Traitors' Gate (40 page)

The older fawkner began to laugh. The younger cast Joss a
startled look and trotted over to the loitering ordinands; two took off as Joss frowned. “Aui! Did I say something laughable?”

“Neh, sorry,” said the fawkner, wiping his eyes. “Just never thought I'd see the day when a reeve would fly in here and call himself commander of Clan Hall and not even know the proper forms, eh? Not to say we haven't been warned. I'm Kagard and that is Lenni. Let's look at your eagle, then. Anything I need know, besides that he knows the old forms better than his reeve does?”

The words rankled, but Joss kept his temper jessed. “Scar's calm, if you're calm. I'd appreciate your opinion on these two wing feathers.”

Scar accepted their attention, and flirted a little with the younger fawkner when he approached with a pair of files. Joss coped the one trouble spot on Scar's beak, and when they were finished he allowed Kagard to direct him and Scar to an empty loft, where a haunch of deer was brought in and tossed to the eagle after Joss had leashed him to his night's perch.

They walked outside onto the landing ground, now entirely in shadow. Lenni called an assistant out of a storehouse to pull closed the barred gate.

“It's been years since I've been at Bronze Hall,” said Joss. “I go out the archway and over the bridge to the main island, neh?”

Kagard touched him on the elbow in a friendly way, and smiled in a friendly way, and spoke in a friendly way. “Best you wait here for marshal's people to give the go-ahead, eh? It shouldn't take long for them to get back.”

“For the go-ahead? Is there some kind of trouble?”

“Hasn't been any trouble since marshal instituted the new measures and talked to all the town councils in Mar.”

“Was there trouble before?”

“Trouble in the Beacons and in the Ossu Hills. But we've culled out most of that trouble.”

“What manner of trouble are you talking about?” Joss asked, feeling increasingly uneasy as he looked around the expanse of ground. The islet was a rocky outcropping artificially
leveled to create the landing ground for visiting eagles; there was a good launching point at the prow of the islet. The place housed a dozen separate small lofts and a storehouse and barracks and, as he recalled, stairs cut into the rock beyond the archway that led down to a stone pier where supplies could be paddled in. The folk here did a lot of fishing, too.

“Not for me to say,” observed Kagard.

Joss knew a dismissal when he heard one. He licked the taste of salt off his lips, remembering his own childhood on the coast near Haya. “Fish for dinner tonight, I'm hoping,” he said, and got a laugh from them, as he had hoped. They weren't thawing, though. They kept a formal stance. “Your eagles here, you've got more known family groups than any of the other halls, neh?”

“We do,” agreed Kagard.

Lenni was more voluble, perhaps seeing an opening to show off his youthful knowledge under the gaze of his seniors. “We've got cursed good records of family groupings. They say that Bronze Hall eagles cooperate better than those of any other hall. That's why we keep visitors out here. Fewer tangles.”

“Good to hear.”

A pair of ordinands and a reeve trotted into sight under the archway. One of the lads carried a lamp. Joss strode over to meet them.

“Marshal Orhon will see you now,” said the reeve.

“Orhon?” Joss had no image of any such reeve. Not that he expected to know every gods-rotted reeve in the Hundred—obviously that was impossible—but after his years at Clan Hall he usually knew the names, at least, of the senior reeves at various halls because the legates of each hall did talk about the goings-on at their home compound. But an Orhon, out of Bronze Hall? Nothing.

How idiotic had he been to come here alone? A cursed headstrong fool, as always, acting on impulse instead of thinking. The Commander would never have acted so, but she was dead, wasn't she? So far, he was still alive.

He hefted his pack to his back and noted that they did not
ask him to give up either short sword or baton as they crossed under the archway and out into the odd stillness of dusk exposed on the high rock cliff of the islet. The water swirled in white foam still visible in the gloom. Stars bloomed. There was no moon. Their footfalls made an erratic rhythm on the plank bridge. A bell tolled in the distance, ringing the last fishermen home.

On the far side of the bridge, the trail divided. They followed a track to the left, set along a cliff and lit by lamps hanging from iron posts. As they came around the headland the wind off the ocean rushed in his face, but even in the last gasp of day crossing into night it was beautiful. Far out, the ocean rolled, billows drawing whitecaps in and out of the dusk.

A cottage was set alone in the midst of low-growing seawort and clumps of berrywax bushes. Lamps hung from the eaves. They clumped up onto the porch, where Joss pulled off his boots. The reeve, who had not introduced herself, rapped on the door. A hand bell chimed. The reeve indicated that Joss should let himself in. With a startled shrug, he slid open the door, stepped through onto mat, and closed the door.

The ocean's breathing and the wind's thrum beat in his ears as he stared at the man sitting cross-legged on a pillow in a chamber otherwise empty except for two flat pillows resting to the right of the door.

“I am Marshal Orhon.” The man had a shiny red blotch sprayed across the right half of his face. The left side of his face drooped, that eye fused shut, the skull shaved to stubble, the ear not much more than a twisted nub. His jaw didn't work properly; that accounted for his soft voice.

“Where is Marshal Nedo?” Joss asked.

If Orhon's expression changed, Joss could not interpret it. His voice's timbre did not alter. “Her eagle was killed.”

“
Was
killed.”

“Deliberately killed. By raiders in the Beacons. They mutilated both bodies. To send a message.”

“We never heard—” Something in the twist of Orhon's scarred mouth cut Joss so hard he closed his lips over the rest of the pointless words he'd been about to utter.

“There is a great deal Clan Hall does not know, if indeed you are from Clan Hall as you claim. Yet you cannot even respond to the formal greeting, the one passed down through generations of reeves. One which, according to report, your eagle recognized.”

“Everyone says Scar is smarter than me, and I see no reason not to believe them on that score.”

“Sit down,” said the marshal, and Joss wondered if his voice softened. Had he found the comment amusing? The confession humbling enough?

He grabbed a pillow and sat. Voices murmured on the porch; feet thumped; the door slid open.

“Sidya!”

Sidya, once Bronze Hall's legate at Clan Hall, nodded at the marshal, not meeting Joss's eye. “Yes, I know him. His name is Joss. He was legate from Copper Hall, in all kinds of trouble because he kept insisting on honesty and holding to the laws. He got sent off on an expedition to find out about some trouble on the roads. Last I heard before we were called back here was that he'd been named marshal of Argent Hall to try to clean the place up. As for the commander of Clan Hall, I know nothing about that, only the word we got a few weeks ago about a massacre in Toskala where the old commander was murdered. As for his claim to be the new commander—well—any reeve can name himself ‘commander' but that doesn't make it so.”

Orhon did not move. It was eerie, as if he were not a living man at all but disfigured skin stretched over the wooden frame of a man.

“Do you vouch for him, Sidya? Do you think he's telling the truth?”

As the silence drew out, Joss grimaced. “The hells! I thought we parted on amiable terms. That was three years ago, Sidya.”

The comment cracked a laugh out of her, and he glimpsed the enthusiastic woman he'd shared a bed with for about half a year. She reached for the other pillow, tossed it down next to Joss, and sat beside him. “I've no complaints of you, Joss. Anyhow, I broke it off, not you. I'm just—” She looked at the
silent Orhon, whose one good eye did not shift focus. “These are troubled times. I don't know who to trust, but I guess I'd trust Joss as much as anyone. I've never known Joss to be anything but honest.” She looked back at him. “But why in the hells are you come here calling yourself commander of Clan Hall?”

“Because I'm the last person you'd think the Clan Hall council would elect?”

She grinned. “True enough.” Her smile flattened. “But if enough of their senior reeves were murdered . . .”

“There wasn't much left to choose from,” he admitted. “I've gained experience as marshal at Argent Hall. Together with the militia there, and an outlander captain and his soldiers, we defeated an army that attacked Olossi. So I suppose that makes some folks think I might be able to protect the rest of the Hundred. I accepted the post and the responsibility because someone has to fight.”

“Why are you here?” Orhon asked him. “Bronze Hall has recalled its legate and attendant reeves from Clan Hall. We don't intend to send them back, especially now that Toskala has fallen into the hands of a creature called Lord Radas.”

The words were not spoken in anger, simply as a statement of fact, the more chilling for its even temper.

“Surely you see we must stand together or fall separately. We've got to institute new practices. Reorganize. Work in concert with the forces assembling to fight Lord Radas's army.”

“You want us to change. To give up our gods-given charge of enforcing the law and become soldiers instead?”

“I don't
want
it. But we have come to that crossroads where we must choose the path of change.”

“So you say. But Clan Hall has failed the reeve halls. They've let the old formalities lapse. The old disciplines are not followed. Where the old order decays, then what is new has crept in with its rot.”

It was hard to hear because his voice was so soft, but Joss at last got a handle on the odd cadences in the man's speech. “You're not from Mar.”

“I fled Herelia fifteen years ago after my village was burned because we refused to submit to the rule of Lord Radas's archons.” His good eye flickered as at a memory. “After years as a beggar and itinerant laborer on the roads, I washed up half-starved in Salya, here in Mar, where I found work in the marsh cutting reeds. Then an eagle chose me.”

“How did you come by these injuries? In the line of duty?”

“Neh. These I got the day my village in Herelia burned, when I tried to rescue my mother and aunts and the other children from the flames.”

“And an eagle chose you despite—!” Sidya cast an accusatory glance, and Joss broke off, flushing. “I beg your pardon, Marshal. But eagles choose—”

“Eagles choose men and women who are whole and healthy and strong, not those who are crippled. Why did Stessa choose me? Because the gods made it known to me through the eagle's calling that I must restore the proper forms, the proper discipline, the old ways. Adherence to tradition is the only way to defeat the pollution that breeds these troubles. It is the only way to defeat an army whose adherents wear the gods-corrupted Star of Life. Until Clan Hall recognizes this truth, we cannot support her. Or you.”

•  •  •

I
N THE QIN
style, the baby's cot was placed beside the table as Mai spooned soup into bowls. In Kartu Town, children did not dine in company with the master, but the Qin did not consider a meal to be a meal if there were not children and kinfolk present. Food taken on campaign, among soldiers, took a different word, akin to horses and sheep grazing.

Horses and sheep would have been better company.

Mai had overheard Tuvi telling Anji that it would look bad to the men if he did not eat the homecoming meal with his wife and child. So there Anji sat, formally dressed, not a hair out of place. None of the senior officers were present today, although the doors were slid open so that anyone passing by could look in. The cooks had outdone themselves with dishes
spiced both hot and subtle. Anji did not eat. He did not speak. He simply sat there, not looking at her. His silence made of the meal a mockery.

She would not succumb. It might seem that a hundred knives pricked her, so nervous was she, but she kept her hands steady as she ate. Even her dark mood could not kill her appetite. Also, handling spoon and eating knife gave her something to do as Anji did not talk and did not eat and did not look.

At length she finished, and called for Sheyshi to take away the dishes. As soon as Sheyshi had placed the dishes on a tray and carried them out, Anji rose. He caught up Atani and carried the baby to the door.

“Really,” said Mai in a voice that made him pause, back to her, at the threshold, “it shows no respect to those who have cooked, taking particular care to make special dishes, to refuse to eat this food simply because you are angry not at them but at another person.”

He said, in a lower voice, addressing the door, “The Ri Amarah showed us hospitality in every way openhearted and generous. That we have succeeded here is in great part due to their aid. Now you repay that hospitality by betraying them. Leaving me to make apologies and restitution, if any can be made given the enormity of the dishonor.”

He banged the door shut behind.

Mai rested her forearms on the table and her head on clasped hands. So had Father Mei sounded as he scolded one or another of his wives or brothers: never able to be satisfied.

Well. Anji could kill her. That would be painful, certainly, but then it would be over. Surely if he had meant to beat her he'd have done it already. Anji's was a contained rage, and she supposed he might continue on in this horrible way for days or months or years.

What if he did? Her heart would weep, but hearts endure years of unhappiness all the time. She had probably breathed more happiness in this last year than Grandmother Mei had inhaled in her entire life. After all, she had always told herself that the only place to find happiness is inside. That was the lesson she had learned growing up in the Mei clan.