Traitors' Gate (98 page)

Better not to look. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes, but after a while his arm got tired, and then the other arm got tired, and eventually the steady rumble of the wind and the tense silence of his companion numbed him enough that he could regard the sea below with resigned terror. Just let Miravia be alive. As long as he held to that thought, he could endure.

They'd launched before noon and soon he had to piss, even though they'd warned him to relieve himself before flight. But there was nowhere to land except the south shore shining gold off to the left, and he sure as the hells wasn't going to ask her to detour just for him. They rose higher yet until the air stung in his chest and his eyes watered, and he started to shiver, but she said nothing and the eagle flew on, alternating gliding on strong winds and then beating for stretches. To cross the Olo'o Sea by ship took two days, or a long day and night, yet the waters quickly slid past as the day wore on. Late in the afternoon they passed above the hinterlands of Astafero, the settlement a smear of buildings far below, and sped straight for the magnificent Spires. The winds buffeted them, and he shuddered convulsively in a cold blast that swept off the high, forbidding peaks whose crowns glittered a blinding white.

They plummeted and he shrieked as the earth hurtled up. They hit and he fell hard to his knees as she unhooked him without warning. He knelt at a cliff's edge, the spray of a waterfall
spanning the gulf of air. He crept away from the chasm, and the first time he tried to stand he could not. The reeve was shucking the harness from her eagle, releasing it, and by the time he got his feet under him she was walking in company with a Qin soldier into the trees. Another sentry waited at the path's edge, so he hurried after.

“Where's O'eki and the other—what was his name?” he called.

“Master O'eki is a heavier burden, and Siras hasn't as much experience to push his raptor so hard.” She tossed the words over her shoulder and kept walking. He struggled past the sentry, who nodded at him but stayed where he was, waiting for the other reeve. Aui! He had to piss so badly that he staggered a few steps off the path, shook himself free of his trousers, and released.

Afterward, legs steadier, he loped through the forest and caught her up as she and her escort emerged into the clearing with its living shelters and store houses and a herd of goats ransacking their way along the tree line.

Soldiers came running. Priya, sitting on the porch with the baby in her arms, looked up, then stood, her posture inexpressibly weary. She had cut off all her hair, shorn like a sheep every which way, and by the look on her face as she watched him stumble over the uneven ground toward her, he knew what had happened.

He should have understood. He had met the emperor's brother. He knew what manner of people the Sirniakans were. He knew what the captain's mother was. She had warned him.

“It can't be true,” he said, stubbing his toes as he tried to take the steps in a single leap. “It can't be true. I could have saved her if I'd agreed to marry her. If I'd taken her away—”

Her voice was as colorless as undyed linen. “Chief Tuvi wishes to speak to you, Master Keshad.”

He balanced on the porch's edge, heels bouncing over air. “Does he think
I
had something to do with it?”

Soldiers had fenced him in while he wasn't looking. These men had been sent to Merciful Valley to protect Mai's life, and they had failed.

“I'll go in,” he said. They had all failed.

Priya nodded. The baby was suckling on a bottle sewn from a sheep's udder, content for the moment, eyes shut.

It was easier to shut your eyes, wasn't it? To pretend you didn't have to look at the horrible truth. He shed his sandals and pushed aside the canvas. The outer chamber was empty, two rolled-up pallets stowed out of the way, but a curtain was tied up to reveal the inner chamber. The canvas wall on the far side had also been tied up to allow in light and air. Miravia was sitting on a pillow beside a man reclining on a pallet, his legs covered by a length of silk and his torso belted into a silk jacket. She bent forward, setting a cup to Chief Tuvi's lips as she smiled and began to speak in response to something he had just evidently said.

She
smiled
at Tuvi!

Kesh's feet scuffing startled her. She spilled the liquid on Tuvi's chin as she jerked upright, head whipping around to stare. Her lips moved, forming his name. She had hacked off her hair, and what was left spiked in ragged clumps like a badly mown hayfield. She was more beautiful in her grief than he had ever seen her, sorrow honing her spirit so its beauty stabbed like lightning.

The chief raised himself on an elbow, his gaze an arrow pinning Kesh. “Here you are,” he said, his voice hoarse with pain. “Sit if you will, Master Keshad.”

“You don't think I had anything to do with it!”

“To do with what?” asked the chief.

Miravia burst into tears and, sobbing, jumped to her feet and ducked out through the back flat onto the wraparound porch. When Kesh moved to go after her, Tuvi stopped him with a word.

“Sit.”

Kesh sat, missing the pillow.

The chief pulled the silk off his legs. He wore a local kilt, and his skin, in the fading light, was revealed as a mass of welts and blisters.

“Bringing you here, did the reeves speak of what I told them to keep secret?” asked the chief as Kesh tried not to stare.

“No.”

“Did the captain's mother ever speak to you of her plans?”

“I told Captain Anji everything! She offered to give me Miravia if I would take Mai as well. It was cursed obvious she wanted to be rid of Mai. What in the hells happened?”

“Sheyshi was her agent all along.”

“Sheyshi? The slave? But she's . . . stupid. How could she be—?”

If you shut your eyes, you would not see what walked and talked right in front of you. Was anyone ever really as stupid as Sheyshi had constantly been?

“We saw what we expected to see.” Tuvi grunted and lay back on the heap of pillows. “If you will, a sip of juice.”

Kesh found the cup Miravia had set down before she had run off. How odd to feel compassion for his rival's pain. The man had never done him any harm, as far as he knew. After swallowing the juice, the chief breathed as his eyes watered.

At last, he sighed. “We were all taken in. She stabbed Mai by the pool. When Mai fell in, I tried to drag her body out but the pool's sorcery burned me. She sank into the depths.”

“Are you saying you've no body?”

“I lost her. The demons—or maybe the gods of this place—took her.” Tuvi raised a hand, welted with fine red scars, and covered his eyes as he wept.

He wept, as hardened a soldier as he was.

“That old bitch—!” cried Kesh.

“Sheh!” The Hundred word cut like an edged blade.
Shame!
“No man speaks so of the var's sister, a princess of the blood.”

“She had Mai killed!”

“So it seems. Nevertheless, if you insult her again, I must kill you for the sake of the captain's honor. I admit, it is not the Qin way to make a stab in the dark, but when her brother condemned her to a life in the Sirniakan palace, it must be expected she would learn to live as the locals do in order to survive. So must we all. Mai's power was considerable. A threat to her, coming to this land as a stranger to a son who did not know her well and who never liked his uncle, her brother. The var is a
hard man to please. Sheyshi must have been the princess's agent all along. The princess's relationship with Beje and Cherfa was closer than we ever imagined. They must have been in communication all those years. It was Beje who helped smuggle the young Anjihosh past the empire's border nineteen years ago. I was part of that effort, you know. I did not suspect Commander Beje might have been her agent still. Or perhaps he knew nothing, and she used Cherfa to place an agent into her son's troop. To protect him. It has only ever been her desire to protect her son.”

Kesh had no answer to this. “What now, then, Tuvi?”

A soldier hung a lamp from a hook before retreating into the dusk.

“Tell me again, every word the emperor's brother said to you, every word the captain's mother spoke in your hearing.”

So Kesh told his tale again, pausing at intervals to help the chief drink. When partway through it came time for the chief to relieve himself, two soldiers helped him beyond the porch to the pits. He could walk, with assistance, although the effort left him exhausted. Yet afterward, returning to the pallet, he indicated that Kesh must go on. After Kesh had related everything he could recall, the chief wiped his eyes.

“We should have suspected the slave,” he said.

O'eki came in, eyes red from weeping. Priya walked beside him, carrying Atani, and Tuvi smiled as she settled the baby in the chief's embrace, the child so handsome and bright a face that a man might weep to think of what he had lost.

“If only I had agreed, I might have saved her,” muttered Kesh.

Tuvi laughed, the sound raw. “Hu! You are no match for the captain's mother, Master Keshad. Mai was dead the instant Anjihosh said no to his mother.” He handed the baby back to Priya, who took his look as a command and retreated with O'eki.

“One last thing, Master Keshad,” said the chief, “and then I must sleep. The sooner I can travel, the sooner I can bring this news to the captain. Let me assure you, in case you do not understand me, that the reeves who fly in and out here obey me. I must inform the captain, none but me. None can know outside
us until he knows. I'll kill you if there is any question that you might attempt—”

Kesh flung up his hands. “I want nothing! I have no plans!”

“You want something.”

Ah.

There it stood, between them.

“Miravia,” said the chief, “is a fine, well-mannered, and intelligent young woman, if not particularly handsome.”

“Not handsome!” cried Kesh. “She's the most beautiful woman I have ever seen!”

“Nothing compared to that girl Avisha,” continued the chief.

“Avisha! That spring-blooming flower, pretty for a season and then likely to wither? The hells! Are you
blind
?”

“The mistress wished me to marry her, because her family cast her out and Mai wanted to be sure that her dearest friend would always have the protection of a clan. It's a hard world for any person thrown without kin into the cruel battle of life, is it not?”

“As I know! I lived twelve years as a debt slave.”

“And bought yourself free, which means you're an intelligent lad, if a reckless and irritating one. I will marry Miravia, Master Keshad, if that is what Miravia wishes. Because it's what Mai wanted. It would be the wise thing for Miravia to do. She'll never lack, as part of the captain's household.”

“You forget there's a war.”

“I don't forget it. But unlike you, the captain is not a reckless man. He has his plans laid well in place, a substantial army, and an additional five hundred Qin soldiers to back him up.”

“Commander Beje's men!”

“No. These are men who would have been placed under Anjihosh's command had he been allowed to take his army on the eastern frontier of the Qin empire, but either way, it does not matter. We Qin who are soldiers fight for the man who commands us, and when we are sent elsewhere, there we fight. For Anjihosh now. In time, for his son.”

“I thought you fought for the Hundred.”

Tuvi gestured, and Kesh handed him the cup of juice. It was, in fact, difficult for Tuvi to grasp the cup with his burned
hands, but the man was determined to recover enough to travel. To serve his captain. To do his duty. To fight.

“I will marry Miravia if that is what she wishes, and I'll treat her well. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “the visits to that garden will have to stop. What a cursed wrongheaded thing that is! Hu!” He held out the empty cup, and Kesh took it. “But if she wants a different man, one who assures me she will not lack for any of the comforts and security Mai would have wanted her to have, then I will not raise my sword against that man, nor will I hold a grudge.”

“Do you want more juice?” asked Kesh.

“No. I'll sleep now.”

“Here. Let me help you with the pillows.” Kesh settled the pillows so they braced the chief comfortably. “Do you want the silk over your legs?”

“No. The air cools the burns. Is that all you have to say?”

Kesh really looked at him, seeing a man of indeterminate years, forty or fifty, hard to say because the Qin hid their age so well with their weathered faces and easy smiles. An honest man, in his way, clear-eyed and clear-spoken. Brutal when he must be, but unexpectedly kind.

“You're a cursed road more generous than I could ever be, Chief Tuvi. She matters more to me than anything.”

“I'm not generous, lad. Don't make the mistake of thinking so. I have a wife back in the grasslands, a good woman I'll never see again. It would be pleasant to have a wife again, if it falls out that way. Nevertheless, I'm a soldier, and my loyalty was given long ago and completely, as it must be. I'm Anjihosh's man. He is my life. Now, go on. I suppose you will find her by the pool. It's where she goes to mourn.”

 

S
HE HAD NOT
taken a lamp, but he found her easily enough, kneeling beyond the waterfall and its ruins in the darkness of the cave where, so the tale had it, Atani had been born within a net of firelings. Kesh didn't believe the story, not precisely, because everyone knew firelings lived in storms, not in caves, but people would tell tales to fit what they wanted to believe. It made life easier.

“Miravia,” he said.

She knelt before plaited wreaths heaped upon a stone slab meant to be an altar. There were no flowers; this wasn't a season for flowers. She didn't look up. She must have seen the light. She must have guessed it was him.