Traitors Gate

PART THREE
Demands
9

Twenty-five days ago, Mai had taken refuge in a valley entirely wild, its soil untrammeled by human feet and its bounty unhar-vested by human hands, a place so high and isolated in the mountains it could only be reached only by eagles. Here, in a cave behind a waterfall, she had given birth to a son.

At dawn on the day called Resting Ibex, Atani's hungry fussing woke her. She nursed him from the comfort of her sleeping mat. She slept under a framework of poles raised two steps off the earth with canvas hung for walls and roof. A second structure housed the reeves and hirelings and guards brought in to assure the baby's comfort and safety. Their stores of rice and grain rested in a storehouse raised on stilts.

After Atani's demands were satisfied, she tucked the infant in a sling, slipped into her sandals, and stepped out. Sprawling jabi bushes fenced in the clearing; the stream burbling down from the waterfall higher up in the vale chased into the trees beyond. She greeted the sentries and, with them pacing behind her, followed a track downstream beside trees whose branches drooped, so heavily laden were they with sunfruit and mamey and mango.

The mountain escarpment rose on three sides, all bold peaks and daring angles. On the fourth side, the stream that welled out of the sacred pool upstream spilled over a rocky ledge at the edge of a mighty cliff overlooking a wilderness of rugged foothills. In the right light at the right time of day, rainbows glittered in the spray below, and if the last gasping breath of a high-mountain storm sprinkled out of the Spires from the heights behind you, you might see rainbows above and below.

Surely the Merciful One favored this place. From this vista a person might hope to see into the future, or recall the past.

How long ago had Mai been carried away from her family and childhood in Kartu Town by the Qin captain and his troop? One year? Two? It seemed like half her life ago. Far more had happened to her in that short span of time than in the seventeen years previous: she had been married off to a man she did not know, had embarked on a long overland journey, had sealed a merchant's bargain on which her life and fortune and that of many

others depended, had made a dear friend, had supervised the building and expansion of a settlement, had survived battles and assassins, and borne her first child.

'Mistress?'

She turned. 'Greetings of the day, Priya. I'm coming.'

Together, she and her attendants walked back to the clearing and onward up a path twisting through the foliage toward the heights. Mai carried whatever small offering took her fancy. This morning she plucked a bouquet of red-and-yellow fall-of-joy with its swoony scent. Each morning more attendants followed, most no doubt out of curiosity, some in the hope of currying favor, and a few with perhaps a bud of faith. Even Sheyshi accompanied them, although poor Sheyshi could still barely recite the most basic of prayers, stumbling over the same words every time.

Not that the Merciful One was a jealous or critical god, demanding fearful obedience or exacting perfection. Far from it! The Merciful One was a pilgrim who had wandered far from home, finding a resting place wherever folk raised an altar. The procession — fully eighteen people today including all six off-duty Qin guardsmen as well as the three on-duty ones — climbed to the rocky clearing around the pool. The waterfall boomed, which meant rains had fallen higher up in the Spires beyond sight and sound of the valley. The churning waters hid movement beneath the foam, but she never quite glimpsed an actual living creature swimming there.

She led the way through low walls that marked an ancient ruin. The walls had once entirely rimmed the pool, but now they were as broken and worn as the teeth of an elder. They entered the cave in single file along a ledge, cliff wall on the right and the waterfall's curtain on the left.

Two lamps burned within the cave. A slab had been set across the birthing stones where Mai had labored to create a humble altar covered with a red cloth. Here she laid today's offering of flowers as Priya intoned the first prayers.

' " The Merciful One is my lamp and my refuge."'

The others settled, the most interested kneeling at the front behind Sheyshi, the merely curious to the back. Four had not come in at all, loitering in the ruins beside the pool hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious creature that lived within what all now called 'the birthing pool' in honor of Atani.

Yet as Priya chanted the Three Refuges, the Four Undertakings,

and the Five Rewards, as Mai repeated the responses and joined in where she knew the longer threads, she tasted an iron tang on her lips and felt the tingling in her bones that betrayed the presence of unseen others. The lamps burned, flames hissing softly, but she did not need oil's light to see within the cave's dim enclosure. Threads glittered along the ceiling of the cave. This morning, twenty-five days since she had given birth, less than a full month according to the calendar of Sapanasu but a full turn of the moon, fewer threads netted the ceiling than had been there yesterday, or the day before. That these threads were themselves living creatures she did not doubt. She had felt their touch while in the throes of labor; their net of light had clothed her when she was naked. When she entered the precinct of the sacred pool now, she still heard an echo of voices whose speech — if it was speech — she did not comprehend.

She did not fear them, nor did they fear her.

' " Merciful One, your wisdom is boundless. Excuse me for the transgressions I have made through thoughtlessness, through neglect, through fear."'

Human voices whispered, their changed timbre causing her to turn. Did the glimmering threads brighten? Or was it only her own heart and eyes that caught fire as Anji ducked into the cave? He kneeled at the back of the group, asking for no special precedence; he bowed his head in the same manner as everyone else.

'" May the rains come at the proper time. May the harvest be abundant. May the world prosper, and justice be served. Accept my prayers out of compassion. Peace."'

Priya's attention never wavered from the altar, but as soon as she finished, she efficiently herded the others out of the cave, leaving Mai and the baby alone with Anji. Mai rose. While once she might have grasped for Anji immediately, seeking solace, protection, strength, and reassurance, now she waited, watching him.

'Well, Mai,' he said with that slight upward twist of the lips that signified his satisfaction. 'You are looking more beautiful even than before. By all reports — which I naturally have been receiving daily — the child remains healthy.' He glanced up at the threads gleaming on the ceiling, and a frown bruised his expression so briefly that in the instant after it cleared she thought she must have imagined it. 'Let's go outside.'

'It's been a full turn of the moon since I gave birth. I admit, I

was expecting you to arrive yesterday or today. Yet I had hoped for a more private reunion.'

His answering smile was sharp with desire; she felt it in her own flesh; maybe the air sang it. The baby stirred.

'Patience, Mai.' He grasped her wrist as his gaze swept along the ceiling with the look of a man deciding whether or not to commit his troops to battle. 'Not here. This valley puzzles me, and I don't like puzzles. I've come to take you home.'

'Back to the Barrens?' She sighed, thinking of how much dried fish she had eaten in the settlement in the Barrens. Atani woke with an exploratory mewl of discomfort. 'Am I going to be exiled to the Barrens forever?'

After all, he was teasing her. 'Home to Olossi.'

He was so close!

After a full turn of the moon, it was no longer forbidden. She could not resist.

She kissed him, and he caught her close, and they forgot to say the formal words in which the father greets the mother of his child and the child itself, who have survived for a full turn of the month without demons finding and devouring spirits made vulnerable by the precious and difficult passage known as birth.

He let her go and stepped back. 'Hu! This is not the place!' He wiped his brow. 'I have been considering the situation. As we have seen, the red hounds can track me anywhere. So it is better to accept the risk and attack in its turn that which we can alter. I'm making changes in how traffic is secured on the roads. Folk can still cross wilderness on deer tracks — we'll never be able to stop that — but we can place controls on the roads and gates that will alert us to anyone who does not belong.'

'Even so, we can never know what lies inside a man's mind,' she said. 'People can be bought, or coerced to act at another's command. And we never know until it's too late.'

'It's said the Guardians of old could know what secrets lay hidden inside a mind.' He scratched at his jaw thoughtfully. 'Such Guardians would be valuable allies.'

'Until they saw into your thoughts! I haven't forgotten the ghost girl who took the form of Cornflower and killed those soldiers! When she looked at me, it was like she tore my heart out!'

'Demons are a different matter. They must be killed.' He touched Atani's coarse black hair. 'Let's go outside. I'd like to look at the baby, where I can see him properly.'

The change in his voice stiffened her shoulders. He walked out, and she followed. The sun had risen high enough to flood the open area with its light. Only Qin soldiers remained in the clearing; Priya and Sheyshi had gone down with the others. Chief Tuvi hastened over as Mai lifted the baby out of the sling and presented him to his father with the words traditional in Kartu Town.

'Here is your son. Son of your seed, son of your blood, son of your bone. Let the ancestors favor him and strengthen him. Let him bring honor to your name.'

The baby's black eyes were open, and he stared gravely at his father, making no sound. Anji took him from Mai as Tuvi waited beside her. Anji's personal guards, Sengel and Toughid, and other senior soldiers filed up behind. Anji placed the baby on a smooth stretch of wall and began to unwrap the swaddling. He glanced up at Mai, who felt unaccountably nervous. What if the baby was not perfect? He was so silent, rarely crying, often sleeping. He was so small! Tuvi set a hand on her shoulder, grasping firmly as if to hold her still.

'Mai,' Anji said. 'I've news from the north. Shai is alive.'

Her legs gave way. She groped for a place to seat herself. As Anji laid bare the infant and examined him, head, genitals, torso, and limbs, she wept.

'A healthy boy,' said Chief Tuvi.

Only after all the senior men had admired the naked baby, nodded their agreement, and offered polite blessings to the mother did Tuvi remove his hand from her shoulder.

Twenty novice reeves were detailed to fly her retinue out of the valley. They could have flown all the way to the settlement, but for the last mey of the journey, Anji insisted they mount well-groomed horses ornamented with ribbons and silver-studded harness and ride in ranks appropriate to the occasion.

It was how the Qin did things.

At the gates, they were greeted with song punctuated by rhythmic clapping, for that was what folk did in the Hundred.

'Enter, enter, we welcome you.

That you walk here is like flowers blooming.'

The Qin soldiers had prepared a feast surely offered only to a prince among the Qin. Vats full of sheep's-head soup bubbled

over massive hearths. There was plenty of rice and nai, but also special wheat cakes made in squares, sweetened curds, and a fermented milk so strong it made your eyes water. Mai and Anji sat on pillows on the porch of their house with the baby displayed in a cot between them, festively decked out in a gold cap and a red sash. First the senior Qin soldiers — and their wives, if they had them — and then the middle rank of Qin soldiers — with their wives, if they had them — and finally the lowest rank of Qin soldiers and the tailmen and the grooms — with their wives, if they had them — approached the porch and spoke rote greetings to the newborn and offered fealty to father and son and honored mother.

Afterward, the townsfolk brought the local customary gifts of nuts, fruits, and sweets.

'I feel a little uneasy,' Mai whispered as she leaned into Anji's shoulder, savoring the feel of the length of his arm along her own. 'I remember how our last festival turned out.'

'We slaughtered every one of the red hounds who attacked the settlement that day.' Anji shifted away from her, not liking to touch in public.

'Surely there are red hounds — spies — in hiding.' Mai scanned the crowd, seeing only faces smiling with approval and excitement.

'We scoured the settlement.' From the porch of the captain's house at the crest of the hill, you could see down over the settlement, past the half-built wall, and all the way over the parade ground to the fan of darker earth where an underground channel, still being constructed, would bring rainwater down from the mountains. He indicated an untidy sprawl of tents and shacks raised away from the settlement on dry ground; it had grown up in the twenty-five days she had been away. 'Now we admit through the gates only those who have a license for trade granted by the clerks of Sapasanu.'

'I'm not a coward, Anji. But you must admit it was frightening when the red hounds rode out of the wilderness like that. So many of them! I don't worry about myself so much. Well, maybe I do. It's natural to be scared after seeing such a thing. But-' She brushed a hand over the baby's cap. He had gone to sleep, his sweet face calm in repose. 'This little one, I worry for.'

His gaze followed the stroke of her hand. 'You can be sure I will not put my son at risk. Here is Mistress Behara.'

Behara's noodle business had flourished so greatly in the last

six months that she had brought in a number of clan members to increase production. She presented a tray containing balls of sweetened rice paste, admired the baby, and addressed Mai.

'Verea, I am sent as a representative for the merchants in the town. Most of the women who live here today came to this place at your behest, hopeful to make a decent marriage or because you offered seed money for them to engage in a business of their own. While you bided here with us, you were accustomed to listen to those disputes that arose between various of our number and offer a judgment.'

'Were you?' asked Anji.

'I did listen when folk had grievances,' said Mai. 'Usually, once folk talked things over, they sorted things out for themselves.'

The noodle maker sketched a gesture of respect toward Anji, prudent toward those carrying swords, but she turned back to Mai. 'It's said you are returning to Olossi. Would you preside over an assizes tomorrow? There are several cases that have arisen that would benefit from your clear head, and all have agreed to respect your judgment. In addition, there is talk that perhaps Astafero-'

'Astafero?'

'That is what folk are calling the settlement now.' Behara sketched a phrase with her hands.' " The shore burned," the night those red hounds attacked. What I mean to say, verea, is that because it was your coin and the captain's victory that established this settlement, some say we must ask your permission before voting in a council to oversee the administration of the settlement.'

Mai glanced at Anji, but he opened his hands to say: This is not my purview.

After all, how could it be? Beyond the Hundred, west of the border of the Sirniakan Empire in the Mariha princedoms and along the Golden Road, Qin armies under the var ruled as conquerors, but Anji had been forced to flee into exile with two hundred soldiers, his wife, and their grooms and slaves.

Mai turned back to Behara, who had, by the flickering of her gaze, noted this silent exchange. 'Every city and village in the Hundred has a council, does it not? Why should it be different here? An assizes tomorrow. We will convene at dawn.'

'The gods' blessings upon you and your child, verea. Captain.' Behara made her courtesies and retreated.

Behara, coming last, had brought the heaviest request. The celebration spilled down into town, where folk ate and drank and

sang, as folk would do, given the opportunity. Anji nursed a wheat cake, having nibbled half of it, and drank cups of the harsh milk as his men called out praise for the child's beauty, his strength, and his quiet uncomplaining nature, seen as a sign of excellent character among the Qin. Mai devoured three balls of sweetened rice and a pair of wheat cakes and an entire bowl of nai.

'I expected to see Avisha,' she said, when the edge of hunger was dulled.

'Who is Avisha?' Anji shaded his eyes to survey the Qin soldiers sitting close by with swords at the ready, drinking deeply and eating well, laughing and talking with such open smiles and with such a clamor that she might have mistaken them for other people entirely, not the stolid Qin soldiers to whom she had grown accustomed. Some of the men with local wives had already gone down to join the celebration below.

Mai looked at Tuvi. He had stiffened slightly, maybe even blushing a little, remembering his ignoble defeat.

Anji saw Tuvi's expression and sighed. 'Ah. The one who knew herbs and flowers.'

'She was not right for you, Chief Tuvi,' said Mai tartly. 'You did not truly love her. You were only taken in by her pretty face. Beauty flies quickly' She rapped his forearm with her closed fan. 'You would have gotten bored of her.'

The chief relaxed. 'I admit, I did not expect to be rebuked in such a manner. Refusing to eat my rice! But a man does get lonely. Perhaps you will choose for me, Mistress?'

Anji raised an eyebrow.

'I will keep my eyes open. For you, Tuvi-lo, someone special only.'

And it was true, she thought, as the chief chuckled with Anji, that Chief Tuvi had felt the rejection more than the loss. Tuvi had not loved or even particularly respected Avisha, who was a pleasant young woman Mai's own age and knowledgeable about plants, as Anji had naturally recalled because he always remembered any fact that might be of possible use to him, but she was not a deep spirit, not like Mai's dear Miravia, who was lost to her now, trapped in a cage of her clan's making.

'What did become of the lass?' asked Anji. 'I seem to recall… Jagi, wasn't it?'

Tuvi nodded, expression determinedly bland.

To have lost the girl to a mere tailman! How it must sting.

'Ah, yes, you recommended Jagi, Tuvi-lo, did you not?' Anji turned to Mai. 'We have set up training camps in different parts of Olo'osson. We've assigned Qin troopers to stand as sergeants over companies drawn from local men. They've got to train fast and hard, become cohesive units. We don't know how soon we'll have to fight.'

'Jagi is good with the locals.' Wth a wry smile, Tuvi gestured toward the square of benches seen belgw that marked the spot where marriages were finalized. 'He's patient with them. They like him. The troop of local lads he was training here consistently won in trials, so we sent him and his troop and his wife and the two children to Dast Welling. If all goes well, he'll be training an entire cohort.'

'That's a substantial responsibility,' said Mai. 'I'm pleased for Avisha's sake.'

'You were fond of her?' Anji asked. 'Women feel most comfortable with women around them. Maybe you are lonely for the company of other women?'

'I have Priya, of course.'

'Of course. She is an educated woman. A priestess of the Merciful One. You are fortunate to have such an exceptional woman in your household.'

'I am. She is the greatest comfort to me. But it is true-' Only Tuvi stood close enough to listen. Even Anji's two bodyguards, Sengel and Toughid, had relaxed enough to walk away out of earshot, although not eyeshot, to suck down ladles of fermented milk. 'I miss my dear friend Miravia. Do you suppose you could talk to her father and uncles? You might be able to persuade them to allow me to visit her again. I have accepted she will never again be allowed to visit in our own compound, after that terrible incident. After men not of her kin saw her face-'

His expression closed. 'The Ri Amarah run their own houses by their own laws. We do not meddle with those who have treated us as guests and given us aid. That is all I have to say'

She knew that look. She had grown up in the Mei clan, where Father Mei ruled all and must be consulted in all matters except the most trivial. It was what she had expected in her own marriage. But in matters of business and marriage, Anji had let go of the reins; she was in charge, and he never meddled because he assumed she knew what she was doing and that she would do

what benefited them. It was a potent brew, going straight to the head like too much sweet cordial.

But there was a line, and on the other side of that line, he commanded.

As the baby gurgled, he smiled and lifted up Atani to dandle him. The matter was closed to him; he would not think of it any longer, but she had not that facility. She would think of Miravia and Miravia's troubles, and mourn the loss not of a friendship, for they could write one to another, but for the voice and smile and touch that had come to mean so much to her in so short a time. To lose the intimacy of their friendship was a grief so sharp it was like a wound.

'Mai?' His smile faded as he watched her.

She sealed her sorrow as in a cask and set it away beside her fear for Shai. Alive, Anji had said; not coming home.

'What other news?' she said, more brightly than she intended. 'What of the reeves? Have you heard from Marshal Joss? Reeve Miyara told me he was called away to the north.'

Anji's eyes narrowed as if he were looking into the sun. He shifted the baby more firmly into his grasp. 'From the north, the news is bad. Are you sure you wish to hear an accounting on such a pleasant day?'

T do not wish to hide from the truth, if that's what you're asking.'

'Very well, then. The news from the north.'