qin soldier in awkward pursuit.

'Are you ready?' asked Joss.

'Yes.'

He blew a tone on his whistle: Up!

Mai laughed first as fear squeezed her heart, and then she laughed because, as the ground dropped away and they picked up and up, the entire settlement fell into her view in the most astonishing manner. She could see everything! The mountains striped with late afternoon shadows. Sheep pouring over a slope as they moved to pasture. The skin of water gleaming in the irrigation ponds and the net of canals moving water into greening fields. The racks of drying fish. The sky, so blue above, and the mirror of the sea so wide below, fading in the east to dusk.

No wonder reeves left their families behind and never looked back.

She spotted the procession returning from the Ladytree, everyone chanting and dancing, but as she watched, twisting because the view was falling away behind them, a pair of figures reached the crowd and a trickle of tiny figures spun out of the celebratory mass as oil separates from water. Anji was already spreading the word, putting his plan in motion.

Then they were over the water, and she lost sight of the settlement. Why did Anji not trust her? Or was it those around her he did not trust? Agents of the Red Hounds might infiltrate in many guises. As for the Hieros, that knife could cut both ways: her agents could spy on foreign agents, but they could also spy on him.

With mighty wings outstretched, the eagle glided. The land

receded behind them. She had never ever imagined anyone could travel so fast. The wind rumbled in her ears, and carved scallops in the glittering surface of the water far below.

On and on they flew. The sea darkened in the east, promising night. Joss had his arms around her shoulders in a discreet lover's embrace and, abruptly, he relaxed his grip and withdrew his hands.

She gasped, gripping the harness because she felt suddenly how fragile were the straps holding her in.

'How are you doing?' He was very close, accustomed to embracing women, no doubt, while she had never been this intimately close to any man except Anji.

'Hu! I have to pee, but I should have known that would happen! No, don't worry.' She giggled, so giddy she thought her spirit must be flying even higher than her body. 'I'm joking.'

Her abdomen clenched so hard her next words were choked off, a fist clenched to squeeze her breath right out of her lungs. Warm liquid gushed down her thighs.

'The hells!' cried Joss. 'I thought you said you were joking.'

Eldest daughter, she had attended at every birth in the Mei clan since she was old enough to run errands in and out of the birthing room. 'That was my water breaking. I'm going to give birth.'

'Now? Right now? The hells you are!'

A spark of panic surged to a flame. She shut her eyes and let it run, as a pure, wild fire might rage along her skin. Let it fall away, like clothes shed from the body. Her fear died. She would live, or she would die. She must accept what was, in order to think and to act.

He was still babbling. 'How could it-? Aren't you-? What do you mean, that was your water?'

Liquid ran down her leg; there was plenty of it, since the womb is a vessel of water and blood in which the growing seed is nurtured. In the desert, as the saying goes, without water there is no life, without blood you have no kin.

'My womb's water. Now I will deliver the baby.'

'Eiya! What if it slips out and falls into the water?'

'It won't come right away. My womb's passage has to open. How long until we reach Olossi?'

'I am not flying over the sea all night with a laboring woman

whose baby might drop out at any time.' He tugged on the harness and the eagle began a low slow curve. The other reeve signaled with flags, querying, and Mai saw Priya dangling, like her, and staring toward her, trying to read the situation. 'The hells! The nearest village is south, but there might be agents of the Red Hounds in hiding there. The Ireni Valley lies too far north through barren, uninhabited, rough country, not a place I want to have to set down. May those cursed Sirniakans have their balls eaten off by demons! Could they not have waited to attack?'

She began to laugh again, because she had never imagined him the kind of man to start raving. Then another pain caught, and he swore, and she rode it out by measuring each breath in four counts and out four counts, trying to picture the peaceful altar of the Merciful One, who brings ease to women in the throes of birth.

'Mai? Mai!'

'Oof! No, it's just – it's fine. What about that valley? The Naya Hall reeves say it can only be reached by air.'

'True enough, and it's not far as the eagle flies. Aui. I've only been there once, though, and not so late in the afternoon as this with the cursed sun going down. The hells. Gods rot it, what choice have we?'

They swung around, flying toward the setting sun and the dull red gleam of far distant mountains. The female reeve followed, and for a while they flew in silence with the marshal breathing raggedly while Mai counted off the intervals between her pains. Not too close together, enough that she began to get tired of counting. Yet Joss was right: they could not fly all night over the water, with a chance the baby might drop before they reached Olossi.

'What can I do?' he said after pain had ripped away her breath again. 'I'm cursed useless.'

'Eh! Ah! The hells.' She pressed a hand to her head as the pain receded, relieved she had a respite, however brief. 'Get us put down in a safe place. The pains will come more quickly, and be more severe. We'll need a fire, boiled water, scraps of cloth or grass for the bleeding afterward. Priya knows a tea to brew for the pain, but she hasn't any with her, never mind.' On she talked, because it kept him quiet and her mind busy, sorting through her memories of births she had attended, only one of which had ended in a mother's death.

Do not think of that, nor of early babies and how difficult it was for them to survive.

The shore rose into view. To the right she saw the settlement's embankment.

'Too close,' muttered Joss. 'Eh, well, now I know my heading.'

They passed above the turbulent break between sea and land. Mai glimpsed a party of unknown mounted men wheeling to face trouble: a mass of Qin and local riders approaching both from the direction of the settlement and, somehow, from the road behind the outlanders. The outlander troop broke toward the sea, the Qin in steady pursuit over rugged ground. Down the Qin drove them. A pair of arrows tipped with fire traced a spectacular arc out of the Qin company and up into the sky before plunging into the sinks and shallows along the shoreline.

Flame licked the surface, boomed in a sink with a startling burst, and then raced in a flare of light along the shore as the oily smear that stained the surface caught fire and spread.

The Qin pushed their enemy down into the burning sea.

Then she and Joss were past, too far away to watch the course of the battle, but for a long time after as they flew inland, Mai could see the shoreline limned in fire as night overtook the east.