Traitors' Gate (59 page)

“Where are you going with this, Mai?”

She went on in her market voice. “We have seen Uncle Hari twice, the first time in the Fox Month and last month as well. I am encouraged that he has not fled. But he is restless and discontented—”

“So demons must be, because of their essential nature.”

“What folk in the Hundred call a demon and what you call a demon is not the same thing.”

“You may call a demon any other name you wish, but it is still a demon.”

“That is not what I meant.” She rapped him lightly on the back of the hand, a piece of flirtatious scolding that made him smile and twine his fingers between hers. “Be serious, Anji. Please listen to me. I would say Hari despises himself. No one should have to live with such despair eating away inside them. Especially not my beloved Uncle Hari! Anyhow, even if you wish to consider him a demon, is it not better to give him a reason to want to be part of what we have built rather than merely wanting to avoid the cloaks he hates and fears? Will I not get a better price for the peaches I am offering for sale if the customer has a hankering for such fruit, rather than feeling forced to haggle where he does not—”

Anji laughed, and she blushed, seeing he had conceived a
more intimate interpretation of her words. “I am not convinced that is a good comparison, whatever it was you meant to make of it,” he said. “But you are right. It is better to act out of desire than fear. What are you thinking?”

 

O
N THIS, HER
third visit to Uncle Hari in the valley, she waited until she had hot tea poured and cups set on a tray, all the while chattering about the various councils of Olo'osson large and small as if this conversation were merely a way to pass a quiet afternoon. They sat, as before, in the ruins sprawled alongside the pool and waterfall. The cave and its altar remained dark and dry; no threads glimmered on the sloped roof, and no dark shapes roiled beneath the pool's murky waters.

They were alone in the upper vale: she, Uncle Hari, and Anji with the baby in his lap. Chief Tuvi stood below, where the path emerged out of the tangle, while Sengel and Toughid waited out of sight. Five reeves had dropped them off with an offering chest, none the wiser, and departed with orders to return a hand's span before sunset.

“You want me to preside over an assizes?” Hari asked.

She flushed. She had not yet spoken of her plan, although naturally it sat forefront of her thoughts.

“I know,” he said, “that you were waiting to broach the subject until you had soothed me with gossip and tea, but you cannot conceal your plans from me. What use would I be at an assizes? Have I ever shown the least sign of wisdom in conducting my own wasted life?”

“Do this one time as a favor for me, Uncle. I beg you. Just one time. And then, afterward—”

“Stop!” he cried, laughing in the old remembered way, with his big grin and crinkled eyes. “You will slay me, Mai. I can refuse you nothing when you stare at me with that hopeful face. You want to make a song of it all.” He looked toward the wash of water as it rained into the pool. “I once wanted to make a song of it all. You see how it worked out.”

“The tale is not yet finished, Uncle. That is the mistake you
are making, if you don't mind my saying so. You've closed the gate, but you can open it again. There are other paths—”

“Aiee!” He laughed again and this time, remarkably, looked at Anji. “Is she always this persistent?”

Anji smiled.

“One time,” said Hari to Mai. “Because you asked.”

“I have it all arranged,” she said, although emotion tangled in her market voice, making it hard to speak. “You need only arrive at the council square just before sunset tomorrow, Uncle.”

“They won't know I'm coming,” he said, and she dreaded the way his voice softened, as if he were changing his mind.

“You'll come to Astafero and preside over the assizes, just like the tales say it happened in the old days. You'll see. Please—”

“No tears! Just this one time.” He rose without drinking his tea and began to pace. “What am I to do? What am I to say?”

“Say as little as possible,” said Anji.

“Let them speak,” added Mai. “There will be a clerk of Sapanasu, to record the proceedings, and an envoy of Ilu, one of Kotaru's ordinands, a mendicant sworn to Atiratu, a diakonos serving Taru, and a kalos from Ushara's temple in Olossi.” She glanced at Anji, who betrayed by no flicker any discomfort at this mention of the Devourer's temple. “There must be representatives of each of the seven gods at an assizes. Except for the pilgrims of Hasibal, because the Formless One has neither temples nor priests.”

“You know the Hundred well, Mai.”

“I'm just saying you need only listen and hear. Others know the law. But in the case of certain intractable cases, you'll know the truth.”

 

T
HE NEXT DAY
—the auspicious day known as Transcendent Snake—passed slowly. In the afternoon, after a draft of calming tea and water to cool her face, feet, and hands, Mai walked down to the council benches. Would he come? Or would he turn away?

The council speaker called the council to order. The first
business was a continuing discussion of certification in the market. What authority determined which goods could be certified as best-quality, good-quality, everyday-quality? Should shoddy work be forced off the market, or fined? What if a competitor brought a charge of shoddy work merely to cut into another's sales? In Olossi, the council controlled certification, but in Astafero, no standards had yet been set. People had settled here from villages and towns all over Olo'osson, and naturally they did not always agree.

As the debate dragged on, Anji without fuss or announcement walked up with Sengel and Toughid to stand at the back in the last hand's-breadth of shade. A few people noted him, but the discussion flowed on regardless. His gaze wandered. He tipped back his head, following an object moving in the sky.

“Heya!” cried a youth loitering near Chief Tuvi's guardsmen. “What is that?”

A rider on a winged horse cantered to earth. Mai rose, heart pounding, as the assembly fell into a dead silence. Hari hesitated, looking—she thought—ready to fly away. What must she say, to draw him in without betraying her knowledge of him? He did not particularly resemble her except in coloring, but might people wonder anyway? Or would they not see past his winged horse and Guardian's cloak?

A faltering voice trembled through the first lines of a song, and other voices joined in.

come in, come in, we welcome you with garlands
come in, come in, at long last you return

The noodle seller, Behara, beckoned to her daughter and sent her running down into town. The six priests rose in consternation, and finally the hierophant extended open hands.

“Holy One,” she said, but faltered, washed bloodless and unable to speak further.

“Make a space for the holy Guardian!” snapped the Lady's mendicant. “For as it says in the tale, face south in the morning and north in the afternoon. Isn't that how it goes?”

At first no one moved. Then, awkwardly, one man and another
woman and more cleared a bench and backed away. Hari dismounted, and the horse furled its wings. A child came running up from town in company with Behara's elder daughter, and the little one—not more than seven or eight—without the slightest self-consciousness pattered forward with a garland draped over one arm and raised it as an offering. The garland was a little withered, truly, and where it had come from in
this
season Mai could not imagine.

Hari stared at it until the child said in a clear, carrying, and somewhat exasperated voice, “You're supposed to
take
it. It's an offering, Holy One!”

Hari's grin blazed. He bent low so the child could drape the garland over his head, then he walked down to the cleared bench, the child trotting behind. The silence within the assembly was so intense that Mai realized her nails were biting into her palms. She opened her hands and sat, to avoid notice.

“And stop pinching your big sister when no one is looking, just to get her into trouble,” Hari said to the child, who chortled wickedly and bolted into the crowd.

Behara actually laughed, although it was her own grandson so accused. She stood. “Holy One, I pray you, sit down. Why are you come?” If she was nervous, she hid it well.

“I am a Guardian,” he said as he let his gaze pass once over the assembly. Startled gazes flicked up, or down; a man gasped out a word; a woman chuckled; another sobbed into her hands. “Is this not an assizes?”

He sat.

Everyone looked toward the six priests, who were conferring in frantic whispers. No one knew what to do!

“Bring cases forward,” said Behara impatiently.

“But there is a proper form—” cried the hierophant.

“Never mind the cursed proper forms,” said Behara. “How are we to remember a ritual no one here alive has ever witnessed? We'll discuss the certification issue next council meeting. Aren't there other disputes to be brought forward today?”

It took some effort to force the first set of disputants to present themselves before a cloaked man with his outlander face and ominous Guardian's eyes.

A flock of sheep had been deliberately stampeded, and several lost. The man who owned the flock said those who had scared the beasts had stolen them. Not so, said the accused young debt slave, although he blushed and stammered as he spoke. He'd done no such thing; he'd been out walking and only fallen into the way of the scattering sheep and tried his best to round them up as a courtesy, only to be accused of theft!

Hari scratched his chin, looking—Mai thought—surprised as he examined each witness in turn. He indicated the men who owned the flock. “You
believe
the sheep were deliberately stampeded, that is true enough, you do believe it. You lost five of your flock, and that is also true. Maybe it is true the flock was deliberately set upon by people bent on mischief and maybe it is not, but there are no witnesses, so we can't know. However, this young man's story is also true.”

“Then what was he doing out there, a debt slave like him?” demanded one of the owners.

Hari laughed. “What do you suppose a young man like that was doing, out away from town? The same thing I would have been doing at his age, had a lass as lively as the one he's thinking of made the same offer to me!”

As men smirked and women chortled, the owners blundered on indignantly. “But then why didn't he say—?”

There were a hundred reasons folk might not say: maybe she was married already; or she was ashamed of her lust for a lowly debt slave; or he was skiving off work and avoiding a beating. Aui! Who could blame a young man for doing what the young liked to do, eh?

“But what about our missing sheep?”

Hari's expression made Mai, who knew him so well, want to snort with laughter. “Can it be you have only taken up sheep-herding this year? No wonder! You need to hire an experienced drover, ver. Someone who knows sheep. I admit it will cut into your profit, but until you understand the ways of sheep you will find yourself in trouble again and again. I speak as a man who knows sheep. Is there another case?”

Indeed, there was. Underweight strings of vey were being
passed off in the marketplace, but no one knew where they had come from. Hari surveyed the crowd with seeming absentmindedness as one merchant after the next approached to display the string they'd been shorted. He stopped a woman in midsentence with a raised hand, his gaze fastening on a face half hidden in the crowd. His eyes narrowed. Folk murmured anxiously.

“They're coming from the same people who are weighting their wheat flour with chalk dust,” he said.

His words were answered by a flurry of sharp movement in the crowd as a man and woman tried to bolt. No one had suspected. They'd thought the flat bread tasted gritty because everything tasted of grit here. Anyhow, most folk were accustomed to nai porridge and rice, coming from waterfed lands; the drylands wheat and millet were a new taste. What punishment was to be meted out for such a crime?

Hari looked right at Mai, and she needed no second heart and third eye to see the plea in his expression. She broke in. “Olossi's market has a code for such violations that we may follow until Astafero codifies its own market laws. Surely it is the Guardian's business to determine the truth, and the council's business to determine the fine.”

Hari's tense posture relaxed. Folk agreed that she had the right of it. The sun set over the mountains. A pair of youths lit lamps, the oil of naya so pure it blazed. The light shimmered in the twilight glamor of Hari's long cloak, whose fabric blended into the fall of night and yet caught the final fading measures of day. The way he sat so still quieted the assembly; they were nervous, but not precisely fearful. They watched him, but did not cower. His mouth wore a lopsided smile that was also half a frown.

He said, “What of this other matter that concerns you, Mistress Behara?”

The words startled the noodle seller, but she rose to address Guardian and assembly both. A gang of youths trying to extort protection money had been caught by the militia and now there was a dispute over what punishment should be meted
out. The lads were hauled up before Hari, where they stammered out defiant declarations of innocence.

Hari made a cutting gesture with a hand that stopped them short. “Don't lie to me!” The young men wept as Hari's gaze staked them. Frown deepening, he released them and spoke to the assembly. “You have a more serious problem. These louts are an advance force from a criminal organization that was driven out of Haldia by the war. It's trying to move its operations into Olossi.”

Folk gave way to let Anji through to the front. “I beg your permission to deal with this matter personally,” he said to the council. “That such organizations operate in Olo'osson is not acceptable. I'll take custody of these men. With the help of the Hieros and her agents in Olossi, we'll track this back to its source and put an end to it.”