Spirit Gate

29

For the first three days after leaving Dast Korumbos, they traveled through heavily wooded hills, and although the road bent here to the left and there to the right and at intervals hit steep upward inclines as they climbed out of a valley, on the whole they headed northeast and downslope until Mai thought her tailbone would never stop aching. The Qin never tired or ached, so she refused to complain and had Priya massage her in the evening.

"Sheyshi should massage you, and you should massage Sheyshi." She lay on her stomach, with her head turned sideways so she could see with one eye. Her hair was caught up against her head, tendrils fallen free along her neck. "You must ache, too."

Priya smiled as she rubbed Mai's buttocks. "This is an easy life, compared to what came before."

"I wish I was a horse," Sheyshi whispered. She only ever whispered.

"Why do you wish you were a horse?" Mai asked. "Oh. Ah! Yes, right there!"

Sheyshi did not answer. She was the most reserved person Mai had ever met, closemouthed, not at all confiding.

"Horses are free," said Priya.

"Sheyshi, do you wish you were free?" Mai asked. "When we have found a place to live, I'll make sure you can earn extra zastras-or whatever they use here-to earn money toward your manumission. That's perfectly fair. Commander Beje gave me your bill of sale. That amount is what you must earn to buy your freedom."

The girl colored, stared at her hands, then lifted her gaze to look at Mai as daringly as she ever had. "I would like to be free," she whispered. "But that isn't what I meant. I dream sometimes about things. I dreamed I was a horse, running over the grass. It felt-it felt-" But after all, that was too much confiding! Sheyshi squeezed shut her mouth, twisted her hands and, to make herself busy, offered Priya more oil for the massage even though Priya's hands were moist and Mai's flanks smoothly coated.

Priya chuckled. "Were you a mare, or a stallion? I've wondered, sometimes, how it might feel to be a stallion-man or horse-and have such a-"

"Oh, stop teasing her!" Mai scolded, because the girl looked miserable. Or maybe not. Commander Beje had implied that the girl slept in the bed with his chief wife and that there was play between them. "Are you lonely, Sheyshi?"

Sheyshi wore a green silk cap from which hung shoulder-length streamers, some of green silk, some of gold and white beads, and one woven out of supple wire. Normally the arrangement left her face exposed, but with her head bowed the streamers concealed her expression.

"Hard to come by right now," said Priya as she rubbed, "but I can make sheaths out of sheep gut if you're wanting comfort with a man without catching a child in your sack."

Mai chuckled. "You made me no such offer, Priya! A sheep-gut sheath for a man's sword!"

"You are freeborn, and now a wife. You must get a child as soon as you can." She paused with a hand resting on the gentle curve of Mai's lower back. "Perhaps…"

"It's too early," said Mai, suddenly frightened. "Don't say anything."

Priya began kneading again as if nothing had been said. "I will pray to the Merciful One that you are blessed with seven sons, and three daughters."

It was good to change the subject. "How can it be, if there are always seven sons but only three daughters, that all the sons can get married? In Kartu, the clan banner goes only to the eldest son. But all my uncles got wives-well, except for Uncle Shai, and Uncle Hari, and Uncle Girish." She shuddered, remembering Girish. He'd paved his own path to the deepest hell.

"Priests and soldiers need not marry," said Priya. "This way we always have plenty of them."

"Ow! Ow! No, don't stop! Right there!" She groaned in blissful pain. "Yes, right there! It hurts!" Priya worked in silence while Mai kept her eyes shut and breathed into the knot of pain to try to loosen it.

Sheyshi shuffled around; there came footsteps, an opening and closing of the flap of the tent. Feet shushed along the carpet, and just before Mai opened her eyes to see what was going on, hands began massaging her again. These hands were firm and strong and callused, and no less knowing.

"Anji." She smiled as she opened her eyes.

He kept kneading with one hand and with the other slipped free the tortoiseshell comb that bound up her hair, uncoiling it and raking it out over her back. "I am the most fortunate of men," he murmured.

"I am the most flattered of women."

He laughed. "It is not flattery if it is true. Not one man among this company does not honor your beauty and good nature, Mai."

She rolled out from his hand, onto her side, and propped her head up on a bent elbow. "Is that what you seek? The envy of other men?"

He considered the comment, but his gaze roamed along her body and his hands twitched, although he did not-yet-touch her. "It is easy to be gratified by the envy of others, directed at what you yourself possess. But it weakens you. Half the secret of your beauty, plum blossom, is that you do not covet it or use it." Then he smiled. "Except in the marketplace, to drive a harder bargain."

"You will never let me forget that."

"I must know the measure of those I hold closest. Any commander must measure his troops in this manner."

"I am no different than your troops?"

He said nothing, and she understood abruptly that it would be foolish to press the conversation any further in this direction.

She groped for and found the scraper Priya would have used to clean the oil off her body. "When do I get my bath?"

He relaxed. "Soon." He took the scraper and worked methodically, but somehow by the time he had finished he was also undressed and she was warm and almost delirious with pleasure.

"Soon," he repeated, kissing her.

She wrapped her limbs around him and took what she wanted.

DO NOT FEAR happiness.

Is it dangerous to become too happy? To get what you want, and be blessed with good fortune? A kind husband. A missed bleeding. As Grandmother Mei used to say, in her querulous way, "Why do you think you'll get a drink from my cup just because I gave you one yesterday?"

She pondered this question at dawn as she rolled up the blankets and the sleeping carpets while, outside, Priya and O'eki released the tent ropes. She crawled out as the walls collapsed. Sheyshi collected the bedding and secured it to one of the packhorses. Anji stood beside the sentry fire talking with the man who rode that huge and intimidating eagle. Anji had an easy way of conversing with other men. He had a natural precision of movement, and he took up space in a way that made him noticeable without diminishing those in his company. He glanced her way, saw her, and without smiling-just a certain way of narrowing his eyes and the barest curve to his lips-made her flush.

Grandmother had not approved of happiness. She said it led to carelessness and trouble, or perhaps she had meant that happiness led you to carelessness, which in turn took your hand and walked you into trouble. Good fortune was fickle. You must never count on it.

Her hair was already pulled back in a mare's tail swishing down her back to her hips. She twisted it up deftly, and Priya thrust the tortoise comb through the mass of gathered hair to keep it in place. Mai walked over to the men.

"A good morning," said Joss appreciatively. He was the kind of man who smiles his admiration but shows restraint in the way he doesn't draw too close. She liked him. He was good-looking in the northern way, but pretty old. As old as her father, probably, although his coloring was so different that it was hard to tell. Father Mei walked old and talked old and frowned old and sighed old, but the reeve had the lively aura of a man who plunges through life because he wants to be happy.

It hit her all at once.

"You're an Ox," she said.

"Mai?" said Anji in a tone that almost crossed into a warning.

Joss laughed. "How did you know?"

"So am I. The Ox is hardworking and pragmatic, with a dreamer hidden inside."

"What gave me away?" He was still smiling, his eyes handsomely crinkled with amusement, and she gave in to the temptation to flirt, even though she knew she should not.

" 'The Ox walks with its feet in the clay, but its heart leaps to the heavens where it seeks the soul which fulfills it. The Ox desires happiness, which is a heavenly gift, but it accepts its burden of service on earth even if it knows that happiness has flown out of its grasp.' And anyway, the Ox is always beautiful."

She was aware at once of Anji's boots shifting on the dirt as a complicated expression altered the reeve's face before he found a harmless smile again. "Does it say somewhere that the Ox is a shrewd judge of character? Or did you serve your apprenticeship to Ilu as I did?"

"I don't know what 'Ilu' is."

He glanced at Anji and made his own judgment. "We'd best begin our trek. It's still five or six days' journey from here to Olossi. I won't rest easily until these two caravans are delivered to the safety of the market there."

Anji nodded, and the reeve left.

"He's been called handsome before," said Anji once the other man was out of earshot. "He's accustomed to the admiration of women. It was the talk of happiness that made him uncomfortable."

She looked at him closely. "You're a little mad at me."

"This is not the marketplace, Mai, and you are not selling peaches and almonds to unsuspecting men who will be stunned into paying full price by one glance from your beautiful eyes."

She raised a hand to her cheek, where Father Mei would have slapped her. "Forgive me," she said in a low voice, but she kept her gaze fixed to his.

He did not smile to soften his words. His voice was low and even. "Do not dishonor me."

"I will never dishonor you! Because I will never dishonor myself!"

Now he smiled. "I am rebuked."

Her cheeks were hot, and her heart was hotter. She was still not quite sure what threat she faced because in most ways Anji was still a mystery. Father Mei would have hit her, and her mother and aunt would have pinched her arms and ears until she cried. It had been easier to fit herself into the walls they shaped than to endure slaps and pinches, but she had passed through the gate and survived the ghost lands. She was not the same person any longer. She refused to go back.

"I want to be trusted," she said softly, "because it dishonors me if I am not trusted."

His gaze remained level. He was no longer angry, but rather measuring and perhaps a little curious, intrigued yet not at all amused. "Honor is all we have. You are right, Mai. I must trust you."

She nodded in reply. That was as far as she could go. She could not trust her voice, and turned aside gratefully as O'eki brought the horses forward.

LATE IN THE afternoon, the wagons rolled into a meadow already fitted for encampments. A covered cistern opened through a series of cunning traps into a trough suitable for watering stock. A spacious corral built out of logs allowed them to turn out many of the beasts. Posts offered traction for lead lines where horses could be tethered. Pits rimmed with stones marked off six fire circles, all of which had iron stakes set in place to hang kettles or cauldrons over flames. Hired men and slaves set to work to raise camp and get food ready.

She made her way on a dirt path that cut through a thick stand of pipe-brush and under an airy grove of swallow trees to the crude pits set back against a ravine. Some kind soul had woven screens out of young pipe-brush stalks and pounded and nailed arm braces against the steep slope for ease of use. There was a great deal of coming and going and, remarkably, a stone basin cooled by trickling water flowing down through an old, halved stalk of mature pipe-brush. As she washed her hands, she noticed a small structure off to one side that almost blended into the foliage. She walked over, Priya and Sheyshi trailing after, but thought better of mounting the steps when she saw it was a shrine. She had been raised in the path taught by the Merciful One. In the empire, she knew, the priests served Beltak, calling him the Shining One Who Rules Alone even though he was only a harsher aspect of the holy one all folk worshiped.

This altar had no walls, only green poles with the shapes of leaves carved into them, a tile roof painted green, and a green rug laid over a plank floor. The rug was woven of thick, stiff grass-like blades as long as her arm, and it had begun to wear away where folk had trodden on it. A walking staff stood within, propped at an angle, so tall that it fit inside the peaked roof. A stubby log sat on its end in one corner, with a bouquet of withered flowers discarded on top.

"I'm surprised the flowers haven't blown away, or been replaced with something fresh," she murmured to Priya. "Is there no bell or lamp?"

"This is no altar for the Merciful One," said Priya.

"I don't think it's a Beltak temple, either," said Mai.

"I see no god," whispered Sheyshi. With head bent, she eyed the shrine as she might a twisting snake whose dance can cause women to fall into a charmed and deadly sleep.

Folk were looking their way, faces obscured by twilight.

"Perhaps we're not meant to stand here," said Mai. "Let's go back."

Anji had staked out the central fire pit, and he stood near its flickering light speaking to the reeve as Mai walked up behind them. They were laughing, and did not see her.

"You are a lucky man, did you know that?" Joss was saying.

"It would be impolite to reply to such a question. If I knew, and said so, then it would seem I am boasting. If I did not, it would seem I am foolish."

The reeve laughed. "I am answered!" He turned, alert even before Anji was, and Anji turned, and saw Mai. Sheyshi scuttled away to help O'eki, who was wrestling with a steaming haunch of venison. Priya paused just outside the circle of firelight.

"Surely you are a fortunate man as well," said Mai, coming forward.

His smile remained easy, but his gaze retreated into itself, as though he were staring down a long straight track into a twilit distance whose landscape was forever veiled from mortal sight. "I am not married."

Day seemed to shift into night with the swiftness of a child whose mood can swing from joy to tears in an instant. She halted beside Anji, but she could not look away from the reeve.

"You have a shadow in your eyes," she said to the reeve.

He looked at Anji, and she looked at Anji, and the captain nodded, and the reeve spoke in a low voice as around them the camp settled into its evening routine of drinking, eating, song, and sleep.

"I gave up telling the tale years ago. It came at the beginning, when the shadows first began to reach into the land, in the north. She was the first one-the first reeve-slaughtered. That was on the Liya Pass. Twenty years ago. Where it all began, when outlaws and cursed greedy lords began hunting down the eagle clans. I still dream about her. I shouldn't have let her go alone. If I'd gone with her…" But he shook his head.

"What then?" she asked.

Anji remained silent, watching.

He shrugged, and offered her a wry smile that made her want to cry for his pain. "Most likely we'd both be dead. Her eagle was found. Not just dead, but mutilated."

She had a nasty, prickling feeling along her back, as if someone drew cold fingers laced with slivers of glass up and down her skin. "What of her?"

He shifted his gaze to the leaping flames, his head canted and jaw tight, and continued speaking. "Her body was never found, but we found her clothes, her boots, a belt buckle, her knife, items she carried in her pack…"The fire sparked as a soldier shoved a pair of branches into the flames. The reeve winced back from the flare, then caught himself and went on, although his voice seemed flatter and more distant. He might have been reciting from a scroll. "Her boot knife was found on a girl, one of the Devourer's hierodules. The girl had been stabbed in the heart. That girl's corpse lay there with the rest of the discarded gear. It was only her body we did not find, nor them who did it, as they had all abandoned the camp."

"She might not have been taken away with those who killed the other one?" Anji asked.

"We searched, but there was never any sign of her. No, she's dead. I knew it as soon as I saw what remained of Flirt-that was her eagle. A reeve doesn't survive her eagle's death. An eagle can survive through the lives of four or five reeves if it's particularly long-lived, like my good Scar, but for the other way, no. Better dead than no longer a reeve, so we say." His smile was a ghost's smile, without life, but he struggled with it and shook his head and said, "It still hurts. A few years later, bones were found in an unmarked grave up beyond that abandoned camp. Perhaps that was her, hidden because they feared our revenge. I try to leave it behind." He blew breath out through his lips and shook himself in the manner of a duck shedding water. "I keep thinking I have."

"I'm so sorry," said Mai, wiping away a tear. "What was her name?"

"Reeve Joss!" A voice hailed him from the darkness. "Best come see this!"

"Excuse me." Joss left.

"Every young man loses his first love," remarked Anji to Mai, "but most get back in the saddle and keep riding. He's tethered to one post."

"Is it fair to say so? You don't know what he's done in the years since, only that speaking the tale makes him sad. The storytellers in the marketplace would make a song out of it, like in the tale of the Rose Princess and the Fourteen Silk Ribbons. She ran off with her lover, and he left her by the riverside while he went into town to buy her silk ribbons, and she was eaten by a lion that had been sent to earth by a demon jealous of her beauty. Afterward he wore her bloodstained rags and went on pilgrimage to the fourteen holy temples, one for each ribbon he had bought for her, but he could not calm his heart and after all he turned back to seek revenge, but the demon seduced him and made him steal back the ribbons from each temple and. .. It's a terribly sad tale!" she finished indignantly, seeing that he was trying not to laugh. "He dishonored himself! What could be worse? There is a song, but it always makes me cry."

"I would gladly hear the song. You sing with sincerity and a true voice."

"Maybe not such a strong one," she muttered. "But the tone is good, so I am told."

"You are still angry. I do not laugh at you, dearest Mai. I just have no taste for such tales. To me, they seem ridiculous."

"How are the tales ridiculous?"

He laughed. "Any man knows better than to leave a beautiful woman alone by the riverside in the middle of wilderness! Wild beasts and demons stalk everywhere, and not least among them the sort of bandits we drove away in Dast Korumbos. No, I have no patience for those stories."

"Mistress." Sheyshi came out of the dark carrying a copper basin filled with water. "Here is warmed water, if you want to wash your hair and face."

"Captain!" The reeve reappeared, barely visible in the gloom, and waved a hand. "If you will. There's something I would like you to see."

Anji nodded at her and went after Joss. Mai watched them fade into the twilight. She scanned the clearing and the trees but could see nothing exceptional, only merchants fussing at their wagons, soldiers grooming horses, and a dog slinking under the wheels of a cart. Guards ringed the prisoner's wagon, but they showed no sign of alarm as they maintained their vigil.

Movement beside one wagon attracted her gaze. Canvas had been stretched by means of an internal scaffolding to make a cabin over the bed, and two young women knelt beside a small fire, feeding sticks into it and stirring in a pot that hung on an iron tripod over the flames.

"Look there," said Mai to Priya. "I've noticed them before. They look a little like Sheyshi, don't they?"

"Slaves," said Priya. "See the bracelets and anklets, hung with bells so they cannot run away without alerting their master. Someone means to sell them here in the north. So it happened to me."

Mai took the other woman's arm, looking for the mark of shackles. "You have never worn such bracelets, Priya!"

"It is not the custom in Kartu. They were taken off me before I came to your father's house."

"Still." Mai scratched a forearm carelessly. "There's something about those two-or that wagon, anyway-that makes me itch. I don't know what. Like that time keder oil spilled on Ti's hand and made it blister. There's something hidden, but I don't know what."

A young man appeared by the fire, speaking to the girls, and he looked up as if he felt Mai's gaze. She had seen him before, among the merchants. He was young, with thick, curly black hair, and vivid with a kind of hunger of the spirit, a thing which gnaws at the underbelly and never lets up. He noted her, as men always did, but looked away quickly as if to say, "You cannot feed me, so I have no interest in you!"

"Find out his name," said Mai to Priya.

Priya brushed her fingers across Mai's knuckles. "You shouldn't stare at young men. Best we go on. Your water is ready."

She followed Sheyshi behind a canvas screen set up for privacy and, with the aid of her two slaves, stripped and had them pour the water over her just for the feel of it. It wasn't a true bath, with a scrub and afterward a hot soak, but she rubbed and soaped and afterward Sheyshi brought two more basins and rinsed her, and anyway it was better than the constant smear of dirt on her skin. She had dried and dressed and was sitting on a stool, sipping at this nasty drink called cordial while Priya combed out her hair, when Anji returned, accepted a cup from Sheyshi, and drained it without even a grimace at the sour taste.

"What was it?" she asked him.

"Just in the trees, a man found two skulls, bones scattered. Wild beasts got into them, but it isn't clear if the dead men were murdered or just died from some other cause-starvation, illness. Or where they came from or why, nothing but the bones, not even scraps of clothing, pieces of gear, nothing."

"It doesn't seem likely that naked people would go wandering in the forest. Unless these Hundred folk have strange customs."

He smiled, but sobered immediately. "The reeve tells me they have no holy followers of the Merciful One at all."

"No followers of the Merciful One? How can that be? We saw a shrine to the god, but it contained no statue, nothing but withered flowers."

"He kept thinking I was saying the Merciless One. It took us a while to sort it out. He had never heard of the Merciful One."

"You might as well say you have never heard of the color blue, or the sun and the moon!" she protested. "Surely all creatures know the Merciful One."

He smiled. "Not in Sirniaka, where Beltak, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Shining One, rules alone."

"Everyone knows that this Shining One is only one aspect of the Merciful One."

"You would be burned alive for saying so."

"Then I am glad we did not have to stay in Sirniaka!"

He touched her hand, and cradled it between his. "Not even for another amaranth parasol?"

"I only needed one!" She laid her other hand atop his, thinking of the flash of jealousy he had displayed. Of course it was gratifying, but it scared her, too. "I only need one," she added, and his hand tightened on hers and he looked at her intently in a way that made her both bold and nervous, as though she stood in the court of judgment knowing she had done nothing to dishonor herself.

"Well," he said, releasing her hand and rising, breaking the gaze. Her shoulders relaxed. "They'll be given a proper funeral, however they do that kind of thing here. Still, it makes a man wonder."

"How they came to die?"

"How much trouble the Hundred folk are having in their lands, to find border guards working in league with bandits and bones abandoned in the forest. Another thing I wonder at." He paused, and she watched him as he regarded the starry heavens with a thoughtful gaze. His profile was a noble one, given a patina of unworldliness by night and stars and the fitful illumination of firelight. So might a man out of legend appear as he considers his destiny, because it is the duty of night to mask his thoughts and lend glamour to his fortitude.

She waited-she had always been good at waiting-and at length he continued.

"Their ghosts were still there. Where men die violently, there remains a whirlpool of rage and fear where the spirit was cut from the body. I had Shai come over. Do you know what he told me?"

"Poor Shai. He's so afraid of being burned for seeing ghosts."

He frowned. "It's true you Kartu folk have odd ideas, which we Qin often remarked on. Among the Qin, the few men and women who can see ghosts are honored. It's a rare gift. In the empire, a boy who sees ghosts is given to the priests and becomes a powerful man. It's also true, though, that a woman in the empire who saw ghosts would be executed. So, after all, on all counts, you're better off with me, Mai."

"Did I ever suggest otherwise?"

"You did not. But, hear this and wonder, as I do. Those ghosts claim to have been reeves, so Shai tells me. They were murdered, although they cannot say who killed them. Yet where are the bones of their eagles? How comes it that our good ally Reeve Joss had no inkling of these deaths? Are these reeves not soldiers together in one unit? Does a crime that assaults one not lash the rest into action? Why is he here alone? Where are those who must stand at his shoulder?"

"What are you saying? That he is a rogue? Or a liar?"

"I think he is an honorable man. But what of other reeves? Are they as honorable as he is?"

"Did you ask him? Maybe he had heard of the deaths but not thought to tell you."

"He said there is a fort-a hall, he called it-of reeves a few days' journey from here. He'll leave us tomorrow at a place he calls Old Fort, and fly to that place to meet with these other reeves, to see what they have heard of this situation. I am thinking he wonders why they have not acted, when all these crimes take place within the lands they are responsible to patrol."

"He can ask them if they are missing two reeves."

Anji shook his head. "I did not tell him what the ghosts told us. I am mindful of the laws of Kartu. Before we let these Hundred folk know that both Shai and I have ghost-touched sight, best we know whether they'll wish to burn us alive."

She put her hands to her cheeks, wishing that fear did not make her skin burn so.

"We must keep our eyes open," he went on. "Reeve Joss promises to meet us in Olossi, to help us in our request for settlement privileges. Mai, there is a part for you to play as well. You are my negotiator. When we reach this city, Olossi, you must speak innocently, and listen well."

"You want me to be a spy."

"A merchant, darling Mai. Merchants make the best scouts of all. Anyway, men speak freely with you in a way they will not with other men. Your beauty and clarity are like wine, loosening their tongues. We have ridden into a strange land. If we are to survive here, we must know what we are up against."