Traitors' Gate (33 page)

“This is the accounts book we use for all shipments pertaining to the building of the mistress's household in Astafero.
This
is the accounts book used for expenses pertaining to this compound. The two compounds are accounted separately, not
together! Now, you'll have to go back over the entire last month and divide the expenses out properly. Hu!”

The big slave nodded to acknowledge their presence.

The scolded clerk murmured a barely audible greeting.

Another clerk, even younger, blushed and stammered. “G-G-Greetings of the day, Mistress.” Hu! The poor girl's head was shaven, and her thin face would have benefited from the softening ornament of hair.

“Sit down,” Mai said, hoping she sounded gracious as the clerk brushed at the stubble on her head as if she had guessed Mai's thoughts. Eiya! Judging a young woman by looks alone was the kind of thing her mother and aunt would have done! Beauty was all very well, but Mai was painfully aware that if Anji had been a cruel man, then her beauty would have brought her tears rather than joy. She attempted a smile; the clerk groped for her brush and, having picked it up, set it down again immediately, thoroughly intimidated. Mai sighed. “O'eki, show me the books.”

Three lamps burned although it was day; there were only two windows that could be opened in the long room, one at each end and both set with grilles. The door into the warehouse was closed, but they received light through the porch door, which had been left propped open because the captain's wife was inside. The customers' door, leading into the warehouse, was closed and locked. So much was closed and locked!

The scolded clerk hunched his shoulders as Mai looked over his shoulder.

“Those are very clear entries,” she said. “Very readable.”

O'eki grunted impatiently. “Yes, but not all in the right place. You see this lumber, marked to this account when it should be here, while the settlement account has been debited with this purchase of dye stuffs.” He pulled a counting frame over and flicked wooden beads so quickly their colors blurred. “Just on this page alone you have two hundred and forty leya misaccounted.”

“Are you going to send me back to the temple?” The clerk looked so young! Although, Mai thought, he was probably no younger than she was herself.

“If you fix this properly and make no further mistakes, I'll know you are learning,” said O'eki. The lad nodded gratefully as the other clerk looked on, with her face pulled into an almost comically anxious expression. “Lass, you double-check the spare ledgers against the main set.”

As the clerks bent back to their labors, Mai drew O'eki aside, over to the long drawers where Anji kept a set of maps. She opened the top drawer, in which lay a detailed drawing of the city of Olossi, how it nestled on bedrock in a bend in the river, how its streets climbed the hill toward Fortune Square, how its inner and outer walls separated the city into an upper and lower town.

“Where did these two clerks come from?” she whispered.

“The temple of Sapanasu. It's the only place I can hire clerks, Mistress. It's the custom here, to hire your accounts keepers from the temple. But these two are very inexperienced.”

“Their numbers and ideograms are very readable.”

He laughed, and both young clerks, startled, looked up from their books and self-consciously down again. “One thing I will say for that Keshad. He might have been arrogant and temperamental, but he kept excellent accounts.”

Mai closed the drawer and opened the one below it, whose lines described the region surrounding the Olo'o Sea, as much as the Qin scouts and Anji could describe of it. Past the town of Old Fort the road pushed into the foothills and thence higher up into the mountains here called the Spires. Precise handwriting that she recognized as Anji's had inscribed “Kandaran Pass” above the village named Dast Korumbos; at the edge of the map where the pass sloped away south and west, the same hand had written “Sirniaka.”

That way lay the empire, whose red hounds still hunted Anji. He would always be in danger from that direction.

“I wonder how Keshad is doing,” Mai murmured. “Will he and Eliar be able to spy out information in the empire?”

Priya had come up beside them. “I wonder if they are still alive.”

“The empire is a terrible place,” murmured Mai. “If Anji's half brother is now emperor, and has killed all his other brothers
and half brothers, then he will not want Anji alive, even if Anji has no intention of claiming the Sirniakan throne. And there are other claimants, too. These cousins, sons of Anji's father's younger brother. How can I keep track of them all?” A few tears ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away. “How clever of Anji to label his maps with a script no one in the Hundred but he and Priya can read.”

“You are reading it now, Mistress,” said Priya with the smile she offered only to Mai or O'eki.

“I am learning.” She gestured toward a table. “I'll sit here for a while. O'eki, maybe that young woman will sit with me and review the ideograms. I want to be able to write my own accounts book in the Hundred style.”

The girl's name was Adit, and she had been born in the Year of the Ox, just like Mai, but she was a timid creature, hard to draw out, so after a while Mai concentrated on forming and memorizing the ideograms. Priya and O'eki had seated themselves together at a writing desk, heads bent intimately together as they discussed an unknown matter in low voices, hands touching.

A guard stepped in, glanced around, and stepped out. Sheyshi entered, carrying a fussing Atani.

“I'll nurse him over here,” said Mai as she took the baby to the far end of the room where pillows were stacked for visitors. Atani was an efficient eater, very hungry but not one to dawdle. When he was done and she had burped him, Adit crept over and shyly asked if she could hold him, for it transpired she had left a beloved infant brother at home when she went to the temple. So then she could be coaxed to speak of her home and her family in northern Olo'osson, and when Mai at length had Sheyshi take the infant out, she and Adit settled back to work companionably, trading comments, chuckling over an awkward stroke, asking and answering questions. Eventually the lad rose and, in the course of stretching and straightening his already neat jacket, paused by the table where the two young women worked.

“That's just the basic work,” he said in the tone lads got when they were showing off for girls. “Those ideograms are
the old way of recording. Anyone can do that. That's why the clerks of Sapanasu keep them around, because even merchants who didn't apprentice with the Lantern can tally with numbers and ideograms. Writing is much harder.”

“Don't try to boast, Wori,” said Adit in a low voice. “It makes you look stupid.”

“I would like to learn this other writing of the Hundred,” said Mai.

“If you didn't apprentice with the Lantern, you can't,” he said, tweaking his sleeves.

Adit hid her flushed face behind a hand.

“Why not?” Mai asked.

“Because you can't,” he repeated stubbornly. She suspected he now felt trapped by her attention and Adit's embarrassment. “No one does.”

“Not doing it is not the same as not being able to do it. For one thing, surely the Ri Amarah did not apprentice with the Lantern and yet they know how to write in the temple script—”

“Eiya! Well! Them!”

“What does that mean?
Them.
”

He shrugged. “They're outlanders. They don't even worship properly.”

“I'm an outlander.”

“Do you make offerings at the seven temples?”

“I don't. I have a shrine to the Merciful One. That's where I pray.”

“That's the Merci
less
One,” he said with a smug smile.

“No, it isn't,” said Adit suddenly. “I've talked to the women who work here, and they told me it's the Merciful One. Full of mercy. There's a prayer they say, ‘I go to the Merciful One for refuge. I go to the Truth for refuge. I go to the Awakened for refuge.' ”

To hear these words flow from the girl's lips surprised Mai. She had thought the local women who worked for her only came to listen to Priya lead the service in order to be polite to the employer who paid them. “Why, that's right. That's part of the prayer.”

Wori said, “Who ever says a thing like that? ‘I go to the truth for refuge.' That doesn't mean anything.”

Voices raised outside: men were speaking vehemently in the warehouse. There came a shout, and then a hammering on the warehouse door. Chief Tuvi called out an order; footsteps pounded like a cloudburst as men raced across the entrance courtyard.

She rose, her own heart at a driving run. Would she never be free of the red hounds?

Priya hurried over and grasped her elbow. “Quickly. Come farther inside.”

Soldiers appeared in the office door leading to the porch. “Quickly, Mistress. Come inside.”

“Will this never end?” she cried angrily.

A rhythm rapped on the warehouse door, the signal giving the all-clear.

“Seren,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “Open the door.”

The young soldier limped over to the door. His comrade drew his sword as Seren slid back the iron eye panel.

“Clear to open,” said Tuvi's voice from the other side.

Seren undid the bolts and bars, braced his crippled leg, then swung the door open. Chief Tuvi entered first, marking the occupants with his sharp gaze. An older man wearing the turban of the Ri Amarah strode in behind him.

“Master Isar!” said Mai. “I am honored at your visit, but I admit I did not expect you—”

“Have you seen my daughter?”

She flinched, for his tone reminded her exactly of Father Mei in one of his tempers. So many months had passed since a man had spoken to her in that way she had almost forgotten how it felt, but of course she would never truly forget because it was the male voice she had grown up with. It angered her now more than it scared her. She cooled her voice to a pitch of such sincere graciousness that she hoped her demeanor would scare
him
.

“Ver, will you sit? Priya, might you bring wine? Here is a pillow.”

He paced the length of the room and back again. She waited. Chief Tuvi watched through narrowed eyes. The two soldiers shut the door to the warehouse and stood with backs against it. O'eki loomed, and the clerks retreated to the cabinets.

Isar was a good-looking man somewhat older than Father Mei, a man of considerable influence and wealth, accustomed to deference. Because he was Ri Amarah—outlanders who had settled in the Hundred about a hundred years ago and yet had never come around to worshiping the Hundred's gods—he was also, it seemed, accustomed to being distrusted.

Still pacing, he spoke without looking at Mai directly. “I have come to you, verea, because of your friendship with my daughter, whose name we do not speak in public spaces. This trouble began when she was allowed to visit you in this compound. Not that I fault you, verea, for certainly you cannot understand our customs. But she has become unruly and disobedient since that day—”

Mai wanted to protest that Miravia had spoken discontentedly of her fate and the restrictions placed on her on the very first day the two young women had met, many months ago, but she knew better than to try to stop his flow of bitter words.

“—and now it appears she has utterly cast all honor and duty and sense of propriety into the dirt and
run away from home
.”

Chief Tuvi looked at Mai, and she wasn't sure whether he was shocked, or ready to burst out laughing. Isar stared around the office.

“Must all these strangers stand here and listen?” he demanded.

Mai gestured. “Adit. Wori. You are released for the day. We will see you at dawn tomorrow, neh?”

With relieved nods, they hurried out.

“Seren. Valan. Bolt the door, and wait outside on the porch for my signal.”

As the two soldiers left, Mai turned to Isar. “Chief Tuvi and my advisors stay.”

“Your advisors? Your slaves, you mean!”

“Master Isar, surely you did not come to insult me, since you know perfectly well that my husband has supported your people. Your customs are not our customs.”

“My apologies, verea. I am distraught.”

“What has happened to Mi—to your daughter?” She was truly becoming anxious now, as dusk settled outside and the chamber darkened.

“She was to leave tomorrow morning.”

“Leave for where?”

“Leave for her wedding. To take her place in her new home.”

His words shocked her. “To Nessumara? You can't possibly be sending her on the roads, Master Isar. Captain Anji has secured the roads in Olo'osson, but you know better than most that beyond Olo'osson the roads are not safe, not even for an armed caravan.”

“It has been arranged that a reeve will fly her there. A female reeve, I might add.” Surely his complexion was pallid more with anger than concern. Did he truly care for his daughter, or was she merely a piece of merchandise he could trade to benefit his family's wealth and position?

“The reeves aren't carters, hauling cargo for money. They enforce the law!”

“Master Esaf has repeatedly supplied foodstuffs for Clan Hall at no profit. Given transport to refugees likewise. He asked for one favor in return. Even a very pious man yearns for a wife when he has been without one for some time.”

As lecherous old goats lust after lovely young brides they've bought like animals at the market!
she thought.

Something in her thoughts must have communicated to Master Isar, because he plunged on. “It's a substantial sum that he's forgone.”

As if coin answered all objections!

Yet, were Isar and his relatives any different from her own family? Anji had seen her at the market, and because he was a Qin officer in a town conquered by the Qin army, he had gone to her father to purchase her.