Traitors' Gate (65 page)

They then named an outrageous sum that made Kesh choke and even Eliar change color, a flush rising in his cheeks. The girls saw him, and they giggled and goggled at the young good-looking Silver in their midst, just as the newly arrived Qin soldiers stared at the girls, although without the lighthearted laughter.

The old woman speared Keshad with her gaze. “You will obtain a sample of local food so my people may taste what they can expect to eat. It smells awful.”

She swept away with her attendants.

“The hells!” exclaimed the older slip-fry girl. “That was rude!”

Kesh distributed vey to the first dozen soldiers. “You pay
this much and then return the bowl and leave,” he said to them. “Make a line. That's how we do things here.”

Mollified by paying customers, the girls got to work.

“This will be interesting,” said Eliar in Kesh's ear.

“Did you ever believe otherwise? Now help me do as she asked. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to stand before Captain Anji after she's filled his ear with complaints of our service.”

“It must be twenty years since he's seen her. Didn't she send him away?”

“Yes, at the age of twelve, so he wouldn't be murdered in the imperial women's quarters you are so fond of. What's that to you?”

“That the Sirniakans are barbarians isn't my fault! I'm just remarking that it's not as if she raised him after that time. It's the age a boy leaves his mother's care and moves among men into a man's life. Why should he listen to her after all these years beyond the kindly respect any son must show a mother?”

You're an idiot.
But Kesh held his tongue, thinking of Miravia. Maybe she had months ago been married off to the old goat, but perhaps there was time, since the roads north still weren't safe. Old goats died, and left the young goats behind. There was no telling what had happened while he was gone. He had to be patient.

“Heya! Heya!” The local guardsmen waved to get his attention.

A party of mounted men were riding up from the track that led west around the Olo'o Sea. The incoming troops were about one third Qin, the rest young local men who dressed and acted as if they wished they were Qin. Kesh was surprised to see Chief Deze at their head.

“Chief?” He hurried to meet them as the wiry soldier dismounted. “How are you come here so quickly? We left you at the border.”

“The reeves gave me a lift. I'm traveling with you to Astafero.”

“Is that where Captain Anji is?”

Chief Deze had a likable smile, and it slammed like a closed door on a question he had no intention of answering. “We'll resupply here and leave at dawn. I'll take charge now.”

Never in his life had Keshad been happier to give up control.

“C
OMMANDER. INCOMING WITH
passengers.”

Joss stepped away from the stewards—one from Clan Hall and one from Copper Hall—who had almost come to blows over what should have been a cursed simple inventory of the harness rooms at Horn Hall.

“Kesta.” He beckoned her into the dimly lit chamber, which like the marshal's cote got its best light before noon. “I'll let you help Tesya and Likard sort this out.”

“Sort what out?” she asked suspiciously, examining their disgruntled faces.

“I didn't—” objected Tesya.

“She said—!” barked Likard.

“You have my full trust,” said Joss as he hurried out. Kesta hissed a few choice words in the direction of his back. As he slipped out under the arched entrance hewn into the stone, he waggled a hand in an insulting gesture, but she had already turned away to scold the hapless stewards.

“Here we are, in the abandoned shell of a reeve hall whose eagles and reeves were massacred, and all you two can do is
argue over tack
?”

“If they were massacred,” objected Tesya. “The commander heard the news from some gods-rotted ghost—”

“Neh,” objected Likard, “that lad Badinen saw it all!”

Tesya snorted. “You can understand that fish boy? Anyway, my people
need
that tack. We lost everything—”

As Joss fled down the corridor, Kesta's voice rang. “Sit down and shut up!”

He would soothe ruffled feathers later. As a tactic it worked well to allow his most trusted reeves and fawkners to crack down on the ones who complained and bickered, while he could glide in later to coax the difficult temperaments back into good humor, but he was pretty sure it wasn't good strategy over the long haul.

Hirelings swept the eating hall, which was lit through shafts. He crossed the vast entry hall, flooded with brightness from a big hole gaping above. Hirelings hauled sacks of rice over their shoulders toward the kitchens. Three off-duty Clan Hall reeves were laughing with two Copper Hall reeves over a jest. Young Badinen watched their interaction with the expression of a neglected puppy hoping for attention. He'd been a pet of the Horn Hall reeves, Joss had worked out, but to the Clan and Copper Hall reeves he was just a novice no one had time to train. Something would have to be done about that.

Joss emerged through a high cave mouth onto an oval ledge as long and wide as Clan Hall's parade ground. All along the cliff wall were dotted perches and shallow eyries. He crossed the ledge to the rock wall that rimmed it. Squinting into the setting sun, he watched four eagles descend. Two landed on the parade ground at the top of the ridge, out of sight, while the other two thumped down not so far from him. Their passengers and reeves unhooked, and Captain Anji and Tohon joined him at the wall.

“I've come, as you requested,” said Anji, gesturing toward the magnificent peak of holy Mount Aua some fifteen mey distant. “That's an impressive view.”

Tohon peered over the wall, a significant drop of at least a hundred baton lengths to a slope slippery with scree that marked the base of the cliff. “Hu! That's a long way down!”

“There's no way up here except on the wing,” said Joss. “This ridge is the final outthrust of the Ossu Hills. It's all ravines and folds behind us. And we've got a permanent water source. And gardens atop the ridge.”

“Easy to defend,” remarked Anji, “and yet, according to the report your people brought me, these reeves are all dead.”

“It seems they were specifically lured to an isolated peninsula
in the far north called the Eagle's Claws. There, their eagles were poisoned, and the reeves died.”

“Your source of information?”

“The surviving reeve's account strikes me as having the color of truth. He seems too unsophisticated to come up with such an elaborate tale and stick to it, and you can be sure I've run him over that ground many times. But this news didn't come from his lips alone. I heard it first from a Guardian.”

“From a Guardian!” The captain crossed his arms over his chest.

“She brought news of a region we call Herelia. There's a town called Wedrewe recently built to house an administrative center, where new cohorts are being trained. There, the masters of the army condemn prisoners and make an accounting of what they've won. It's walled, but not heavily fortified beyond the presence of so many troops.”

“It's a place that might be attacked. Go on.”

“Lord Radas may have as many as fifteen cohorts. And more recruits are being gathered, or forced into the ranks.” Joss swiped a hand over his hair, recently shorn, its bristles like a warning prickle against his palm. He blew breath out between dry lips, and chose careful words, because he could not keep what Marit had told him to himself. “Captain Anji, I must speak to you in complete privacy, you and I alone, where none can possibly overhear us.”

No flicker of surprise creased Anji's expression as Tohon tugged on an ear and, casually, as if he had seen something that interested him, moved about ten paces away along the wall. “This matter you and I must discuss in complete isolation. At a time no one suspects we are doing anything other than scouting.”

“You already
know
?” cried Joss, the words so loud that half the people on the ledge turned to stare.

Anji laughed as if Joss had made a joke. “Who could fail to know that half the women in Olossi have come to the door of my compound asking if you will ever return to Argent Hall? At least I may now tell them that you bide a little closer here at Horn Hall than when you made your nest in distant Toskala.”

A flush burned all the way to Joss's ears. On the ledge, folk laughed.

“That must be Mount Aua,” Anji went on as cool as you please, signaling to Tohon. “It's magnificent.”

“Yes,” stammered Joss. Had Anji come to know the terrible secret Marit had told him? She'd mentioned that she had allies. Or was it something else he meant to speak of? Yet it was easy to fall into the astonishing view of a gorgeous land and find his feet. “This time of year no clouds veil its peak. The Aua Gap is the wide saddle of land that lies between the mountain and us. West”—he nodded to the left—“lies Olossi, south the golden Lend, and east”—to the right—“lies the road down onto the river plain, toward Toskala and Nessumara.”

“There's the town of Horn.” Tohon, returning in time to catch Joss's comments, indicated white-washed walls as tiny as a child's toy landscape and almost cut from their sight by the last spur of the Ossu Range.

Anji tracked the vista with his gaze. “Three roads meet here, under our eye: West Track from Olo'osson; East Track from distant Mar; and the Flats, out of Istria and Haldia, in the direction of Toskala. If I were a man wanting to stage my forces to move against Lord Radas, I'd start in Horn.”

“My thinking as well,” said Joss, following his lead, “which is why I asked you to come. However, the town of Horn has rejected my—ah—best attempts at persuading them that it's in their best interest to ally with us.”

Anji considered the onion walls of the ancient town. “Send in my wife.”

Joss laughed. “Truly, what man could resist her?”

Anji looked sharply at him, then walked along the length of the wall toward the steep stairway cut into the outer face of the escarpment that led from the ridgetop down to the ledge. Four figures were descending: Anji's two personal guardsmen, who attended him everywhere, and the two reeves who had ferried them here. Joss recognized one as young Siras, long limbs taut with excitement as he stared around.

“I was laughing because it's a clever plan,” said Joss to Tohon,
stung by Anji's seeming rebuke. “A man can't help admiring what is beautiful!”

“The captain frets over his wife but doesn't like folk to know he does.” Tohon was leaning at his ease, elbows on the wall, as he surveyed the view. “He's not a man who likes his weaknesses known to others.”

“Is she his weakness?”

“Maybe so, but he calls her his knife.”

“His knife? That's a strange thing to call her.”

“Not among the Qin. A man can be waylaid by demons wearing many guises. Lust for flesh or for gold, lack of discipline, disloyalty, reckless ambition, unchecked anger. A good woman is a man's knife. She protects him against demons. Don't you have the same saying here?”

Joss scratched behind an ear. “Well, truly, we don't. Maybe Mai can cut a path into the trust and hearts of the council of Horn.”

“If anyone can, it would be her. A grand vista, if I must say so.” He marked the eagles soaring on watch high above. “How's the lad doing, Commander? Is he a good reeve?”

Joss thought first of Badinen, floundering apart from his stormy northern seas and complaining of the heat. Then he realized that Tohon could not have met the young fisherman. “Do you mean Pil?”

Tohon nodded, shading his eyes to search the heavens for more eagles.

“He's a cursed solid young man. He's a good reeve, still inexperienced but he's really taken to his eagle and of course as you know he's a excellent soldier in ways we reeves haven't ever trained to be.”

“Do the others—ah—accept him?”

“Because he's an outlander? So they do, but that's in large part because that foul-tempered Nallo has taken him under her wing.”

“A woman?” Tohon rarely looked startled. His eyebrows raised, and his lips parted. “Are they lovers?”

“Pil and Nallo? I shouldn't think so. From what I've observed
and heard in passing, neither are fashioned that way. It wouldn't matter anyway. It doesn't among the reeves.”

“It's as well the eagle took him, if you understand me, Commander.”

“I don't.” Anji had met Sengel and Toughid at the base of the stairs and the three Qin stood where the wall met the towering cliff, gesturing at the spectacular vista as they conferred.

Tohon cleared his throat and tugged at an ear. “It's just that this fashioning you speak of, it doesn't happen among the Qin.”

“Surely it's simply part of the nature of some folk.”

“Not among the Qin. Maybe that's why the eagle took him.”

“Ah,” murmured Joss, tumbling at last:
Doesn't happen
meant
Better to say it doesn't happen than to admit it does.
“You outlanders have curious ways. For myself, I'm cursed glad to have a steady young reeve like Pil. We need him.”

“He's a good lad,” said Tohon. “Doesn't talk too much, which wears easily on his companions. Just like Shai.” The shift of subject was so swift it reminded Joss of Scar altering his glide high in the heavens. Tohon's brows furrowed. “It would ease a man's mind to hear something, if there was word.”

The glimmer of vulnerability took Joss by surprise. “Zubaidit I saw in Toskala, as you know. The Guardian I spoke to told me she'd freed an outlander prisoner in Wedrewe, but where he is now or if he got out of Herelia I couldn't say. It might have been Shai.”

Tohon's smile was brief. “My thanks.” He turned as Anji and his two guardsmen walked up with several curious reeves and fawkners trailing at a polite distance.