There followed a moment of complete silence, punctuated once by a drifting lilt of some kind of stringed music, cut off as quickly as if a door had closed. The prince studied them. Eliar wiped his brow. Kesh was panting. How could it be he had come so far and risked so much, only to have it all snatched out of his hands?
Aui! Captain Anji had warned him. He’d understood the empire better than anyone, because he had spent his boyhood in the palace. He’d been willing to gamble with the lives of Keshad and Eliar, and the drovers and guardsmen, because it cost him nothing personally to make the attempt should it fail, and offered him benefit if they succeeded.
Fair enough. Kesh had accepted the bargain. No use blaming anyone now that disaster sat in a serviceable chair and stared him in the face, mulling over how best to use him.
To use him, not to kill him.
The prince nodded. “I am not the enemy of my cousin Anjihosh. His mother made plain her intent to remove him from the battles over the throne when she smuggled him out of the palace and sent him west to his uncle, the Qin var, the year Anjihosh gained twelve years of age. But that does not mean my brother and I can pretend he does not live and breathe. He remains the son of an emperor. You may see that this presents a problem for us. Yet we are peaceable men, seeking order, not war. Our father taught us that it is better to be prosperous than to quarrel. Thus, when my brother sired a son, I accepted the place foreordained for me, so that we could work together rather than sunder what would otherwise be strong.”
“You’ve been cut,” said Eliar, going pale about the mouth. “I’ve read such stories, but I didn’t think—”
Cut? What on earth did that mean?
The prince whitened about the mouth but spoke mildly enough that Kesh wondered if he were a man trained never to show overt anger. “We do not use such a crude term.”
“I beg your pardon, Your Excellency,” said Eliar. “I know no other. There is no word in the Hundred that describes . . .” He blushed.
“In the trade talk they might say gelded, but we have a more honorable term in our own language, which is more sophisticated than the crude jabber used in the marketplace.”
Gelded! Kesh had to actually stop his own hand from reaching down to pat his own privates, to reassure himself they were intact. “Captain Anji isn’t the kind of man to accept a knife cut so as to live.”
“We have something else in mind. And you, Keshad of no patronymic and Eliar son of Isar of the Ri Amarah, are the ones who will deliver our offer to our cousin. You will accept the assignment?”
Kesh looked at Eliar. Eliar lifted a shoulder in a half shrug.
“What choice do we have?” Kesh said.
The prince lifted both hands. “You can be brought before the priests and accused and convicted of being spies. It is a choice. An honorable one in its own way, since an honorable man speaks truth at all times.”
“What punishment would we then face?” Kesh asked.
“A merciful one. A swift execution, rather than burning such as heretics and nonbelievers suffer. You, Keshad, in any case. I am not sure how the Ri Amarah would fare as those of his people who lived in these lands were banished from the empire one hundred and eighteen years ago because of their heretical beliefs. He might merit burning.”
“Yours is a cruel law,” said Eliar.
“Hsst!” Keshad kicked him.
“Men are cruel,” observed the prince without heat. “The law binds them in order to mitigate their cruelty. Such is the wisdom of Beltak.” He folded his hands on his lap. He was as sleek and well groomed as any treasured gelding, a strong work horse, and a handsome person in his own way, better-looking than Anji if measured by symmetry alone. “So. I have found you, and made my proposal. Do you accept? You two, to carry our offer of peace across the Kandaran Pass to our cousin in the Hundred.”
“This is no trick, no hidden poison or sorcery meant to kill him?”
“No trick, no poison or sorcery meant to kill him. It is an honest offer, the best one he will get.”
“What else can we do?” muttered Eliar.
Kesh had spent too much time as a debt slave to trust masters and merchants who, given a monopoly, did not exploit their advantage. But that didn’t mean a clever man couldn’t gain advantage for himself on the sidelines as the powerful wrestled. “Very well, Your Excellency, we’ll take your offer to the captain. What is it?”
The prince nodded at the captain, who gestured. The guardsmen on the balcony backed up out of sight. The captain crossed to a door set on the far side of the chamber. He opened it and went through, leaving the prince—apparently unarmed—with Kesh and Eliar and their swords.
“So do you have horns?” asked the prince in a pleasant voice. “I’ve always wondered.”
Eliar flushed.
The door opened and a woman entered the room. She was veiled, perceived mostly as cloth obscuring both face and form, yet she walked with confidence and carried a short lacquered stick with a heavy iron knob weighting one end. She was short and, it seemed, a bit stout, but vital and energetic. As soon as the door was shut behind her by an unseen hand, she pulled off the veil that concealed her face and tucked it carelessly through her belt.
The hells!
She was an older woman, not yet elderly, and she had a face so distinctively Qin that Keshad at once felt he was back riding with Qin soldiers. She circled the two young men as a wolf circles a pair of trapped bucks as it decides whether it is hungry enough to go to the bother of killing them. Then she turned on the prince.
“These are fearsome spies?” The trade talk fell easily from her lips.
“An exaggeration, I admit,” the prince said with a careless smile that had something of a scorpion’s sting at its tip. “Do not trouble me with your contentious nature.”
“You will be glad to be rid of me.”
“I need have nothing to do with you. From what I hear, the women’s quarter will be glad to be rid of you after all these years. My brother has thankfully decreed there are to be no more foreign brides, only civilized women, admitted to the palace quarter.”
“He says so now. But wait until your brother, or his heir, or that heir’s son, sees benefit in contracting a foreign alliance. When the gold, or the land, or the horses, are too tempting to refuse. Then your words will change and your hearts will turn, and some poor young woman will be ripped from her family’s hearth and thrust into a cage, as I was.”
Eliar gasped, as if the words had been aimed at him.
The prince rose, his eyes so tightened at the corners that Kesh supposed him to be very angry. But he spoke in the blandest of voices, addressing Kesh and Eliar. “This woman carries our offer to Anjihosh. You will escort her and those attendants she brings with her. Be assured that agents of my choosing will ride with you over the Kandaran Pass. If you do not deliver her safely, they will kill you.”
Kesh looked at Eliar; the young Silver was his only ally. “Yes, Your Excellency. Can you tell me who we have the honor of escorting?”
“And idiots, too, in the bargain,” she said. She walked to the door, rapped on it with the iron knob of the stick, and, as soon as it was opened, vanished within.
“You claim to be a believer,” said the prince, “because of which I will offer you a piece of advice. That woman is a serpent, with a poisoned tongue and a barbarian’s lack of honor. Do not trust her.”
“That’s Captain Anji’s mother, isn’t it?” As soon as Eliar spoke the words, Keshad realized she could be no one else.
“The palace is rid of her at last,” said the prince. “As for you two, should either of you set foot in the empire again, you’ll find your lives swiftly forfeit.” He clapped his hands thrice.
The door opened, and the captain strode swiftly out, posture erect and shoulders squared, like a man about to take his place in the talking line and perform one of the tales, a martial story told with defiance and bold gestures. These people knew what they were doing, entirely unlike Kesh
and Eliar, their expedition begun as a toss of the sticks and exposed so easily Kesh felt the shame of it. Now they were delegated to be mere escorts to a bellicose woman being returned in disgrace to her son.
The prince sat in his chair as the captain led them away. Yet as they walked the length of the underground corridor with its hunting stories faded in the dim light, Kesh considered the last time he had brought a woman north over the Kandaran Pass into the Hundred. He’d believed one thing about her, but he’d been entirely wrong; Cornflower had turned out to be quite different from what he originally thought she was, not a helpless mute slave at all but rather a terrible demon bent on vengeance. Aui! There was really no telling what would happen when Captain Anji’s mother arrived in the Hundred, was there?
PART TWO: ENCOUNTERS
In the Year of the Red Goat
3
DON’T OPEN THE GATE.
Those were the last words Nekkar had said to the apprentices before he had slipped out of the temple to get a look at the army that had occupied Toskala eight days ago. Reflecting back on their frightened faces and anxious tears, he knew that leaving them had been a gods-rotted foolish thing to do. He should have stayed in the temple grounds to keep some order in the place. Make sure none of the young ones panicked.
Aui! Too late now to fret over what he couldn’t change.
He had reached the front of the line.
A sergeant caressing a long knife finished his interrogation of a thin man, a farmer by the look of his humble knee-length linen jacket and bare legs. “So you admit you are a refugee, come to Toskala from the country in the last six months?”
“We had to flee our village because of the trouble—”
“No refugees allowed in Toskala. You’ll be marched to the gates and released. Return to your village.”
A bored soldier beckoned to Nekkar, a gesture meaning You next.
The farmer didn’t budge. “I’ve children waiting in the alleys. I have to get them.”
“You should have thought of that before you left your gods-rotted village.” The sergeant nodded, and soldiers grabbed the man by either arm. As he’d done numerous times before, seen by everyone standing in line, the sergeant sliced three shallow cuts into the man’s left forearm. “We cleanse those who sneak back into the city after they’ve been marked.”
“But they’ll starve!” The man’s voice rose shrilly as his desperation mounted and the pain of the cuts stung into tears. “Their mother is dead. We lost track of our clan—”
The soldiers dragged him out by a different door. Aui! The refugees who had flooded into Toskala over the last year had put a strain on the resources of the city and caused a great deal of hard feeling, but to separate a man from his children in such a way was beyond cruel. Yet none dared protest. Soldiers lined the main room; an inn called the Thirsty Saw had been cleared of customers and set aside for their use. Many more folk besides him waited in line, some wringing their hands or rubbing unmarked forearms, others weeping. Most stood in silent, bitter dread. Eight days ago, on the cusp between the days of Wakened Ox and Transcendent Snake, their good city had been overthrown by treachery and fallen into the hands of thieves and criminals.
The bored soldier’s voice sharpened. “I said, You next.”
Nekkar limped forward.
The sergeant looked him up and down without smile or frown. “What’s your name?”
“I’m called Nekkar.”
“What’s your clan?”
“I’m temple-sworn.” As any tupping idiot could see by his blue cloak with its white stripe sewn over each shoulder! Those who wore the blue cloak marking them as servants of Ilu the Herald, patron of travelers and bringer of news, became accustomed to being addressed as “Holy One.” That the sergeant had not used the customary honorific was a deliberate slight. He swallowed angry words as he glanced uneasily around the chamber. The other detainees, swept up like so much detritus by the soldiers now patrolling Toskala’s streets, stared, trying to gauge what questions they might be asked and what answers would serve them best.
“What clan in Toskala marks your kinfolk?” The sergeant’s impatience edged his tone. He wore a silver chain from which hung an eight-pointed tin star, a cheap medallion compared with the finely wrought chain likely obtained in the first frenzy of looting.
“Why, no clan in Toskala!” he replied, surprised. “Why should it? I was sent to Fifth Quarter’s temple at sixteen as an apprentice and transferred five years later as an envoy to Stone Quarter’s temple. I have lived here in the city the last thirty years, and never regretted one moment of it.” Until today. “My kin are hill people from the Liya Pass, if you must know, a day’s walk from the town of Stragglewood on the Ili Cutoff.”
“I know the place. Go on.”
Faced with the soldier’s unrelenting gaze, he cleared his throat nervously and went on. “Most of my people follow the carters’ or woodsmen’s trade. Easy to work together, then, you see, cousin hauling logs for cousin. Never had a badge, like they do here in the city. Honest country folk don’t.” The sergeant didn’t blink at that jab, nor rise to the bait, nor touch his own ugly star badge, if that was what it was. “I haven’t been back there for over twenty years. My life is here in the city now.”
“What clan?” the sergeant repeated.
He wiped sweat from his brow with a hand made grimy when the soldiers who had cornered him had shoved him to the ground. His wrist hurt, and his twisted ankle was swelling. “Tumble Creek lands, mostly. Some granddaughter branches that range the roads and paths, as carters do. We’re a daughter branch long split from the Green Sun, call ourselves Tumble Sun, if you must know.”
The sergeant blinked, as if the names meant something to him.
Dread opened its maw and swallowed Nekkar in one gulp. He had the horrible feeling he had just betrayed his entire clan, who had never done one wrong thing to him even for all he had been thrilled to leave the quiet hills for the glories of the finest city in all the Hundred.
The sergeant pointed to the white trim on his cloak. “You’re wearing an ostiary’s stripes.”
“Yes, I’m ostiary over the temple of Ilu that’s located here in Stone Quarter. We’re well known as the most minor of the five temples dedicated to Ilu in Toskala.”
“An ambitious person raised to a high position might feel slighted to be called ‘minor.’ Maybe you were hoping for a better place.”
He was very irritating, and Nekkar was anxious about his charges and sick of seeing unoffending refugees cut like debt slaves and dragged away. Standing in line half the day with hands and ankle throbbing and without food or drink had made him light-headed enough to kick him into incautious speech, that sarcastic way he had of lecturing youth when they were being idiots. “I’m perfectly happy with an orderly, unambitious existence. Keeping to my place and serving the gods as I am sworn, and leaving others to go about their lawful business. In peace.”
The soldier’s hand flicked up. A gasp voiced behind was his only warning. A blow cracked him across the shoulders and he dropped to his knees, too stunned to cry out. His gaze hazed; lights danced. He sobbed, then caught a tangle of prayer and chanted under his breath to take his mind off the pain blossoming across his back and the fear sparking in his mind.
“Hold him for questioning.” The sergeant’s voice faded.
They dragged him out to the back and dumped him on the ground. Pain paralyzed him. He tried to imagine what Vassa might be cooking for dinner tonight, but his parched mouth tasted only of sand. It was easier to let go and close his eyes.
HE CAME TO with a start, his back throbbing as if a herd of dray beasts had stampeded over his body. Voices staggered back and forth, fading, growing louder, and fading in a slide that made him dizzy although he was flat on his stomach and sucking in dust with each nauseated breath.
“Just these two outlanders in the last eight days?” a woman asked. “That’s all you’ve rounded up, Sergeant Tomash?”
&n
bsp; “My apologies, Holy One. I have been searching according to the orders given out by the Lord Commander Radas and Commander Hetti, Holy One. Every household and guild is required to open their compound to my soldiers and present a census of their household members and their wealth. These two slaves are the only outlanders I’ve found in Stone Quarter.”
Someone was weeping, desperate and afraid.
“Release them, or kill them, as you wish. They are useless to me.”
“My apologies, Holy One.” The sergeant, whose contemptuous tone inside the inn had made folk cringe, sounded as near to tears as a whining boy dumped by uncaring relatives on the auction block. “I’ve been diligent. I am interviewing compound by compound throughout this quarter, just as I was ordered. Anyone unlawfully on the streets is brought before me. These folk I had dragged out here all need further examination, Holy One.”
“Look at me!”
The sergeant whimpered.
Nekkar opened the eye that wasn’t jammed up against the ground. At first he thought his vision was ruined; his open eye scratched as if scoured by sand, and when he blinked, it hurt to open and close. Then he realized that actually it was dusk, and also that a few paces from his head floated a cloak of rippling fabric like the night sky speckled by stars.
A person in travel-worn sandals wrapped over dusty feet was standing not three steps from his nose; it was this person who wore the cloak.
“You’ve spoken the truth about the outlanders,” said the cloak.
The sergeant sobbed with a gasp of relief. “Yes, Holy One.”
“You’ve done as well as anyone could.”
“My thanks, Holy One.”
“Bring the prisoners before me one at a time.” She moved away to a trellis.
Nekkar eased up onto his side. He was lying in the inner courtyard of the Thirsty Saw, where he and other folk in Stone Quarter often drank under the shade of an awning green with vines. Soldiers lined the compound wall, staring at their boots. Prisoners were tied to the posts that supported the massive trellis, and more were stuffed doubled over and in evident pain into livestock cages. Many had soiled themselves from being confined for so long, their reek mixing with the sour stench of spilled wine.