Traitors' Gate (69 page)

They talked with hoots and clicks, with hands shaping words too swiftly for Shai to make out transitions, and with their bodies: a shoulder might rise or a hip jut, an elbow swing and a
knee bend. Folk in a council meeting could not speak so fast and say so much merely with words.

The day was cool, but his face was hot, and sweat greased the lids of his eyes as he blinked away stinging tears. The sight of these pathetic refugees had triggered the most terrible memories from those weeks when he had struggled to keep alive a cadre of children held captive by a cruel cohort of the Star of Life army. If he closed his eyes, Yudit and Vali's suffering was all he could see; yet with eyes open, he saw misery everywhere else.

The wildings stilled, and the oldest female stepped forward.
They go safe.

“Thank you,” he whispered, suddenly dizzy. Brah and Sis dropped out of the trees to shoulder him up so he could breathe.

You who see ghosts, where now do you go?

Among the Qin he had learned that in battle, adaptability is better than strength. As Tohon would say, strength can always be overcome, if you can find a way to do it. A man who can change course when needed has less chance of running into a wall. Think fast. Strike where there is an opening. Maybe he hadn't saved Anji from Hari, but he had other goals. His own fears and weaknesses were nothing against the promise of an act that could change everything.

“ ‘A dart, a dart in my eye,' ” he murmured; the memory of Captain Beron's ghost—speaking words only Shai could hear—was as powerful as a shout. “ ‘How it stings.' ”

He met each gaze, because the wildings respected the acknowledgment of the individual. “Copper Hall on the Haya road is burned. Nessumara is beyond my reach. It's unlikely I can make contact with the reeves. But I have another task. I'll find this cohort flying a banner with six crossed staves and give myself up to them, because they will be looking for gods-touched outlanders. I'll find Zubaidit. There's one thing I need from you.”

Brah and Sis patted him on the shoulders, gesturing regretful farewells. He must go, and they must stay in the Wild that sheltered them.

What do you want, demon?
the wildings asked.

“Darts, and a pair of blowguns, the smallest you have. And one other thing. I need snake venom.”

•  •  •

I
F ANJI WAS
not the most patient man Joss had ever met, the reeve was not sure who was. For three long days, Horn's council wrangled. Everyone had a grievance; each council member had fears that had to be addressed; they all had unhelpful suggestions or urgently unreasonable demands.

Only three things made the three days bearable: they got to sit on benches in the shade of a tile roof, with a cool breeze blowing; the local cordial was exceptionally good; and Anji's calm demeanor never wavered, even as the interminable afternoon of the third day dragged on. The man could listen without breaking a sweat; without showing exasperation, without responding to the most inane or selfish complaints by snapping back a sharp retort; without slapping a hand to his forehead when people were being idiots.

From dawn until late into the night the commander of the reeve halls and the captain of Olo'osson's army sat in the council square, and not once did Anji raise his voice or interrupt.

Not that he needed to. Others raised their voices and interrupted; then the arguments would fragment into new and more complicated relationships, like clans marrying into festering disputes they'd not been warned about beforehand. Each time a new eruption occurred, Joss would grab for his cup of cordial while Anji's gaze would flicker toward Tohon, or Sengel, or Toughid. What passed in those unspoken exchanges Joss could not fathom: were they amused, irritated, indifferent? The scout and the two guardsmen remained as impassive as Anji, although now and again Tohon tugged on an ear.

Soon enough, Anji and Joss learned to milk that cow by falling into a rhythm between them, Joss's irritation balanced by Anji's reasonableness.

“We get refugees come begging every day,” said the latest quibbler. “If we give a tey of rice, then they will keep coming back and living right in the dirt like animals, hoping for a
handout. Yet if we turn them away then they steal from our gardens and orchards, so we must post guards at all hours. It's a cursed nuisance.”

Joss swiped a hand back over his hair. “Amazing that they won't just crawl up into the hills and die so as to leave you in peace. Cursed impolite of them to want to live.”

“We're already rationing our stores to our own folk! You want us to starve altogether?”

“It's a good point,” said Anji in his steady voice, and every head turned his way. “If you starve yourself trying to feed every hungry mouth, then all will starve and none will survive. There's no sense in that. But starving folk will not lie down and die. Would you? If it was your children who were crying?”

“I'm not the one who ran from his home, who didn't fight, who planned badly and didn't take enough food with me, who—” The quibbler went on in this vein for a while until other people told him to hush.

Anji nodded into a silence others had carved. “To simply give away all your rice and nai solves nothing. But to do nothing, solves nothing. And it encourages refugees to steal.”

“We could kill them if they won't go,” said the quibbler enthusiastically.

Joss said, “We'll let you stab the babies first.”

“Now, here, Commander—! What manner of man do you take me for?”

Joss had always really disliked selfish whiners like this prosperous man, who clearly had enough to eat and fine silks to wear. It was so easy to make them pop red with indignation, since they could think only of themselves. And it was anyway apparent by the way folk were smirking and rolling their eyes that this fellow wasn't liked. He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I can only judge you by your words and acts.”

The man's eyes bulged as he opened his mouth to retort.

“If I may.” Anji raised a hand with the orator's twist, one of the few gestures from the tales he had mastered. The quibbler sucked in hard and settled back. “The only way to remove the burden on Horn is to defeat the enemy and thereby make it possible
for the refugees to return to their farms and feed themselves. They don't want to be refugees. They want to go home. But they can't.”

Many among the council nodded. Onlookers standing in the back nudged each other, whispered, bobbed their heads in agreement.

The quibbler scratched his beard. “You're an outlander, Captain. Is that what you want? To go home?”

Anji's rare smile flashed. “Neh. My bridges are burned in the lands I came from, not of my choosing. I merely want to live peaceably here in the Hundred with my wife and infant son.”

“And a cursed beautiful woman she is!” shouted a wag whose voice carried although his face was hidden in the crowd. “Bet you don't give her much peace.”

Folk laughed.

Anji blinked; that was all. Sengel coughed. Tohon glanced at Joss, chin raising slightly. Was the captain annoyed? Or signaling an opening?

Joss lifted his cup of cordial. “I say, enough of this cursed nattering on. If Horn will join us in sealing an agreement to fight this cursed army, then the captain can sooner get back to his peaceable life which I am sure many of us envy him.”

Anji rose. Their chortling and murmuring quieted as abruptly as if he had drawn his sword and sliced out a hundred tongues. “Surely every man and woman here is exhausted by living in such uncertainty. When do you think it will get better, if nothing is done?”

He scanned the assembly; no one ventured an opinion; their silence made his point for him.

“But it can get much much worse, and I assure you, it will. I have seen war. I've fought in war. It's nothing I want to see again. Peace is preferable, but you don't win peace by hiding from what troubles you. Do not think Horn's walls can withstand a determined assault if you have only a handful of ill-trained guardsmen to defend the walls. After three days of talking, you must know the choice is stark. Either you lose everything, while a few claw out a fragile truce with the brutal
conquerors, or you fight, with allies at your side, and have a chance of restoring the life you want to live. There's been enough talking. You have to decide. What action this council takes is in your hands.”

He walked out, pausing only long enough to make polite courtesies to the four most elderly councilors. Joss followed him through a dusky courtyard where lamplighters had begun their rounds. The two youths stared at the four Qin soldiers and the reeve.

Anji drove straight for a gap in a hedge. When Joss trotted after him, he found himself in a small private garden overlooking a ravine and one flank of the city falling away below. The three soldiers hung back by the entrance. Anji leaned on the low wall, frowning at the horizon. The sun's golden rim flashed as it slipped out of sight. The few smoky clouds were bathed in red, the sky darkening as twilight overtook them.

“That way lies Olossi,” said Anji as Joss joined him at the wall.

“And Mai.”

Anji's eyes narrowed. “Among the Qin, we do not boast of our wife's virtues in public. In the empire, we do not speak of women in public places at all.”

“I might remind you that we are not in either of those places.”

“True enough. Nor do I regret where I am now.”

Joss was not sure what to make of the captain's strange mood or where to go with it. “You're a good negotiator, Anji. Better than I am.”

“Do you think so? I thought we herded that flock together, even if you took the role of the dog, nipping at their heels until they moved in my direction.”

Joss laughed. “That's one way to look at it. Neh, I meant that you told them what they wanted to hear in a way that encouraged them to seal the alliance we desire.”

“Why would any man seal an alliance if it did not benefit him in some manner? It takes no brilliance to point out that we will both prosper if we work together.”

“Yet some folk will consistently work against that which
will help them, like turning their backs on the reeves. While others act in ways that benefit only themselves while harming others, even if another path is available that might allow both parties to benefit or at least not suffer.”

“Maybe so.” Anji spoke the words with the flat inflection that meant he was amused. He hitched up a leg and sat sideways on the wall, facing Joss. “You're a man who believes in the law, Commander.”

“You are not?” Up here on the height the wind streamed steadily although with the twilight the rumble abated a bit.

“Certainly I believe laws are vital if we wish to live in peace. But I've lived in the empire, and among the Qin, and now I live in the Hundred. The laws here are not the same as the laws in the empire. Nor yet are they the same among the Mariha princedoms and caravan towns along the Golden Road, which the Qin army conquered. Still less are they similar to the laws enforced by the Qin var. What am I to think except that laws must change according to circumstance?”

“Maybe that is true in other lands, but here in the Hundred our laws were given to us by the gods.”

“In the empire, the priests and nobles say the same.”

“I'm sure they do. However, our laws are carved in stone, on Law Rock.”

“By the gods' own hands?”

Joss was surprised that this comment both amused and irritated him. “No one knows.”

“Is there no tale that relates the carving of Law Rock?”

“None say what hand cut words into stone, or if it even matters.”

Anji nodded, standing again, as restless as Joss had ever seen him. Maybe he was more nervous about Horn council's deliberation than he cared to let on. “I'd like to see Law Rock.”

“So you shall, because we'll go to Toskala, where we have stationed twenty reeves and one hundred and fifty firefighters and militiamen to guard the law.”

“So you prove my point, Commander.”

“Which point was that?”

“How quickly you forget my wisdom!” retorted Anji with a laugh. “Only this. You have kept men on Clan Hall to protect a physical object. But it is our deeds, or a council's actions, or the decisions reached at an assizes, through which the law takes a presence in our lives, is it not?”

“Without Law Rock, who decides what is justice? The army we fight has its own measure of what is justice.”

“Do they? Maybe they just like having the power to enforce their will. If they were the ones without weapons and numbers, they would be asking for mercy.”

“Then after all, you are saying there is a law we must all follow. One carved in stone, or present in the world whether we recognize it or not.”

Anji gestured toward the city below. A few lamps bobbed in narrow streets; here and there a lantern hung to mark an entryway; otherwise, all was quiet, only the faintest buzz of living chatter betraying folk settling down to another uncertain night.

“I am saying that certain principles, applied effectively, tend to result in certain outcomes. A king who displeases his populace must either rule by force of arms and custom, or he must give way and change, or he must die. The governance which promotes a peaceful life for many is most likely to be pleasing, is it not?”

“We do not have a king in the Hundred.”

“The Guardians did not rule in ancient days? Like kings?”

“The Guardians—” began Joss, thinking of the conversation they had not yet had about Guardians.

Anji shook his head, indicating the hedge.

“The Guardians did not rule,” Joss said instead. “They presided at the assizes. They guarded justice. It was village arkhons and town councils, and in the north a few lords and chiefs, who ruled.”

“It is exactly that splintering that has made you vulnerable.”

“We have lived as the gods decreed. For a long time we lived with no wars or battles, so the tales tell us.”