Traitors' Gate (115 page)

The driver was a taciturn woman old enough to be Shai's mother. She spoke only to complain about aches and pains or the weather, while handling the dray beasts with great ease and competence. Shai dozed on the pallet fitted into the bed of the wagon, under a canvas awning rigged up with rope to protect him from the baking sun. He wore a loose kilt and, when he had to, a vest; he healed best with his skin exposed to air. Each day in the morning he walked alongside the wagon for a while before resting; each day in the late afternoon he walked a little more. Tohon never once told him to be careful of overdoing it, although the driver often informed him that he was risking a relapse in this reckless way. More hair than wit! Not that he had much hair these days, that having been cropped down to his scalp.

“Eat a few more spoonfuls, son,” Tohon said each night, the only time he nagged him.

Each night, he ate a little more than he had the night before. He listened to the merchants chatter, sing, laugh, swap stories of the months-long siege of Nessumara. Where were you during the first attack? It was a close thing, wasn't it? If they'd not stopped when they did, we'd have been overrun. Did you see what happened to the Green Sun clan, after it was discovered they'd tried to trade secrets to the invaders? Every individual including the children sold into debt slavery, and their compound and storehouses gifted to Chief Sengel, in thanks. Why, the Qin chief had even taken a local delta woman—connected
to several wealthy clans both by kinship and through her business dealings—as his wife.

One of the merchants had a cousin named Forgi who had been one of the scouts who'd guided Commander Anji's army north along the causeway, and he regaled the caravan with the story of how his cousin had been saved by a flight of reeves who had killed an entire cadre of men about to stumble on his hiding place. Too bad about that one reeve who had died, eh? Women all over Haldia and Istria were surely weeping their hearts out, for everyone said he was that handsome. Still, even and maybe especially a handsome man could be curdling with bitterness and ambition inside, for hadn't he been trying to claim he was commander of the reeve halls, when everyone knew that it took a reeve council to elect a new commander? Why, they'd convened just a few days ago, hadn't they, right there at Copper Hall? Every reeve hall except Bronze Hall had sent representatives, and they'd elected Commander Anji to serve as their commander, which only made sense. So it was just fortunate Commander Anji hadn't been killed when that cursed eagle had tried to rip off his head.

The outlander had saved them. Not that there weren't still stories out of the countryside of desperate men ransacking villages, and rumors of cohorts fallen back to Wedrewe in Herelia, making ready for a new assault. Thank the gods for Commander Anji and the garrisons and reeve patrols he was setting in place in the cities and major towns and all along the roads. The Hundred—well, those parts safeguarded by the army—was a peaceful, orderly place again.

So it proved on the eight stages—eight days—from Nessumara to Horn. Riders patrolled the roads in “short” cadres of six and eight horsemen with an experienced man as sergeant, a pair of corporals who had served in the commander's army, and the rest of each group filled out by local men glad to have a chance to feel they were doing something to keep the peace. All along the route, men and women worn thin by months of scarcity prepared the fields against the rains, due to come any day now, if the gods were merciful. May the rains come at the proper time. May the harvest be abundant.

How odd to hear prayers chanted to the Merciful One woven into the conversation and chant of the locals. Did they even know where they came from?

“You're getting stronger,” said Tohon approvingly as they wandered Horn's market with its scant pickings. “You're ready to ride.”

They were buying supplies for the next leg of the journey. A young woman working a pair of slip-fry pans paused as the oil spit and the vegetables sizzled and gave Shai the once-over, a look torn between appreciation and pity. He hadn't known he could still blush.

An elderly man selling radish and nai—nothing special, but all he had on offer today—nodded as Tohon picked through the baskets. “You're one of those Qin, eh?”

“I am,” Tohon agreed amiably. “Just taking the lad back to Olossi.”

“I heard,” said the old man, “from a merchant what come in yesterday from Nessumara I guess in the same caravan as you, that this lad was burned killing one of those gods-cursed cloaked lilus. Tell you what. I'll give you a sack of nai for nothing, as thanks. It'll be a touch bitter, as it's leftover from last season, but it'll feed you. The radish I have to sell, though, as I've a clan to feed just like anyone.”

They filled up their wagon cheaply enough despite the high prices at the market. Everyone wanted to thank the Qin soldier and the young man scarred by burns by offering them a bit of this or that—prickle-headed apples, caul petals for soup, rice cakes and bean curd, a sack of rice—for under market price. At a loss.

Mai would have been appalled.

“There now, son,” said Tohon. “You can't help thinking about her. It will come and go, but it will never stop hurting.”

“Do you still weep for your son and daughter and wife, Tohon?”

“I remember them every day, when I see some new thing I'd like to share. A bolt of red silk. A red-capped bird. The way pipewood sets up a rustle when the wind runs through it. There's no other sound like it. That Mount Aua, a fine bold
peak, don't you think?” He'd learned to point with his elbow, indicating the distant mountain, tipped with white, towering and strong.

“ ‘Mount Aua, who is sentinel,' ” murmured Shai, “ ‘We survive in his shelter.' Tohon, are you sure the children are safe?” He'd asked a hundred times, and yet he must ask again, always, because his heart ached so.

Tohon's answer was always the same, and delivered in the same patient tone. “I delivered them to Nessumara before the city fell under siege. I believe they were shipped to Zosteria to keep them out of enemy hands. Eridit and the two militiamen knew enough to take care of them. I think they were going to head to Mar. But sometimes, lad, you have to accept that you may never know.”

“Is that how the Qin manage? Riding away from their families for years, or forever? Sending their sons away to war, and never knowing?”

Tohon had a firm grip, and he knew exactly where he could grasp Shai's arm without bruising tender skin. “You learn to ride on the path and keep your eyes open so you can see what is there, not what you wish were there.” His gaze was level, and after a moment he smiled. “And then after all you might discover that what is there is what you wished for all along.”

 

T
HEY SIGNED UP
with a new caravan out of Horn, heading along the West Track to Olossi. Riding was harder—it chafed, and he had to wear trousers—but each day he rode for longer at a stretch. By the time they reached Olossi, he rode half the day and walked half the day and split wood every evening as the driver sat on a folding stool and watched, commenting on his form and likely chance of hurting himself, and how he could be more efficient if he altered the angle of his axe. When he got tired of hearing her criticisms, he altered the angle, and was surprised to discover she was right.

They passed through checkpoints and entered the inner city. At the gate of the Qin compound they were met by a woman with a debt mark at her left eye who told them cheerfully that, no, the Qin no longer owned this compound. It had been sold
last month to Master Calon, who was her new master, a decent man for all that his grandfather had come up from Sirniaka.

Who had the authority to sell it? Everyone knew that the new mistress of the Qin household was the commander's mother, a formidable woman before whom the entire market quaked, known to be intimate with the Hieros and, indeed, every head priest of every temple in the city as well as having already secured a seat on the city council and gotten herself invited into the compounds of the Ri Amarah.

No one had any great affection for her. She wasn't the young mistress, the one who'd been killed by red hounds, agents of the southern empire whose eye was now turned north and whose reach was cruel and arbitrary, for truly why would anyone want to kill Mistress Mai, who had overthrown the corrupt Greater Houses and secured wives for the Qin soldiers and nurtured the new settlement of Astafero in the Barrens that supplied the city with oil of naya and a very good grade of wool? And who had been kind and generous while doing it, never a harsh word or a cutting remark either to your face or behind your back.

Be that as it may. The empire was a terrible threat, everyone understood that now, here so close to the Kandaran Pass. The murder of the commander's beloved young wife proved that, didn't it? As for the mother, all approved of her devotion to her grandson. The baby had been sent to Olossi with his nursemaid last month, hadn't he? While the commander was on campaign in the north, naturally he would entrust the little lad to family. The grandmother was devoted to her grandson. It was sweet to see her with him in the market, dandling the boy—for he was a beautiful and lively baby with whom everyone fell in love at first sight—while ruthlessly ordering around her slaves and hirelings and bickering with the market women in that imperious way she had, as if she thought the sun rose and set on her likes and dislikes . . .

“Our thanks, verea,” said Tohon, steering a stunned Shai away from the gate. “We'll just find our own way, then.”

Shai's head was whirling. He couldn't keep track of where they were going. As his feet slapped on stone, the impact jarred
up through his bones to addle his thoughts yet more. But Tohon knew the twists and turns of the lanes and each rise and fall of hill, and so they climbed to the height, to a substantial compound sprawled next door to a compound whose walls flew the banners of a Ri Amarah clan. The Qin guards at the gate recognized Tohon, although they were not soldiers Shai knew; they were newcomers, from a cohort of Commander Beje's men sent north with the Qin princess and now likely to spend the rest of their days in the Hundred.

“We need cordial and juice,” said Tohon to the guards, “and a place to sit in the shade.”

“Better than that,” said the young man, eyeing Shai's scars or his muscles, hard to say. Shai
was
showing a cursed lot of skin in his kilt and sleeveless vest. “We got word you arrived. Come this way.”

He led them to the porch, where they took off their sandals, and thence deep into the house past several layers of sliding doors, each threshold guarded by more black-clad soldiers, until they came to a long, quiet chamber covered with woven mats and furnished with a single low table and a single pillow on which sat Anji. Chief Tuvi, kneeling behind him, was twisting up Anji's topknot and fixing it with a gold ribbon. A pair of Qin soldiers were standing to either side of three small chests bound by chains. Shai felt a sting on his skin, and he shuddered. He knew what was in those chests.

“Sit,” said Anji without looking up.

Shai sat, trying not to remember how the cloak had smothered and burned him. He dared not shut his eyes, so he watched as Tuvi finished his task in silence. When the chief sat back, Tohon spoke.

“We'd be appreciative of a cup of cordial, or some juice, Commander. We just arrived after a long journey.”

“So have I also just arrived,” said Anji, rising, “although by reeve.” He examined Shai without expression, then nodded. “I wasn't sure you would live, but I see Tohon has taken good care of you.”

Shai could say nothing. Watching Anji, he could only think of Mai.

“Come with me,” said Anji.

He led them into a courtyard guarded on one side by Qin soldiers and on the other by massive men of foreign mien, muscled like wrestlers, and as clean-shaven as Toskalan men. They entered a narrow antechamber. After a pause during which Shai heard female voices murmuring and the faint fragile kiss of a delicate porcelain cup touching to plate, doors with painted screens were slid open. The chamber beyond was a wide porch, its plank floor heaped with carpets, its far side open to a courtyard infested with fountains, ornamental pools, and dwarf trees carefully pruned. Its ends were hung with curtains which rippled as unseen people moved behind them. Eyes peered through gaps as Anji, Tuvi, Tohon, and Shai entered the room.

Two women sat facing over a low table. The elderly Hieros sat on a pillow, while the Qin princess reclined on an embroidered couch. The Hieros wore a simple taloos of best-quality burnt-orange silk, wrapped to expose her arms, thin and age-worn but still wiry with strength. The Qin princess wore robes that covered her from wrist to ankle to throat. She glittered with gold chains and a gold-knit headdress stabbing like a tower from her head.

“Ah, Anjihosh,” she said. “You have come at last. Sit down.”

No pillow was offered for the men with him.

Anji indicated that Shai should take the pillow. He remained standing while Shai, too exhausted to care how it looked, sank down to rest.

“This must be the uncle,” continued Anji's mother, surveying Shai. “Hard to say if those scars will ever entirely go away. I suppose he was a good-looking young man once, although nothing like the niece.”

“Anjihosh,” said Tuvi quietly, like a rider calming a storm-maddened horse.

The Hieros lifted a porcelain cup and sipped, watching the interplay between mother and son. She set down the cup with a crooked smile. “A dark day, Commander Anji, when we heard about the murder of your devoted and beloved wife by red hounds out of the empire.”

“The red hounds?” blurted Shai, seeing a flash of triumph in the Qin princess's eye. What had he to lose by speaking out? They could do nothing worse to him than had already been done. “You were the one who killed her!”