Spirit Gate

7

Shai never spoke much. He didn't see the point of speaking, since no one ever listened to him, and those who did then usually snapped at him for having the temerity to speak. Best to keep your own counsel under those circumstances.

So it was a wonder to him when his niece Ti'ili came running on the path that led from town up the gentle, grassy slope of Dezara Mountain to the base of the spring pasture. Here, beside a copse of very young birch trees he'd planted and watered himself, he had set up his woodworking shed so he could work in peace without four elder brothers and their five meddling wives and the truculent ghost of his sixth brother plaguing him. Ti's black braids flapped as she ran. He set his attention back to the work before him as she pulled up, gasping, under the shade of the open shed.

"Uncle Shai! You've got to come! You've got to speak up for Mai!"

He finished the stroke of his adze and ran his hand along the grain of the pine log he was planing down to make a fine bedstead for the wedding. Good and smooth, ready to cut to length. When he was done, he looked up at Ti.

"But you've got to! She's been crying all day. You know it isn't right that they marry her off to a Qin, even if he is an officer!"

He studied the log, the second of two precious trunks his elder brothers had traded three ewes for so that the family wouldn't be embarrassed when it came time to stand up at the law court and seal the marriage. The legs, out of the other log, were already carved and oiled. He was preparing the last of the supports, although he wasn't going to have time to carve as elaborate a frieze into the wood as he would have liked, not with the date already chosen and written into the law court's record. Seventeen days from now.

"He'll beat her! He's buried one wife already. He admitted it himself! We'll never see her again! Never! Never! Never! He'll get tired of her and sell her into slavery and there'll be nothing we can do to stop it! His masters will be overthrown and he'll be killed in battle and then-!"

"Hush!" He stood, casting his gaze about, but his two younger nephews-Ti's cousins-were out of earshot tending to the sheep.

She kicked at wood shavings with her pretty red slippers, knowing she had gone too far. While it was perfectly true that the Qin had ruled Kartu Town for only the last twelve years, and that shifting alliances, a death in the var's family, or an unexpected push from the eastern cities might cause the Qin horsemen to retreat and some other power to take their place, it was still treason to speak of such a thing. Ti was only two years younger than he was. She knew as well as he did what the Qin did to their enemies or even to those who only spoke ill-considered words against them.

She looked back down the path, following his gaze. Kartu Town was not much to look at, a dusty bee's hive of compounds surrounded by an inner wall which was itself surrounded by startlingly green orchards crisscrossed by slender irrigation canals. Beyond the orchards lay a thick mud-brick outer wall studded with watch-towers and guardposts. The wall was wide enough to allow Qin guardsmen to ride their rounds atop it instead of walking. They hated to walk. The citadel, a circular structure of baked brick, rose at the northwestern corner of the inner town. In the square fronting the citadel rose the gallows, and today three posts were decorated with remains. A vulture circled.

Like all of the inhabitants of Kartu Town, he'd learned to look away. In truth, it was not the sight of the citadel and its square that made him climb every day in good weather to the peace of his shed. It was the vista beyond: endless, open, yawning wide to the west, all sky, the rocky plateau of the desert looming on the southern horizon, and the mountains rising heroically to the north. So beautiful. They were all stark lines and pale slopes with the memory of winter in their snowy peaks.

"I hate it up here!" cried Ti. "Too much air! Too much sky!" Abruptly, she burst into tears. "I know I shouldn't have said it-but he's Qin. What will happen to Mai? How could Father Mei have agreed?" She sobbed like a tempest.

"He's decent enough," said Shai finally as this storm began to die down.

"Who is?"

"Captain Anji."

"How can you say so?" she shrieked. "A dirty barbarian! You're a Qin-lover!" Then she clapped a hand over her mouth and began sobbing noisily again. He waited until the worst subsided before scooping up a handful of shavings and handing them to her so she could wipe mucus from her upper lip.

"He doesn't have to marry her. He could have just taken her as a concubine. Branded her a pleasure girl and dragged her to the brothel for his use. We couldn't have stopped him."

She hiccoughed, sucked in a watery breath, and gave a bleating moan as she pounded her belly with a fist as if she were mourning. "I know it's not as bad as it could have been. But I can't bear to be parted from her! Ei! Ei! Ei!"

"She'll just be across town, at the citadel. You can see her every day."

"No! No! No! The news just came this morning, by messenger from Captain Anji. The garrison is being pulled out and sent east on the Golden Road. There's something going on there, I don't know what. Maybe there's war on the border. War! They're going east and she'll have to go with them, and we'll never see her again! Ever! Ever! Ever!"

He set down the adze on the bench, considerably startled by this news. "How soon?"

"In two days! The wedding is tomorrow, not next month! That's why you have to speak to Father Mei. Maybe they'll listen to you. All the other uncles… you know them! They always do what Father Mei says. Chicken-hearts! All but Uncle Hari. If he was here still, he'd put a stop to it."

"For shame, Ti!"

"I'm not sorry, even if no one else will talk about Uncle Hari! He was your favorite brother, too! You know it! You know he was the only one tough enough to stand up to Father Mei! He'd tell Father Mei to postpone the wedding. Wait 'til the garrison comes back. But they'll never come back. That's what Captain Anji knows. He knows they're never coming back and he's taking Mai away forever and ever and ever!" She once again fell to bawling.

Ti's outbursts were usually like cloudbursts in summer-frequent but short in duration, causing brief floods and then getting all that moisture sucked away as soon as the sun came back out-but this time she was truly upset. She and Mai were close as twins, born the same day in the same month in the same year to his eldest brother's first and second wives, who were themselves sisters. The two girls had never been apart in all their seventeen years.

No use trying to get any more work done today. He gathered up his tools into the cedar tool chest.

After a bit, when she could hear him, he said, "You could go as second wife."

"He won't take me!"she wailed. "I already asked, but Captain Anji told Father Mei he can only have one wife. And Father Mei won't let me go as her maid because it would be dishonorable, and anyway, Captain Anji said he won't take me even as a servant."

He'd be a madman to take you as wife or servant, Shai thought, although in truth he was shocked that Ti would suggest such a thing. A servant! Someday Ti's impulsive and stormy nature would get her, and the family, in big trouble.

A slender shape toiled up the path and resolved into the slave girl everyone called Cornflower, for her blue eyes. Ti saw her and got that look all the women in the house did whenever Cornflower appeared in a room. She wiped her eyes and nose before the slave halted twenty steps below them with hands clasped and body bent in a half bow. No need for Cornflower to say anything. Wind tugged at the slave's wool tunic and her trident braids of uncannily white-gold hair. Her bare feet and calves were burned a pinkish brown, but everyone knew she had unusually light skin beneath her clothes, not like that of normal people but more like that of ghosts, and there was something about the way she stood there so quietly, a well of stillness, that made him always think about what it would be like to…

"I better go," said Ti.

Shai started, unaware he'd been wandering. Cornflower served the two senior wives-Ti's mother and aunt-so her presence here was a summons for Ti. Her presence was unwelcome to any young man whose greatest ambition was to be left undisturbed.

"Promise me you'll come right now." Ti started down the path at a fast clip, Cornflower trotting behind, head lowered. Ti looked three times back over her shoulder, mouthing words, gesturing almost comically, trying to get Shai to hurry up.

He didn't see the point. He was the last person his eldest brother would listen to. But he whistled for his nephews and finished stowing the tools. His flush receded. His thoughts sank back into an orderly flow. The wind tugged at his sleeves, tied back to leave his lower arms bare. It wasn't warm enough to work bare-chested yet, although he preferred it when it was. He hated to go back down to town, back to the family compound, where sleeves had to be tied down to the wrists and any work you did or comment you made was overseen, overheard, and overruled by others.

Mai was fortunate. She was escaping.

Not that she would think of it that way.

His younger nephew came running, looking important and annoyed. "What is it?"

"I have to go down," Shai said, gesturing toward town. "I'll be back this afternoon."

"You better be. I don't want to sleep out here worrying about thieves!" He scuffed his feet among the wood shavings and sat down hard on the bench.

Not that there were thieves anymore, not since the Qin took over. Still, no one left good tools and precious wood unguarded, even so.

"What do you have to go down for, anyway?" The boy shaded his eyes and squinted toward town. "Uh!" He grunted and rolled his eyes, seeing his older cousin far down, retreating on the path. Because of Ti's way of walking, she could not be mistaken for anyone else: all bouncing sleeves, a spring like that of an antelope in her step. "That Ti! Just a big boiling teakettle, that one! It must be about Mai and the wedding, eh?"

Shai shrugged.

"Make sure you're back here soon. No shirking!" His nephew was eldest son of second brother and, therefore, had more clout than his young uncle Shai, but not enough to overrule Ti's request, because she was daughter of Father Mei. If Ti asked, Shai must go.

So Shai left. An ugly scene would no doubt ensue once he reached the compound, but there was no reason to worry about that on the walk down with the day so fine and the sky so merry and blue. The wind skated up from the east, which meant it was clear of dust torn up from the desert. The tips of the mountains to the northwest could be seen, three deep; that was unusual, quite striking. He thought he heard a hawk's piercing call but when he paused and spun slowly he saw no speck in the sky, nothing flying except one wispy cloud spinning out along the ridge of Dezara Mountain. The slopes still had a hint of spring green in them although they were fading to summer gold. The sheep were hidden above in a fold of land, but he heard a second flock bleating off to the right. That would be the Gandi clan's herd. There had been talk about a marriage between Mai and an elder Gandi boy, but of course the attentions of the Qin captain had cut those right off.

Poor Mai. No wonder she was crying. Still, it wasn't really a surprise. Mai had been doomed from the start.

He stared east, into the wind. Because it was so clear, he could see the old road winding along the mountains for an unexpectedly long way before haze and distance cloaked it. No clouds of dust betrayed a merchant train or travelers. All was quiet and at peace. Shai liked things at peace.

It wouldn't last.

He started down again and soon enough was nodding to the guards at the gate-two grizzled veterans of the town militia who had survived the Qin takeover-and crossed into the verdant oasis of the orchard gardens. The noise of the town was audible but muffled by green leaves and the laughter of the orchard workers. He crossed the Merciful Prayer bridge, passed under the arch of the inner wall, and came out into the sun-blasted citadel square, where no one walked at midday. By the commander's quarters, two stocky Qin soldiers rode patrol, their heads covered by felt caps whose tilted brims shaded their eyes.

The gallows and the posts cast almost no shadows. Widow Lae's remains, dangling from the middle post, clattered in the wind. Keeping his head low, Shai twisted his clan ring three times around his middle finger and walked, trying not to look at the strands of black hair fluttering from the widow's skull and the tattered remains of her red silk tunic, her best garment. Most of her flesh had been picked clean by wind and vultures and sun, leaving these strings of tendons that bound together her bones, the last remnants of hair and clothing, and her ghost.

"I did it!" she shrilled. She was a wraith, more mist than form, a handsome young woman of about twenty although she'd been three times that age when she'd died. "I'll get my reward soon enough! Then you'll all be sorry!"

The entire town had been forced to assemble to see Widow Lae put to death after she insulted a Qin officer, although everyone knew that she'd been condemned for a more serious offense. A foreign merchant had testified that the widow had asked him to smuggle a letter, whose contents betrayed Qin military secrets, to Tars Fort on the eastern border. At least, that was what the merchant had told a drinking companion at the brothel when they were both drunk. When he'd refused to take the letter, the widow had sent one of her grandsons instead. The young man had never been found or seen again nor had anyone managed to trace his trail, and after the execution all the widow's dependents had been sold into slavery and her possessions confiscated by the Qin commander, who had given the merchant a percentage of the profits. Her distant kinfolk weren't even going to be allowed to bury her bones. So shameful!

No wonder her ghost clung stubbornly to her anger, even though that anger chained her ghost to the earth, to this very citadel square where she had died.

Shai often wondered what had been in that message, in part because naturally he was curious and in part because Widow Lae's death had altered the course of Mai's life. On the day of the widow's execution, with every man, woman, and child of Kartu Town assembled in citadel square, Captain Anji had first spoken to Father Mei about marrying his beautiful daughter.

The walls of the town's many residential compounds closed around him as he left the square and its ghost behind. He whistled under his breath. Father Mei's second wife, the younger of the two sisters, the one who was also Ti's mother, hated whistling. He'd learned to amuse himself softly.

Five turns left, past the town baths, two turns right, and one final left turn down an alley brought him to the servants' entrance to his family's compound, just around the corner from the main entrance. He shook the bell. The peephole opened to reveal two suspicious dark eyes that crinkled up as the unseen mouth smiled.

"Master Shai!"

One Hand let him in and barred the door behind him, the movements smooth with long practice despite the slave's disability.

"Lots of trouble indoors?" Shai asked.

The old man shook his head with a wry smile. "We are all sad to see the flower leave us, Master. She bears the Merciful One's gentle disposition in her heart, and holds mercy in her hands."

Shai sighed. No doubt the household slaves would miss the extra food Mai slipped them when she thought no one was looking, and the ointments and infusions she smuggled into their sleeping room when one was sick. It would have been easier to stay up on the mountain than face what lay within. It was tempting to enjoy the sun and the quiet of the courtyard and pretend the rest of the world had gone to sleep.

"Not a lot of people in the streets today," he said. "No one out on the Golden Road, either, not as I could see from Dezara Mountain. I wonder if this talk of troubles on the eastern border is scaring people. If merchants won't travel, the markets will suffer."

"Storm is not going away while you wait out here, Master Shai," said One Hand.

Shai sighed again, but delaying changed nothing. He crossed the dusty courtyard, pausing twice to savor the shade, once under a peach tree and once under the grape arbor. He went into the house past the whitewashed slave barracks, past the tapestried halls that led to his married brothers' suites of rooms, past the curtained alcove where he and his nephew Younger Mei slept-

He stopped and stuck his head in. Mei had thrown himself down on the bed they shared. He was weeping, trying to mute his noise in his wool tunic, which was wadded up and squashed against his face. Startled, the boy lifted his head. His entire body shook with a gasp of relief.

"It's you! Don't tell Father Mei."

Shai let the curtain fall and sat down at the end of the bed. The rope base sagged under him, cutting lines into his buttocks; the servants had taken the mattress out to re-stuff it with new straw just this morning.

"I can't believe she's leaving. My dearest sister! We are twin souls! Born together! Now I'll never see her again."

Since it was probably true, Shai didn't murmur reassurances. He listened for the tread of hard feet, keeping Mei company while he sniveled. Slaves passed twice, but they walked with light footsteps and none were foolish enough to tell tales on the youth who would one day be head of household, should he live so long. Poor Mei. Father Mei and any of Younger Mei's other uncles would whip him for crying if they heard. In a way it was better to be least and superfluous, seventh of seven sons, an unlucky position certainly but one without expectations and demands beyond remaining silent, keeping out of the way, and doing what you were told.

"All right," said Mei finally. He sat up and wiped his face dry with his tunic. "I'm ready." He stood, straightened his knee-length silk coat, and examined his spotless nails. "They've already gathered in the fountain court."

The Mei family compound had the same layout as most every family compound in Kartu Town. First you would see the massive outer wall built of earth or bricks. Behind this wall, and usually ringing the inner portion of the compound, lay a buffering outer courtyard where livestock and chickens could be quartered, a garden and fruit trees could grow, and the servants could launder, cook, clean, and take care of the necessary chores that none of the household kin desired to smell or listen to. The inner compound had a barracks built on the eastern end and a maze of rooms for the family, the most recent added on only four years ago. Some compounds in town were smaller, scarcely more than hovels erected within a corral of sticks; others were palatial and boasted marble floors and second stories.

Unmarried men like Mei and Shai slept in alcoves; unmarried daughters slept in their mothers' suites with the other children. At the center of the house lay the fountain court where Father Mei entertained guests or negotiated contracts. Although a painted, windowless corridor led from the main gate to the fountain court so that visitors would not glimpse the secret heart of the family's private life, Shai and Mei took the slaves' hall that wound through the warren of rooms. It let them in behind the hedge-like screen of flowering bitter-heart from which they might first observe before revealing their presence.

Everyone was assembled. Father Mei sat in the black chair, facing the splashing fountain. Grandmother-Shai's mother-sat on Father Mei's left. She was tiny, frail, and half asleep but otherwise quite magnificent in a gold silk woman's coat, the extraordinarily long, square sleeves embroidered with red leaping antelopes. The uncles sat to Father Mei's right, all in a line. The wives stood a step behind them, and there were at least a dozen children kneeling with heads bowed and hands resting on thighs off beyond the uncles. From this angle Shai could only see the top of Mai's head; she was seated on a pillow halfway between Father Mei and the fountain. In this same way he would present a valuable item to be admired and examined before the haggling began.

Captain Anji sat on the fountain bench with spray wetting the back of his gold silk Qin tabard and the peculiar braided topknot that all the Qin officers made of their hair. Remarkably, he had come alone except for two attendants standing with arms crossed back by the gate. The Qin were famous for their arrogance.

Cornflower was offering rice wine to each of the uncles. Someone had put her in a concubine's revealing bedroom silks so that every time she bent at the waist to proffer the cup, a flash of pale hip was revealed. Despite this provocation, Captain Anji kept his gaze fixed on Father Mei. He was a man of powerful control.

Shai could not stop peeking through the bitter-heart. Her braids had a caressing way of sliding to and fro over her shoulders and upper arms. They were fastened at each tip by tiny nets sewn with lazulite beads as blue as her eyes. Shai shut his eyes.

Thank goodness the ceremony of receiving had almost reached its conclusion! The family had been out here for a while, while Shai was dawdling.

The sigh that escaped Younger Mei's lips was as fragile as the ghost of a wind passing through scattered rose leaves. Shai looked at him, squeezed his arm, and lifted his own chin: Hold firm! Mei gave Shai a look, like that of a frightened rabbit determined to bite the hawk that has cornered it but not sure it will survive the altercation. Then he stepped out from behind the hedge.

The heir's place, of course, was to stand at his father's right hand. Mei did so, taking up position smoothly and without a sound. Captain Anji flashed the merest glance Mei's way but did not otherwise betray that anything was amiss or that another man might have taken insult at the heir's belated arrival. Shai waited behind the hedge, partly because he was so aroused by the sight of Cornflower in her bedroom silks but mostly because no one had bothered to place a chair for him with the rest of the uncles and he refused to kneel with the children. Ti was seated first among the children, her hands clenched and her round face streaked with dirty tears. She looked as if she'd rubbed her face in the dust. But she kept her mouth shut.

The last glass was sipped dry. With an annoyed gesture, Father Mei's elder wife Drena sent Cornflower back inside. It hadn't been the choice of the women, then, to see if Captain Anji could be embarrassed by revealing Cornflower's charms.

"I apologize that we must speak in such haste," said Father Mei, although the ceremony of receiving always took at least an hour and the usual opening negotiating formalities might take an equal amount of time. "I had thought the negotiations done and the contract sealed, Captain Anji, but now it appears otherwise. What brings you to us?"

Captain Anji had a soldier's bluntness. "I sent a messenger ahead to inform you of my situation. You already know my predicament. I've received a change of orders. My company rides out in two days. I would like to marry tomorrow so my bride can journey with me. It is the fondest desire of my heart."

Now he did smile, nodding at Mai. Shai could not see Mai's reaction because he could see only the back of her head, but he thought her shoulders tightened slightly; it was hard to tell because she was so heavily draped in the layers of blue silk appropriate to an affianced bride. Then again, lots of things were hard to tell with Mai. All loved her for her accommodating, placid nature. She was beautiful, but a little stupid.

"It will be a hardship for my clan to hurry the rites. It will cost us to pay the law courts to move the day, and to make room tomorrow in their schedule, and we won't have ready the many fine luxuries we wish to dower her with."

"I have some resources. I can pay the law court what they need. I ask nothing of you except your daughter, Father Mei."

How coolly he said those words! Shai was impressed. Father Mei would inflate the costs and keep the difference for the family, but Captain Anji was apparently no merchant or bargainer and thereby, according to the rule of the marketplace, ripe for plucking. Or else he simply did not care. Beauty in women captured men that way sometimes.

"We will sustain a loss by having her torn from the house before her time."

As if on cue, Younger Mei sniffled, then stiffened, knowing he must show no emotion. Emotion gave the opponent a bargaining chip.

The captain slipped a hand into the folds of one sleeve, searched for something, and withdrew his hand, now cupped. "I possess nothing to recompense you for your loss, which is extreme. However, two days ago I purchased an item which I think might be of interest to the Mei clan."

He unfolded his hand to reveal a ring. It was silver, shaped to resemble a running wolf with its mouth biting into its tail. A rare and perfect black pearl was inlaid as the wolf's eye.

Grandmother bolted upright in her chair. Her hands gripped the arms like a hawk's talons. "Girish, bring it to me!" she said querulously.

The wives whispered, horrified. The uncles coughed and hemmed. Ti giggled nervously. Father Mei's big hands closed, opened, and with his right thumb and middle finger he made the warding sign, but because he did not speak, no one spoke. No one dared correct Grandmother.

Captain Anji raised an eyebrow, puzzled by the exchange.

She seemed to collect herself, and her memory. "Shai!" she snapped. "Nothing-good boy! Hu! I don't know why Grandfather thought you so clever! Come quickly. Get it and bring it here."

He padded forward from behind the hedge. The uncles and wives and children seemed surprised to see him. Father Mei grunted, a sign that he was holding his legendary temper in check. It always exploded afterward. But as soon as Shai got between the captain and his eldest brother, blocking Father Mei's view, Captain Anji winked at Shai as if in sympathy before dropping the ring into his hand.

"Hari," breathed Shai, not meaning to talk, but the touch of the ring actually hit so hard that he rocked back on his heels and struggled against a wave of dizziness.

It was Hari's ring. No doubt of that.

He took in a breath to steady himself, then walked back to his mother and placed it gently in her right hand. She slapped him hard with her left, the crack stinging and bitter.

He choked back his surge of anger. He'd gotten so good at doing it that it had become reflexive. The bitch would be dead soon, and he wouldn't miss her. Anyway, her slap-her dislike of him-didn't hurt nearly as much as contact with the ring had.

Hari was dead.

He'd known it as soon as the ring had touched his skin, just as he knew that no one else would feel it. Hari was dead. He'd been wearing the ring when he died; he'd been angry in an amused kind of way-the anger lingered in the ring. But surely Hari's spirit had already fled earth through Spirit Gate. There was nothing to hold him here, after all. Anger and bitterness hadn't chained him in Kartu Town. He'd not waste time lingering on earth as a ghost when there were adventures to face in the afterlife. Not Hari, the boldest and handsomest and most delightful of brothers.

"Fool boy," muttered his mother sharply. Her hands shook as she struggled to hide her tears, and Father Mei finally took the ring and examined it. As soon as it was out of her hands, she hid her face behind a sleeve.

"This belonged to my younger brother," Father Mei said. "Hari marched east as a mercenary with one of your regiments six years ago. We have never heard from him. Where did this come from?"

Shai shuffled to the side, turning, to see Captain Anji shrug.

"Certain peddlers have a license to travel from fort to fort selling small wares, curiosities, such things. I found this yesterday among the goods offered for sale by a man who had come from the east along the Golden Road. He said it came from a place called 'the Hundred,' which lies north of the Sirniakan Empire. He bought it from a Hundred merchant, traveling in Mariha, who said it was found near a town he called 'Horn.' There'd been a battle there. Internal matters, lord fighting lord or some such. I'm not sure of the details. The Hundred folk are barbarians, it seems. They've never had a var-a king-to lead them. Scavengers will always pick clean the fields of battle, and it seems it was no different with this ring. I don't know how many hands it passed through to get this far from the place it was found. But I recognized the ring at once. Mai has a ring like it."

As did every blood member of the Mei clan.

"Does it bring joy or grief to your house?" the captain asked.

"I cannot know," said Father Mei. "Is Hari dead, or alive? He cannot rest if his bones do not rest with those of his ancestors. We can never rest, not knowing what became of him." His lips were thin, a sure sign of anger.

Lots of anger in this house. Shai waited for the blow. It came quickly.

"When my beloved and precious daughter goes with you, she must have servants, familiar ones who have served her for many years."

"Of course." Captain Anji nodded.

"She will be alone, who has never been alone. I ask you, Captain Anji, let my young brother Shai accompany her."

The words struck, shivering like lightning through him. He stood, stunned, as his brother droned on.

"He is still unmarried, so he leaves no obligations behind, and he is almost twenty, old enough to be considered a man. We'll send a slave with him and provisions and traveling gear, so he'll be no burden on you. Once he reaches the eastern border, he can make his way north to this place called the Hundred and look for this battlefield near a town called Horn. If he can find our brother's remains, he can bring them home."

"A long journey," mused Captain Anji, "and far beyond the boundaries of the lands the Qin claim."

"Merchants go there. Peddlers go there."

Anji grinned as at a private joke. From this new angle, Shai could now see Mai's face. She was pretending to look down quiescently at her folded hands but in fact she was studying the captain. Her eyes widened slightly; her lips twitched. Although she and Shai had grown up together, lived in the same compound all their lives-she as the cherished, pampered daughter, and he as the unwanted and despised youngest brother-Shai did not understand her. What did this flash of emotion portend? Impossible to say. Mai was as sweet to him as she was to anyone. She had no hidden depths, no reserves of deep feeling. Most likely she was frightened out of her wits.

But Shai wasn't, not as the first shock faded.

"Merchants travel where soldiers fear to ride," said the officer. "Shai is welcome to come, but I cannot guarantee his safety after he leaves my protection."

"If you set him on the right path, that is all that I ask," said Father Mei, pompous and condescending as always. "Then we will be square, our debts equal and canceled. Do we have an agreement?"

"We have an agreement."

With those simple words, Shai was released. Unchained. He was free.