Shadow Gate

  The Qin looked at him blankly, not understanding.

  “Never mind,” said Kesh impatiently.

  He closed a hand over Chaji’s wrist and yanked to dislodge his grip. He barely shifted Chaji’s arm, but the soldier sucked in breath with an audible hiss, then released Walla and slugged him.

  The blow landed on his shoulder, and he staggered back with a yelp. The holy ones shouted for the warders, Chaji grabbed at Walla, and Tohon strode into the breach with angry words that sat Chaji down on the bench as though he’d been shoved. Everyone quieted. A pair of broad-shouldered warders, easily spotted in orange sashes, showed up from the outer court.

  Walla examined Tohon and, then, Chaji with his petulant expression but obedient seat on the bench. She made a sign with her left hand, and the warders stepped back to lounge watchfully by the gate.

  “Maybe we get tired of explaining ourselves to grasping, rude, horny outlanders,” she said to Kesh. Her stare made him self-conscious in a way both irritating and provocative.

  “When you come to the temple, you are offering yourself at the altar of the goddess,” Kesh said to the Qin. “The hierodules and kalos choose you if they are willing to, ah, worship with you.” He brushed a hand over his curly hair, aware that he was blushing. Not that any of it was at all shameful, only that Walla was bullying him. He wondered if she hated Bai, and if this was payback for an old rivalry.

  “They choose us?” Tohon tugged at his ear, obviously wondering if he’d heard wrong. Of all the Qin soldiers, this middle-aged man was the only one Kesh respected. He ruled his cadre firmly but without cruelty; he conversed pleasantly with Zubaidit, treating her like a comrade. The worst Keshad could say of him was that he seemed genuinely to like that cursed reeve, Joss.

  “The hierodule or kalos makes the offer. You can refuse it, if you wish, and hope to receive another offer. Which may come, or may not. Men walk through the gate of gold and women through the gate of silver, to the gardens, where the acolytes of the Merciless One wait. Then it’s up to you to accept or refuse what is offered.”

  “What of these four here?” asked Tohon, indicating the four hierodules and ignoring the young man.

  “These five acolytes,” said Kesh, “all reside beyond the gate of gold, which admits men to the inner precincts. They came here to the Heart Garden because you’re out-landers, and they wanted to see if you could behave according to the temple rules. Not all outlanders can.”

  “I can behave!” said one of the young soldiers, Jagi, with a grin, and Walla looked right at him, seeing something in his smile that interested her.

  The one called Pil looked sidelong at the kalos, then away quickly before anyone could notice, but the kalos marked the look and yet hung back.

  Tohon was still stroking the nub of his ear. “Huh. What else are we to know?”

  “You’ll all need baths.” Walla bent her gaze on Jagi, whose grin widened. “But you won’t mind that. Whew! You all do smell. How often do you wash those heavy garments?”

  “Take a bath?” cried Chaji. “In water?”

  “Here, now,” said Tohon, beckoning to Kesh. “Is that necessary?”

  “I should think so.” Even the heady smell of blooming flowers could not cover the rancid odor of the men and, in particular, their clothing. “Folk in the Hundred bathe every day if they can. Don’t you have bathhouses in your country?”

  This word brought blank looks.

  “Water weakens a man,” said Chaji.

  “It’s not what we’re accustomed to.” Tohon had given up on the ear and was now twisting the few whiskers that grew, like a wraith’s beard, from his chin. “There are evil spirits in water. Everyone knows that.”

  The bold and brave Qin soldiers shuffled their feet and looked toward the gate to the outer court, as if seeking escape.

  “The baths lie just beyond the gate,” said Walla, “and you can advance no farther into the goddess’s body without cleansing.” She beckoned to her companions. They sauntered back to the gate and went in, leaving the gates ajar.

  “Baths aren’t bad,” said Shai hesitantly, and the others looked at him, and away. “They never killed anyone, eh?”

  Released by the sun’s heat, fragrance poured off the flowers until it seemed to drown them. Birds flitted within the lush arbors of musk vine with their bright red passion flowers.

  Jagi jumped to his feet. “I’ll try it!”

  That was enough for most of them. They trundled forward cautiously, leaving Kesh sitting on the bench beside Shai, Chaji, and Tohon. Tohon gestured to Shai, and the young man sighed but, obediently, stood and followed the others.

  “It can’t be right, this story about the whores picking and choosing and turning a man down if he wants them,” said Chaji after Shai was gone. “They’re just saying that to take advantage of us.”

  “Best you go in after them,” said Tohon to Kesh. “Make sure the lads do what is fitting. We have to learn to live in this land.”

  He might as well have been in collusion with Bai! With a grimace, Kesh rose. “You’re not coming?”

  Tohon slanted a gaze sidelong toward Chaji. “Anyway,” he added, “I have an old feud with the water spirits. I’m not sure about these ‘baths.’ ”

  “There are bathing pools, it’s true,” said Kesh, “but you can also just wash yourself out of a big basin. You just have to strip down and wash your whole body with a cloth and soap. You have to clean yourself before you can get in the pools anyway. And, honestly, you might want to—well—wash your clothes.”

  Chaji rose, both hands in fists. “What makes you think you can insult us? You’re no better than a naked rat, a worthless—”

  “Chaji-na,” said Tohon sharply. The young soldier sat down, shoulders heaving.

  Kesh was shaking, but he kept his voice cool. “I was born in the Year of the Goat, Gold Goat, as it happens, not that you would know what that signifies.”

  “No need,” said Tohon mildly, “to keep talking, lads. I’d recommend you both to shut your mouths. Keshad, go on, as I told you.”

  Chaji lifted his gaze just enough to let Kesh know he was looking. Those pretty eyes didn’t impress Kesh; glaring, he crossed his arms.

  “Go on,” said Tohon, voice like the snap of a whip.

  Kesh grabbed his small pack; everything else they’d left at a stable in the village of Dast Olo, by the pier where they’d taken boats to the temple island. Behind, he heard Chaji murmur, his words too faint to understand, and Tohon’s curt rejoinder. He reached the gate, set a hand on the painted door, and paused before stepping into the garden of gold. From inside, he heard the spill of water into a basin; he heard laughter. A woman was singing a familiar song in time to the beat of a hand drum and the rhythm of shaken bells: I paused inside the gate and beheld the garden.

  “Keshad!” A youth wearing the casual kilt of the off-duty acolyte stood over by the white gates, beckoning to him.

  The hells! Kesh walked over to the youth, where Tohon met them.

  “It seems you and I are called to the council,” said the soldier to Kesh. “Chaji waits here. The rest—hu!—let’s hope they behave.”

  Back on the bench, half concealed at this angle by the arbors and flowering trees, Chaji sat in sullen silence, fists pressed in his lap.

  “The Hieros wants you right now,” said the temple lad impatiently.

  Kesh and Tohon followed him through the white gates into a courtyard filled with a tangle of vegetation. A narrow path littered with petals and old leaves cushioned their steps.

  “Hu!” muttered Tohon. “What a thick forest! I can see nothing.” His gaze darted this way and that, and once he stopped and abruptly brushed at his face. Then he stared into the shadowed branches. Draped on a limb, a ginny stared at the Qin with a look Kesh recognized as amusement.

  “Huh!” grunted Tohon. “That’s the male Zubaidit keeps. She let him go.”

  “They’re the goddess’s acolytes,” the lad called over his shoulder.
“They belong here, truly. Anyway, the Hieros doesn’t like to be kept waiting. She’s got many more things to accomplish today, and wants this business finished and closed.”

  Kesh wiped his brow and scratched his chin. The shade gave relief against the sun, but the overwhelming scent of green growing things oppressed him. They strode out into the open space in the center where the fountain splashed, water tracing the strenuous curves of a man and woman intertwined in the act of devouring.

  Tohon actually blushed, and looked away, gaze fixed on the back of the lad, who kept walking without a glance at the sculpture to another path on the far side of the clearing. This path wound through a jungle of spiky orange and yellow proudhorn and falls of purple muzz and white heaven-kiss, their scent almost too sweet. Tohon walked as if expecting an attack.

  A steeply slanted tile roof rose from the greenery. They ascended a flight of stone steps, pressing through uncut shoots of musk vine that groped at Kesh’s body. He staggered into a pavilion of surpassing beauty: the pillars painted in gold leaf designs; the benches upholstered with rich fabrics so expensive that immediately his mind totted up their worth in days of labor and the price of slaves; the floor inlaid with a complicated pattern of precious woods. The lad threw out an arm before Kesh or Tohon could actually step onto the floor, and indicated that they must remove their shoes and then sit to one side on a pair of plain silk pillows.

  Four waited in the pavilion, sipping wine. Zubaidit looked perfectly comfortable seated cross-legged on a pillow, ginnyless. Beside her, that cursed reeve flirted with a smile on his smugly handsome face as he made some quip meant for Zubaidit’s amusement. Captain Anji sat quietly. Bai marked Kesh’s arrival with a glance but did not acknowledge him. The reeve kept talking, attention fixed on Bai. The Qin captain noted Tohon, then Kesh, and gave each a crisp nod before turning back to the conversation.

  The fourth person sketched a greeting. Master Calon was the head of a well-to-do merchant house whose faction had never before held power in the city, although today he wore the crossed sash of a seated council member with the red braid of power fixed to his right shoulder. In the aftermath of the battle, a huge change had swept the city and council of Olossi. The Greater Houses, who had held power for untold generations, had fallen to the machinations of the Lesser Houses and the guilds in alliance with Captain Anji and his troop.

  A pair of elderly hierodules—by their age, lifelong slaves to the goddess—mounted the steps and with a tinkling of bells announced the arrival of the Hieros. All rose, Kesh last of all. How he hated this woman!

  Her attendants helped her sit on a particularly fine pillow covered in a heavy damask of an intense jade green that set off the pale pipe-sprout of her rich silk taloos. For such a delicate, frail, elderly little woman, she had a stare that hammered you. And she was gloating. He could see it in her smirk as she addressed the gathered company.

  “That man, the Qin sergeant. The stink of his clothing offends me. Have your people some objection to bathing, Captain? Yet by all report you are yourself perfectly happy to indulge in the baths in the city.”

  “I see you have a network well placed to bring you all manner of reports, holy one,” said the captain with a faint smile.

  “As you will yourself in time, I expect,” she retorted. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  Captain Anji looked at Tohon, gave a nod.

  Tohon’s expression remained calm, his voice untroubled. “I can answer for myself, holy one. As a man who has earned respect, I ask to be treated with respect.”

  She looked him over. His gaze, on her, was not challenging but it was also not submissive. “I will listen to your words.”

  He acknowledged her reply with a nod. “It is well known among my people that the water spirits hate human beings. They are kin to demons, and therefore there is a long war between us. We Qin know better than to trouble the spirits. Maybe you folk have a better understanding with them than we do. Anyway, my daughter drowned, and my wife died of grief from losing her to the water spirits.”

  Kesh expected the Hieros to scoff at this ridiculous story. There weren’t any spirits in water except for strong currents and unexpected eddies. The merlings lived in the sea, but they were living, material creatures like humans and delvings and firelings, not spirits. Even demons were living creatures with powers beyond human understanding. The only spirits abroad in the world were ghosts. Everyone knew that.

  The Hieros touched fingers to her right ear and then her forehead, the gesture of hearing and understanding. “Very well. If you wish to walk in the temple, then come to me personally. Like all hierodules, I am trained in the act of cleansing a body in preparation for the act of worship. I am powerful enough to protect you against anything, within these walls, that might wish to harm you.”

  The temple lad whistled under his breath, Bai looked baffled and Joss and Master Calon amazed, but the elderly hierodules made no comment at this remarkable offer. It was impossible to know what Captain Anji was thinking.

  Tohon tugged on his left ear, blinked, and then met the Hieros’s steady gaze. “My thanks to you, holy one.”

  Kesh hadn’t known the old bitch could smile in a friendly way, but she did so now, like a flirting girl all lit up when a boy agrees to meet her family. “That’s settled, then. Now to our other business.” The smile vanished. She turned a cold shoulder to Kesh quite deliberately, drawing attention to his disgrace. “Marshal Joss, you’ve fulfilled your duty and brought me these criminals. Zubaidit I absolve from fault, although naturally she will have to return her accounts bundle and resume her service with the temple. She can’t have known that her brother would use a stolen object to purchase her freedom. He, on the other hand, must pay full forfeit and be prosecuted for his crime of buying out the contract of a temple slave under false pretenses. He tried to cheat us. The temples cannot allow such behavior to go unpunished.”

  “The girl came into my possession by finder’s right, which none of you can dispute,” objected Kesh. “How can I have known some envoy of Ilu would come along to make a claim on her? How do I even know you’re telling the truth? You could be trying to cheat me, to get Bai back into your claws.”

  She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “How the assizes choose to deal with any complaint in the matter brought by his former master, matters not to me. Master Feden is dead and his house disgraced—”

  “I bought out my own contract with trade goods! Nothing illegal about that!”

  “—so it may be that the heirs of the House of Quartered Flowers will bring no claim against him. But the temple certainly means to take back what is rightfully ours—”

  “Only because you’d been cheating her all along, you old bitch—”

  “Keshad!” snapped the reeve. “Be quiet!”

  “I won’t be quiet! I’ve been found at fault without being allowed to speak in my own defense, or have any kind of representation at the assizes. She means to tilt the judgment against me before I ever stand up at the rail. What kind of justice is that? Or do the reeves simply stamp as justice what’s the wish of those in power?”

  Ha! That stung!

  The reeve examined Kesh with a look that hadn’t the hammer of the old bitch’s look but which was just as annoying, like someone poking into you to see what would make you squeak. Kesh shifted on his pillow and rubbed his throat. Tohon coughed into a hand. Bai watched the Hieros much as the ginnies had watched her.

  The captain broke in. “If you will. It appears the dispute rests on whether this man, Keshad, brother to Zubaidit, had a legal claim on the individual whose body he used as payment for his sister’s freedom. He exchanged a girl he found in the south for the outstanding balance on his sister’s accounts book, the unpaid balance of which kept her as a debt slave to the temple. Am I correct?”

  “You are,” said the reeve.

  “I accepted the female as payment because of her obvious value,” said the Hieros. “I would have been a fool to let
such a treasure pass out of the temple’s hands. However, it appears she belonged to someone else.”

  “This is the part I do not understand,” said the captain. “A man came to the temple, at night, and claimed the female. Did he have a contract? Proof of ownership? He might himself have been a thief, a clever con man, who cheated you and left the blame to fall on Keshad.”

  There is a silence that soothes, and a silence that frightens. Silence can conceal, or reveal. It can make you stop and think, or it can be a warning. The garden lay quiet behind them, smothered in green growing things. Clouds scudded overhead, piling up over the Olo’o Sea. Kesh smelled rain coming, but it hadn’t reached them yet.

  “He was a Guardian,” said the Hieros, “and so was the girl.”

  Nine simple words, coolly spoken. A cold thrill woke in Kesh. Guardians walking the land again! He could not imagine what it might mean for the Hundred. Or for him.

  He got up clumsily and glared all around. “Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. But how would she ever have gotten to the Hundred, eh? Many months’ journey! She could never have made it alone, a naked girl, with nothing and no one, starving, mute, lost. I brought her here.”

  “You have no idea what Guardians are capable of, or why she might have been walking in the south,” began the Hieros in a cruel voice. “You are the worst kind, making excuses for your crime, refusing to accept responsibility for the acts you have committed. Don’t think I don’t have reports of what you did as Master Feden’s factor, how you treated those in his employ, how you treated your fellow debt slaves, how you used them and discarded them—”

  The captain broke in, politely. “I beg your pardon, holy one. It seems to me that, while you are perfectly reasonable in your assessment of the young man’s faults, they are not among the concerns that trouble us most in these days.”

  “That he cheated the temple is of no concern to you?”

  Captain Anji had a pleasant smile that deflected anger. “It is of greatest concern to me, although naturally you understand that as a newcomer to the Hundred, I do not worship at the altar of your gods for I do not know them. But I am aware that every land is tightly woven with its gods. This dispute is a matter to be judged carefully, and thoroughly. My concern is that you may have no chance to do so if other events overtake us in the meantime.”