Spirit Gate

  “I’ve seen you before, last year,” said the male clerk. “You’re out of Merchant Feden’s household, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Come on, Denni!” called the female clerk, who had already moved on to the next wagon. “The envoy said there was a bigger caravan coming up behind this one. We’ll be stuck here all week if we stand gawking.”

  “Aui!” The male clerk looked Kesh over with a sneer. Boldly, he grabbed Kesh’s elbow and rudely twitched back a sleeve to reveal a bronze bracelet. “Pretending to be what you aren’t, as if you’d already bought your accounts bundle and cleared your debt! Don’t think we can’t see what’s marked by your eye.” He let go, and went after his companion.

  The captain raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t there a law against you slaves wearing sleeves that cover your wrists?” Recalling the ledger, he added ten to ten, as merchants did, and got twenty. “You’re Feden’s slave, aren’t you?”

  “I am.” He felt how his ears burned, how his cheeks burned. How the shame took him, but also the anger and hope, because he was so close. “Do you know him?”

  “You look like a good Hundred boy to me. What happened?”

  Keshad wanted to say “none of your business,” but the first rule of merchants, and slaves, was never to insult those who might have the means to harm you, or help you, later.

  “Family debt. I was a boy. I never knew the details, only the amount.”

  “Eiya! If anything should clear your slate, young man, then this cargo should do it.”

  Kesh made the traditional gesture, hands to chest, the formal bow of not more than thirty degrees’ inclination to show respect rather than submission, and turned to go.

  “Whsst! In!” he said to the girls.

  They clapped the chests shut and loaded them into the back while Tebedir yawned and got to his feet, stretching, flexing his big hands, clucking as he got the beasts out of their stupor.

  “Coming up, Master?”

  “I’ll walk,” said Kesh.

  “If you ask me, a man can wear his feet out, walking too much. Women walk.”

  “I’ll walk.”

  The captain watched them go, his gaze as sharp as the touch of a blade to Keshad’s back, but in the end one of his men called to him and he went back to his task. He hadn’t even demanded a bribe, but there were men like that. “Beron” was an Earth-touched name, and he’d worn the Earth Mother’s tattoos. No doubt the envoy of Ilu would have a few words to say about the honesty of a man born in the Year of the Crane, dedicated to the Earth Mother at birth, and serving Kotaru, the Thunderer, as one of his holy soldiers, his ordinands.

  24

  By the time Keshad paid a half leya as toll to pass the palisade gate and walked beside his wagon into the village of Dast Korumbos, the envoy was already seated and drinking at the inn called Southmost. The village’s eight rectangular houses were sturdily constructed of halved logs, and in the manner of the southern Hundred were not whitewashed. Chimes tinkled from every eave. The inn’s shutters were open under the peaked roof to air out the loft. In the fenced forecourt, a trio of locals sat on stools around the envoy’s bench, laughing as he told a story.

  “So he said, ‘No one wants to live so far south, right up into the mountains where anything might happen. But where else will folk pay double price for my sour cordial?’ ”

  The innkeeper trotted out, cast a sour glance at his customers, and went back inside the house. The courtyard boasted two awnings and a grape arbor that also provided shade. The kitchen smoked out back. A chicken wandered past the benches, scratching and pecking. A dark-haired child stuck its head out of the loft where Kesh had slept once on a straw bed, the one time he had had Merchant Feden’s coin to pay for lodging. The other times in Dastko he had slept on the ground beside the village well, under the branches of the Ladytree, where no one was allowed to charge rent.

  The envoy saw him and lifted a hand in greeting. Kesh handed five vey to Tebedir. “For the well,” he said. “See they drink deeply.”

  “If you ask me, they overcharge.”

  “That they do. You come have a drink, and we’ll see what the inn is offering at a reasonable price for supper.”

  “We stay here tonight?”

  Ahead, the wagon with the two Silvers trundled on through the far gate, headed down West Spur into the north, but the second wagon had already pulled up along the commons. Kesh squinted at the sky with its lacing of clouds and a peculiar purpling blue to the east, what could be seen of that horizon with the hills piled so high and the mountains crowded so close behind.

  “It’s a half day’s journey to Far Umbos. We can’t make it by dusk.”

  “That wagon goes on.”

  “Silvers have some kind of sorcery that protects them. Me, I don’t want to sleep out under the trees tonight with any wild beast coming to eat us up. For free!”

  “Lot of cold road here in the north,” remarked Tebedir as he got down and hooked the leads onto the beasts’ harness. “Lot of cold road and only wild forest and demon beast on every side. Not like in the empire. In the empire, there’s always some person or village in spitting distance. Don’t know how you folk stand it.”

  “I might say otherwise, wondering how you southern folk can stand to live all crowded together.”

  “Not crowded at all!” he retorted with a chuckle. “Lonely. Brrr.” He shuddered as though troubled by a chill wind, gave a flip to the reins, and guided the team toward the well at the northeastern corner of the palisade.

  The Ladytree was an old one, situated to the left of the well between the high outer palisade and the lower ring of stone wall that protected the well. A waist-high corral marked the limit of the Lady’s generosity. The top of each post was carved into a representation of her sigil, the double axe, so no one could mistake this for anything but holy ground, but also to provide a hitching post for a traveler’s mounts, dogs, or livestock. The Lady was practical in that way. The branches had grown out over the fence and had been twined in with it, and in spots he noted white scars where they’d been hacked back in defiance of the law.

  Children loitered by the narrow entrance to the encircled well. Several sat on the high posts that jutted up from the wall. One man and one woman waited by the well gate to exact toll from anyone who needed to water a team. Keshad hoped Tebedir would not kick up a fuss about the woman wanting to take coin out of his hand, but the Sirniakan driver had worked the Kandaran Pass into the Hundred before; he knew the custom here. The wagon came to a halt under the sanctuary of the Ladytree. Tebedir unhitched the beasts with practiced skill and led them around the curve of the inner wall to the gate. The man put his hand out, not the woman. No doubt they’d seen plenty of Sirniakan drivers come through.

  “Keshad!” The envoy beckoned. “Come sit, nephew. My friends here have already bought me a drink in exchange for news from the south.”

  The locals moved aside to let Kesh sit beside the envoy on the log bench. As a draught of cordial was placed before him by the smiling innkeeper, he glanced back toward the well, but Tebedir and the animals had vanished behind the inner palisade. One boy stood up on one of the high posts and, balanced there like a bird sentry, turned to watch what was going on at the trough, which was not visible from outside the little palisade.

  “What about you, lad?” asked the locals. “What news from the south?”

  Kesh shrugged. “Not much news you haven’t already heard. The old emperor died. It’s whispered there’s a rebellion brewing in the south against the new emperor. A cousin thinks he has more right to sit on the throne, so there might be fighting.”

  “Oom. Hem,” muttered the locals, nodding wisely. “That bodes poorly for custom, don’t it?”

  “It might,” said Kesh, “if fighting reaches so far north no one dares trade from the Hundred into the empire. As for the western markets, the Mariha princes have fallen to an army from farther west, barbarians called ‘Kin.’

  “You
traveled that far west?” asked the envoy, surprised. “All the way to Mariha lands?”

  “I did. That’s where I got the two girls. It was strange, though. Not one merchant I spoke to complained about their new overlords except that they have a habit of hanging thieves as well as murderers.”

  “That can’t be all bad,” said the older local, twisting greasy fingers in his beard. “Good riddance.”

  “Unless they call thieves and murderers those they want to hang, even if they didn’t steal or kill!” said the younger as he rubbed a scab on his nose.

  The trio talked for a while of their own expeditions into the south, though Kesh soon wondered whether these men had stirred more than a half day’s walk from Dast Korumbos in their entire lives. Their stories sounded like such a tangle of tales that he suspected they might have heard them from others, and they could never verify details, but the envoy merely smiled at their stories, and nodded at Kesh as if to warn him that there was no harm in letting them spin their fantasies as long as they wished. Other wagons trundled in at erratic intervals. After two marks the traffic ceased. This late in the day, no one else continued north. By arriving early, the first wagons had gotten the prime spots under the Ladytree, up against the net of branches that, having grown into the fence, gave them a second wall of sorts at their backs. Other wagons had to pay for space on the commons or along the outer palisade, and soon most of the open space in the village was littered with a confusing maze of wagons and carts and a few tents being raised.

  Tebedir took his time watering the beasts and getting things settled to his liking. After he hobbled the pair beside their wagon, he sauntered over to see about drink and taking a meal. The locals squinted at the driver, sketched hasty fare-thee-wells, and departed.

  “I hear tell there’s another caravan coming up behind this one,” said the innkeeper as he brought Tebedir a cordial and all of them a pot of lovingly spiced barsh, a green mash of rice, chopped onion, and liver liberally sprinkled with pepper and sharp kursi, which was grown in the eastern marshlands.

  “What’s this?” Tebedir asked, making a face at the pungent barsh.

  The envoy took in a deep breath and smiled broadly. With two fingers he dipped into the mash and tasted it. “Ah! A better flavor than your cordial, Master Innkeeper. Very good!”

  The man grunted, both irritated and gratified. “The berries were sour this year. I can’t afford to throw it out and buy elsewhere. No one wants to live on the pass, right up into the mountains where anything might happen. Heya! I was born here, and here I’ll stay, but we have to pay rent and food to the ordinands who patrol the wall and control the gate, and to the clerks who account the trade and taxes. And it’s a high toll ourselves to bring in any goods we want that we can’t grow here. I don’t like serving sour cordial, I’m proud of my inn and my service, but sour cordial’s all I’ve got this year.”

  “Heya! Innkeeper!” a merchant called from another bench.

  He sketched a gesture of leave-taking and hurried away. Kesh hitched the tripod holding the pot of barsh closer to the bench. They set to it eagerly.

  Tebedir ate more slowly than the other two and was first to break the silence. “Not that tasty, if you ask me.”

  “What of your girls?” asked the envoy.

  Embarrassed to be be taken to task in public, Kesh called the innkeeper over. “I want two tey of your second-grade rice, and a tey of beans—whatever kind—mixed in. I’ll bring the bowl back when they’re done.”

  “That’s a lot of food for two young girls,” said the envoy. He stared toward the Ladytree. Clouds had crept westward, making the late afternoon hazy. The wagon was half lost in the shadows under the spreading branches, but the envoy’s gaze had a piercing quality that made Kesh nervous. What if the man could see through cloth?

  Kesh forced a grin to his lips. “They’re my merchandise. I’ll get a better price for them if they’re healthy and plump. No profit to me if the girls get sick or starve on the way to the block, is it?”

  “No, certainly not. Nor is it any shame to hire folk who worship He Who Rules Alone when there are no good Hundred folk who can make the journey.”

  “The Shining One Who Rules Alone,” corrected Tebedir genially. “King of Kings, Lord of Lords. You Hundred folk will all burn in the fire if you don’t change your ungodly ways like Keshad here did.”

  The envoy raised an eyebrow but said nothing, and Kesh winced, thinking it would have been better had the envoy spoken his thoughts out loud. Anything would be better than that measured gaze turned on him now that seemed to eat him alive.

  “Have you turned your back on your clansmen?” asked the envoy curiously, although no hint of anger tarnished his voice.

  “They turned their back on me! Sold me into slavery to pay their debts!” He touched the crudely worked debt mark, more scar than tattoo, curving from his left brow and around the outside of his left eye.

  “A sad tale heard all too often in the Hundred, I grant you. But under the rule of Beltak, once a slave you are a slave forever.” He turned to the driver. “Is that not true?”

  “Of course! No man become slave by the law of the Exalted One if he do not fall into disgrace.” He nodded toward Keshad without embarrassment. “Is different here in the north. Tsst! First become slave, then buy free, and so on. But that is your way. Maybe it will change when Beltak’s priests come.”

  “Maybe,” agreed the envoy politely, “but in the Hundred, the gods and the land are as one, not to be separated.” He looked closely again at Kesh as if trying to tease the strand of memory out of Kesh’s mind that would explain to him why a good Hundred boy would betray his gods.

  Kesh scratched the back of his neck, wondering how he could excuse himself without insulting the envoy. Whatever pleasure he’d taken in the day had vanished. Fortunately one of the innkeeper’s lads bustled up with the boiled rice and beans.

  “Best get the girls fed and settled down for the night,” he said as he took the big bowl. “We rise before dawn. Get a brisk start to the day. Olossi Town beckons.”

  He tossed enough vey on the table to pay for everything.

  “I thank you, nephew.” The envoy smiled. “Rest well.”

  “Crazy priests,” muttered Tebedir as they walked back to the wagon. “Best they all die in the burnings. Better for your people to worship the Exalted One and not these wrong things they call gods.”

  “Leave it, if you will,” said Kesh sharply. The conversation had rattled him. He handed the rice inside.

  After the girls had eaten, he returned the bowl to the inn, paid a pair of vey to empty their waste bucket in the inn’s latrines, and returned to his little camp. Yet as he knelt in the shadow of the wagon, set a bowl of water before his knees, and said his evening prayers with palms turned upward to face the heavens, he found the words meaningless.

  “Rid us of all that is evil. Rid us of demons. Rid us of hate. Rid us of envy. Rid us of heretics and liars. Rid us of wolves and of armies stained with the blood of the pure.” He dipped a thumb in the water and traced that cool touch across his forehead. “Increase all that is good. Increase life. Increase wealth. Increase the strength of your devoted. Increase the power of your holy emperor, beloved among men.” He dipped his little finger in the water and traced a line on each cheek. “Teach me to hate darkness and battle evil. Teach me the Truth, Exalted One, King of Kings, Lord of Lords. You are Beltak, the Shining One Who Rules Alone. Peace. Peace. Peace.”

  Wind shushed in the branches of the Ladytree, as if the Lady Atiratu Herself overheard him and muttered Her displeasure among the leaves. His thoughts wound away like the wind, seeking north. The town of Olossi beckoned, sixty-two mey from Dast Korumbos, more or less eight or ten days’ journey depending on weather, road conditions, the state of the wagon, and the likelihood of accidents or obstacles as yet unknown.

  Nine days! It seemed both far too many and so blindingly few. He could feel the taste of freedom on his tongue, as sharp
as the blend of kursi and pepper that had spiced the barsh. His freedom. Her freedom. Both of us, soon to be free.

  “Hei! Hei!”

  The slap of feet on the ground startled him so badly he knocked over the blessing bowl. Water stained the dirt. He jumped up, but his view beyond the Ladytree was obscured by branches. A commotion roiled the commons. A youth came running from the direction of the southern gate with his broad sleeves fluttering back like bird’s wings.

  “Hei! Hei! ‘Ware! ‘Ware! Ospreys comin—!” He stumbled forward and plunged headlong into the ground. An arrow stuck out of his back. His arms jiggled crazily as he tried to crawl but could not make his legs work.

  “Osprey?” Tebedir had heard the words but from his angle closer to the trunk of tree had not seen the lad fall. “What is that?”

  “Trail robbers. Named for birds—what swoop down and grab their prey. But they never attack into a town. . . .”

  “Robbers!” exclaimed Tebedir.

  “Close the gate! Close the gate!” rang the frantic call.

  Already out in the commons, a hand of men in guard tunics ran toward the southern gate. A pair of guards leaped on horses and headed toward the northern gate. A crowd converged on the inn, each man, and they were all men, yelling and gesticulating as they cried for protection, for news, for safety. Kesh grabbed his sword and slung it over his back, then buckled his quiver over it and with a quick tug and pop strung his bow. His stomach had fallen into a pit so deep he couldn’t measure it.

  “Tebedir, you can run, or stick with me, whatever you will, but if you run now I can’t pay you your delivery share and you’ll be taking your chances with robbers out among the trees.”