Traitors Gate

46

The night is dark, and the sky is hazy, and a campfire is burning like a friendly beacon, three figures seated companionably if forlornly within its fragile aura. Folk like to tell tales and sing around campfires, especially if they are seated at the edge of an abyss as threads of fire flicker like lightning across the stone ledge on which they rest.

'The brigands raged in,

they confronted the peaceful company seated at their dinner,

they demanded the girl be handed over to them.

All feared thenf. All looked away.

Except foolish Jothinin, light-minded Jothinin,

he was the only one who stood up to face them,

he was the only one who said, "No."'

'And then what happened?' a woman asked with a rough-timbred, sexy laugh just exactly like Marit's, the laugh of a woman who is not afraid to see the humor in just about anything because she's learned that's one way to make sense of life. T mean, truly what happened? Did you start talking on and on and on until-'

'Until they fled out of boredom? Until they expired for not having any air to breathe after I had used it all for my lengthy speech? No, indeed, that is not what happened, even if you think it must be. I'm deeply saddened and grievously wounded that you would even insinuate such a thing.'

Marit laughed again.

'In the tale,' said a third voice, 'you cry aloud about the injustice. You gather crowds, who listen, who gain courage. The bandits cut you down for they fear to hear you speak the truth. And then the people rise up in noble anger and drive them away, and the girl-' Here her raspy childish voice took on a shine of intensely smug contentment. ' — is saved and never troubled again.'

The man sighed lengthily and with much effort in drawing out

the exhalation to its last lingering wisp. 'Well, now, I wish I could say it transpired all so neatly as you say, Kirit, but in truth-'

'The hells!' Joss sat up. 'We're on a cursed Guardian's altar. We've broken the boundaries again-'

He tried to rub the haze out of his eyes, for there came Marit scrambling up from the fire and running toward him with a grin like a blaze of joy.

She dropped to her knees beside him. 'Joss. Do you know who I am?'

For answer, he embraced her and then, because her body crushed against his body felt so cursed good, just as it ought, he kissed her. Oh, the kissing was good. He'd never forgotten the taste of her, and the way she had of-

Memories cascaded so hard and fast that he broke away and clapped his hands to his head as if he had the headache that afflicted him when he was drinking too much. Only his head didn't hurt at all.

'Aui!' She laughed. 'That wasn't the greeting I was expecting. But I admit, it's the one I would have wished for.'

He lowered his hands 'You're dead, Marit. Twenty-one years dead. To think I could never let you go, for I tell you I missed you so badly and then would go on and on blaming myself for what wasn't truly my fault. Eiya! I'm remembering-' He pressed palms together, pinched himself, smoothed his hands down his thighs. He was wearing his reeve's leathers, although they were dusty in some spots and in others smeared with a stain that slid with an oily slime under his testing finger. 'I hesitate to say this, but I have an odd memory that you are a ghost pretending to be a Guardian haunting my gods-rotted dreams and that I was… I was…' Yet it was all haze, a smeary, oily confusion of arrows flying and men shouting and one man — could that be himself? — desperately trying to shield his beloved companion. What in the hells?

She grasped his hand in one of hers. A death white cloak shivered at her shoulders: a demon's cloak.

Neh, not a demon's cloak. That had been someone else's word for them. That had been Anji's word.

'Joss, there's no easy way to say this. You're dead. I don't know how you were killed. Or how long ago it happened. But Jothinin and Kirit and I found you, and we've done our best to help you awaken.'

'Awaken from what?'

'From death.'

'Marit, no one awakens from death. You pass through the Spirit Gate and cross to the other side.'

'Except for a few of us, a very few, who as it says in the tale must walk the lands to establish justice. If they can. A rather heavy "if" in days like these. Or in any days, I suppose.'

'You're talking about the Guardians.'

'I am. And you are. Because you've been — well — you've been claimed by a cloak, Joss. Jessed, if you will. Don't take this the wrong way, but the cloak that's wearing you is the one that used to belong to Lord Radas. Not that that means anything, mind you. It's not the cloak that corrupts the Guardian. I don't believe that. I think it's something inside the person that weakens and breaks, so just because you're wearing the cloak of Sun doesn't mean you'll become corrupted as he did.'

He felt its weight dragging like stone on his shoulders, and yet its power coursed through his body like a river's streaming current or the wind's blustery push or a flame's fiery snap. It draped over him, whispering against the stone on which he sat. An arrow was half hidden under the fabric. When he picked it up, it fit easily in his hand.

Across the ledge a glittering labyrinth flowered as if the arrow's touch on his skin had brought it to life: the maze that led to the altar and its hidden pool spread in patterns that winked and tempted. How easily he could walk it now! Those twists and turns ignited memories, banished the haze.

'Captain Anji killed me. Only he didn't really kill me. He didn't dare strike at me. That gods-rotted bastard. He had his soldiers kill-'

'Calm down, Joss. You're upsetting Scar. Here now, give me a kiss.' She tipped his chin up and kissed him lightly once, twice, thrice, until he laughed and, behind her, that cursed envoy of Ilu — what was he doing here? — spoke.

'Yet again we have proven women believe sex solves everything.'

'He was getting agitated!' retorted Marit, but she sat back on her heels and smiled in a way that made Joss's ears — and more — burn. 'The hells, Joss. Not that you weren't a pleasant armful before, but you were just not this cursed handsome when you were young. What happened to you?'

He was working back through her words, spinning the arrow

once around slowly. 'What do you mean? I'm upsetting a scar?'

'Ah.' She rose, walked back to the fire, and poured liquid from a leather bottle into a cup. Beyond her, three horses stood close together, heads and necks drooping, one with a hind hoof tipped up on the toe. A feathery bulk sprouted from their shoulders and folded back along their flanks all the way to their croups.

'Those are winged horses,' he said indignantly as she returned.

'Drink this.'

It was a tart cordial, just the way he liked it, with real bite. And he was cursed thirsty all of a sudden. But he set down the cup.

'Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that I'm awake, and not dreaming or plowing my way through some manner of drunken stupor. Let's just say those are three winged horses. Let's say I'm wearing a Guardian's cloak, for I'm certainly wearing something like it. And that this arrow in my hand is somehow connected to the cloak of Sun. Let's say that you and these two individuals are also Guardians. I can't believe I just said all that.'

Now he did knock back the cordial, and it seared his throat and made his eyes water in a most satisfactory way.

'Do you remember what Marshal Alard used to say, Marit? If you have to choose between what seems the most reasonable explanation, and what the cold, hard evidence reveals-'

'Go with the evidence,' she finished.

'There you stand, wearing the cloak of Death. Him, the cloak of Sky, I suppose. And her-' The firelight must have been playing tricks on him, for she looked like a ghost, not like a person. 'My apologies, verea. We've never met.'

Marit tugged him up, biting her lower lip in that way she did with her eyes so inviting. She chuckled as he flushed. Eihi! Now he remembered what he had been doing not long before he'd died, and it hadn't been with Marit but rather with that gods-rotted magnificent hierodule Zubaidit, and it had been cursed energetic and tremendously wild and hot and-

'What are you thinking about?' she demanded, really laughing now. 'Neh. Never mind. For I'm pretty sure I don't want to know. And now, thank the Lady, I don't have to.' She led him by the hand over to the fire, where she introduced him to Jothinin and Kirit. The girl was a cursed odd-looking person, an outlander, ghastly pale with almost colorless eyes and hair like straw. Fortunately, she was quite young, likely not more than sixteen or

eighteen, and treated him with the reserved deference due to an uncle never before met.

They had a nicely spiced porridge and several ripe sunfruit and mangoes, not that he was particularly hungry, and more of that wonderfully tart cordial. He had a curious idea that he didn't actually need to eat, but the act was comforting, and the food was tasty, and he had anyhow lived all his life eating in company. It would have seemed strange not to do so now.

Jothinin was a talker, just like the foolish Jothinin in the tale, but he had a pleasant voice and a great many entertaining tales to tell, many of which were a joke on himself. But at length even he fell silent as the fire sparked and popped, and Kirit, its keeper, gifted more wood to its flames.

'So let's say it's true, that I'm a Guardian,' said Joss. 'What does that mean? For here are four of us. Anji has the other five cloaks. He's bound them with chains into chests and I'm pretty sure he means to hold them. I admit, seeing what happened with Radas and Night, it's not entirely surprising Anji believes the cloaks dangerous and corrupting.' Yet when he pulled the fabric of his Sun cloak through a hand, he felt no shadow, no dark seam cracking wide to eat out his heart and turn him into a lilu. Not that he couldn't crack. Not that every person wasn't vulnerable in some way. But it wasn't inevitable, as Anji had claimed.

'We weren't sure what happened to the other cloaks. But we're the ones responsible. For we — Jothinin and Kirit and I — told him what he needed to know to kill Guardians.'

Kirit said, 'But the bad ones are gone now. Isn't it better they're gone?'

'So there we lie, between the sea and the shore, just like in the tale.' Marit turned to Joss. 'What if it is better that they're gone? It seems the Hundred is settling into peace again. Folk can labor and live without the fear they had before. Because the outlander rules with his army. They rule the roads, the gates, the assizes, the markets. You see where I'm going with this. He's not a cruel master. Life prospers. The crops are good. The roads are safe. Children sleep in peace. But we daren't get close. His soldiers and his reeves are hunting us. Hunting Guardians. Now that he knows he can kill us, he means to rid the Hundred of Guardians. And what if he's right to do so? Who among us is free from the threat of corruption?'

Jothinin scratched his head. Kirit stared into the gulf of air, as if the night held answers.

'No one is,' Joss answered. 'Not us. Not Anji. Not any man or woman. What are you all looking at me like that for? It wasn't that cursed wise a comment.'

Kirit's eyes had gone wide and she shrank down as if to curl herself into a ball. Jothinin shifted to place himself between the girl and the fire. Marit rose as the ground made an odd shushing sound behind him and a light tremor vibrated up through the stone into Joss's body. The horses woke, and one — two — three they spread their fine bright wings and galloped off the cursed ledge and into the night.

'Why are there only three horses, if there are four of us?' he asked.

'Aui! That was the other shock, the one we've been waiting to drop on you. Just stand slowly, and turn around.'

He obeyed her, for he felt an odd monstrous presence looming behind him like the charged breath of a late season storm prickling his neck.

'No one truly understands the bond between eagle and reeve, what invisible leash jesses one to the other. We guessed you must have died because your eagle died. For I am cursed sure living eagles don't fly at night and seek out Guardian altars, not as this one does.'

The old raptor lowered his head to Joss's level, an uncanny glamour in those huge depthless eyes.

'How can this be?' Joss asked, as Scar offered a series of chirps in greeting.

'In a way,' said Marit, 'you died together.'

Joss was left to wonder if it was he, or Scar, who had died fighting for justice. Or maybe after all it was the two of them in partnership, just as it had always been.

When a pregnant widow and her household move into town, the event is certain to be talked about for days. When the widow is young and beautiful, the gossip will spread across weeks. And when she opens her own emporium that competes successfully with local warehouses and merchants who have lived for generations in the bustling port of Salya on Messalia Bay, then it is likely that rumor will mildew into the kind of antipathy that flourishes for months in shadowed corners and uncleaned cupboards.

And yet, stage by stage, week by week, month by month, it did not.

Mistress Karanna, the head of Seven Cups clan, was won over when the young widow advised her on the quality of silks and which hues were more appropriate to her particular complexion and personality. Master Dessottin of Merling's Gift clan discovered that the widow's married sister — not that anyone believed they were actually sisters — not only shared his obsessive interest in plant lore but actually knew how to play an obscure game of counters called 'emperors and warriors' which he had long studied in equally obscure texts first encountered when he'd served his apprenticeship as a clerk of Sapanasu; that she beat him more often than not did not lessen his enjoyment of the matches. His influence brought round several local clans, one of which was doubly charmed when the married sister specifically requested a formidable aunt to attend the birth of her daughter because of the aunt's long experience in midwifery.

The farmers and artisans and laborers appreciated the widow's fair prices and willingness to dicker at length and to trade in kind, if that was all they had to offer. A few hired daughters and sons into her household, where they were fairly treated and well paid, although there were a few complaints about the widow's clerk, who had such an exacting eye for detail that he spared little patience for people who made even trivial mistakes.

The local secretive Ri Amarah household, after substantial initial resistance, made some manner of deal regarding import of certain hard-to-acquire precious oils. And when the Four Petals clan began to simmer with resentment, seeing their trade in oil cut into, the widow befriended their unmarriagable eldest daughter and within two months had helped them open up a promising negotiation with an upcountry sheepherder's clan that included the promise of an expansion of the wool trade.

Even the horribly crippled and notoriously solitary marshal of Bronze Hall began to fly in once a week with certain of his senior reeves to take tea on her spacious porch right out in public view, the only place in her compound she ever met with men.

So when after the course of seven moons the widow gave birth

to a healthy baby girl, only two important holdouts remained: a branch of the White Leaf clan out of Arash, who were in any case only third-generation local with therefore the usual insecurities of newcomers, and the hieros at the local temple of Ushara.

The White Leaf clan was dispatched with a ruthlessness that had the town laughing for days: she simply asked the old widower, whose temper was infamous, to stand with Bronze Hall's marshal and a senior reeve named Peddonon as one of the uncles over the delicate newborn, whom the cranky old man certainly must hold. Wasn't she precious and darling even with her unmistakably out-lander features? Who could say no to such a request, coming as it did from a young woman so very lovely who no longer, alas, possessed the extended family with which to comfort and influence the baby?

Three months passed. She made a thanksgiving offering at each of the temples, and laid flowers on Hasibal's stone together with prayers no one had heard before. But she did not make the traditional procession to the Devourer's temple. She never went there at all. The young man who assisted the head gardener got drunk one night and told a friend, who told a friend, who told her cousins, that he had once overheard the mistress say there were spies in the temple keeping an eye on her, which was a very odd sort of thing to say even for a beautiful and mysterious young widow with an air of tragedy cloaking her like first-quality silk.

Or so folk whispered, until the day the Qin soldiers rode into town.

It was clear she had been warned ahead of time, likely by the Bronze Hall reeves, because she appeared midmorning on her porch dressed in a rainwater-blue taloos of such exceptional silk that a girl passing by on the street actually went running to Seven Cups clan to fetch Mistress Karanna so she could see it for herself.

But Karanna no more dared approach than did anyone else when a cohort of black-clad soldiers — the very black wolves who, it was said, ruthlessly hunted down criminals and kept the peace in the Hundred, not that they'd seen any such soldiers down here in the isolated and peaceful backwater of Mar — rode into town, their horses filling the streets and their blank expressions frightening children. About a third of them were outlanders, solemn as herons, so easy astride their horses they might have been born in the saddle.

The commander at the head of the procession was also an out-lander. He was magnificently dressed in a knee-length silk jacket

sewn from silk of such a surpassingly delicate green, like sea foam under the evening sky, that Mistress Karanna actually wept. Or maybe she wept because he and all the soldiers were armed, and with his sword swinging at his side he climbed right up onto the porch as if no one could stop him from doing so, which no one could.

The widow made no courtesy, nor did she cower. She greeted him coolly, and anyone with eyes could see they knew each other.

This was not to be a happy meeting.

At first it seemed the point of contention was the baby, and that was a wonder, indeed, for anyone who had seen the infant — and most everyone in town had peeped into the emporium or porch over the last three months to take a look — must instantly recognize that the tiny face bore some resemblance to that of the Qin soldiers. Was her nose destined to grow to something like his? An unfortunate fate for a girl, perhaps, but when the widow allowed him to hold the child and examine it, which he did very carefully, one might begin to suspect she was not, after all, a widow. That he might in fact be the father of the precious darling. That the point of contention was not the child, although clearly there was something about the child which mattered deeply to him, but the woman herself.

Anyone with eyes or ears could see what kind of tale this was. Every variation on this song has been sung down the years. She retreats; he pursues. He desires; she refuses. A slave buys herself free, but the master cannot bear to let her go.

What then?

The siege lasted one full month.

He was a persuasive and extremely powerful man, a reasonable, intelligent man, who consulted with councils from villages and towns all over Mar, presided over assizes, and discussed certain efficiencies of reorganization that were proving successful in other regions of the Hundred. He examined the local varieties of wool and rice, seven times rode out hunting with local men, and once took a canoe to Bronze Hall to meet with its recalcitrant marshal, an expedition he did not repeat. All that besides the mornings or afternoons he spent dandling the baby while courting the woman, although it was noted that she never actually invited him to visit nor was he ever, for even one instant, alone with her behind closed doors.

By the end of the month many of the locals had come to

cordially loathe his well-behaved and standoffish soldiers especially as dozens of local youths began to wear their hair up in topknots and certain local girls got over their shyness enough to flirt with an enthusiasm that their disgusted elders put down to the novelty of the soldiers and the heavy strings of coin they had to spread around. One Qin tailman fell so desperately in love with a chance-met local girl that he persuaded her to ride away with him when, at last, the commander had to admit defeat and leave. He had other regions to oversee, other councils to consult with, other assizes to administer.

'Other wives,' the married sister was overheard to say tartly to her husband, 'to impregnate.'

The next day the hieros packed up and left with a dozen of her hierodules and kalos.

One month later a new and quite young hieros sauntered into town in company with a pair of middle-aged outlanders and their wagon.

'Do you think he'll come back, Priya?' Mai asked three days later as they sat on pillows and sipped tea on the porch. Dusk hovered but hadn't yet fallen. 'I don't know if I could bear to go through that again. Do you know how badly I wanted to have sex with him?'

'Why didn't you?' asked Priya. The baby was asleep on her lap, snoring softly with a bit of congestion, feet and hands twitching with baby dreams.

Mai reached across the table to touch her hand. 'Do you know, Priya, it wasn't until I came here that I realized that when I was Anji's wife, I was always under guard. Did you and O'eki choose a house yet? Maybe that cottage by the lake you were talking about? It was very, ah, scenic'

Priya laughed. 'You are not a country girl, are you? Anyhow, there were too many mosks. We were thinking of something in town. There's a tiny compound just down this street and around the corner.'

'I know the one! Perfectly respectable. Although it has no porch as fine as this one.'

This porch wrapped the main house, which was set at exactly the right height and position to command a spectacular view over the bay, whose sunset-gilded waters were darkening fast as twilight rushed over them. A pleasant breeze blew up from the shore. The port-side neighborhoods down at the strand were lively as the night market set up, but here compounds were settling in for the night, a

few people hurrying home with lantern in hand. Their street was empty except for a dog purposefully trotting along, as if leashed by someone they could not see. The dog loped out of sight. Song drifted up from the streets below.

Inside, Miravia shrieked with laughter, and Keshad swore angrily and, evidently, stomped out of the room.

'The poor lad is jealous because Miravia gets along so well with his sister,' remarked Priya as Miravia and Zubaidit began giggling. 'Imagine what it must be like to struggle for so long against seemingly insurmountable obstacles only to get exactly what you want.'

'Ah.' Mai shut her eyes.

'Oh, Mai, what a foolish thing for me to say.'

'Neh, never mind it.' She opened her eyes and drained her cup. 'See. No tears. Anyway, Kesh didn't exactly get everything as he wished it. Zubaidit still serves the temple.'

'I would say she serves the goddess. It may not be exactly the same thing. For I would call it very interesting indeed that she — of all people — has corne here — of all places — just now — of all times.'

Mai lifted the pot. 'She told me she requested service at this temple so she could be near her brother. More tea, Priya?' She poured gracefully and lifted the lid to see how much was left and, after consideration, decided to let it be as it was. 'I'm so glad you've come, and come to stay. Yet I think of Atani, left alone there.'

'He's well taken care of. The women spoil him. Commander Anji loves the boy, Mai.'

She watched the face of her sleeping daughter wistfully. 'That will have to be enough, won't it?'

A rowdy group of twenty or thirty reeves surged into view, singing raucously but in remarkable harmony.

'Mai!' Peddonon stumbled on the lower step as he leaped onto the porch. 'The hells! My knee!'

'You're drunk.'

The baby, startled, woke and began to bawl lustily.

'I beg you, verea, let her uncle take her! She's crying because she misses me!'

Peddonon swept her out of Priya's lap and began to dance and sing along the porch as Mai winced, hoping he wouldn't topple off the edge, but in fact he wasn't drunk at all; he was just pretending as reeves tramped onto the porch and made a great deal of noise with a great swirl of currents during which Priya recovered the baby and Miravia brought out cordial and a tray of cups and

Peddonon caught Mai's arm within the concealment of all the commotion and pulled her back through the house to the quiet courtyard and garden that, in the Mar style, ran the length of the back of the house.

'How a prim Ri Amarah woman like Miravia came to develop such a crude sense of humor I will never figure,' said Zubaidit, stepping out of the shadows under a towering paradom bush.

Mai yelped, both hands slapped to her breast. 'Eihi! You startled me, sneaking up like that.'

'I like that rat screen in the public room,' added Zubaidit, 'but I feel I have seen it before.'

'I used to own it, but it was sold away. I tracked it down specially and had it carted here.'

'In fact,' said Peddonon, 'I had it wrapped in layers of canvas and flew it here. You were terrible gloomy, Mai. A man would weep to see it. We had to do something to lighten you. My wise grandmother always said that a sad woman gives birth to a fussy baby'

She stretched on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. 'You're a terrible good man. Now why have you two sneaked me out here?'

'To admire your plantings.' Zubaidit drew Mai into the heart of the garden in all its evening solemnity, although the reeves' chatter, laughter, and song rose overhead like so much heady wine. 'Is that muzz? Proudhorn? Musk vine? Stardrops! You'd think you were planting a Devourer's garden here, Mai. Or thinking of one, anyway.'

She flushed. 'I like their scents. You know what my situation is.'

'Well,' said Zubaidit with a shrug, 'he only specified men, didn't he? You're always welcome at Ushara's temple, whatever you choose. He'll hear nothing from me.' She removed her hand as they reached the long, open stretch where dirt had been marked with flags and ribbons tied to and between sticks for the digging of an ornamental pool, meant to commence two months ago but suspended because of the siege. 'Look there, Mai.'

Three figures waited at the end of the garden, discernible by the glamour woven into the cloaks they wore.

Mai halted as her hands clenched. 'Have you betrayed me?' she whispered.

'The hells!' Peddonon turned on the hieros. 'I told you this was a bad idea to spring it on her without warning.'

'There!' Zubaidit looked skyward.

A shadow covered the stars. A vast weight thumped down

right in the middle of the open ground, crushing the carefully sur-veyed flags and ribbons. It was, Merciful One protect her, an eagle, even though she was sure eagles didn't fly at night. A lithe figure unhooked, dropped, and strolled forward, grinning.

'Greetings of the dusk, you cursed show-off,' cried Peddonon, rushing forward. But he pulled up short before, tentatively, reaching out to grasp arms with the man as the others came forward.

Four Guardians. The last of their kind.

She recognized the envoy of Ilu leaning on his walking staff; his cheerful smile coaxed an answering smile from her even as he was careful not to look too hard into her face. She shied away from the girl who wore the face and body of the slave Cornflower, who had killed Uncle Girish, three Qin soldiers, and, if the stories were true, an entire cadre of the enemy; a mirror hung from the girl's belt, an incongruity against her rough traveler's clothing.

It was the Guardian reeve's identity that shocked her. 'Joss? I thought you were dead! I would never have said-'

He released Peddonon and grasped her hand as much to hold her off from the lamp-like shimmer of the cloak that swathed him. 'You would never have said what?'

He looked into her face, raised to his.

'The hells! You told Anji whatV

'I didn't say so, I just let him assume you might be the father-'

'The hells!'

'It was the only way to get Anji to release me. It was just an idea I had, that you were the only man he really feared.'

'Because he thought you would have wanted to sleep with me?' He clipped off the words, broke off the contact, smiled glancingly and heartbreakingly at Zubaidit, and turned to the woman wearing a death-white cloak as she walked up beside him, a sword sheathed at her side. 'This is Mark.'

Zubaidit said nothing, her gaze fixed on the shadowy net of an arbor of patience, still so young and sparse that its characteristic falls weren't yet long enough to dangle over the horizontal posts. She might have been smiling, but it was difficult to tell under evening's cloak.

'Well, this is more awkward than I had realized it would be,' said Peddonon. 'Do I babble to smooth over the unexpected undertow, or do we move straight to business? Straight to business it is, then. You may wonder, Mai, what brings us here tonight, or how it comes that four Guardians are walking in your garden.'

'No,' said Mai, taking his hand and smiling when he squeezed back, the pressure of his fingers warm and comforting. 'I am honored to welcome four holy Guardians into my courtyard. Joss surprises me, and while it pleases me and heartens me to see him, I have to say, beautiful Ox you may be, but I think you're a little old for me.'

Joss laughed, and Peddonon relaxed, and the woman called Marit smiled. Zubaidit bent her head and brushed at an eye as though flicking away a gnat.

'I'm surprised all four travel together, as vulnerable as they must be now anywhere they could be boxed in, trapped, and cut down. The black wolves are hunting you.'

'We know,' said Joss, rubbing his left shoulder. 'We've made a few tactical errors. We've spent months searching out people we can trust.'

'Like Peddonon and Zubaidit,' she agreed. 'Who in the end must have led you here. I expected one or more Guardians might eventually track me down to find out if I knew what Anji had done with the cloaks he took off the other five.'

'He told you?' Joss demanded.

'Neh. He did not tell me. He could not, considering the first cloak he killed was my beloved Uncle Hari, who trusted him only because I had assured him that Anji could be trusted.'

'We tracked the commander's movements eventually to Merciful Valley, but it's under heavy guard.'

T told you not to rush in,' observed Marit with a tone of amused if critical intimacy that made Zubaidit wince and Mai suddenly wonder if Joss and Marit were lovers. Surely this could not be the very murdered reeve his heart had pined for all those years?

'It is,' said Joss wryly, and Mai jerked her gaze away, realizing she had been staring at him.

He's tethered to one post, Anji had said scornfully when they had first heard the tale from Joss. Hu! And look how things had turned out for Anji, riding all the way across the Hundred to try to get her back.

Maybe the breeze shifted. Maybe the singing changed cadence, or one of the budding night candles opened to release its heart-easing scent. The night was still dark, but her mood unaccountably lightened. She had a life yet before her, and with the grace of the Merciful One it might be a long life. There were a hells lot of things you could do with a long life.

'Yes,' she agreed. 'It would make sense that Merciful Valley is heavily guarded. There are five chains hammered into stone just beneath the rim of the pool, under water. At the end of each chain, in the depths of the pool, lies a small jeweler's chest, wrapped in chains. It's easier to throw them in than to drag them out. During the season when the firelings are birthing, or if the ancient ones are wakened, the water burns you. But the rest of the time, it's just water.

'I admit, I love my silks, and such clasps and hairpins and other ornaments that go with them. When I was stabbed, no one thought to clean out my garments and such trivialities as I had brought with me to the valley. My things were just shoved into a cupboard and forgotten, as some of my clothes chests were forgotten in the compound in Astafero. So it was possible for me, with Miravia's help, to drag five small chests up from the deeps and hide them in one large chest, and toss five objects down into the depths in their place.

'I asked myself, if Anji truly wanted to rid the Hundred of the Guardians, why riot throw the chests into the pool without a chain? Why not sail them out onto the ocean and dump them overboard weighted with rocks so no one could ever hope to retrieve them? Because he would never take the chance that they might not serve him as weapons later. Yes, I know where the cloaks are. They're right here, in my house.'

A burst of laughter rose from the porch, and there was whooping and stomping in appreciation of some doubtless crude jest. But in the garden, it was silent.

Finally, Joss whistled softly.

'And an outlander will save them,' he said with a smile so charming and bright and handsome she was glad he was too old for her because she might otherwise have been tempted.

'Zubaidit,' she said softly, 'come with me?'

They went inside to the dark house. Mai paused, after she'd slipped off her sandals, to light a lamp with which she illuminated their progress down a corridor to her private rooms.

'Are you crying, Zubaidit?' she asked as she slid the door aside. Priya was sitting comfortably beside the baby's cot in the darkness, and she nodded but did not leave the baby as the two women quietly walked past her and into a narrow storeroom with closed cupboards and shelves stacked with bolts of silk.

'A little.' Swallowed tears made Zubaidit's voice hoarse. 'It was cursed good sex, I have to tell you, not that you really want to

know, and it hurts to know that was the one and only time. He's a holy Guardian now. You can see he loves her. But I swore my oath to the goddess years ago. I know my path.'

'Well,' said Mai, 'I'm sorry. Or not sorry. However you wish it.' She kissed the other woman's cheek before turning to the second cupboard and opening it.

She had hidden the chests in plain sight, stacked among her other chests and fripperies. Easy to pull out, they had so little weight she could stack three in Zubaidit's arms and easily carry the other two. Such a small thing, to mean so much.

Peddonon and Joss were deep into a serious conversation, heads down, not touching but standing close together as Peddonon sounded irritated and Joss regretful, when Mai and Zubaidit returned. The men broke off as the women set the chests down on the ground. Mai went into the garden shed and returned with a wedge and a big hammer, which she handed to Peddonon.

He bit his lip. Then, with a set of neat blows, he shattered the locks. They watched her unwrap the chains and, one by one, open the chests.

Uncle Hari's cloak was first. She hadn't meant it that way, but it seemed appropriate. There was something unsettling in the way they slithered and twisted out of their cages, and yet their flare and flash caught at her heart like banners rumbling in a bright joyful wind. Twilight-sky; blood-red; earth-brown; seedling-green. Last rose night, sewn with stars fallen deep within a cradle of black, its corner brushing her hand with a shiver of memory. It's the ones who can't let go — of fear or anger, lust or greed, vanity or pride or power — who are most at risk of becoming corrupted.

Then they were gone, vanished into the darkness.

On their wings the Guardians took their leave. They were no longer truly part of that world where fussy babies slumber restlessly, and reeves sing bawdy tales on the porch, and a young woman contemplates her future, which after all looks like a series of gates, one after the next and no two alike. Hard to say what lies beyond each threshold.

We must be ready for anything.