Traitors' Gate (49 page)

“If the world is not as it is meant to be, then we must work to correct it.” She turned with passion to Mai, grasping her arm. “You must dislike hearing us argue!”

“Was that an argument?” asked Tuvi, his pace not faltering.

The four soldiers kept an even distance at all four points. As they passed the thatched roof of the council square, six council members chatting over a morning tea rose to greet Mai.

“Verea! Well come. That you are here makes the day bright.”

“Will you preside over an assizes before you leave again, verea?”

“You have not come alone, verea?”

“No, indeed,” she replied, greeting each one by name. “Here is my sister, Miravia. She will be running my household in Astafero.” Mai studied their expressions as they eyed
Miravia's face; they clearly knew what she was, rumor having traveled ahead. “If there is ever any question that needs my attention when I am in Olossi, that for some unlikely reason you cannot solve yourselves although I cannot imagine why that would be so, then you must bring the question to Miravia's attention. She will write a message which can be flown to Olossi by a reeve. She has my complete trust.”

“Ah! Eh! Very good!” They revised their expectations, smiled more warmly.

Tuvi settled back as Mai stepped into the shade with the women. She asked after their businesses and their families. Mistress Sarana had married a Qin soldier and was noticeably pregnant; it wasn't so many months, really, since the first marriages had been blessed at the gods' altars. Maybe that rice had been nibbled on early! But wasn't that the way folk did go about things here, casual about sex in a way inconceivable to any woman in Kartu Town? Yet when she thought of how Anji had slapped her, her cheek still burned.

“Verea?”

“Just wondering how your daughter is, Mistress,” she said to Behara, now head of Astafero's council. “I hear she ate Chief Deze's rice!”

“She did, and we hope there will be fruit soon, but too early to tell, eh? Anyway, he's been posted to West Track, so she'll live here for now and he comes to visit as often as he can.”

That was the way things worked in Astafero. Some of the newly married women chose to migrate to new towns to follow their husbands on assignment. Others remained at the settlement with families growing as kinfolk who were struggling to eat came to live where there was work and food to be had. Miravia watched and listened, not saying a word.

When Mai extricated herself from the conversation, they walked down into the market with its familiar dried fish smell. There were new shops set up in crude storefronts with canvas walls and older shops newly refurbished with brick. They sold cloth, banners, harness, tools, dishes and serving utensils of everyday quality, storage chests of precious wood, baskets, bedding, mats, and spices and bean paste shipped or carted in
from elsewhere. Miravia trailed behind as Mai chatted with every person she knew and met new people, because folk were coming to Astafero as people did where there was security in an insecure world. Yet Miravia did shyly smile at people who, despite being taken aback by her features, politely engaged her in the casual talk of the marketplace. At length, they worked their way down to the main gate. Mai surveyed the further sprawl of brickyards, smithies, fish racks, workshops, and the green patches of burgeoning fields watered from the underground channels still being dug. But she did not suggest venturing past the gate's shadow.

“The Ri Amarah have lived in the Hundred for four generations, and you not even two years, but you are treated as a cousin while my people are still seen as outlanders,” said Miravia in a low voice. “I want to be part of the Hundred, Mai. Not an outlander all my life.”

Tuvi had climbed the ladder to the parapet and was speaking to the soldier in charge of gate duty; the two men were pointing—quite rudely! how she would ever cure the Qin of finger pointing she did not know!—at some object or movement much farther out.

Mai took a deep breath. “
If
you were to marry Tuvi—”

Miravia pushed a sandal into the dirt, digging a hole.

“Not now, I mean! No hurry!”

“It's too early,” Miravia muttered, cheeks scalded red although it wasn't hot.

“Of course!” Mai took her hand, tucked it into the crook of her own elbow, and indicated the market. “Best I go back to nurse Atani. Do you want to stay in the market?”

As easily as Miravia had taken to walking in public with her face exposed after so many years locked behind walls and veils, she was not ready to brave the market alone. Her smile was wan as her flush faded. “I'll go back with you.” She clutched Mai more tightly. “Without you, I would be in Nessumara now. That you gave me shelter . . . I can never repay you.”

Tears slipped down Mai's cheeks, but she never minded these swells of pure emotion, which like the wind off the mountains came as if from the heavens, a blessing from the
Merciful One. “This is not a matter of exchange. We are sisters. I would no more be here without you than I would be without my husband.”

“Mai!”

“You don't need to thank me any more than I thank you for welcoming me into your heart when I first came to Olossi, when I was alone and without a sister.”

Miravia choked down her sniffles under broken laughter. “Now we will fall upon each other wailing and moaning.”

Then they laughed so hard Chief Tuvi looked puzzled as he climbed down the ladder. But he did not react as a love-lorn man would; he neither sighed nor smiled to see their laughter. If she meant to coax this match into existence, she would have to work carefully.

“Let's go up,” he said instead, brow wrinkled. “The captain will be wondering what became of you.”

A
T THE BASE
of Liya Pass lay the town of Stragglewood, so called for the way the woodland was cut in strips and spurs into the hills where folk had taken the easy routes to collect and transport wood. The town was a way station for trade over the Liya Pass, which connected the region of Herelia to the main road leading southeast to Toskala along the Ili Cutoff.

Approaching on the road at dawn, Marit surveyed markedly tidier surroundings than those she recalled from the last time she had come through, twenty-one years ago. Every field boasted recently erected boundary stones. Young orchards were laid out in ranks spaced so evenly she guessed they had been paced out by the same person. She passed ruined foundations marking where poor clans' hovels had been demolished. A livestock fence ringed the garden plots, and compounds like a tannery, lumberyard, and byres whose stench and noise were kept outside the town. An imposing inner palisade circled the actual town buildings; at its gate a pair of middle-aged men
stood on a platform that allowed them a view of both fields and forecourt.

Their gazes, briefly met, betrayed minds dismayed to see a cloak riding up to their town in a month in which an assizes court was not scheduled. A very bad omen. They shielded their faces behind hands.

“Holy One.” The shaven-headed elder spoke through his hands. “Forgive us. We had no word or expectation of your coming. The assizes is not readied for your pleasure.”

For my pleasure?

Warning snorted, tossing her head.

“What awaits me at the assizes?” she asked, cautious in her choice of words but sure she must speak boldly if she meant to continue the ruse.

Beyond the gate, people gathered in the forecourt, the squeak of leather rubbing, a rattling cough, a capacious yawn.

A man called out. “Heya, Tarbi! It's past time to open the gates and let us out to our labors, eh?”

The shaven-headed man climbed out of sight. Hands fumbled at chains; bars scraped; the gates were pulled open. In the forecourt stood at least fifty folk carrying hoes, spades, axes, and other implements. More were walking up. Seeing her, half the folk dropped to their knees as if they'd been felled by a sledgehammer. All raised hands to shield their faces. It was a practiced response the obeisance of which chilled her more than the cursed dawn wind. She turned Warning in a sweep that sent folk scuttling away from her.

“Finish with your duties,” she said to Tarbi. “Then escort me to the assizes.”

“You are gracious, Holy One.” He unhooked a basket from under the eaves. Every farmer and woodsman, carter and tanner, elder and child filed past to hand him a pair of discs strung on leather straps. He examined them, tossed one in the basket, and returned the other to its bearer, who then slung it around the neck and hurried out the gate, careful never to look Marit's way.

When the first rush was past, Tarbi called down the other guard to take charge. He walked ahead; she led the mare.
Children fled into their houses. Women flinched away, shielding their faces in the gesture Marit was beginning to loathe.

“Are there bandits hereabouts, that you lock your town gates at night?”

“Of course not, Holy One. The land is at peace.”

Stragglewood had a central square fronted on two sides by capacious clan compounds ostentatiously renovated. Along the northern front of the square ran a long, low building that she remembered as the council hall. She was shown into its courtyard. The traditional elders' benches had been removed. A colonnade opened into an open hall whose elders' benches had been removed in favor of a chair built to outsize proportions and raised on a dais with a pair of smaller chairs set below to either side as obsequious attendants.

“Where are the assizes?”

“They are here, Holy One. We captured a gods-cursed demon. She's confined in a cell along with unclean ones awaiting judgment. She and two of the unclean ones will be sent to Wedrewe for cleansing when the chain comes through at the Lamp Moon.”

“You've confined a gods-touched person?”

“According to the statutes.”

“The law? Aui! And what in the hells are ‘unclean ones'?”

“The criminals, Holy One.”

She clamped lips closed over a furious reply and took a few deep breaths. The rafters of the hall seemed ominous; she did not want to walk under a roof where shadows spilled over the floor like the pooling of blood. “Where are the elders' benches?”

“Removed, according to the statutes, Holy One.”

“Who judges the cases, then?”

His head remained stolidly, stubbornly, bowed. “You'll want to discuss these matters with the clerk, Holy One. I am only in charge of the gate passage.” His fear trembled on the air, as delicate and complex as a spider's web. “We are always posted in pairs at the gate, Holy One. Hodard may come under suspicion if he remains there too long alone.”

“Under suspicion of what? Allowing someone out without taking their token?”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. For that was precisely what was going on: no one could enter or leave town without the act being marked. The tokens and palisade had nothing to do with protecting the town from bandits.

Tarbi's gaze skipped over her face so quickly she caught only a glance of a memory: a sobbing woman being flogged in the town square as prosperous-looking clans-folk shouted questions at her, “where has he fled to? where has he gone?”

Yet his thoughts were as clear as speech:
How is it she does not know this? It is exactly as we were warned! An impostor will come.

He wrenched his gaze to the dirt.

She'd betrayed her ignorance. “Fetch the clerk.”

With a haste that betrayed his eagerness to flee, he scrambled onto the porch and kicked off his sandals, calling out as he slid open a door. “Osya! Come quickly!”

Marit dropped Warning's reins and walked after him, pausing with one foot on the ground and the other braced on the lower of the two steps. A body appeared in the gate. She turned, but it was only a little child come to stare at the winged horse. Its open mouth and wide eyes, all wonder and excitement, made her smile. Then it caught sight of her, and it dropped so quickly to its knees, head bowed and hands raised in an obscene imitation of the adults' gestures, that she felt mocked. It bolted away into the square without a word.

Feet scraped along plank flooring. She overheard their voices because her hearing was so uncannily keen.

“Why aren't you at your post, Tarbi? You'll be flogged.”

“Keep your voice down. There's come one of the impostors we were warned to watch for.”

“There's never been such a sighting. Sky-blue, mist-silver, earth-clay, bone-white. Those are the ones we're to look for, neh?”

“Bone-white the cloak she wears. Send Peri to Wedrewe, as we were commanded.”

“This is a bad omen! What if the lords cleanse the entire town, thinking us corrupted? We've followed all the statutes. It's not our fault!”

“Send Peri to the gate after me and I'll get him mounts and send him on his way. Meanwhile, flatter and favor the cloak, persuade her to bide here as long as possible. There's a reward if she's delivered to the Lady. We'll prosper, you and me.”

Marit stepped away from the porch as she heard footsteps approaching. She walked Warning over to a watering trough set under the shade of an open roof. Over in this corner, she smelled sour sweat and the ripe stench of human waste; a woman was sobbing softly. A man's raspy voice croaked out a whisper, “Shut up, will you, you bitch? If you'd just slept with Master Forren like he asked, you wouldn't be stuck in here. At least you're not being sent to Wedrewe to be cleansed, eh? What do you have to complain about?”

“Holy One.” Tarbi hurried out into the courtyard, so flushed with fear and nervous hope that he smelled as ripe as the manure. “The clerk is coming.”

“Best you return to your posting,” she said before he could babble on.

“Thank you, Holy One.”

He ran out. Not long after, a burly woman emerged from the hall with a very young man in tow, him with head bowed so deep Marit wondered he did not ram the top of his head into every pillar. He slunk out the gate as the clerk came forward with face shielded by her hands.