Spirit Gate

25

There was a lot to take in besides the twenty or so corpses, the stray horses, and the baggage that had been strewn on the ground around the carts as they were ransacked. Merchants and servants hurried to gather up those wares not spoiled or broken in the assault. One wept over a roll of golden silk that had been trampled, but surely the idiot could see that silk, at least, could be cleaned and repaired and sold at a reasonable discount; it was better than being dead. Other merchants crowded around the reeve, demanding aid or explanation or simply pouring out their fear and anger, but Kesh remained mindful of the force of men that waited off to one side. He estimated their number at about one hundred, all wearing black gear. They showed remarkable discipline, lined up in tidy ranks with a trio of men, their leaders, in front. They appeared foreign in both dress and facial features. He had never seen anyone who looked quite like them, except in Mariha.

He elbowed into the mob surrounding the reeve and, finding the innkeeper, grabbed him by the arm. "Heya! Heya! Pay attention! We need to bring in wounded men, maybe a dead one. An envoy of Ilu needs our help! Quick!"

Kesh's fierce words cowed the man, and the reeve looked his way with the calm expression of a man completely in his element.

"Go on," said the reeve to the innkeeper. "You heard what he said. Bring in any wounded at once. Find that envoy! If there are any innocent folk these ospreys killed, I'll need their name and clan, so we can make an accounting and see that any death tithe is offered correctly."

Kesh tugged the innkeeper after him. The reeve, meanwhile, gestured to the others to move back to their wagons. Afterward he walked to the black-clad guardsmen. Kesh saw the envoy's bright blue cloak on the ground and he broke away from the innkeeper and ran to kneel beside him. The arrow had an ugly look to it. The shaft had broken four times and it was clear that the envoy had been tumbled when the horses were ridden over him.

"Is there a healer here?" he asked the innkeeper.

The man gave a groan of despair and shook his head. "Nay! Nay! It's many days' walk to the closest temple devoted to the Lady! We haven't seen a mendicant in weeks."

"What about the Merciless One? Sometimes there are healers there."

"The closest temple is all the way north by Olossi."

"I know that place," said Kesh grimly.

"Eiya! Horrible!" wailed the innkeeper as he stared at the body. "To have it known that an envoy of Ilu died here! No one will want to bide here or sup and drink at my inn. It's an ill omen! We're ruined!"

"Get a flat board-a tabletop-a door-something! We must carry him inside." He looked up at the sky. "It might rain, and it will soon be dark."

The innkeeper needed no greater encouragement. He bolted back the way they had come. Kesh pressed a hand gently to the envoy's neck. He breathed still, if shallowly. Life pulsed in his body. The breath of the gods had not yet left him.

Kesh curled his hand around the arrow as close against the envoy's back as he could and tested its grip by slowly twisting it. To his surprise, it slid free easily. Amazingly, the point had not pierced the fabric of the cloak but only driven it deep into the body. He cast the arrow away and swiftly pushed the cloak to one side as blood gushed up through the yellow silk of the tunic. He got out his knife and slit open the back of the tunic to expose the wound. The tumbling by the horses had done the most damage by disturbing the point, but it was remarkable how the silk had not torn despite the speed and force of the missile. He pressed the heel of one hand on the wound to stem the flow of blood and closed his eyes, trying to sense the pattern of the body's humors beneath the skin, as it was said true healers might do who could breathe and smell and even hear the whispering complaints of illness or injury.

"Ssa!" came the whisper. "Sshuu!" And then, "Where did they come from? Who set them on us?"

Kesh opened his eyes to see that the envoy's eyes were open. One of them, anyway. He couldn't see the other since the man's face was turned to one side because he was laid out on his stomach.

"Please lie still," said Kesh. "Don't talk. I got the arrow out. Hang on. We'll get you to the inn. You'll rest there."

The first winds heralding dusk sighed down off the mountains, and the cloak rose and sunk into ridges and hollows as if something living were moving inside it. The envoy did not reply, but perhaps he had passed out again. His left arm lay at an awkward angle, and bruises were purpling all along his back where hooves had struck him.

"How badly hurt?" The reeve crouched beside Kesh. He was younger than the envoy but a fair bit older than Kesh, a good-looking fellow with short black hair teased by a few strands of white. He stood at medium height, lean but very fit, and he moved with the strength of a man who has confidence in his ability to stick it out in a brawl. A dangerous man, in his own way, and not unlike his eagle in the way he examined the envoy with a keen gaze, without actually touching him, as predators seek from above the sign of their prey by studying the ripples in grass and the flash of sudden movement along the ground.

Kesh eased the heel of his hand off the wound. Blood oozed, but the gushing had stopped. He pushed the envoy's cloak off the body and into a heap at one side, then slit the tunic from neck to base and opened it like wings.

"Trampled and shot," mused the reeve, "but still breathing. Good thing those os-preys are all dead, as it's more merciful than the death they'd receive for killing a holy man."

"He's still breathing! He spoke to me."

The reeve grunted and glanced over his shoulder. Kesh looked, too, and saw that the black-clad guards had dismounted and spread out, and were hauling the corpses of the bandits into rows the better to tally, identify, and dispose of them. Locals and servants hovered close by, hoping to strip the bodies of second-rate but still precious silk.

"That's one band," remarked the reeve, more to himself than to Keshad, "but it won't be the end of it."

"The end of what?"

"These attacks along the roads. I came south from Clan Hall to investigate."

"I heard there's been trouble. I've been south some months. You'd think Argent Hall would have been patrolling."

"So you would think. Worst, it turns out it's the captain in charge who has made common pact with these ospreys."

"The captain? The one in charge of the border post? Captain Beron?"

"The same," said the reeve. "How do you know him?"

"I heard the clerks speak his name as I passed through earlier today. He seemed a decent man."

But the thought struck him hard enough that he fell silent: It was my treasure the ospreys sought. He saw it, and let me pass, and sent these men after.

He said nothing, although the reeve waited, as if sensing that Kesh clutched a secret to his heart.

"Beron?" The envoy stirred. His voice had the hoarse gurgle of a man talking past blood. "Dedicated to the Earth Mother at birth. Crane-born-did you see his Crane mark? Sworn to Kotaru the Thunderer. Well. It's no wonder." That wheeze was, perhaps, meant to be a laugh, but it sounded more like a death rattle.

The reeve regarded the envoy with a look of mild amazement.

"What's no wonder?" demanded Kesh. "Yet if you would be silent, uncle, we might save you!"

"Cranes are orderly… Thunderer likes discipline… Earth Mother arranges all things but… can be rigid. Overturn these.. ."He gargled on blood as he tried to suck in air.

"Overturn these," said the reeve softly, "and you have chaos."

"It is easy to subvert a man… who is in all parts desiring order… imposed from without. Eh! Eh! Any envoy of Ilu would have advised against… dedicating this child… to Kotaru."

"Uncle! Keep still! You must spare yourself."

The reeve looked fixedly at Kesh as the innkeeper trotted up, gasping and grunting and leading a pair of men who carried a tabletop on which to bear the wounded man. The envoy closed his eyes. They shifted him over and hurried off, but Kesh grabbed the innkeeper by the sleeve.

"There's a pair under the Ladytree. A poor brave lad who I fear is dead. And my driver, who needs his wound washed and bound with a salve. If you have any starflower or soldier's friend, they are good for such injuries. Or Bright Blue, which stems bleeding-nay, it's too far south for that."

The innkeeper gave him a fearful grimace and tore away, shouting at a pair of untidy lads loitering by the gate to come and give a hand, and he lumbered off toward the inn after the envoy while his servants, or slaves, ran toward the Ladytree.

"You know something of the healing properties of plants," said the reeve, who had not once taken his gaze from Keshad during this exchange. He rose, brushing the dust from his knees, and when Keshad looked past him at the black-clad foreigners tidying the field, he looked, too, to see what caught Kesh's interest.

"Where did those come from?" asked Kesh. "Were they patrolling? I've never seen such a company of guardsmen in Olossi."

"No. They're the hired guard for another caravan. It was running about half a day behind yours. I saw them coming down the pass. As a reeve, I have the power to deputize folk when I need their aid."

"They're not Sirniakan."

"Are they not?" The reeve sat back on his heels with a look of pleased interest. "What are they, then?"

"I'm not sure, but I think they're Kin. Qin. I can't say it right. Grass eaters. That's what they're called in Mariha."

"Mariha?"

"That's a princedom west of the empire. They were ruled by five princes for a long time, so I was told, and none were happy except those who ruled. Then these Qin people came out of the west and killed the ruling princes. Now the Qin rule in Mariha."

He was about to say more, but he faltered, seeing too late that the reeve's pleasant interrogation had been meant to draw him out.

"Beyond the western edge of the Sirniakan Empire?" mused the reeve. "Well, I've seen no maps nor have I patrolled those lands, so I can't say I understand it. These men and their captain claim to be mercenaries. They hired themselves to the caravan as guards."

For a while that seemed drawn out far too long, the reeve smiled at Kesh as Kesh squirmed, shifting his feet and berating himself in his thoughts. This reeve was a truly dangerous man, for all his cordiality. He must start to wonder why the ospreys had attacked in such numbers and into the village rather than waiting and raiding along the road. He must start to wonder what it was they were after so urgently.

"I'd like to talk to you further," said the reeve.

"I have to leave at dawn."

"As must I. Come see me in the inn later, when you've a chance. Don't forget your accounts book and tallies." He said the words with such a benevolent smile that Keshad knew he absolutely would be rounded up by those grim-faced guardsmen and marched before the reeve as before the assizes if he did not present himself before the man this very night. When a reeve said such words, in that tone of voice, a man had to obey.

"It's getting dark," he said, to escape.

He fled to the Ladytree to find Tebedir arguing with the lads from the inn. The driver had already poured a dram of his potent brew onto the cut and bound it with a strip of linen, and he refused any other aid.

"Best see to the boy," he said.

"He must be carried," said Kesh to the lads, who bent to grab the youth by ankles and wrists. "Nay, not like that, you fools. His guts will fall out."

"What matter?" asked the shorter lad. "He's dead, this one. Just not yet."

"Wish he'd stop squealing," said the taller one. "Makes a lot of noise for a dying man, don't you think?"

"No one can survive a plug to the guts. Gah! He smells!"

"Go get something to carry him on!" shouted Kesh.

They fled as Kesh cursed after them.

The lad was whimpering and keening, and the sound did grate the ears, but Kesh felt pity for him, and anyway the lad had probably saved Kesh's cargo with his stalwart defense of his master's wagon. He crouched and smoothed the lad's forehead and talked to him as he would talk to an injured dog, letting the sound of his voice act as a focus as the lad's breathing caught, ceased… and gasped again as he fought back to life.

Tebedir offered a bowl of water and a cloth to Kesh, who wiped the lad's brow as he mewled and cried for his mother. Flies gathered on the dead ospreys, and flies buzzed around the lad's ghastly wound, all pink and gray with oozing blood draining his life as it dribbled onto the ground. Wind whispered in the Ladytree, and between one breath and the next the lad escaped into the air, slipped away on the breeze, his breath following the shadow path toward home. A sprawled hand lay open; the mark of the Ox decorated his wrist.

Tebedir murmured a prayer. Kesh sank back on his heels as the pair of lads trotted up empty-handed. A stout man wearing a stained merchant's coat labored along behind them. When he saw the dead boy, he slapped a hand to his forehead.

"Not under the Ladytree! Now I'll have to pay the death offering to the Lady, too!"

Tebedir raised an eyebrow and looked at Kesh.

"This boy saved your cargo," said Kesh sharply. "He defended your wagon with selfless courage. I can't say the same for you."

"This is none of your business! Move aside! Oh, by the Witherer's Kiss, you fools!" he shouted at the lads. "You should have dragged him out from under the tree! Now I'm stuck with the cursed Lady tithe."

Kesh rose and turned to Tebedir. "Watch the cart, if you will. If I have to stand and listen to this any longer, I'll hit him."

"Please hit," said Tebedir. "That boy fought like brave man."

"Pissing foreigners!" snarled the merchant. "Get out of my way!"

Kesh lifted a fist, and such a tide of loathing swept him that he hauled back-the merchant shrieked-and from the cart a female voice said words in a language Kesh had never heard before. It was like a bucketful of icy spring water splashed over him. He recovered; he remembered: Hit a man beneath a Ladytree, violating the Lady's law, and you paid a fine to her mendicants. They always knew; you could never get around it. Pay a fine, and it was that much coin thrown away. He could afford to lose none of his profit, not now, not this time. Not because he was disgusted by a self-important, selfish jackal of a man who paid his lackwit servant in sticky buns since the poor boy was too ignorant and too stupid and now too dead to demand better pay.

Shaking, he lowered his hand, gave the bowl and cloth to Tebedir, grabbed his ledger and pouch, and strode away. The merchant began yapping after him, but Kesh walked fast and didn't listen.

Dusk lay heavily over the commons. A cheerful fire burned in the outdoor hearth of the inn's courtyard, and men gathered there, drinking, but no songs warmed the twilight and the talk looked intense but muted. No one laughed. Other merchants hunkered down beside their carts. A half-dozen hirelings prowled around the ranks of corpses, but a quartet of black-clad mercenaries guarded the dead men, and Kesh guessed that no one would strip those bodies, not tonight, not without permission from the mercenary captain or the reeve. He paused by the gate to look over the mercenaries from a safe distance, not so close that they might feel he was challenging them. A few were setting up crude tents, canvas stretched out as a lean-to over bare ground to provide shelter against rain and wind. A pair rode off toward the south gate. Others moved among the horses, unsaddling some and stringing their spare mounts along a line for the night. They watched the movement of merchants and hirelings and slaves in the commons in the same way that wolves study the behavior of deer in a clearing. They ignored the corpses, though Kesh could not. The souls of dead folk begged for release, and the longer they lingered here, the more likely they would get up to some mischief.

He touched fingers to forehead and lips, and patted his chest twice, remembering the words of the Shining One Who Rules Alone: Death is liberation.

"There are no ghosts," he said, as if saying it would make it true.

Too late he noticed a young man coming up to the gate carrying a full kettle of steaming barsh. He halted and stared at Kesh strangely, as if he'd heard the comment. Kesh opened the gate for him, and the young man nodded in thanks and hurried toward the mercenaries, looking back once. He was dressed differently, in loose trousers and a short kirtle bound at the waist with a sash. His red-clay coloring and pleasant features reminded Keshad more of his two Mariha slave girls than of the stocky riders with their flat, broad cheekbones, sparse mustaches, and predator's gaze.

Inside the inn, the reeve had set up court. He had drawn up a table parallel to one end of the long room. Here he sat, stripped out of cloak and sleeveless vest and down to shirtsleeves, on a bench between table and wall, and seated beside him the man who must be the mercenary captain. The contrast between the two men made Kesh pause beside the door as he tried to decide whether to get in line with the other merchants being interviewed by the reeve, or grab a drink first to fortify himself against the coming interrogation.

The reeve had an easy way of talking to the merchants who laid out their ledgers and tallied their chits in response to his smiling questions. His manner suggested this was merely an inconvenience between friends. The other man was a stranger, reserved, removed, but aware of every action within the smoky interior. He glanced at Kesh, noting his scrutiny, and marked him with a nod before looking elsewhere. That he understood the words flying back and forth Kesh guessed by the way he would cock his head at intervals and glance sideways so as not to seem to be paying too much attention to the talk of cargoes and tallies. He had much the look of the Qin soldiers, but a striking nose and the shape of his eyes gave him the look of a man who has been twisted out of different clay. Kesh wasn't sure which man made him more nervous: the genial eagle or the silent wolf.

The innkeeper sidled past, on his way to the door, and Kesh caught his sleeve and tugged him to a stop.

"Here, now, you old toad. Those two lads you sent were useless. There's a boy dead beneath the Ladytree-"

"Thank goodness!" wheezed the innkeeper, trying to pry his sleeve out of Kesh's grasp. "That's none of my trouble, then. I have enough as it is!"

"As sour as your cordial! Where is the envoy?"

"Lying as peaceful as he can, out on the shade porch." He recoiled, although Kesh did nothing but give him a disgusted look. "He's under a shelter! If he dies under my roof it'll cost me half my season's profit for the purification ritual. I am not a cruel man, ver, but it will not help me or my family if I lose everything we have, will it?"

Kesh scanned the room. An elderly man was filling wooden mugs. A lad not more than ten was cleaning the floor where someone had sicked up. The rest of the staff, evidently, was outside clearing up from the attack.

"Can't get good help, anyway," continued the innkeeper as he weaseled his sleeve out of Kesh's grip. "Used to be my good wife and a niece and daughter helped me instead of these cursed useless hired louts, but after the midnight raids of four year back we moved all the women down road by Old Fort. I was lucky. I know a man lost both his strong daughters that summer to the raids. The gods alone know what became of them, poor lasses. Something awful. If you'll kindly let me get to my business, ver, I'll see you get a cup of cordial."

Kesh let him go as the reeve caught his eye and gestured, smiling as if they were old friends just now reunited. The innkeeper scurried away. Kesh pushed past a trio of grousing merchants and came up to the table as another man gathered up his ledger and chits, thanked the reeve profusely and, with an innocent man's flush of honest relief, headed for the door with a mug of cordial in one hand.

"I forgot your name, ver," said the reeve. "Sit down."

"You never asked it."

"In the heat of the moment, courtesy gets lost in the fire. I'm called Joss."

"Fire-touched," said Kesh, thinking of the envoy as he noticed the mark on Joss's wrist: like the dead boy under the Ladytree, the reeve was born in the Year of the Ox. Kesh's ken for numbers figured it up, unbidden. While the lad must be sixteen, this reeve was likely two cycles older, so he was forty.

Joss smiled. " 'A Fire-kissed Ox! You'll drive me to drink, lad!' That's what any one of my dear aunties always said. I don't think I was that wild. This is Captain Anji, who commands the guard of the caravan that was traveling behind you on the road. We're all fortunate they happened to be close enough to help us out. I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name again."

"I'm called Keshad." It was best to set all his chits on the table immediately. He opened the ledger to the current page. "I'm a debt slave bound to Master Feden of Olossi."

"Master Feden of Olossi," murmured the reeve, gaze fixing on the tabletop as though to seek answers there, or to remember a thing he had forgotten. "Feden."

"Do you know him? He's a member of the Greater Council of Olossi. One of the most prosperous and influential merchants in Olossi, in fact."

The reeve blinked, as though shaking awake, and he looked hard at Kesh. "How long have you been debt-bound to him?"

"Twelve years now."

" Twelve years? Did you know that on Law Rock it states that 'When a person sells their body into servitude in payment for a debt, that person will serve eight years and in the ninth go free.' "

He shrugged. "Everyone knows that covers only the original debt. Not any debts accrued in the interval."

"Is that what your master tells you?" asked the reeve in a tone Kesh couldn't interpret.

"That's the usual way. Have you heard different? Is it different in the north?"

The hard look on the reeve's face made Kesh nervous, but the man shook it off quickly.

"No, I don't suppose it is." He ran a finger down the neat column of the ledger, turning back a page or three. Kesh doubted he could read, but any educated person knew the ideograms for common market goods, the directions, numbers, and so on. "A trusted slave, I see, running your own trip south and even into lands where Hundred folk don't normally trade. Like Mariha."

"I like to find goods that will make a profit."

"For your master?"

"I must clear a certain amount for each trip. After that, I keep the rest of the profit for myself."

The reeve glanced up at him, then touched each of the chits. "Getting close?"

"Yes."

"After twelve years." He was clean-shaven like a lot of the men north of the Aua Gap: Toskala-chinned, people called it. He rubbed his smooth Toskala chin against an arm, sighed, and scooped up the rare chit. "The Sirniakans call this an exalted token." He tapped the last line of the ledger. "I see you invoked Sapanasu's veil for your cargo. Care to tell me anything about that?"

"No."

The reeve drew his finger up to the top of the page. "Whatever it is, it seems to have come your way in Mariha together with-" He clicked his tongue, studying the writing. "Females-two, young, unmarried. What's this?"

"Saffron."

"Ah. Oil…"

"Clove oil."

"These here-mirrors. I don't know what that is-"

"Shell dice. This one is ivory combs-thirty-two in number."

"No silk! That's unusual." His finger slid back to the last line. "Isn't that the mark for a bouquet of flowers? Or herbs of some kind?"

Kesh did not look at either of them. He kept his hands open, and was able to speak normally. "An aphrodisiac."

The reeve nodded, with a hearty grin and chuckle that suddenly struck Kesh as so entirely false that he shuddered and found he'd curled one hand into a fist. All this time, the mercenary captain had watched and listened and made no sound or reaction, like one of those stone monuments so old that any distinguishing marks have long since been worn off its face. This time he raised an eyebrow and said, in a cool, elegant accent, "Have the men of the Hundred need for such medicine?"

"We haven't any women as beautiful as your wife, Captain," said Joss, "or we should never want for desire."

The captain smiled blandly to accept the compliment. He did not deny it.

"Where are you come from, Captain?" Kesh asked.

"I have come from the south. I hire my company out as caravan guard. This is our first trip to the Hundred." Anji looked sidelong at Joss. "Maybe Hundred folk need guards to hire."

Joss shrugged. "Maybe so. Times are hard."

"I hear things are very bad in the north," said Kesh, happy to see the conversation flow into safer channels.

"So they are," said Joss with the merest flicker of his eyelids as he considered the north and what it meant to him.

"Maybe you know folk who are looking for honest men seeking employment," said the captain.

Joss let the chit fall to the table and regarded the captain. The two men had level gazes, and the ability to look each at the other without it becoming a contest. They were different men, with different authority, not rivals.

"It's come to this," said the reeve, "that merchants moving goods along all roads in the Hundred need caravan guards. I'll see what introductions I can make for you, in Olossi, in exchange for the good turn you've done me."

"One, in exchange for another." The captain extended an arm, and the men grasped, each with his hand to the other's elbow: So were bargains sealed in the marketplace, where the worth of a man's word was soon known to everyone.

"May I go?" Kesh asked.

"Certainly," said the reeve as though he thought Kesh had left hours ago. "Just one thing."

Kesh waited.

Pleasant expressions were traps for the unwary. The reeve wore one now. "An envoy of Ilu is dying out on the back porch. It's a bad thing in any event, that a holy man is murdered in this way, and I take it more personally because I was dedicated for my year to the Herald, so it's like one of my kinsmen breathing out his spirit a few paces from me. Here I was come too late to prevent it. That's a thing that really burns me hard, coming too late." His entire aspect shaded to an emotion so dark that Kesh took a step back, and that made the reeve take notice and that friendly smile crawl back onto his lips just as if he hadn't a moment before looked furious enough to rip someone's head right off. "Tell me, Keshad, did you witness the killing? Can you tell me what you saw? Leave out no detail. Mention everything you noticed."

"There wasn't much to notice. I retreated under the Ladytree to defend my wagon and cargo." The best defense was a good offense; he remembered that now. "You can imagine that I didn't want to lose what I'd bought in Mariha. I'm close-very close-to buying back my freedom, so you can imagine-" Even so, he choked on it.

The reeve nodded compassionately and took a slug of cordial while Kesh caught his breath and thought through his strategy. The captain did not drink.

"I stood there under the Ladytree hoping we wouldn't be noticed because of the boughs. Or that ospreys wouldn't blood sanctuary ground-scant chance of that! Anyway, men came riding our way, and that envoy just ran out toward us. At first I thought maybe he was in league with them, but he used his staff to bring down one of the horses and its rider, and then someone-I don't know who-shot him in the back as he was running, and after that he was run over at least once by a pair of horses. I was busy by then. I didn't see anything more."

The reeve asked, "Where do you think the envoy was running?"

"I thought toward the Ladytree, seeing as it is sanctuary ground.

… "He timed his hesitation perfectly. "He couldn't be sure the ospreys would grant him safe passage. But he may have been running elsewhere. I don't know. I had my own troubles. We were attacked. My driver got wounded. That lad was killed. I should put in a complaint to you, now that I think on it, because the merchant who hired him looks like to shirk the burying tithe, and I'll wager he's got no interest in seeing the boy's family gets any death tax due them. He was a brave lad, a little weak in the mind, if you take my meaning, but he stuck his ground as brave as any guardsman I've seen, not that he had a chance against the ospreys."

Captain Anji had a little secret smile on his face that made Kesh turn cold inside. But the reeve said nothing, only stared into the depths of his cordial as if seeking the tiny stems that weren't quite all strained out.

"Did you know his name?" the reeve asked.

"His name? Whose name?"

"The envoy's name?"

"He never said, now that I think on it. They rarely do. I never thought-"

"Yes?"

"Just… it all came so fast, the attack, all of that. I really thought we were safe once we crossed the border." He wiped his brow and found that his hands were trembling. "Can I go now? Is there anything else you want to ask me?"

The reeve shook his head. "No. You can go." His smile was so cheerful that it was almost possible to believe they were two good friends parting after a sweet drink to chase down the day's travel. "If I think of anything else, though, be sure I'll ask."

"I'm leaving at dawn."

"So are we all. I believe your two caravans will be joining forces for the rest of the journey. I'll be patrolling the West Spur as you go, so I can always drop in if I have any more questions."

"I'll go, then." He nodded at both men and moved away, swearing under his breath, until he caught the innkeeper coming in from outside. "What about that cordial you promised me?" He glanced over his shoulder to see the reeve and the captain with heads bent together. The reeve glanced up at the same moment, saw him looking, and waved at him with the kind of bright, deceitful smile that cheating merchants paraded every day of their cheating lives. It reminded him of Master Feden.

"You're hurting my arm," whispered the innkeeper.

"Never mind the cordial. I'd like to see the envoy."

There wasn't much to see. The dying man had been carried out behind the main structure, and laid out on a table set up on a raised porch covered by a solid roof constructed of lashed-together pipe stalks and thatch-tree fronds, the kind of place where people congregated in the heat of the day to escape the sun. A single tarry lamp burned, suspended from a hook in the cross quarter beam. Its smell gave him a headache, but the glower of its light offered enough illumination to see. The envoy lay on his stomach with his blue cape bunched along his left side to make him more comfortable. Kesh crouched beside him. He gave no sign of life beyond the infinitesimal movement of one eye below its closed eyelid, as though he were dreaming.

"He'll be dead by midnight," whispered the innkeeper, too loudly, and-startled-Kesh fell on his butt, and put his head in his hands, and after a moment roused himself to get up.

"Has any effort been made to stem the bleeding?" he asked.

"Bleeding's stopped. Just a bubble of air coming out. See it pop-there! I mark that means it hit his lungs. That'll end him, no doubt." He gestured toward the smoke swirling up from the tarry lamp. "That stink'll fetch any mendicant close by, but if there is none of them near, then there's nothing we can do."

"You've no starflower? Soldier's friend?"

"Wouldn't know it if I saw it. Just herbs for flavoring food and the cordial spices, that's all we've got here."

Gingerly, Kesh traced a finger around the wound. It was deep and almost perfectly round, rimed with blood but barely oozing. Bruises were blooming all over the envoy's bare back. The bright saffron-yellow tunic lay in pieces, discarded to one side.

"It's the trampling that done him," said the innkeeper. "I've seen men run over by horses who got up and walked in for a drink as easy as you please only to die in the nighttime after with no warning. Something gets broken inside. No way to heal that."

"No," said Kesh quietly, "no way to heal the things that are broken on the inside." He touched the envoy's grizzled hair, as much silver as black. "Is there a Sorrowing Tower here?"

"Nay, none here. He'll have to be carted to Far Umbos. Another expense!"

"He had two bolts of finest quality silk with him," said Kesh bitterly. "That should cover your costs."

The bartender called from the back door. The innkeeper excused himself and hurried indoors.

Kesh was overcome by such a wave of exhaustion that for a moment he thought the blue cloak was slithering like a snake, as though something trapped inside it was alive. He dozed off. When he started awake, he remembered that the innkeeper was gone, leaving only him and the silent body. The envoy still breathed, slow and shallow. Something about the pale moon exposed in an inky sky and the harsh scent of the tarry lamp made Kesh shiver.

On the breeze he heard the sound of wagons rumbling in, and a few shouts of greeting.

"Farewell, uncle," he murmured.

In the commons, the second caravan had arrived at last, led in by a pair of scouts. It was a bigger company than the one Kesh had traveled with, about thirty wagons and carts in all although it was too dark to get an accurate count even with hirelings and slaves trudging alongside with torches. There was even one heavily guarded wagon, a tiny cote on wheels rather like his own, but he could not be sure what treasure, or prisoner, was held within. There were another hundred of those black-clad guardsmen riding in attendance. Captain Anji led a substantial troop.

Kesh walked back to the Ladytree and his own wagon, where Tebedir kept watch. He dismissed the driver to get what rest he could. After emptying the girls' waste pail out beyond the Ladytree's boundaries and returning it to them, he stretched out on the ground. There he dozed, restlessly, waking at intervals to stare hard into the darkness.

He had to stay alert. Someone was looking for the treasure he was hiding. A thousand needles could not have pricked so hard. But there was nobody there, and all around him in Dast Korumbos the survivors and the newcomers slept the sleep of the justly rescued. If any ghosts walked, he at least, thank Beltak, could not see them.