Traitors' Gate (15 page)

“Do you think they're demons?” Odash asked.

“Captain Anji does. He's the outlander captain who saved Olossi. But I'm not sure he means the same thing by the word as we do. For myself, I don't know what to think.”

“It was swords killed all the men and women in the council hall on Traitors' Night,” said Odash.

“You're sure? In the tales it's said Guardians can kill with a word and a look alone.”

“The only survivor of the massacre was one of the traitors. She said the cloaks promised order and wealth to anyone who aided them. Afterward, the cloaks turned on the traitors who had done the dirty work of actually murdering the council, and killed them—with a look and a word, like in the tales.”

“Used and discarded! So the question is, why didn't the cloaks kill the council themselves? Can I interview this survivor?”

As Odash hesitated, all the others drained their cups. “She threw herself off the promontory.”

“Eihi! Just like in the tale. What did she tell you?”

“Nothing but how if she'd known otherwise she wouldn't have done it, useless apologies, if you take my meaning. All I know is that she's from the Green Sun clan, and they all cleared out before the attack. If we can get more information from the city about what other clans cleared out, we might know who betrayed us.”

“We'll send that message as a warning to Nessumara,” said Joss as folk nodded.

“Why, just so!” cried Odash as the others looked at Joss and then at their empty cups. “That's why we need a new commander.”

“Commander of Clan Hall? Over all the reeve halls? Are you asking
me
?”

Odash bent a baleful glare on Peddonon. “Surely Peddo mentioned—”

“I thought he was
joking
!”

“We didn't know who else to turn to,” added Odash.

“I'm the only one who answered the call?” He rested his forehead on fists, his head so heavy he thought he might never again raise it. “Let me sleep on it. I'm cursed tired from the journey and everything we've had to deal with down south.”

“Allies from Toskala are sending up a messenger tonight.”

“All the more reason to sleep now.”

Peddonon hung back after the others had gone. “I wasn't joking. We need you, Joss.”

“Let me sleep first!”

Peddonon grinned. “Can't keep your looks without enough rest, my friend. Wise of you.”

“I wouldn't want to end up looking like you, true enough. Say, how are the two recruits doing? The young Qin reeve gave an excellent account of the encounter on the river.”

Yet he wondered: Had Zubaidit been on that barge Pil had seen on the river? Was she still alive?

“He's exceptional, it's true.” Peddonon scratched his chin. “What's his story? Can we trust him?”

“Eh?” Joss slapped a hand down on the table so hard Peddonon startled. “Has he caused trouble?”

“Not at all!”

“Neh, I meant nothing bad by it. I just wondered because Captain Anji specifically asked me to move him north to get him away from the other Qin soldiers. I'm not sure if it's considered ill luck that he was chosen by an eagle . . . or a disgrace . . . or if Anji means him to serve as a spy in our midst—”

“Think you so?”

“Does he behave suspiciously?”

Peddonon grinned in the way Joss had come to associate with his admiration of certain firefighters. “No. He's cursed good with his weapons and his eagle, and he's very shy. That Nallo is like his older sister, always ready to tear your head off if you even look sidewise in the wrong way at him.”

“Is that how it is? What way have you been looking at him?”

Peddonon sat down again. “He's fashioned like me, not like you, I'm sure of it.”

“You're usually right.”

“In this matter, I'm always right. But—”

“I knew there was a but.” Joss stifled a yawn. “No luck there, I take it.”

“Maybe I'm feeling cheated out of a bit of flirting, but I think it's more than that. A young person is shy about these things. That's to be expected. That's what Ushara's temples are for. But he's of age, plenty old enough.”

“The Qin aren't like us, that's true. Captain Anji has forbidden any Devouring temple to be built out at his settlement in the Barrens west of the Olo'o Sea. Maybe it's just inexperience, as you say.”

“Sheh! Maybe. Yet I wonder if there's more to it. It's almost as if he's ashamed of looking at a man, and he sure as the hells never looks at women in that way.”

This time when the yawn rose, Joss could not hold it in. He raised both hands in apology. “I don't know. Keep an eye on him. Report anything suspicious. Otherwise, we have to assume he's just what he is, a young outlander suddenly harnessed to an eagle and torn from the company of his familiar comrades. Fortunate for him he has Nallo, eh?”

Peddonon laughed. “She scares me!”

“That Tumna chose true, neh? Listen, post a steward to wake me when we get the signal.”

Peddonon slid the door closed behind him. With some trepidation, Joss ventured into the sleeping chamber behind a screen of doors. He'd known the commander of Clan Hall for many years; they'd been lovers for a short time, not that she'd gone any easier on him for it afterward. Exploring the sparsely
furnished room now, he wasn't sure if Odash and the hall steward had already cleaned out her belongings or if she simply had never accumulated anything. The pallet was rolled up along one wall. The shelf held two neatly folded jackets of the kind that could be wrapped around any size body and a pair of loose trousers. An alcove in which an ornament appropriate to the season might be displayed sat empty. A pitcher had been recently filled with water and placed beside a bronze basin. He poured water, then washed his face and hands. Afterward, he unrolled the pallet and lay down on top of the coverlet in his clothes.

Yet he could not relax. Zubaidit's scorching gaze and shapely form kept intruding. Pil had seen Tohon. Tohon had ridden out with Zubaidit. The last time he'd seen her, she had slapped him. Aui! Why should that memory arouse him so?

He fell from uneasy waking into unsteady sleep, sinking into an old dream whose contours had become an achingly familiar landscape: A woman wearing a bone-white cloak walks away into a veil of mist, and he cannot help but run after her although he knows he will never catch her.

Twenty years Marit had been dead, and yet she still walked and spoke in his dreams. She called herself a Guardian now, although he could not understand why his dreaming mind, or the gods, made her do so. Yet strangely, her warnings to him in dreamtime always bore fruit.

“Marit!” he called after her fading form. “What should I do?”

“Joss.”

He startled awake to find Peddonon jostling his shoulder, a lamp shining behind his broad body. “Heya, Joss. You're mumbling in your sleep. Signal's come.”

Reeves learned the knack of waking to alertness. Joss rolled up to his feet as Peddonon stepped back, and they hurried outside, slipped on sandals, and followed the steward and his lamp through the darkness. Clan Hall had been built along pretty much the entire northern rim of the rock, with various launching points over the drop from bare scaffoldings that also served as secondary watchtowers. Where clouds parted, a half-moon
appeared low in the west. They hurried along the wall walk. Fires glimmered where the enemy had set up guard stations along the Istri Walk. They descended a ladder into a pit hewn out of the rock, musty with damp and mold. A gate was set ajar.

The steward halted. “I can't go out on the ledge with the lamp. Be careful.”

Joss and Peddonon paced along a stone-walled corridor, the echo of the river's voice murmuring around them. They emerged cautiously onto a ledge with the wind tearing along the cliff face to their left, upriver. Downstream and curving away to the right, the prow rose to its peak. A pair of burning lamps marked the humble shelter protecting the stele for which the promontory was named. Four reeves lowered a big basket over the edge and eased out the ropes.

The ledge was a sheer drop to the water many hundred baton-lengths below, where a sliver of rocky shoreline was hidden behind broken boulders. The shoreline was pretty much impossible to reach, since you either had to battle the nasty shoreline current in a boat and cut a treacherous angle in among the rocks, or climb out along the lower face of the cliff.

Of course there were folk so reckless and stupid as to enjoy the challenge; he'd been one back when he was young. One time he'd dared a particularly fabulously defiant lass, a banner clan girl, to meet him there at sunset. That had truly been a memorable night.

“Thinking of that banner clan girl?” Peddonon whispered.

“Aui! How'd you know about that?”

“Everyone knows all about your adventures. They're famous in Clan Hall. They'll make a cycle of stories from them someday, the tale of the Handsome Reeve.”

“A comic tale, no doubt.”

Peddonon snickered.

The reeves handling the rope tensed. “Got it. Hauling up.”

Peddonon grabbed the safety rope and braced himself against a pair of stakes hammered diagonally into the rock face. Joss stayed out of the way, rubbing his chin, enjoying the feel of the bristles. He needed a shave. How in the hells could he sort out the complications that dogged him?

Last year, a huge army had swept down out of the northern wilderness under the command of Lord Radas. The army had overwhelmed cities and villages across Haldia and now Istria, throwing the land into chaos; they'd even sent a second army south to attack the city of Olossi. In the south, Captain Anji's outlander Qin soldiers had, with the aid of the reeves of Argent Hall, defeated that second army. At the behest of Olossi's new council, the captain was training an expanded militia to protect the entire region of Olo'osson. Meanwhile his soldiers were beginning to marry local women under the supervision of his beautiful and extremely clever wife, Mai. Who had ten days ago given birth to a boy child over whom Joss now stood as uncle.

Aui!

The reeves and eagles of Horn Hall had vanished. Folk claimed to see Guardians walking abroad, while others called them demons or cloaks and identified them with the leaders of the marauding army. His own work as marshal at Argent Hall had become complicated by the arrival of numerous unjessed eagles seeking new reeves, so many that they'd had to establish a secondary training hall. Naya Hall had been raised on the western shore of the Olo'o Sea near the settlement founded by Captain Anji on land deeded to him and his wife as part of their payment for aiding Olossi. Elsewhere in the Hundred, folk burned out of their villages wandered the roads. Children went hungry. Half the people Joss met while on patrol no longer trusted reeves. And now the desperate reeves of Clan Hall, blindsided by the murder of their most experienced reeves, wanted him to sit as commander over all the reeve halls. Yet the other reeve halls were beleaguered and uncooperative. Why should they agree to a new commander, much less Joss? He rubbed his head, wondering if he was going to get a headache.

It was difficult to imagine how his life could become more tangled.

“Here we are,” muttered a male voice.

They heaved the basket up over the edge and dragged it back from the brink. A single person sat inside.

“Eh, that was a ride, I'll tell you,” she said as she clambered out. “I thought I was going to pitch right over and fall to my
death. And I'll tell you—that path out along the rock isn't a path at all! It's not even a goat track. I slipped into the river twice. I'm soaking wet.”

Joss sagged against the rock as his pulse hammered in his ears.

“Best we know who you are first.” Peddonon stepped out from the wall.

She chuckled, as Joss knew she would. “I'm called Zubaidit. I convinced some brave clan folk within Toskala to get me up here. I've a message from them. But truly, I come from the south, from Olo'osson, at the behest of the Olossi council and their allies. I have news to pass back to Olossi, if you reeves will carry it.”

“Do you know about this, Joss?” Peddonon asked.

“Surely not Marshal Joss of Argent Hall?”

“The same,” Joss said, surprised at how smoothly his voice came out, not much of a croak at all. “Well met, Zubaidit. What of the other scouts?”

“I'd be happy to give my report. But must I stand here in these wet clothes, with the wind chilling me?” she asked, the curl of her voice such a blatant tease that his ears burned. “Or is there somewhere I can take them off?”

Cursed if every gods-rotted reeve standing there didn't start snickering, trying to hide the sound beneath hands clapped over mouths.

Smothering his own laughter, Peddonon said, “It seems you two know each other. But if you don't mind, can we get off this cursed ledge before one of us falls to his death? I mean, the one who hasn't already taken the plunge.”

Snorting and chortling, the other reeves hurried away through the arch and down the corridor, leaving Joss to follow Peddonon and Zubaidit. The glow of the steward's lamp illuminated the assassin as she looked over her shoulder at him.

It wasn't that he'd seen her so cursed many times in his life, since that first day less than a year ago when she had flirted with him and afterward tried to kill him. It was just that he remembered so well every curve, the way her hips tilted as she walked, the lift of her chin. The way you knew she knew how
to use her body, trained in Ushara's temple as the most deadly of assassins. Her vest and kilt were soaked, the cloth clinging to her like a second skin. Whew!

She grinned.

He was like a man staggering after a blow to the head.

“You're the messenger?” asked the steward, drawing her attention.

“I am.”

“You fell in the river?” Neffi asked with an appreciative grin. “I did that once, climbing the same route.”