Traitors' Gate (86 page)

“What business could my cousins have with me?” Anji asked as he smoothly took the baby out of Mai's arms and settled the silk-swaddled bottom on his upright thigh. He glanced down at the crowing infant. “Hush, sunflower,” he said fondly.

Atani hushed, gazing raptly at his father.

The old woman's gaze tightened in exactly the way Anji's did when he was annoyed.

Mai felt her smile pinch toward a smirk, and she battled it back to the innocuously pleasant face she wore when men tried to grope her or women to cheat her. It was the face she had perfected through years of dealing with her hated Uncle Girish. Merciful One grant her open-heartedness! How could she have taken such a powerful and instantaneous dislike to a woman she did not even know?

The woman rose, and in rising displayed the smooth weave and magnificent embroidery of her gown. The silk was astoundingly rich and cunningly embroidered, a veritable treasure house of fabric. This was emperor's silk, not for the likes of a girl born to an insignificant sheep-herding clan in a dusty desert trading town.

“Your cousins are not unaware of the difficulty your existence poses to them. You have a legitimate claim to the imperial throne.”

“Which I forswore by leaving the palace. By going into exile, I became as one dead to the imperial court.”

“Dead to the court, but not dead in your physical form. The former is one style of death. The latter is more permanent. Naturally your cousin fears you may change your mind and choose to live. But your uncle, my brother, the var, might take it amiss if you were to die at the new emperor's hands.”

“My uncle, the var, ordered me killed. Were you unaware of the bargain he made with Azadihosh?”

“I hear whispers, as must any woman in the palace who values the life of her son. My brother desired an easy path into the rich trade offered by the border towns. Your half brother Farazadihosh was desperate. He was newly come to the throne. He suspected his cousins meant to contest him, and he knew they commanded better and more numerous troops than he did. He sought an ally. Your uncle my brother sought advantage.”

“And my life was the piece on the board my uncle was willing to sacrifice. Did that part of this tale escape you, Honored Mother?”

She brushed a hand over his head in an intimate manner, touching his topknot. “Of course it did not escape me. Do you think it was chance you survived?”

“Commander Beje gave me the opportunity to escape with my life.”

“Did this surprise you?”

“It did, I admit it.”

Her disapproval flowed hot like the sun. “It should not have. Your wife is Beje's daughter, a woman of suitable rank and noble lineage. I arranged the marriage myself through Beje's wife Cherfa when I sent you back to your uncle, the var, for safekeeping. Serpent and snake that he proved to be—my own brother! Hu! He had betrayed me beforehand by sending me to that terrible place. I should have expected nothing less from him. Naturally, in later years, when whispers reached my ears of my brother's further treachery, I turned to Cherfa again. She told Beje to aid you.”

“I never saw Beje's wife, although he mentioned her,” said Anji. “I will say that Commander Beje behaved in all ways honorably toward me.”

“He is our ally. The soldiers he sent me are for you. He hands them over to your command.”

“Mine? Hu!” He blew out breath between his teeth, swiped a finger along his beard as he considered this unexpected harvest. “Certainly I have no complaint of Commander Beje. However,
I am no longer married to his daughter. She ran away into the west with a demon.”

“Hu! I had not imagined Beje and Cherfa could sire a weak-minded female. Still, she may yet be alive.”

“To me she is dead.”

She brushed his topknot again and this time found a corner of wrapped ribbon a hair out of place and tweaked it to fall into line. “Too much pride is a weakness, Anjihosh.”

“Call it what you wish. I was married to her at one time. Now she is dead.” He hoisted Atani and, finally, rose; he was taller than his mother was but not enough for his height to intimidate.

His mother cut off his attack before he could pursue it further. “Come inside, Anjihosh. We will drink a proper greeting.”

Her gesture commanded him to accompany her—into the house without taking off his boots! He could not refuse his mother, yet to walk with her forced Mai to walk behind.

Mai thought probably her ears were flaming red from anger, but she would not let her anger rule her. Miravia's clear gaze met hers. Mai gestured as the thought bloomed. Miravia mounted the steps to fall in beside her. Let Miravia stand for her allies, all the women and men in Astafero and Olo'osson who respected her as a woman of means.

Side by side, they walked behind Anji into the house that had once been hers and which was now transformed with all manner of fabrics and low couches and a slumbrous perfume of smoky incense that made her want to sneeze. Sirniakans evidently did not sit on pillows like civilized people. They raised themselves up on low couches, as if they could not be bothered to keep their floors clean by keeping people's dirt-laden shoes off the fine mats.

They tromped barbarically across the mats into an inner room whose doors lay open to receive light from the private central courtyard of the house. The doors to the outer audience chamber slapped shut behind them. In the courtyard, under the shade of the inner porches, sat about twenty women, from sweet-faced girls to wrinkled crones. One quickly covered her
face with a wing of pale blue silk shot through with silver cross threads. The others hid their mouths behind their hands and measured Anji through sidelong, coy gazes.

He was the only man in the chamber.

Anji's mother seated herself and indicated that Anji must sit opposite on a couch facing both her and the courtyard. He remained standing until Mai reached him. He nodded toward the couch; when he sat, she sat beside him. Miravia slid in to kneel gracefully on the floor by Mai's legs, her back a solid comfort. She turned a little, and Atani smiled boldly at her and allowed himself to be passed into Miravia's arms.

Mai settled her now-empty hands in her lap, palms up and relaxed, in the manner of the Merciful One's bounty. She'd faced worse in Kartu Town's market, haggling over peaches. The women examined Mai more boldly than they had examined Anji. She did not flinch. Let them look! She knew her own worth.

Anji's mother clapped her hands. Slaves scurried out from whatever shadows they'd been skulking in to lay out cups and platters around a silver teapot. Out of this pot steaming hot water was drawn and poured into a ceramic blue teapot to rinse it, and the rinse water sluiced into a brass basin. Blackened leaves were sprinkled into the pot, water poured over them, and the teapot sealed with a lid. The aroma was powerful and very fine.

Two cups only, so finely wrought they seemed as thin as paper, sat on the low table.

Anji washed his hands out of the brass basin, his expression so collected Mai knew he was plotting as he wiped his hands dry. He grasped the teapot's handle, filled one cup a third of the way, the other to the full, and finished filling the first. After setting down the teapot, he picked up one cup with both hands and offered it to his mother. She took it, not hiding her smile, meant to announce her victory.

Anji picked up the second cup with both hands and offered it to Mai.

The attendants gasped, hiding faces behind veils of cloth or concealing hands.

Mai took the cup but kept on her placid market face as she
met the older woman's steady gaze. So. Now they would stare in the manner of wolves waiting for one to submit to another. Mai would not look down. Neither would Anji's mother.

“Bring me a cup,” said Anji, his tone so clipped it shocked Mai into looking at him.

A cup was brought. He poured for himself. He drank first, and then of course both women must hasten to drink as the women on the courtyard whispered, like leaves stirred by the rising wind off a coming storm. Anji drained his cup and set it down. His mother finished likewise, and Mai took a final swallow and set hers next to Anji's.

“You are being stubborn, Anjihosh,” said his mother. “I see that has not changed.”

“I came, obediently, as soon as I heard you had arrived in the Hundred, despite pressing events elsewhere that need my immediate attention. You are of course welcome to set up your own household here, if you do not wish to return to the empire or to the Qin. With what message do you come as an emissary from cousins I have never met, do not wish to meet, and who must by the custom and law of the empire seek my death?”

She folded her hands on the glorious silk of her gown. “I bring this message: Remain in exile, never to set foot in Sirniakan or Qin territory again, and they will not trouble you.”

“Why should I believe they are willing to allow me live unmolested when there have been several attempts already on my life?”

“If the red hounds pursued you, it was by the directive of your brother Farazadihosh. Your cousins were too busy raising an army and fighting their war to trouble themselves with
you
.”

“But now they do trouble themselves with me. The offer is too generous for me to believe it honestly meant. Surely you cannot believe they harbor no grievance against me, Honored Mother. Why is it you agreed to act as their emissary?”

“Because my first duty, my only obligation, is to keep you alive, Son. They know that. I know that. You know that. No other person will protect you as I have protected you and will—indeed
must
—protect you. Am I not correct, Anjihosh?”

He bowed his head. “You are correct.”

“I assured myself that they meant what they said and that they were not attempting to betray you through my agency. Do you think I am a fool?”

These words were spat so sharply Mai winced, and although Anji's mother did not look at Mai, it was quite obvious by the way her mouth tightened that she had noticed Mai's reaction.

Anji held a breath longer than he ought, and expelled it as he gripped the teapot and poured a second round of tea into the cups. He did not wait for the women. He drained his cup and set it down hard on the table's polished grain.

“No more a fool than I am,” he said.

“We shall see.” She gestured, and the woman who had veiled herself at their entrance rose like a puppet and walked with graceless stiffness—the poor thing was either terrified or haughty—to stand at the foot of the couch on which Anji's mother reclined.

“Remain in exile, never to set foot in Sirniakan or Qin territory again, and they will not trouble you,” Anji's mother repeated with a gloating satisfaction in her tone like that of a customer who feels she has gotten the better in a long tedious bargaining session. “The bargain to be sealed by a marriage between you and their sister.”

The sister's eyes were all Mai could see; they were traced with a thick black line that emphasized their shape; her lashes were thick, her gaze exotic because it was all that existed of her. She might be beautiful; she might be plain. It was the mystery that excited.

“I have a wife,” said Anji.

“You have a concubine, Anjihosh. And very pretty she is, as I am sure you wish me to mention. The child is yours, I collect. A handsome boy.”

Her voice warmed as she deigned to examine Atani, who regarded her with the same equanimity as he regarded all people: he was sure they loved him. Hu! The woman could not be all horrid if she admired Atani.

“But a pretty girl of no rank or consequence is not the wife of a prince.”

“Mai is my wife,” said Anji.

“Furthermore,” she went on as if he had not spoken, “you must marry in order to protect your life. My life. The life of your handsome son. Even the life of the pretty concubine is at stake.”

The sword thrust home.

His eyes flared, as though he had taken a blade to the gut, and he sat back as swiftly as if he'd been hit and flung an arm out as though to shield Mai from the blow. He did not quite touch her; he had more control than that. Yet the gesture betrayed him.

His mother smiled tightly. “Keep your concubine if you wish. Beauty fades. Blood, however, never weakens. I will hold the baby now.”

She extended her arms; the many gold bracelets she wore jangled along her sleeves, and they caught Atani's attention. The cursed baby went straight to her, as he went to everyone, and she seated him on her lap and let his damp bottom stain the magnificent silk and allowed him to wrap his chubby moist fingers around the baubles as though they were humble wood toys. She knew how to hold a child, and he was an easy child to hold. Anji relaxed his arm; his shoulders eased; he smiled.

The woman, behind her veil, watched him, and then she looked at Mai, and Mai looked at her. If there was a message in the other's gaze Mai could not interpret it. After a moment, the other woman looked away, and perhaps that shuttering came from anger, or shyness, or fear, or loneliness. What manner of woman was she, raised in a women's palace apart from men and confined within walls her entire life? As remarkable as Mai's journey had been from dusty Kartu Town through the desert and the empire into the glorious Hundred, how much farther in every other way this woman must have traveled.

Would the other woman demand that her exalted rank be acknowledged, or might they become as sisters? Rich men in Kartu Town kept two wives all the time; Mai's own father had taken a pair of sisters. It wasn't impossible; women learned to
live together. What choice did they have? It was better to live in harmony than to fight over scraps.

Yet what was she thinking? She need accept no scraps. She had her own household. Her own coin.

Anji's mother was watching her while pretending to dandle the baby. So Mai smiled at her, very prettily; she had learned to smile in the marketplace and in the Mei clan, where tempers and tensions had trapped so many others.