A becoming flush crept up her cheeks, and she shifted to less volatile ground. “You’re very comfortable with Atani.”
“He’s a lovely boy.” He caught Anji watching him. Aui! That narrowed gaze made him cursed uncomfortable.
The captain pointedly looked at Tuvi and raised his chin. Tuvi nodded and clattered away down the porch.
“He sleeps a lot,” said Mai, her expression sweetly tender as she examined the precious face. She seemed content to watch Joss hold the baby, and he had to admit it was a pleasant sensation, child and woman both.
“You’ve brought Tohon, as I hoped,” said Anji. “Will you join me to hear his report?”
The words dragged him back to earth. “Of course.”
“Mai, Tuvi’s gone to bring horses. You and Atani and Priya and Sheyshi can go immediately to the compound. I’ll come later.”
Tohon pulled on an ear, twisting the tip between thumb and forefinger. Priya retrieved the sleeping infant from Joss.
“Will we see you soon, Commander?” Mai asked as she paused beside Sheyshi on the steps.
“I’ll be returning to Toskala as soon as I can.”
“Even reeves must eat.”
“As my eagle does today, while I am trapped on earth.”
She looked at Anji. “Bring Joss with you. It would be a fitting gesture to feast our return to a favored house. Guests bring honor to a feast.”
“And the day is Wakened Ox,” Joss said with a laugh. “An auspicious day for two born in the Year of the Ox to meet again, neh?”
Her smile was glorious. She glanced skyward. “It’s a little late, but there will still be decent pickings at the market.”
“A generous offer,” said Anji in an odd tone.
She glanced at him, looking surprised, and then at Joss. “I hope we will see you later today.”
Priya touched her arm and they went down, followed by Sheyshi.
Joss had to force himself to address the captain rather than Mai’s lovely backside. “Don’t you worry about the red hounds striking again? Mai returning to Olossi? Going out in the market again?”
“Of course I do.” Anji watched her intently as she reached Tuvi, bound the baby tightly in a sling against her back, and mounted, clearly comfortable in the saddle. “But I have put substantial measures in place on the roads and at the gates into Olossi, and additional patrols. There’s also now a separate camp outside the walls to house foreign caravan guards and merchants, who for the time being aren’t allowed to enter the city. If we control the traffic, then we have some control over what elements move in and out of our lands. The alternative is to let fear shackle us. If you’re afraid, don’t do it. If you do it, don’t be afraid.” He drew aside cloth, indicating they should enter. “Tohon? Joss?”
Joss felt the ghost of the baby’s weight on his arm. He shut his eyes, but the vision of Mai’s passionate embrace of her husband burned there, an intrusion he was very very glad no one had noticed him seeing. Like the child, the moment did not belong to him.
“Out on the Lend I saw the most magnificent horses,” Tohon was saying. “Perfect for breeding stock, if we can get some. We need to talk to Atiratu’s mendicants.”
Shaking himself free of the mire of cursed useless thoughts, Joss followed them in. When they reached the visual privacy of the innermost chamber and its fluttering walls, Tohon delivered a brutally concise description of the desperate situation in Toskala and Nessumara and the regions along the River Istri.
Anji listened with a stillness Joss admired, and nodded when Tohon finished. “If they consolidate power in Haldia and Istria and impress unwilling soldiers into their army, then what chance have we when—and it will be when, not if—they turn their gaze again toward Olo’osson?”
“They won’t make the mistake a second time of thinking Olossi an easy target,” said Joss.
“No, they won’t.” Anji walked to his low writing desk and looked down on the paper unrolled there, with lines and hatch marks sketching a map of the Hundred, although it had more blank than detail. Tohon examined it from the opposite side of the desk, arms crossed. “People want to live at peace, undisturbed. They want to raise healthy children to adulthood, eat every day, do their work, attend their festivals. If their gods grant them fortune, they hope to live to see grandchildren and a measure of prosperity. Why should Hundred folk be any different?”
“I don’t believe they are,” said Joss.
“People in the north surely hate and fear Lord Radas’s army. Yet I have seen folk hate and fear the Qin, although you must not imagine the Qin behave in any way like these ones who call themselves the Star of Life. Still, if order is imposed through fear or privation, folk will in the end settle into that order, not wanting to risk more disruption, more fear, more dying.”
“What are you saying, Captain?”
Anji grabbed his riding whip off the desk and tapped the map, then traced a line from Olossi to Toskala. “Before such deadly order is imposed and folk become accustomed to its relative peace, we must act. We have to hit them before they become too powerful.”
“I agree. But we’re badly outnumbered, and they have years of fighting experience and wagonloads of weapons to use against us. This will be a far harder fight even than the battle we waged here in Olossi.”
Anji drew his whip through his fingers, his gaze so sharp Joss was startled. “Surely the new commander of the reeve halls will begin by commanding the halls to act in concert against this threat.”
Joss raised a hand, as if fending off a challenge. Anji’s intensity disconcerted him; it was almost as though Anji was angry at him for something else. “I’ve already begun to do so. But every hall is autonomous. Clan Hall holds a supervisory position only. So for the other halls to undertake to institute any changes I propose—”
“There’s a saying among the Qin. One arrow is easily snapped in half, but bundle many arrows together and they cannot easily be broken.”
“I understand that, truly I do.” He was momentarily irritated, but an outlander like Anji could not be expected to comprehend the ways of the Hundred, so Joss smiled an easy smile and tried out a more charming, soothing voice. “I’m just telling you that the reeve halls may take some while to come around. People don’t like change, especially not when they are settled in their old ways of doing things, and we in the Hundred do love our traditions. We have to be patient and work at them.”
Abruptly, the captain relaxed. “Just as some people will flirt the same as they will breathe, having become accustomed to handling people in that manner.”
Joss grinned. “I beg your pardon.”
It was difficult to tell if Anji was jesting, or if he was serious. “It’s your job to persuade them, something at which it is obvious you have plenty of practice. The question is not whether they will change, because they will have to. The question is, will they agree to do so before it is too late?”
14
HOME. HOME. HOME.
Everything was as Mai had left it months ago, dusted and tidied, and alive with voices as hirelings sang and chattered in the gardens and rooms of her utterly wonderful compound in the fabulous city of Olossi. She smiled as she walked into the chamber at the heart of the complex, where she and her husband slept. Priya opened up a tiny cot, and Mai lowered the sleeping infant into its confines. Atani slept and suckled and eliminated, a placid baby, easy to care for despite his too-early birth.
“I want to see the counting rooms!” said Mai. “And the crane room. And the rat screens—my favorite! And the gardens. So lovely! All that green!”
“You are glad to return, Mistress,” said Priya with a gentle smile.
Mai laughed, feeling giddy. “After all those months in the Barrens, I should think so. I thought I would be forced to live there forever. Then we had to bide a month trapped in the valley after the baby was born. A beautiful place, to be sure. A perfect setting for a tale, where the handsome bandit hides his treasure, but still—”
Priya’s furrowed brow caught Mai short.
“What is it, Priya?” She knelt beside the baby, but his little face remained peaceful and his eyes closed.
“The valley was a merciful place, and well guarded. A safe haven from the red hounds. But creatures live there we do not understand. Like demons, such creatures have their own desires and demands, different from our own. We are fortunate they did not trouble us more than they did.”
Mai brushed the baby’s black hair. Fearing for herself was one thing, but when she looked at her vulnerable son, a new and horrible realm of terror opened an abyss before her. If anything happened to him, she would—as her long-lost and much-missed sister Ti would have said—die die die. “Do you think it was a bad omen when they wrapped themselves around the baby? They were so bright. It’s hard to imagine them as malevolent.”
“Beautiful things can cause harm as well as dull ones. Yet we had no choice but to take refuge in the valley. The Merciful One watches over the faithful. What you cannot change, let go.”
“And what you can change, grasp with both hands, neh?” With a tenuous smile, Mai rose. “Sheyshi?”
Mai had brought three slaves with her across the desert and over the mountains. Her father had sent the big man, O’eki, to watch over her physically. Priya Mai had herself chosen off the auction block in Kartu Town many years ago; over time, she had come to rely on Priya’s wisdom and affection more than that of her own mother and aunt.
Sheyshi was a different matter. A Qin general named Commander Beje had warned Anji that Anji’s own uncle, who was his mother’s brother and also the var—ruler—of the nomadic Qin, had agreed to deliver Anji into the hands of Anji’s half brother. That half brother was the newly anointed emperor seated on the Sirniakan throne, and he intended to kill all of his living brothers and half brothers so they could not contest his right to rule. To live, Anji had to die by riding into exile, taking his retainers with him. Yet he wasn’t the only one whose life had been saved by their long journey into the Hundred. Sheyshi had served khaif at the meeting between Anji and Beje. Because she had therefore overheard a conversation which could incriminate Beje in the eyes of his var, she was, being a mere slave, expendable. Mai had taken her to save her.
It seemed Sheyshi could scarcely bear to stand more than a stone’s throw away from Mai, or Anji, at all anymore, as if she feared what would happen to her if she lost sight of them.
She had been kneeling just outside the door, and at Mai’s call she padded in, head bowed. “I am here, Mistress.”
“Sit with the baby, Sheyshi.”
“Yes, Mistress.” She sank down beside the cot, staring after Mai in a possessive way that made Mai uncomfortable.
Away from the chamber, Mai said to Priya, “Do you think we should marry off Sheyshi? Maybe she would like that.”
“To a Qin husband? Have any of them expressed any interest in her?”
“Now that I think of it, they have not. Isn’t that odd?”
“Maybe not, if they believe she serves you.”
They wandered through the compound to reacquaint themselves with its chambers: here, the crane room, with its painted screens showing cranes through the seasons; there, the rat room, decorated with screens depicting rats in jackets or taloos flying kites and playing hooks-and-ropes. The outer garden was lush with flowers and late-ripening fruit. The large inner garden with its pools and gazebo lay cool and green in these last days of the rainy season. In the back court, women who were washing laundry greeted her cheerfully as she addressed each one by name. The smell of nai porridge and steaming fish rose from the kitchens.
“Priya, will you come with me to the market?”
“Best you not go today, Mistress.”
“You are still worried about the red hounds?”
“Chief Tuvi will want a few days to establish a watch, assign guardsmen, send your escorts into the market to look it over before you go down. Then they’ll know if there are any unexpected changes precipitated by your arrival.”
“You’ve thought this through!”
“I have consulted with the chief and O’eki, it is true.” Priya’s gaze was always full with the affection woven between them, but she was also clear-sighted and willing to speak her mind. “Don’t push too fast now you have been allowed to return, Mistress. It cannot have been easy for the captain to place you at risk, knowing he can protect you better—or so a soldier might think—by confining you in a cage as the Sirniakans do to their women. Let those who seek to protect you and the baby feel they have some control.”
“But the red hounds could strike again.”
“Perhaps they will. Do you wish to return to the merciful valley? There, at least, only those ferried in by reeves can enter.”
“No. I don’t want to live there. I would rather take the risk. Anji will do everything he can, and I am sure that the Hieros has her own agents seeking word of spies from the empire. I’ll send someone from the kitchen staff to the markets, and bide here patiently. For now.”
Priya kissed her on the cheek. “You are naturally a little tired as well. Also, it may be you will wish to feel refreshed when the captain returns.”
Mai flushed, thinking of those few private moments she and Anji had stolen behind the curtains in the militia camp. Anji had been seasick crossing the Olo’o Sea; water did not agree with him. They had not yet celebrated their reunion as she yearned to do. “I’ll bathe.”
Priya smiled and let her go. Mai spoke to the kitchen women while Priya arranged for a tub to be filled in the small courtyard at the heart of the compound, off the private rooms. Mai, after checking on Atani, who was still asleep, joined her. Hot water steamed out of the tub, set on flagstones beneath the roof of a little pavilion. The splintered doors had been repaired; there was no sign any demon attack had occurred.
“I sat with Miravia just there,” Mai said. “I wonder if I’ll ever be allowed to see her again. Her family is so very angry. We insulted their honor.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Mistress. No one could have known the demon would attack and kill those soldiers on any day, much less the day when Miravia visited you.”
“No one could have known,” Mai repeated, as if saying the words again would make the memories of that day less painful. But they did not. She might well lose the dear friend she had made, a young woman of the same age and with the special connection that sometimes sparks between two people, as if they had known and touched each before birth in the mists beyond the Spirit Gate where souls reside. “She lives in a cage.”
“The Ri Amarah have been good friends to us, Mistress.”
“I know they have. It just seems—” It was better simply to strip off her taloos and sit in the warm water and scrub, and let Priya wash her hair. Later, she would take a cadre of women and go to the real baths. Ah!
Then the baby had to be nursed, and afterward she busied herself in the kitchens with the other women. But at dusk came a message that Anji would not be coming home. He had gone away with Tohon on urgent business to do with horses. He might be gone several days; hard to say. Reeve Joss was gone with him, having sent his regrets at not being able to attend the feast. No guests after all.
She wept, and it seemed she was more tired than she had realized, because when she lay down to nurse the baby, she fell into a heavy sleep and remembered no dreams.
• • •
ABOUT MIDDAY, CAPTAIN Arras and his three companies, mockingly referred to as Half-the-Asses-They-Should-Have Cohort by the rest of the army, marched past the dismantled remains of a fourth barrier. They followed First Cohort’s six companies, who had been given pride of place in the van of the approach over the eastern causeway. Because the eastern causeway was the shorter passage into the city, First Cohort would be first to enter Nessumara’s famed Council Square and therefore get to fly their banner from the Assizes Tower.
Four cohorts—First, Seventh, Eighth, and Arras’s remnant Sixth—had set out in staggered
ranks just after dawn. They had made excellent time because the causeway was an excellent piece of construction: raised out of the wetlands like a dike, it was wide enough that two wagons might pass. Not that there was any traffic today. Beside the army tromping briskly into the delta and birds fluttering among reeds and shallows, the world seemed utterly empty. The mire glistened to either side. A boat skulked in the reeds; was that a fishing line stretched taut from the prow? The cursed eagles floated overhead, eyes on everything.
A runner loped along the causeway from the front, a youth with hair tied back and a quilted jacket wrapped around his torso. He sighted for the company banners and, reaching them, marked the horsetail epaulets that identified his quarry.
“Captain Arras? Message from Captain Dessheyi.”
“Go on.”
The lad pulled up beside him and began to talk. “First Cohort has crossed the first bridge, Captain. It’s a plank bridge. Single wide, one wagon at a time, easy for counting toll and controlling traffic. Looked to me like you could remove the middle planks and block it. The front ranks are crossing the island beyond it now, toward a second bridge.”
“What is the island like?”
“Storehouses, courtyards, a threshing ground, gardens and orchards. It’s deserted.”
“Interesting. What are my orders?”
“Cross the first bridge. First Cohort will move forward over the second bridge, while Sixth holds position on the island until the cohort behind yours reaches the first bridge. Then you’ll cross the second bridge in support of First Cohort.”
“Each cleared space taken possession of immediately. I see. Anything else?”
“I’m to continue on to give my message to Seventh Cohort, commanded by Captain Daron.”
“Very well. Follow me.”
He signaled Sergeant Giyara to maintain control of his personal staff and, with the runner in tow, dropped back from the front of his unit. He passed the first-strike infantrymen, his heaviest shields. Behind them marched a cadre of guards walling in the hostages, followed by five cadres of proven infantry with new soldiers mixed in among the veterans. Next in line came the wagoners with their six wagons rumbling along without incident, archers pacing them with bows ready. He reached the rearguard, where his toughest men were wiping their brows and eyeing the distance opening between them and Seventh Cohort, its vanguard barely in sight behind them. The youth took a swig from his flask, then sprinted off as Arras followed his swift progress with an approving gaze.