Spirit Gate

40

He was dreaming, walking along the shore near Haya that he knew from his childhood. The strand ran for mey ahead in a curve that faded at length into distant hills whose heads were shrouded in rain clouds, although here where he walked the sun shone, its light winking on smooth waters. His feet crunched on coarse sand. The rhythmic shush and suck of waves along the shore and the shrill cries of seabirds overhead kept him company.

A mist rose off the surface of the wide bay. It boiled into a silver fog that rolled toward the land like a watery beast shouldering up out of the depths. On the crest of this fog, as on a wave, lifted a rider mounted on a winged horse, and it surely was Marit riding that horse because even at this distance he would know her anywhere. He ran toward the water, to meet her. The foam of the cresting wave broke over the form of rider and horse, obliterating it; he was left behind with wavelets lapping his toes and his hands grasping air.

"Reeve! Reeve Joss!"

The low voice woke him, or possibly he woke himself, moaning aloud. He stirred and sat, and found that he could sit. The bit of rice and water taken earlier had strengthened him. His head ached, but he could blink without wanting to pass out.

After all, he was only hearing things. He could see nothing in the blackness. The air smelled of rotting things and sickness and worse, a foul smell lightened only because it was rather dry, not at all fresh. Thank the gods.

"Reeve Joss!"

The hatch scraped open to reveal a light lowered through to dangle, swaying back and forth on a line. A hand appeared, fingers slender and strong. It fastened the lantern's looped handle to a hook set in the ceiling off to one side, too high for him to reach. He blinked back tears as his eyes adjusted, and when he was able to look up past the light, he saw a face looking down at him through the hatch as hands lowered a rope until its end curled on the floor.

"Hurry up," she said. "Are you strong enough to climb?"

The rope had been knotted at intervals to provide footholds and handholds.

"Very thoughtful," he said, for it took him a moment-he was thinking slowly- to recognize her. "But I'll take my chances with someone who hasn't already tried to kill me."

"As usual, you men always jump to conclusions about what we women intend. It's quite tiresome."

"When I met you last, you tried to kill me."

"Are you sure?"

"Hmm. Let me think. A naked knife. A mostly naked woman. I admit that part was appealing."

"Why in the hells would I come to kill you stripped to the waist?"

He chuckled, although it sounded exceedingly like rolling pebbles in his mouth, a trick he had tried when a lad with predictable results. He felt now, too, as though he had swallowed something small and hard that wedged in his throat. There was still a little water left in the cup, and he sipped at it and recovered and could speak.

"I thought it was a clever ploy to distract my attention."

She laughed as she grinned down at him. The flame of the light gave her complexion a glowing cast, bathing it in gold. Her eyes were very dark, heavily lidded. Her mouth was lush and very red. Delectable.

"Aui! The hells," he muttered. "I'm delirious."

"No doubt. All the better reason to climb that rope and escape your prison."

"With your help?"

"I'm the one with the rope."

He lifted a hand and was pleased he had strength enough to gesture in a casual way, reflecting a degree of unconcern he did not, in fact, feel, not with her hanging over him in such a position that he got a look right down her vest to the rounded shadows beneath. He remembered-very well-the curves she had on her.

"I'll pass."

"You'll wait for the justice of this corrupt council? I think you'd do best to be well shed of them, for they've been colluding with all manner of folk who will be happy to kill you once they have conquered Olossi. Which they are like to do if you can't get a message to the northern reeve halls, which I wish you would do by climbing this rope, calling your eagle, and leaving this place as soon as ever you can."

"Oh. Slow. I beg you. That was too much and too fast, my sweet."

"I've not given you permission to call me your 'sweet.' "

"Maybe not, but you ask me to trust you. That should give me a few privileges, don't you think?"

"Why shouldn't you trust me? You're such an easy target now that had I wished to kill you, you'd be dead already."

"It is a great comfort, knowing that. Why did you try to kill me before?"

"As I said, you misread the signals."

"A knife thrust at my guts is a strange way to signal something other than murderous intent."

"I had to protect myself. I wasn't sure who had sent you. You might have been on the side of our enemies."

"Who did you think had sent me? Who are your enemies? And who are you?"

She looked away, over her shoulder, then back down at him. "Best we get you out of here before we're interrupted, then I'll tell the tale."

"So, again, you're saying I must trust you."

"Or stay here. Your choice."

"How did you get here? Where are the guards?"

"Aui!" She had a very attractive way of setting her jaw when she was exasperated. "You talk too much, after all. Just like other men. Here I hoped you were different."

"Oh! Eh!" He laughed, although it hurt his head and his ribs to do so. "Now you've appealed to my vanity. I can't bear to be 'just like other men.' "

He tried to stand but found he was too weak to do it easily. Setting a hand against the wall and one on the ground, he managed to lever himself up, but he had to lean against the wall lest he collapse. He was cold, and then hot, and then cold again, in waves that made him sweat and shiver. "Whew. I'm sorry to say, it'll be hard for me to climb that rope."

She withdrew. A second rope slithered over the lip and its end dropped to the floor. Two bare feet appeared, gripped the rope as she eased her body over the lip. She shinnied down hand over hand at a speed that should have burned her thighs, landed softly, and paused with a hand still on the rope to fetch a tiny globe from her cleavage. It was glass, of a kind. With it balanced in one palm, she blew into it, and it lit with a pretty flame that cast an aura of light before her.

"I'll help you up," she said.

He stared at her tight sleeveless vest and short kilted wrap. The rig showed her figure to advantage, and she knew it. She smiled, amused by his stare.

From above, a snap like the sound of a door slid hard shut cut the quiet.

Her smile vanished as quickly as it had come. She stepped forward to examine him, and the floor of the cell, under the glow of the globe light. He became aware of what he must look like and how he must reek. For the first time, he got a good look at the coating of dried grime that had slicked the floor, every possible thing he could disgorge from his body: blood, vomit, diarrhea, urine, the worst sort of spume.

She lifted the globe to the level of his eyes. "Did they try to poison you?"

"I don't know. I ate a little rice earlier. It-stayed down."

"Follow the light." She moved it slowly from side to side, but she watched his eyes. "Did you take a hard blow to the head?"

"That I did."

"Ah. Sometimes that will make you cast out your stomach. Yes, you've quite a few signs of that illness. You'll want a bath and your clothes washed. We best hurry, for this is taking longer than I had planned for. Can you walk?"

"I don't know."

By the way she tilted her head just a little to the right and then back a little to the left it seemed she was considering options and discarding them.

She touched the globe to those rich lips. Its light extinguished immediately.

"I'll put it back in its warm setting, my sweet," he said hopefully.

She looked at him sidelong in a way that would have set him aflame if he wasn't feeling and smelling and looking like a dead rat well run over and left in the dank to get really ripe. Then she tucked away the globe, slung a strong arm around his waist, and helped him over to the rope. There was nothing seductive in the action. She tied him up in the rope to make it a seat around his hips. He was so dizzy from moving that he couldn't even say what he would like to say about where her hands were working because the words went awhirl and he had enough to do to stay on his feet as she rigged him up and left him standing there. She climbed swiftly up the knotted rope and eased herself gracefully out of the hatch. A moment later, the rope drew tight, strained, and he grasped with all his strength to avoid pitching backward as she hauled him up. He rocked. He shut his eyes, but decided that was worse. His knee rapped the hot surface of the lantern, but not hard enough to shatter anything, by Ilu's mercy.

The room above, which he did not remember, was a holding cell with rings along the far wall where folk could be chained up until ready to be moved. She had used one of these rings as her lever, with the rope pulling over it, and when his head came up past the opening she tied it securely, crossed back to him, and used main force with her arms hooked under his armpits to drag him up and onto the floor. There he sprawled. While he panted, trying not to sway although he wasn't moving, she cut him loose from the rope now tangled around his legs.

"You'll have to walk the next part." She stepped back and pulled up the lantern.

"Where are the guards?"

She knelt beside him. There was a pleasant smell to her, like jasmine, but under that a scent he recognized with a kind of delayed shock: She smelled of eagles.

"You'll need this."

Her hands were cool as she lifted his head enough to slip a leather thong over it, settling it at his neck. He groped at his chest, found the bone whistle. He groaned, would have wept had he retained water enough for tears. "What bell is it?"

"Middle night."

"I can't use this until daybreak. Once they discover I'm gone, they'll search for me."

"Which is why we must hurry." She got an arm under him, and with her help he stood. The whistle gave him strength.

"I can walk on my own." That he was so helpless, and she so competent, irritated him enough that he nudged her away. "Where do we go?"

After all, she was not immune. A smile chased across her lips. Her eyelids drooped, and for a moment she had the sleepy look of a woman woken after a night of passion, smug and certain and well pleased. "Does this mean you trust me now?"

He'd be a fool to try to walk unaided, this close to freedom. He grasped her arm just above the elbow. She had satiny skin, and taut muscle under it.

"I'm Joss, but you already know that. What's your name?"

"Zubaidit."

"Ah! Such poetry! 'Where the axe hewed, the man was stricken.' "

Now she was amused. "Not everyone knows the story of the woodsman's daughter."

He would have leaned in to speak intimately close beside her ear, had he been clean and sweet-smelling, but he was not, and although she had as yet made no slightest sign of finding him foul in his current state, he didn't care to chance seeing a grimace of disgust cross her face. After all, if he survived this, he would recover his strength, and take a bath, and then she would see what it meant to meet her match.

So he smiled at her, as well as he was able. "It's one of my favorite stories from the Tale of Fortune. Especially the ending."

She laughed, a clear sound that she made no effort to muffle or disguise. What in the hells had happened to the guards? But he didn't ask again. It was time to take his chances, and see where this tale of fortune led him.

"You would say so," she said with a smirk. "Come, now. We have to go see someone."

She doused the lantern, led him down the corridor, helped him up a set of stairs and through an open door into a spacious hall swallowed in night but which he recognized by the carved railings at one end as Assizes Hall. She moved smoothly, graceful despite the darkness, and he, leaning on her, was able to stumble alongside creditably. No one was about. It was weird how very quiet it was, all the guards lost. Murdered, maybe. And who in the hells were they going to see?

"It's a strange way to murder me," he muttered, unable to help himself. "Or have you some other more convoluted plot in hand?"

"I do, but you'll need all your powers of persuasion to help me. Now, hush."

They came to the wall of screen doors, all closed. A faint, wavering light could be seen through the papered screens. Nimbly, she slid a door halfway open and eased him onto the wide front porch that ran the length of Assizes Hall. A stocky man carrying a small lantern was waiting at the foot of the steps. Beyond him, Assizes Court was empty, all in shadow, no lamps at all.

"What of the eagle?" she whispered, dropping her voice now that she was outside.

"Without me, he won't fly until it's day. I can't call him until dawn."

She helped him down the steps. The man who waited was master of a handcart, which was empty except for a cloak bundled in the bottom.

"This is my friend Autad," she said. "He owns the Demon's Whip, a tavern in Merchants' Walk. He's agreed to cart you, since I wasn't sure how far you'd be able to walk on your own."

"You've thought of everything. Where are we going?"

She tilted her head back as if she'd heard something, and sprang up the steps to vanish into the hall, sliding shut the door behind her. She was gone as quickly as if he had only dreamed her.

"Get in, ver," said the man in a genial voice, pitched low. "Hurry. I'll cover you with the blanket." He moved up beside Joss, and even in the night Joss could sense that terrible grimace. "Whew! Begging your pardon!"

"Where did she go? Where are we going?"

"Where she tells me, ver."

"Do you trust her that much?"

"She's a true servant of the gods, that one. Very pious." The man hesitated. "If you wouldn't mind, ver." He indicated the cart, coughed, gagged a little. "Geh. Well. Best if we do this quick. If you don't mind."

Once in Haya, one summer when he was a lad, he'd been out swimming with his friends and been grabbed by a rip current that had dragged him out into the sea. But you learned growing up on those shores to let go instead of fighting what you could not resist, because fighting would kill you. Eventually, of course, the rip current had slackened, and he had worked free of it and swum back to land.

"Thanks, ver," he said to Autad. With the man's help, he clambered into the belly of the cart. Autad flipped the cloak over him. The cloth smelled of hay, but it was a good, honest, clean smell, one he appreciated. The cart rocked beneath him as Autad lifted and pushed and began walking. The wheel rumbled over stone. The movement jostled him.

For a long way Joss just lay there, thinking of nothing, really, too drained to fret or scheme. The streets were quiet around them. Evidently in Olossi people did not commonly walk out at night, while he was accustomed to the streets of central Toskala, which were more or less awake at all hours. Sometimes it seemed they rattled up a hill, and sometimes it seemed they rolled down one, and only once in that journey did Autad speak, in the manner of a man who has been mulling deep thoughts in his mind and finally found words to express them.

"I'd do anything for that girl. I do owe her, for saving the life of my sister. She had that rash that eats the skin. Poor thing, suffering so. Zubaidit spent her own coin to buy the oil of naya, which is the only unguent that cures it. I couldn't afford such a luxury."

"But-"

"Hush! Now we're coming to where folk are about. I don't want anyone suspecting. I'd lose my license, and be subject to exile. Or worse."

They moved into a neighborhood where there were, indeed, a few folk out even at this late hour, judging by the sounds of footfalls and soft conversation and the occasional clink or clatter of unseen objects changing position. Joss's hip was bruising where it pressed against the bottom of the cart, and every time they lurched forward his right shoulder knocked against wood. Autad hadn't brought any padding, more's the pity.

Abruptly, the cart rocked to a halt and Autad pulled the blanket off. "Can you get out?" He stood back, not offering a hand.

Joss got first to his hands and knees, and then awkwardly clambered out by levering his legs out first and following with his body. He was weak, but damned if he would inconvenience the man with his stink, when it was so obvious how appalling it was. They stood in an alley of towering white walls, both ends lost in shadow. A lit lantern hung from a hook protruding from one of the walls above doubled doors. These were broad and high enough to admit wagons, and a smaller "walking" door for foot traffic was set into the larger door. All around, the cobblestone pavement had been swept clean; there was no trace of litter or noisome debris. Indeed, it was pretty obvious that the only nasty thing in this tidy alley was Joss himself.

"Wait here," said Autad. He probed in his sleeve, withdrew a ball of rice rolled up in a se leaf, and without quite touching Joss gave it into his hands. Joss was so hungry that he ate it at once, trying not to choke on big bites, forcing himself to chew. Autad moved off with the cart while Joss had his mouth full, but when Joss tried to speak, the other man paused, hoisted the cloak, took a whiff, and tossed it at Joss, then with the cart trundled off down the alley until he vanished into the night.

Joss finished the rice, then chewed up the se leaf-beggar's food, as they called it, but despite being stringy and tough, it was edible and it settled lightly in his stomach.

Neither bell nor device adorned the door, by which a man could signal that he stood outside. Any night noises were here muted by the walls and the isolation. He could not even tell how long the alley was, or how far it reached on either side, but he guessed that he stood between two large compounds that were likely either temple establishments or the households of rich men.

For a few breaths he simply stood there to quiet his heart, calm his mind, and consider his options, alone in the dark city with a chance to escape. Definitely his best bet at this point would be to turn and walk away and hope to make it out of the city without being stopped, although it would be tricky to get past the gates of the inner wall.

Without warning, the "walking" door opened and there stood Zubaidit.

"The hells! Come inside quickly! Anyone might see you out there!"

Since he could think of no clever rejoinder, he followed her into a wide court with trough, cistern, hitching posts, stable, and a small warehouse. Here tradesmen could bring their provender without sullying the main entrance of the rich man's home, for certainly a rich clan's compound was what this was.

"Over here," she said, indicating the trough. "Best hurry. There's a change of clothes. He'll never speak with you if you're not cleaned up a bit."

"Where are the guards?" he asked.

"Right there." She indicated the opening of the stable, where a trio of men were trussed and gagged, but still alive by the way they twitched their shoulders and waggled their feet to get his attention.

"What game are you playing?"

"There is only one," she said with a smile, pressing a bag of rice bran into his hand. "The game of life, death, and desire. We haven't much time." She turned her back and folded her arms.

Though he was shaking with weakness, and could not trust her, the entire night's adventure had taken on such an air of unreality that he let himself be dragged onward and outward, as into the sea. He stripped, with some difficulty prying himself out of the tight leather trousers, and tossed trousers, jacket, shirt, and cloak to one side. All were unbelievably foul, soaked through, matted, dried, and stiff in spots. A bucket stood beside the trough. He filled it and dumped it over his head, filled and dumped, filled and dumped, until he was soaking. Using handfuls of the bran, he scrubbed himself, working quickly, finding all the worst layers of grime. After, caught by a sense of impending doom, he dressed in the simple shirt and knee-length jacket provided, draped and tied into place with a sash. She did not once turn to look, although he had wondered if she would. He crossed to the cistern, took down the drinking ladle from its hook, dipped, sipped, and hung it back.

"Ready," he murmured.

"This way."

He followed her into the warehouse, whose walls in this darkness he could not perceive. If folk slept here, he did not hear or see them.

"This way."

Behind her, he groped his way up the rungs of a ladder into the attic. Here she lit her tiny globe to reveal a long chamber with a steeply pitched roof on both sides. The low walls were lined with shelves on which rested various boxes and bags neatly filed away according to a system he could not quickly comprehend. She moved to a cabinet, opened it, and gestured. Ducking through after her, he was at once choked with a sense of closeness, weight pressing on him, dust a congestion in his lungs, walls falling at him on either side. But after all he fixed his gaze on her backside, very shapely, as she climbed stairs in what was little more than a narrow tunnel, the ceiling so low that he kept thinking he would slam his head against it and the walls so close that if he leaned any little bit left or right his shoulders brushed the paneling. It was quite dark, although the glow of her light outlined her figure most pleasingly. Hers was an easy target to aim for. He mounted the steps behind her, but she got farther away and he fell behind because the climb exhausted him and she was swift.

She opened a door and passed the threshold. At length, puffing and panting, he got to the top and stepped into a fine chamber ornamented with all manner of luxurious furnishings. Beside an open coin chest rested a reclining couch imported from the south. A set of paintings depicted a crane seen through the six seasons, edges embossed with gold foil to frame each hanging silk scroll. Two greenware ceramic ewers flanked a brass basin worked into the shape of a very rotund peacock with feathers spread high and small mirrors adorning each "eye," so a person could catch a glimpse of himself as he washed his face.

It was the kind of chamber where a merchant entertained guests he wanted to impress with his wealth, or where he reclined on his couch in order to entertain himself by counting out his strings of money. It appeared that Zubaidit had arranged a different sort of entertainment for the other person in the room. This grand gentleman wore only an ankle-length night jacket cut from such a fine grade of southern silk that even Joss could appreciate its quality. The precise shade of blue was hard to distinguish because there were only two lamps burning, both set on tripods, one on each side of the chair to which the man was tied. Zubaidit finished untying the gag she had secured around the man's mouth, and with a glance at Joss, she seated herself cross-legged on the couch next to her prisoner and folded her hands in her lap.

"I've met you!" said Joss, staring at the merchant. "I met you in the north."

"He stinks!" croaked the man. "Don't let him sit on my best pillows! Or on my Dayo'e carpet! Aui!"

"You have an overly sensitive nose. Best you be thinking of your life and livelihood and that of this city, rather than your pillows and expensive carpet. Oh, just sit down, Joss."

He had to. His legs were about to give out. He tried to stay away from the doubled rank of eight pillows with their embroidered scenes depicting that day in ancient times when an orphaned, homeless girl knelt at the shore of the lake sacred to the gods and prayed for peace to return to the land. This set of scenes portrayed the gods'answer: the calling of the Guardians, and the gifts given by each of the gods to those Guardians, to aid them in the burdensome task of restoring peace and establishing justice.

The merchant whimpered as Joss sat, but Zubaidit cut him off. "Master Feden, I thought perhaps you might be more likely to believe me if I let you speak to Reeve Joss, who hails from Clan Hall."

"You're lying," said the man. "This is some story you've woven to confuse and befuddle me. You came here with Reeve Horas earlier today. You stood beside him as his ally, and swore to him that you would deal with this prisoner. Yet here this man sits, contaminating my good carpet! What have you done to my guards?"

"Nothing as lasting as the death that will greet them if you do not believe me when I tell you the truth. There is a strike force not a day's march from these walls, and an army two or three days' march behind that, many thousand strong, who mean to burn, rape, and plunder this town and set their own governor over what remains. You were a fool to ally with Argent Hall and whatever folk out of the north you have made alliance with. But it is not too late to act, and save yourself and this town."

"An army?" said Joss. "On West Track? I saw none when I flew down

… and yet-"

"Go on," she said encouragingly. She had yet to move her hands, clasped so easily there between her thighs, as if she were waiting for a cup of tea to be brought so they could sip in cool collusion.

"On our way down here, we came across groups of men, armed bands. But I never thought… Could small groups be brought together that quickly, to form an army?"

"If they are well led, certainly. Who is your ally, Master Feden?"

"None of your business. None of the temple's business."

"Surely it is. If the temple is to be attacked, the temple must be prepared to withstand the assault."

"Who would attack a temple?" cried Master Feden.

"You have not been listening to the stories that have walked south, have you? Those who serve the Merciless One have become targets, just as reeves have. In the north. Only in the south and in the east have the temples remained immune."

"Impossible. No one would hurt those in service to the temples."

"On the Ili Cutoff, you were talking to Lord Radas of Iliyat," said Joss to Feden. "It just doesn't make sense. Does Lord Radas know about this army? Who leads it? Where it comes from?"

Feden did not answer.

"I'll tell you this," said Zubaidit. "I have seen a thing I thought I would never see, a thing spoken of only in stories."

She moved smoothly, uncoiling more than rising. Stepping away from the couch, she bent, picked up one of the pillows, and displayed the fine needlework in the spill of lamplight. Folk no doubt lost their eyesight stitching those tiny details. It made Joss's eyes water to look, or perhaps that was the cloying scent steaming off a heated bowl of perfumed water strewn with petals that had been placed on the low side table next to Master Feden's chair. It had the sticky aroma of diluted sweet-smoke. Joss wondered if the man was an addict. Master Feden was twisting his hands, testing the bonds that trussed them, but he was caught fast.

"Look at me!" She shook the pillow. "You see? Here, the gods offer their gifts."

Every child knew the Tale of the Guardians by heart, how the orphan had come to Indiyabu to plead with the gods to intervene, to save them.

Joss chanted.

Taru the Witherer wove nine cloaks out of the fabric of the land and the water and the sky, and out of all living things, which granted the wearer protection against the second death although not against weariness of soul;

Ilu the Opener of Ways built the altars, so that they might speak across the vast distances each to the other;

Atiratu the Lady of Beasts formed the winged horses out of the elements so that they could travel swiftly and across the rivers and mountains without obstacle;

Sapanasu the Lantern gave them light to banish the shadows;

Kotaru the Thunderer gave them the staff of judgment as their symbol of authority, with power over life and death;

Ushara the Merciless One gave them a third eye and a second heart with which to see into and understand the hearts of all;

Hasibal gave an offering bowl.

"I saw two of them," said Zubaidit.

"Two Guardians?" said Joss, with a thrill of fear and excitement.

"Two orphans?" said Feden with a sneer.

"Two horses, winged." She threw down the pillow. "Two horses. Winged. And an army of thousands, too many to count. Although based on the number and formation of their cohorts I would say there were four or five cohorts of about six hundred soldiers in each. Let us estimate three thousand men, three hundred and twelve in the strike force, and more ranging up and down the line as foragers and scouts. That, Master Feden, is the army that marches on Olossi. What did they promise you?"

"There is no such army," he said, "and all agree the Guardians have long since vanished from the land, and were anyway only a tale told by our grandparents to school the young ones. You are insane."

"I'm tempted to agree," said Joss, but by the look she gave him in response, brows drawn down and mouth scowling, he saw he had truly angered her.

"So be it," she said. "I wash my hands of both of you." She crossed to the coin chest and helped herself to two fat strings of silver leya and one of humble copper vey.

"Thief!"

"Payment for services rendered. Yet the information is true enough. I'll return to the temple to warn them, as is my duty. After that, you are all on your own."

"You give no proof," said Master Feden. "You have no proof. How did you release this reeve? Why didn't you kill him, as you said you meant to do?"

"Marshal Yordenas commanded me to kill him-"

"You were trying to kill me!" Joss cried indignantly.

"No. The temple sold my labor to Marshal Alyon, when he requested protection. I stayed on after Marshal Alyon's death because the Hieros ordered me to. She saw that things weren't right at Argent Hall. She thought all the reeves had become corrupt. That's why I was armed when I approached you."

Joss could not help laughing. "Armed and naked. A deadly assault."

"The reeve is wanted for murder," said Master Feden. "Murderers deserve death."

"Murder? Whom is he supposed to have murdered?" she asked scornfully.

"A border captain named Beron, a holy ordinand in the service of the Thunderer."

"You and your council are fools five times over. I killed that man, on a commission given me from the temple."

Master Feden, surprisingly, remained silent.

"Captain Beron undertook a commission to assassinate a member of the Lesser Houses," she continued. "The Merciless One alone claims the privilege of such action. He crossed the boundaries, took a life in a way forbidden to the Thunderer's ordinands. Therefore, he was marked for death at our hands."

"The hells!" Joss glanced at Master Feden, but the merchant was now staring at his hands, all tied up tight, and not speaking. "How did you manage to kill Captain Beron? He was caged, concealed, and guarded by the Qin."

"I arranged for an axle to break. In the fuss, I meant to make my move. But as it happens, just before the breakdown a window opened, and I took the opportunity." She smiled, looking Joss up and down in a way that made him wipe his brow. She was laughing: at him, at herself. "I have many skills."

"We needed his testimony! He was willing to talk, to tell us who he was working for, who was paying him off."

"The Merciless One is a jealous mistress. He violated the boundaries. He had to die."

"Then we'll never know who hired Captain Beron to assassinate a man, and to hunt with ospreys."

"Master Feden might know."

"Me? Me!" Feden sucked in a lungful of smoke, and set to coughing. Belowstairs, heard either from down along that hidden stairway or through the closed door into the main part of the house, a clamor rose of many voices calling out the alarm.

"Master Feden! Master Feden!"

A high bell rang to wake the household.

"Heh! Heh! The guards come! You've been discovered! Now you can't escape justice."

She drew a knife from a sheath tucked up high on her thigh, hidden by the kilt. It was a thin, killing blade exactly like the one he had taken off her in Argent Hall. "It's all the same to me whether you die now, Master Feden, or die later at the hands of the allies who betrayed you. What did the leaders of this army that is marching on Olossi offer you? Gods! How gullible can a man be? Is it only greed that blinds you? Or are you just that stupid?" She waved the knife toward Joss. "Go on. Down in the warehouse, turn behind the ladder and find the fourth locker. Open it, and feel with your hands three bricks to the left. There is a stamp on the fourth brick. You can fit your fingers in and lift it, and find a hook beneath. Pull on that, and a door will open. Follow the tunnel out to the street, taking the third turn to the left and the second right. Go swiftly."

"What tunnel? I know nothing of a tunnel under my warehouse."

She ignored Feden's spluttering, and instead repeated the directions.

"How will you escape?" Joss asked. Feet pounded on stairs. Soon they would be at the door.

She clenched her jaw. "Why must men be so stubborn? Just go. Save yourself. I am not clumsy enough to be caught by this manner of men."

"Heya! Heya!" cried Master Feden. "Help me! Help me!"

Fists pounded on the far door. "Master Feden! Master Feden! We've news! Terrible news."

"He's busy!" she shouted. "Come back later, when I'm through devouring him."

But they were desperate. Her reply did not raise a single answering retort, not even a lewd joke. "Terrible news. You must open up. Villages are being attacked and all the folk in them murdered. A lad escaped. Hurry, Master Feden! We brought him, to tell his tale."

A new voice joined the chorus. "Master Feden! It's Captain Waras! Master Feden, open up, by the gods. You must convene the council. What will we do? What will we do? We've been betrayed!"

The merchant had been frightened before, then flushed with rage and doomed triumph as he contemplated being murdered in cold blood by the Devouring woman. Now his complexion faded to a ghastly gray. "Villages massacred? Can it be true?"

She said nothing. Joss found he could not move his limbs, as if he had fallen into sucking mud and gotten trapped.

Then she moved, too quickly for him to stop her. She unlatched and slid the door open, and behind it unlatched and slid open a second, secured door. Captain Waras strode in, looking first at her, then at Master Feden, and finally at Joss. He was so flustered and shaken that he did not act as a guardsman should, to assess and react to the threat. He waited, hands loose at his sides, sword in its sheath. A pair of guardsmen walked in, supporting a lad of some fourteen years, a slender boy with the wiry legs and arms of an experienced rider. He had the stone-shocked look of a person who has seen something he dares not believe but cannot deny.

Joss rose. "Give me your report," he said, finding his reeve's voice. "Quickly, while we still have time."

The lad lifted his chin, responding to the command.

"They marched in along West Track, from Hornward." He spoke in a flat tone, all emotion smothered. "I was at the Olossiward end of the village, stabling the horse for the night, and then… and then.. ."Almost he cracked, but he swallowed and blinked multiple times. He held on. "I rode away as fast as I could and though they rode after me they could not catch me and I rode all night and I changed horses at the villages and I warned them and some believed and some did not but I got torches and I kept riding through the night, oh the gods have set their hands down on this land, what will we do? Everyone. Everyone who could not run. They were all killed. All dead. Slaughtered like animals."

His eyes rolled up. He fainted.

The guards stared at the fallen youth, then at each other, waiting for someone to give them an order. Joss crossed to the lad and knelt beside him to be sure he'd not cracked his head; his breathing was even, and the reeve arranged his limbs more comfortably. Zubaidit sheathed her knife and went to the window, leaning out to stare into the darkness.

Feden wheezed out a breath. "Betrayed," he muttered, as if trying on the word as he would try on a new jacket, one as finely made as that which slipped around his bare legs now to reveal pudgy knees and ample thighs, a man with plenty to eat and plenty to boastfully display. With plenty to lose.

"We have been betrayed," said Captain Waras. "Everything these allies of yours promised the council, Master Feden. Lies. They said no one would be hurt, only that we would get our trade routes back and extra portions and a larger share of the market for those who cooperated with them and a lesser share for those who did not. That they would put down the revolt of the Lesser Houses."

Feden had long since ceased struggling against the bonds. He sagged, and his chin drooped, and trembled. "Betrayed," he said in a strangled voice.

"I must return to Clan Hall with these tidings," said Joss.

Zubaidit turned back to survey the chamber and the stricken men: merchant, captain, guards, and fallen boy. "No matter what you choose to do, you can be sure that the reeves of Argent Hall will see everything."

"What will we do? What will we do?" Feden broke down and wept.

She spun the knife through her fingers, an entertainer's trick that was not at all charming in her hands. When she smiled, Captain Waras took a step away from her.

"I have an idea," she said, "but you won't like it."