Traitors' Gate (89 page)

It was remarkably easy to channel his anger into overly polite words. “It's not our way to enter our homes shod in dirt, ver. Our mat makers pride themselves on their fine work. Why should we trample it as if it were no better than the street?”

He set his boots aside and ran a hand over his hair before entering behind the impatient factor. They crossed the matted floor on a trail smeared with dust tracked in from outside. The factor paused by the far doors and rang a hand bell. A door was slid opened; Kesh entered alone. Four low couches in the Sirniakan style had been placed in a square, a table set between them.

“Master Keshad.” Anji's mother reclined on one couch. “Sit down.”

He sat opposite and rested his hands on his thighs. Female voices whispered and giggled from behind curtains strung across one side of the room. Where slits parted, he glimpsed eyes, or cheeks, or gauzy veils stitched with shimmering thread.

“The ladies admire your beauty, Master Keshad. They're commenting on it.”

“I beg your pardon, exalted lady,” he said as more giggles assaulted him. His cheeks burned. With the force of will that had gotten him through twelve years of slavery, he refused to look again toward the curtains. “Your words startled me.”

“Are you not commonly praised for your beauty?”

“No, exalted lady.” He was unable to find a posture that did not make him uncomfortable. “Why have you summoned me?”

But he could already guess.

“We traveled a long road together, Master Keshad. I will therefore presume upon our acquaintance to forego the usual pleasantries and formal words and strike directly to the heart of the matter. I made an offer to you many days ago. What is your answer?”

There was more than one way to make trouble!

“I hope you will forgive my blunt speaking, exalted lady.”

“I expect an honest answer.”

The gods-rotted women hiding behind their cursed curtain were still whispering, the sound as irritating as the whine of a disaffected customer who has gotten the worse of the bargaining session through their own hapless negotiation.

“I must decline your most generous offer. I cannot take the captain's wife off your hands. I do not want to marry her.”

“You need not marry her. You can take her as a concubine.”

“I am hesitant to correct your observations, exalted lady, but believe me when I say she is a rich woman who is well respected among the councils of this region.”

“She is very young!”

“Nevertheless. Most people credit her with convincing your son to fight the army that attacked Olossi last year. Also, the Olossi city council considers itself beholden to her for making it possible for them to overthrow the houses who ruled the council for many years solely to enrich themselves and their allies. Also, it seems she's been instrumental in supporting local councils and in creating a regional council in Olo'osson so all folk can have their voices heard.”

She said nothing.

“And, to be blunter, exalted lady, your son will never allow another man to take her from him.”

“I can direct my son.”

“You can?”

“You doubt me?”

Keshad smoothed the fabric of his loose trousers over his legs, taking courage in the fine weave and reed green color; these were the best quality clothes he had ever owned. Yet her garb—the silk; the embroidery of gold thread; the headdress plated with gold rings and medallions—was as far above his rich merchant's fittings as his were above that of a beggar's tattered loincloth.

“I do not doubt you, exalted lady. But I must still decline your offer.”

“You have given up on the other one? She's a clever girl, if reckless and possibly even inclined to disrespect. However, her accounting skills are good, she knows herbcraft, and she can even read and write. These are skills not to be scorned.”

“I will win her over in my own time and in my own way.”

“You can have two wives.”

This was like talking to Zubaidit when she got going! “Exalted lady, please listen to my words. It is not what I want.”

“But it is what
I
want. I can make it worth your while. Name your price.”

Goaded, he laughed. “Exalted lady, your son will kill me if he ever learns that I—or I suppose any man—has—well—Mai—” Aui! He was blushing. “Do you think he cannot?”

“I see.” She might have been a statue examined from a distance, remote and unknowable. She clapped her hands three times, and a slave emerged from behind a curtain carrying a small sack, no bigger than a melon, in both hands. The slave offered the sack to Kesh.

“I beg your pardon, exalted lady. What is this?”

“Gold.”

The slave released the sack. Kesh caught it; his arms tensed under its unexpected weight. “I can take no payment for an act I have refused to perform.”

She smiled with real amusement, and for an instant he saw the personality that had captivated an emperor. Captain Anji's smile was more spontaneous. Hers was a weapon.

“This is not payment. It is not obligation. Nor is it a reward or a bribe. It is a gift. If it were anything otherwise, you would
know. But I have the pleasure of making gifts exactly as I wish. I respect your honesty, Master Keshad. Now you may leave.”

So he left, burdened with gold and with a sense that he had missed something important. As soon as he was out on the porch, as soon as he had pulled on his boots and began walking down through the quiet evening streets of Astafero where a man might perfectly well carry a bag of gold without fearing he would be robbed and killed, he saw away beyond the walls in the lowland plain a pair of torches marking Ushara's temple.

Sixth bell had not yet been rung.

T
HE BABY SPRAWLED
naked in his cot, netting draped over to keep off mosks and flies and gnats, to discourage scorpions and snakes. Here in the Barrens the houses had to be elevated off the ground to keep away vermin, or else, as in Kartu Town, furniture must elevate the body away from the earth where poisonous creatures scuttled.

The commander's complex of tents had likewise been built up off the ground, canvas raised over raised plank flooring. Mai knelt behind Miravia, combing out her hair, which had a tendency to snarl. They were alone except for the sleeping baby.

“It's very irritating,” said Mai, “that we cannot sleep in the house we raised but must push Chief Berkei out of his accustomed place to accommodate us. Not that the chief complained.”

“You were invited to sleep in the house, were you not?”

“Anji was. In the suite of rooms set aside for his use just as if that woman had built and furnished the house and overseen the settlement. No doubt I was meant to sleep like a beggar on the steps.”

“She's been kind to me. Not kind, precisely, but—Ouch!”

“Don't move! There, I got the tangle out. Hard to imagine her as
kind
.”

“A poor choice of words. She has treated me with respect. She asked about you, but I pretended stupidity and told the other hirelings to do the same. I'm sure she did not believe us. She ordered me to take her shopping in the market and bargain for her. She seems to know no other way of talking to people except to command them. She talked a great deal about Keshad. He traveled with them all the way from the south. She seems to think he is a promising young man.”

“Do her words stand in his favor, or against him?”

Miravia raised a hand to a cheek.

“You're blushing!” said Mai with a laugh, although she could not see Miravia's face.

“I don't think she speaks well of many people,” said Miravia in a choked voice. “Oh, Mai, do you think of Anji every waking moment? When you close your eyes, do you see his face? Imagine his voice? Wish you might taste his lips? All the while knowing you are an utter fool for being obsessed?”

“No.”

“No!” Miravia turned so quickly Mai lost hold of the comb, which remained trapped in her curls. “No?”

“Of course I think of him often. But I have other responsibilities, obligations, duties. Atani. My business interests. The household. I can't think of Anji all the time! I think of him enough! You are infatuated with Keshad. There's nothing wrong in that unless you lash yourself off a cliff for a man you don't know.”

Miravia leaned back against her, and Mai wrapped her arms around her as Miravia spoke. “It's true you hear tales and songs telling of a glance seen across a street or looks exchanged in a garden that seal two hearts. How the arrow of a lilu hits its mark and makes the victim miserable for the rest of her days. I saw him that day, in your courtyard, that one time. Now I can't stop thinking of him.”

“That isn't love, dearest,” said Mai, as a pressure of annoyance built in her chest. “You can't love someone you don't know.”

“Do you love Anji?”

“Of course I love Anji.” She disentangled herself from
Miravia and went back to combing her hair, because combing hair calmed her surging heart. “But I didn't love him when he plucked me out of the marketplace.”

“You told me you did!”

“I was very frightened. So I had to believe it, didn't I? I had to sing the songs that allowed me to ride each day into unknown territory. Then, afterward, well . . .” Her hands ceased their stroking; she wrapped her fingers in Miravia's hair as she recalled the sweetness of Anji's lovemaking.

“You're blushing,” said Miravia with a laugh, not needing to look at her to know that heat had flooded her skin. “Stop that! Your husband will return soon enough, a moth to your flame. Let me comb out your hair, or does he like to do that for you?”

They both began to snort and giggle, and Mai had to wipe her eyes and her running nose with a scrap of cloth. “Oh, hush,” she said, “we'll wake Atani.”

The curtain swayed, and a dark hand pressed it aside. Priya looked in, smiling. “Is all well? Have you awakened the baby?”

“No, thank you, Priya. All is well. Is there any signal of Anji's return?”

“No.” She vanished behind the curtain.

“Where did he go?” asked Miravia, settling on her knees as Mai hitched up her taloos to her hips and sat cross-legged with her back to the other woman.

“I don't know. I sat through the entire afternoon at his side. He wanted me to tell the chiefs and sergeants about life in the Hundred and how I would help them find local wives and settle into local households once the war was over.”

“Is he that sure we will win?”

“That's the story he must tell himself and others, isn't it? It's the tale I tell myself. They asked about the brothel, very shyly, I must admit, for they didn't wish to trouble me with such questions, but Anji told them that they must ask me everything even though he didn't expect
that
question! That's how he found out that since last time we were here, a temple to the Merciless One was dedicated and raised, at the order of Astafero's council! I
thought he was going to ride down and burn it to the ground at that very instant. He said before he would permit no temple of Ushara in the settlement. He's still angry about—” She faltered, because she had never told Miravia about Anji hitting her. “—about me taking you to Ushara's temple in Olossi. But I turned his anger to my advantage, because he hadn't a word to say that he was willing to say in front of others. That allowed me to speak. I told the men about the local customs and that they must never offer coin in Ushara's garden and so on. You know all that better than I do. After all that, he calmed down, and the meeting was over at nightfall, right before you returned. Then an urgent message came from his mother.”

Miravia pulled the hairsticks and combs out of Mai's hair and let it fall. “You shouldn't fight her.”

“I don't want a battle. But what am I to do? Accept a place as his second, inferior wife?”

“You cannot ever be that to him!”

“I am a merchant's daughter. She is an emperor's sister.” Hu! Now she was crying.

“It won't come to that. He loves you.”

“As you love Keshad, perhaps?” she asked bitterly. “He loves my beauty, anyway. People do not marry for that kind of love. Their clans arrange a contract. Or a woman is purchased. Or two families seek an alliance. Or cousins pool their family fortune with a wedding. There are many reasons, but not that one. He would be a fool not to marry her and secure the benefits she brings to him. Anyway, if he does not marry her, his cousins will try to kill him.”

“They may try to kill him no matter what he does or says.
She
might try to kill him, once she's in his bed. With a dagger she's hidden in her bosom!”

Mai sobbed, and Miravia embraced her, and then they both began to laugh because laughing was better than crying.

The sixth bell tolled across the settlement to mark the final descent into night.

Miravia shrieked and scrambled to her feet. “I have to go! I said I would meet him—!”

“No!”

“Yes!” How Miravia's face glowed at the thought of meeting a lover she ought not to have. “I thought, if I just devour him, then I'll have done it and I can think more clearly. And he'll have slaked his thirst, and he'll leave me alone and stop pestering me!”

“You go to the temple?”

“I go every week. I don't have to obey my family's strictures any longer. Why should I deny myself?”

To know that the women and men of the Hundred worshiped at Ushara's temple was one thing. To see Miravia making ready to leave with a reckless look in her eyes left Mai stammering. “B-But Chief Tuvi is a good man.”

“Yes, he is a good man. What has that to do with anything?”

“I am hoping—you two could marry.”

“He's as old as my father!”

“You were about to be married off to a man twice as old! That makes him half as young! He'll treat you kindly, and leave you alone to run your business affairs as I do mine. Then we'll always be together.”