“It’s Avisha, ver. I remember you.”
His smile warmed. Maybe he was old enough to be her father, not that he was anything like. Aui! He was a handsome man even as old as all that. “There was an envoy of Ilu in there. Did you see where he went?”
“No, ver, but he can’t have gotten far.”
“What do you know of him?”
“He came into the settlement about a week ago, at least twelve days. The mistress asked him to site altars for the gods, so marriages can go forward in the proper way.”
Chief Tuvi ambled over, his gaze sharp and his smile forced. “Is there a problem, Marshal?”
The marshal raised a hand as if to beckon Tuvi in. An unspoken message passed between the men, but she wasn’t sure what it was. “See if you can find that envoy, Chief.”
“He’s harmless. The mistress likes him, and she is a good judge of character.”
“If I’m not mistaken, the last time I saw that man was in Dast Korumbos. He was dead.”
Eihi! Maybe the marshal wasn’t quite right in the head. Age took folk like that.
“You recognized him, too, eh?” said Tuvi, nodding. “He walked with us over the Kandaran Pass, but I lost track of him before we reached Dast Korumbos. You say he was killed in the bandit attack?”
“He was dying.”
“But you didn’t see him dead?”
The marshal ran a hand over his tightly cropped hair. “I did not, it’s true. It’s hard to imagine he could have survived those injuries, though.”
Chief Tuvi shook his head. “He’s talked a few times with the mistress, ver, and I can tell you, he’s no ghost. Ghosts don’t drink tea, for one thing.”
“Hard to imagine how they could.” The charming smile flashed as the marshal’s gaze shifted back to Avisha. “If the altars are built, then I suppose marriages will go forward. You must have a line waiting for you, Avisha. Yet whose rice will you eat?”
She wrapped a hand in the fabric of her taloos, angry at him for embarrassing her in front of Chief Tuvi, who might not like to see her in the company of such a good-looking man. But the marshal was not truly interested in her, he was just fashioned that way, flirting with women the same way he breathed.
“I must go, ver. I’ve work to do.”
And Zianna to check in on. Eiya! She’d neglected the children, so caught up was she in running after the mistress. She hurried off. Jerad was nowhere to be found, and Zi was in the kitchen yard with little ones her own age, picking pebbles out of a bin of rice, careful-handed despite their youth.
“Zi, I’m off to the garden. You want to come?”
Zi barely glanced at her. “No.”
Zi had been angry at Avisha since the day Nallo had left, as if that was Avisha’s fault. Anyway, Zianna didn’t really understand that their father was dead, only that he wasn’t around to dote on her and someone had to be blamed for a world cast into disorder.
With a sigh, Avisha caught the attention of one of the kitchen workers. “I’m going down to my garden.”
“I’m hoping those melons you planted give fruit,” said the woman with a smile, tucking a strand of loose hair back into her kerchief with a sweaty hand.
Avisha trudged down through the growing settlement. Men expanded a second reservoir at the base of the irrigation channel. The main reservoir had captured a fair bit of water in the recent rains, which was routed into cisterns. Mai had extended credit for seeds, and Avisha had received a plot in one of the irrigated parcels. The soil was a fine-grained pale silt nothing like the black river-fed soils of her home. She hadn’t much to enrich it with beyond peelings and scraps she composted with night soil, but while celestial star simply would not grow, she had coaxed along decent plantings of ginger, onions, pepper-heart, and various chilis. She watered and weeded the garden, then walked past the parade ground. Down by the shelter where folk could rest under shade after drilling, Jerad cracked sticks with another lad. Although she halted and waved, he did not notice her.
She wiped away a tear with a dirty finger and walked to the dry fields, where she had set up pot irrigation for her melons. She had also planted sapling figs, dates, and three ranks of precious woolly-plum seedlings; all but two had sprouted. Out here, all alone, she felt truly isolated. She did so badly miss her father.
Horsemen pounded into view in tight formation. She watched admiringly as the Qin soldiers pulled up, wheeled, turned again, and galloped away with dust spitting in their wake. Another group of ten raced up to attempt the same maneuver, the local riders awkward on their mounts while their black-clad Qin supervisor slashed his whip at those who fell out of line. A second unit of trainees attempted the drill, half of them hopelessly lagging on the first turn as the Qin soldier yelled at them and chased them back to the starting point. A third group came, holding together better at the first turn, but several fell off the line at the second turn and then whipped their horses to catch up, only to get themselves in a tangle, pulling up short before the horses crashed into each other.
Jagi was in charge of this group. He rode through the ranks laughing, and pointed with his whip here, and then there, indicating where they had gone wrong. He had the riders work back through the drill in pairs before a shout from the starting point called his group back. They rode off in paired rows; some of the local men had their hair up in topknots, like the Qin, while others had bound their long hair in horsetails that swagged down their backs. She admired their squared shoulders. Jagi, at the back, had so easy a seat on his horse that he and it might as well have been one creature.
A formation consisting only of Qin riders swept past. Jagi peeled off from his own group and raced with his comrades through an about-face back toward the starting line with a precision and speed that made her heart pound. No wonder they had defeated a much larger army!
“Vish!” Jerad trotted up, his face smeared and his clothes dirty. He wore a big grin of pure happiness as he watched the troop ride off. “Did you see that, eh? I’m going to be a soldier in the captain’s army. Jagi is teaching me to ride. I’m going to become a black wolf, just like them.”
42
“Why should you get to keep that girl for yourself, not sharing her?” The soldier confronting the sergeant squinted, holding an axe in one hand. “Who set you over us as if you was lord?”
Shai watched sidelong as he scoured out the pot that had been used to cook rice. The conflict had been taking shape over several days of marching, and now, having stopped for the night in yet another isolated, abandoned, burned village, the malcontents within the cadre of thirty-six had decided to confront their leader.
“I was named captain when the cloak left us,” snarled the sergeant. “You going to argue with the lord?”
The man with the axe sneered. “You think that pervert cares about us? You ever think maybe we were led into a trap? I’ve been thinking the lords sent us west to test Olossi’s strength, not caring what became of us. Like scarpers sent into a hole to see if an adder will bite. What do we owe them? Why go back at all, eh? Plenty of fields here. We’ve got slaves to do the work.”
Shai sat on a charred beam out in front of a shed where most of the younger children, chores complete, already rested on such pallets as they could scrape together from grass or straw. They were always scratching, bodies speckled with bites and discolored with sores and bruises and welts. His foot itched. He leaned down and felt along the arch until he identified the bump where he’d been bitten. Aiye! He hurt everywhere, but he must never let it show.
Twenty-six men had congregated around the sergeant, so there were nine men not present. He identified four in visible watch positions where two paths entered the wide clearing. Two more would be in the woods on a ranging watch. Where were the other three? Yet he could not possibly lead twenty-four frail children and adolescents into the woods; even with a head start, they would be caught.
“Farming is hard work,” said the sergeant as his allies muttered agreement. “I didn’t sign
up to farm.”
“You say that because you get a good lie-down every night, when there aren’t enough to go around who are old enough, eh? Or are you like the cloak, eh? The younger, the better?”
“You gods-rotted, pus-filled shit!” The sergeant flicked up a hand, and Twist and another pair of soldiers threw the challenger to the ground. Their bodies blocked Shai’s view of the beating, but two girls who were carrying buckets on a pole down the lane faltered and dropped the pole, so frightened were they at the sight. Solid thumps changed tone to a meatier, more liquid sound; they were bashing in the man’s head.
There is a way men have of breathing hard when their blood is up that Shai had come to recognize in these soldiers, a spillover that the Qin soldiers had, evidently, learned to rein in. Twist lurched out of the gathering, glaring around, hands clenched. Men moved back from him as he spotted the cowering girls. Shai leaped up and trotted forward.
“Here, now!” he called out. “I’m thirsty! Where’s my water?” He affected the lopsided gait that made the men laugh at him, but no one was laughing.
“Take the body away,” snarled the sergeant. “If any of you have further complaints, let me know.”
Twist grabbed Shai. “You’re not what you pretend to be, that’s what I think, cursed outlander.” He spat in Shai’s face.
The spittle landed beneath an eye, and he flinched, sparking with hatred as he forced a stupid grin. “Heya! My dear mom said spitting wasn’t nice.”
“I’d wick your dear mom until she wept for mercy!” Twist slugged him up under the ribs.
The impact doubled him over, but the spectacle had drawn the attention of the others, those slinking away to lick their wounds and those needing a bit of fun to work out the bloody aftermath of the killing of one of their own.
“Heya, Twist! I’m betting his mother was a ewe. I hear that’s more to your liking.”
“You ass-wiping turd.”
Gagging and hacking, Shai stumbled out of the way. A fight broke out, fists flying, and more men waded in, laughing with a high-pitched giggling, but as Shai staggered toward the girls the roil settled out and the knot dispersed, men grumbling as they headed to fires or shelters.
“Pick up the buckets.” It was hard to choke out the words with his chest throbbing. “Get back to the well and get more water. Keep moving like nothing happened.”
Faces gray with fear, the girls grabbed pole and empty buckets and hurried off. They were so scrawny their shoulders came to a point instead of a nice rounded curve. What remained of their tunics hung in flaps.
Shai rested on hands and knees as he waited for the worst of the pain to fade. Merciful One protect them! Tohon would be making a plan, while he did nothing more than react as each new blow fell. Maybe he was dull-witted in truth. He’d done his best, organizing the children into banners so they could look out for each other, carrying the weakest when they lagged. But it wasn’t enough.
And yet the girls did come back with the water without being hit. The men mumbled, and ate their supper, and called for their favorites or waited their turn. The beaten man had been dragged away by the other soldiers and thrown into the trees, but despite the pulpy mess of his head, some glimmer of life still animated him because no ghost rose.
Shai crept back to the shelter as twilight mellowed the scene. It was easy to believe they sheltered in a peaceful backwoods hamlet, trees soughing in the breeze, candlewick flowers giving off dusk’s perfume. An owl hooted, and a nightjar clicked.
After night fell, Jasya and Wori and the others old enough to be taken hobbled back to the shelter, ducking past him on the threshold and finding their places in their banner groups as he had assigned them. He waited until all were back except Yudit, who was forced to remain with the sergeant all night. He had to wait, because three nights ago they had lost Jolas, done to death in a rough way that Shai sheared away from recalling, having seen the aftermath. He hadn’t thought to go looking for the lad until morning, and by then of course it was far too late.
Yet what could he have done anyway?
How was it possible he could not keep them all safe?
Too restless to sleep, he braced himself across the opening so no one could grab one without him knowing. He considered paths of escape. Could they sneak out at night? By the two sentry fires, shadowed forms paced on watch. The pair of men set to watch the prisoners’ shelter kept up a steady murmur, an idiotic conversation about a game called hooks-and-ropes.
Rain passed over, out of the southeast. He dozed, woke when a child whimpered, but it was only a dreaming cry, not repeated. The watch fires glowed red. At the forest’s edge, mist untangled from the vegetation to drift into what had been some poor soul’s tended garden.
He rubbed his eyes. The mist took on a flowing shape, a ghost winged with a gleaming trail as if its spirit were blown back in an unseen wind from the land beyond the Spirit Gate.
The soldier was dead, then, his ghost wandering in confusion. That left thirty-five, still too many for a single woodchopper to take on.
Yet for an instant, as the ghost crossed the compound toward the byre where the sergeant slept, he saw in the misty shape the form of a woman who looked exactly like Cornflower.
Merciful One! Would her haunt never let him rest? He shut his eyes, wishing desperately for sleep, anything to shut down the fevered workings of his exhausted mind. If he breathed slowly, if he cupped hands before his heart in the attitude of prayer and murmured the beseeching phrases, perhaps he could find peace.
“I go to the Merciful One for refuge. Accept my prayers out of compassion. Peace.”
Footsteps pattered on the ground like a fall of rain. He opened his eyes as Yudit crouched beside him.
“The sergeant’s dead,” she whispered. “They’ll think I did it, and they’ll kill me. But I was just lying there. A ghost came in and stole his spirit.” Shivering, she clutched his arm.
“Who’s dead?”
“The sergeant.” She pressed two objects into his hands: the wolf ring and the belt buckle.
“Get inside.”
Shaking, she crawled past him. Whispered questions greeted her. He eased out from the threshold and crawled to the corner of the shed, from which he could see down the central village path. No ghost emerged from the building where the sergeant slept. Maybe the sergeant’s ghost had already passed through Spirit Gate. Or maybe Yudit, in her fear, had been mistaken.
A bird chirped, the herald of dawn’s coming. Men slumbered. The watch paced. One man by the north path, just becoming visible, swayed as though dozing on his feet. An aura of gray touched the treetops as more birds assayed their predawn song. There was something he ought to have understood and acted on, but had missed.
“Heya!”
He ran back to the threshold. The south path guard was waving his hands, running toward the camp; he tripped and fell hard, cursing. Within the shelter, the children were already awake and alert.
A woman wearing a lord’s cloak rode into the clearing, white cloth unfurling like wings as she raised a staff to command their attention.
“You ass-kissing turds. Rise as I command!” The voice carried without being a shout. Its resonance hung in the air as men scrambled up.
An armed woman rode beside her. He blinked twice, before he recognized her: Zubaidit! Had she betrayed them?
As the two females rode forward, his mind sorted out what he thought he was seeing from what was right in front of his face. The cloak was Eridit, but her bearing so changed and her aspect so frightening that it was hard to see in this cloaked woman the recklessly self-absorbed young actress who had dandled the other three men and afterward thrown Shai down beneath the overhang and, well, wicked him.
“Lord Radas sent me! Why are you loitering here when you are needed in Haldia? We are angry at your disobedience! Get your gear! Move out quickly!”
Her gaze passed over Shai as if she did not recognize him. Zubaidit, measuring the movements of the men as they gra
bbed gear or slouched out of lean-tos and ruined houses, marked him. Both women were dressed more conservatively than he was used to seeing them, far less flesh exposed; Bai was accustomed to having a lot of freedom of movement, while Eridit had just liked flaunting it. But now Bai wore a shift under her laced leather vest, and leather trousers for riding, while Eridit wore richer garb, a silk tabard and flowing trousers whose bright blue color shone in the rising dawn light. Her glossy black hair was twisted up on her head and held in place by lacquered sticks.
Twist and his cronies formed a tight knot, blocking the path into the village. They looked skittish, but they held their ground. “I see no winged horse,” Twist said, although his voice quavered.
Eridit raised a hand, as if giving an order.
A hiss sounded. An arrow buried itself in Twist’s throat. He crumpled, as the men around him shouted in fear and bumped into each other in their haste to get away from the stricken man. His body spasmed, legs pumping as he gurgled.
“We do not tolerate disobedience,” cried Eridit, and even Shai shuddered at her imperious fury.
A man came running from the byre. “Heya! Heya!” Sweating and gray, he stumbled to a halt as he stared at the two mounted women with suspicion and fear. “Sergeant’s dead. Not a cut, or welts, or bruises on his throat. He’s just dead.”
Zubaidit’s gaze flickered, and Eridit glanced at her sidelong, the moment passing quickly as the soldiers gabbled in alarm and confusion.
“Thus are those who disobey us, punished!” cried Eridit. “Gather your gear. Move east. Quickly, now. Quickly.”
Cowed, they hastened to their shelters and pallets.
One brave man shuffled forward with head bent to touch fisted hands. “What of the prisoners, lord?”
Neither looked toward Shai.
“Leave the prisoners!”
“Er, eh, as you command, lord. But what of the two favored ones the lord cloak, Lord Bevard, commanded us to bring safely to camp. And what of the lackwit? The lord cloak promised he would tear our hearts out if we did not do as he ordered.”