Traitors' Gate (72 page)

“It's done.”

Perhaps her tone had an angry edge. Perhaps she was shaking more than she realized, even if only one drop of ink stained the paper above her imperfectly brushed name. She wanted its lines to reflect the grace of proper calligraphy, to mirror the gravity of the occasion, but she was still learning, so it would have to do.

She set the brush on its stand. O'eki put a hand to his forehead.

Priya's fingers brushed her chest as if pain stabbed in her heart. “Free,” she murmured as she leaned to the right as if trying to read the freshly inked letters. Without warning, she collapsed.

In her haste, Mai knocked the writing table askew, and before O'eki had even gotten to his feet she knelt beside Priya's limp form. “Priya? Priya!”

As faintly as the whisper of mice in the desert Priya spoke again one word. “Free.”

Mai held her shoulders, keeping her head up. How slender she was! Not much weight to hold, and yet how generous in heart Priya had been all those years. She had served Mai faithfully, affectionately, warmly, loyally. Mai had never given her service a thought.

How blind she had been!

“Yes, you're free now, Priya. You and O'eki both. If I had understood . . .”

But she had not understood. Only now was the veil ripped from her eyes.

Priya rose to crouch at the table and touch the paper; paperweights shifted as she turned it so she could read. There is a flower in the desert that blooms only once in its life; it was as if Priya's expression took on that opening as her gaze scanned the words.

“Seren,” said Tuvi in a voice startling for its eerie calm. “Take the baby.”

The young soldier accepted the baby, although Atani's fabled equilibrium was, under this storm of emotion, beginning to dissolve into a fuss.

“As for you, Master Keshad,” Tuvi continued, words all the more commanding for their even tenor and unimpeded flow, “having returned to this compound, you are back under my authority. You will tell me everything that transpired, in the south and on your return journey. Afterward you will bide here, confined and quiet and under my supervision, until the captain returns to interview you.”

Keshad glared at Tuvi as at a rival in love. “What choice do I have?” he said with a dark frown that made his handsome eyes all the more intense.

Hadn't Miravia seen him that one time, in this very compound? Was it possible she had fallen in love with a face glimpsed across a courtyard, as lovers did in songs and tales?

Tuvi made no reply to Keshad's inane question. In his silence he exerted his authority.

Mai rose, tentatively brushing Priya's shoulder as if to test whether her beloved nursemaid recognized that she existed. Priya glanced up, eyes watery with tears, and touched the back of a hand to her own lips as if to say that she had, as yet, no words.

It was done. Mai could not regret it, no matter what happened next.

“I too must hear Keshad's tale,” she said to Tuvi in her firmest voice, however weak it sounded to her ears.

He nodded. “As soon as the captain returns, you'll hear it all. Meanwhile, the young master wants feeding.”

Atani strained toward her from Seren's solid arms. When she took him, he began to root against the silk of her taloos, trying to reach a nipple, while Keshad flushed and looked away. O'eki nodded at Mai with a faint smile, and gestured as if to say, “We'll come when we can.” Priya was staring at the words that freed her. Sheyshi still stood with her back to them, so it was
impossible to imagine what she was thinking. For how many years had the young woman lived as a slave in the Mariha princedoms? How had she come into Commander Beje's household? Was it possible that Sheyshi, simpleminded as she was, did not truly remember? That this household was the only one that meant anything to her? Or was Mai foolish to think anyone did not dream of what they had lost?

“Sheyshi, of course you can stay in this household if you wish it,” Mai said again, although Sheyshi did not answer.

“Mistress, isn't that baby hungry?” said the chief.

She took comfort in the baby's fussing. Thanks be to the Merciful One for hungry babies, who soothe troubled minds through their uncomplicated need. When all else roils, refuge can be found in simple tasks. For she had to be honest with herself. It wasn't losing Miravia she feared most. What if the empire's troubles reached up out of the south to devour Anji?

 

•  •  •

 

K
IRIT WAS ARGUING
with him again, annoying girl. For days Jothinin had dragged her from one makeshift campsite to the next along the western shore of the Olo'o Sea, whose isolation protected them. She stayed with him because the girl she had been had always moved with the tribe. She obeyed because she was accustomed to accepting the command of her elders. Today, she was rebelling.

“If we have allies,” she said, flinging stones into the water, “then we should fight at their side!”

“Guardians do not fight,” he said for the hundredth time. “Anyhow, Kirit, we have placed a weapon in their hands that can be turned against us.”

“But they can't be our allies if they would turn against us! Why are you afraid?”

It was getting cursed hot as the season of Furnace Sky took hold, and here on the western shore of the Barrens there was no shade. The ground beneath his feet had baked as hard as brick; a skin of salt left where wet season pools had evaporated crackled as he walked closer to the girl.

“It is better for us to stand back and let events follow the course they will. Afterward we can come forward and restore the assizes.”

“ ‘Foolish Jothinin, light-minded Jothinin'?” she sang. She didn't have the cadence right, and her voice cracked on the melody, as though she were not accustomed to singing. “Marit said you stood up and spoke out, even though you got killed for it. So what would have happened if you had hid then?”

“I'd be resting peacefully beyond the Spirit Gate, where I wouldn't be getting lectured by a girl who knows a hells lot less than she thinks she does!”

She glared at him with her demon-blue eyes, quite disconcerting in their cold fury. She opened a hand to let stones fall. “I am angry at you, uncle. I am going north to find Marit. She will listen to me.”

When had he ever been able to stop a stubborn-minded girl from acting foolishly? That was the problem with tales; they didn't tell the truth but rather what people wanted to be true. Listeners did want the lustful farmer to get to sleep with the man she desired; they wanted the lad and lass forced to marry by warring clans to discover they could live in a peaceable house. They wanted a death that made you weep, and a joke that made you laugh. They wanted the carter's barking dog to be smarter than the greedy merchants who were trying to cheat the carter of his hire.

Everyone loved the tale of the Silk Slippers, in which he had played so striking a role. He
had
stood up in protest when the bandits had come to take her away, but the gods knew what an arrogant pain that girl had been, not the sweet innocent portrayed in the tale but rather a self-absorbed, demanding, vain spoiled brat who spent most of her time talking about whether people were paying enough attention to her. Her unpleasant personality hadn't made her cause any less just. But it was why no one else had made the effort to protect her. No one had liked her. He had only spoken because it was the right thing to do.

The wind blew hot and dry off the mountains.

“Kirit, what if they kill you?”

“I'm already dead, uncle. I want to fight.”

“Let's say I agree,” he said hastily. “We'll seek Marit together and decide what to do next.”

She considered with that funny little frown creasing her pale lips and pallid face. “We saw many troops gathering on the Olo Plain. Now we see also ships hauling soldiers east across the sea to Olossi. We could ride with them!”

“As Sun Cloak rides with his army? Don't you see, Kirit? That would make people fearful. They must not believe Olo'osson's army is the same as Radas's army. Led by shadow-corrupted cloaks.”

Tongues of water lapped the shore, the water faintly slicked with oil of naya. They were north of the new settlement, north of the most plentiful naya sinks, but cracks bubbled here and there beneath the waters. Its flavor coated his lips.

“I fear what we have unleashed,” he said.

“You fear everything, uncle,” she said with a flash of emotion he could not interpret: anger, maybe, or scorn. Or maybe she was just worried about him. Was that too much to ask? “I want to hunt down the other Guardians. Even if I can't kill them, maybe I can lead them to those who can kill them.”

Her words alarmed him badly, but he smiled in the inane way he had perfected. “Perhaps you're right. Let's go search out some sunfruit, and then we'll fly to the high salt sea to meet Marit.”

“It's not the end of the year yet, is it? Will Marit be there?”

“It's soon to become Wolf Month. Then there is only Rat Month, and after that the Ghost Festival welcoming a new year. Then it will be the Year of the Blue Horse, when we can hope for a secure, orderly, and tranquil year.”

She agreed to go with him to the high valley she had discovered after her final awakening, the hidden valley where sunfruit grew in abundance. Yet when they flew in between the high mountain cliffs, they found that since the last time they had been here, others had claimed it. In a clearing hacked out of the trees, two neat structures had been built, simple but pleasant shelters raised on posts and walled and roofed with sturdy canvas. No one bided there, but closed chests and sealed pots and tidy cupboards told a tale of people who might come back at any time.

“I feel we're being watched,” he said as he stared around the clearing. Telling nosed through the high grass by the trees.

Kirit had ridden ahead, following a path into the trees. He led Telling after her. It was cool up here in the mountain valley; the air was bracing, and a taste like the feel of a thunderstorm snapped on his lips. He shuddered at each least rustle and stir within the trees, but he saw no one. Birds fluttered in the branches and, once, a small sleek hairy pig scuttled across the path in front of him and raced away into the brush. The noise of its passage faded as he emerged onto open ground, a sprawl of ancient ruins beside a pool fed by a waterfall spraying down the side of a sheer cliff.

There was something odd about the water in the pool, something that hurt his eyes, like knives stabbing him, more pain than light. Even Kirit reined her mare away, wincing and shading her eyes.

“When we came before there weren't people here,” she said. “But now they've made their mark and claimed it. Look! There's an altar in the cave. An offering of flowers, like they would offer to the Merciful One in Kartu Town where I was a slave.”

There was a chain in the water, hard to see if you didn't have a Guardian's vision. It ran from the shallows into the deep black depths beyond his sight. Chains bound things.

“Something's happened here,” he said. “Something bad. Best we leave quickly.”

Kirit rubbed her eyes, looking as disturbed as he felt. “Marit will know what to do.”

He was relieved, thinking of Marit's competence, her decisive nature, her clear-eyed vision, her blunt words. “We'll leave Olo'osson. It really is best for the army to march without us. If Marit thinks otherwise, we'll discuss it when we meet her.”

He paused at the edge of the clearing as Kirit rode up behind him. The high peaks darkened as the sun set behind them, washing their outlines in a hazy purple-red whose echoes rippled in the pool where the falls disturbed the deep water. He shuddered and turned away, mounting his horse, making ready to ride. Kirit rode up close beside him, as uneasy as he was.

“Anyhow,” he added as Telling unfurled her wings, “we can tell her we've accomplished our part of the plan. Just as we said we'd do.”

 

•  •  •

 

A
NJI HAD FLOWN
enough that he had become comfortable both with the harness and with the height, with his feet dangling, with his safety held entirely in the hands of another man. Joss wasn't sure he could give up control so thoroughly; he was too accustomed to having his hands on the jess. But perhaps Anji, trained as a soldier, had long ago learned that his survival depended on the loyalty of his men. Who was the wiser, in that case?

“There!” shouted Anji, pointing so rudely with his finger that Joss flinched, and in the same instant—either because he caught the lapse or because he was that quick reacting—the captain curled his hand into a fist. He'd seen a ledge tucked high up on the rock-bound slope of Mount Aua.

“We can't go there,” said Joss. “Guardian altars are forbidden.”

“Who forbids them?”

“We're not allowed to break the boundaries by walking in the holy places the gods made for Guardians.”

“Haven't the Guardians already been corrupted when demons stole their cloaks? Anyway, Joss, I have a vague memory that I was once told in passing by a person whose name I do not recall that when you were young you broke the boundaries many times. You got expelled from your first reeve hall because you dared to walk on Guardian altars? Can that be true?”

Joss laughed bitterly. “I'm wiser now. Perhaps.”

“Ignorance weakens us,” said Anji as the wind thrumbled in their ears and a glitter woke on the distant ledge like a promise.

If they only knew how the Guardians had become corrupted. For if one Guardian had become corrupted, why not all? He refused to believe it, not about Marit.

“The altars do not like our kind. They'll cast us out and try to throw us to our death.”

“Are these altars alive? As the sands in the bone desert along the Golden Road are alive, inhabited by demons?”

“They are forbidden. The gods guard them. Nor will Scar be of any aid. You'll see.”