Traitors' Gate (90 page)

“Oh, Mai.” Miravia bent to kiss her. “You're the one who sheltered me. Without you, and all you risked for me, I would be in Nessumara now in a cage. If you don't want me to go to Ushara's temple, I won't go.”

Mai smiled ruefully as she snagged Miravia's scarf off the floor. She'd bought this scarf for Miravia months ago, admiring its beautiful color. The scarf was a gift of friendship, not an obligation to bind Miravia to Mai's wishes.

“Of course if you want to go, you must go. I will not rule you as I was ruled. Hold still.” She tied it to conceal Miravia's hair, adding a pretty knot for flair. “Go on.”

At the curtain, Miravia grinned. “Anyhow, Mai, who is to say I cannot meet a lover in the temple and marry a different man?” Then she was gone.

Mai stared at the curtain as it rippled and stilled. The lamps burned. The shadows lingered. Was she sad? Happy? Bewildered? Upset? She hardly knew what to think, and yet the
memory of Miravia's deliriously hopeful expression made her smile.

Priya slipped into the chamber, crossed to her, touching her hand. “Plum blossom, are you well? So Miravia has gone off to meet the Devourer, has she?”

“Should I have dissuaded her, Priya? Keshad's rather unpleasant, but she thinks him handsome.”

“I believe she acts wisely. The flame may burn hot and short, and then afterward even if there is pain at its death, it will be extinguished. Held apart, it will smolder for far longer than if it is allowed to consume the fuel of desire. Or they may find they truly care for each other.”

“Two clanless people do not marry for love, Priya.”

“What do you suppose O'eki and I did?”

When she had traveled with Anji and his soldiers across the desert and along the mountains and over the Kandaran Pass, almost every day had exposed a new vista whose unexpected contours surprised her, elated her, scared her, or made her look twice.

She stared at Priya, who stood exposed as a person whose depths she had never bothered to contemplate. “I never thought about you being married. It never seemed important because—”

The woman's gaze softened. “Because we were slaves. Yet we had no contracts, no property, no freedom to barter with, no clan to please, no family obligations because we were torn from our families. Because we were slaves. So we pleased ourselves. Your father could be a harsh master, but he was fair in his own way. He allowed us to marry, as long as we did our work and never let our association interfere with the household. He allowed O'eki to earn coin on the side with the hope of buying us free in time. Not every master in Kartu Town was as generous.”

“I'm a fool,” said Mai. “Forgive me, Priya. I never even looked. Or thought. Or wondered.”

“You are no fool, plum blossom. You are young, and yet even so in your own way, wise enough to let Miravia go although I know you wish her to marry Chief Tuvi.”

“Do you think Tuvi wants to marry her?”

“I think he wants to please you, Mistress. Or please the captain through pleasing you. Difficult to say. Perhaps both. He's an honest man. He goes to the temple now and again to please himself—”

“Chief Tuvi goes to Ushara's temple?”

Priya chuckled. “Does that surprise you?”

“Of course not. It's just—Aui! It's no business of mine.”

“He has enough obligations within the household that I do not suppose he feels a desperate need to take on a wife and, later, children.”

“But every man wants wives and children in order to be content!” She heard her own voice and laughed. She wiped her eyes and sighed. “I sound like my mother and aunt and all the other wives in the Mei compound. They must say so, mustn't they?” She swallowed. “Have you gone to Ushara's temple, Priya?”

Priya merely smiled, saying nothing, keeping her secrets.

“I'll never go,” said Mai.

“No,” agreed Priya. “Married to the captain, as you are, you will never go.”

Hands clapped outside the entrance. O'eki stepped inside with such a look that Mai tensed. “Mistress,” he said—and broke off.

Two burly men dressed in the southern style pushed past him, still wearing their
boots
. For an instant she saw one holding a long knife and the other a drawn sword; so had red hounds tried to kill her in a plain white room in the women's quarters of an unknown inn in an unnamed city in the empire.

She lunged for Atani's cot.

Priya tugged her to a halt. “Mai! Stop!”

The haze of her vision cleared. They weren't holding weapons: one held a scroll and brush and inkpot, the other a baton carved from ebony wood and inlaid with strips of gold, a factor's staff of authority.

Sheyshi rushed in behind them, took one look at Mai's unbound hair, and hurried over to the pillows to collect combs and hairsticks. “The mistress is not dressed to receive visitors!”

Words are no obstacle when the wind blows in. O'eki
stepped to one side, holding the curtain back. Anji's mother strode into the room and halted, surveying the plain canvas walls, the scatter of pillows, the three small chests that contained Mai and Anji's traveling clothes and necessities, a tray with cups and pitcher and basin set to one side, the enamel pisspot set off to one side on the open porch, recently emptied and rinsed. She looked at O'eki, at Priya, even at Sheyshi.

Never let it be said the market had not taught Mai to think on her feet.

“Sheyshi, please offer a pillow for our guest,” she said in the same gracious voice she would use when offering a tough customer a few almonds to nibble before getting down to serious bargaining.

“I see you are not dressed to receive visitors,” said Anji's mother.

“At this time of night I am accustomed to receiving only my husband. Unfortunately he is not here to greet you.”

“I am not come to speak to my son.”

Sheyshi placed the best-quality pillow—embroidered in silver and red and gold thread with butterflies and bees—near Anji's mother.

“Am I to sit on the floor like a slave?”

“Honored Mother, it is the custom in the Hundred for all people to sit on pillows, on the floor, just as it is the custom here to do many things differently from what you and I may have been accustomed to in the places we lived before this.”

“Do not condescend to me. You, a humble merchant's daughter, cannot in any way compare your circumstances to mine. Is there no stool? No camp chair? No captain's bench?”

Maybe there had been once, but these artifacts had vanished over the last year. Mai had a chair in the compound at Olossi, but she only used it when negotiating a particularly hard bargain. Some rich people liked couches in the Sirniakan style, but Mai preferred the ease of handsome furnishings that could be moved, changed, or put away quickly and with little effort.

“Now that we are come to live in the Hundred, Honored Mother,” she went on stubbornly, with that same sweet voice,
“we have found it easier to adopt the local ways rather than cling to our old ones.”

“So say those who are weak-minded and lazy. Had I not clung to my Qin customs and ways in the long years I was trapped in the women's quarters of the imperial palace, I would be dead now. So would my son. A fact you should consider. I will not sit on the floor.”

“Then you must stand, Honored Mother. My apologies.”

She snorted. “Sweetly wielded. A knife coated with honey.”

Mai let this pass. “May I offer you refreshment, Honored Mother? Khaif or tea can be brewed. There is also kama juice.”

“What is your price?”

Mai smiled. Now they were walking on familiar ground. “I offer you refreshment as I would offer any guest refreshment, Honored Mother. This is not the market, that such drink would come with a price.”

“Do not play this game with me. I am accustomed to female beauty. I have studied it over many years. Many beautiful girls and women inhabit the women's quarter in the imperial palace, some even more beautiful than you. But you are also intelligent, and more than that, you hold a piece of yourself aside. That is what lends savor to your beauty, although few men understand it is that quality they react to. I doubt my son understands it. He may believe it is merely your physical beauty and your intelligence he favors, but it is the particular quality of spirit which infatuates him so. He wishes to conquer all of you and knows instinctively that there remains yet a corner of your spirit which belongs to you only. How that must rankle him!”

Mai had learned to say nothing and show nothing long ago. Her market face had protected her many times. She found anger surging in her breast, and she pushed it aside. Later she could rage. Now, she waited.

“What is your price? Your own household? Coin? Gold? Fabric? Horses? Slaves? A handsome husband to replace this one?”

“You believe I am someone else, Honored Mother. I have
my own household. I am rich, through my own efforts. I run things as I wish. I am content.”

“Would you be as content if Anjihosh is murdered? They will come after him.”

“They might come after him even if he marries the emperor's sister. Have you any reason to trust they will leave him alone in exchange for a marriage?”

“The marriage will show them he means to honor the agreement to remain in exile. The Hundred means nothing to the empire. There is nothing here they could possibly want.”

“The giant eagles.”

“Ah, the giant eagles and their reeves, which I have seen. Yet they are a curiosity, poorly deployed and without purpose. In the empire, the reeves would be slaves who served the throne, sent as messengers on the emperor's behalf or to strike at his enemies. It is Anjihosh the empire cares about, not the eagles or the paltry trade goods.”

She took three steps toward Mai. Priya stepped forward as if to place her own body between the two women, but Mai put out a hand to restrain her. Anji's mother was only looking, studying Mai with a gaze not truly hostile but something Mai had no name for and no experience with. She herself measured fabric in the market with such a gaze, trying discern which would best suit her uses and which was not worth her time or coin. But you did not measure people as you measured goods in the marketplace.

Eihi! Of course folk did.

They did it all the time.

She folded her hands in front of her and said nothing, only returned that gaze without flinching.

Anji's mother nodded, a flicker of a smile flashing. Was that a dimple, like Anji's? It was already gone.

“You are more formidable even than I had supposed. Let us speak bluntly, then. Have you a price?”

“Let us speak bluntly, then. I do not have a price.”

“Do you think it unreasonable of me to insist that my son make such an advantageous marriage?”

Obedience choked her. Duty choked her. Truth choked her. Powerful men commonly took two wives, multiple concubines. Clans made alliances for mutual benefit. In contracts, in business, love meant nothing.

“I see,” said Anji's mother. “You understand perfectly well that it is not an unreasonable demand. But let us imagine that my son is too proud and stubborn to see you relegated to the status and rank of concubine, even if that is what you are in the eyes of any person born of noble blood and to high rank. Such distinctions often mean a great deal to the common people. Let us say that for a merchant's daughter, status as a concubine would be seen as lowering, shameful, even dishonorable. Would you therefore object to a position as his second wife, for certainly an emperor's sister must be designated his chief wife? There is no shame or disgrace in standing as the second wife to a prince.”

Once she could have borne it in silence, let words wash over her and away. She had long ago determined to live life in her own way and on her own terms by holding a part of herself aside as a garden in which she could nurture a seedbed of personal, private happiness. In those days, she had been careful to hide her true feelings in order to never anger others, because if they were angry they might disturb the tranquil sanctuary she had so carefully constructed.

But now, it seemed, she no longer feared making other people angry. The girl she had been had passed through the Spirit Gate and become a woman whose voice she scarcely recognized as her lips opened and she spoke.

“You forget, verea, that in the Hundred Anji is not a prince. He is not an emperor's son, or an emperor's brother, or a var's nephew. Such titles mean nothing here. He is a militia captain, a man who works for coin just like everyone else. He is no greater or lesser than I am. If I walk first in his heart, why should I then agree to step back and become second?”

“To save his life. And the life of your handsome son.”

Priya gasped. O'eki gave an inarticulate exclamation.

The ground lurched beneath Mai, or perhaps that was only her hammering heart and dizzied head as she stumbled to the
cot and placed her body between the baby and his grandmother.

Who smiled, not unkindly. “Perhaps you now understand me. There is no abyss as fathomless as a mother's fear for her child. There is no beast who will fight more fiercely than a mother defending her child. So understand me in this. Anjihosh's son is as precious to me as Anjihosh himself. I am not the one you need fear in the matter of the boy.”

“Then why do you threaten Atani?”

“I do not threaten Atanihosh. I am endeavoring to make you understand that with my aid and cooperation you can ensure the baby's survival.”

“If I relinquish my place as Anji's wife.”

“If you give way, as is proper, to a woman whose rank and birth lie far above your own. It would be best for you to leave the household entirely.”

“Taking my son with me?”

The woman had the audacity to look startled. “Only Anjihosh and I can protect him!”

“Is this your argument? To abandon my son into the arms of a woman who speaks of his death?”