Spirit Gate

42

A quartet of guardsmen accompanied Joss to Crow's Gate. Although he had bathed again in the court of Master Feden's compound, and had been given clean clothes in the style of those worn by Olossi's militiamen, he insisted on wearing his leather trousers instead of a clean linen pair. For the moment he regretted it, as they were damp from being rinsed and wiped down, so his legs chafed where they rubbed the saddle. The lingering stench of his captivity caught in his throat.

Crow's Gate was still barred for the night. In the half-light that presages dawn, he watched as another rider approached them. She was riding one horse and leading a packhorse and a spare on a lead.

"You can't have been to the temple and back by now," he said.

"No. As it happens, I ran into another hierodule in town, a kalos, in fact, a fellow I know and trust. He'll take the message to the temple in my place. That gives me more time to make some distance west. What did you decide?" She indicated the four guardsmen, who had looked her over and then away. She was subdued, and with her hair pulled tightly back and wrapped into a knot at the back of her head and her body concealed in a loose knee-length jacket, she was a woman you wouldn't give a second glance. Not unless you knew what she was.

She smiled, teasing him for staring at her so.

He wasn't usually taken so off guard. "Oh, eh, yes. These good men here will escort me south to the intersection with the Old Stone Road. I believe it will be safe to call Scar from there."

"Yes. You're less likely to be seen. I expect a certain reeve from Argent Hall to fly in soon after dawn. It's best he be given no chance to see your eagle."

"Why?"

"Why shouldn't he see your eagle?" There was something more than teasing in that pull of her lips. She had a way of raising her eyebrows and tilting her chin that was deeply sensual, even triumphant. She was a woman confident of her power and, in that, desperately attractive.

"Why do you think the same reeve will come back?"

"Marshal Yordenas will send someone back to make sure those mercenaries leave. I am pretty sure Horas will volunteer, say he knows the situation best, so best he be the one to supervise. I admit, a lot of the plan depends on it being him who returns. It's a gamble. But we've only got one throw before we're ruined, so we may as well be reckless."

"I still expect this is all a ploy to catch me off my guard, or capture my eagle."

"If you say so. Had I known you were so full of yourself, I'd have known I need only wait until you fill up with the poison of self-love and strangle on it."

Seeing that he had begun to lose her interest made him try harder by shifting ground. "What do you gain from this gamble?"

Her expression was closed to him. She drew her horses aside as Crow's Gate was opened and the first folk were allowed to pass. Riding away, she spoke a last comment over her shoulder. "Nothing so different from what's in it for you."

He was flushed, and bothered. He let all the other traffic go ahead until the early tide of traffic had flowed out. Their party was released to pass Crow's Gate, and they headed out on West Track, riding due south toward the escarpment while the sun rose east over the Olo Plain and the river's meander. For a while they rode in silence. Farmers had set out into their fields. Early-morning peddlers trundled their goods out toward distant villages. Joss wanted to tell them all to turn back, to hide within the safety of the walls, but he could not. The reeves of Argent Hall must not suspect that Olossi's council had learned the truth about their alliance. And so, in the service of their desperate gamble, they sent folk out unsuspecting into the lands where wolves were already on the prowl.

The four guardsmen were likable young men who could not, in fact, stay silent for long. They had the confident bearing of those granted youth and health and strength, but the least of Captain Anji's tailmen could, Joss supposed, take all four out without a great deal of effort. These were not hardened men. They were not honed. They were like a sword made for show, not for fighting, pretty in their dyed linen jackets and loose trousers and bright silk sashes of teal or crimson or sea-foam green.

"Did you see the incomparable Eridit last night?"

"No, she was engaged with another man. I went to the arena to see that new troupe."

"Were they at the Little or the Big?"

"Oh, at the Little. They came out of Mar. It wasn't much of an audience."

"It wasn't much of a talking line, I heard."

"That's true. But there was one girl… still, you know how they are, they will say they are sworn to purity until their tour is done."

"They say that if they aren't interested. What they say to a handsomer man is quite another thing."

"That's not what your sister said."

"Hey! That's not funny. You know she's getting married at Festival."

"Stop it, you two! Or I won't cycle you off duty on Festival First Night."

The chatter changed course into safer channels: the upcoming new year's festival; a jeweler who gave good deals on trinkets suitable for wooing jarya companions; a flower seller who had given good advice about a certain herbal that gave off an arousing perfume; the cockfights and horse races meant to take place on Festival Third Day; the demise of their favorite rice-wine seller in an unexpected fall from the upper story of his warehouse; the preparations of one of their party for his appearance in a talking line on the last night of the festival, which mostly had a great deal to do with properly gathering and sewing together stiff nai leaves to make the traditional bristling wrist guards.

These young men, like all the rest of the early-morning travelers and indeed most of Olossi's population, were ignorant of the magnitude of the threat that stride by stride marched nearer. It seemed Olossi's council really did like to hoard its secrets, even when knowledge might save lives. It did not, on the whole, make him trust them, neither the Greater Houses or the Lesser.

"Look! There!" said the fourth young man, who up until now had said the least.

They had gone a ways up the slope and could look back with enough command of the height that the wide plain and the curves of the river winding through it made a striking scene. Sunlight glittered on the river. The sea was a vast sheet of calm water, bluest beyond the delta's mouth. Over Olossi, a reeve circled, dipped, and descended for a landing.

Joss swung around to look up along the road. A fair stretch ahead of them, where the going got steepest, a rider moved at a leisurely pace. The rider was leading two spare horses, one of which had the bulky outline of an animal laden with supplies. As he watched, she reached the turn where the road bent sharply right to run east parallel below the escarpment.

To his companions he said, "Let's get moving."