Traitors Gate

4

Don't open the gate.

That was the last thing Zubaidit had said to Shai before leaving on her spying expedition yesterday. Now it was dawn, Bai hadn't returned, and someone was rapping hard on the nailed-together planks set against a gap in the abandoned storeroom in which he had slept.

'Open up!'

'The whole compound looks abandoned to me.'

'The dog thinks otherwise.'

A dog snuffled along the exterior of the planks. Shai tucked his sword along his torso and slid a hiltless knife into a sheath cut into the leather of his boots just as the soldiers kicked down the planks. Shards Splintered.

He pretended he was just waking up. He'd successfully played stupid before. 'Eh, ver. Eh. You frightened me.'

Burly soldiers prodded spears in his direction. 'Heya, Sergeant! Got an outlander here. Whew! He stinks.'

'That's because we're in an old tanning yard, you imbecile,' came the reply. 'Bring him out.'

'Out!' They treated him as they might a dog whose temperament was chancy.

'Eh, ver, Mistress told me to wait here for her. She'll whip me if I leave.'

'Our orders are to kill anyone who disobeys.'

'Maybe he can't understand you,' said the second man.

Shai had already cut a hiding place for his sword into the foundation. He rolled over the sword, shoved it into the gap, and covered it as he kept talking. 'Please don't hurt me, ver. My mistress, she said she would whip me. Please don't.'

He crawled on hands and knees, feeling the points of the spears like stinging scorpions along his back, but once he got outside into the colorless dawn, the soldiers drew a step back and let him stand. He shook out his loose trousers, flicked dust from the sleeveless leather vest that covered his chest, and wiped a smear of dust from his lips. This tannery compound hadn't been used for some time, and lay far enough away from Toskala that Bai had

thought it safe to use as a hiding place. But every structure in this entire area where the camp followers had set up days ago was being searched and their occupants driven outside and rounded up. Women were arguing, children crying, old men fumbling as they tried to keep their bundled possessions slung over thin shoulders.

As they came into the disrupted camp, a sergeant trotted over to look him up and down. 'An outlander, all right! Look at those arms!'

'Mistress said to wait for her here, ver.'

'And where is she, your mistress, eh?' demanded the sergeant.

'Out in the camp, ver. She always goes out at night.'

'A whore, eh?' cackled one of the soldiers. 'I wonder what she wants a slave for, if she can get men to pay for it?'

The other soldier poked Shai with the haft of his spear. 'He's got no slave mark. What if he's concealing a weapon beneath that vest or trousers.'

'Fancy a look, do you, Milas?' said the first soldier.

'Shut it,' barked the sergeant. 'Milas is right. Get that vest off.'

In the Hundred, folk walked about with a great deal of skin uncovered, while Shai still felt awkward about his bare arms. So his embarrassment made him slow, and the soldiers got more threatening, others circling in, attracted by the commotion. The light rose from gray to a pearly pink. Overhead, clouds chased the wind north.

Shai was strong from years of carpentry, and lean from the recent weeks of privation. He kept his head bent, knowing he was blushing as he stripped off the vest.

'Sheh! Reason enough, neh?' Milas laughed once Shai stood with with vest hanging from his right hand. 'Cursed if those camp women aren't staring and licking their lips. You want us to strip him all the way, Sergeant? A nice show for the lasses and such lads as are fashioned that way, neh?'

The sergeant had already turned away. 'This is taking too long. A cloak will sort this out. Bring him.' He raised his voice. 'Let's get this camp cleared.'

Shai pulled on the vest as he shuffled over to join the rest of the detainees. He kept his head deferentially lowered as he scanned the encampment: canvas tents and lean-tos, tiny huts precariously assembled out of scraps of wood. A few abandoned structures like the old tannery in which he had slept gave the temporary camp a look of ruined permanence, and the clotheslines where rags

Happed and the stink of the crudely dug refuse pits reminded him of certain neighborhoods in faraway Kartu Town where the outcast and the poor had barely scraped by living in their own filth. The Qin conquerors had forced gangs of townspeople to raze such compounds and build blocks of more sanitary housing, easy to police and control.

But he had left Kartu Town. He no longer lived under the suzerainty of the Qin. He had come to the Hundred together with a troop of exiled Qin soldiers only to find himself in the middle of a chaotic internal war. He and Zubaidit had been sent north with five others to spy out the enemy, and now, of course, he'd gotten himself captured.

Again.

The soldiers herded the group along a barrier of wagons that marked off the edge of the army's main camp. An early wind teased trampled ground where draft beasts and horses grazed. In the days since Toskala had fallen, much of the army had taken up stations within the city, leaving the camp followers to starve because the soldiers could get food and miscellaneous goods as well as repair work done elsewhere. Some had drifted away into the countryside. Now, it seemed, the commanders of the army meant to sweep up and dispose of the rest.

'Heya! I walked all the way from Walshow, feeding the army. What am I to do?' called a man hauling a cart laden with the pans and tripods of a movable kitchen. Beside him, a boy bent double under the weight of a bundle of goods, his left eye scarred with the mark of a debt slave.

A young woman, red-eyed from weeping, kept trying to get the attention of a pair of soldiers who resolutely refused to look her way. She held an infant wrapped in a decent piece of cloth that matched the green scarf she had wrapped around her hair. 'Where's Joran? Why hasn't he come back for me and the baby, like he promised?'

Shai hung back until he was at the tail of the crowd, the dust kicked up by their feet smearing his tongue. After months of regular rain, it had not rained in three days, and the churned-up ground had dried. Off to the left sprawled the city, too big to comprehend in one glance. It was marked most obviously by a huge rock outcropping thrust up where the River Istri and the Lesser Istri had their confluence. There, during the day, the giant eagles ridden by reeves landed and took off. A pillar of smoke drifted

above one quarter of the city, losing coherence as the wind tore at it.

'Keep moving!' A soldier prodded Shai while speaking to his own comrade. 'Milas says this one's got muscles like you wouldn't believe. A real woodchopper!' They both laughed, as if the word meant something different.

'Where's the outlander?' Shai recognized the sergeant's voice. 'Move him out separate.'

'What are we doing with the rest of them, Sergeant? That poor lass. Joran did promise to take care of her and the baby, but I hear he got assigned guard duty at the lord commander's headquarters.'

'Not our problem. Our orders is to clear the camp and cleanse those who give us trouble. Anyway, the girl was stupid for leaving her village to follow him. She can walk home. If Joran cares about her, he'll fetch her when the campaign is over.'

By now the detained camp followers numbered in the hundreds, and those at the front began wailing as they neared the road. Poles lined the road up to the city gates, bodies strung up by their arms on at least a third of them. Living people, some still struggling as they tried to relieve the pressure on their arms, some with broken legs unable to carry any weight. Flies swarmed on the faces of hanging folk helpless to swipe them away.

Hu! Not even the Qin conquerors were that cruel. They had executed criminals and traitors and, indeed, anyone they deemed a threat for whatever reason they cared to name, but they killed them first and hung their bodies out as a warning after.

A captain rode his horse along the road, surveying the poles, both the unadorned and those ornamented with the dying and the dead. Shai could not help but criticize his uneasy seat in the saddle, a man come late to riding to whom the gelding was merely a badge of authority. He lacked the Qin grace on horseback. He preened, relishing his power, as he looked over the frightened faces gazing up at him.

'Orders have come down from the commanders,' he shouted, his voice raspy. No doubt a captain of an army that is imposing its control over a hostile city had good reason to go hoarse from shouting. Shai held his position at the back of the crowd, but the sergeant kept staring right at him. 'You lot are to return to your homes. The army has no more need of you.'

A chorus of protests rose: 'You can't dump us-!' 'We walked all that way with you-' 'How are we to live-?'

The captain rode to the front of the crowd, drew his sword as folk shrieked and pressed back, and cut down the lass with the infant. She died without a sound, collapsing into a heap with the baby in her arms. Her ghost emerged with startling swiftness as a mist exhaled from her nostrils. Her ghostly fingers plucked at the squalling baby as she cried in a voice only Shai could hear.

'Help my baby, please! I beg you!'

Ghosts may be warned by senses other than sight and hearing. With a terrible shriek she flung her essence uselessly at the captain as he casually leaned down and stabbed the infant, like piercing a haunch of uncooked meat once, twice, and a third time.

Folk scattered away, screaming, but the soldiers drove them back together like so many stampeding sheep rounded up and confined before slaughter. The cursed sergeant grabbed Shai's arm, his smile that of a man who has seen his dinner waiting and knows it'll be tasty.

'Don't try to run, ver.'

'Silence!' shouted the captain. Soldiers plied the flats of their swords like clubs until the crowd huddled in submissive fear. Many had dropped their goods, leavings scattered: a ladle here and a sieve there, a tangle of leather cords crushed into the dirt, and a forlorn dog cowering. In the turmoil, the ghosts had vanished.

'You were allowed to follow the army from Walshow on sufferance. Now you are no longer needed. Go home. Any found by day's end within sight of the city will be cleansed, I promise you.'

He reined aside as the soldiers formed a barrier between the city and the crowd and waited sullenly for the camp followers to accept the inevitable and start moving off.

The sergeant hailed the captain. 'Captain Dessheyi, we found an outlander.'

The captain rode over, the horse skittish with the crowd seething so close by. 'So I see, Sergeant. Good work. I'll take him.'

'There's a reward for outlanders, Captain. If I might say so. I found him.'

'Did you? Or did some of your men roust him out, and now you take credit for it? Very well. There's a cloak at the city gates. Take him there.'

He should have run at the first sign of trouble. Now it was too late. Some called the cloaks 'Guardians,' saying they were holy guardians of justice sent to the Hundred by the gods long ago. But

Shai figured they were demons. Of the four he had encountered, one was a horrible pervert. Another had taken on the form and face of a dead slave girl Shai had once owned, and she had easily killed an entire cadre of the enemy before allowing Shai and the children he was caring for to walk free. The third had seemed harmless enough, a middle-aged man dressed in a blue cloak who talked too much. The fourth had been his dead brother Hari's ghost.

The commander of this army, Lord Radas, was one of these demons, the very man Zubaidit had been sent north to assassinate. So this was Shai's chance to be more than the least and last of seven brothers, the least and last of the Qin tailmen. This was his chance to prove himself.

'Glad it's not me has to face a cloak,' muttered Milas as the cadre marched Shai up onto the road toward Toskala. Outside the city walls, houses rose in village blocks linked by paths to the city, although the folk who lived there had fled. Every patch of ground was cultivated, rice fields, vineyards, vegetable gardens, wheat. Mulberry trees lined the irrigation ditches that crossed the area. Farther out along the Lesser Istri spread compounds like the abandoned tannery he had hidden in, anything that stank too much to be allowed within the environs of the city.

Gangs of workers tended the fields under guard by cadres from the army. Ten heavily laden wagons rolled past. A steady stream of people trudged out of the city on footpaths, more refugees to join the banished camp followers. It was a pleasant morning for walking, as long as you didn't think about the dead and dying people hanging from posts.

When their cadre reached the gate, they found a line of detainees waiting beyond the gatehouse under the supervision of bored soldiers.

'Heya!' called the sergeant, seeking out the captain in charge. 'I've got an outlander. Can I take him forward?'

This captain had a lean, watchful face and enough arrogance to make you blink. 'Get in line with the rest.'

'These lot aren't outlanders!'

'I'm pleased you can tell the difference. Everyone here has to be judged for one reason or another, so get in line. You're not the only one who's brought in an outlander. I'll call you forward in due time.'

They waited the rest of the morning. Shai measured the height

of the walls, the speed and frequency of traffic — all as Tohon had taught him — but after a while he began to think his efforts pointless. The soldiers stood, or sat, or went to relieve themselves; two mounted an expedition for food and returned some time later with a heaping bowl of noodles that they shared out between them. Shai got nothing. His stomach rumbled with hunger, but he'd endured worse and, even so, he had never suffered the abuses forced on the children he'd been held captive with for many weeks. Had Eridit and the others found Tohon? Had their party reached Nessumara safely? He murmured a prayer to the Merciful One: Shower mercy over them; protect them; grant them refuge. But he had no offering gift except the pain and fear and grief in his heart.

Clouds gave intermittent protection from the sun. It was not as steamy as it had been earlier in the year. The season was changing. Having grown up in a distant land where the round of the year was utterly predictable, he could not hope to know what this new season would bring. He considered the knife concealed within his boot and offered a brief prayer to the Merciful One: Let them not search me.

Was Lord Radas himself conducting interrogations?

'Heya!' The familiar voice jolted him. 'What are you lot doing with my slave, eh?' Zubaidit strolled up in her tight sleeveless vest, her kilt swinging with each twitch of her shapely hips.

'So you're the whore,' said the sergeant with a laugh.

'I'll thank you not to use that insulting word, Sergeant. I'm an honest merchant.'

'Taking coin for sex is not honest work,' said Milas with a sneer.

She looked him up and down until he blushed. 'Like you never paid? Just how long have you been marching with the army, ver? Or do you sharpen your tool yourself?' His comrades laughed. 'You lot scorn the Devouring temples, so I figure that gives us something in common.' A medallion in the shape of an eight-pointed star hung by a leather thong around her neck, just like the ones worn by all the soldiers. 'Can I have my slave back? I'll make it worth your while.'

The sergeant placed himself between her and Shai. 'Listen, verea. You look like a tasty morsel, that's for sure. You've got the look of a hierodule.'

'I was a hierodule, truly, until I left, because the old bitch of a

hieros kicked me out.' She was a bold woman who knew how to attract the eye, but Shai recognized the strength in her shoulders and the taut muscular grace of her legs, signs the soldiers ignored in favor of the sexual charms she flaunted to put them off their guard.

The sergeant grinned in reply. 'Well, lass, I don't like to be the one bearing bad news, but all you camp followers have been told to get out. Any one of you found within sight of the city by day's end will be cleansed.' With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the poles lining the road, an avenue of death.

Zubaidit did not even look at the suffering. 'Whew! That's cold comfort for those who served the army all this way. You lot figuring to settle in here? Else who will help you on your further campaigns?'

'Not my problem. It may be those bed warmers who have pleased the officers get dispensation to stay with the army, but I wouldn't take my chances even on that. We saw a soldier's favorite lass with a baby born of his getting, cut down by Captain Dessheyi just for being in his way. Why don't you get on, then? No cause to get yourself in trouble, eh?'

She regarded him with a quizzical look, a moment of sympathy, perhaps, or something more complicated. Then the expression vanished, and the mocking smile reappeared. 'I'll just take my slave and get out of here.'

'Neh, can't let you do that. How'd you afford a brawny lad like this, anyway?'

'He was cheap. He's dumb as an ox. That's what I call him, anyway. Ox.'

Shai took the hint. 'Mistress, I waited for you. Then they made me go. They're taking me to see some fancy cloth. I tried to wait, Mistress. Please don't whip me.'

The soldiers snickered.

Bai's smile was its own whip. 'Are you sure it's worth wasting the time of your, interrogator, Sergeant? You see what I mean.'

'There's a reward if we bring in outlanders.'

'Eiya! I thought no one cared for outlanders here. I've been trying to hire him out for the novelty of it, but he's too cursed stupid to know what to do with women, or with men, for that matter. I think he can only tup sheep.'

That got them roaring. Shai was just grateful there were no sheep around, lest they amuse themselves by suggesting he perform.

'Heya!' The captain in charge of the line beckoned. 'Sergeant! Come.'

'You can't just steal him from me like that,' objected Bai.

'Go back to your village and get yourself a respectable shop or a respectable husband,' said the sergeant in a manner meant to be kindly. 'You don't want to find yourself like that lass and her infant babe who are dead.'

Bai did not protest as they led him away. She could not. Anyway, they both knew he had to take a chance at the cloak.

At the gatehouse, coin changed hands, and the sergeant and his cadre took off, happy to be rid of him. He was shoved down a corridor and fetched up in a spacious courtyard between high walls where a horse grazed on a patch of grass. Cloth had been strung along rope to conceal one half of the courtyard. The sun's light revealed three figures against the cloth: one kneeling abjectly and one waiting with a soldier's alert posture over to the side, half turned away. The third man stood with a slumped tilt to broad shoulders Shai thought he recognized.

'Please, I beg you.' By the motion of clasped hands, Shai guessed it was the kneeling figure who spoke. It was painful to hear a man reduced to such wretched sobs. 'You've seen into my very heart, you know all my secrets. It wasn't my choice to hide those barrels of wine, nor the ale. It was my sister. It was her idea!'

The third man slapped a hand to his head in an exaggerated gesture Shai had seen before. 'Of all things, I detest folk who betray their own to protect themselves. Sniveling, selfish bastard.'

The sound of that voice knifed into Shai's heart.

'I might have seen fit to show mercy to a merchant who, not unreasonably, sought to salvage some of his goods rather than see them looted. But to blame your own sister, when you and I know perfectly well that you told her to do it — sheh!'

The Hundred word — for shame! — fell easily from those lips, and Shai shuddered as, his strength failing him, he dropped to his knees.

'Captain Arras, take this one away for cleansing. Quickly. He stinks.'

'Can't we just execute him, my lord?'

'I have to throw them a few bones, you know that. He disgusts me. Just take him.'

The condemned man shrieked and struggled as soldiers entered

from the other side and dragged him out past Shai. Past the briefly opened curtain, Shai saw a trim man of military bearing, the same watchful captain from the line. The captain lifted hands to shield his face, turning to face the third figure, still concealed as the cloth slithered down to seal away the area.

'They've brought the outlander, as you commanded, my lord.'

'Ah.'

A brown hand pulled aside the cloth. A man emerged from behind the curtain, dressed in the local fashion and wearing a cloak for the rains. Shai had been little more than a boy when, six years ago, his favorite brother had been marched in chains out of Kartu Town, a prisoner of the Qin conquerors.

Hari was dead. Yet here he stood, looking at Shai with a well-known and much-loved sardonic smile on his blessedly familiar face.

'Hello, little brother,' Hari's ghost said, smile lingering. 'You've grown up.'

Nekkar was slumbering fitfully when Vassa woke him, her worried expression illuminated by the lamp she carried.

'She's here.'

A deep bruise in his right hip made it difficult to stand, even leaning on a crutch, the effect made worse because his swollen left ankle throbbed if he rested any weight on it. But he limped out to the porch to find one of the night guards standing nervously behind the assassin. She was younger than he had imagined.

'Zubaidit.'

'Holy One.' She assisted him with strong arms to settle onto a pillow.

Vassa sat down on his other side, smiling in a way he knew meant she was reserving judgment. She set down the lamp on the planks. 'Kellas, bring what remains of the warmed khaif.'

The lad, hovering since Nekkar had fainted the night before, ran off.

'A humble cottage for an ostiary,' remarked the assassin pleasantly as they waited. 'Another person of your rank might insist on more ostentation.'

Vassa snorted, but she unbent slightly.

'I serve Ilu. Not wealth and the fickle opinion of those who care about such displays.'

She chuckled in a way he found endearing. 'An honest acolyte! Not as common a treasure in these days as we might hope.'

'That's as may be, verea. We could chatter on in this vein for half the night and would be considered polite for doing so. I beg your pardon. You said you had an associate. A gods-touched out-lander. Where he is?'

'Taken prisoner.' Her words were clipped.

'How did it happen?' asked Vassa sharply.

'I blame myself. I should have sent him away when I had the chance, because he lacks training, but he is gods-touched and therefore I thought I could use him to fulfill my mission. While I was here exploring Toskala, the army decided to send away the camp followers. He was caught in the sweep.'

'Saving me, you lost him.'

She shrugged with an angry lift of her chin. 'We can't know it would have fallen out differently had I not saved you, Holy One.'

Kellas appeared out of the darkness with a tray. Vassa served the spy with her own hands, a courtesy Nekkar observed with interest. Something in the woman's confession had earned Vassa's sympathy, and he trusted his lover's instincts for people more than his own.

He took his cup, sipped at the pungent sludge that had come from the bottom of the pot, and set it down with a grimace. 'We have seen many troubling and terrible things in recent days.'

She drained her own cup without answering.

'Bring nai porridge as well, whatever's left in the pot,' said Vassa to the lad, 'and make sure Odra keeps the rest of the apprentices down on their pallets.'

'Yes, Auntie.' Kellas trotted off. The night guard remained out of sight in the darkness.

'What will you do?' Nekkar asked.

'Go on with the mission. I waited as long as I could by the city gate after they took him inside, but I never saw him brought out and hanged. So maybe he is dead by other means. Or maybe he has succeeded beyond my expectations. I may never know. Such is war.'

'What do you want of us?' Vassa asked, and in her tone Nekkar heard a tincture of weariness: it got so tiring to have to be suspicious of everyone. Sometimes you had to trust as an act of hope.

'Is there any possible way you can get me up to the reeves on rhe rock and back down again without being caught?'

'Up to Law Rock and Justice Square?' The words startled him. 'No. The thousand steps are blocked by a rockfall. If you don't have wings, there's no other route beyond the provisions baskets, and I'm sure they're winched safely up top. The army must have a blockade at the base of both routes — basket and steps — to guard against folk down here sending weapons or food up in aid of the reeves.'

Vassa folded her arms over her chest. 'What message have you for the reeves? Or for us, for that matter? We're forced to abide by curfews. We're promised the markets will be allowed to open under strict supervision if we obey. Yet this morning word came by street crier that every house, clan, and guild compound will be required to give up coin and storehouse goods to the army, and a hostage as well, one from each household, clan, guild, and even the temples.'

'Just as the Guardian commanded,' murmured Nekkar.

Zubaidit whistled. 'That's a heavy tax.'

'Theft can be weathered, if one is willing to tighten one's belt through the lean months to come.' Vassa broke off as Kellas hurried up with a covered bowl, set it down in front of the assassin, and retreated. Zubaidit set a hand on the cover and, trembling, drew it back.

'Go on,' said Vassa, voice gentling. As a cook, she could not bear to see people suffer from hunger.

'My thanks, verea.' She dug in with a will, devouring half the porridge before she forced herself to stop and let it settle. 'My apologies.'

'How long has it been since you've eaten?' demanded Vassa.

'It doesn't matter. Listen, Holy One. Verea.' She gestured with the spoon in the direction of the gates. The wick whispered as it consumed the reservoir of oil. 'The army intends to march downriver and attack Nessumara. They'll leave a garrison to defend their interests in the city.'

'We could fight them if there are only a few!' cried Kellas from the end of the porch.

'Apprentice, it will be bed for you if you can't keep silence,' said Nekkar, although it was difficult not to chuckle at the lad's enthusiasm. Her words likewise set his own heart hammering. He turned to the assassin. 'Could we fight?'

'It is a risk to leave Toskala with only a garrison to control it. That must be why they are taking hostages to march south with

the main army. Such hostages can be cleansed if anyone in Toskala rebels.'

'The hells!' murmured Vassa.

The pain in his body swelled tenfold, as if he were thrown once again into the courtyard of the Thirsty Saw to face the Guardian's penetrating gaze. 'Of course no one will dare attack the garrison if they fear for the lives of their kinsfolk. Aui!'

'I need to let my allies know of this, as well as other observations I've made. Can you get me up the rock?' She looked at Vassa. 'For I think you know something, verea, that you're not saying.'

'Vassa?' he said, indignantly. 'Do you know something you've not shared with me?'

She patted him on the knee. 'You are not my husband, to be privy to my clan's secrets. Nor are you local, Nekkar. You've only lived in Toskala thirty years. I was born here.' She leaned forward to regard the assassin with a stare from which the other woman did not flinch. 'To help you puts us in deadly danger. We must live here while you will leave.'

'A fair concern, verea,' replied the spy, 'so I'll offer you a trade. Help me get a message to the reeves. When it comes time for your clan, or this temple, to hand over a hostage to the army, I'll go in place of one of your own. If I can't reach Lord Radas here, I have to go with the army. This is my chance. What do you say, verea?'

'Eat the rest of that porridge before it congeals,' said Vassa, in that way she took with the apprentices, to whom she was devoted although she lived in the compound next door and spent most of her day cooking for her clan of mat makers.

Zubaidit ate slowly with an effort that made it clear she was starving.

'They'll notice her southern way of talking at once,' said Nekkar, not sure whether to laugh at the thought of sticking one in the eye of the army, or weep at the chance of disaster that might engulf them were they to be caught.

'I served Hasibal for my apprentice year with a troupe of festival entertainers,' Vassa said with a sweep of uplifted chin that captured their attention. Nekkar smiled to see her brightness come alive after so many days smothered in anguish. 'We'd have to stage it, like actors do over in Bell Quarter. My clan could let her pose as the southern bride of my nephew, gotten in a trade deal. We'd hold her back when the army comes round, make it

seem like he and all of us are besotted. Get them to choose you as if against our will. It would be tricky. Not least due to his charms. He's a handsome lad.'

'I'll take that risk, if I must.' Zubaidit grinned in a way that made Nekkar laugh softly.

'A hierodule, indeed,' he murmured.

'I serve the Merciless One,' she agreed. 'And the reeves?'

'I'll talk to my people,' said Vassa. 'And they'll talk to other people. It's dangerous, with this curfew, but there is one hidden path. Can you be patient, verea?'

'I can be as patient as I must be.'