Spirit Gate

PART FIVE: SLAVES
23

JUST BEFORE SUNSET a man appeared on the road, entirely alone, walking up out of the south. He was a holy man, and he wore the gaudy colors of an envoy of Ilu: a voluminous cloak of peacock blue, wine-red pantaloons, and a tunic dyed the intense yellow gotten only from cloth dyed with that dearest of herbs, saffron, whose value in the markets of the Hundred Keshad knew down to the last vey. Along with the rest of the small merchant company, Kesh stared as the man strode to the spot they were settling in for their night's camp, cheerfully greeted the caravan master, and began chatting as though he'd been traveling with them all along. The envoys of Ilu were known to be insane, not mad in their minds but willing to endure hardships and risk dangers that no ordinary person would get near. This certainly proved it.

But Keshad had his own business to attend to, a wagon, mules, driver, and most crucially the goods he was transporting north over the Kandaran Pass to the Hundred. He had a very particular and complicated routine he must follow at night to keep his goods safe. So he dismissed the envoy of Ilu from his thoughts, and did no more than glance his way once or twice, until midway through the next day when the envoy, pacing the caravan, drew up alongside Kesh where he walked at the front of the line.

"Greetings of the day, nephew."

"Greetings of the day, Holy One."

As the two men walked along the ancient trading road, they talked. It was a good way to pass the time. Their feet scuffed up dust with each step. The rumble of cart wheels and the clop of pack animals and the laughter of a quartet of guards striding out in front serenaded them. Behind, the rest of the caravan clattered along. That ensemble of noises always seemed to Keshad the most reassuring of sounds when he was out on the road. If safety could be found in the world, then surely it was found where folk banded together to protect themselves from predators.

"In ancient days," the envoy was saying, "the Four Mothers created the land known as the Hundred with its doubled prow thrust east and north into ocean and two great mountain ranges to the south and the west to protect the inhabitants from their enemies. The Mothers joined themselves with the land, and in that transformation seven gods emerged from the maelstrom to create order."

Keshad shrugged. "So the story goes, at any rate."

"Ah. You're clearly born and bred in the Hundred." The man touched his own left eye, as if to bring to Kesh's attention that he had noticed the debt scar on Kesh's face. "Yet you don't believe the Tale of Beginning?"

"I believed it when I was a child."

"You've gone over to the Silvers' way of believing?"

"The Silvers? No, I don't know anything about that."

The envoy was old enough to be Kesh's father, had Kesh still had a father; a man beyond his prime but not yet elderly.

"Something else, then. Hmm. Keshad is your given name, so you say. That means you were dedicated to the Air Mother at birth. Too much thinking. That's often a problem with Air-touched children. In what year were you born?"

Kesh brushed his elbow, where his tattoo was. "Year of the Goat."

"Even worse then! Goats are inconstant and unstable, prone to change their thinking, especially if they're Air-touched and liable to think too much. Still, they can survive anything. Look at you, a young man, in the prime of your strength, good-looking, all your teeth-oh, no! missing one, probably from a fight."

"That's right. But the other man lost more! And he started it!"

"Happy is Ilu when he hears of those who gain justice!" The envoy grinned, and Kesh laughed. "Good eyes, not bloodshot or yellow or infected. Strong limbs, open stride. Health in order. It must be your Goat's heart that is distracting your Air-touched mind."

Kesh rolled his eyes, but he did not want to insult a holy envoy, who was a nice enough fellow, cheerful, lean, strong, and with an amazing set of white teeth that made his grin contagious. Obviously, the man was crazy.

"So, then, lad, you are born to be skeptical. How do you think the world came into being, if you don't believe my tale?"

"I hadn't given it much thought. I'm too busy wondering if we'll be attacked on the road, and if the guards we hired will protect us. Or run."

"That's always a distraction," agreed the envoy amiably.

Still, as the small merchant train and its armed escort trudged down the hip-jarring slope of the Kandaran Pass, Keshad studied the terrain of the rugged foothills where bandits lurked. He cast his gaze up at the spires themselves, shining in the afternoon sun. Light splintered off the snowy peaks. Clouds spun off into threads where they caught on summits and pinnacles. It was easy to imagine the fiery eye of a god glaring those formidable mountains into being as a warning to mortal man: Do not cross me.

"The way I see it," Keshad continued, "it doesn't matter how the world came to be. It matters what path a man takes as he walks through the world."

"A fine philosophy! Did you serve your apprenticeship to Ilu, perhaps? You sound like a Herald's clansman."

"No."

"One of the Thunderer's ordinands, perhaps? I see you carry a short sword and a bow. That's not common among merchants."

"I am not," he said curtly, and was then sorry at his sour tone. The envoy had treated him with good humor and deserved as much in return. "I have spent a lot of time thinking about journeys, because of my own. For instance, a merchant has a choice of three paths to reach the markets of the Hundred."

"Three paths? I would have thought only one." The envoy indicated the road on which they walked, but his sharp gaze never left Kesh's face.

"He can brave the seas-"

"And their treacherous currents! The roil of Messalia! Reefs and shoals!"

"That's right. Or the desert crossing to the west over Heaven's Ridge."

"And thereby across the Barrens! There's a reason they're called that, you know!"

"That's so. But it can be done, and folk do it."

"True enough." The man coughed. "So I hear."

"Or he can pass this way, as we're doing. Paying a tax to the empire for right-of-way on the Kandaran Pass, because it's the only route leading over the Spires that we know of."

The envoy's steady gait did not falter, but his eyebrows rose in surprise and his voice changed timbre. "That we know of? You think there's another way over the Spires?"

"If there was, and you knew about it, wouldn't you keep it hidden?"

The envoy snorted and lifted his walking staff, letting its crest of silk ribbons flutter as he waved the staff toward the heavens. "That I would, lad! If I were a merchant, and prized profit above all things. Or one of the Lady's mendicants, desiring secrecy. How comes it that you know so much about traveling into and out of the Hundred, if you're not heart-sworn to Ilu the Herald, as I am?"

"I'm a merchant, and therefore I prize profit, so I've tried all three in my time-"

"Ah. As well you might, being an Air-touched Goat. Still, you're yet a sprout. Young to be so well traveled!"

"Not so very young!"

"Three and twenty seems young to a man of my years!"

Kesh laughed. "Do you want to hear what I've concluded about the three paths?"

The envoy's expression was full with laughter, although he did not laugh, and for some reason Kesh could not explain, the holy man's amusement was not condescending but warm and sympathetic. "I've heard a great deal about you so far! Why stop here? Go on!"

"Well, then. I've concluded that while Death might find tax collectors amusing, She doesn't often masquerade as one. Therefore: I choose taxes."

"Taxes?"

"Best to risk taxes now, and death later."

"As they say, both are certain. Still, I can't help but think they're gouging us."

"Who is? Death's wolves?"

That grin flashed again. "Death's wolves aren't greedy. They only eat when they're hungry, not like the wolves among men. I mean the Sirniakan toll collectors, the ones we've left behind. Double and triple toll they charged me! Even a man such as myself who is only carrying two bolts of silk. Just because I'm a foreigner in their lands."

"It's true their tolls cut down on profits, but taxes are still preferable to death. A man can't work if he's dead."

"So it's said. Is that all life is for you? Work?"

Kesh looked back at his cargo. He'd rented the wagon, mules, and driver at great expense in the south, and spent yet more to rig up scaffolding and waxed canvas so his treasure would be concealed from the eyes of men, although naturally every person in the wagon train believed they knew what he had purchased. If he listened closely, he heard the two chests shifting and knocking together and the two girls whispering as the wagon juddered along. Otherwise, his cargo was silent and seemingly ignored by merchants and guardsmen and travelers alike, but he saw the way they glanced at his campsite in the evenings, every man of them. Wondering.

The envoy said nothing, waiting him out.

Kesh discovered he'd tightened his hand on the hilt of his own staff so hard his fingers hurt. He shifted the staff to his other hand and opened and closed his fingers to ease the ache.

"Work is the road I must take to reach the destination I seek," he said finally, knowing the ache would never ease.

"Ah." Again, the envoy brushed a finger alongside his own unscarred left temple. If he wanted to question Kesh about the debt mark, he kept his curiosity politely to himself.

"What of you, holy envoy? That's a long way to walk just to buy silk, when you can buy Sirniakan silk in the markets of the Hundred. Had you no other purpose? Sightseeing?"

"As if any priest would wish to risk execution in the south just to see the fabled eight-walled city," replied the envoy with a chuckle, easily falling in with Kesh's change of subject. "Silk, it's true, can be bought anywhere, but I was looking for a particular… grade and pattern. "His frown was startling for being so swift and so dark, but it passed quickly, and Kesh wondered if he'd mistaken it. "I did not find what I was looking for. Did you?"

The riposte took him off guard. "I'll only know when we reach Olossi."

"Who will you sell the girls to?"

"Girls?"

"The two girls."

Keshad smiled nervously. "Whichever man will pay the most."

The envoy glanced back at the wagon. His gaze burned; for an instant, Kesh thought the man could actually see through the canopy and mark the treasure Kesh had hidden all this way by using the time-honored method of illusionists: distract the gaze with the things that don't matter so that your audience doesn't notice the one thing that does. Ilu's envoys were notorious, seekers and finders who noticed everything in their service to Ilu, the Herald, the Opener of Ways. They were always gathering news and carrying messages; the temples even sold information to support themselves.

Still, this was none of Ilu's business. Kesh had come by this treasure as honestly as any man could. It was his to sell and profit by, his to use to get what he needed most. After so many years toiling, this trip promised to be the one that would at last bring him what he had worked for, over twelve long years.

It hurt to think of it, because he wanted it so much: Freedom.

"Look there." Perhaps the envoy meant the distraction kindly, seeing Kesh's distress, but even if this were so, it was just as obvious that the sight relieved him. "The first mey post. We have reached the Hundred at last."

The white post had carved on it the number one, being the first mey of the road. Above that was engraved the name of the road, written in the old writing, more picture than letter, and recently repainted in the grooves with black ink: WEST SPUR.

The envoy padded to the side of the road to cover the top of the post with his palm. The mey post stood chest height. It was square at base and top but tapered so that the base was larger than the squared-off top where, in time of peril, the base of a wayfarer's lamp could be fixed into a finger's-width hole drilled deep down into the wood. At first the envoy stared north along the road, which began here its most precipitous drop out of the mountains. Then he shut his eyes and bowed his head in prayer as the seventeen carts and wagons of the merchant train trundled closer. When he looked up, he gazed toward the nearest prominence. A rugged mountain rose just off to the east with forested slopes and a bare summit surrounded on all sides by bare cliffs. Keshad thought he saw light winking up there, as if caught in a mirror, but when he blinked, the illusion vanished.

"Home," said the envoy with satisfaction. He removed his hand and began walking again to keep ahead of the wagons. Kesh hurried after him. "And hope of a dram of cordial at the Southmost."

Brakes grated against wheels as wagons hit the incline. Kesh looked back. The black mey marking, which had numbered one viewed from the south, numbered sixty-four seen from this direction: the distance of the road called "West Spur" from founding post to founding post. The other end of the West Spur lay a few mey outside the market city of Olossi, their destination. For him, this was the last road he would walk as the man he was now.

He felt sick with determination, with hope, with memory.

"I will let no obstacle bar my path," he muttered.

"What? Eh? Forgive me, I didn't hear."

"It was nothing. Just thinking out loud."

"Like the winds, to whom voice is thought, and thought voice."

"No, more like a mumbling madman who doesn't know when to shut up. There's the border gate."

Stone walls stretched east and west as far as Kesh could see, with miniature towers anchoring each side of the road. Armed men leaned on those narrow parapets, eyeing the approaching caravan. Below, by the log barrier, a pair of young ordinands lounged against the fence, laughing as they traded stories with those of the caravan's guards who'd been walking point.

"Heya! Heya!" shouted their captain from the east tower. "Get you, and you, to your posts!"

The ordinands scampered back across the ditch on a plank bridge to take up their places at the second fence, this one gated and closed.

"The guard force has doubled since last time I came through here," commented the envoy.

"Are they expecting trouble?"

"It's always wise to expect trouble in border country."

Kesh grunted in reply as he dug into his travel sack for his permission chits, his ledger, and the tax tokens he had received from the Sirniakan toll stations they had passed.

"If you'll excuse me, holy envoy. I must see to my cargo. If you would be so kind as to share a cordial with me at the Southmost, I would be honored."

"Indeed! I thank you. I'll drink with pleasure!"

The envoy strode ahead. His staff, tattoo, and colors were chit and ledger enough. In the Hundred, the servants of Ilu could wander as they, and the god, willed. Only Atiratu's mendicants had as much freedom. Kesh certainly did not. He dropped back. The forward wagons creaked and squealed as drivers fought against brakes, beasts, the weight of their cargos, and the steepening pitch of the road. It was a good location for a border gate. Any wagon that did not slow to a stop would crash into the ditch, and charging horsemen who cut off the road to avoid fences and ditch would shatter themselves against the stone walls.

Farther back, a wheel, stressed to its limit by the wear of the brake, wrenched sideways and broke off its axle amid curses and shouting. The wagon tipped sideways and with a crack and a shudder blocked a third of the road.

"Out of the way! Out of the way!"

"You cursed fool!"

Kesh jumped back as his hired driver, Tebedir, barely swung past the wreck; then Kesh got a toe on the boards and leaped up beside him.

"I replace wheels before they is too weak to take the strain," said the driver without looking at Keshad as the wagon rocked with the shift in weight. "No savings in scanting on repair, if you ask me."

"It's why I hired you," said Kesh, "despite the cost."

"No savings by hiring cheap."

They jolted to a stop behind the third wagon, to wait their turn. Ahead, a pair of Silver brothers or cousins-identifiable by their pale complexions, slant eyes, turbaned heads, and the silver bracelets jangling from wrist to elbow on their arms-were arguing with the clerks checking off their ledger. Kesh chewed on his lower lip. Tebedir chewed a cylinder of pipe leaf, spat it out, thumbed a new leaf from the lip of his travel sack, and rolled it deftly before slipping it between parted lips. His teeth were stained brown, but he had a nice grin.

After a while, rubbing his stubble of black hair, Tebedir said, "Slow today."

Kesh wiped sweat from his forehead, although it wasn't unusually hot. "The guards are expecting trouble."

"Rumor in camp tells it no merchant can travel north past a town the Hundred folk call Horn."

"It's hard to imagine, although I've heard those tales, too. That would mean the markets of Nessumara and Toskala are closed to every merchant trading out of Olossi."

"Still, young master, we are only going this far as Olossi. It is no matter to us."

"That's right. No matter to us."

As the second wagon moved through, Tebedir gave the reins to Kesh and clambered down to take the beasts and guide them over the plank bridge. Kesh didn't like heights-they made him dizzy-so he didn't look over the edge and down into the ditch, although he'd heard that the ordinands cultivated adders in that trench. It always seemed when he crossed that he heard hissing, but that might have been the wind scraping through the pines and tollyrakes that grew in the highlands around them.

No, that was hissing. Aui! Had she taken it into her head to waken now? He turned. One of the girls was peeking through a gap in the canvas sheeting tied over the scaffolding.

"Tsst! No! Not allowed!"

She saw him. One dark eye, all he could see, flared as she startled back. The cloth was pinched shut. A voice murmured, too soft for him to hear syllables. Anyway, they didn't speak a language he knew, nor had he taught them words beyond the most basic commands. That way they couldn't talk to anyone.

Tebedir pulled the wagon to a stop where the guards waved him down. Keshad tugged his sleeves down to conceal his bronze bracelets. The captain strolled up, examined Kesh's face, and held out a hand.

"Let's see your ledger, ver," he said in a friendly way which suggested he preferred cooperation to belligerence.

And why not? A captain at this border station could turn back any man to whom he took a dislike. The Silvers' wagon had been released and was rumbling down the road toward the village that waited two mey farther along. Where the dust settled, the envoy walked along briskly in its wake, his arms swinging. He seemed to be singing, but he was too far ahead for Kesh to hear. The second wagon, piled high with bolts of silk wrapped in burlap, was under assault by a pair of shaven-headed clerks who laboriously matched each bolt to what was written in the merchant's accounts book.

"How slow they are," said Tebedir, indicating the clerks. "Why you Hundred people allow women perform the work belonging to men?"

"No use arguing against the gods of the Hundred," said Kesh.

Tebedir merely grunted in reply, then led the beasts off to a generous patch of shade, beneath trees planted long ago for this purpose. He sat down on a log placed there for drivers, sipped from his ale pouch, and settled back to wait as Kesh handed the ledger over to the captain. The man paged through it. Naturally he couldn't read, but a man in his position knew the old ideograms well enough to mark if everything was in its proper place. As his arm moved, Kesh glimpsed the tattoo on his wrist: the Crane, resting between the clean squares and angles that marked an Earth-born child.

"Looks in order," he said to Kesh, handing the ledger back, "but the clerks will have to set their stamp. What's this?" Kesh offered him the tangle of chits, and he plucked the rare one out of the group and dangled it. "Two ordinary, one exalted. What have you got in there?"

"I call on the law of Sapanasu," said Kesh, "to ask for the veil of secrecy. You check yourself, Captain, and see that all is in order. I've no contraband, no weapons, no goods not accounted for in my ledger. I'll pay extra for the veil. It's my right."

"It's not cheap."

"I've these tax tokens to prove I've paid the worth of my cargo all the way north out of Sirniaka."

"I see it. This ledger is stamped with Merchant Feden's seal. We know his mark here. I'll accept your call for the veil. Now let me look."

Kesh gave his two-note whistle and called, "Moy. Tay."

The curtain at the back of the cart parted, switched sideways by a brown hand, and the older girl peeked out. The captain eyed her as she unfolded the step and cautiously descended to the ground. She was small but well formed, if too slender for the taste of most men. The younger followed her out, keeping her gaze lowered. She was plumper but not quite ripe. Under Kesh's gaze, they lifted out the two chests and opened them to display their contents.

"Sisters or cousins," said Kesh.

"Umm," agreed the captain. "Too skinny. Might not be bad, though, with a few more years and more flesh. Where are they from?"

"I picked them up in eastern Mariha, along the border country there. I was hoping to sell them to one of the jarya houses in Toskala or Nessumara, but I hear it's not safe to travel so far."

"It's true. You've been out of the Hundred for some months?"

"Yes."

"Roads north out of Olossi aren't safe. That's the word. It would be a shame to lose a good cargo like that to a pack of filthy bandits. But what's this veil you're wanting?" He picked carelessly through the contents of the two chests. "I see nothing unusual here. Vials of saffron, clove oil, mirrors, a basket of shell dice, ivory combs-very handsome!-and so on. You're not even carrying silk."

"Go in, if you will. Here come the clerks."

The captain paused with a foot on the step.

"This one next, Captain Beron?" asked the male clerk.

"Yes."

Moy and Tay kept their gazes fixed on the ground as the clerks moved in with their charcoal pencils, carved wood stamps, and ink. The clerks wore the nondescript, undyed robes common to those who labored for the Lantern of the Gods, Sapanasu. Like most of Her hierophants, they had shaved their heads, and their brown skin had a pleasing gleam from being oiled. They poked and prodded the girls delicately, and in their efficient way tallied each least item in the two chests and checked it against his account. They were so tidy that they packed everything back in just as they had found it, not a corner's fold of fabric out of place.

The captain ducked inside the wagon, which rocked under his weight. Tebedir dozed. A fly crawled on one of the driver's eyelids, and without seeming to wake he lifted a hand to brush it away.

"All accounted for." The female clerk dipped a stamp in ink and pressed it to the appropriate line in the ledger while the male clerk copied down figures in the record book he carried. "Or was there something else? What's this chit for?"

She held up the rare oblong, carved out of shell into the shape of a leopard.

The curtain trembled. The captain pushed out, wiping his brow, then the back of his neck. He stumbled as he came down that one step. He was flushed and sweating, and looking a little ashamed and yet at the same time a little amused at his own shame, but only a little.

"Tsst! Where'd you get such a thing?"

"I found it. Unclaimed. Mine by finder's right. You know the law."

He took a long look at Kesh. What passed in his mind was unfathomable.

"Anything we must know, Captain Beron?" asked the female clerk.

"No, set him his tariff and let him go on. He's invoked the veil."

"Very well." She and her fellow clerk consulted. They were no older than Kesh, but experienced and swift. They named the tariff. Kesh sorted through his coins, paid them into the locked coffer, and got his border chits to add to his collection. He was now almost broke, except for his trade goods, and paying for food and water would take the rest of his coin over the sixty-four mey of West Spur. It all depended on the price he could obtain for his trade goods once he reached Olossi. Everything depended on that.

"I've seen you before, last year," said the male clerk. "You're out of Merchant Feden's household, aren't you?"

"I am."

"Come on, Denni!" called the female clerk, who had already moved on to the next wagon. "The envoy said there was a bigger caravan coming up behind this one. We'll be stuck here all week if we stand gawking."

"Aui!" The male clerk looked Kesh over with a sneer. Boldly, he grabbed Kesh's elbow and rudely twitched back a sleeve to reveal a bronze bracelet. "Pretending to be what you aren't, as if you'd already bought your accounts bundle and cleared your debt! Don't think we can't see what's marked by your eye." He let go, and went after his companion.

The captain raised his eyebrows. "Isn't there a law against you slaves wearing sleeves that cover your wrists?" Recalling the ledger, he added ten to ten, as merchants did, and got twenty. "You're Feden's slave, aren't you?"

"I am." He felt how his ears burned, how his cheeks burned. How the shame took him, but also the anger and hope, because he was so close. "Do you know him?"

"You look like a good Hundred boy to me. What happened?"

Keshad wanted to say "none of your business," but the first rule of merchants, and slaves, was never to insult those who might have the means to harm you, or help you, later.

"Family debt. I was a boy. I never knew the details, only the amount."

"Eiya! If anything should clear your slate, young man, then this cargo should do it."

Kesh made the traditional gesture, hands to chest, the formal bow of not more than thirty degrees' inclination to show respect rather than submission, and turned to go.

"Whsst! In!" he said to the girls.

They clapped the chests shut and loaded them into the back while Tebedir yawned and got to his feet, stretching, flexing his big hands, clucking as he got the beasts out of their stupor.

"Coming up, Master?"

"I'll walk," said Kesh.

"If you ask me, a man can wear his feet out, walking too much. Women walk."

"I'll walk."

The captain watched them go, his gaze as sharp as the touch of a blade to Keshad's back, but in the end one of his men called to him and he went back to his task. He hadn't even demanded a bribe, but there were men like that. "Beron" was an Earth-touched name, and he'd worn the Earth Mother's tattoos. No doubt the envoy of Ilu would have a few words to say about the honesty of a man born in the Year of the Crane, dedicated to the Earth Mother at birth, and serving Kotaru, the Thunderer, as one of his holy soldiers, his ordinands.