Traitors' Gate (101 page)

That was enough to spur them on.

The young men and women pushing carts and wagons broke into a run, and the vehicles crashed into the line. Soldiers fell beneath the wheels, while others scrambled to join their fellows, retreating toward the barracks. But the crowd was emboldened now; the months of curfew, of hunger, of humiliation had seared them; the young struck recklessly, pouring into the gaps within the army's lines, hitting the doors and windows, climbing the roofs to get over into the courtyard behind, so as to attack from the rear. His first cadre of envoys surged forward with the rest, but others held him as he tried to move forward.

“We need you here to command us. Stay back, Holy One.”

Folk from all over Stone Quarter surrounded him, bearing planks and barrel lids for shields. A man five paces away, an arrow in his shoulder, toppled into the people behind him. The crowd lurched forward, then staggered back, then forward again, bodies pressed together, everyone caught in the crush. Weapons clashed and rang, but he couldn't see above the crowd. Far away, the fire bell clamored as reeves glided low over the city. A pot plunged out of the sky to break across the top of the barracks, and in its wake an arrow blazed down. Fire chased down the sides of the tile roof. A scream of triumph rose from some furious young person, hard to say if male or female, and the crowd broke forward until people were stumbling, trying to keep their balance lest they be trampled. Nekkar tripped over a body and hit his knees hard on the ground, bracing himself on a hand as he stared into the open eyes of the sergeant who had ruled Stone Quarter for the last months. He'd been wounded in the side, but he wasn't dead; he was awake and aware, and Nekkar felt obliged to speak a word of comfort, but before a single word escaped him a figure dressed in a ragged taloos dropped down beside him. Fala held a dagger in her hand, and she paused only long enough for the sergeant to see in her his
death, and then she plunged the dagger into his chest once, and twice, and three times, and four times.

“Enough, niece!” Nekkar cried. “Enough!”

She looked up, hair falling over bruised shoulders; her cheeks were sunken. She was panting, licking her lips as blood leaked over her hands. “My thanks to you, Holy One. This is your doing, isn't it?”

“We found allies,” he said.

Then she began to weep, and a pair of brothers or cousins shouted her name and pulled her away from the dead sergeant.

Others lifted Nekkar. “We've won, Holy One! To the gates!”

“Leave two cadres to make a sweep of the neighborhoods. There will be soldiers who escaped, desperate men who must be caught.”

“Caught and killed!”

They marched to Toskala's gate, a roaring, singing mass, swarming out to the garrison encampment, which had already been subdued by a company of militiamen flown up from Horn. Already the uprising was losing cohesion as folk streamed toward the main road and its line of posts, to release the dead and dying who had been condemned to cleansing.

A pair of reeves landed hard in an open field, and a passenger unhooked and jogged across the field, heading straight for Nekkar.

“Holy One! I'm Chief Toughid. We met before.” The outlander was a good-looking fellow, not very tall but hale and strong, a bit younger than Nekkar. Once you got accustomed to his accent, he was easy enough to understand. “Commander Anji's orders, Holy One, to speak to you first. I will order sweeps of the city to look for rogue soldiers. Also, we must set up a perimeter. Enemy soldiers from this region and from the lands down the river will attempt retreat. We must stop and kill as many as we can.”

“What news from Nessumara?” asked Nekkar.

“Chief Sengel's trap was sprung at dawn. I tell you, Holy One, it is a poor commander who does not learn from his mistakes. The demon who commands the enemy did not anticipate that we might use oil of naya again. Hard to imagine such
a creature can hope for victory. Good for us, though.” He shaded his eyes against the late-afternoon sun as the giant eagles rose into the sky. A frown chased across his face as he examined one of the reeves; then he looked back at Nekkar. “What is it, Holy One?”

Nekkar had not realized how his fears and hopes were made plain on his face. Eiya! He was so weary, and yet elation lifted him. “I'd like to walk out to the brickworks, Sergeant. They were forcing children to make bricks, and I just wonder—”

I just wonder about those poor orphans.

But the words choked him. Across the encampment and from the city, people began to sing the famous “Prayer that lifts good news” from the Tale of Fortune.

This is a prayer that lifts good news.
An offering of fresh flowers in thanks.
This is a prayer whose seeds scatter.
Our voices honor you, who birthed us.

The chief whistled. Soldiers whose faces Nekkar did not recognize—Olossi men—converged to form a disciplined cadre awaiting orders. “Escort the holy one to the brickyards and wherever else he wants to go, and then bring him back to me. I'll be setting up an administrative center. Where do you recommend, Holy One?”

“Eh. Ah.” He wiped moisture from his forehead and discovered, to his shock, that his hand came away smeared with blood. What a terrible day, for all its triumph. “Law Rock would be the proper place for an administrative center, as it's always been. That way no quarter feels slighted or honored. But the stairs will need to be cleared. That will take time.”

The chief nodded. With a gesture, he sent the cadre off with Nekkar, with a special escort of two young Qin soldiers for the ostiary. Wagons had ground ruts into the ground, cracked in this season of dry soil. Folk from the city had already run before him to the yards seeking kinfolk enslaved to the work; the place was a hive of weeping and wailing as people found their lost ones or heard tales of death and despair. The Qin soldiers
took in this scene without comment, sticking at his heels like dogs, quiet and respectful.

He trudged among ragged shelters, scraps of cloth fixed to broken planks to form caves against the sun. Thin children staggered in the heat, seeking a friendly face, but others remained in hiding. He would have missed them had they not recognized him, even after so many months.

“Holy One?”

The voice was little more than the brush of wind through delicate leaves. Under a grimy bit of canvas held down by the broken stubs of bricks a dusty skeletal hand lifted the cloth as a thin face peered out. A second body moved in the shallow pit the canvas covered.

Were these the same orphaned children he'd lost in the alley? Did it even matter?

“Come out now,” he said in the voice he used to calm homesick young novices crying through their first month at the temple. “We're going to the temple. There'll be food and a bath and a pallet to sleep on.”

“There's soldiers with you, Holy One. They look funny.”

“They've come to set things right. Just like in the tale: ‘and an outlander will save them.' ”

The child crawled out, and after her—impossibly—the smaller and the smallest. All three had survived their months in the brickyard, although they were weak, emaciated, and covered with dirt and filth. The soldiers muttered to each other, and at first he thought they were disgusted and then he realized they were appalled, however little they revealed in their expressions. Such young men might well have younger siblings, lost to them now. Without hesitation they each picked up one of the smaller ones without regard to the reek and filth.

Nekkar took the hand of the eldest, a brave soul too weary and hungry to cry. “We're safe now.”

“What if they come back?” whispered the child. “The bad ones.”

Nekkar gestured to the Qin soldiers, who were gently cradling the littler ones. “We'll make sure it doesn't happen again. All will be well.”

“S
HAI
!”

The whisper woke him. He sat up fast and was jerked hard against chains. The metal cuff had scraped raw the skin on one wrist.

It was dark within the cohort command tent, where Captain Arras held his cohort councils in the day on thin pillows and slept at night on a cot. The captain, of course, had marched out to attack Nessumara. The tent was empty. The canvas wall belled inward, and Shai shivered as if a ghost were embracing him, unseen but heard, trying to drag him away from life and past the Spirit Gate into death.

Words spilled outside. He recognized Zubaidit's voice, but her tone was stretched and anxious, quite unlike her. What was Zubaidit doing here?

Hu! She had joined the enemy's army in an effort to get close to the lord commander, and was now Shai's jailor. The entrance flap rippled, and she slid inside, the scent of her—leather and sweat and a fragrance he did not know but which sat sweetly on the tongue—rousing him.

“I'm awake,” he murmured.

“A cloak's come,” she whispered. “I've ordered Sergeant Fossad to bring the cloak here. We have to strike before she sees into my heart—”

Footsteps approached. Bai pressed a key into Shai's hand and lay down on the cot. As the tent flap was swept open and lantern light blinded him, Shai fit the key into the lock, clicked it over, then dropped it. He looked full into the gaze of Night. Her pleasantly unremarkable face creased in a kindly frown. So might a patient aunt survey the wreckage of the sticky buns invaded by a horde of lively and hungry boys: She can make more, but they hadn't asked permission.

“You got far,” she said. “Where in the lands did you suppose you could find refuge?”

He twisted the cuffs off his wrists and rose with chains in his hands. “I find refuge in justice.”

Bai rolled to stand with a sharp inhalation of breath. He knew she was setting hollow pipe to lips.

“A dart,” he said, taking a step forward to draw Night's attention. “A dart in my eye. How it stings.”

The cloak flinched, the barest movement; she swiped at her neck as at a midge. Shai leaped. In the instant before Shai slammed into the cloak, Fossad yelped and clapped a hand over his eye. Shai went down hard atop the woman, her cloak of night and stars billowing into the air. Where the fabric brushed his skin, his skin burned. He pressed the chains into her throat. She shoved, hands struggling for a grip on his vest, but the snake venom worked fast. Choking, she worked her mouth as if to breathe, to speak, to plead, to curse him. He locked his gaze on hers, but she was just a person staring at him, dark eyes in a dark face, no one to fear because she had no lackeys to command within this dark tent. Did terror burn in her gaze? Was she afraid of him? Do eyes speak, or do we only believe they do, pouring our own thoughts and interpretations into the gaze turned on us by another? We don't really want to know. For it is terrible to stand naked and without concealment.

A drop of blood beaded at her nostril, swelling out as air exhaled, sucked in as she fought for breath. For life.

I must not die. I cannot die. I will not die.

Yet all things die, in the end. Dead riverbeds wind a course across the desert; mountains shed in flakes and sediment their rock and soil. Grass withers, and new grows where the old has seeded the dust.

“It's time to pass onward,” he said, “to cross the Spirit Gate. You've done enough here. Let go.”

Her lips moved, but her breath was extinguished. No sound stirred the air, and yet he understood her.

I'll do anything. Just don't let me die.

“And so you have done anything,” he said. “You did terrible things, and let terrible things be done. Go away now and leave us to build a peaceful life.”

With a final burst of strength, she surged upward, the cloak wrapping him as to choke him, burning blistering cutting off his air and he saw

into her heart

the well that is fear which pierces from deepest earth to highest heaven, that eats your strength and leaves you hollow

the orphaned girl had bundled her courage and her heart like a pack to be borne and she had climbed the treacherous path to seek the gods in their high eyrie and there she had boldly walked into the water expecting to die but she had not died. The gods had brought forth the Guardians out of the pool of Indiyabu to walk the lands and establish justice, and the orphaned girl had gone on with her life in the ordinary way, and when the day of her death had come as it does in time to all creatures born out of the Four Mothers, she had been embraced by a cloak. For had she not offered her life in service of justice for the land?

Only the dead can be trusted, it said in the tale. But those who walk a second time may still fear death. Corruption and virtue wax and wane in the heart, and where fear feeds corruption, it consumes virtue until the heart is only a shell in which echoes its own voice speaking to its own self about its certain selfish concerns. Hearing no voice but her own, she had betrayed not only her companions, the other Guardians, but the land and the legacy of her own tale.

Shai held on because he knew how to endure pain; because he was stubborn. Because he lived, and she had to die, again, to finally cross the threshold of the Spirit Gate.

The spark that burns within the eyes of the living faded. The cloak eddied and sagged. Blood trickled from her mouth as the poison killed her. She died.

“Shai!” Bai was standing by the entrance, sword raised as she flipped aside the flap to glance out. Fossad was dead, with blood leaking from mouth and nose and a smear of blood staining the eye that had taken the second dart. His startled ghost oozed from his body and reached for the lantern as though to light his way.

“Eiya!” cried the ghost. “My eye stings. What happened?”

“Hurry!” Shai said to him. “The Gate awaits you.”

“Eh! I see the light!” Then his spirit was gone.

“The hells!” Bai cried, eyes flaring as she stared at Shai. She was so very alive that life radiated off her like threads of blue fire; she was as bright as the lantern, and only he, in the shadowed tent, was veiled and therefore opaque. “You're hells burned, Shai! All red. And look at the gods-rotted cloak!”