Traitors' Gate (38 page)

Mai lifted her chin, sensing victory in those words. “Miravia is not fortunate, she is not willing, and yet she cannot say no. Folk will say she went willingly, when the truth of her heart speaks otherwise. I believe her when she says she will suffer abuse in that house in Nessumara. If I can do something to stop it, then it is dishonorable of me not to try!”

Miravia hid tears behind a hand.

The ginny thumped its tail once, then lapsed back into stillness. A small bird with a red-feathered cap and white-tipped wings fluttered in under the pavilion roof, landed beside the tea tray, and looked them over with sharp black eyes.

“You may suffer for this act today,” said the Hieros.

“I know,” said Mai. “But I can't do anything else.”

The old woman bent her head, as if considering whether to make one more attempt to bargain Mai down. Her hair was entirely silver except for a few strands of black. It was bound up and pinned in place by lacquered hairsticks like those Mai herself used. Once, Mai supposed, it had been luxuriantly thick hair. Now, of course, age had thinned it.

She raised her head and looked at Mai. “Do you trust me?”

“I came to you for help, Holy One.”

“Very well. I'll help you. But she'll have to leave Olo'osson immediately. Today.”

“There is another way, Holy One,” said Miravia. She sucked in a breath as for courage and spoke again. “I could enter the garden.”

“Mira!” Mai grasped her arm. “You can't—”

“Not as a hierodule. No offense to you, Holy One. I have no place in the temples as an acolyte. But merely as a—a—a—” She shook off Mai's touch, not in an angry way but in the manner of a person who knows she must walk the next stretch of the road alone. “Once I enter the garden—and do what is done there—my family can no longer marry me off.”

“You can't possibly—” Mai cried.

“No clan among the Ri Amarah would ever accept me,” said Miravia calmly. “They will say I am no daughter of theirs. They will say I am dead.”

The old woman had features honed by age; in them you could see the ghost of her youth, and yet Mai could not imagine her young. “Who are we, daughter, if we have no clan? We are a fish hooked out of the water that sustains us and left to die on the shore. Do not be so eager to embrace this form of death.”

“I do not want never to see my mother and brothers again. But it is still better than what awaits me in Nessumara. Can you imagine sending one of your own daughters into such danger?”

The Hieros smiled. “Certain of my daughters are trained to walk into danger, and they do, and I will likely never see them again. But you are desperate, indeed, Miravia. Is this truly what you wish?”

“Doesn't anyone ever think I also might be curious? That I might want to—” She stammered. “Don't all the tales say it brings pleasure? I see in the blush on your cheek, Mai, when you speak of Captain Anji. Why shouldn't I be allowed to experience what every girl born into the Hundred expects she can have simply by walking to the temple after she has celebrated the feast of her Youth's Crown?”

“I am not one who will argue this point with you,” said the Hieros. “Enter if you wish. If you feel apprehension natural to one coming from your circumstances, be aware that certain of the hierodules and kalos are trained specifically to—Well, it should be obvious we are accustomed to every temperament and wish a person might have, entering Ushara's holy precincts.”

“Miravia,” whispered Mai, “it would be—with someone you don't even know, or—” Humiliated, she looked away.

“All are allowed to enter who have not offended the goddess,” said the Hieros. “You, too, may enter if you wish, Mai.”

“I would not! Anji would—!”

“Does he own your body, as a master owns the debt of a slave?” asked the Hieros.

She could not find a safe place to fix her gaze. “It would be shameful. I couldn't.”

Miravia grasped her free hand. “Oh, Mai. Do you think less of me?”

“Never!” She burst into tears. “I just want you not to suffer what I grew up with! That hateful house! Grandmother Mei's spite. My father's temper, and how it made everyone walk with their heads down for fear of looking him in the eye and getting punished for it. He beat my brother, Younger Mei—my dearest, twin to me—because he wasn't strong and angry like Father. And now my dearest twin doesn't even have me to protect him or hold his hand. But I always knew I would have to leave the house. That's the way of it, that the girls must leave to join their husbands' households, where they bide at the mercy of those who may treat them well or ill. Bad enough I should have to leave. I couldn't bear to think of you, Miravia—”

“It will be well.” Miravia kissed her and stroked her. “Once my family casts me out, we'll find another way.”

“I'll gift you with so much coin,” sobbed Mai, “you can set up your own stall selling herbs and ointments.” She sucked in breath and wiped her cheeks.

They embraced.

Mai pulled away. “Best I go quickly, Holy One.”

“You came in secret, did you?” said the old woman with a faint smile, perhaps of disapproval. “Now we will see what colors this thread layers in the cloth.”

“I don't want you to get into trouble,” said Miravia in a husky voice.

One last embrace. Maybe their last one.

Mai walked out of the garden with the palanquin carried behind her by silent but clearly curious folk. They did not attempt to speak to her.

It will be well
, she thought fiercely.

The baby woke, and as she crossed under the white gates, ginny lizards peered down upon them from the trees and tall bushes. Atani turned his head as if trying to track them. As she passed under the outer gates and beyond the temple's outer wall, the sun had risen a hand's breadth above the estuary. The path down to dockside gritted under her feet. The force of all
she had said and done overtook her in a rush of feeling that made her tremble. What would Anji say?

The boatman stared at her as the acolytes jostled the boat while getting the palanquin fixed across the board, but mercifully he said nothing except “You'll have to sit inside, verea, for there's no place otherwise.”

He balanced the boat deftly as she clambered aboard, tightening her grip on the baby until he squawked in protest. She settled onto the bench inside the curtains as the boatman poled away from the dock. She kissed Atani's sweet face for comfort.

The water had gentled, and the easy slap of water in the back channels lulled her. Smells and sounds rose from the channel: musty molding thatch; the dry rustle of reeds; the whit-whoo of a bird calling after its mate. Soon she heard the rumble of wheels, a hammer pounding a steady rhythm, a burst of laughter cut short. A boy's voice lilted: “There is it, Seri! Go get the porters!”

What would she tell Tuvi? She'd not thought that far ahead.

The boat bumped the dock. An odd spill of silence emanated from the dockside where she might have expected the lively sounds of commerce.

“No need for such a look, ver,” said a voice she recognized as that of one of the hirelings. “We just took the coin like any hire.”

The palanquin thumped hard to the boards. Weren't the hirelings going to pick her up and start back to the city? She bit her lip and reached for the curtain, to tell them, kindly but firmly, that they had to go right away.

“I beg your pardon, ver, but them who hires the palanquins have to be able to expect privacy—”

The curtain was abruptly pulled back. She looked into Chief Tuvi's face, his expression so blank she thought it hid a deeper emotion. His mouth quirked, as if he had a wish to speak but could not. At a movement behind him, he flipped the curtain up over the roof of the palanquin and stepped out of the way.

There stood Anji, his riding whip clenched in his left hand
and his normally neat topknot as frayed as if he'd bound his hair up in haste. To come riding after her.

Her breath caught in her chest; her fingers went cold; her cheeks flushed hot.

But not this cringing. One sharp breath she took in, and then with her market face as bland as ever she could make it, she stepped out of the palanquin with the baby in her arms and smiled with blander politeness at him, facing it out with pleasant words in the tone with which she would greet a treasured acquaintance.

“Anji, I was just—”

He slapped her, the back of his hand to her cheek, the blow so sharp and unexpected that all grounding in time and place fell away for forever and one instant as she fell and she drowned

he's furious

he's reaching for his sword

he's going to kill me now

Merciful One, please give me the strength to endure this

She was too stunned to react when instead of cutting her down he took the baby out of her arms and turned his back on her. Then he paused, shoulders tense like coiled steel, and turned halfway back.

“Bring her,” he said to Tuvi.

He walked to his horse, mounted, and rode away.

“Hu!” Tuvi sighed, and as through a haze Mai saw him take his hand off his sword's hilt. Her cheek was stinging.

All kinds of people were staring, old and young and laborers and merchants and debt slaves and girls at their harborside slip-fry pans with mouths dropped open. Everyone was staring, except the Qin soldiers detailed to escort her, who were carefully looking elsewhere. The river churned behind her.

“Follow my lead, Mistress,” Tuvi said in a low voice. “It's best if you ride, so they can see you are still honored among us. Do not let them see you cry. You've nothing to feel shame over.” He paused, fingering his wisp of beard as he studied her. “Do you?”

Her face was really hurting now, a throb that reached to her left eye. “It wasn't wrong to help Miravia.” Her voice was a
scrape over tears held in. “Are you angry with me, Tuvi? I couldn't bear that on top of the . . . other.”

He shook his head, as if she'd given the wrong answer. “Ride with me, Mistress.”

She had no more of a choice than the day Anji had approached her father and proposed that Father Mei might be interested in marrying his daughter to a Qin officer, a polite way of saying: I'm taking her. He could have hauled her out of the marketplace where she had sold produce, and done whatever he wanted; no one could or would have stopped him. The family would then have taken her back in shame, or left her to make her own way as a whore. It happened to women all the time, didn't it? Only the old stories and songs made it seem glamorous.

She struggled to gather calm as she turned to the porters. “The second half of your payment is waiting at Crow's Gate when you return the palanquin, as was agreed.” She followed Tuvi to the waiting soldiers.

But of course it was impossible to ride in a taloos. Trembling and embarrassed, she had after all to call the bearers and return to Crow's Gate sitting within the palaquin as the Qin soldiers plodded before and after like jailers. She wept once and then wiped her eyes. Her cheek hurt if she touched it, so probably it was going to bruise, and then she wept again, and after that she thought of what Tuvi had said and she was done with weeping. She had done nothing wrong! Even if everyone said otherwise—that of course a young person must marry according to the wishes of the clan—she could not stand aside while her beloved friend was handed over to a man who had already killed three wives.

They arrived at Crow's Gate. The line at the gate moved slowly, and when she peeked out from behind the curtains, it was to see sober young militiamen interviewing each incoming party and clerks of Sapanasu checking accounts books. She leaned out, but did not see Anji among those waiting in line.

“Set me down, please.” The bearers did so, and she climbed out and walked over to Chief Tuvi. “How long will this take, Chief? Don't they let Qin soldiers through?”

“They do not, on orders of the captain. If the locals must endure these delays in order to make the roads safe, then so must we when we are about the ordinary business of the day. Lest we appear as outlanders in their eyes, taking privileges we deny to them.”

“No, of course Anji is right.” She looked away, pretending that her bracelets must be turned. Her breasts were beginning to ache, a sense of fullness that anticipated a feeding, for although Atani did not take much at any one time, he nursed frequently.

Tuvi dismounted and handed his reins to one of the soldiers. “You four escort us, two before and two behind. The rest of you wait your turn and be sure that the bearers and palanquin owners are properly paid.”

“Tuvi, are you sure—?”

“Do you want to stay in the palanquin, Mistress? I can engage its services to return you to the compound.”

“I'd rather walk.” To delay returning home to face Anji's anger. To feel the sun on her face, to pray for the grace of the Merciful One to cover her heartache.

He led their little cadre up to the gate and invoked captain's privilege to pass them through ahead of others.

“That's the outlander, the captain's wife,” someone said in the crowd.

Another called out, “Greetings of the day to you, verea! You brought good fortune to my cousin's husband's sister, who married one of the soldiers after her own husband was killed on West Track. She'd have had to sell herself into debt slavery otherwise.”

“Council members say you're the one bargained those cursed Greater Houses down until they begged for mercy.” This comment brought general raucous laughter. “Thanks to you, verea. They say it's thanks to you the Qin soldiers fought at all.”

“Out Dast Olo way, eh? Getting a taste at the temple? For sure you've earned it.”

A flush rose in her cheeks, maybe enough to hide the red mark.

Folk made pretty greetings as Tuvi inexorably led her forward.
She spoke words of greeting in return, nodding and smiling at every person who nodded and smiled at her, but all she could see was Anji's face in the instant after he had struck her, a man she did not recognize.