Shadow Gate

  “Heya, ver,” called one of the guards. “Here comes someone.”

  Kesh whistled, and they tightened up their formation, guards slipping wicker shields off their backs. Kesh had a sword, but he left it sheathed. Surely bandits would ambush them, not march up in the open.

  A trio of peddlers walked into view, each man leading a string of laden horses. They wore red caps and the distinctive tiered robes common among Sirniakan merchants. The guards relaxed.

  Keshad acknowledged them with the believer’s salute, speaking in the believer’s language. “Peace to you, in the Name of the Exalted One, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Shining One Who Rules Alone.”

  “Peace to you,” they replied, and there was an awkward moment while both parties slowed so as not to ram into each other. Kesh pulled his mount aside, and his company followed suit, but instead of simply passing upward the men halted. They stared pointedly at Eliar and the turban that wrapped his head.

  Kesh approached them. He didn’t like the way their gazes sucked him in, like they were spooling for secrets.

  “A cold day higher up,” he said with a smile, switching back to the modified Hundred speech that could be understood in every trading town he’d ever walked. “You’ll be wanting more of a wrap, if you’ve got one. More snow ahead of you, but the road’s open yet all the way across. What news from the empire?”

  Sour men offer sour smiles, and one refused to smile, still squinting at Eliar.

  “All praise to Beltak, King of Kings and Lord of Lords,” said the eldest, and he also changed to the trade speech. “Sarida’s markets are open to foreign men. Believers such as you will be charged a lower toll. As for ourselves, we hope for good trade in the Hundred, despite the cold weather. How are the markets?”

  “They are open!” he said, wondering what kind of an idiot they took him for. “Silk is always welcome in the Hundred. No silk rivals Sirniakan silk, heh?” His chuckle did not elicit agreement, even though his statement was not flattery but truth.

  “Seen you much traffic on the road?” asked the eldest with a sly glance toward the guards and drovers.

  Eliar looked away.

  Keshad lifted his chin, the Sirniakan way of motioning no. “No one in the last three days. Should we fear bandits on the pass?”

  “The priests make all roads in the empire safe,” said the eldest, as if Kesh had insulted them. “But we hear stories in Sarida, maybe there is trouble in the Hundred, maybe some fighting with outlanders? You know anything of that?”

  “There’s trouble in the north, but not in Olossi, where we come from.”

  “Are there many outlanders in Olossi? Like us?”

  “Not like you.” He wondered now why they wore red caps and not some other color. “We hope for a rich market in Sarida, eh?”

  Another glanced at Eliar. “If you worship at the temple.”

  “I will worship at the temple.”

  They nodded, made their parting gestures, and took their leave.

  Keshad got the men moving. Eliar waited perhaps four breaths before he began poking.

  “What was that all about? What temple? Why do you think they were asking about outlanders in Olossi? Do you think we should return to Olossi to warn the captain?”

  “Now, there’s a fruitful idea. Naturally we can easily outpace trained soldiers racing at night out of the empire armed with numerous weapons and a string of remounts. Who may perhaps be on their way into the Hundred to assassinate Captain Anji. So when they catch us hounding their trail, they won’t just kill us outright, do you think? I don’t either.”

  “Why do you dislike me? What have I ever done to you?”

  “Nothing.” And then, because he couldn’t speak the truth, he ate his anger and went on in a tight voice. “I apologize for my bad temper. This expedition means everything to me.”

  Everything.

  Eliar’s gaze drifted to sharp peaks so majestic that one might believe gods dwelt there, if one believed in gods. What Eliar saw in the crags and white-cloaked spires, Kesh could not guess, but when the young Silver frowned and looked back, his shoulders were taut and his expression scarred with something akin to grudging respect and a kind of weary pain. “Aui! How Miravia would love this! It’s noble of you to risk everything to aid your sister.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Flakes of snow spun past, and the rest of the company plodded steadily behind as they pushed down into the empire, where fortunes might be lost or won.

  A fortune he would win, to use for unselfish reasons, not selfish ones. Unlike Eliar, he would risk everything to save a sister. His own. And now Eliar’s. He would save her even if she never thanked him for it, even if that brief look they had shared in the inner court had meant nothing to her. Let others ride into Olossi on the trail of Captain Anji, if that’s what those men were: spies, Red Hounds, assassins. Let others argue for prominence in the city council, guide the temples, or stand in authority over the reeve halls. Kesh had his eyes set on a far more precious prize, the one Eliar had already selfishly traded away.

  Miravia.

  44

  “What’s your name?” Marit asked.

  The spy stared morosely into the campfire, cradling his left forearm on his right. They’d been traveling downriver along Istri Walk for days, and the man had remained silent the entire time.

  “Easy enough to find out his name,” said Hari as he untied the pouch of food they had commandeered from a passing patrol.

  “He need tell me nothing,” replied Marit tartly. “What do we have to eat? I’m hungry.”

  “We’re better served to drink at the altars. That’s what keeps us strong, and young.”

  “A fountain offering youth? Think you so?”

  “It’s what they tell me. It might be true. Or it might be a ruse to keep me returning to the altars, where they can spy out my movements.”

  “Good man,” said Marit to the spy, who had maintained an intense interest in the fire. “You’re listening, and pretending not to. If you’re truly a spy for Toskala, then I hope you go to Clan Hall and report all you’ve seen and heard to the Commander.”

  “I’m no spy,” he muttered to the fire. “I was walking to visit my sister in High Haldia, after hearing there was troubles in the north and worrying about her and her young ones.”

  If death, the release of the spirit, tasted sweet on the air, then a lie burned, like too much red-cap scalding the tongue. Anger was sour, and hope bitter, and what joy or happiness tasted of she did not know since she’d met with little enough in the last months.

  “Don’t lie, ver,” she said, not unkindly, “because you can’t lie to me. Here. Can you eat?”

  He could not grip the rice ball, so she broke it off in portions and fed him, and his gratitude and suspicion spiced the air as Hari paced at the edge of the fire’s light. She walked into the darkness to him.

  “Why do you run at Lord Radas’s beck and call?”

  “Because they’re the only ones who can free me.”

  “Release you, you mean? How would they manage it, if it takes five to destroy me?”

  His shadow was made substantial by the twilight glamour of his cloak. “I don’t know. I only know it can be done, for there was a frightened woman wearing the green cloak when I first woke, and now that cloak wears a man. Not a bad sort, precisely, not vicious or cruel like the others, but there is something about him that creeps me.”

  The spy had looked up, maybe trying to listen.

  “Careful,” called Marit, “or I’ll guess your secrets.”

  The spy looked away.

  “When he falls into the hands of our masters, he’ll betray you, and then they’ll know your true intentions,” said Hari in a low voice. “If this campaign against them is what you truly intend.”

  “He can’t possibly hear us from over there. Anyway, I want no part of an army that strings folk up by their wrists, leaves them to rot and die, and calls it a cleansing. One that burns villa
ges, abuses women, and locks down High Haldia like a jail. Fear is their master, not Lord Radas.”

  “Lord Radas’s pleasure is fear. That’s why he commands the army.”

  “Who commands Lord Radas?”

  “She is very old, although she doesn’t look it. What she is truly, I do not understand.”

  “But she wears a Guardian’s cloak.” She thought of the night she had watched a woman walk out of the forest and, without touching them, kill two reeves. “A cloak of night, spanned with stars. She—whoever she is—and Lord Radas discovered how to kill Guardians, and then took their cloaks for their own. Find out how to kill a Guardian, Hari, and tell me, and then I promise you, if it’s still your choice, that I will release you if it is in my power. After I have destroyed them.”

  “You’ll never manage it.”

  He walked farther into the night, until she could not see him. Trees sighed in a wind out of the south, running up the river from the distant ocean, carrying the promise of more rain. They had camped on a stretch of beach where a bend in the river had led the current to undermine the far shore and smooth this one. Thorns bristled in plenty to shelter them from patrols, and stands of smoke tree and northern pipe separated them from the Istri Walk, a screen against prying eyes.

  She walked back to the fire.

  Without looking up, the spy said, “Folk are saying the Guardians were murdered. That demons took their place for the power they could wield.”

  “It’s an explanation,” she agreed.

  After a while, he spoke again. “My name’s Miken. Toskala’s council sent me and four others to spy out Wal-show, but I was caught in High Haldia. I don’t know what became of the others. It’s true I have a sister in High Haldia. That’s why I went there.”

  The truth stings.

  She looked away, reaching for the bag of provisions. “You want more rice? Maybe some wine to wash it down?”

  “Why did you save me?”

  He had a cautious gaze, and she found that if she struggled to draw an imagined curtain between her and him, his thoughts did not overwhelm her. He had nice eyes, but his face was thinned with hunger and hollow with the pain he still endured from the aftermath of beatings and then the final hanging, for he’d told his captors everything and they had laughed at his weakness.

  “I was a reeve, once. In my heart, I’m still a reeve.”

  He indicated Hari’s presence beyond the light. “What about the outlander?”

  “Listen, Miken. You can go free now, make your own way. You can travel with us, pretend to be my prisoner or my hireling. We’re headed for the army. I’ll try to get you back into Toskala, but there’s no guarantee I can manage it.”

  “I’ll never know if it’s true or not, what you’re saying.”

  “No, you won’t. But I give my oath as an apprentice to the Lady, where I took my year’s service, that I’m telling you the truth. It’s her honor I hold in my hands when I tell you that if I can bring them down, I will.”

  “You alone? That one seems to me a bit of a coward and an outlander besides, which might account for it.”

  “I can’t stand aside and do nothing.”

  He was seated on a log, hands laid loose in his lap and arms slack, everything still too sore and abused to work properly. But he was stronger than he’d been when they’d cut him down.

  “I know the back routes. I’ll make my own way to Toskala.”

  “We’ll leave you provisions then, if you can carry them.”

  He closed and opened his right hand, face scrunched up in pain, but he managed the movement, and then closed and opened his left hand to show it could be done.

  “Tie the bag to my back, and help me shove this log into the river. They can’t see me at night, and we’re past the cataracts. It’s smooth water more or less downstream.”

  “A reasonable plan, if you can hang on.”

  “I’ve hung on this long. I endured worse.” He rose. “No point waiting. The council needs my report.”

  She rigged the provision bag around his torso, then dragged the log into the river. “You’re sure?”

  He flexed his shoulders, tested his range of motion. “My thanks to you for rescuing me. What’s your name?”

  The streaming current rushed, louder than the wind.

  She smiled sadly. “Ramit.”

  He hooked himself into the fork where a branch had grown out from the bole. “My thanks, Ramit. May the gods honor you.”

  His words brought tears. “May you find a safe haven, Miken.”

  She shoved the log onto the river and watched until she could no longer see it on the dark waters. Then she walked back and sat by the fire, contemplating the lick and simmer of flames and the occasional spat spark. Was there a pattern to its burning, a truth in the way flames ran merry along a charring log or glowed in a blue-white shimmer where coals burned dense and hot?

  If Guardians can be made, then they can be unmade.

  If Lord Radas and his ally can kill, then so could she.

  A branch snapped. She grabbed her sword.

  Hari strolled into the light. “So you didn’t trust him either. Wise of you, my sweet.”

  “When did I become your sweet?” She sheathed the sword.

  He braced a foot on another drift log and stared at the sky, but it was overcast and thus starless. Ripples of firelight seemed to work through the fabric of his twilight cloak. Her own had a stubborn bone-white gleam, as pure as death.

  “Two times I took off my cloak,” she said, “and I couldn’t breathe, and then it wrapped around me, and took me back, like it refused to let me die. So you can’t just remove a cloak and kill them that way. You’d have to bind the cloak as well.”

  “You can’t kill what is already dead. Anyway, if a living person touches the clasp which binds a cloak, their skin burns and blisters just as if they were touching fire.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Yordenas does it, if a person angers him. Makes them hold the clasp until the skin burns off their hands.”

  Marit shuddered. “Where is he now?”

  “He was sent south to take charge of Argent Hall, and I was sent south with the army.”

  “Then you both failed.”

  “And I’m pleased to hear it!” His grin made her laugh. “I did my best to do as little as possible with my command. I marched as a mercenary with the Qin for a while, and I saw how disciplined their troops were, and how certain men could not bear the discipline. I was given the dregs, the criminals and the insane, I swear to you, and I let them give in to the worst that drove them. That’s why they were so easy to defeat at Olossi.”

  “Whose side are you really on? Had you ridden them harder, you’d have led them to victory.”

  He bent to grab a stick, and poked into the fire until, with an oath, he flung the now-burning stick into the river. “Let’s ride. No use lingering here.”

  She raised her arms, stretching. He watched her in silence, but she did not need the sense granted by her Guardian’s cloak to recognize a stirring of arousal in his body.

  “Harishil, eh? Hari being your short name. You’re not Water-born?”

  “I don’t know what that means. Although my brothers complained that I was always too full of hot air.”

  She smiled, not wanting to think of Fire-born Joss. “Air, then. Which suits me. I can think of a reason to linger here, where it’s quiet and isolated.”

  He sucked in a breath, moving neither toward nor away.

  “I don’t like being alone, Hari. And whatever else you may be, you’re an attractive man. Despite everything”—she leavened the phrase with a cocky grin—“I like you.”

  Her dear friend Kedi had often said, “There’s a reason it fits firmly in the hand, convenient for women to lead us around, for it’s true that’s what leads and we must follow.”

  Hari spoke a phrase in a language she had never heard before. He ran a hand over his hair to his nape. She rose, because s
urely he was not budging, and tested him by stroking up from his nape. He kept his coarse black hair clipped so short it was like bristles. A reeve’s cut.

  “That tickles!” she said, laughing.

  His breath grew harsh, but not from fear.

  The first time she’d bedded Joss, she’d played coy, to encourage his reckless streak, but Hari was a different man, so guarded it seemed likely he’d lost the habit of trust. Forget subtlety.

  One kiss was all it took. And if he was a little desperate, in the manner of a drowning man, she didn’t mind: She too was a little desperate, having swum in cold and lonely waters for far too long.

  MARIT AND HARI rode at a leisurely pace south toward Toskala on the Istri Walk, in no hurry to reach the army although Marit knew they ought to move quickly.

  “Eagles!” Hari squinted at specks in the sky.

  “You seem pleased to see them.”

  “I wonder if they see us.” He grinned. “And what they make of us if they do.”

  Nothing like sex to cheer up a man, reflected Marit. The edge was still there, but he chattered a lot more about nothing of importance. Good thing she liked his voice.

  A wagon with a broken axle had been dragged to one side, its bed stripped bare. Vultures flapped heavenward from a pair of decomposed corpses sprawled at the edge of woods an arrow’s shot off the road. If Hari had seen the bodies, he made no comment, but for a while they rode in silence. The road was wide and smooth, the powerful River Istri a noisy neighbor to their right. Normally in the rich heartland of Haldia a traveler would expect to meet steady traffic, but they encountered no one except for soldiers wearing the eight-pointed star who manned the occasional barricade.

  Yet the land was green, and the sky today as much blue as cloud. It was a fine morning for a ride through handsome countryside. What were the eagles doing? What hall did they come from?

  “I have to admit,” said Hari with a laugh, “I wasn’t sure I could manage it. It’s a relief to know I still can.”