Traitors Gate

PART SEVEN
Gates
45

Keshad hated dawn most. At dawn, the first bell woke the city of Olossi. Its clangor jarred him out of the glorious oblivion of sleep and into the sickening realization that he was still enslaved by his debt, that he must rise as he did every day and labor under Master Feden's cruel yoke. Each morning, waking, the pain blossomed as brightly as it had the very first morning, when he'd been a child of twelve bewildered by having had his own kin push him and his younger sister up onto the auction block. The knot of anger never softened.

Now he woke and braced himself as memory flooded: / am a slave, my sister is a slave, and this day will be no different from the days that came before.

A warm, naked body stirred against his, and Miravia rolled over, her swelling belly pressed into his abdomen, and kissed him. 'I thought you would never wake! Didn't you hear the rooster?'

He clutched her close, tears brimming, and buried his face in her thick hair. It was shoulder-length, still ragged at the ends where she had chopped it off seven months ago.

'Are you crying}' She brushed a finger along his cheeks before letting it tangle in his curls.

'Just a bad dream.'

Beneath blankets and on a plush cotton-stuffed mattress raised on a pallet of wood, they made their cozy nest. He would have lingered here half the morning stroking her hair and caressing her skin, but after frowning at him, as if she wasn't sure he was telling her everything, she wriggled out of his grasp and rose. How glorious she was, all curves, and her smile in the dim sleeping chamber as she looked down on him was the most glorious curve of all. Her belly was growing each day.

If joy could kill you, he would be dead right now. He would have expired seven months ago, the first time they had kissed.

She poured water into the basin and washed, then deftly wrapped a taloos around her naked body. Pausing with a hand on the curtain that partitioned off the sleeping chamber, she swept her hair back from her face.

'I'm going up to the pool to pray,' she said, as she did every morning at dawn.

The curtain slithered down behind her. Her footfalls tapped on the planks of the porch that wrapped the shelter. She exchanged a greeting with someone farther off, and moved away.

Canvas walls tied down between floor and roof beams blocked the wind, which moaned over the sturdy roof. A pair of chests lay closed, with clothes draped over them. A bowl of oil blended with mosk-chasing purple thorn had burned out during the night, leaving its lingering scent. He closed his eyes and luxuriated in the fading heat within the comfort he had made for them out of Miravia's grief. As he drifted between waking and dozing, he smiled, breathing in the scent of jasmine she always left behind. Maybe in the world beyond Merciful Valley she would have refused to eat his rice and chosen Chief Tuvi instead, out of loyalty to Mai, but Tuvi had left to serve Captain Anji, and Kesh had stayed. So the world beyond the valley didn't really matter, did it?

'Keshad? Aui! Come out here and help me, you cursed lag!'

He sighed. Rising, he wrapped a kilt around his hips and, shivering, pulled on a wool tunic over it. It was cursed cold up here in the mornings, with the season of rains fading. His toes ached as he yanked on a pair of the woven socks necessary up in the mountains. He hurried outside just so he could pull on his boots over his freezing feet.

Reeve Miyara was waiting at the steps, arms crossed, scanning the darkening clouds spilling out of the west on a driving wind. 'We're in for another storm. You'd think the cursed storms would stop with the end of the Whisper Rains, eh? Do you think the firelings bring the storms here? For I've never seen so many firelings as I have in this place. It's like they've come to visit that Silver prayer ritual with Miravia. There were so many in the cave the day Mai gave birth to Atani. Maybe they've all come to visit the place she died.'

'Surely they were here before you reeves ever discovered this valley and used it as a refuge.' Kesh put out a hand. Was that a drop of rain? He'd heard no thunder.

'It's hard to think of firelings as being like us, as having a home, isn't it?'

If it rained, Miravia would run back home and strip off her soaked taloos, and… He smiled.

She laughed. 'You're not truly listening, are you? You're

wishing you were back in your bed. What is it about men that they get that idiotic look on their faces when they're getting good sex regularly?'

She was an honest, hardworking Lion fifteen years older than he was. He did not know her well; she visited once a month, an assignment mandated by Captain Anji. She arrived on Wakened Eagle with a sack of rice or nai and a pouch of salt and spices. More important, she came bearing an offering to be presented at the altar at dawn on Transcendent Deer, which was the day Mai, stabbed by her traitorous slave, had vanished into the pool. Then they would share a meal, while she and Miravia would reminisce about Olossi's markets and festivals or discuss flowers and herbs, a passion the two women shared. She usually left at dawn on the next day, Resting Crane, but today she seemed inclined to linger. Nor did he see her eagle.

'Why did you agree to the assignment?' he asked, emboldened by her joke. 'Flying supplies for us? Visiting the cave?'

'I grieve for Mai. I didn't know her well, but I loved her, too. The Hundred was a different place, when she was still with us.'

'What do you mean?'

By the way she took a step back and pinched her lips together, he realized she did not trust him. What in the hells had he ever done to earn her mistrust? He'd been loyal to Miravia. As bored as he often became isolated up here, he never for one breath regretted his choice to stay.

Miyara's distrust annoyed him. 'I know you asked for the assignment, after Captain Anji asked for the valley to be set off limits until Miravia's year of mourning had passed. So he can send his offerings and observe the proper rituals, too. You and Reeve Siras are the only people we ever see.'

Her frown passed swiftly, like dawn's rising. 'If he's truly observing a year of mourning, then it seems strange he married again so quickly. But maybe it's all of a piece. Maybe Joss was right.'

'He married again? When? Who?'

'Neh, think nothing of it. Outlanders have different ways.' She licked her lips nervously and gestured toward the thatched roof that sheltered the kitchen. 'Miravia put on the rice before she went up. I came over to ask you to help me choose among the turnips and radish, which you'd like me to harvest, it being your garden.'

'The hells!' He tromped down the steps, and she stepped back, a hand curling around the reeve's baton that swung from her belt. He stopped short as his irritation sparked from a smolder to a flame. 'You can't just let a remark like that flash like lightning and not think I'm going to jump! Married! It's true most folk wait a year, unless there are young children who need care and not enough aunties and uncles to-' He broke off, thinking of the infant child Tuvi had carried off with him. Surely that baby had plenty of uncles! 'What else has been going on out there we don't know about? Why don't you and Siras tell us anything?'

'Do you ever ask a cursed thing about what is going on beyond this sheltered place?' she retorted. Her anger boiled up as suddenly as the thunder now rumbling out of the peaks almost as if it had been birthed by the force of her words. 'Or wonder if we've been commanded to keep our mouths shut?'

'But- I-'

'Heya!' Her eyes widened as she looked past him. She broke into a run.

He turned. Miravia had stumbled into the clearing from the trail that led up to the waterfall; she was swaying, hands extended as a falling woman begs for help.

The hells!

He bolted, passing Miyara easily, and reached Miravia in time to catch her as her legs gave out. She was washed gray like a corpse, and breathing hard.

'My love! Ravia! What's happened? Are you hurt?'

Her mouth opened, but no words came out. In her stunned gaze he saw nothing but blank incomprehension, as if a lilu had sunk its claws into her heart and drained away all thought, leaving only emotion. But her body worked. She regained her feet, pulled away from him, and began running back up the trail. He had to follow, glancing back to assure himself that Miyara, armed with baton and sword, was jogging at his heels. A look of alarm erased the suspicion that had so recently scarred her expression. They wound up through the thickly perfumed trees, the late flowering bushes, the profusion of fruit. He bumped his head on a dangling sun-fruit, which dropped to thud on the earth and tumble away into the undergrowth. So much lay hidden.

Commanded to keep our mouths shut.

'Ravia!' he called, but she kept running, passion the wings that carried her.

He was puffing and heaving by the time they burst out into the ruins. He stumbled to a halt as Miyara stopped beside him.

'The hells!' cried the reeve with the breath he could not take.

The waterfall, swollen with the last of the rains, pounded its fury into the pool. Water lapped to the brim, wavelets spilling along flat terraces of smooth stone. The cursed pool was writhing with blue threads like infant firelings pouring up from the depths. Miravia was staring not at the pool but at something else entirely.

A slight figure huddled on one of the low stone walls whose tumbled remains graced the ruins. Black hair plastered her neck and wove trails down the soaking wet silk of her bloodstained taloos. Her mouth was parted, and slowly, as if it hurt to move, she straightened and looked toward them.

Thunder boomed. It began to rain in a fierce, unexpected cloudburst.

Mai.

Then she woke, coughing water out of her mouth. Only half

aware of what she was doing, she dragged herself onto a shelf of

rock and lay heaving until she could breathe again. Her chest

hurt; pain squeezed her ribs with each sharp inhalation.

A woman screamed.

Hu! What if Tuvi hadn't gotten here yet and Sheyshi tried again? What if the slave had gone after the baby?

She pushed up through an agony of tight muscles, but instead of Sheyshi and Priya and the baby, Miravia was standing a stone's toss from her with hands shielding her cheeks and her mouth and eyes gone all round as though an awful demon was rising out of the pool behind Mai about to pounce. She actually turned to look, the feeling was so strong, maybe Sheyshi climbing out of the water with her knife, but there was no one, only a shimmering surface of blue threads she recognized as the newborn spirits born in the womb of the firelings and not yet strong enough to take flight into the storms.

How did she know that?

'Miravia!' she rasped, but Miravia was already gone, fleeing flip flap flip flap, her footsteps reverberating through the empty ruins as water poured over the high lip and roared into the pool. Spray moistened her face. She staggered to the path that led behind a curtain of falling water and into the overhang. Priya might have hidden Atani in here, but the overhang lay dim and

empty but for the altar stone heaped with withered wreaths and flower necklaces and a fresh-blooming spray of plum blossoms. Out of season surely, she thought at random as she caught herself on the stone, trying not to topple over.

A ring sat on the stone. She stared at it a long time: a Mei clan wolf's-head ring, big enough to fit a man's finger. She'd given hers to Anji, but she knew who this one belonged to: It was Shai's ring. Left on the altar.

She snatched it up and stumbled outside, hand pressing into her stomach as a prickling pain spread across her midsection. Legs giving out, she sank onto the ruins of a low wall. Her flesh felt ragged beneath her probing fingers. The lips of the stab wound were still tender, felt through the wet silk of her taloos. Where had all that blood come from that soaked the silk? Why did it still hurt so much?

She had to go find Atani, but she didn't have the strength to rise. Just rest a little, and a little longer yet, and then strength would come. It must. She had to find Atani, and Priya, and O'eki. She had to warn Miravia. Sheyshi was a murderer, an agent long since planted into her household without anyone knowing. Not even Anji had known. She was sure of it.

Anji would never have acquiesced to her death. Or at least, not under these circumstances. He hated to lose, and he would never allow his mother to win. That was his weakness. Of course her beauty had attracted him in Kartu Town's market, but any Qin officer might admire beauty and even sample what could not be denied to him, and then ride on. Why hadn't she seen it before now? Perhaps he had been, as he claimed, amused or even impressed when she had tried to sell him almonds at a price twice market value. But now she wondered if it had irritated him as well. Folk feared the Qin. They were wise to do so. And here this slip of a girl from a dusty provincial trading town, a place of no possible importance in the wide world, had the gall to mock him by demanding such a price.

She could see the scene unfold with stark clarity. It was easy to see from this side of the knife that had plunged into her flesh, whose blade had wept her blood.

He had taken her, just like in the songs. The dashing, powerful officer. The humble fruit seller unable to say 'no.' Yet their hardships had bound them together; their journey had forced them to forge a partnership. They had been building something

worthwhile, hadn't they? Didn't Anji truly love her? Hadn't he defied his mother on her behalf? Or had he only been irritated at having his will crossed?

Because Anji had betrayed her anyway, when it suited his purposes. He had promised to safeguard Hari but had killed him instead. Who else would Hari have trusted to come so close? Who else could have walked right up to him without Hari having the least idea what was about to happen?

Only Anji..

Thunder boomed. Rain hammered the clearing as if it meant to disintegrate her and sweep her fragments back into the pool whose healing touch had saved her. Saved her for what? For waking up to realize that she could not trust the man she loved?

So when she heard the clap of running feet followed by the intake of shocked breath followed by silence as the rain gave out as abruptly as it had washed through, it was hard to be frightened of what they might'do to her. She'd already been stabbed in the heart and survived.

Miravia had returned, bringing with her Reeve Miyara, whose unsheathed sword and expression of stunned fear kindled a flame of indignation. What had she ever done to make people fear her} She was the one Sheyshi had tried to kill!

'Mistress Mai?'

'Master Keshad!' This was too much! Her sight wasn't clouded. He placed a hand intimately on Miravia's hip to shift the young woman behind him, but not before Mai realized that the bulge in Miravia's taloos wasn't the fabric twisted and pouching. 'Miravia! Are you pregnant? By him?'

'Mai!' Miravia pushed past Keshad and flung herself at Mai, her body solid and warm and comforting as Mai hung onto her and she hung on to Mai, sobbing and hugging.

'Best get away from her,' said the reeve into their blubbering reunion. 'She must be a lilu, Miravia. Come to lure you to your death by taking the form of one you love.'

Mai sat straight, releasing Miravia and wiping her nose. 'I'm the one who was stabbed! How can I then be the lilu? Where is Atani? Where is Sheyshi? Shouldn't you be chasing after herV She rose, and the reeve leaped back as if expecting Mai to smite her.

Keshad paced forward with hands extended in an annoying

way meant to placate, as if he too thought she was a lilu and must be bribed. 'Here, now. What do you want, lilu?'

'Miravia, you can't possibly believe I'm a lilu! Where is Atani?'

Miravia trembled as she brushed fingers over the sopping fabric of Mai's taloos. 'Commander Anji took him, of course. He thought you were dead. Everyone thought you were dead, because you were stabbed and blood was everywhere and you sank into the pool and no one could reach you. Mai, sit down.'

Mai sat, coughing as though there were more water in her lungs, but there wasn't, just a sick weight of dread. She spread a hand over her own belly, where she and Anji had seeded another life, although no one could possibly yet suspect. 'Miravia, how are you come to be so obviously pregnant, when this morning you weren't pregnant at all?'

'Don't touch her!' cried the reeve.

Keshad sat down, so Mai was boxed between him and Miravia. 'Careful, lilu. I have a knife and I'm not afraid to use it.'

'Kesh! Don't you dare!' Miravia took Mai's hand and turned it over, opened her fingers, traced the lines that creased her palms, although in truth her hands were horribly wrinkled as they would be after being immersed in water for a long time. 'Mai. Listen to me. Sheyshi stabbed you. Then the Qin killed her. It seems Sheyshi wasn't stupid at all but only playing a part. She was an agent for Anji's mother all along.'

'Anji's mother! The old bitch! She warned me she wouldn't let me get in the way of her plans for Anji. When he finds out what she did-'

'Mai! Listen! He already knows. It's been seven months — two hundred and fifty-two days-'

'Two hundred and fifty-three,' said Keshad.

'You think it's really Mai, don't you?' demanded Miyara, keeping her distance.

'Of course it's Mai,' said Miravia as she stroked Mai's arm and smiled, her face as bright as the threads whose glow made the pool shimmer both on its visible surface and in its depths. 'She's annoyed with me for getting pregnant by Kesh, because she wanted me to marry Chief Tuvi. No lilu would care about that. Anyway, isn't it obvious? The firelings saved her. They hid her away until they healed her. Just like in the tales.'

She wept tears sweetened by joy, but Mai had heard a different melody in Miyara's voice, and she captured the reeve's gaze until,

at last, Miyara shook her head with a twisted smile.

'I could believe it. I want to believe it. But Mai-'

'Tell me what you fear to tell me,' said Mai. 'I beg you.'

'Think of what Anji will say when he finds out she's alive!' cried Miravia with happy abandon.

Miyara made an awning with a hand over her eyes, thinking. After a while, she looked up. 'Maybe a bowl of rice and a cup of cordial first.'

'No.' She opened her hand, displaying the ring. 'What does this mean?'

The reeve shrugged. 'Your uncle Shai left that as an offering on the altar.'

The Merciful One's touch might untwist the knot in your heart, dizzying you. 'He's alive, then. He survived.'

'He did. But he's gone, Mai. He left the Hundred with that scout, Tohon.'

'Taking Hari's bones back to Kartu Town. Poor Shai. He'll hate it there. And I'll'never see him again.'

'He may have said something about a Kartu Town, but I think he was going on with Tohon, to wherever the Qin live. They were like father and son, if you know what I mean.'

Ah. The words eased the ache a little, knowing that Shai had a hope of being happy. 'And what about my son? Is Atani dead? Did that old bitch have him murdered, too, so the emperor's sister could marry Anji and make a treaty and fine fat children between them?'

'The child was taken away by his father,' said Miyara. 'Everyone knows Commander Anji dotes on the boy. But the rest is as you say, Mistress. His mother took over the running of his household. He married the Sirniakan woman.'

Mai wiped beads of moisture from her face, her heart as cold as her chilled skin and damp hands. Anji had betrayed her.

'There's one thing I need to do first. Miravia, will you help me?'

'Of course.'

'Wouldn't it be wise to ask what it is before you agree to it?' demanded Keshad, but Miravia cast him such a look that Mai would have smiled if she had remembered how.

She rose. 'After that, I beg you, Miyara, please take me to my son. I'll never leave him in the clutches of those women.'

By stages.

First she sent Keshad.out with Miyara to Astafero. Miyara returned with Siras and a brash young reeve named Ildiya so passionately infatuated with Siras that she would do anything he asked. Ildiya flew out with Miravia, while Mai followed with Miyara. Siras hauled the single heavy chest of the few but precious items worth taking away from Merciful Valley.

They flew to Naya Hall, now a training hall for all newly jessed reeves from across the Hundred. After a period of training, these novice reeves were assigned to one of forty-six secondary halls and outposts according to family groupings and flight assignments. It was a new system, devised by Commander Anji.

'Anji is commander of the reeve halls?' Mai demanded. 'How can that be? What happened to Joss?'

So it was with the shattering news that Anji had also killed both Joss and his eagle thundering in her heart that Mai spent a miserable night in Astafero. The house built for her and Anji lay abandoned but for a few desert mice, chirping geckos, and two stout clothes chests shoved forgotten into a back storeroom. At dawn, having sent a message ahead asking Mistresss Behara to meet her, she walked down to Astafero's council square.

Several hundred people had gathered, and they wept, and touched her, and showed her the flower-bedecked altar they'd set up under a roofed shelter at Hasibal's stone.

'Do you want to pray to the Merciful One, Mistress?' Behara asked her. 'Many of us do, remembering the prayers. How can it be you are alive? Everyone said you were murdered by the red hounds out of Sirniaka.'

'Is that what they said?' And yet, how to explain what would only make them distrust her? 'In truth, verea, I was sorely hurt and I suppose it was deemed better to set it about that I was dead than to risk a second attack.'

Ah. Of course. This made perfect sense. Exactly the kind of wise decision Commander Anji would make to confound his enemies. They showed her the sprawling market, the burgeoning fields, the expanding docks, the steady expansion of the irrigation channels being dug mey by mey up into the hills. The garrison fort with its well-behaved soldiers.

No one feared attack from the empire. The commander had taken care of that even if he had had to marry that foreign woman who, it was said, no one ever saw. Those problems with bandits

and renegades in previous years? Neh, not a problem at all any longer, at least not here in Olo'osson. Trade was brisk and profitable. Why, a woman walking alone could carry a precious vessel of water-white all the way from Astafero past Old Fort and to Horn, and not fear she'd be assaulted! The commander had taken care of that.

They prayed the prayers to the Merciful One at the altar of Hasibal every day, they told her, and their prayers had been answered.

They flew north in stages.

The second night they slept over in a village on West Track, a quiet town whose innkeeper welcomed them gravely. He proudly showed them a newly built dormitory set aside for traveling reeves and soldiers. A much smaller chamber was set aside for female reeves, with only two pallets folded up in the bedding cupboard.

He had no idea who Mai was, although he looked twice and then three times'at Miravia and, when Kesh pointedly draped an arm around his wife's shoulders, smiled apologetically as he explained he'd recently been serving numbers of Ri Amarah men hastening to and from Toskala on business for the commander.

'I thought they kept their women- Never mind. My apologies, verea.'

He invited them to dine in the main room of the inn and hurried off to the kitchen. The inn wasn't crowded but the locals were drinking, eyeing them with the satisfaction locals take in seeing outsiders look unsure of themselves. A pair of young men really looked Mai over, and then began arguing in low voices. The innkeeper and his wife brought their party cordial and a big pot of well-spiced barsh to share for their supper.

'How much?' asked Mai, preparing to bargain.

He looked surprised. 'Eh, verea, any reeve or soldier or messenger receives free lodging and food. It's part of the tax, isn't it? The militia tithe.' He grinned. 'However, I'm only obligated to serve you a single cup of cordial. After that, you have to pay house prices.'

'The militia tithe? What manner of tax is that?'

His smile softened, as if he'd just figured out she was as stupid as she was pretty. 'So the army and the reeves can patrol, make sure we're not burned out of our villages, killed in our beds. I'm happy to feed them, seeing how peaceful things are now.'

The young men sauntered up, swaggering with nervous bravado. 'Velin here says he's seen you before, verea,' said the one courageous enough to speak first. 'He says he's sure he saw you in Olossi that one time he went there for festival. Aren't you one of Hasibal's players? They take in outlander slaves, sometimes, and train them up. Hard to see how a man could forget a face like yours. I'm Noresh, by the way. We'd be happy to buy you a cup, eh?'

She knew how to smile to make a man feel she regretted the necessity of discouraging his advances. 'My apologies, ver. I'm on a mission with these reeves. Nothing I can speak of.'

That impressed them. Out of misplaced pity, a scab she kept picking at, she told the innkeeper to pour them each a cup and handed over a few vey. They wandered away, flushed and whispering at their triumph, and kept glancing her way as they lingered over their cups as if to drag out the ecstasy. A woman brought out her lute and began accompanying herself on songs, the folk joining in on the chorus and the hand gestures. The music flowed so sweetly; thoughts might wander down these bright tuneful paths and let go of the shadows.

Until the woman began a new song, one whose response was answered raggedly by folk still Eagerly learning it: how the outlander had saved them and been rewarded with the love of a young woman as beautiful as plum blossoms shimmering dew-laden at dawn, only to have her stolen away from him by a jealous lilu.

Mai, choked and unable to breathe evenly, excused herself and returned to the tiny room. Miravia followed her and lay down beside her on the pallet they would share for the night.

'Mai…'

'Neh, it's nothing. Nothing I understand. He betrayed me.'

'He loved you!'

'Maybe he did, but now I wonder if this would have happened in the end no matter what? Demons stole me! That's one way to put it. But there's another story, a truer tale, isn't there? We sing the songs, and hear the tales, hoping they will have a happy ending — the bandit prince falls in love with the brickmaker's daughter and they live forever after in harmony — or at least a sat-isfyingly gruesome one in which everyone dies, but that is why they are tales, isn't it? Forever after in harmony, as long as I always did what Anji approved of. And then, when I did not…' She touched her cheek, the one he'd slapped.

'Folk do get angry with each other, Mai. Kesh can be so

irritating, but I love him despite it, because of it, including it. If people can never be angry, then isn't that a way of lying?'

Mai smiled, remembering how she had thrown a cup at Anji, which he'd caught. Then she wept, and Miravia held her.

People travel onward by stages. Seven months is a stage, a chasm whose loss cannot be recovered, only bridged.

Late on the third afternoon they found shelter in an outpost atop a hill, a way fort overlooking the major road across Istria called the Flats. A cadre of soldiers was.stationed in tent barracks set on raised plank floors. Their commander was a Qin officer attended by four Qin tailmen whom Mai did not recognize and who did not recognize her. The soldiers recognized Kesh's partnership with Miravia, and deemed Miyara too bored with their youth to flirt with, but Mai and Ildiya they marked as fair game despite Siras's obvious jealousy.

'Enough!' said Miyara finally after yet another tray of cordial had been brought and hopefully presented to the young women. 'Have you louts no manners? We'd like to eat in peace.'

'Neh, I was finished,' said Mai, for the sweat and rowdy clamor and the presence of Qin soldiers made her stomach knot and her eyes fill with tears. Every man, even the local ones, wore a black tabard and his hair bound up in a topknot. 'I'll just walk outside.'

Kesh jerked as if he'd been kicked. 'Ow!' he cried, flashing an indignant look at Miravia. She nodded toward Mai. 'Ah. Well. I'll just walk out with you, verea. Keep you company. Guard you in case there are wolves prowling.'

Every man there, even the Qin, watched them leave the eating porch, and avid gazes tracked them out along the ridge. They reached a platform sited for an excellent view of the road running below, the distant crown of Mount Aua to the west, and a nearer view of an oddly shaped ridge, slightly higher in elevation than their own, cut by a ledge whose stony surface glittered as the setting sun caught its length at just the right angle.

'I wish you would call me "Mai,"' she said as she leaned on the railing, the wind battering against the clasps and sticks with which she armored her hair. 'Miravia is my dearest friend. Maybe she is my only friend. Even Miyara can't tell me what has happened to Priya and O'eki, only that they went away with Anji. I hate to be called "verea" by you, as though we're acquaintances in the market. I'm very angry she married you, but surely I can still think of you as my brother.' She wiped a tear.

'Eiya! Why are you crying?'

'Just missing my twin.'

'You have a twin). One as beautiful as you?'

She shot him a glance, and he blushed horribly, looking mortified, and she laughed for the first time since she had woken. 'I have a twin, a brother. Maybe he grew into his looks. I hope so.' Poor Mei. Always hounded by Grandmother and Father Mei and their mother and aunt. He was no silkworm to wind a cushion of silk to protect himself. He was a fragile leaf, subject to their storms. How was he faring? Could she send him a message across the vast distance, let her family know that she was alive? Would the family ever know the full story of what had happened to Hari?

'Did you ever look in the pool, Keshad? Did you ever see the chains?'

'What chains?'

'Never mind. Did Shai truly say nothing to you, that time he came up with Anji a month after-' She rubbed a hand over her vest, feeling the scar tissue along her ribs. 'After Sheyshi stabbed me?'

'He never talked to me at all, arid I admit I didn't talk to him. I was too cursed worried that Ravia would take it into her head to tell Chief Tuvi she would marry him, out of loyalty to you. So I didn't pay much attention to his troubles.'

She rested a hand on his forearm, and he was so startled he jerked it away, then flushed again, and settled his arm back beside hers on the railing as if within the reach of a particularly fearsome snake, and endured her fingers resting lightly on his hand.

'You do love Miravia, don't you?' she asked.

He looked irritated. Then he flung back his head as the sun winked hard on that distant ledge. 'I just remembered. The captain and his men brought three small jeweler's chests bound with chains. But they left without them. I thought they were offerings for the altar. He sent up flowers every month, plum blossoms if he could get them. But that doesn't explain why he left those good quality chests behind, does it? Indeed, they emptied a clothes chest from the barracks shelter and took it away with them, although I never knew — nor asked — what was in it, I was that glad to see them go without taking Ravia with them.'

She changed the subject, stumbling over a momentary awkwardness by falling back on the one subject she never tired of. 'Tell me

again, how was the baby that last time you saw him, when Anji came to take him away?'

He had the same smile any Hundred man would have, thinking of a plump, healthy child. 'An exceptionally beautiful child. He has such a chortling laugh, like everything amuses him! Very good natured.'

Four soldiers tramped up behind them, laughing in a quite different way, shoving each other and showing off, making themselves big and noticeable as they crowded against the railing two on each side.

'Heya, verea! Like the view, eh?'

'It's a very fine view of the road. I suppose you keep an eye on travelers and caravans. Make sure no one comes to harm.'

'We do oversee the roads, of course.' They were young men, desperate to boast. 'But that's not the chief reason we're here. We're black wolves, you know.'

'Black wolves?'

'The army's elite. We're trained to hunt demons.'

'You hunt demons?' She looked at Kesh, but he shrugged.

'See that Mount Aua? There's a demon cradle there, a place demons might try to shelter for a night, sip their demon nectar. And that ridge there — see how it glitters? That one, too. So we're posted here to keep an eye on them. There are other outposts like this one. Chief Chartai commands the entire black wolf cohort here in Istria. We're the second such cohort, you know. Just commissioned two months ago. See our banner?'

It flapped from a pole, two wolf's heads grinning in the breeze.

'We figured you maybe had a brother or husband who died in the service of the wolves, verea, seeing as you wear the ring.'

She looked down at the wolf's-head ring, sigil of the Mei clan. The necklace had slipped out from the neck of her vest and Shai's ring dangled at the curve of her breasts, which they were staring at, as men would. It was the same head, the very same. They held up their hands to show they, too, wore wolf's-head rings.

Her throat tightened on words she did not want to say. She slipped the errant chain and its ring back beneath her vest and was at once sorry she'd done so, because they followed the movement of the ring as if with their own hands.

'What kind of demons are you hunting?'

'Any demons, really, traitors or bandits or murderers. But particularly cloaks, verea. Those ones who say they're Guardians but

are really gods-rotted lilus waiting to corrupt us and lead the Hundred back into war.' They preened, just like sunning eagles. 'Only the black wolves are told the secret of how to kill demons. It's a dangerous job. We're not afraid.'

But now she was. Fear snapped, a wolf who had just decided to eat her up.

The fourth day they ought to have made it all the way to Toskala, but Miyara was stricken as by a shuddering sickness, and then she wept while still aloft, and afterward they sailed down and came to rest in a pasture as sheep scattered. The buildings of a substantial town rose ahead. Farmers and herdsmen came running.

'Miyara, what is it? Are you ill?' Mai was dangling with her feet off the ground, kicking a little, wanting to stand on solid earth instead of being helpless.

'I'm scared, Mai, I don't mind saying. There's a thing I've never told you. About Joss. They say Scar went after Commander Anji. They say Joss was jealous that Commander Anji was doing a better job than Joss was commanding the reeves, so he tried to kill him.'

'Joss? Reeve Joss? Are we talking about the same man?'

'The cursed handsome one.'

'That's right. He's an Ox, just like me. I admit he was vain, but very charming! Yet I never met a man less ambitious to puff about his own importance and authority than Reeve Joss. I mean, he seemed like a man who'd been dragged into authority and didn't like it much.'

'That's how I saw him, I admit. But others didn't. It's not what folk said afterward. I wasn't there. But let me tell you something and I beg you never to say I mentioned it. There's a contingent of reeves — not many, but people who were close to him — who flew to Bronze Hall down in Mar. You wouldn't know them, they'd just be names to you. They've never truly confided in me, but I've been thinking as each month passes that once I've discharged the obligation I made to ferry supplies up to Merciful Valley for the one year — a promise I made to Commander Anji on behalf of the boy, who is my nephew, if you'll recall-'

'I do recall it. I know what I owe you.'

'Never mind that. It's nothing any Hundred woman wouldn't have done.'

'What have you been thinking?'

'That I'd leave Argent Hall and fly to Bronze Hall. Siras is thinking of coming with me — and I suppose Ildiya will tag along with him. Anyhow, we just want to hear what they have to say. Bronze Hall's not a member of the reeve council. They never sent a representative to the council in which Commander Anji was elected as commander over the reeve halls. They're not subject to him.'

'And what does Commander Anji think of that?' Mai asked tartly. 'That one hall doesn't acknowledgehis authority?'

'How could I know? I'm just a reeve in Argent Hall, far away from Law Rock. I know there's been plenty of fighting up in Herelia and Teriayne and the north. The war's not over yet. I'm sure Commander Anji is too busy to bother himself with sleepy Mar, way down on the southeastern coast.'

'Let me down, I beg you, I have to pee.'

Miyara unhooked them both, and they both went to pee in the woods. When they reemerged, the farmers were gawking from a distance at the eagle while the herdsmen and their barking dogs chivvied the sheep through a gap in the woods toward a safer clearing.

Mai was struggling with the trousers. 'I hate these things. A taloos is so much easier to wear, much less pee in.'

Miyara hauled out a flag and signaled Siras and Ildiya, who headed down.

'Tell you what, Mai,' said Miyara. 'Let's shelter here for the night. Then we'll reach Law Rock in the morning. Better in the morning than late in the afternoon, eh?'

'Why?'

She jerked the flags down and rolled them up tightly, hands tense. Her eyes had a faraway look, as a caravaner in the desert might eye a distant haze wondering if it is a killing sandstorm. 'Better to have plenty of time to leave, don't you think? If things aren't so hospitable.'

'Reeve! Verea!'

A man and a woman came jogging toward them along the road. 'We saw you come down. And here are more of you! Surely you'll honor us by staying over. We're a humble town, but we've a garrison station newly built and still empty. You're welcome to stay there for the night. We'll feed you gladly.'

It was impossible to say no to such an enthusiastic offer. The reeves shucked the harness from their eagles, seeing it was earlier

in the day than they normally halted, and they accompanied the townsfolk along the road as the farmers gestured friendly greetings and went back to their resplendent fields, half grown in stagnant rectangles of water.

'Look at that growth! That's our second crop this season! I don't mind telling you, it was cursed lean pickings until the first crop was brought in. We all struggled to survive, and some of the children and elders and invalids did not, for all our stores were stolen by the demon army and some of our lads and lasses besides.' The ancient road was an astonishing landmark, smoothly paved and massively built, raised up from the surrounding countryside and flanked on either side by tracks worn into the earth by generations of trudging feet. The town lay ahead, a half built palisade now abandoned; plenty of people were out in the fields and among the orchards. 'But that's all settled now. Why, just three months ago a girl who'd gone missing fully ten months ago — given up for dead! — came riding home behind a Qin soldier. Very finely set up she was, too, for he'd taken it into his mind to eat her rice, and she'd been minded to finish the bowl he started. Her clan were nothing more than day laborers, and now they're the third richest in town. What do you think of that!'

The abandoned palisade had been fitted with gates, set open with iron bracings. Four posts had been erected to the left of the open gate.

Four posts, from which dangled the remains of men, strands of hair fluttering where flesh hadn't yet rotted away from the skulls, the tattered remnants of their clothing frayed and faded. So had the Qin hung out executed criminals in the sun-blasted citadel square in Kartu Town after their armies had conquered the area.

Maybe she fainted. Maybe she just tripped on uneven pavement. Maybe she just forgot to breathe.

Then she was on her knees, shaking, hands over her face.

'Mai!' Miravia steadied her.

'Why are corpses hanging from posts?' She'd never forgotten Widow Lae. On the day of the widow's execution for treason and spying, every man, woman, and child of Kartu Town had been required to assemble in citadel square to watch. That had been the day Anji had first spoken to Mai's father. That had been the day he'd made it clear to a man who could not refuse him that he intended to have her for himself. Of course he'd never asked her. It would have been surprising if he had!

How could she ever have thought it was romantic?

And yet hadn't it been just as sweet and satisfying as one of her beloved songs? Up until the end, when he had killed Uncle Hari. When his mother had taken over Mai's household. When he'd married a woman he didn't know in capitulation to the very mother who had arranged the murder of the woman he loved.

And all for what?

For now she understood what she had been hoping for, in the last four days. The unspoken wish, the unexamined dream: that, upon seeing her, Anji would cast all the other aside, discard it without a second's thought, and embrace her. Just as it used to be.

'Them's the executed men, verea,' their escort was saying. 'So sorry if it upset you, if it came unexpected. But surely you have assizes down there south, too, don't you?'

'We do,' said Miyara slowly, 'but I never saw such posts as these. I heard that the Star army would cleanse people, hang them up by the arms until they died of pain and thirst. It gives me a sick feeling to look at these dead men and think of them suffering like that.'

'The hells! I know the cleansing you're speaking of. We're not such savages. This was done all according to the law. The assizes came through, just like in the old days. Very fair, it was. Very orderly. Because we're so close to Toskala, we happened to host the commander himself just for the one day, a very impressive man with excellent manners. He come accompanied by judges, just like the Guardians of old with their law scrolls and each one wearing a tabard in a color that marked their specialty. You know, white for murder trials. Green for agricultural disputes. Gold for boundary disputes. Red for- Well, anyway! I don't mind telling you the local lads had captured twelve fugitives from the demon army who'd, been hiding out in the woods. The commander interviewed each one personally, in front of witnesses. Two he deemed were just young fellows, led astray but salvageable, and those he sent on to a militia training camp in High Haldia. Two were auctioned right here into debt slavery, for a seven-year term. Four were sent for a three-year term of labor on public works in Toskala, very fair, mind you. These four, though — they were the senior men, and poison-mouthed fellows they were. The judges really had no choice but to condemn them — it has to be unanimous, you know. They got a quick execution, more merciful than what things they themselves done to innocents at their own confession, I'll tell you.

Their corpses were hung up on these posts as a warning to them who might think of turning to the shadows, and as a reminder to the rest of us that justice was served.'

She slept poorly. Maybe they all did, for they rose before dawn and left as soon as the eagles could be whistled down.

Not long after dawn they reached Toskala. The city filled up a wedge of ground between two rivers, the breadth of its packed buildings, avenues, alleys, compounds, walls, and outer districts where the dirty work of living was carried out sprawled northward along the banks. It was almost as big as the Mariha city she had glimpsed in the distance, right before they'd been detoured up to Commander Beje's villa where Anji had been given a reprieve from his death sentence.

A huge promontory of solid rock thrust up at the southern point, a spear dividing the two rivers. The Greater Istri glittered like hope under the morning sun; its tributary, almost as wide, streamed into the greater in a web of currents and countercurrents as complex as the yearning and anger interlaced in her own heart.

Miyara flagged them down over the huge rock, toward a reeve hall strung along the western cliff in a series of long barracks and open parade grounds. They landed in one of the parade grounds. After unhooking and handing her eagle over to the care of fawkners, Miyara led Mai aside to a tiny cottage set back in a small garden.

'Vekess is marshal here, isn't he?' she demanded of the elderly man sweeping the porch. 'I need to speak to him immediately.'

'He's out on patrol.' He frowned at her brash approach, and then he saw Mai. He smiled, setting his broom to one side. 'What's this? Where are you come from?' He looked up to see Keshad and Miravia hesitating in the alley, with Siras and Ildiya at their backs.

'I'm Reeve Miyara. I have brought messengers from Merciful Valley. I was hoping Marshal Vekess could tell us where Commander Anji is, and arrange for the messengers to meet with him.'

'I'm Reeve Odash. Sit down. I'll send for someone from headquarters to speak to you.'

'I beg you,' said Mai, 'but perhaps there's a place I might relieve myself. And change out of these dusty clothes?'

Of course there was, a tiny square garden shed nicely made

with sliding doors on two sides and cupboards and shelves inside so neatly organized with shears and rakes and digging spades in four different sizes that it was a pleasure to admire their disciplined ranks. The old reeve, with a grandfatherly solicitude not without a touch of a wistful lust, carried in a copper basin, a pitcher of cool water, and a linen tower. Even so, she could only wash her face and hands and feet and, with Miravia's help, clasp and pin up her hair so it was tidy. Last, she succumbed to the vanity she had often pretended she did not possess. In Astafero, she had taken a first-quality taloos from the dusty storeroom. She shook out the cloth now. The intense blue green color mirrored the salty waters of the Olo'o Sea and was chased with faint silver threads outlining the foam and waves of a sea caressed by winds. She wrapped its silky glamor around her body as Miravia shook her head.

'How do I look? You're my mirror, Miravia.'

Miravia's frown deepened. 'Are you meaning to confront him, or seduce him?'

'Should I make my entrance in all my dust, in those unattractive trousers and vest? Looking like a — a — sheepherder?'

A hand patted one of the doors. 'Mai?' Miyara was whispering as if she dared not let anyone know who was concealed within. 'Can you come out? Now?'

A decisive step thumped on the porch and the door was slammed open to reveal a Qin soldier with sword drawn.

'Tuvi!' She grasped Miravia's arm, seeing the sword's ugly curve, the tip as deadly as an eagle's beak.

His other arm flashed out and he caught himself against the wall. He stared at her as at a monster. The sword wavered, drooped. He took a step back, and Miyara had to jump back down the step to avoid being shoved off by his movement.

'How can this be?' he said hoarsely.

'Chief Tuvi.'

'What are you, that comes here wearing Mai's face and form?'

'I'm Mai, Tuvi-lo.'

'You can't be Mai. She is dead. I saw her die. She vanished into the pool.' He found his balance and held out a hand to display the ropy white scars across the skin. T tried to pull her out, but the demons had already claimed her.'

'No. That pool is the womb of the firelings. They healed me.'

'Of course that is impossible,' he said, 'and it is foolish of you

to claim it could be true. For then why do you only appear now? No person can breathe water. Only demons can. Therefore, you are a demon. Now you have come here with anger and a demon's mischief in your heart. What do you want?'

He shifted back one more step, enough to gesture toward people outside she could not see. 'Sergeant! Hold the three reeves and that man Keshad under guard.' He stepped into the chamber, raising his sword. 'Miravia. Go outside.'

She stepped in front of Mai. 'No. This is truly Mai, Chief Tuvi. I know it.'

'She is a demon, what the people here call a lilu. She has seduced you, Miravia. Even you.'

'I want my son!' cried Mai.

'So after all it has come to this. The child was born in the midst of demons, and now they seek to claim him. Miravia, step aside. I don't want to harm you.'

'No,' said Miravia, but Mai shouldered her aside and placed herself in front, staring him down as she drowned in the death of her hopes.

'Kill me then, Tuvi-lo. I do not fear death. Not much, anyway. But tell me, if you please, if it is true these stories I hear. That Sheyshi was his mother's agent. That when he discovered who had me killed, he allowed his mother to take over the running of my household anyway! That he married the Sirniakan princess his mother brought for him. That his army is spread across the Hundred guarding every gate and road, just like the Qin army across the towns of the Golden Road? Paying taxes they call tithes. Hanging executed criminals from posts as a warning, just like you Qin did in Kartu Town in our citadel square after making us watch the executions. Is that all true?' The tears began to flood, but she had to speak. 'Is Atani well? Is he thriving and healthy? Do they take good care of him? Did Priya and O'eki stay with him, or were they dismissed? And did Anji's mother or his new wife find you a good wife, Tuvi? Someone special only, as I would have?'

Mai had never set out to deliberately cause another person pain. She had never cut anyone, much less killed a man, but she saw the blow connect in the way he gasped as his eyes lost track of her briefly as the words stabbed home.

No. The women in charge of Anji's household had not found him someone special. Why should they? They didn't care about Tuvi personally. He was just another weapon at Anji's disposal.

He sheathed his sword. 'Miravia, go with the others. You — what must I call you?'

'You know my name.'

His mouth pinched closed as he refused to say it. 'You will come with me. For after all, I find I cannot kill you, even knowing what you are. Let the captain decide.'

Let the captain decide.

'Mai?'

'Do as he says.' She kissed Miravia on each cheek, and they embraced tightly, for it might be the last time. 'Be happy with Keshad.'

She must go quickly lest she lose her composure. For it was composure she needed more than anything. She walked through the garden with Tuvi at her back, close enough to kill her swiftly should it come to that. Reeve Odash leaned on his broom, his face seamed with confusion, but he did not protest. Tuvi's escort of twelve men stared openly, as much delighted as startled to find Tuvi marshaling a beautiful young woman out of a garden shed. Two of the soldiers were Qin soldiers she knew, young men she'd traveled with. They gaped like fishes, but Tuvi's fist nudged her in the small of the back so she kept moving without a word even as he ordered them to run ahead and clear a path.

So it was that folk were ducking out of the way, hurrying into barracks, closing shutters, as Tuvi marched her through the alleys and training yards of the reeve hall. They passed under a gate guarded by two soldiers and along the verge of a cliff on a narrow trail paved with flagstones, past pools scratched into the stone, and thence to the very prow of Law Rock where the wind sang over the rushing waters. A humble thatched roof surrounded by a simple wood railing sheltered a dull stele, squat and wide, set in the earth, nothing much to look at except for the flower necklaces draped over its upright end. One had slipped off, the white flowers a blaze of brightness against the raked dirt.

Then they came around the point and walked up a flagstone path on the eastern rim that ended in a wall and a gate guarded, once again, by soldiers. She did not know these men, and they were definitely outlanders with smooth cheeks and eyes as hard as pebbles as they looked her over without lust but with a glint that warned her, too late, that they had recognized her.

'What is this, Chief Tuvi?' they asked. 'Isn't this-?'

'Let me through,' he said in the tone of a man who does not

expect to be refused. They hesitated just long enough for his expression to kindle, and in that battle Mai saw the war within the household. Who ruled? Anji, or his mother?

They rapped a signal on the gate. It was opened, and Tuvi guided her along a narrow whitewashed corridor and past several slits behind which she heard voices speaking in a language she did not know. Twice, Tuvi paused to answer a question posed from an unseen interlocutor, and twice another gate was opened and they passed through into an identical blank corridor. The third gate opened onto a porch that overlooked a garden, its ornamental bushes severely pruned and its flowering shrubs exceptionally elegant in a sparse aesthetic she recognized as Anji's.

The blow took her like the knife up under the ribs. There he was, seated on a simple camp stool under a simple awning beside a low table, bent over what was almost certainly a set of maps while he talked with a pair of local men she did not know. One was a militia captain and the other an ostiary of Ilu, if one judged by the stripe on his blue cloak. He smiled in that familiar, beloved way in response to a comment by the ostiary, but perhaps the wind alerted him to the scuff of their feet as Tuvi touched her elbow to bring her to a halt under the shade of the porch. Perhaps the birds — for there were birds, a pair of red caps and several bright yellow bellies with their green banded wings — called a warning. He stiffened. He lifted his chin, as though scenting the air. He rose and slowly, almost hesitantly, turned.

Of course he knew her instantly. The air sang with his shock. The wind smothered its cry in the leaves. A petal spun lazily, drifting to earth.

Her breath caught on a sob.

There. It was done.

He spoke, although he was too far away for her to hear. The militia captain looked startled, squinting at her as if the sun was shining in his eyes, while the ostiary's posture suggested a more complicated wine fermented with equal parts rue, resignation, and compassionate amusement. They took themselves off, crunching away on a graveled path.

Anji picked up one of the knives holding down a corner of his maps. Then he came, his trim figure simply arrayed in a tunic of first-quality silk dyed a shade of red so bold it seemed garish, like a fabric someone with poor judgment had chosen for him just because it was gaudy.

She was shaking so hard she grasped at the thought, as trivial as it was. She needed something to hold on to as he mounted the steps onto the porch.

'That color does not suit you, Anji. It reminds me of the way young men boast to get attention. Subtle greens and blues are more elegant.'

He passed Tuvi, handing him the knife, and put his hands on Mai's shoulders, holding her so he could examine her. The weight of his hands was familiar; his scent, laced4with sweat and horse and the mild spice of khaif on his breath, made her want to wilt into his arms; his gaze devoured her.

'How can this be?' he murmured, hands hot on her shoulders and face flushed with that same driving heat.

Without another word he embraced her and kissed her, and although she had meant to say a hundred things to him, to negotiate, to name a higher price than the market value, she could say nothing. She clung to him. She twined her hands in his hair. She kissed him wildly. This was still her Anji.

'Anjihosh!' Tuvi's voice was the whip that separated them, and his the hand that wrenched Anji away from her. 'She is a demon. You must see that.'

Anji yanked hjs arm out of the chief's grasp. 'Of course.' He rested a hand so gently on the curve of her cheek that she sighed, feeling those cursed tears again. 'Of course she must be.'

Love is cruel. Could she do nothing but weep?

She stepped back out of reach of his hand. 'Anji. Your mother had me stabbed.'

'I know.'

'I fell into the pool, but the firelings healed me.'

'The firelings?'

'The pool is the womb of the firelings.' She could not make sense of her surging feelings, one instant wanting to kiss him and the next to rage. 'Why did you kill Uncle Hari? You promised him safety. You promised me you'd protect him.'

He shrugged off the question. 'The cloaks are all corrupted. It was necessary to save the Hundred.'

'Then kill me, too. If you think I'm a lilu, isn't it necessary? Didn't your mother think it was necessary to rid herself of a rival? Just be quick about it, so I don't suffer more than I have already. Tuvi has a sword, and he's holding your knife.'

'You are my knife, Mai. Even if you are a demon. So be it. I am

helpless before you. Or maybe the firelings fell in love with you as any man must love you, and have healed you and sent you back to me, where you belong. That's all that matters, isn't it? Now you are here.'

'Anjihosh-' said Tuvi.

'Give her the knife, Tuvi. If she wants to kill me, let her do it now.'

T don't want the knife!'

'What do you want, Mai?' He took her hand in his, turned it over, kissed her palm in a promise that made her flesh burn and her heart sing.

I want it to be what it was before.

'Papa! Papa!'

Anji let go of her hand. Out of the garden had come a procession, unseen and unheard until now. A lovely little child toddled forward on stout legs toward the porch, half ready to fall forward in his haste. Anji laughed and leaped down to the path to scoop up the toddler before the lad tumbled onto his face on the gravel. Tuvi made a sharp gesture, and the half-dozen persons halted dead still back by a hedge that screened the far porch from the eye of this one. There they waited obediently. All were women, drawing up cloth to cover their faces so Mai saw nothing but a distant glimpse of kohl-lined eyes and expensive silks in colors as garish as Anji's tunic.

Anji hopped back up on the porch, holding Atani with the ease of much practice. How sweet the baby was! How much he had grown! How dear and precious her beautiful boy had become! He was a darling, as sunny as day and with a brilliant chortling smile that vanished as soon as Mai extended her arms to take him. He flung himself against his father's shoulder to hide his face.

'He's shy,' said Anji. 'It's the age for it.'

'Won't he come to me?' She touched Atani's back tentatively, that sweet flesh like balm to her aching heart, but Atani glanced up and, shrieking, squirmed against his father, anything to get away from her.

She recoiled, gulping down tears.

'Mistress,' said Tuvi, his grimace one of sudden sympathy. 'He doesn't know you. It's been too long.'

T know,' she gasped.

That didn't make it hurt less.

One woman stepped away from the others, still holding cloth

across her face, but a gesture from Tuvi stopped her on the path, where she was too far away to really know what was going on. Anji's expression clouded. A frown splintered his joy, and the child sobbed once and was silent.

'That woman is pregnant,' said Mai.

'Yes.' He descended and kneeled on the path, setting down the boy and speaking softly into his ear, then patting him on the rump. 'Go to Mama,' he said, giving the child a swift, affectionate kiss on each plump cheek. 'Go now, Atanihosh. Hurry!'

The unfortunate stranger was forgotten. The boy set out with laughing determination. 'Mama! Mama!' he cried, trundling down the path with his arms outstretched toward the other woman.

'I have to sit down,' Mai whispered as her heart was ripped from her. It would have been better to be dead.

Tuvi reached for her, but Anji had already jumped back onto the porch and he caught her and held her as Atani was swept up into the arms of the woman he called 'Mama' and whisked away behind the hedge.

'Mai,' Anji whispered fiercely, holding her close, 'don't leave me. Stay here with me. Don't faint. I've got it all worked out.'

'Anjihosh,' objected the chief. 'Your mother-'

'She's got the treaty she wants. A grandson to raise. My wife will bear a child and we'll be fortunate if it is a girl. Why should I not take a second wife? I suppose it was inevitable. It was just too difficult to consider at the time, with the demons' army threatening the north. But now with the enemy army mostly hunted down and killed, there's no impediment-'

Mai shoved him off, slamming back into the wall, bracing herself against it. 'None? Not after your mother tried to kill me when I wouldn't agree to become your second wife? When I refused to step aside and let her rule over my household, the one I built and nurtured and fed? Knowing she set her agent on me, Anji, you think I'll expose myself to her again?'

He shook his head impatiently. 'Of course not. I can see it would be impossible for you to live under her suzerainty. But it is easy enough to set up another household, one that you hold authority over entirely. Some place close by, that a reeve can lift me to-'

'When you want sex? A second household? Close by? For your convenience? Do you expect me to agree to this?'

'The boy can visit you, Mai. I would bring him with me.'

'Visit? My son can live with me!' she cried, seeing the trap as it was sprung, the bait her hunger for her baby, as desperate as she was to hold her child against her breast.

'Ah,' he breathed. 'The boy.'

He glanced at Tuvi, at the eaves, at the hedge behind, and at the empty, silent garden. At his own hands. He wore her wolf's-head ring on his little finger, and it was this he stared at. She could practically see the thoughts chasing behind his eyes in currents and countercurrents, two rivers of desire colliding and mingling until, at last, his gaze hardened, even if the expression was tempered with regret.

'Neh. The boy belongs to her now. That was part of the agreement, that he believe she is his mother. It's the only way to ensure his safety. Surely, Mai, you can see that Atanihosh's survival must be our chief concern. A bitter price, but a necessary one. You and I will have other children. Many others, plum blossom.'

He reached to embrace her. She extended a hand, palm out, to stop him.

The future, a bolt of shimmering first-quality silk, unrolled before her. An elaborate compound furnished just as she wished, with painted screens and embroidered pillows and a spacious counting room for her mercantile business fitted with drawers and cubbies and writing desks, and that irritating Keshad as her chief accountant. She would insist on living in a town, or preferably a city like Toskala with a substantial market, whose streets and alleys and stalls she and Miravia could browse at their leisure. She would become a woman of means, using the coin she had herself earned, nothing gifted to her, and no doubt she could demand a position on the council which naturally no council would deny her. And Anji, for a day or a week or a month at a time, in her bed. His kisses and his warm embrace.

She enduring the cage for the sake of the boy, as Anji's mother had done all those years locked up in the women's palace within the emperor's palace in the Sirniakan Empire. All that she was, having meaning only because of the precious boy and a powerful man's desire for her.

'That's your offer,' she said, drawing down her market voice and her market face. 'Now here is my counteroffer.'

'Mai,' he said softly, with a soft smile that cut as sharply as steel, 'there is no counteroffer. There never was. Not since that day in Kartu's market.'

The thing about Sheyshi stabbing her is that it had anticipated the pain yet to come. This pain, severing flesh and bone and blood, she must absorb without letting any trace of it show on her face. She must lock it away now and only later let the agony tear through her.

'No.' She eased her hand away from his chest, not sure what she would do if he were to move in to kiss away her defenses, but the word was shield enough. His brows drew down; his gaze narrowed in that way it did when he felt thwarted. T will not be your second wife, and have my son call another woman "mother." I want my son back and to be your partner, as we were before.'

He laughed bitterly, his hand darting in to grasp strands of her hair that had fallen over her shoulder, to twist them between his fingers. 'Oh, Mai, however much I might wish it, it's impossible. We've crossed under the gate. There is no going back.'

She turned her head away, and he released her.

'This isn't about going back,' she said. 'But we can go forward on the path we were set on before. I had my business ventures, my warehouse. You were captain of Olossi's militia…'

She faltered.

He, who was now in all ways but in name the ruler of the Hundred. The Qin commander, accustomed to conquest.

To think she had mistaken him for the hero of the tale.

Flowers swayed as the wind danced through them. A high-pitched shriek of excitement rang: her child's voice. Then there was silence but for the rustling leaves and the mournful ripple of the awning. The unweighted corner of the map rose, as invisible fingers pried for secrets, and sagged down again.

Tuvi took her hand in his with the affection of an elderly uncle who has seen a great deal of the world and knows what to value. In his measured expression she saw the chief she had grown so very fond of. 'Mistress, he will treat you well. Be sure of that.'

'No.'

Tuvi's smile was like the last spark of the sun before darkness swallowed day, more farewell than comfort. 'A lilu would have said yes. If you leave now, Mistress, you can never return.'

'If she leaves?' cried Anji. 'She can't leave!'

The market was her territory. Here, she knew what to do. T have coin enough to pay you in full what you paid to my father.'

His was an anger chained and bound. 'You are not my slave. I

have never treated you as a slave. But you cannot leave, Mai. I will not allow you to go out into the world where some other man will claim you. Then I would have to kill him.'

'And me? Would you have to kill me?' she asked sadly. 'Neh, Tuvi-lo, stand aside, for it's better if I know the truth.' With a sigh Tuvi took a step away, leaving Anji to face her.

He wanted to touch her — she could see it in his posture, his hands, his expression — but he refrained. 'You know I could never harm you, plum blossom. I have never even raised my hand against you — except that one time. Mai, when I look at you I see all that is best in the world. Your beauty, your generosity, your intelligence, your honor. How can you expect me to step back and let that go?'

'Anji, there's something I must tell you.' Because there is always a counteroffer. 'When Sheyshi stabbed me, when I fell into the pool, I lay in a place which is caught between the life of the world and the Spirit Gate beyond. When I woke, I thought it was the same day, that only a few breaths had passed while I struggled to reach the surface. Do you understand me? Months passed for you, but for me — for my body — it was less than a pair of breaths.'

She had taken him off guard.'

'I'm pregnant, Anji.' She couldn't lie outright. But he was vulnerable, and so she must strike. She need only speak a name, and he would presume the rest. 'Joss.'

The veil ripped asunder. She had one glimpse of sheer brutal throat-choking fury.

'Tuvi, give me your sword.'

The chief coolly interposed his body between them. 'No, Captain. You'll regret it later.'

'Tuvi, give me your sword.' He wasn't a man to grab at things. He expected to be obeyed.

'No, Anjihosh.' Keeping his back to her, Tuvi said, 'Mistress, return by the way we came to the reeve hall and don't ever come back.'

'Tuvi, where are Priya and O'eki? Please tell them that I live, and that they should stay with Atani if they must, to care for him, but if they are at all unhappy, then they must-'

Til tell them. Go.'

She fumbled at and opened the door. Even then she thought perhaps Anji might call after her, might realize how ridiculous his suspicions were, might change his mind, might see a different

path, the one she wished for rather than the one he had chosen, but after all, he did not.