Traitors' Gate (43 page)

“Uncle Hari, you don't have to go back to them. I know a place you can go, where they won't find you.”

“There is no place—”

“You have heard no voice but your own voice, and their voices, for so long you can't hear any other words. Stop listening to them! You weren't the one who scraped the dirt before Grandmother Mei and my father. You were the one who talked back. So why crawl now?”

“You cannot understand how—”

“Is pain all they can inflict on you?”

“Isn't pain enough?”

“Bad enough, of course. But I don't think that's what you fear the most.”

“What do you think I fear the most, Mai?” He turned the cup over, a single drop pooling on the surface of the table, and then he lifted one edge of the cup and placed it over that smear of liquid, trapping it.

“I think you fear yourself. You have disappointed yourself, and now you are afraid to be anything except a disappointment. It's true, you might try to break away from them and fail. That would be bitter, indeed. But you might break away, and succeed. You might have to make a new place for yourself. You might have to walk into an unknown country without knowing what will happen when you get there.”

He scrambled to his feet, and Anji shifted to get his legs under him, but Mai grabbed Anji's wrist and squeezed until he stilled. Hari had only begun to pace, his cloak belling and sagging with the measure of his turns.

“Even if you think you know,” she went on, “even if you think everything is determined, that the Gandi-li boy will become your husband because it has been talked of for two years and the contract is next to sealed, you can never know. Even if you think it's likely you will lose a battle to a numerically superior enemy, you can never know. Even if you think your dearest friend will be forced to marry a cruel old man who will abuse her, you can never know.”

“Even if you think your wife will naturally obey what she knows to be your wishes,” said Anji in a soft voice, “you can never know.”

Hari's steps ceased. That smothered sound might have been a chuckle. He stood with his back to them. Lamplight rippled in the threads of his cloak like a living creature caught in the weave. “And in this secret place you recommend, what would I be? A creature living in solitude? A prisoner? A crippled man trapped in the corner of a house until he fades into blessed oblivion?”

“I'll come visit you,” said Mai, “but you must wait and be
patient, for it's possible I won't be able to visit often. It's a beautiful place. You'll find the waterfall and cave of particular interest.”

“Why not? What can they do to me they haven't already done?” He raised one arm, elbow rising sideways as though he was wiping away tears. “You haven't changed, Mai. I suppose you still sneak peaches out of the basket and hand them to orphaned beggar children and pathetic slaves, and then overcharge the spiteful who have riches to make up the difference.”

“How did you know—!”

“She overcharged me,” said Anji. “Looked me in the face and named double the asking price. I respected a woman bold enough to cheat a Qin officer. That's why I married her.”

“It's not cheating,” said Mai, “to name a price. I'd be a poor merchant had I not tried to increase my profit. You could have bargained.”

“I did,” said Anji more quietly still. He was not smiling.

The words stung in a way she did not expect, and as she looked down at her hands, one lying flat on the table and the other curled around her cup, she had to blink back tears.

Anji kept speaking. “Where the River Olossi meets the Olo'o Sea, there's a low island where eagles and sea birds perch. I'll send a message to Argent Hall to have Reeve Miyara meet you there, this coming evening, just before sunset. I'll send her with a wolf banner, so you know she came from me. Do not go directly to Argent Hall and display yourself. The fewer people who know where you are, the less likely you are to be found by those hunting you.”

Hari walked to the door. “It's true enough I must hide. I'll find this islet, and wait there until a reeve named Miyara arrives to guide me to a valley where I can shelter without fear of being discovered by Lord Radas or by Night.”

“What you tell us about their plans could help us defeat them,” added Anji.

“I'll talk to none but Mai, and certainly not to the hated Qin. That's the price of my cooperation.”

He slid the door open and walked out past the Qin soldiers; they looked away as he strode past them. Even the Qin must
fear a creature who could reach into your heart and steal your secrets.

“Anji,” she began.

He shook his head. They waited as the Qin soldiers followed Hari.

At length, Chief Tuvi returned. “I'm not sure how he came in without anyone seeing him, Captain, but he's gone now. He mounted a winged horse and flew out over the wall. Shall I set a doubled guard?”

“Do it, but I think it unlikely he'll return unless he has allies waiting to attack us, which I doubt. Surely he could have killed me, if he'd meant to, and yet he stayed his hand. Meanwhile, alert the reeve on duty to send a message to Argent Hall. Reeve Miyara must come at once.”

Tuvi left.

Anji crossed back to the table. “It's too dangerous for you to see him again.”

“What's to stop him coming back here to see me, for one thing? And for another, Uncle Hari trusts me. If I reject him, he will despair, and despair will lead him back to them. Isn't despair one of the things that turns people into demons?”

“If they were people before. Usually demons are demons.”

“Hari wasn't born a demon.”

“He might have been born with a human face and body, and no one to know better or ever suspect.”

“I might be a demon, then!”

He studied her as the flame hissed, its light spilling over the polished surface of the lacquered table. “You just might be.” Then he kissed her, and she was suddenly so weary that she sagged against him, letting his embrace support her. “If he was born as human as you or I but has become a demon, it must be because corruption has eaten his heart. So you must be doubly cautious, Mai. I suppose I'll let you visit him, as it seems I must if we are to get any information out of him. That's information we desperately need. We can take Miravia with us. She may have some special sorcery to challenge his—”

“Miravia!” She pushed out of his arms and stared at him,
but he was not a man who teased for the pleasure of seeing you squirm. “She can't stay in the temple.”

“Ah. I went to the Ri Amarah last night.”

“When you were still angry with me.”

He smiled crookedly. His dimple flashed. “I went to offer them a larger share of the oil of naya we put on the market.”

“Anji! The oil of naya is the foundation of our wealth. If we unconditionally offer the Ri Amarah a larger share of what we put on the market, then we're cutting into our own profit—”

“I was still angry with you. Hear me out. I never got that far. The entire household was in an uproar. The Hieros had sent word that Miravia had entered the temple. Master Isar told me the entire tale. He had no idea you were involved in any way with her escape. Or that I might already know where she was.”

“Tuvi said they'd hired an agent. A man was watching our gates. If he saw her, or me—”

“The agent will no longer trouble us.”

“But—”

“He'll tell the Ri Amarah nothing.”

Something about his clipped tone made her shy away from further comment. “Yet so many people saw you, and me, at the docks in Dast Olo—”

Anji shook his head curtly. “It's unlikely anyone in Olossi will pass on stories from the street to the Ri Amarah. Or that Master Isar would believe such gossip if he heard it.”

“Every merchant listens to the word on the street.”

“Certainly. But they have no proof to connect your visit to the temple with Miravia's flight there. Without such proof, I am too valuable an ally for them to cast aside on hearsay. What matters to us is that they now consider Miravia to be dead.”

“Dead! Poor Miravia.” She blinked, but no tears flowed. “Yet that means she is free.”

“Orphans who have no protection and nowhere to shelter are not ‘free.' They are vulnerable and inclined to end up dead. However, we can adopt Miravia. It would be valuable to us to have such a person in our household who may interpret Ri Amarah customs and their secret language. The source of their wealth. Their sorcery, if they possess sorcery.”

“Don't you trust the Ri Amarah?”

“As much as I trust anyone. Also, you'll be leaving Olossi for a month or more. You and Atani will ride with me on a circuit of the training camps and militia forts in Olo'osson. You'll talk to the local councils and merchants while I'm about militia business. Miravia will be company for you on the road.”

“When will we see Uncle Hari?”

“We'll come to Astafero as part of the circuit. That will be time enough for him to make a decision about where he intends to stand. I have it all worked out, Mai. It will do very well.”

B
EFORE DAWN ON
the second day of the Month of the Ibex, in the Year of the Red Goat, a storm boiled up from the east over the mountains of Heaven's Ridge to break over a high salt sea and a vast escarpment that overlooked the western desert far below. Marit left her companions and the horses under the shelter of an overhang and walked into the downpour. If she stood out here long enough, would the rain pummel her into droplets that would pour over the jagged edge and plunge down cliffs too tall to measure until they shattered into nothing and were gone beyond redemption? Just as the life she had once led—Reeve Marit, who partnered with her eagle, Flirt—could never be regained.

Over twenty years ago she had been murdered, but instead of crossing under the Spirit Gate, she'd awakened as a Guardian, wearing the bone-white cloak of Death.

Marit had never feared storms. As a child she had sneaked out at night to see how close lightning would strike or if the blue spark of a fireling had left glittering in its wake a tangible mark of its passing, a ropy thread fine like spider's silk but as strong as iron. At such times her father would drag her in and slap her, and afterward hang fresh amulets over the doors and shuttered windows to prevent demons from creeping in on the trail his thoughtless daughter had left open. Her mother would scold her for upsetting her father and waking the others in the compound, but her mother never bothered with amulets and
wards. She made offerings to the seven gods and expected the gods to deliver justice through the day-to-day work of the reeves and through the assizes presided over by the gods' holy representatives, the Guardians. That Marit's mother had never herself seen a Guardian did not shake her faith in their holy purpose.

Lightning chased across the sky, leaping from cloud to cloud. Storm scent prickled Marit's skin. Along the distant southern shore of the inland sea, a dance of firelings lit the horizon, winking into flame, flicking out, and popping again into life. She wept at their beauty.

Were the firelings not like the spirits of humankind? It is so easy to cut the breath out of a living, breathing person, to send the spirit fleeing past Spirit Gate, and yet again and again spirits will kindle. The drive to live, to flower, to grow, is unquenchable; the kiss of the Four Mothers breathes it into the world and even the least of things—a patch of lichen on stony rocks, a frail sparrow battered in stormy winds, an unloved child—will suck in that strength and struggle to stay alive.

Whatever living might be.

She trudged across the pale mud into the shelter where her companions waited: two people who, like her, wore the cloaks of Guardians, and the three winged mares they rode, who were named Seeing, Telling, and Warning.

Jothinin smiled with relief. “Not much to see in such weather, neh?”

“I saw firelings.”

His pleasant smile widened into something more heartfelt. “Seldom glimpsed and therefore always welcomed. Among their gifts are said to be healing, and a filament as fine as spider's silk yet as strong as iron.”

“What is a fireling?” asked the girl where she crouched by the fire, turning a spit on which she had skewered five conies trapped among the rocks.

Jothinin settled down cross-legged with a satisfied grin.

“We're about to hear a tale,” said Marit with a laugh as she sat down.

“So quickly you understand me.” He pretended indignation,
but he was a man who wore lightheartedness as easily as the sky-blue cloak that swathed him. Yet Marit did not think him light. “It happened in ancient days when the Four Mothers ordered the Hundred. They gave pattern and form as weft and warp. The tales weave the fabric of the land, and within the tales lies the Hundred count.”

“What is the Hundred count?” the girl asked. She never left off asking questions.

“The hidden order of things. The Hundred count is the skeleton beneath the flesh. In the Hundred count we comprehend the architecture of the land. Just as we count numbers, so can we count the frame of the Hundred. The Hundred is many, yet it is also one. The Hundred is the one crossroads at which many roads meet. Yet it is also two: female and male; night and day; wet and dry; life and death. We who live and think possess three parts: the mind, the hands, and the heart, and three states of mind: resting, wakened, and transcendent. Every town and city builds three noble towers, and within the Hundred three languages are spoken. The Four Mothers created us out of water, fire, earth, and air. The Five Feasts delineate our lives. There are six reeve halls,” he nodded at Marit, “and seven gods, seven treasures, seven holy gems. Seven directions.”

“How can there be seven directions?” demanded the girl.

Marit hissed, for it was very rude to interrupt a tale, but Jothinin smiled with the calmness of a man who has faced the worst in himself and come to the conclusion that he can see very little after that to unsettle him.