Was Lord Radas himself conducting interrogations?
“Heya!” The familiar voice jolted him. “What are you lot doing with my slave, eh?” Zubaidit strolled up in her tight sleeveless vest, her kilt swinging with each twitch of her shapely hips.
“So you’re the whore,” said the sergeant with a laugh.
“I’ll thank you not to use that insulting word, Sergeant. I’m an honest merchant.”
“Taking coin for sex is not honest work,” said Milas with a sneer.
She looked him up and down until he blushed. “Like you never paid? Just how long have you been marching with the army, ver? Or do you sharpen your tool yourself?” His comrades laughed. “You lot scorn the Devouring temples, so I figure that gives us something in common.” A medallion in the shape of an eight-pointed star hung by a leather thong around her neck, just like the ones worn by all the soldiers. “Can I have my slave back? I’ll make it worth your while.”
The sergeant placed himself between her and Shai. “Listen, verea. You look like a tasty morsel, that’s for sure. You’ve got the look of a hierodule.”
“I was a hierodule, truly, until I left, because the old bitch of a hieros kicked me out.” She was a bold woman who knew how to attract the eye, but Shai recognized the strength in her shoulders and the taut muscular grace of her legs, signs the soldiers ignored in favor of the sexual charms she flaunted to put them off their guard.
The sergeant grinned in reply. “Well, lass, I don’t like to be the one bearing bad news, but all you camp followers have been told to get out. Any one of you found within sight of the city by day’s end will be cleansed.” With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the poles lining the road, an avenue of death.
Zubaidit did not even look at the suffering. “Whew! That’s cold comfort for those who served the army all this way. You lot figuring to settle in here? Else who will help you on your further campaigns?”
“Not my problem. It may be those bed warmers who have pleased the officers get dispensation to stay with the army, but I wouldn’t take my chances even on that. We saw a soldier’s favorite lass with a baby born of his getting, cut down by Captain Dessheyi just for being in his way. Why don’t you get on, then? No cause to get yourself in trouble, eh?”
She regarded him with a quizzical look, a moment of sympathy, perhaps, or something more complicated. Then the expression vanished, and the mocking smile reappeared. “I’ll just take my slave and get out of here.”
“Neh, can’t let you do that. How’d you afford a brawny lad like this, anyway?”
“He was cheap. He’s dumb as an ox. That’s what I call him, anyway. Ox.”
Shai took the hint. “Mistress, I waited for you. Then they made me go. They’re taking me to see some fancy cloth. I tried to wait, Mistress. Please don’t whip me.”
The soldiers snickered.
Bai’s smile was its own whip. “Are you sure it’s worth wasting the time of your interrogator, Sergeant? You see what I mean.”
“There’s a reward if we bring in outlanders.”
“Eiya! I thought no one cared for outlanders here. I’ve been trying to hire him out for the novelty of it, but he’s too cursed stupid to know what to do with women, or with men, for that matter. I think he can only tup sheep.”
That got them roaring. Shai was just grateful there were no sheep around, lest they amuse themselves by suggesting he perform.
“Heya!” The captain in charge of the line beckoned. “Sergeant! Come.”
“You can’t just steal him from me like that,” objected Bai.
“Go back to your village and get yourself a respectable shop or a respectable husband,” said the sergeant in a manner meant to be kindly. “You don’t want to find yourself like that lass and her infant babe who are dead.”
Bai did not protest as they led him away. She could not. Anyway, they both knew he had to take a chance at the cloak.
At the gate house, coin changed hands, and the sergeant and his cadre took off, happy to be rid of him. He was shoved down a corridor and fetched up in a spacious courtyard between high walls where a horse grazed on a patch of grass. Cloth had been strung along rope to conceal one half of the courtyard. The sun’s light revealed three figures against the cloth: one kneeling abjectly and one waiting with a soldier’s alert posture over to the side, half turned away. The third man stood with a slumped tilt to broad shoulders Shai thought he recognized.
“Please, I beg you.” By the motion of clasped hands, Shai guessed it was the kneeling figure who spoke. It was painful to hear a man reduced to such wretched sobs. “You’ve seen into my very heart, you know all my secrets. It wasn’t my choice to hide those barrels of wine, nor the ale. It was my sister. It was her idea!”
The third man slapped a hand to its head in an exaggerated gesture Shai had seen before. “Of all things, I detest folk who betray their own to protect themselves. Sniveling, selfish bastard.”
The sound of that voice knifed into Shai’s heart.
“I might have seen fit to show mercy to a merchant who, not unreasonably, sought to salvage some of his goods rather than see them looted. But to blame your own sister, when you and I know perfectly well that you told her to do it—sheh!”
The Hundred word—for shame!—fell easily from those lips, and Shai shuddered as, his strength failing him, he dropped to his knees.
“Captain Arras, take this one away for cleansing. Quickly. He stinks.”
“Can’t we just execute him, my lord?”
“I have to throw them a few bones, you know that. He disgusts me. Just take him.”
The condemned man shrieked and struggled as soldiers entered from the other side and dragged him out past Shai. Past the briefly opened curtain, Shai saw a trim man of military bearing, the same watchful captain from the line. The captain lifted hands to shield his face, turning to face the third figure, still concealed as the cloth slithered down to seal away the area.
“They’ve brought the outlander, as you commanded, my lord.”
“Ah.”
A brown hand pulled aside the cloth. A man emerged from behind the curtain, dressed in the local fashion and wearing a cloak for the rains. Shai had been little more than a boy when, six years ago, his favorite brother had been marched in chains out of Kartu Town, a prisoner of the Qin conquerors.
Hari was dead. Yet here he stood, looking at Shai with a well-known and much-loved sardonic smile on his blessedly familiar face.
“Hello, little brother,” Hari’s ghost said, smile lingering. “You’ve grown up.”
• • •
NEKKAR WAS SLUMBERING fitfully when Vassa woke him, her worried expression illuminated by the lamp she carried.
“She’s here.”
A deep bruise in his right hip made it difficult to stand, even leaning on a crutch, the effect made worse because his swollen left ankle throbbed if he rested any weight on it. But he limped out to the porch to find one of the night guards standing nervously behind the assassin. She was younger than he had imagined.
“Zubaidit.”
“Holy One.” She assisted him with strong arms to settle onto a pillow.
Vassa sat down on his other side, smiling in a way he knew meant she was reserving judgment. She set down the lamp on the planks. “Kellas, bring what remains of the warmed khaif.”
The lad, hovering since Nekkar had fainted the night before, ran off.
“A humble cottage for an ostiary,” remarked the assassin pleasantly as they waited. “Another person of your rank might insist on more ostentation.”
Vassa snorted, but she unbent slightly.
“I serve Ilu. Not wealth and the fickle opinion of those who care about such displays.”
She chuckled in a way he found endearing. “An honest acolyte! Not as common a treasure in these days as we might hope.”
“That’s as may be, verea. We could chatter on in this vein for half the night and would be considered polite for doing so. I beg your pa
rdon. You said you had an associate. A gods-touched outlander. Where he is?”
“Taken prisoner.” Her words were clipped.
“How did it happen?” asked Vassa sharply.
“I blame myself. I should have sent him away when I had the chance, because he lacks training, but he is gods-touched and therefore I thought I could use him to fulfill my mission. While I was here exploring Toskala, the army decided to send away the camp followers. He was caught in the sweep.”
“Saving me, you lost him.”
She shrugged with an angry lift of her chin. “We can’t know it would have fallen out differently had I not saved you, Holy One.”
Kellas appeared out of the darkness with a tray. Vassa served the spy with her own hands, a courtesy Nekkar observed with interest. Something in the woman’s confession had earned Vassa’s sympathy, and he trusted his lover’s instincts for people more than his own.
He took his cup, sipped at the pungent sludge that had come from the bottom of the pot, and set it down with a grimace. “We have seen many troubling and terrible things in recent days.”
She drained her own cup without answering.
“Bring nai porridge as well, whatever’s left in the pot,” said Vassa to the lad, “and make sure Odra keeps the rest of the apprentices down on their pallets.”
“Yes, Auntie.” Kellas trotted off. The night guard remained out of sight in the darkness.
“What will you do?” Nekkar asked.
“Go on with the mission. I waited as long as I could by the city gate after they took him inside, but I never saw him brought out and hanged. So maybe he is dead by other means. Or maybe he has succeeded beyond my expectations. I may never know. Such is war.”
“What do you want of us?” Vassa asked, and in her tone Nekkar heard a tincture of weariness: It got so tiring to have to be suspicious of everyone. Sometimes you had to trust as an act of hope.
“Is there any possible way you can get me up to the reeves on the rock and back down again without being caught?”
“Up to Law Rock and Justice Square?” The words startled him. “No. The thousand steps are blocked by a rockfall. If you don’t have wings, there’s no other route beyond the provisions baskets, and I’m sure they’re winched safely up top. The army must have a blockade at the base of both routes—basket and steps—to guard against folk down here sending weapons or food up in aid of the reeves.”
Vassa folded her arms over her chest. “What message have you for the reeves? Or for us, for that matter? We’re forced to abide by curfews. We’re promised the markets will be allowed to open under strict supervision if we obey. Yet this morning word came by street crier that every house, clan, and guild compound will be required to give up coin and store house goods to the army, and a hostage as well, one from each household, clan, guild, and even the temples.”
“Just as the Guardian commanded,” murmured Nekkar.
Zubaidit whistled. “That’s a heavy tax.”
“Theft can be weathered, if one is willing to tighten one’s belt through the lean months to come.” Vassa broke off as Kellas hurried up with a covered bowl, set it down in front of the assassin, and retreated. Zubaidit set a hand on the cover and, trembling, drew it back.
“Go on,” said Vassa, voice gentling. As a cook, she could not bear to see people suffer from hunger.
“My thanks, verea.” She dug in with a will, devouring half the porridge before she forced herself to stop and let it settle. “My apologies.”
“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” demanded Vassa.
“It doesn’t matter. Listen, Holy One. Verea.” She gestured with the spoon in the direction of the gates. The wick whispered as it consumed the reservoir of oil. “The army intends to march downriver and attack Nessumara. They’ll leave a garrison to defend their interests in the city.”
“We could fight them if there are only a few!” cried Kellas from the end of the porch.
“Apprentice, it will be bed for you if you can’t keep silence,” said Nekkar, although it was difficult not to chuckle at the lad’s enthusiasm. Her words likewise set his own heart hammering. He turned to the assassin. “Could we fight?”
“It is a risk to leave Toskala with only a garrison to control it. That must be why they are taking hostages to march south with the main army. Such hostages can be cleansed if anyone in Toskala rebels.”
“The hells!” murmured Vassa.
The pain in his body swelled tenfold, as if he were thrown once again into the courtyard of the Thirsty Saw to face the Guardian’s penetrating gaze. “Of course no one will dare attack the garrison if they fear for the lives of their kinsfolk. Aui!”
“I need to let my allies know of this, as well as other observations I’ve made. Can you get me up the rock?” She looked at Vassa. “For I think you know something, verea, that you’re not saying.”
“Vassa?” he said, indignantly. “Do you know something you’ve not shared with me?”
She patted him on the knee. “You are not my husband, to be privy to my clan’s secrets. Nor are you local, Nekkar. You’ve only lived in Toskala thirty years. I was born here.” She leaned forward to regard the assassin with a stare from which the other woman did not flinch. “To help you puts us in deadly danger. We must live here while you will leave.”
“A fair concern, verea,” replied the spy, “so I’ll offer you a trade. Help me get a message to the reeves. When it comes time for your clan, or this temple, to hand over a hostage to the army, I’ll go in place of one of your own. If I can’t reach Lord Radas here, I have to go with the army. This is my chance. What do you say, verea?”
“Eat the rest of that porridge before it congeals,” said Vassa, in that way she took with the apprentices, to whom she was devoted although she lived in the compound next door and spent most of her day cooking for her clan of mat makers.
Zubaidit ate slowly with an effort that made it clear she was starving.
“They’ll notice her southern way of talking at once,” said Nekkar, not sure whether to laugh at the thought of sticking one in the eye of the army, or weep at the chance of disaster that might engulf them were they to be caught.
“I served Hasibal for my apprentice year with a troupe of festival entertainers,” Vassa said with a sweep of uplifted chin that captured their attention. Nekkar smiled to see her brightness come alive after so many days smothered in anguish. “We’d have to stage it, like actors do over in Bell Quarter. My clan could let her pose as the southern bride of my nephew, gotten in a trade deal. We’d hold her back when the army comes round, make it seem like he and all of us are besotted. Get them to choose you as if against our will. It would be tricky. Not least due to his charms. He’s a handsome lad.”
“I’ll take that risk, if I must.” Zubaidit grinned in a way that made Nekkar laugh softly.
“A hierodule, indeed,” he murmured.
“I serve the Merciless One,” she agreed. “And the reeves?”
“I’ll talk to my people,” said Vassa. “And they’ll talk to other people. It’s dangerous, with this curfew, but there is one hidden path. Can you be patient, verea?”
“I can be as patient as I must be.”
6
STUCK ALL DAY up on Law Rock because Tumna was out on her hunting day, Nallo had had enough.
“Sit your stinking ass down and keep your mouth closed, ver.” The snap in her voice made the cursed merchant take a startled step backward, out of her face. “I’m tired of hearing you complain, and so is everyone else, neh? You’ll have your turn to get your rations and make your complaints when it comes to you.”
“I’m a respected guildsman! You’ve no right to talk to me in that way, some village girl thinking she’s as good as me just because—”
“Just because I have an eagle that can rip your head off? End of the line, ver.”
Nallo signaled to the firefighters who made up what passed for a militia atop the rock. Using their fire hooks as pro
ds, the young men chivvied the furious merchant out of his place and to the back as he protested in an obnoxious voice while onlookers smirked. He’d made no friends with his demands for special treatment.
She surveyed the folk waiting in line for their daily rations. “We mean to hold Law Rock. So you’ve got to bide your time, do your part, accept your rations, keep calm. Those of you who can train to fight, will train. Those who are hoping for a lift off the rock will have to wait your turn.”
At the head of the line, on the long porch fronting the militia barracks where many of the stranded people slept, a shaven-headed clerk sworn to Sapanasu the Lantern made a mark in her accounts book as the fire captain ladled out a ration of rice porridge to a woman with two children hanging on to her taloos. The clerk called for the next person in line, and bent forward to hear his name.
We’re Toskala’s last defenders, Nallo thought, and a sad herd of bleating goats we’re proving to be.
The cadre sergeant beckoned. “Heya, Nallo! You’re called to a reeve’s meeting.”
“Hold the line,” she said to him. “Anyone who bawls out of turn gets sent to the back like that one. Better we had a sack of mildewed nai than him. At least we could dump the rotten nai on anyone trying to clear the steps.”
“Heh, that’s a good one.” The firefighters liked her irritable temper and sharp tongue, although few others she’d known in her twenty years had appreciated it. “Wish I’d seen your eagle rip the head off those men who killed the two eagles on Traitors’ Night.”
But Nallo remembered how her friend Volias had dropped dead beside her in the instant his own eagle had expired. That her own eagle, Tumna, had slaughtered the murderers didn’t make her feel better. “I’d have ripped off the heads of those gods-rotted, hells-bound traitors if I’d gotten to them first.”
“Aui! I’ll bet you would have!”
She trotted over to the gate that led into the reeve compound, where she found Pil waiting. She paced beside him into Clan Hall, an impressive complex with its skeletal watchtowers where eagles could perch, the two vast lofts for shelter, a long, narrow parade ground for training, and a sheltered garden tucked away behind it all near the edge of the cliff where the commander of Clan Hall had her office and chamber. The commander was dead, of course, murdered with so many others on the night they were all now calling “Traitors’ Night.” Odash, the old reeve who had acted for years as hall steward because he was too crippled to fly, had taken the cote’s porch for his headquarters as he tried to keep Clan Hall functioning.