Traitors' Gate (119 page)

“Do you want to pray to the Merciful One, Mistress?” Behara asked her. “Many of us do, remembering the prayers. How can it be you are alive? Everyone said you were murdered by the red hounds out of Sirniaka.”

“Is that what they said?” And yet, how to explain what would only make them distrust her? “In truth, verea, I was sorely hurt and I suppose it was deemed better to set it about that I was dead than to risk a second attack.”

Ah. Of course. This made perfect sense. Exactly the kind of wise decision Commander Anji would make to confound his enemies. They showed her the sprawling market, the burgeoning fields, the expanding docks, the steady expansion of the irrigation channels being dug mey by mey up into the hills. The garrison fort with its well-behaved soldiers.

No one feared attack from the empire. The commander had taken care of that even if he had had to marry that foreign woman who, it was said, no one ever saw. Those problems with bandits and renegades in previous years? Neh, not a problem at all any longer, at least not here in Olo'osson. Trade was brisk and profitable. Why, a woman walking alone could carry a precious vessel of water-white all the way from Astafero past Old Fort and to Horn, and not fear she'd be assaulted! The commander had taken care of that.

They prayed the prayers to the Merciful One at the altar of Hasibal every day, they told her, and their prayers had been answered.

They flew north in stages.

The second night they slept over in a village on West Track, a quiet town whose innkeeper welcomed them gravely. He proudly showed them a newly built dormitory set aside for traveling reeves and soldiers. A much smaller chamber was set aside for female reeves, with only two pallets folded up in the bedding cupboard.

He had no idea who Mai was, although he looked twice and then three times at Miravia and, when Kesh pointedly draped an arm around his wife's shoulders, smiled apologetically as he explained he'd recently been serving numbers of Ri Amarah
men hastening to and from Toskala on business for the commander.

“I thought they kept their women—Never mind. My apologies, verea.”

He invited them to dine in the main room of the inn and hurried off to the kitchen. The inn wasn't crowded but the locals were drinking, eyeing them with the satisfaction locals take in seeing outsiders look unsure of themselves. A pair of young men really looked Mai over, and then began arguing in low voices. The innkeeper and his wife brought their party cordial and a big pot of well-spiced barsh to share for their supper.

“How much?” asked Mai, preparing to bargain.

He looked surprised. “Eh, verea, any reeve or soldier or messenger receives free lodging and food. It's part of the tax, isn't it? The militia tithe.” He grinned. “However, I'm only obligated to serve you a single cup of cordial. After that, you have to pay house prices.”

“The militia tithe? What manner of tax is that?”

His smile softened, as if he'd just figured out she was as stupid as she was pretty. “So the army and the reeves can patrol, make sure we're not burned out of our villages, killed in our beds. I'm happy to feed them, seeing how peaceful things are now.”

The young men sauntered up, swaggering with nervous bravado. “Velin here says he's seen you before, verea,” said the one courageous enough to speak first. “He says he's sure he saw you in Olossi that one time he went there for festival. Aren't you one of Hasibal's players? They take in outlander slaves, sometimes, and train them up. Hard to see how a man could forget a face like yours. I'm Noresh, by the way. We'd be happy to buy you a cup, eh?”

She knew how to smile to make a man feel she regretted the necessity of discouraging his advances. “My apologies, ver. I'm on a mission with these reeves. Nothing I can speak of.”

That impressed them. Out of misplaced pity, a scab she kept picking at, she told the innkeeper to pour them each a cup and handed over a few vey. They wandered away, flushed and
whispering at their triumph, and kept glancing her way as they lingered over their cups as if to drag out the ecstasy. A woman brought out her lute and began accompanying herself on songs, the folk joining in on the chorus and the hand gestures. The music flowed so sweetly; thoughts might wander down these bright tuneful paths and let go of the shadows.

Until the woman began a new song, one whose response was answered raggedly by folk still eagerly learning it: how the outlander had saved them and been rewarded with the love of a young woman as beautiful as plum blossoms shimmering dew-laden at dawn, only to have her stolen away from him by a jealous lilu.

Mai, choked and unable to breathe evenly, excused herself and returned to the tiny room. Miravia followed her and lay down beside her on the pallet they would share for the night.

“Mai . . .”

“Neh, it's nothing. Nothing I understand. He betrayed me.”

“He loved you!”

“Maybe he did, but now I wonder if this would have happened in the end no matter what? Demons stole me! That's one way to put it. But there's another story, a truer tale, isn't there? We sing the songs, and hear the tales, hoping they will have a happy ending—the bandit prince falls in love with the brick-maker's daughter and they live forever after in harmony—or at least a satisfyingly gruesome one in which everyone dies, but that is why they are tales, isn't it? Forever after in harmony, as long as I always did what Anji approved of. And then, when I did not . . .” She touched her cheek, the one he'd slapped.

“Folk do get angry with each other, Mai. Kesh can be so irritating, but I love him despite it, because of it, including it. If people can never be angry, then isn't that a way of lying?”

Mai smiled, remembering how she had thrown a cup at Anji, which he'd caught. Then she wept, and Miravia held her.

People travel onward by stages. Seven months is a stage, a chasm whose loss cannot be recovered, only bridged.

Late on the third afternoon they found shelter in an outpost atop a hill, a way fort overlooking the major road across Istria called the Flats. A cadre of soldiers was stationed in tent barracks
set on raised plank floors. Their commander was a Qin officer attended by four Qin tailmen whom Mai did not recognize and who did not recognize her. The soldiers recognized Kesh's partnership with Miravia, and deemed Miyara too bored with their youth to flirt with, but Mai and Ildiya they marked as fair game despite Siras's obvious jealousy.

“Enough!” said Miyara finally after yet another tray of cordial had been brought and hopefully presented to the young women. “Have you louts no manners? We'd like to eat in peace.”

“Neh, I was finished,” said Mai, for the sweat and rowdy clamor and the presence of Qin soldiers made her stomach knot and her eyes fill with tears. Every man, even the local ones, wore a black tabard and his hair bound up in a topknot. “I'll just walk outside.”

Kesh jerked as if he'd been kicked. “Ow!” he cried, flashing an indignant look at Miravia. She nodded toward Mai. “Ah. Well. I'll just walk out with you, verea. Keep you company. Guard you in case there are wolves prowling.”

Every man there, even the Qin, watched them leave the eating porch, and avid gazes tracked them out along the ridge. They reached a platform sited for an excellent view of the road running below, the distant crown of Mount Aua to the west, and a nearer view of an oddly shaped ridge, slightly higher in elevation than their own, cut by a ledge whose stony surface glittered as the setting sun caught its length at just the right angle.

“I wish you would call me ‘Mai,' ” she said as she leaned on the railing, the wind battering against the clasps and sticks with which she armored her hair. “Miravia is my dearest friend. Maybe she is my only friend. Even Miyara can't tell me what has happened to Priya and O'eki, only that they went away with Anji. I hate to be called ‘verea' by you, as though we're acquaintances in the market. I'm very angry she married you, but surely I can still think of you as my brother.” She wiped a tear.

“Eiya! Why are you crying?”

“Just missing my twin.”

“You have a
twin
! One as beautiful as you?”

She shot him a glance, and he blushed horribly, looking
mortified, and she laughed for the first time since she had woken. “I have a twin, a brother. Maybe he grew into his looks. I hope so.” Poor Mei. Always hounded by Grandmother and Father Mei and their mother and aunt. He was no silkworm to wind a cushion of silk to protect himself. He was a fragile leaf, subject to their storms. How was he faring? Could she send him a message across the vast distance, let her family know that she was alive? Would the family ever know the full story of what had happened to Hari?

“Did you ever look in the pool, Keshad? Did you ever see the chains?”

“What chains?”

“Never mind. Did Shai truly say nothing to you, that time he came up with Anji a month after—” She rubbed a hand over her vest, feeling the scar tissue along her ribs. “After Sheyshi stabbed me?”

“He never talked to me at all, and I admit I didn't talk to him. I was too cursed worried that Ravia would take it into her head to tell Chief Tuvi she would marry him, out of loyalty to you. So I didn't pay much attention to his troubles.”

She rested a hand on his forearm, and he was so startled he jerked it away, then flushed again, and settled his arm back beside hers on the railing as if within the reach of a particularly fearsome snake, and endured her fingers resting lightly on his hand.

“You do love Miravia, don't you?” she asked.

He looked irritated. Then he flung back his head as the sun winked hard on that distant ledge. “I just remembered. The captain and his men brought three small jeweler's chests bound with chains. But they left without them. I thought they were offerings for the altar. He sent up flowers every month, plum blossoms if he could get them. But that doesn't explain why he left those good quality chests behind, does it? Indeed, they emptied a clothes chest from the barracks shelter and took it away with them, although I never knew—nor asked—what was in it, I was that glad to see them go without taking Ravia with them.”

She changed the subject, stumbling over a momentary awkwardness
by falling back on the one subject she never tired of. “Tell me again, how was the baby that last time you saw him, when Anji came to take him away?”

He had the same smile any Hundred man would have, thinking of a plump, healthy child. “An exceptionally beautiful child. He has such a chortling laugh, like everything amuses him! Very good natured.”

Four soldiers tramped up behind them, laughing in a quite different way, shoving each other and showing off, making themselves big and noticeable as they crowded against the railing two on each side.

“Heya, verea! Like the view, eh?”

“It's a very fine view of the road. I suppose you keep an eye on travelers and caravans. Make sure no one comes to harm.”

“We do oversee the roads, of course.” They were young men, desperate to boast. “But that's not the chief reason we're here. We're black wolves, you know.”

“Black wolves?”

“The army's elite. We're trained to hunt demons.”

“You hunt demons?” She looked at Kesh, but he shrugged.

“See that Mount Aua? There's a demon cradle there, a place demons might try to shelter for a night, sip their demon nectar. And that ridge there—see how it glitters? That one, too. So we're posted here to keep an eye on them. There are other outposts like this one. Chief Chartai commands the entire black wolf cohort here in Istria. We're the second such cohort, you know. Just commissioned two months ago. See our banner?”

It flapped from a pole, two wolf's heads grinning in the breeze.

“We figured you maybe had a brother or husband who died in the service of the wolves, verea, seeing as you wear the ring.”

She looked down at the wolf's-head ring, sigil of the Mei clan. The necklace had slipped out from the neck of her vest and Shai's ring dangled at the curve of her breasts, which they were staring at, as men would. It was the same head, the very same. They held up their hands to show they, too, wore wolf's-head rings.

Her throat tightened on words she did not want to say. She slipped the errant chain and its ring back beneath her vest and was at once sorry she'd done so, because they followed the movement of the ring as if with their own hands.

“What kind of demons are you hunting?”

“Any demons, really, traitors or bandits or murderers. But particularly cloaks, verea. Those ones who say they're Guardians but are really gods-rotted lilus waiting to corrupt us and lead the Hundred back into war.” They preened, just like sunning eagles. “Only the black wolves are told the secret of how to kill demons. It's a dangerous job. We're not afraid.”

But now she was. Fear snapped, a wolf who had just decided to eat her up.

The fourth day they ought to have made it all the way to Toskala, but Miyara was stricken as by a shuddering sickness, and then she wept while still aloft, and afterward they sailed down and came to rest in a pasture as sheep scattered. The buildings of a substantial town rose ahead. Farmers and herdsmen came running.

“Miyara, what is it? Are you ill?” Mai was dangling with her feet off the ground, kicking a little, wanting to stand on solid earth instead of being helpless.

“I'm scared, Mai, I don't mind saying. There's a thing I've never told you. About Joss. They say Scar went after Commander Anji. They say Joss was jealous that Commander Anji was doing a better job than Joss was commanding the reeves, so he tried to kill him.”

“Joss? Reeve Joss? Are we talking about the same man?”

“The cursed handsome one.”

“That's right. He's an Ox, just like me. I admit he was vain, but very charming! Yet I never met a man less ambitious to puff about his own importance and authority than Reeve Joss. I mean, he seemed like a man who'd been dragged into authority and didn't like it much.”