Traitors' Gate (102 page)

The ghost of the dead woman was pouring into the cloak, rather like the way the priests of Beltak had sucked the ghosts of dead men into their blessing bowls. The cloak would hold her ghost until its magic knit the body, and then she would live again. And again. And again.

“We've got to get this cloak off her body. Give me the gloves.”

“The cursed cohort's returning,” said Bai, but she leaped to the dead man's body and stripped his gloves, then tugged them on Shai's hands one at a time as he released his grip on the metal cuffs. He tossed them aside; they'd served their purpose. With gloved hands he grappled at the clasp, and the clasp
burned
into the leather; heat stung his palms, raising tears of pain. Hu! The cloak came undone, and he yanked it away so hard the body tumbled gracelessly, like rubbish. With a wordless wail, her ghost writhed out of the cloak into the body and
reached
for the cloth as if to insinuate herself back into the weave that had kept her alive for so terribly long. The cloak billowed wildly around him, humming as in a wild storm wind.

“We've got to bind it!” he cried.

“Release it to the wind!” said Bai.

“Her ghost will crawl back in if it touches the body. We have to keep them separate.”

Bai grabbed a blanket folded neatly at the foot of the captain's cot. She ripped belts off Fossad and the dead woman. Shai wept as the bite of the cloak burned his hands, but he stepped on it, pressed it to earth, rolled the fabric inside the blanket; they folded it up and over and over again, pressed it tight and winched the belts over it and after that wrapped it in chains. How pain burned. The living were not meant to handle that which has the power to trap and succor ghosts.

A horn woke in the night. Shouts crashed like thunder.

“You betrayed me!” Her ghost swelled to fill the space like a storm of sand wailing out of the desert.

The tent flap was swept aside, and a lamp's steady glow cast gold over the interior as Bai stepped back with sword raised and Shai reeled, stumbled, and fell, his gaze hazing. The ghost reached into him but its substance passed right through his body; his heart was safe from her.

Then she was gone.

“The hells!” Captain Arras drew his sword in answer to Bai's guarded stance as he and his loyal sergeant stepped into the tent, she with lamp in hand and a hand on her knife. The entrance closed. Behind, a man called, “Captain Arras?”

“Tell the soldiers to set a doubled guard. Everyone else rest. We move out at dawn.”

He scanned the scene. His mouth twitched, but he showed no other emotion and it was difficult anyway to trace the lineaments of a face slathered in muck. He did not lower his sword. “Sergeant Zubaidit. Can you explain this?”

“Fossad attacked this woman, Captain.”

“The hells he did. That's one of the gods-rotted cloaks, the woman who wore the cloak of Night. The most fearsome of all. Yet now she lies here, just another cursed corpse like to the many that have been made today.”

“Did we win?” Bai asked without blinking.

“We lost. I took my cohort and got out before we all got killed by soldiers who knew what they were cursed doing. Where is her cloak?”

His gaze caught on the bundle at Shai's knees, which had an odd way of shifting and bulging and receding as if the thing inside it were trying to find a way out. “Who in the hells are you, Zubaidit? A cursed spy, no doubt! An infiltrator. I should have seen it!”

The sergeant with him grunted.

“You warned me, Giyara,” he added.

“Kill her,” suggested the sergeant, not angrily but with resignation.

“You can kill me,” Bai said coolly, “but you'll still take the blame from Lord Radas. You're the captain. Therefore you're responsible. Everyone knows you raised me up from hostage to soldier to sergeant.”

“You're cursed calm about it. If I go down, you'll go with me.”

“I'm prepared to die.”

“I'm not!”

Her smile was thin. “That's the difference between us. But if that is your sole concern, I may be able to save you if you'll listen to me.”

“What about my cohort? I won't sacrifice them to save myself.”

“That you say so is the only reason I haven't killed you already. Believe me when I say, Captain, that you're a decent enough man, and good at your job. Do you love the cloaks? Has Lord Radas treated you well?”

“He didn't listen to me months ago when I urged him to push into Nessumara at the first attack, for I'm sure we could have broken the militia and taken the city without much trouble. He didn't listen to me this very dawn, when I warned him that something wasn't right. No doubt he's abandoned the cohorts who were killed this morning and flown away to the safety of his cohorts on the northern causeway. He's lost less than half his army, after all. He can still fight.”

“Then choose new allies, Captain.”

“And betray the old?” He looked at Shai, shaking his head. “Are you truly Lord Twilight's brother? The resemblance is strong. Are you the outlander who will save us?”

“I need water,” croaked Shai. His head was muzzy, and the pain was building.

“He's not the only outlander in this tale, Captain,” said Zubaidit. “Lord Radas betrayed not just you personally but the Hundred itself. Time and again he has betrayed the cause of justice. Why do you aid him?”

“Because the gods command us to obey the judgment of the Guardians. Because with him, I could fight. Anyway, who can
stand against the cloaks, who can see with their third eye and second heart, who defeat even death?”

“We can, and we did.”

“Her cloak is gone,” muttered the sergeant. “She looks no different than you or me. Just a dead body. Was it all lies? That the cloaks defeat all, even death?”

Bai's sharp smile made Shai shudder. Bai hadn't known if the cloaks could be killed, but she'd been willing to throw herself into the battle without thought for her own fate. Ought he to admire her ruthless purpose, or fear it?

“Now you see the truth of it,” Bai said. “Join us.”

“You might believe it's a tempting offer to a man like me,” retorted the captain. “Especially since I'll have to immediately order you stripped and thoroughly searched, and all your gear confiscated and burned, to make sure you aren't carrying any hidden weapons. Weapons that can kill a cloak and Fossad, there. Then afterward tell me, you who have stood loyal to your commander, why should he trust me if I turn traitor to the one whose orders I obeyed before?”

Shai toppled forward, landing beside the bundle, the chains a finger's breadth from his nose. He smelled: the snap in the air before lightning strikes. He tasted: the flavor of a cloudburst, rain pounding on stone and muddying dirt. He felt: the cooling breath of a mountain wind on his blistered, reddened skin. He heard: Bai's words like the purl of cooling water over exposed rock.

“Let me tend to him. Shai never faltered. His courage is worthy of a song. As for the other, Captain Arras, I know a commander who can use your skills and the loyalty you would offer a commander who will treat you with the respect you deserve. I am his agent, following the orders of my Hieros, who together with the council of Olossi and the council of temples in Olo'osson has put their trust in him. Will you join us?”

“What surety can you offer me? What if we surrender, and your commander simply orders us executed?”

“If you want surety, I'll give you this.”

“That's a blanket.”

“Neh, Captain Arras. It's a blanket wrapped tightly around
a Guardian's cloak. You can use it to buy a new life for you and your soldiers.”

Arras's harsh laugh cracked against the fragile shell that bound Shai to consciousness. Splintering, he shattered, and fell into blessed darkness, where all wounds are healed.

O
VER THE NIGHT
, the reeves slept hard, and at dawn launched from the prow of Law Rock. All day Joss patrolled the skies above Toskala as Peddonon's two flights and the two flights flown in from Horn Hall harassed the routed garrison. They rained arrows down on desperate companies marching in ragged columns north toward High Haldia; they drove desperate men into ambuscades they had set up beforehand by lifting cadres of soldiers into position ahead of the fleeing soldiers. Their orders weren't to capture the enemy and bring them before the assizes to face judgment for their wrongdoing. Their orders were to kill.

They weren't the orders Joss had given. This wasn't justice, as the reeves were taught to serve justice. But as the reeves gathered on Law Rock late in the afternoon to seal their victory by breaking out the last of the hall's stores of cordial, even Peddonon was laughing with a grim sort of exaltation.

“Cursed hells-ridden bastards mown down like grass! Whew! Did you see that, Pil? When those militiamen caught them with their trousers down taking a—”

“Commander Joss!”

Joss left the gathering of whooping, drinking reeves and crossed Justice Square to meet a delegation from the city. They'd been winched up in the main baskets, now free to haul supplies and people up and down the rock.

“Chief Toughid.” The chief offered a forearm for the traditional Qin bash, and Joss slammed him harder than he might have otherwise but he was still the one who winced. “Ostiary Nekkar.” He had to be introduced to the other notables. “Is
there to be a council? Might the city be better served to hold it below, where anyone who wishes can come and listen?”

The chief shook his head. “Too many voices will drown out the necessary orders.”

Joss paced him into the council hall, the dusty benches of which betrayed it as the one building up on the rock that hadn't housed refugees over the long months of occupation. No one wanted to sleep in the place where so many people had been murdered on that long-ago Traitors' Night. Now voices rang with triumph as eighteen notables from the city in addition to Toughid and Joss settled on the benches. A number of the firefighters, reeves, and militiamen who had stuck it out atop the rock stood to listen, quieting as the ostiary rose.

The slender man nodded wearily, a fragile smile lighting his face. “Our thanks to Chief Toughid, and to the reeves. Yet the danger is not passed. We've driven out the garrison, but many survived to flee north while others ran south to join up with their brothers near Nessumara.”

“A substantial number survive.” Toughid's manner was brisk and unemotional. “We don't have a full accounting of the situation in Nessumara. We should hear midday tomorrow. However, the enemy has fifteen cohorts. Even if as many as five cohorts were disrupted in the last few days, that leaves ten cohorts unaccounted for.”

“What do we do?” the council members demanded. Joss couldn't keep their names straight, making it seem as if they spoke with one voice. “There's not much oil of any kind left in the city.”

Toughid nodded. “What advantage we have gained from oil of naya we cannot expect for the next phase of the campaign. In the morning I'll send a messenger—” He quite deliberately cleared his throat before starting again. “In the morning, Commander Joss will send a messenger to the main army to inform them of Toskala's rising. The soldiers lifted in will remain here to coordinate defensive measures. We must expect cadres and companies and even full cohorts to retreat from Nessumara past Toskala. Desperate men driven by fear are dangerous and unpredictable. I'll leave my best sergeant in charge of the defense.
Place your militia under his command and use your reeves wisely, and you'll be able to hold the city.”

“Where do you mean to go, Chief Toughid?” they demanded.

Joss sat on the end bench, shoulders braced against the stone wall and legs extended with feet crossed at the ankle. Not one person looked Joss's way. For all that the Qin soldier threw bones to the reeve commander, no one paid any attention to the faithful dog, not if he wasn't barking.

“For myself,” said the chief, “I'll go on to Gold Hall. We've made an arrangement to launch an attack on High Haldia's garrison.” He nodded at Joss. “Is there anything you'd like to add, Commander?”

Joss raised a hand in the gesture of agreement. “You have things well in hand, Chief Toughid. Our thanks to you and your men. However, the one consideration reeves must deal with before all others is the health of our eagles. If we push them past their strength, they'll grow sick and not easily recover. Our eagles need rest. I'll release a pair to lift you north to Gold Hall. We'll have to run short patrols here for as much as a week. No carting. No long flights. No raids. I'll carry the message myself to Captain Anji.”

Toughid nodded, and the ostiary rubbed his chin thoughtfully, but the cursed council members would natter on like so many whining gnats. “We need flights to harass the enemy. How will we know what's going on if the eagles aren't flying? Those Qin soldiers keep riding and riding, never faltering—”

“If your horse or dray beast goes lame, then you can't ride or cart, can you, eh?” Joss said irritably. “And there's a cursed lot more horses and dray beasts than there are eagles. The reeves have been doing their part, and like all men and women can endure plenty, but the eagles are being pushed to their limits and I'm the one who has to protect them. That's all I have to say.”

After the council ended, Toughid walked aside with him, carrying a lamp while Joss spun his baton through his fingers.

“You know my goal, Commander. Since we know there may be a demon in High Haldia, I must hunt him down and kill him if I can.” Toughid's grin was as light as day. “Sengel got one. Can't let him have all the glory, can I?”

“I'll send Peddonon with you. He can nurse his eagle another few days. He's an experienced and trustworthy reeve.”

They halted by the barrier blocking off the steps, Toughid wincing as at a bad smell. “Hu! If you don't mind, maybe one of the other ones. Vekess, perhaps. That Peddonon I hear is one of those—like Pil—you can see why it was for the best Pil was sent off to be a reeve.”