Traitors Gate

44

Twenty days after the battle at Skerru, Tohon told Shai that Mai was dead and then left him alone to weep. How could it have happened that he walked into danger but sweet, generous Mai was the one who died?

The next day, the Qin scout hired a wagon and supplies in Nessumara and found them a place in the first caravan headed over the plain of Istria to Horn. No one had much to sell; it was more the principle of the thing, brave souls wanting to test the new security on the roads. After all, a caravan had gone north to Toskala and returned without harm, although there'd been one scare with a cadre of scruffy men who, it had turned out, were farmers driven by starvation out of hiding. They hadn't even known that Lord Radas's army had been defeated at Skerru. Now, of course, those farmers as well as everyone else had regained their freedom to trade where they wanted and to move between markets and through open countryside once infested by bandits and scoured by an army whose soldiers wore a cheap star beaten out of tin whose leaders had promised them life but led them to death.

The Qin scout rode, switching off between a quartet of scruffy little steppe horses. Besides the four guards, only Tohon had horses. Half the Hundred, the merchants noted, had been cleaned out of riding horses for the army; these days, only soldiers rode, a fair exchange when you thought about it.

The driver was a taciturn woman old enough to be Shai's mother. She spoke only to complain about aches and pains or the weather, while handling the dray beasts with great ease and competence. Shai dozed on the pallet fitted into the bed of the wagon, under a canvas awning rigged up with rope to protect him from the baking sun. He wore a loose kilt and, when he had to, a vest; he healed best with his skin exposed to air. Each day in the morning he walked alongside the wagon for a while before resting; each day in the late afternoon he walked a little more. Tohon never once told him to be careful of overdoing it, although the driver often informed him that he was risking a relapse in this reckless way. More hair than wit! Not that he had much hair these days, that having been cropped down to his scalp.

'Eat a few more spoonfuls, son,' Tohon said each night, the only time he nagged him.

Each night, he ate a little more than he had the night before. He listened to the merchants chatter, sing, laugh, swap stories of the months-long siege of Nessumara. Where were you during the first attack? It was a close thing, wasn't it? If they'd not stopped when they did, we'd have been overrun. Did you see what happened to the Green Sun clan, after it was discovered they'd tried to trade secrets to the invaders? Every individual including the children sold into debt slavery, and their compound and storehouses gifted to Chief Sengel, in thanks. Why, the Qin chief had even taken a local delta woman — connected to several wealthy clans both by kinship and through her business dealings — as his wife.

One of the merchants had a cousin named Forgi who had been one of the scouts who'd guided Commander Anji's army north along the causeway, and he regaled the caravan with the story of how his cousin had been saved by a flight of reeves who had killed an entire cadre of men about to stumble on his hiding place. Too bad about that one reeve who had died, eh? Women all over Haldia and Istria were surely weeping their hearts out, for everyone said he was that handsome. Still, even and maybe especially a handsome man could be curdling with bitterness and ambition inside, for hadn't he been trying to claim he was commander of the reeve halls, when everyone knew that it took a reeve council to elect a new commander? Why, they'd convened just a few days ago, hadn't they, right there at Copper Hall? Every reeve hall except Bronze Hall had sent representatives, and they'd elected Commander Anji to serve as their commander, which only made sense. So it was just fortunate Commander Anji hadn't been killed when that cursed eagle had tried to rip off his head.

The outlander had saved them. Not that there weren't still stories out of the countryside of desperate men ransacking villages, and rumors of cohorts fallen back to Wedrewe in Herelia, making ready for a new assault. Thank the gods for Commander Anji and the garrisons and reeve patrols he was setting in place in the cities and major towns and all along the roads. The Hundred — well, those parts safeguarded by the army — was a peaceful, orderly place again.

So it proved on the eight stages — eight days — from Nessumara to Horn. Riders patrolled the roads in 'short' cadres of six and

eight horsemen with an experienced man as sergeant, a pair of corporals who had served in the commander's army, and the rest of each group filled out by local men glad to have a chance to feel they were doing something to keep the peace. All along the route, men and women worn thin by months of scarcity prepared the fields against the rains, due to come any day now, if the gods were merciful. May the rains come at the proper time. May the harvest be abundant.

How odd to hear prayers chanted to the Merciful One woven into the conversation and chant of the locals. Did they even know where they came from?

'You're getting stronger,' said Tohon approvingly as they wandered Horn's market with its scant pickings. 'You're ready to ride.'

They were buying supplies for the next leg of the journey. A young woman working a pair of slip-fry pans paused as the oil spit and the vegetables sizzled and gave Shai the once-over, a look torn between appreciation and pity. He hadn't known he could still blush.

An elderly man selling radish and nai — nothing special, but all he had on offer today — nodded as Tohon picked through the baskets. 'You're one of those Qin, eh?'

'I am,' Tohon agreed amiably. 'Just taking the lad back to Olossi.'

'I heard,' said the old man, 'from a merchant what come in yesterday from Nessumara I guess in the same caravan as you, that this lad was burned killing one of those gods-cursed cloaked lilus. Tell you what. I'll give you a sack of nai for nothing, as thanks. It'll be a touch bitter, as it's leftover from last season, but it'll feed you. The radish I have to sell, though, as I've a clan to feed just like anyone.'

They filled up their wagon cheaply enough despite the high prices at the market. Everyone wanted to thank the Qin soldier and the young man scarred by burns by offering them a bit of this or that — prickle headed apples, caul petals for soup, rices cakes and bean curd, a sack of rice — for under market price. At a loss.

Mai would have been appalled.

'There now, son,' said Tohon. 'You can't help thinking about her. It will come and go, but it will never stop hurting.'

'Do you still weep for your son and daughter and wife, Tohon?'

'I remember them every day, when I see some new thing I'd like

to share. A bolt of red silk. A red-capped bird. The way pipewood sets up a rustle when the wind runs through it. There's no other sound like it. That Mount Auaj, a fine bold peak, don't you think?' He'd learned to point with his 'elbow, indicating the distant mountain, tipped with white, towering and strong.

'"Mount Aua, who is sentinel,"' murmured Shai, '"We survive in his shelter." Tohon, are you sure the children are safe?' He'd asked a hundred times, and yet he must ask again, always, because his heart ached so.

Tohon's answer was always the same, and delivered in the same patient tone. 'I delivered them to Nessumara before the city fell under siege. I believe they were shipped to Zosteria to keep them out of enemy hands. Eridit and the two militiamen knew enough to take care of them. I think they were going to head to Mar. But sometimes, lad, you have to accept that you may never know.'

'Is that how the Qin manage? Riding away from their families for years, or forever? Sending their sons away to war, and never knowing?'

Tohon had a firm grip, and he knew exactly where he could grasp Shai's arm without bruising tender skin. 'You learn to ride on the path and keep your eyes open so you can see what is there, not what you wish were there.' His gaze was level, and after a moment he smiled. 'And then after all you might discover that what is there is what you wished for all along.'

They signed up with a new caravan out of Horn, heading along the West Track to Olossi. Riding was harder — it chafed, and he had to wear trousers — but each day he rode for longer at a stretch. By the time they reached Olossi, he rode half the day and walked half the day and split wood every evening as the driver sat on a folding stool and watched, commenting on his form and likely chance of hurting himself, and how he could be more efficient if he altered the angle of his axe. When he got tired of hearing her criticisms, he altered the angle, and was surprised to discover she was right.

They passed through checkpoints and entered the inner city. At the gate of the Qin compound they were met by a woman with a debt mark at her left eye who told them cheerfully that, no, the Qin no longer owned this compound. It had been sold last month to Master Calon, who was her new master, a decent man for all that his grandfather had come up from Sirniaka.

Who had the authority to sell it? Everyone knew that the new mistress of the Qin household was the commander's mother, a formidable woman before whom the entire market quaked, known to be intimate with the Hieros and, indeed, every head priest of every temple in the city as well as having already secured a seat on the city council and gotten herself invited into the compounds of the Ri Amarah.

No one had any great affection for her. She wasn't the young mistress, the one who'd been killed by red hounds, agents of the southern empire whose eye was now turned north and whose reach was cruel and arbitrary; for truly why would anyone want to kill Mistress Mai, who had overthrown the corrupt Greater Houses and secured wives for the Qin soldiers and nurtured the new settlement of Astafero in the Barrens that supplied the city with oil of naya and a very good grade of wool? And who had been kind and generous while doing it, never a harsh word or a cutting remark either to your face or behind your back.

Be that as it may. The empire was a terrible threat, everyone understood that now, here so close to the Kandaran Pass. The murder of the commander's beloved young wife proved that, didn't it? As for the mother, all approved of her devotion to her grandson. The baby had been sent to Olossi with his nursemaid last month, hadn't he? While the commander was on campaign in the north, naturally he would entrust the little lad to family. The grandmother was devoted to her grandson. It was sweet to see her with him in the market, dandling the boy — for he was a beautiful and lively baby with whom everyone fell in love at first sight — while ruthlessly ordering around her slaves and hirelings and bickering with the market women in that imperious way she had, as if she thought the sun rose and set on her likes and dislikes…

'Our thanks, verea,' said Tohon, steering a stunned Shai away from the gate. 'We'll just find our own way, then.'

Shai's head was whirling. He couldn't keep track of where they were going. As his feet slapped on stone, the impact jarred up through his bones to addle his thoughts yet more. But Tohon knew the twists and turns of the lanes and each rise and fall of hill, and so they climbed to the height, to a substantial compound sprawled next door to a compound whose walls flew the banners of a Ri Amarah clan. The Qin guards at the gate recognized Tohon, although they were not soldiers Shai knew; they were newcomers, from a cohort of Commander Beje's men sent north

with the Qin princess and now likely to spend the rest of their days in the Hundred.

'We need cordial and juice,' said Tohon to the guards, 'and a place to sit in the shade.'

'Better than that,' said the young man, eyeing Shai's scars or his muscles, hard to say. Shai was showing a cursed lot of skin in his kilt and sleeveless vest. 'We got word you arrived. Come this way.'

He led them to the porch, where they took off their sandals, and thence deep into the house past several layers of sliding doors, each threshold guarded by more black-clad soldiers, until they came to a long, quiet chamber covered with woven mats and furnished with a single low table and a single pillow on which sat Anji. Chief Tuvi, kneeling behind him, was twisting up Anji's topknot and fixing it with a gold ribbon. A pair of Qin soldiers were standing to either side of three small chests bound by chains. Shai felt a sting on his skin, and he shuddered. He knew what was in those chests.

'Sit,' said Anji without looking up.

Shai sat, trying not to remember how the cloak had smothered and burned him. He dared not shut his eyes, so he watched as Tuvi finished his task in silence. When the chief sat back, Tohon spoke.

'We'd be appreciative of a cup of cordial, or some juice, Commander. We just arrived after a long journey.'

'So have I also just arrived,' said Anji, rising, 'although by reeve.' He examined Shai without expression, then nodded. 'I wasn't sure you would live, but I see Tohon has taken good care of you.'

Shai could say nothing. Watching Anji, he could only think of Mai.

'Come with me,' said Anji.

He led them into a courtyard guarded on one side by Qin soldiers and on the other by massive men of foreign mien, muscled like wrestlers, and as clean-shaven as Toskalan men. They entered a narrow antechamber. After a pause during which Shai heard female voices murmuring and the faint fragile kiss of a delicate porcelain cup touching to plate, doors with painted screens were slid open. The chamber beyond was a wide porch, its plank floor heaped with carpets, its far side open to a courtyard infested with fountains, ornamental pools, and dwarf trees carefully pruned. Its ends were hung with curtains which rippled as unseen people moved behind them. Eyes peered through gaps as Anji, Tuvi, Tohon, and Shai entered the room.

Two women sat facing over a low table. The elderly Hieros sat on a pillow, while the Qin princess reclined on an embroidered couch. The Hieros wore a simple taloos of best-quality burnt-orange silk, wrapped to expose her arms, thin and age-worn but still wiry with strength. The Qin princess wore robes that covered her from wrist to ankle to throat. She glittered with gold chains and a gold-knit headdress stabbing like a tower from her head.

'Ah, Anjihosh,' she said. 'You have corpe at last. Sit down.'

No pillow was offered for the men with him.

Anji indicated that Shai should take the pillow. He remained standing while Shai, too exhausted to care how it looked, sank down to rest.

'This must be the uncle,' continued Anji's mother, surveying Shai. 'Hard to say if those scars will ever entirely go away. I suppose he was a good-looking young man once, although nothing like the niece.',

'Anjihosh,' said Tuvi quietly, like a rider calming a storm-maddened horse.

The Hieros lifted a porcelain cup and sipped, watching the interplay between mother and son. She set down the cup with a crooked smile. 'A dark day, Commander Anji, when we heard about the murder of your devoted and beloved wife by red hounds out of the empire.'

'The red hounds?' blurted Shai, seeing a flash of triumph in the Qin princess's eye. What had he to lose by speaking out? They could do nothing worse to him than had already been done. 'You were the one who killed her!'

Anji's mother regarded him with amusement. 'I? I did not stab her. The slaye Sheyshi stabbed her. It is to be supposed — how else are we to explain it? — that she acted as an agent for the red hounds. Every son and grandson of Emperor Farutanihosh was under a death sentence. The boy's mother simply got in the way as she protected her child.'

'So it is to be supposed,' murmured Anji, like a spike of lightning as Tuvi rested a hand on the commander's forearm.

'It's a lie! A lie you have all agreed to tell to protect-!'

'Shai! Silence!'

Once, that tone from Anji would have silenced Shai, but no longer. 'Is there to be no justice for Mai?'

But his cry rang in empty air, and their silence was his answer.

He might as well have remained mute, for all the notice they took of him. Tohon laid a hand gently on his arm, that was all.

Anji turned away. In a hoarse voice, he said, 'Where is my son?'

His mother clapped her hands. A slave slipped out from behind a curtain. 'Fetch the boy.'

The Hieros's gaze paused on Tohon as she accepted from him a nod, and moved again to Anji. 'As folk are saying, Commander, the eyes of the south have turned this way. The empire now knows — and cares — we exist. Because of you.'

'My apologies,' he said, and the words sounded sincere enough. T did not seek their attention.'

'Yet you have it. I suppose if I could rid myself of you and your beautiful son and thereby end the problem, I would. But that would leave me with your Qin soldiers, and your Qin-trained militia, and enemy cohorts still at large in the north. They are still at large, are they not?'

'We have not yet marched into Herelia to take down their headquarters in Wedrewe. We have spent our efforts over the last month securing Istria and Haldia, the countryside, the towns, and the cities. I'm particularly concerned that every farmer can plant as soon as the rains come without fear he will be vulnerable to attack out in his fields. Starvation is a significant concern across the north, and it will only get worse. If folk cannot plant now, the situation will become catastrophic. As it is, it may take years for people to rebuild. Wedrewe, and the remnants gathered in Walshow, are a danger, but they can be dealt with later.'

T suppose they can,' murmured the Hieros. 'What do you want, Commander Anji?'

He had the grace to look startled. 'Why, to raise my son in peace. A peace that will shelter all the people of the Hundred.' His gaze sharpened. 'Isn't it the same thing you have many times told me you want, Holy One?'

'Ah.' She sketched a series of fluid movements with her left hand, in a language that would have meant something to the wildings and to any Hundred-raised folk. 'And therein lies the tale, does it not? If you die, we are left as in the tale of the Guardians. "Long ago, in the time of chaos, a bitter series of wars, feuds, and reprisals denuded the countryside and impoverished the lords and guildsmen and farmers and artisans of the Hundred." This time, I fear, we cannot rely on the Guardians to establish justice.'

'The assizes must be reopened,' agreed Anji, 'without the inter-

ference of demons. The roads must be safe, tolls and tithes and taxes fair. People want to eat. I could go on, but I won't. For all this, we need peace.'

A slave entered, and behind him walked Priya, carrying a plump baby whose luminous face and brilliant smile brought as much radiance into the chamber as a hundred lamps. Shai could not help himself; he began to cry.

The baby spoke up in a piercingly sweet voice: 'Dada! Dada!' He reached; he yearned.

Anji strode across the chamber and engulfed the baby, showering his black hair and dusky face with butterfly kisses that made the little lad chortle as he tried to purse his tiny lips in imitation. Priya looked away, bowing her head.

The Hieros watched, sipped her tea, and set down her cup. 'So, Commander Anji, do you suppose you and your son can ever hope to live in peace? That you'll be safe from those who might wish to kill you?'.‹

Anji glanced up, tucking the child into the curve of his left arm. 'I rely on your support.'

'And you have it, because I, too, have people I wish to protect.' The Hieros's smile did not reassure, but it possessed the pinch of finality. She looked at the Qin princess and received from her a nod no less final. An agreement incubated, hatched, and thrived in that wordless exchange between two women who knew how to order the domains they ruled. 'I am a weary and elderly woman. This trouble has harmed the Hundred grievously. We are not ready to fight another war while this one is not yet ended and the empire in the meantime shrugs a shoulder our way, wondering what mosk has stung its ear. Let it be stated, therefore, that we are allies.'

'Let it be said,' agreed Anji. 'I have every respect for you, Holy One. I will work in concert with you and the temples. We seek the same goals.'

'I suppose we do. Now, I am finished here for today.' She rose with light grace to her feet, needing no aid, and paused by the door to look at Tohon.

'My apologies, Holy One,' Tohon said regretfully. 'I'm not at leisure at this time.'

She nodded with careful neutrality, or rueful resignation. The doors slid shut behind her.

'Well, Mother,' said Anji, 'now you have what you want.'

'Yes.'

'Everything except my affection. Which you will never have.'

She twitched out of the hands of a hovering slave a square of cloth so lushly embroidered with fine silver thread that it glittered. After patting her forehead, she handed it back and sat straight, tucking her feet sideways under her, her skirts heaped in ravines and ridges around her.

T do not need your affection, Anjihosh. I only need you to survive. That is my victory. You will marry the emperor's sister to placate him. I have dulled the knives of the Hieros and her spies and assassins, and will mock into submission those on the council who voice doubts about any aspect of your enterprise. The rest you are already on your way to accomplishing. The Hundred is a fine inheritance for your son, don't you think?'

'Why would the emperor's sister allow Mai's son to live, after she bears a son of my siring?'

'Because I will command it done that way. Let Atani be her son, Anji. Let him call her "Mother." She is a biddable creature, and desperate to please. Let her bear daughters in plenty to dote on, and I will rid you of any inconvenient sons who might trouble the waters, for you and I can both see that Atani will shine brighter than any of them possibly could. There, it is settled.'

Anji was, Shai saw, on the edge of tears. He was trembling. The baby, looking worried, patted his father's mouth.

With an effort of will that seemed to actually reverberate through the room as a lute's string vibrates, the more powerful for its lack of sound, Anji reined himself in. He buried the tears. He kissed the baby's palms, first one, then the other.

He said, 'It is settled.'

Tohon grunted, as though he'd been punched in the gut.

Carrying the boy, Anji turned his back on his mother and walked out of the chamber. Shai scrambled up to follow Tuvi and Tohon through the courtyard and into empty chambers furnished with nothing but the barest comforts, absent any of the wild, artful abandon with which Mai would have filled a house. Where were the taloos-wrapped rats flying kites, the first screen she had purchased in Olossi's market just because it had delighted her so? All trace of her was gone.

All except the baby.

Anji came to rest in the chamber with the three chests. He turned to Tuvi. 'We'll fly at dawn to Merciful Valley,' he said. He looked at Shai. 'Not you, I think.'

'Not me? Is there yet more you have to hide? Did you conspire with your mother to have Mai killed, and now fear I will speak to her ghost and she tell me the truth? Can it be true you have just told your mother that you'll marry the woman she killed Mai to force you to marry? I don't believe you wanted Mai dead. I think you loved her, as much as you can love anything. And even so — can it be true? — you'll allow the baby to grow up thinking your new wife is his mother, as if Mai never existed?'

'Anjihosh,' said Tuvi in his hands-on-the-reins voice.

Anji had walked beyond anger. Indeed, Shai thought, he had walked beyond shame. He had walked beyond honor. He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it; the ghost of another man, a man he might have been, faded behind him.

'It matters not,' Anji said. 'It's done. It's over.'

Tohon said softly, 'A man can be waylaid by demons wearing many guises. Maybe they cloak him with a lust for flesh or for gold, or with vanity or a lack of discipline or the scourge of disloyalty. Or maybe they cloak him with unchecked ambition. A good woman is a man's knife. She protects him against demons. And if he loses her, and does not honor her memory properly, I suppose he risks becoming a demon himself.'

After the silence died to something more stifling, Anji spoke. 'Are you finished, Tohon?'

'I am, Commander. I've said what I felt needed saying.'

'Then you're dismissed.'

'Yes, Commander. I suppose I am. Are you coming with me, Shai?'

Anji held the baby, the last piece of Mai existing on earth. The baby who would never know who his true mother was.

'I want to see where Mai was killed,' said Shai raggedly. 'That's all.'

'Very well,' said Anji. 'That much I will offer you, for her sake.'

So it was done. It was over.

The reeve flight, rising into the steep foothills over which towered the gods-touched mountains, left Shai speechless, not that words had ever come easily. Six reeves deposited six travelers in the valley midmorning and departed immediately, promising to return in the afternoon, as Anji requested.

Merciful Valley was aptly named. Its beauty softened grief, if grief can be softened by anything except time. A mist of cool rain

kissed the trees and sang a lullaby over the grass, herald to weather brewing within the peaks.

In addition to a contingent of Qin guards stationed in the valley, two people remained here. One Shai vaguely remembered, an impetuous and irritating young man named Keshad who ignored Shai while he attempted to ingratiate himself to Anji while casting dagger glances at Chief Tuvi, although why anyone could dislike Tuvi, Shai could not figure. Tuvi was a decent man, solid, honest, and loyal.

The other inhabitant of the valley was kinder, a young woman whose grief for Mai was a comfort to Shai. In the humble audience chamber of the two room shelter, she offered hot bark tea to suit the chill in the air.

'The soldiers say you pray every day, Miravia,' said Anji after he had handed the baby over to her. She kissed Atani's hair and unhooked the baubles hanging from her ears so he could clutch them in his chubby little hands.

'It's our tradition, among my people. After the death of a beloved relative, we pray each day for one year.'

'To ease their passage to the other side, or to ease your own heart?' he asked between sips of steaming tea.

'Does it matter?' She wiped away tears.

Anji cast a sidelong glance at Keshad. 'Miravia, I would be grateful if you would honor Mai's memory by remaining here for the entire year and praying each day. It would ease my grief, to know you watched by the place she died. I would remain here, but I'm called away. The campaign continues.'

'Of course, Commander Anjihosh!' she cried.

'Keshad, I understand your sister has returned alive to the temple. Which means you are free to go.'

'I heard,' he said, with a grimace of relief that then shaded into irritation. 'And also that she is staying as a hierodule in the temple. I don't know what the old bitch said to her-' But he broke off and looked at Miravia. All at once the young man's motives unfurled to Shai's gaze as a flower under the sun. 'I prefer to stay here, if I may be permitted to.'

Anji's answering smile troubled Shai. He looked exactly like a man who has just watched his bets in a wagering game fall into place.

'I think it can be allowed for you to remain here, if Miravia has no objection.' But Anji glanced at Tuvi as Miravia blushed, and

Tuvi shook his head, as if to answer for her. Anji rose, 'I wish to pray at the altar and make an offering in Mai's memory. If you'll excuse me.'

'Do you want me to go up to the waterfall with you, Captain?' Miravia asked.

'No. I'll go alone.'

He did not go alone. He carried Atani, and Tuvi and two guardsmen — men who flanked Anji everywhere he went, just as Sengel and Toughid had once done — each carrying one of the small chests. Another pair of guards followed. Shai was allowed to walk behind them.

'I'll just come along with you,' said Tohon, falling into step beside Shai.

'You think he's going to kill me, too? What benefit is there in that? I'm nothing to him.'

'I'll just come along,' said Tohon, patting him on the arm. 'Hush, son. Don't tire yourself out. We've got a long way to go yet.'

It was a hard, long hike for a young man recovering from such burns as he had sustained. Odd how Chief Tuvi did not labor as much, or seem as weak, although he bore ropy scars as if he'd been lashed by a fiery whip. The Qin forged ahead, while Shai, shadowed by Tohon, fell behind. Losing sight of the others, they trudged up a trail fenced in by thick walls of vegetation. The trail had been dampened by mist, but the dirt wasn't yet mud.

Into a clearing they walked. Beyond the ruins, a waterfall and pool churned as mist spattered the stones. Atani was chortling, reaching for the pool and babbling complaints when his father would not let him touch it. Distant thunder boomed in cloud-shrouded peaks. A dark shape roiled the depths. Blue fire like spikes of lightning snaked through the water and vanished as Atani laughed.

The Qin stood a few paces back from the lip, where waters rippled and sighed. There was no sign of the three little chests, as if they'd thrown them into the pool. Anji gripped the struggling baby more tightly and, leaving his guardsmen to wait, he crossed behind the curtain of water into the overhang behind.

But Shai could not move to follow him. For a ghost sat on one of the low walls, hands resting on thighs as he tracked Anji's departure. Looking back, his ghostly expression flickered with startlement as he rose.

'Hari!' breathed Shai.

Hari's essence looked exactly as Shai had seen Hari last, dressed in the local manner with loose trousers and a tunic tied at the hips, except he was a ghost, not truly substantial. His crooked smile hadn't changed at all, for he was angry at the world and laughing at himself for the futility of it.

'Hello, little brother. Hu! I hoped you would find me. How can it be you walk beside the man who killed me?' Of course Anji hadn't wanted Shai to come here. He'd known there was a chance Hari's ghost might linger. He'd known Shai could hear as well as see ghosts. But Shai already knew enough to condemn Anji. This was just one more stab wound.

'How did he kill you, Hari?' he said past this fresh grief.

Anji's men looked at Shai, looked at each other, shrugged, and went back to waiting.

'He walked up here alone. I thought he was come to deliver a message from Mai, or check to see if I was alone before he allowed her to come up. He does guard her so, does he not? You'd think he actually loves her, which I suppose might even be possible for a Qin. Then before I knew what he was about he drew his sword and cut me down. He unclasped the cloak and tore it from me. It was easy to let it go, once a person with more determination than I had was willing to relieve me of it. I'm free, Shai. Spirit Gate calls me. But I can't cross. I need to warn Mai what manner of husband she has, that he would promise her one thing and then turn around and do the opposite. He's veiled, did you know? Like you. That's why I couldn't see it coming. Is Mai safe, Shai? Tell me she's safe.'

Ghosts are caught in the moment of their death. They do not know past or future; they cannot feel the passing of days or years. That is their fate, and their misery.

Shai could not add to Hari's misery. Not now. After all, those who are veiled may lie to both cloaks and ghosts.

'Yes, Hari. She's safe.'

'Don't weep for me, little brother. It's for the best. It's only that I worry about Mai.' He laughed the familiar, mocking life. 'Now you can take my bones home to our ancestors, can't you? If you can find my sorry remains. Not much to show for a life, is it? Yet Mai would poke and prod in that way she had, wouldn't she? Getting you to do more than you had any intention of doing. I had just started to hope I could learn what it truly meant to be a Guardian.'

Tohon cupped a supporting hand under Shai's elbow. Anji emerged from the spray, the baby still squirming, quite the

handful as he babbled as if to spirits in the air that no one else could see, batting and waving his hands. Anji's gaze caught on Hari's ghost, then tracked to Shai. He halted, waiting for Shai to speak.

What was there to say? Mai's father had told Shai to bring Mai home if Anji didn't treat her well, but what a pointless little speech it had been. Father Mei had only said it to make himself feel better, knowing he'd sold away the treasure of his house. The road that passes under Spirit Gate runs in only one direction. There is no going back.

'I need my brother's bones,' said Shai.

Anji nodded. 'I'll have my men dig up his remains.'

Wind moaned along the cliffs. The waterfall wept its constant tears. The baby buried his sweet face against his father's neck.

'I'll take you home, Hari,' Shai said, 'if it's truly what you want.' But already Hari's ghost was dissolving under the chill spray of falling water. He'd held on. He'd given warning. Too late.

'Ah, well,' murmured Tohon. 'Kartu Town is on the way, if we take the northern route.'

'The way where?'

Anji and his men walked down through the ruins and vanished into the forest. Only Chief Tuvi glanced back.

'I thought…' Tohon tugged at an earlobe. He examined the lofty peaks as if seeking a lofty speech there. Abruptly his gaze fastened on something Shai did not see. He tracked it, lost it, shrugged. 'You'll take his bones to Kartu Town. What about the mistress's bones?'

'There are no remains. Anyway, she doesn't belong to the clan. She was sold to the captain. Her bones belong to him.'

'Indeed, they do. We'll go to Kartu Town, then.'

'I don't want to return there.' To think of being trapped again in the Mei clan made his stomach roil and his anger burn. 'I can't, and I won't.'

'No, of course not. You're not the lad you were then, are you?'

Yet his tone had changed. Cool, calm, collected Tohon sounded unsure. He fussed with his knife. He patted his hair as if he'd for- gotten his cap, but he was wearing neither cap nor helmet today. His words fell diffidently.

'After you get your brother's bones settled, you're welcome to come home with me.'

Shai staggered. When had he gotten so dizzy? He groped, found a broken wall, and sat. 'Home with you?'

'I've been dismissed from Captain Anji's service. I'll have to report in to Commander Beje, but I've served with honor. It's time for me to go home to my youngest son's wife's tent and meet my grandchildren. Come with me, Shai. We'll find you a good woman to marry. She can be your knife, as you can be hers. You'll be my son, and I'll raise your children as my own.'

Tohon watched him with dark eyes and a vulnerable smile. He'd been hit hard before, but he knew how to keep riding even if the path didn't open onto the vista he wished was there. That didn't make the question any easier to get out. 'What do you say, Shai?'

Beneath the water's roar and the wind's cry, a voice as sweet as Mai's whispered: Yes.

Shai could say nothing, not with words. So he grasped Tohon's hand and then, unexpectedly, Tohon pulled him up and embraced him, as Shai had never once been embraced by his own father.

At length, Tohon pushed him gently back and looked him over with that same smile. 'Hu! A long journey ahead of us, neh? Come on, son. Let's get what we need here, and go home.'