Traitors Gate

25

The closer Shai and his escort of a dozen wildings got to the edge of the deep Wild, the fewer trails offered passage. As he hacked at a vine wrapped stubbornly around his ankle, he heard frantic

voices. A scream pierced the forest's veil. Shoving past a curtain of leaves, he stumbled down a wet-season gully sucked dry at this time of year. The gully offered a trail of a kind, and he splashed through isolated puddles, slipping twice along its slick pavement of damp leaves. Brah and Sis kept pace in the branches. The adult wildings had vanished.

The forest wasn't silent, which just made tracking more confounding: insects buzzed; birds chirred sweetly or squawked raucously; a larger animal cracked dead branches as it fled. He could never tell where the noises were coming from. Where the gully turned in a sudden bend, a bush had thrown tendrils across the depression. Shoving through this he slammed into the back of a man kneeling on the ground beside a child sprawled flat on its back.

The man toppled sideways with a yelp. Folk, unarmed and lugging only sacks and baskets and small children, huddled in a hollow sticky with the muddy remains of a wet season pond. At Shai's entrance, they shrieked. The surrounding canopy bent to dancing although the wind had not risen.

Shai leaped up, waving his arms. 'Don't kill them! If you honor me, let me first speak to them!'

The man sobbed as his companions stared in horror at a sight behind Shai. He turned. The child had begun to leak blood from its nose and mouth; it twitched weakly, sucking for air, then was still.

Mist rose from the body. A shape congealed, casting around.

'What happened? That hurt!' Its cloudy gaze fixed on Shai. 'You're an outlander! I never saw an outlander before!' He was sure the lad smiled as at a good joke, but abruptly its attention focused past him. 'I see there — so bright!' the ghost cried, and the boy fled through Spirit Gate, folding away into nothingness.

The trees ceased their movements. Had the wildings seen the ghost as well?

'Is that your child?' Shai asked.

'Neh.' The man rubbed his forehead as if to wipe away blood or anger or dirt or grief. He had an ugly wound above his right ear, and his left arm ended in a stump wrapped with the bloody remains of a jacket. 'He went by the name of Gelli. He was one of the children that came with us out of Copper Hall, but he had no family left. Said they were dead or scattered. No trouble at all, that boy. Even tempered and lively. He kept us smiling with his lokes and antics.'

'Surely you know it is forbidden to cross the boundary of the Wild.' He crouched beside the body. The boy's right hand bore a pair of purpling puncture wounds. 'Snakebit!'

'It was dangling in those vines when the boy pushed around,' said the man helplessly. 'Impossible to see, it being green like the vines. How was anyone to know a small creature could be so deadly?'

No wonder the darts of the wildings were so effective.

'Did you not see the poles with skulls set atop them?' Shai demanded.

They stared at him with the speechless intensity of folk who are hungry, thirsty, lost, and without hope except maybe for that given them by the antics of a lively boy now lying dead at their feet. Most were young, like the prisoners Shai had been held captive with, although these hadn't the battered, bruised, stunned look of the abused. These were merely starving, frightened, helpless refugees, swatting listlessly at bugs come to feast on warm bodies.

Finally, a very young and quite pretty woman stepped forward, clutching the hand of a boy no older than the lad who had died. She eyed him as warily as if he might be a snake about to strike. Not one seemed aware that they were surrounded by wildings.

'We're all that remains from those fled from Copper Hall,' the girl said.

'Copper Hall? In Nessumara? Has the city been attacked?'

'That I don't know. I meant the other Copper Hall, the main reeve hall north of the city on the road to Haya. A cohort come and burnt the hall.'

'Copper Hall is burned?' The simple words were so sharp a shock that he felt strangled.

Their tale spilled like rain: a cruel army rousting folk from their villages; farmers and villagers fleeing into the countryside and some coming to rest at the reeve hall where old Marshal Masar offered a haven. Then the reeve hall had been attacked and burned, eagles killed, the reeves fled. The old marshal had left behind his own grandchildren.

'He had to do it,' said the young woman gravely as she blinked away tears, 'because they could only carry one extra person each. If they didn't save the fawkners, who would care for the eagles? If there's none to care for the eagles, and the reeves die, then who will protect us?'

'The reeves haven't done a cursed lot of good protecting us, have they?' objected the man, waving a hand to clear away a cloud of gnats. 'They saved themselves and left us behind to die.'

'There was nothing else they could do!' cried the girl indignantly.

So many spoke Shai could not make out the speakers among the angry group.

'They could have fought against that cursed army, eh? Instead of flying up there out of reach and watching as the rest of us got hit over and over and over again!'

Houses burned. Captives taken. Men killed. Storehouses looted. Children and elderly dead of sickness and starvation.

'How are you come into the Wild?' he asked.

The girl took up the tale. 'A sergeant discovered us hiding in the wine cellar and convinced the cohort captain to let us go. But after we traveled for some days, other soldiers harassed and chased us. They drove us in here. They killed them what would not go past the poles. We had no choice but to die at their hands, or hope to escape. We thought maybe we could walk a ways through the Wild and leave with none the wiser.'

'That one sergeant,' added the man with a weary kind of rage, 'she did more than the cursed reeves ever did by hauling you children out of your hiding place and getting you out alive instead of giving you over to be slaughtered. Those poor cursed hirelings and assistants who got left behind were killed outright. Folk I knew well, every one of them. Think of it! It was that one sergeant, enemy as she was, who saved us. Not the gods-rotted reeves.'

He had a debt mark at his left eye, easy to overlook because that part of his face had been scraped to bleeding.

'You'll not speak of my grandfather that way!' shouted the girl.

'Enough!' Shai glared until folk fell into an anxious silence. 'There are wildings in the trees all around you, ready to kill you with darts soaked in snake venom like what killed that poor lad.'

Some wept, shaken by fear. Others wore a look of glazed indifference, people pushed past their limit.

'Should we just lie down and die?' said the girl, her chin jutting in a desperate display of bravado. 'If the wildings are so cursed deadly — if they even exist except in tales — then why haven't they killed you?'

Their despair made him reckless. 'Because I'm not human. I'm a demon.'

'I never heard that outlanders are demons. They're just people, like us, only they look funny.'

'Hush, you idiot girl!' the man hissed.

Shai laughed. 'What's your name?'

She slanted a look at him as if she had just discovered that he was a young man and she was a young woman, and things might go as they might go if things went. As he felt himself flush under her bold scrutiny, she smiled, flexing her power to disturb him. She knew men admired her, even as ragged and hungry and dirty as she was. Surely she'd not been assaulted and abused in the last weeks. She showed no fear, as if the thought of such a threat had never occurred to her. 'I'm called Jenna. It's short for Jennayatha.'

Someone sniggered. Others hissed. He was meant to understand the reference, but he did not.

'I'm an outlander. I don't know your tales, if you meant to convey some meaning by your name, verea. Tell me more about Copper Hall. What happened with the sergeant?'

The tale was neatly told, for the Hundred folk did know how to spin tales from any least event, and this was a story that could easily become woven into a true tale to be told to grandchildren should any of these survivors survive to dandle grandchildren on their laps. Barrels of wine and cordial had distracted the first lot of soldiers come to explore the cellar, but a sergeant had shined a lamp's light onto the faces of frightened children and withdrawn without betraying their presence. She had returned and marched them past ranks of corpses to join village refugees and hall slaves who were to be allowed to live while the rest were put to the sword. Each word was a blow to Shai's hopes. How was he to reach Olossi if he could not reach a reeve?

'That sergeant was a hierodule once,' said the boy suddenly, speaking past his sister's grasp.

'A hierodule? What makes you say that?'

The lad looked around to make sure everyone was listening. 'She said she was an acolyte of the Merciless One. That's how she knew there were times to show mercy and times to withhold it. No use killing children.'

'That's what she said,' his sister agreed, canting her hips as if to mimic the way the other woman had sauntered. 'She had knives. And she ordered that lot around, didn't she? I liked her. Even if she was one of the cursed army.'

Maybe it was the way he'd had of sensing a coming storm when

he was up at the carpentry shop on Dezara Mountain. Maybe it was the way ghosts called to him. 'Did she say her name?'

'She called herself Zubaidit,' said Jenna. 'But if I were marching in that gods-rotted army, I'd call myself something different than my real name, just for being ashamed!'

'Which cohort? Is there any way to identify it?'

'They had a banner… six crossed red staves on black cloth.'

'That's right,' the man agreed, and others nodded. 'We saw those banners flying as they advanced. The soldiers what chased us into the Wild carried a banner with eight white nai blossoms on a green field. What will happen to us now, demon?'

'Can you return to your villages?'

Their laughter was harsh; their tears shamed him. 'How can we go back? They have the weapons. We have nothing.'

'Where did you last see the cohort with the six crossed staves?'

They spoke of landmarks, streams, a burned Ilu temple, the sea.

'Rest you here while I talk to the wildings. Don't try to run away. If you run, you'll be killed.'

He batted at the leafy curtain with his walking staff, thinking of the green snake that had bitten the lad. When no snake twisted, he ducked through. Wildings blocked his way in the gully. Above, Brah and Sis swayed on branches, their grimaces of dismay easy to interpret.

One of the wildings, an older woman, gestured. Must kill. Forbidden.

'Listen to me, honored one.' He, who had never spoken up in his long and dreary childhood, was learning how to speak. 'They are not your enemy. They were forced to cross into the Wild. This war is your enemy. The Star of Life army is your enemy. The corrupt cloaks — the Guardians who walked under the Shadow Gate — are your enemy. Once they have burned villages and killed folk who respect the old ways, what is to stop them from pressing their attack into the Wild?'

Her hands spoke sharply. We kill humans when they come across the boundary.

'Maybe the first ones. But more will come. They will chop clown and burn the forest. They are already breaking the boundaries elsewhere, killing the gods-touched who you call demons. By killing these villagers, you act as the army's allies. You bring your own death.'

They talked with hoots and clicks, with hands shaping words

too swiftly for Shai to make out transitions, and with their bodies: a shoulder might rise or a hip jut, an elbow swing and a knee bend. Folk in a council meeting could not speak so fast and say so much merely with words.

The day was cool, but his face was hot, and sweat greased the lids of his eyes as he blinked away stinging tears. The sight of these pathetic refugees had triggered the most terrible memories from those weeks when he had struggled to keep alive a cadre of children held captive by a cruel cohort of the Star of Life army. If he closed his eyes, Yudit and Vali's suffering was all he could see; yet with eyes open, he saw misery everywhere else.

The wildings stilled, and the oldest female stepped forward. They go safe.

'Thank you,' he whispered, suddenly dizzy. Brah and Sis dropped out of the trees to shoulder him up so he could breathe.

You who see ghosts, where now do you go?

Among the Qin he had learned that in battle, adaptability is better than strength. As Tohon would say, strength can always be overcome, if you can find a way to do it. A man who can change course when needed has less chance of running into a wall. Think fast. Strike where there is an opening. Maybe he hadn't saved Anji from Hari, but he had other goals. His own fears and weaknesses were nothing against the promise of an act that could change everything.

'"A dart, a dart in my eye,"' he murmured; the memory of Captain Beron's ghost — speaking words only Shai could hear — was as powerful as a shout. ' " How it stings."'

He met each gaze, because the wildings respected the acknowledgment of the individual. 'Copper Hall on the Haya road is burned. Nessumara is beyond my reach. It's unlikely I can make contact with the reeves. But I have another task. I'll find this cohort flying a banner with six crossed staves and give myself up to them, because they will be looking for gods-touched outlanders. I'll find Zubaidit. There's one thing I need from you.'

Brah and Sis patted him on the shoulders, gesturing regretful farewells. He must go, and they must stay in the Wild that sheltered them.

What do you want, demon? the wildings asked.

'Darts, and a pair of blowguns, the smallest you have. And one other thing. I need snake venom.'

If Anji was not the most patient man Joss had ever met, the reeve was not sure who was. For three long days, Horn's council wrangled. Everyone had a grievance; each council member had fears that had to be addressed; they all had unhelpful suggestions or urgently unreasonable demands.

Only three things made the three days bearable: they got to sit on benches in the shade of a tile roof, with a cool breeze blowing; the local cordial was exceptionally good; and Anji's calm demeanor never wavered, even as the interminable afternoon of the third day dragged on. The man could listen without breaking a sweat; without showing exasperation, without responding to the most inane or selfish complaints by snapping back a sharp retort; without slapping a hand to his forehead when people were being idiots.

From dawn until late into the night the commander of the reeve halls and the captain of Olo'osson's army sat in the council square, and not once did Anji raise his voice or interrupt.

Not that he needed to. Others raised their voices and interrupted; then the arguments would fragment into new and more complicated relationships, like clans marrying into festering disputes they'd not been warned about beforehand. Each time a new eruption occurred, Joss would grab for his cup of cordial while Anji's gaze would flicker toward Tohon, or Sengel, or Toughid. What passed in those unspoken exchanges Joss could not fathom: were they amused, irritated, indifferent? The scout and the two guardsmen remained as impassive as Anji, although now and again Tohon tugged on an ear.

Soon enough, Anji and Joss learned to milk that cow by falling into a rhythm between them, Joss's irritation balanced by Anji's reasonableness.

'We get refugees come begging every day,' said the latest quibbler. 'If we give a tey of rice, then they will keep coming back and living right in the dirt like animals, hoping for a handout. Yet if we turn them away then they steal from our gardens and orchards, so we must post guards at all hours. It's a cursed nuisance.'

Joss swiped a hand back over his hair. 'Amazing that they won't just crawl up into the hills and die so as to leave you in peace. Cursed impolite of them to want to live.'

'We're already rationing our stores to our own folk! You want us to starve altogether?'

'It's a good point,' said Anji in his steady voice, and every head turned his way. 'If you starve yourself trying to feed every hungry mouth, then all will starve and none will survive. There's no sense in that. But starving folk will not lie down and die. Would you? If it was your children who were crying?'

'I'm not the one who ran from his home, who didn't fight, who planned badly and didn't take enough food with me, who-' The quibbler went on in this vein for a while until other people told him to hush.

Anji nodded into a silence others had carved. 'To simply give away all your rice and nai solves nothing. But to do nothing, solves nothing. And it encourages refugees to steal.'

'We could kill them if they won't go,' said the quibbler enthusiastically.

Joss said, 'We'll let you stab the babies first.'

'Now, here, Commander-! What manner of man do you take me for?'

Joss had always really disliked selfish whiners like this prosperous man, who clearly had enough to eat and fine silks to wear. It was so easy to make them pop red with indignation, since they could think only of themselves. And it was anyway apparent by the way folk were smirking and rolling their eyes that this fellow wasn't liked. He gave an exaggerated sigh. 'I can only judge you by your words and acts.'

The man's eyes bulged as he opened his mouth to retort.

'If I may.' Anji raised a hand with the orator's twist, one of the few gestures from the tales he had mastered. The quibbler sucked in hard and settled back. 'The only way to remove the burden on Horn is to defeat the enemy and thereby make it possible for the refugees to return to their farms and feed themselves. They don't want to be refugees. They want to go home. But they can't.'

Many among the council nodded. Onlookers standing in the back nudged each other, whispered, bobbed their heads in agreement.

The quibbler scratched his beard. 'You're an outlander, Captain. Is that what you want? To go home?'

Anji's rare smile flashed. 'Neh. My bridges are burned in the lands I came from, not of my choosing. I merely want to live peaceably here in the Hundred with my wife and infant son.'

'And a cursed beautiful woman she is!' shouted a wag whose

voice carried although his face was hidden in the crowd. 'Bet you don't give her much peace.'

Folk laughed.

Anji blinked; that was all. Sengel coughed. Tohon glanced at Joss, chin raising slightly. Was the captain annoyed? Or signaling an opening?

Joss lifted his cup of cordial. 'I say, enough of this cursed nattering on. If Horn will join us in sealing an agreement to fight this cursed army, then the captain can sooner.get back to his peaceable life which I am sure many of us envy him.'

Anji rose. Their chortling and murmuring quieted as abruptly as if he had drawn his sword and sliced out a hundred tongues. 'Surely every man and woman here is exhausted by living in such uncertainty. When do you think it will get better, if nothing is done?'

He scanned the assembly; no one ventured an opinion; their silence made his point for him.

'But it can get much much worse, and I assure you, it will. I have seen war. I've fought in war. It's nothing I want to see again. Peace is preferable, but you don't win peace by hiding from what troubles you. Do not think Horn's walls can withstand a determined assault if you have only a handful of ill-trained guardsmen to defend the walls. After three days of talking, you must know the choice is stark. Either you lose everything, while a few claw out a fragile truce with the brutal conquerors, or you fight, with allies at your side, and have a chance of restoring the life you want to live. There's been enough talking. You have to decide. What action this council takes is in your hands.'

He walked out, pausing only long enough to make polite courtesies to the four most elderly councilors. Joss followed him through a dusky courtyard where lamplighters had begun their rounds. The two youths stared at the four Qin soldiers and the reeve.

Anji drove straight for a gap in a hedge. When Joss trotted after him, he found himself in a small private garden overlooking a ravine and one flank of the city falling away below. The three soldiers hung back by the entrance. Anji leaned on the low wall, frowning at the horizon. The sun's golden rim flashed as it slipped out of sight. The few smoky clouds were bathed in red, the sky darkening as twilight overtook them.

'That way lies Olossi,' said Anji as Joss joined him at the wall.

'And Mai.'

Anji's eyes narrowed. 'Among the Qin, we do not boast of our wife's virtues in public. In the empire, we do not speak of women in public places at all.'

'I might remind you that we are not in either of those places.'

'True enough. Nor do I regret where I am now.'

Joss was not sure what to make of the captain's strange mood or where to go with it. 'You're a good negotiator, Anji. Better than I am.'

'Do you think so? I thought we herded that flock together, even if you took the role of the dog, nipping at their heels until they moved in my direction.'

Joss laughed. 'That's one way to look at it. Neh, I meant that you told them what they wanted to hear in a way that encouraged them to seal the alliance we desire.'

'Why would any man seal an alliance if it did not benefit him in some manner? It takes no brilliance to point out that we will both prosper if we work together.'

'Yet some folk will consistently work against that which will help them, like turning their backs on the reeves. While others act in ways that benefit only themselves while harming others, even if another path is available that might allow both parties to benefit or at least not suffer.'

'Maybe so.' Anji spoke the words with the flat inflection that meant he was amused. He hitched up a leg and sat sideways on the wall, facing Joss. 'You're a man who believes in the law, Commander.'

'You are not?' Up here on the height the wind streamed steadily although with the twilight the rumble abated a bit.

'Certainly I believe laws are vital if we wish to live in peace. But I've lived in the empire, and among the Qin, and now I live in the Hundred. The laws here are not the same as the laws in the empire. Nor yet are they the same among the Mariha princedoms and caravan towns along the Golden Road, which the Qin army conquered. Still less are they similar to the laws enforced by the Qin var. What am I to think except that laws must change according to circumstance?'

'Maybe that is true in other lands, but here in the Hundred our laws were given to us by the gods.'

'In the empire, the priests and nobles say the same.'

'I'm sure they do. However, our laws are carved in stone, on Law Rock.'

'By the gods' own hands?'

Joss was surprised that this comment both amused and irritated him. 'No one knows.'

'Is there no tale that relates the carving of Law Rock?'

'None say what hand cut words into stone, or if it even matters.'

Anji nodded, standing again, as restless as Joss had ever seen him. Maybe he was more nervous about Horn council's deliberation than he cared to let on. 'I'd like to see Law Rock.'

'So you shall, because we'll go to Toskala, where we have stationed twenty reeves and one hundred and fifty firefighters and militiamen to guard the law.'

'So you prove my point, Commander.'

'Which point was that?'

'How quickly you forget my wisdom!' retorted Anji with a laugh. 'Only this. You have kept men on Clan Hall to protect a physical object. But it is our deeds, or a council's actions, or the decisions reached at an assizes, through which the law takes a presence in our lives, is it not?'

'Without Law Rock, who decides what is justice? The army we fight has its own measure of what is justice.'

'Do they? Maybe they just like having the power to enforce their will. If they were the ones without weapons and numbers, they would be asking for mercy.'

'Then after all, you are saying there is a law we must all follow. One carved in stone, or present in the world whether we recognize it or not.'

Anji gestured toward the city below. A few lamps bobbed in narrow streets; here and there a lantern hung to mark an entry-way; otherwise, all was quiet, only the faintest buzz of living chatter betraying folk settling down to another uncertain night.

'I am saying that certain principles, applied effectively, tend to result in certain outcomes. A king who displeases his populace must either rule by force of arms and custom, or he must give way and change, or he must die. The governance which promotes a peaceful life for many is most likely to be pleasing, is it not?'

'We do not have a king in the Hundred.'

'The Guardians did not rule in ancient days? Like kings?'

'The Guardians-' began Joss, thinking of the conversation they had not yet had about Guardians.

Anji shook his head, indicating the hedge.

'The Guardians did not rule,' Joss said instead. 'They presided at the assizes. They guarded justice. It was village arkhons and town councils, and in the north a few lords and chiefs, who ruled.'

'It is exactly that splintering that has made you vulnerable.'

'We have lived as the gods decreed. For a long time we lived with no wars or battles, so the tales tell us.'

'So the tales tell you. But tales tell us only what those who compose those tales and who pass them down over many generations choose to record and remember. The Beltak priests of the empire bind the empire so that nothing will change. They use their spirit bowls and their prayers and their spies and red hounds and informers to build walls so no man can be other than what the priests tell him he is. Yet I wonder. Are the priests enforcing the god's will, or their own?'

Joss shook his head. 'Can we blame the gods for our own weaknesses and faults?'

Anji again turned to stare west, as if he yearned for his absent wife. Mai had been taken by reeve back to Olossi two days ago. 'I blame the gods for nothing,' he said as night swept over them. His words weren't bitter or angry or joking. He said it as he might say I wield my sword with my right hand, a statement of fact.

'Are you not a believer, Captain? What gods do you worship? If I may ask.'

Anji did not answer.

Folk bearing lamps crowded at the gap in the hedge. A decision had been reached. Horn's council had voted to ally with Olo'osson.

Anji glanced with a wry grin at Joss as he stood. 'We'll feast and drink with Horn's council tonight in celebration, Commander. Tomorrow, we'll send a messenger to Mai and Tuvi in Olossi. It is time to mobilize the army. You and I will scout the ground ahead. I want to see with my own eyes what we're up against.'

The last time Kesh had walked on the shore of the Olo'o Sea in the Barrens, the wild lands had spread from the shoreline with its slicks and sinks all the way to the impregnable heights of the rugged mountains. Back then, a few tents had housed Captain Anji and his scouting party. Now they rode between fields of wheat, supplied with water from irrigation channels, and stands

of pearl millet on the dryland slopes above. Sapling orchards had taken root. The shore was lined with racks of drying fish. Folk hauled buckets of dirt; shaped bricks; fertilized the dusty earth with nightsoil. Laborers toiled on scaffolding for a brick palisade that would soon surround the entire double hill of the primary settlement.

At the gate, Chief Deze sent the new Qin troop to the distant barracks. The remainder of their group and the wagons lumbered up the main market street. A noodle seller set down her ladle and gaped. A seamstress seated on a mat in the shade of her humble porch dropped her needle. Ten men with hands slick from bean curd raced out of the back garden of a shop to stare. Anji's mother stared right back, meeting each gaze in a way that made a few grin, a few step back, and a few look startled or ashamed.

Under an arcade with a walkway of raised bricks and a canvas roof, shopkeepers had set up stalls that sold ribbons and cordage, banners and flags, and bolts of cloth ranging from least to best quality. Now, many of the shopkeepers stood to get a look, and their customers turned to stare, ribbons and unrolled silk forgotten. A woman with hair bound back under a kerchief stepped out of the shadowed arcade into a corner of sunlight, leaning out to get a better look by bracing herself on a post.

Her movement caught Kesh's eye. But it was her face that arrested him.

Seen only once, but never forgotten because unforgettable: a handsome, serious, somewhat square face with full red lips and eyes like two brushstrokes. They were the most beautiful eyes, windows opening onto a treasure house filled with mystery and promise. Her features had seared him, a brand burned into his memory, a scar that would always mark him.

But she wasn't looking at him. Her expression tightened, and she pushed back from the pole and ducked into shadow.

Too late.

Eliar jerked his horse to a halt and flung himself out of the saddle. He leaped onto the raised brick porch and grabbed her arm.

'Eliar-' She tried to drag herself free.

'What are you doing out here?' he shouted as he shook her roughly.

The cavalcade rumbled to a halt as the captain's mother signaled, regarding this curiosity with a look that reminded Kesh abruptly of her son's powerful reserve: impossible to guess what

she was thinking. Kesh dismounted, tossing his reins at the nearest soldier. He jumped up to the promenade and grabbed Eliar's turban at the base of the neck. The silk twisted cool and smooth under his ringers, best quality weave, very fine.

'Let her go,' he said in a voice only Eliar and his sister could hear. 'Or I'll rip this off right now. And we'll all know the the truth of whether you cursed Silvers have horns.'

Eliar let go. Kesh released the turban's silk.

'Get out of my way,' said Eliar, oblivious of multitudes who had swarmed over to stare at this delightful altercation between a Silver and a young woman everyone surely knew was an unveiled Silver woman walking in public as if she were no different from any other person there. 'To find my sister in such a place, so exposed, is a clan matter. None of your business.'

'To find a woman being roughly handled is a matter for all decent people to respond to,' retorted Kesh.

'So say you, the slave master, selling women and men into servitude where they may be abused in any manner whether in public or private. You cant on so, but you are as bad as anyone.'

'At least I do not drone on about abuses of slavery and then lock my women inside my house and yelp like a kicked dog when I find my sister enjoying the freedom of the market.'

Eliar punched him. The fist landed in the curve between jaw and neck. Kesh toppled backward into a table stacked with twists of cordage. The stallkeeper shrieked as her wares scattered across the ground. Folk began yelling. Eliar's sister grabbed the table and righted it.

Shoulders heaving, Eliar glared at his sister. 'How are you come here? Does the family know?'

Her face took on such an aspect of melancholy that it was as though all color had leached from the world despite the bright sun shining down upon them.

What she meant by that look Kesh could not fathom, but Eliar's mouth pinched.

'Eliar,' she said, offering a hand in the gesture of greeting.

He turned his back on her and walked away, stumping past the cavalcade and up the avenue under the glare of the sun. She swayed as if ill. She did not call after him.

Kesh brushed at his jacket, straightening his sash. His tongue, like his sash, had twisted into a knot. His face was burning, and his hands were trembling.

'The hells!' cried the stallkeeper to the street at large. 'Cursed Silver knocking everything over and then just walking off!'

Do something!

Kesh bent to rescue the scattered cordage, bumping into her as she knelt to do the same. Because her skin was lighter, it was easy to see the red of shame scalding her cheeks.

'He was wrong to say those things,' Kesh said, the words pouring like the flood rains, 'and to act toward you so rudely in a public street.'

'You're Keshad.' Her voice was barely audible. 'The one who went south to the empire with Eliar.'

His heart was pounding so loudly he thought the entire street must hear. 'How can you know my name?'

T saw you before.' Her blush did not subside as she busied herself collecting the fallen cordage. 'That day in the courtyard of Olossi. Maybe you don't recall it.' She examined him until he could not breathe.

'Of course I remember!' He dropped to his knees, but she rose in the same moment and dumped an armful of gathered cordage on the stallkeeper's table.

'My apologies, verea,' she said in her husky voice, its tones and timbre so sweet it was painful for Kesh to hear her speak just for all the longing he had carried with him in the months of travel. 'If there is any damage to your merchandise, I will cover the cost.'

'You did nothing wrong. You and your mistress are good customers, none better.'

'I insist that if any of the merchandise is ruined, that we make compensation.'

The stallkeeper's friends, gathering, jostled Keshad as they picked up the rest of the fallen cordage. 'Neh, verea,' they agreed, nodding and smiling at Miravia, 'nothing but a bit of dirt. It was wrong of the Silver to shake you like that.'

She thanked them and extricated herself from the crowd.

Kesh followed her down the steps of the arcade into the sun. 'Eh, ah, maybe you need an escort up to where — ah — wherever are you living, verea?'

'I do not need to be rescued.' She walked away down an alley.

Harness jingling reminded him of his obligations. He tripped over the stairs and bruised a knee, and a friendly passerby caught him by the elbow to steady him.

You all right then, ver?' asked the man, a good-looking man

with a pleasant smile and his long hair in a braid down his back. 'Can I help you?'

'Do you know her?' Kesh asked wildly. What if he had lost her? After the way she had stared at him! 'Where does she live?'

'The Silver girl? Lives up at the mistress's house. She manages things here now the mistress lives in Olossi. Talk has it she was thrown out of her family's house just for showing her face in a public street. It's hard to believe any clan could be so hardhearted, but they are Silvers and so there is no accounting for their outlander ways, is there?'

'Do you mean Mai? Captain Anji's wife?'

'Surely I do. Here, now. Your people are calling you. Where'd you folks come from?'

'South.' It had to be obvious just by looking. 'From the empire.'

'Who is that old woman? She's got the look of those Qin soldiers about her, but truly, she reminds me of my eldest aunt, the one who cracked the whip.' He grinned so engagingly that Kesh almost started talking, then recalled he was on a public street.

'My thanks for the hand, ver.' Keshad shook free and trotted over to the cavalcade, where a Qin soldier held the reins both of his horse and the one Eliar had abandoned.

The captain's mother beckoned. 'What was the meaning of that altercation? A lovers' quarrel?'

'No, exalted one. They are brother and sister.' If rumor were true, if Miravia had been summarily exiled from her clan, what did that make her now? Not a widow. Surely not a wife.

'I see,' said the old woman. 'It is not Master Eliar who is the hopeful lover.'

Her raptor's gaze was fixed on him. How deep her stare penetrated he could not be sure, but her claws were in him already.

She nodded. 'Is your suit to be favored, or dismissed?'

He felt his skin gone clammy, and then a rush of heat.

'I have found you to be a sure-footed person on the whole, Master Keshad. So it must be you are uncertain of how your suit will be received either on the part of the young woman, or her family. Is there aid I can offer you?'

'You, exalted one? Offer me aid? Why?'

Her expression sharpened, as he had always imagined an eagle's might when it spots the flicker of movement that betrays its prey. 'You have done me a service. I am a woman who settles

her debts. Therefore, if you need my help, you need only ask.' She raised a hand and the cavalcade resumed its upward progress. Folk stopped to stare at this remarkable sight while meanwhile she scanned the humble market street, the dusty lanes, and the recently built brick houses; her gaze rose to the makeshift temples — the council square with benches set under thatched awnings — and the sprawling building on the height with a plank porch and canvas walls.

'A strangely modest palace for an emperor's son and var's nephew to bide.' She glanced at the wagons behind her, her female attendants veiled behind curtained windows. 'Is this the best the Hundred has allowed my son?'

'This is but a part of what he possesses, exalted one. Although I admit his exploits are chiefly military. It is his wife who negotiated for a substantial payment for services rendered and who included this valuable stretch of land, since it is here that king's oil can be harvested. They are partners in this venture.'

'His wife? His wife was stolen by the western demons long ago.'

'Perhaps that was another wife, exalted one. I speak of Mai. If you meet with the council here, they will speak so highly of her you might think they exaggerate. But I assure you, they do not. Although Captain Anji founded the settlement, it is surely through her efforts that the town has flourished.'

'A local woman, is she? From a noble family in this region?'

'No, exalted one. It is not our way to have certain families set above others as it is in the empire. Anyway, she became the captain's wife before they arrived in the Hundred. I believe she is a merchant's daughter from the Golden Road, a place called Kartu Town.'

'I never heard of such a place! One of those dreary little towns with nothing more than a well and a stable and a herd of sheep. In any case, my son cannot have married a merchant's daughter, although I suppose he might have taken one as a concubine. Is she here?'

'I believe she resides in Olossi.'

'Go yourself and bring her to me, since Chief Deze seems determined to keep me out of the way until my son returns to offer a more fitting welcome. Bring her quickly, so I can take her measure.'

'Take her measure? Anyone here will gladly give you her measure.'

'Who is it you are in love with, Master Keshad? The blushing woman whose brother humiliated her in public? Or this other one?'

'She is Captain Anji's wife, exalted one.'

'Yet would you take her, if she were offered to you?'

'She will not be offered to me! The captain is devoted to her, everyone knows that.'

She pursed her lips. 'These sentimental spoutings become tiresome. What man has ever held on to a concubine when he saw that his interests lay elsewhere? Because I like you, Master Keshad, I will give you the concubine and help you acquire this other female as well. Then you can have two wives. Or a wife and a concubine, however you wish it.'

He choked, face burning. 'I am not-'

'Are you not? Look how flushed you are!'

He swiped a hand over his sweating forehead. 'Anyway, Mai is her own mistress. She is the administrator of their holdings and household, not him. She can't be bought or sold.'

'Of course she can be! Only the price is negotiable.'

'What are you saying, exalted one?'

'I am saying,' she said with a glance toward the wagons ambling upward behind her, 'I have plans for my son that do not include an inconvenient merchant's daughter.'

Home. Home. Home.

Mai had been gone from Olossi for only a few days, flown on eagle's wings to Horn and back again. In those few days so much had passed in Horn that to think of it dizzied her. But entering now through her courtyard gate she felt as if she had only stepped out of the compound walls to take a turn in Olossi's market streets before returning home to eat her dinner and go to her night's rest.

As Chief Tuvi escorted her in through the warehouse, voices faded to silence as people looked up. Factors hesitated, brushes were set down, vials of precious oil held forgotten in hands, people standing as still as if they had spotted a venomous snake near their feet. Tuvi shrugged with a frown of puzzlement. Priya wrapped the sleeping Atani more closely against her slender frame. When they reached the gate that led into the counting room, it opened at once, as if the folk inside had expected them. Tuvi stepped inside first, as he always did. He scanned the room, then gestured to Mai. After a glance at Priya and the baby, she followed.

O'eki stood in the center of the chamber with arms crossed, his big frame towering in the space. 'Mistress!'

His gaze shifted to fix on the other person in the otherwise empty chamber, a young man with black and lovely hair curling loose as if blown in a whirlwind, his intense expression pinning her in the instant in which she recognized him.

'Keshad! You came back! You survived! What of Eliar?'

'Eliar is alive, not that I care for his well-being any longer. Mistress, where is the captain? Is he with you?'

'He's still in Horn.' She shook her head. 'What news, Keshad? By your face, it is momentous!'

'I've been sent to fetch the captain,' he said, but he was a terrible liar; his gaze slid sideways, his eyelids flickered; his lips thinned as if he were squeezing back the truth.

She looked at O'eki, who shrugged. Standing, as always, in a position to block any move made against her, Chief Tuvi scratched at his straggle of a beard. Priya came in behind her and touched her elbow to reassure her. Atani smacked his lips.

'Best speak up, lad,' said Chief Tuvi in a genial tone that would have milked blood from stone, if the stone were wise.

Voices broke into argument on the other side of the door that led into the house. The heavy door groaned, then slammed back, and Sheyshi stormed into the room with high color in her dusky cheeks.

'Mistress! You are come home! I was worried for you!' She seized Mai's free arm and clung to it, her breath sweet with mint tea and her fingers like claws digging into Mai's flesh. 'I heard those two talking! That one!' Mercifully, she released Mai and pointed with her finger, tremblingly, at Keshad, who flinched at the rudeness. 'I heard that one tell O'eki to keep a secret until the captain comes home.'

'Keep what secret?'

Sheyshi heaved a passionate sigh. 'There is trouble in the settlement for Mistress Miravia! And he won't tell. you! Some important person is come, but I couldn't hear who. Now maybe your sister Miravia has trouble!'

'What important person, Keshad? Has Eliar threatened to take Miravia to Nessumara?' In her life maybe Mai had never spoken so sharply to anyone, but the events of recent months had spun a stronger thread in her, as tough as silk, as enduring as wool. 'Tell me!'

He took a step back as if she had slapped him, then he wiped a hand over his face as if to brush away the pelting bruise of a cloudburst. The look he cast toward Sheyshi was bitter, even brutal, an ugly grimace that startled Mai. He could not control his feelings; he struggled to speak evenly as Chief Tuvi's placid gaze prodded him.

'There is much to tell, Mistress. The emperor, he who was the captain's half brother, is dead, killed in battle by his cousins.'

Mai swayed. Priya caught her under the elbow, but she found her breath. O'eki stooped by his desk and rose to offer his writing pillow for her to sit, but she shook him off as Sheyshi wailed. 'No, I'm all right. What does this mean for Anji?'

'The cousin has taken the throne and been anointed as emperor. But he is a peaceable man, seeking order, not war.'

'Hu! Certainly it seems practical to him to want no more fighting now he has gained the imperial throne,' said Tuvi with one those inscrutable smiles common to the Qin when they were amused by the ironies of life.

'Maybe so. I only met his gelded brother, who seemed' — the phrase spoken with a shudder — 'determined to achieve his ends. They have an offer for the captain.'

Mai shook her head impatiently. 'An offer? Of what kind?'

'Gelded?' said Tuvi. 'Ah. He was cut. A eunuch cannot sit as emperor. Or var.'

'They don't expect-!' Mai broke off as heat rose in her face.

Atani essayed a few gurgling sounds and reached for Mai from the wrap. Priya lifted him out of the cloth, and as Mai took his comforting weight in her arms she remembered that calmness served her better than anger and fright. 'What is the offer, Keshad?'

'I don't know, verea. They sent an emissary. They sent the captain's mother. It's she who knows what they mean to offer him.'

'The captain's mother?' said Tuvi under his breath, words she would not have heard if he had not been standing close enough that his shoulder brushed hers. 'The var's sister? Is here in the Hundred? In Astafero? Hu!'

Sheyshi was staring at Kesh as if his words had hammered her, yet her gaze seemed fixed not on him but past him, as if she were seeing something else. Then her eyes flickered and she glanced at Mai and began to snivel. 'I'm scared, Mistress. What if the red hounds come?'

'Hush, Sheyshi. Tuvi, if Anji's mother has come, I must greet her. Show her honor and respect. Can she not come here to Olossi?'

The Qin were not outwardly affectionate; they did not push and prod, except when soldiers wrestled and sparred in training exercises. In Kartu Town, folk kept a physical distance appropriate to their station and degree of relationship, and even within the Mei clan Mai had witnessed few displays of physical warmth and intimacy. One of the most startling aspects of the Hundred was the degree to which people casually touched other people, of either sex, in public spaces.

So when Tuvi now touched her hand, she was shocked enough that Atani startled, his little head tilting back to look first at her and then at the chief.

'Best she stay there and you stay here until the captain returns, Mistress,' Tuvi said, but his sober expression cleared immediately and a smile softened his face as the baby squirmed and reached for him. Mai handed him over.

'She asked me if I would take you!' Keshad blurted.

'If you would take me where?'

'Take you as my wife. She has plans, verea, for her son, and they don't include you.'

Tuvi's gaze was distant as he continued smiling absently at the cooing boy. These words did not surprise him, however much they confounded her. 'Like I said, it's best if you do nothing until the captain returns, Mistress.'

Mai stared at Keshad. 'As your wife?'

Sheyshi sobbed and collapsed tin the floor like a rag doll cast away by its indifferent owner. Merciful One! Could poor Sheyshi have been harboring an infatuation for Keshad all this time? And no one the wiser?

'Of course that's not what I want, not that I don't admire you, verea. But you must know-' His emotions galloped away and dragged him after. 'You must know, verea, that I intend to marry Miravia. If she'll have me.'

Sheyshi bawled.

'But you can't!' cried Mai. 'I mean Miravia to marry Chief Tuvi! He's the only one who's worthy of her. And then she'll always stay with me. You can't have her, Keshad!'

'Who are you to order her life? Eliar repudiated her. In the market. In front of everyone. Will you do that, also, if she turns down Chief Tuvi in favor of me? No disrespect, Chief.'

The chief studied the baby with brows furrowed.

'What makes you think she'll have you?' demanded Mai. 'You, who traded in slaves for years!'

'I only did it to earn coin to buy my sister free.'

'Miravia despises and rejects slavery.'

'You keep slaves! She doesn't despise and reject you!'

Anji's mother] Blown in like a storm to overset everything. How could a woman who had never met her be speaking of handing Mai over to another man as if she were a slave purchased at the market? And yet hadn't Anji bought her from her father? That he treated her as a wife, not as a slave concubine, was only because he had chosen to do so. He could have used and then discarded her at any slave market during their long journey here. Why should Anji's mother — a woman of exalted birth, sister to the var who ruled over the Qin Empire and wife to the Sirniakan emperor himself — consider Mai to be any different from a slave? Any more than she was herself, a woman of far superior rank and blood, who had been discarded by the emperor when it was no longer politically useful for him to favor her?

'I will not be handed off to some other man!' cried Mai. 'Meaning no disrespect to you, Master Keshad!' But the words were bitter, their bile a sour taste on her tongue.

Miravia was going to marry Tuvi. Mai had it all arranged and was just allowing time for Miravia's situation to settle. It was not acceptable for Miravia to marry this unpleasant young man with his handsome eyes and beautiful hair, exactly the kind of passionate features worn by the heroes in songs who snared so many luckless maidens. What if Miravia, so innocent, so unworldly, fell in love with his intense looks and rejected a steady, solid, intelligent, calm, and wise man like Tuvi just because he was old enough to be her father!

Yet how was Mai different from the rest if she managed Miravia's life, or Priya's life, or anyone's life but her own and her child's, merely to satisfy her own selfish desires? If she did not want to be so treated, then she must begin by refusing to inflict on

those she had authority over what others had previously inflicted on them. What her father had dealt to her.

She turned to the big man. 'O'eki, write up a manumission for all three of you. You, and Priya. And Sheyshi.'

'Do you mean to turn me out?' Sheyshi sobbed. 'Where will I go?'

'Of course I won't turn you out. If you want to stay, you can stay. It's just you won't be a slave. You'll be a hireling. You'll be paid coin, and if you want to work elsewhere, you can go elsewhere.'

'I don't want to go elsewhere!' Sheyshi wailed, swaying back and forth like a tree whipped in a strong wind.

'You don't have to go anywhere,' said Mai, expending her last store of even temper, she who had prided herself on her fathomless calm. Not for her Ti's storms or her twin Mei's sulks; she had held herself above Uncle Girish's tantrums and thoroughgoing nastiness, her father's controlling angers, her mother's jealousy and competitiveness, her aunt's scheming, and her grandmother's favoritism. And yet here they all surfaced in a swell of furious emotion that made her hands quiver and her shoulders shake.

Keshad will not get the better of me!

'Go on, O'eki!' she said harshly. 'Do as I told you!'

With a shaking hand, O'eki moved paper on the desk and weighted its corners with stones. His brushstrokes were uneven, the calligraphy uncharacteristically sloppy, but he wrote the same text three times, a formulation familiar to him from his years as a slave in Kartu Town.

Tuvi dandled the baby with a thoughtful look on his face that might have meant anything. Surely he had guessed she meant him for Miravia, someone special only, but what he thought of her blurted confidence, the revelation of her most lovingly hoarded plans, she could not tell. Sheyshi's tears squeezed out through eyes pressed shut.

Priya said nothing, moved not. Keshad fumed. She'd stolen a march on him, hadn't she? Eiya! And now she was crying, but she let the tears flow. Tears were no reason to feel shame. Only dishonor shamed you.

O'eki lifted his brush as if to add another word but set it down on the brush stand instead.

'Mistress,' he said in a trembling voice. 'I am finished.'

Sheyshi turned her face toward the wall, hiding herself.

Mai sank down beside O'eki. She plucked the brush from the stand, forefingers on the outside and small fingers on the back with the thumb to steady them. She touched the hairs to the ink-stone and, ruthlessly, hearing only their breathing as her accompaniment, signed them with her formal name, Mai'ili daughter of Clan Mei, as Priya had taught her.

She signed Sheyshi's manumission. She signed O'eki's manumission. She signed Priya's manumission and pressed the seal over each one, to make them legal and binding before witnesses, work that the clerks of Sapanasu usually did but which those who could write could manage themselves without requiring the intervention of the temple.

The var's sister and the emperor's former favored queen, so grand and noble a woman, might consider Mai of Clan Mei so insignificant as to warrant no more consideration than a disposable slave, but Mai was no longer such an insignificant creature even if she had been so at one time. She had no need to ask anyone's permission to seal such an act. Hers to act and hers to seal because this was her household as much as Anji's and no woman like Grandmother Mei was going to totter in and think she could sell off Mai as though she were a helpless, propertyless daughter worth only as much coin as her beauty could be sold for. And she certainly wasn't going to let some handsome untested young man steal Miravia just because of his pretty eyes and reckless heart! She had a right to appeal to Miravia's affections, too.

'It's done.'

Perhaps her tone had an angry edge. Perhaps she was shaking more than she realized, even if only one drop of ink stained the paper above her imperfectly brushed name. She wanted its lines to reflect the grace of proper calligraphy, to mirror the gravity of the occasion, but she was still learning, so it would have to do.

She set the brush on its stand. O'eki put a hand to his forehead.

Priya's fingers brushed her chest as if pain stabbed in her heart. 'Free,' she murmured as she leaned to the right as if trying to read the freshly inked letters. Without warning, she collapsed.

In her haste, Mai knocked the writing table askew, and before O'eki had even gotten to his feet she knelt beside Priya's limp form. 'Priya? Priya!'

As faintly as the whisper of mice in the desert Priya spoke again one word. 'Free.'

Mai held her shoulders, keeping her head up. How slender she was! Not much weight to hold, and yet how generous in heart Priya had been all those years. She had served Mai faithfully, affectionately, warmly, loyally. Mai had never given her service a thought.

How blind she had been!

'Yes, you're free now, Priya. You and O'eki both. If I had understood…'

But she had not understood. Only now was the veil ripped from her eyes.

Priya rose to crouch at the table and touch the paper; paperweights shifted as she turned it so she could read. There is a flower in the desert that blooms only once in its life; it was as if Priya's expression took on that opening as her gaze scanned the words.

'Seren,' said Tuvi in a voice startling for its eerie calm. 'Take the baby.'

The young soldier accepted the baby, although Atani's fabled equilibrium was, under this storm of emotion, beginning to dissolve into a fuss.

'As for you, Master Keshad,' Tuvi continued, words all the more commanding for their even tenor and unimpeded flow, 'having returned to this compound, you are back under my authority. You will tell me everything that transpired, in the south and on your return journey. Afterward you will bide here, confined and quiet and under my supervision, until the captain returns to interview you.'

Keshad glared at Tuvi as at a rival in love. 'What choice do I have?' he said with a dark frown that made his handsome eyes all the more intense.

Hadn't Miravia seen him that one time, in this very compound? Was it possible she had fallen in love with a face glimpsed across a courtyard, as lovers did in songs and tales?

Tuvi made no reply to Keshad's inane question. In his silence he exerted his authority.

Mai rose, tentatively brushing Priya's shoulder as if to test whether her beloved nursemaid recognized that she existed. Priya glanced up, eyes watery with tears, and touched the back of a hand to her own lips as if to say that she had, as yet, no words.

It was done. Mai could not regret it, no matter what happened next.

'I too must hear Keshad's tale,' she said to Tuvi in her firmest voice, however weak it sounded to her ears.

He nodded. 'As soon as the captain returns, you'll hear it all. Meanwhile, the young master wants feeding.'

Atani strained toward her from Seren's solid arms. When she took him, he began to root against the silk of her taloos, trying to reach a nipple, while Keshad flushed and looked away. O'eki nodded at Mai with a faint smile, and gestured as if to say, 'We'll come when we can.' Priya was staring at the words that freed her. Sheyshi still stood with her back to them, so it was impossible to imagine what she was thinking. For how many years had the young woman lived as a slave in the Mariha princedoms? How had she come into Commander Beje's household? Was it possible that Sheyshi, simpleminded as she was, did not truly remember? That this household was the only one that meant anything to her? Or was Mai foolish to think anyone did not dream of what they had lost?

'Sheyshi, of course you can stay in this household if you wish it,' Mai said again, although Sheyshi did not answer.

'Mistress, isn't that baby hungry?' said the chief.

She took comfort in the baby's fussing. Thanks be to the Merciful One for hungry babies, who soothe troubled minds through their uncomplicated need. When all else roils, refuge can be found in simple tasks. For she had to be honest with herself. It wasn't losing Miravia she feared most. What if the empire's troubles reached up out of the south to devour Anji?

Kirit was arguing with him again, annoying girl. For days Jothinin had dragged her from one makeshift campsite to the next along the western shore of the Olo'o Sea, whose isolation protected them. She stayed with him because the girl she had been had always moved with the tribe. She obeyed because she was accustomed to accepting the command of her elders. Today, she was rebelling.

'If we have allies,' she said, flinging stones into the water, 'then we should fight at their side!'

'Guardians do not fight,' he said for the hundredth time. 'Anyhow, Kirit, we have placed a weapon in their hands that can be turned against us.'

'But they can't be our allies if they would turn against us! Why are you afraid?'

It was getting cursed hot as the season of Furnace Sky took hold, and here on the western shore of the Barrens there was no shade The ground beneath his feet had baked as hard as brick; a skin of salt left where wet season pools had evaporated crackled as he walked closer to the girl.

'It is better for us to stand back and let events follow the course they will. Afterward we can come forward and restore the assizes.'

'" Foolish Jothinin, light-minded Jothinm"?' she sang. She didn't have the cadence right, and her voice cracked on the melody, as though she were not accustomed to singing. 'Marit said you stood up and spoke out, even though you got killed for it. So what would have happened if you had hid then?'

'I'd be resting peacefully beyond the Spirit Gate, where I wouldn't be getting lectured by a girl who knows a hells lot less than she thinks she does!'

She glared at him with her demon-blue eyes, quite disconcerting in their cold'fury. She opened a hand to let stones fall. T am angry at you, uncle. I am going north to find Marit. She will listen to me.'

When had he ever been able to stop a stubborn-minded girl from acting foolishly? That was the problem with tales; they didn't tell the truth but rather what people wanted to be true. Listeners did want the lustful farmer to get to sleep with the man she desired; they wanted the lad and lass forced to marry by warring clans to discover they could live in a peaceable house. They wanted a death that made you weep, and a joke that made you laugh. They wanted the carter's barking dog to be smarter than the greedy merchants who were trying to cheat the carter of his hire.

Everyone loved the tale of the Silk Slippers, in which he had played so striking a role. He had stood up in protest when the bandits had come to take her away, but the gods knew what an arrogant pain that girl had been, not the sweet innocent portrayed in the tale but rather a self-absorbed, demanding, vain spoiled brat who spent most of her time talking about whether people were paying enough attention to her. Her unpleasant personality hadn't made her cause any less just. But it was why no one else had made the effort to protect her. No one had liked her. He had only spoken because it was the right thing to do.

The wind blew hot and dry off the mountains.

'Kirit, what if they kill you?'

'I'm already dead, uncle. I want to fight.'

'Let's say I agree,' he said hastily. 'We'll seek Marit together and decide what to do next.'

She considered with that funny little frown creasing her pale lips and pallid face. 'We saw many troops gathering on the Olo Plain. Now we see also ships hauling soldiers east across the sea to Olossi. We could ride with them!'

'As Sun Cloak rides with his army? Don't you see, Kirit? That would make people fearful. They must not believe Olo'osson's army is the same as Radas's army. Led by shadow-corrupted cloaks.'

Tongues of water lapped the shore, the water faintly slicked with oil of naya. They were north of the new settlement, north of the most plentiful naya sinks, but cracks bubbled here and there beneath the waters. Its flavor coated his lips.

T fear what we have unleashed,' he said.

'You fear everything, uncle,' she said with a flash of emotion he could not interpret: anger, maybe, or scorn. Or maybe she was just worried about him. Was that too much to ask? 'I want to hunt down the other Guardians. Even if I can't kill them, maybe I can lead them to those who can kill them.'

Her words alarmed him badly, but he smiled in the inane way he had perfected. 'Perhaps you're right. Let's go search out some sunfruit, and then we'll fly to the high salt sea to meet Marit.'

'It's not the end of the year yet, is it? Will Marit be there?'

'It's soon to become Wolf Month. Then there is only Rat Month, and after that the Ghost Festival welcoming a new year. Then it will be the Year of the Blue Horse, when we can hope for a secure, orderly, and tranquil year.'

She agreed to go with him to the high valley she had discovered after her final awakening, the hidden valley where sunfruit grew in abundance. Yet when they flew in between the high mountain cliffs, they found that since the last time they had been here, others had claimed it. In a clearing hacked out of the trees, two neat structures had been built, simple but pleasant shelters raised on posts and walled and roofed with sturdy canvas. No one bided there, but closed chests and sealed pots and tidy cupboards told a tale of people who might come back at any time.

T feel we're being watched,' he said as he stared around the clearing. Telling nosed through the high grass by the trees.

Kirit had ridden ahead, following a path into the trees. He led Telling after her. It was cool up here in the mountain valley; the air was bracing, and a taste like the feel of a thunderstorm snapped on his lips. He shuddered at each least rustle and stir within the trees, but he saw no one. Birds fluttered in the branches and, once, a small sleek hairy pig scuttled across the path in front of him and raced away into the brush. The noise of its passage faded as he emerged onto open ground, a sprawl of ancient ruins beside a pool fed by a waterfall spraying down the side of a sheer cliff.

There was something odd about the water in the pool, something that hurt his eyes, like knives stabbing him, more pain than light. Even Kirit reined her mare away, wincing and shading her eyes.

'When we came before there weren't people here,' she said. 'But now they've made their mark and claimed it. Look! There's an altar in the cave. An offering of flowers, like they would offer to the Merciful One in Kartu Town where I was a slave.'

There was a chain in the water, hard to see if you didn't have a Guardian's vision. It ran from the shallows into the deep black depths beyond his sight. Chains bound things.

'Something's happened here,' he said. 'Something bad. Best we leave quickly.'

Kirit rubbed her eyes, looking as disturbed as he felt. 'Marit will know what to do.'

He was relieved, thinking of Marit's competence, her decisive nature, her clear-eyed vision, her blunt words. 'We'll leave Olo'osson. It really is best for the army to march without us. If Marit thinks otherwise, we'll discuss it when we meet her.'

He paused at the edge of the clearing as Kirit rode up behind him. The high peaks darkened as the sun set behind them, washing their outlines in a hazy purple-red whose echoes rippled in the pool where the falls disturbed the deep water. He shuddered and turned away, mounting his horse, making ready to ride. Kirit rode up close beside him, as uneasy as he was.

'Anyhow,' he added as Telling unfurled her wings, 'we can tell her we've accomplished our part of the plan. Just as we said we'd do.'

Anji had flown enough that he had become comfortable both with the harness and with the height, with his feet dangling,

with his safety held entirely in the hands of another man. Joss wasn't sure he could give up control so thoroughly; he was too accustomed to having his hands on the jess. But perhaps Anji, trained as a soldier, had long ago learned that his survival depended on the loyalty of his men. Who was the wiser, in that case?

'There!' shouted Anji, pointing so rudely with his finger that Joss flinched, and in the same instant — either because he caught the lapse or because he was that quick reacting — the captain curled his hand into a fist. He'd seen a ledge tucked high up on the rock-bound slope of Mount Aua.

'We can't go there,' said Joss. 'Guardian altars are forbidden.'

'Who forbids them?'

'We're not allowed to break the boundaries by walking in the holy places the gods made for Guardians.'

'Haven't the Guardians already been corrupted when demons stole their cloaks? Anyway, Joss, I have a vague memory that I was once told in passing by a person whose name I do not recall that when you were young you broke the boundaries many times. You got expelled from your first reeve hall because you dared to walk on Guardian altars? Can that be true?'

Joss laughed bitterly. 'I'm wiser now. Perhaps.'

'Ignorance weakens us,' said Anji as the wind thrumbled in their ears and a glitter woke on the distant ledge like a promise.

If they only knew how the Guardians had become corrupted. For if one Guardian had become corrupted, why not all? He refused to believe it, not about Marit.

'The altars do not like our kind. They'll cast us out and try to throw us to our death.'

'Are these altars alive? As the sands in the bone desert along the Golden Road are alive, inhabited by demons?'

'They are forbidden. The gods guard them. Nor will Scar be of any aid. You'll see.'

Mount Aua towered above the Aua Gap, its peak capped with snow after the rains and oftentimes scalded to a balding patch as the heat built later in the dry season. Many tales of the Hundred met or mentioned Mount Aua; songs praised the mountain's strength and watchfulness. Folk did not cut trees on its lower slopes, and its crown seemed to graze the heavens, although Joss had once flown right over the ragged summit, gulping dizzily at thin air. The ledge was scored into the mountain's side about

two-thirds of the way up. As Joss and Scar tested the currents and tried several routes to move in close without getting too buffeted by the winds swirling around the peak, Anji canted his body this way and that to get a better look.

'These altars, are they sited to give the Guardians an exceptional vista from which to observe the movements of people in the land? Or to give them a safe haven which few — beyond eagles and determined climbers — could ever hope to reach?'

'Hold on,' said Joss.

He flagged the rest of their flight — six eagles in all — to stay in a holding pattern; then he gave Scar the signal for descent. They hit an eddy, dropped, rose, and finally he maneuvered a reluctant Scar in to the wide ledge. The eagle landed, spread his wings in protest, and chirped vociferously.

'Unhook… now,' said Joss, and the two men dropped together, Joss shielding Anji from the eagle's irritation, but as soon as the men's weight vanished, the eagle folded his wings, tucked his head, and settled into the strange stupor that afflicted him on the altars.

'He's quiet,' observed Anji as they paced away from the eagle, an arm's length from the sheer edge. 'Hu! We're high up. I feel dizzy.'

'Going so high so fast you may get light-headed.'

The ledge ran like a divot scored out of an otherwise evenly sloped incline, and its inner edge was lost in the shadowy depths of a low-hanging cave cut into the rock. Up here, the wind really tore; no tree or bush or pile of boulders offered shelter, nothing but that cave, and between the cleft and the rim lay a glimmering pattern etched into the rock.

'Is that sorcery?' asked Anji. 'Or a vein of crystal or gems grown into the rock?'

'It's a Guardian's labyrinth. The labyrinth guards the altar, which you can only reach by walking the maze. But anyone who attempts to walk the maze will be cast aside by the gods' protective magic before he can reach their sacred hollow. As I should know, having survived the attempt more than once.'

Anji's eyes narrowed as he examined Joss, but he seemed also to be suppressing a smile. 'In your reckless youth?'

Joss chuckled. 'That's the answer I'll give if pressed.'

'So if I try to walk that path, I'll risk being cast out and thrown to my death? What if I don't walk the maze? What if I

just cut straight across the ledge to that cave behind, to see what's inside there?'

Joss slipped his flying hood back to drape along his neck and brushed a hand along his hair. 'I doubt this is the time to find out, given we've just enlisted the recalcitrant council of Horn in our grand plan to defeat the Star of Life and its commanders. Perhaps you think otherwise?'

Anji laughed, studying the altar. 'Prudence dictates caution. And yet…' The wind pulled a few strands of hair from his tightly coiled topknot; it tugged at the hem of his black tabard, and shinnied through his sleeves, catching in the coils of leather that bound his forearms, and the supple gloves encasing his hands.

What was the quality in Anji that drew the eye?

Anji was relentless, that was it. He kept after the tasks he meant to finish; he did not let up. People had a way of knowing who could be trusted to bring the sheep home and who might get weary of the shepherding and leave the flock out in the far pasture while bringing home excuses instead.

Anji smiled almost as if he guessed what Joss was thinking. He nodded toward the glittering path. 'Do you suppose Guardians can overhear us when we stand here?'

'Cursed if I know. I wouldn't want to take the chance that they can.'

'See you that open ground above and to the right? If we fly there we'll be able to speak in private and keep our eye on this altar at the same time.'

They hooked back in and flew to a high open slope on the massive mountain, above the tree line, so high up that the air tasted as thin as four-finger gruel.

'We're as private as we're ever likely to be,' said Anji when they had walked away from Scar. He glanced up, marking three eagles; the others were patrolling out of their sight. 'What is it you wanted to tell me?'

'I thought by the way you looked at me at Horn Hall that you knew!'

'I know that when a man like you asks to speak privately, then I must heed him.'

The ledge was partially visible off to the right. The labyrinth's glimmer had a pulsating rhythm buried beneath the surface glitter but present as a heart's beat in the body of a man. Had the

gods poured the life's blood of the land into the altars? Threaded it with the land's spirit? Was that how new Guardians were born out of death, because the land — its spirit and blood — flowed through their hearts and into their flesh?

'We've got to talk about the Guardians, Anji.'

Anji nodded. 'Yes. Go on.'

'Lord Radas and his allies have become corrupted and now use the magic of the cloaks for corrupt and selfish ends.'

'They're demons, as I've been saying.'

Joss shook his head impatiently. 'Maybe that's true of the demons of your land. Here, demons are just one of the eight children, often wearing a human face but with their own ways and their own concerns. Just as wildings and lendings and delv-ings have. Anji, listen. The Guardians are not single spirits who have existed for all this time in the same vessel since the day the gods raised them at Indiyabu. The cloaks carry the authority and sorcery granted by the gods. But the individuals who wear the cloaks charige. Humans who died serving justice are raised by a cloak to become a Guardian. But some among the Guardians crossed under the Shadow Gate and became corrupt. It's those Guardians we fight. Not the others.'

'What others?' asked Anji, studying Joss's face intently.

'There are Guardians who oppose Lord Radas and his ally, a woman who wears the cloak of Night. Some among the Guardian council are not corrupt, and they seek to-' There was no way to put this except bluntly. 'They seek to kill the corrupt Guardians in order that new individuals can wear the cloaks and become Guardians in truth.'

'Let's say it's true there are those wearing Guardian cloaks who wish to kill Lord Radas and his allies. How can we know they are not themselves corrupt and plan to take over the Guardians' council and Lord Radas's army for themselves? And even if they are not yet corrupt, how can we know they will not fall into the shadow in time? If one can be corrupted, then all can.'

'The Guardians walked the Hundred for generation after generation, establishing justice, presiding over the assizes. It was only one who became corrupt and then worked to corrupt others, so once we kill her and her allies, the Guardians' council can return to the path of justice.'

'I thought,' said Anji so softly it was difficult to hear him over the wind, 'that Guardians could not be killed.'

A man did not have to be a Guardian to understand certain expressions.

'You do know,' said Joss. 'You've discovered there is a way — a dangerous way — for us to kill a Guardian.'

'Two cloaks came to the Hieros in Olossi. Tohon happened to be there, visiting her, so he was present and heard everything they said, which he told to me. He described them as a man dressed as an envoy of Ilu whom you and I saw dying at Dast Korumbos, and the demon girl — who I know died in the desert along the Golden Road on our journey here — who has taken the shape of Shai's slave girl. She killed three of my soldiers. Later, she single-handedly killed a cadre of enemy soldiers. Does that make you inclined to trust or distrust them, Joss?'

'I'm sorry about your soldiers, although it's odd she killed only three if she meant to kill all of you. As for the other, that envoy tried to help when the village was attacked. I'd call that the act of an ally. So these two came to tell the Hieros there is a way to kill Guardians?'

'They seemed willing to trust the Hieros with this information. How did you find out?'

Joss had never spoken of the dreams of Marit that had haunted him over the years. She was his secret, his hidden desire, his heart's ease. 'I was very young,' he began haltingly.

'The storytellers in the market would make a song of it.'

Heat scalded Joss's cheeks. 'What does that mean?'

'Only that I've heard this tale before, although you may not recall telling it to me. You were young, and there was a woman, the best woman in all the world. It was Mai who mentioned the song. She is fond of market songs.'

No doubt many are sung to her beauty.

Almost the words popped out of his mouth, but he thought better of it. 'Marit was the first woman I ever truly loved,' he said instead, 'and I suppose the last one as well.'

'And she appeared to you, wearing a cloak. Demons appear in the guise of those we most love. That makes us vulnerable to their lies.'

'Your outlander notions about demons do not hold here in the Hundred. It truly was Marit. She is no lilu who set a trap to snare me.'

'Beware wanting her to be something she may not be. One of those she claims to be in alliance with is known to be a demon!'

Anger flashed in the captain's expression, and its strength made Joss cursed uncomfortable. 'No creature has blue eyes like that ghost girl, none except demons!'

Joss raised both hands, in the gesture of soothing. 'Heya! It's understandable you would distrust a woman who killed three of your men. But as you said, we met that envoy of Ilu before. I sensed no corruption in his person.'

Anji's mouth flattened. His voice was coiled tight but very even. 'How can we sense their corruption? Demons hide what they are behind a mask that makes them appear as human. These who wear the cloaks wield considerable power. They will always be a danger to us.'

'Marit fights with us, for justice! She's not our enemy!' The memory of Marit — the feel of her skin under his hands, for there had been nothing inhuman about the flesh Joss had too briefly touched — overwhelmed him. She was as unattainable as she had ever been all those long years he had thought her dead. He had to turn his face into the wind so it could obliterate his tears. All along he had been carrying sorrow with him, a heavier burden than he had ever cared to understand.

Anji unleashed his riding whip and began drawing it through his fingers. 'Perhaps they may be telling the truth,' he said, although the admission sounded grudging. 'Can you find Marit again? If I can speak to her we might learn more about Lord Radas, the cloak of Night, and the other cloaks who obey him. We can account for eight Guardians among these two factions, five opposed to three. That means one remains missing. Where is that one?'

'I don't know how to find Marit. She always found me.'

Anji raised an eyebrow. 'Can it be she still loves you, even though she is dead?'

The words made the air seem hot and the ground unsteady. Joss passed a hand over his eyes, and the world settled back into place. 'She is a Guardian now. None of that matters. She and her allies offered us this weapon so we can fight, because they are Guardians who serve justice and the land.'

Anji tapped his whip against a thigh. 'If we sever the cloaks from Lord Radas and the other corrupted Guardians they command, it's likely we will cripple Lord Radas's army. Yet if we can sever these individuals from that which binds them to the land, then it seems their cloaks will be released to seek new

Guardians. And then what? Will their greed for power not rise all over again? Don't you see the danger in that, Joss?'

'There's always danger. So can we all become corrupt. If that were an argument, then none of us would ever act. The gods raised the Guardians. That some have become corrupted doesn't mean all will be. Justice can be restored. We're obligated to serve justice and restore peace to the land.'

'Of course.' Anji's smile was rueful, his sigh deeply felt. 'We speak of terrible things. You and I know how difficult the struggle to restore peace will be. What have we decided, Commander?'

'If only we'd known this before Zubaidit walked into the enemy's camp!' Aui! Now he must recall kissing Zubaidit! Would these gods-rotted memories of passionate women never cease troubling him? His groin stirred, and he unhooked his drinking pouch, unsealed it, and took a long swig of sweet cordial. 'Captain?'

Anji accepted the offering, drinking deeply as well. Shadows drew a haze over the high slopes of Mount Aua; a streamer of wispy cloud trailed off the icy crown.

'If the corrupted Guardians discover what we know, they'll be put on their guard,' added Joss. 'So any person given this knowledge who confronts a Guardian must act immediately and succeed on their first attempt to sever them from the cloak. How likely is it that they can?'

'Only a person trained in the most exacting manner can be trusted. Can any of your reeves act no matter what the circumstance, even if they are themselves wounded or dying, and press forward to complete a task with no expectation of surviving the attempt?'

'Of course they can! They do all the time. You forget, Anji, we know full well that we die if our eagle dies. But as for killing a Guardian… it's hard to say if any would be willing to undertake an act that would seem blasphemous, as if striking at the gods. I'm not even sure I could bring myself to do it. What of your men?'

'Those of my soldiers I do not trust completely to be able to accomplish what I ask of them, do not still ride with me. Nevertheless, we must be cautious. If we could reach Zubaidit with this intelligence, she would act. Yet to attempt to reach her, if she's truly placed herself within Lord Radas's army, puts all at

risk of discovery if the messenger is captured and interrogated by one of the cloaks.'

'We are caught between too few knowing to manage the task, and so many knowing that we give away our plan.'

'We walk a precarious path,' agreed the captain. 'Tell only those you trust to carry out the act. Let them be ready.'

Joss laughed. 'That's what I admire about you. When you decide to act, you don't hesitate.'

Anji smiled briefly, as at a jest only he had heard. He gestured toward Scar. 'Every day you hook yourself into the harness of a creature that could as easily eat you for its meal as tolerate your weight, for it would soar more easily without you. Is that not admirable?'

'No, for I'm doing my duty, as the gods decreed. Anyhow, Scar doesn't frighten me. The eagles know their duty better than we know ours. They can't be corrupted. They are as you see them. No mask; Nothing concealed. In that way they are more honest than we can ever be.'

'More honest than we should be, maybe. Few people would truly be pleased, I think, to know what thoughts fly through the minds of their lovers and kinsmen and comrades.'

'Maybe it would be like being flayed,' Joss said, staring out over the vista and thinking of Marit: what she had become and how it isolated her. The woman he had loved still lived within her cloaked body; he knew that, because he had kissed her. But his touch had scorched her; it had told her too much, things she did not want to know. Maybe no one should know that much about another person. 'Our masks protect us, don't they?' he said at last.

'So we must hope,' said Anji.