Traitors' Gate

  “Those of my soldiers I do not trust completely to be able to accomplish what I ask of them, do not still ride with me. Nevertheless, we must be cautious. If we could reach Zubaidit with this intelligence, she would act. Yet to attempt to reach her, if she’s truly placed herself within Lord Radas’s army, puts all at risk of discovery if the messenger is captured and interrogated by one of the cloaks.”

  “We are caught between too few knowing to manage the task, and so many knowing that we give away our plan.”

  “We walk a precarious path,” agreed the captain. “Tell only those you trust to carry out the act. Let them be ready.”

  Joss laughed. “That’s what I admire about you. When you decide to act, you don’t hesitate.”

  Anji smiled briefly, as at a jest only he had heard. He gestured toward Scar. “Everyday you hook yourself into the harness of a creature that could as easily eat you for its meal as tolerate your weight, for it would soar more easily without you. Is that not admirable?”

  “No, for I’m doing my duty, as the gods decreed. Anyhow, Scar doesn’t frighten me. The eagles know their duty better than we know ours. They can’t be corrupted. They are as you see them. No mask. Nothing concealed. In that way they are more honest than we can ever be.”

  “More honest than we should be, maybe. Few people would truly be pleased, I think, to know what thoughts fly through the minds of their lovers and kinsmen and comrades.”

  “Maybe it would be like being flayed,” Joss said, staring out over the vista and thinking of Marit: what she had become and how it isolated her. The woman he had loved still lived within her cloaked body; he knew that, because he had kissed her. But his touch had scorched her; it had told her too much, things she did not want to know. Maybe no one should know that much about another person. “Our masks protect us, don’t they?” he said at last.

  “So we must hope,” said Anji.

  PART SIX: CHOICES

  32

  NEKKAR WOKE BEFORE dawn and stretched to discover that, as always, Vassa had left his pallet without waking him. She returned to her clan’s compound to take care of their needs first, as she must, but her presence lingered. As always, he smiled because their love was, even after all these years, a wellspring of unexpected joy.

  Often enough, it was also his only smile of the day.

  His stomach growled as he stowed the pallet and blanket in the cupboard. He dressed quickly, careful not to strain threadbare cloth. He kneeled on the pillow in front of his ostiary’s desk, bent his head, and in the silence that held Toskala before first bell rang across the city, he prayed to Ilu the Herald, asking for strength to get through just this one day. As long as he had enough strength for this day, he could keep going.

  And he had to keep going. So many people depended on him.

  Two envoys, Seyra and Doni, waited for him on the porch. How they used to tease Doni for his plumpness! Now the young man’s cheeks were hollow and his loose tunic and trousers accentuated how thin he’d gotten.

  Seyra looked as frail as a wisp of straw. “Holy One. The night passed peacefully.”

  He nodded. “Thanks be to blessed Ilu for watching over us. Any disturbances?”

  “Not that we heard or saw, Holy One.”

  The best he could now say of a new day was that no catastrophe had troubled the night. Two eagles spiraled aloft, so although many reeves and passengers had flown off Law Rock some days ago in a mass exodus, not all had abandoned them. That was something.

  At the trough, an elderly envoy winched up a bucket of water from the well and poured it into the stone basin. The splash hit loudly in the hazy half-light. They washed, murmuring the cleansing prayer as the retiring night watch and the dawn-rising envoys joined them. Afterward, they walked as a group past rows of struggling vegetables being grown in the courtyard.

  On the porch of the sanctuary they slipped out of their sandals. They sang the dawn prayers quietly so as not to waken the novices in the barracks next door. It was better to let the young ones sleep through the morning prayers than wake too early into the claws of hunger.

  As his hands folded to close the last prayer, he bent his head to inhale a final breath of fragile peace. The matted floor cushioned his knees. His right shoulder ached. His left ankle twinged. His stomach gurgled. He raised his eyes to the dais, trying to quiet his mind. On the altar, in a latticed iron frame, sat a large nodule of polished turquoise veined with a spider’s web pattern like a fireling’s lost thread. Ilu’s Eye was always watchful. He was surprised the occupiers had not stolen the precious stone along with everything else, but some at least still feared to rob the gods’ altars.

  That would come next. It was only a matter of time. With each step they took down the path of corruption, the next became easier.

  The Star of Life army had occupied Toskala for almost six months.

  With a sigh, he stood. He walked among the envoys and servants, commending them on their night’s watch or reminding himself of their day’s coming activities. The men must eat a scant bowl of porridge before they went out of the compound to work on building projects for the occupiers. Three times, now, young envoys had not returned, having been killed or imprisoned for what reason he could not fathom; he told them to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Yet occupiers need have no reason as long as they held the sword and you held nothing. The males must go out so the females could remain inside or else risk multiple indignities. Therefore, the women gardened in the courtyard for such sparse gleanings as they could coax from its reluctant dirt, including the terig leaf they sold to the soldiers for a few paltry vey. All other work within the compound they accomplished as well, shut away within the walls. They raked the dirt into complex patterns, just to lend variety to their day. It was a cruel life to be so confined. Not one complained. No one within the temple had starved yet.

  “Holy One, before you go out, please eat.” Doni and Seyra waited with a steaming bowl of nai porridge.

  They would plague him until he ate, or threaten him by refusing to eat until he did. So he ate. The nai was bland but filling; his mouth hungered for it, but his heart rebelled because so many in the city had no nai porridge to ease their belly’s ache.

  Trying to hide their relieved smiles, they hurried away with the empty bowl.

  “Make sure you rest!” he called after them. “Tired eyes cannot see and tired ears cannot hear!”

  The nai sat well in his belly. His legs felt stronger. It was time to go.

  He tied an empty bag to his belt for the rations chits he would be issued and clasped his blue ostiary’s cloak around his neck. Finally, he drank deeply of cool water from the ladle hanging at the well. At the gate, the men were lined up to leave. Today’s gatekeepers—two tough young female envoys armed with staves and knives—shifted the bars. As the men passed, Nekkar touched each on the forehead with a blessing for safe return. When all had passed through, he nodded at the young women. Their expressions were as tight as drums, and they were weary.

  “You’re the last of the night watch?” he asked them.

  “Yes, Holy One. There come our relief now.”

  He heard footsteps behind him. “Kellas did not return last night?”

  “Neh, Holy One. Did you expect him so soon?”

  “Neh, of course not.” He couldn’t expect Kellas back for two days at least. “I forgot. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  They wanted to ask where Kellas had gone but knew better than to inquire. Soldiers might come pounding on the gate with any purpose at all in mind, and the cloaks—should you be so unfortunate as to be forced to stand before one—could eat out your heart.

  “Walk safely with the Herald, Holy One,” they murmured.

  Herald’s staff in hand, he passed under the triple-linteled gate marking Ilu’s holy precincts. At this time of day, men like his envoys and novices hurried in small groups to their assigned labor gangs, but otherwise the streets were empty. He checked the closed gates of the
compounds. No white ribbons hung from any gate posts this morning, to mark a death inside. That was something.

  At each gate he rang the bell and waited for a voice to query. “What news, Holy One?”

  “The reeves still fly. Law Rock is still ours. What news inside?”

  They might say, “All are alive, by the gods’ mercy,” or “Grandfather is refusing to eat so the young ones can have his portion,” or “My cousin never came back from that gang they sent to fell trees, is there news, Holy One?”

  Then he would go on.

  Today’s guards in Lele Square were too busy sucking on the harsh smoke of rolled-up terig leaf to acknowledge him, but they followed his progress with suspicious gazes as he circled the square to check the ribbons hung on gates. On the Red Clover merchant house hung a pair of ribbons, orange twined with white to mark a sickness, maybe a lung fever or a belly cramping; a single white ribbon marked a death in the adjoining compound, a clan of basket weavers. Otherwise, Lele Square had weathered another night.

  An old woman draped in the undyed linen robe worn by Atiratu’s mendicants limped along the eastern shadows of the square, leaning heavily on a stick.

  One of the soldiers broke off from his companions and headed for her, skirting the public well. “Heya, old woman.”

  She halted to look, absorbing the insult.

  “I have an itch on my cock. What do you have to cure it? Cursed girls must be wiping something on me, eh?”

  Her gaze took in Nekkar’s approach but she turned to answer the impatient soldier. “Truly, my nephew, if your tool is itching, then you must wash it every day with soap and a tincture of cloud-white oil, and you must not let it enter any woman or man’s passage for one full turning of the moon. If it still itches afterward, wait another month.”

  “The hells! One full month! It doesn’t itch that badly!”

  “If you do nothing to rest it now it will turn red and develop sores, and then grow green with the Witherer’s fungus. After that, I can’t help you.”

  He yelped. For one sharp intake of breath, Nekkar thought the man meant to hit an elder, but he pushed brusquely past Nekkar and strode back to his fellows, who were laughing as the man’s face darkened with embarrassment.

  “Is that true?” Nekkar asked softly, careful not to look after the retreating soldier.

  “Greetings of the day, Holy One,” she said.

  “Greetings of the day, Holy One. There’s a sickness in the Red Clover compound.”

  “So have I come. There’s a flux over in the masons’ court alleys. Four children and one old uncle are dead. I fear their well has become fouled.” She had a dagger’s gaze, her mouth growing thin in an expression more like a stab than a smile. “As for the other, yes, it is true, except for the Witherer’s fungus. The itching won’t kill him, but if I can scare him into keeping his wick dry for one month, that’s one less man sticking it where it isn’t wanted, isn’t it? I heard there’s baskets for sale in Bell Quarter. Need you some?”

  This news was unexpected, come sooner than he’d hoped. Kellas had been smuggled across the city in hopes of getting him up to Law Rock via the same route the southern spy Zubaidit had taken months ago, in a basket up a hidden cliff. Despite the strict curfew and restricted movement between quarters, Toskala’s priests and clans and guilds had woven a network of communication across the city, although they dared not risk it often.

  “No, not today, but I hope to buy a basket on the first day of Wolf Month, eh? What of you, Geerto?” He ostentatiously rubbed his right shoulder, as though he were asking her for advice.

  She grasped his arm. “You’ve heard the rumor that the great flight of eagles some days ago, all double-laden, means that Clan Hall has abandoned Justice Square and Law Rock.”

  “That’s why we sent Kellas, to find out—”

  “Ah, of course.” She made him raise his right hand high while she kept a hand cupped over his shoulder. “Anyway, yesterday the sergeant at Stone Quarter’s gate told me the reeves had gone for good and that I could now go out to the brickyards.”

  “Eiya!” He dropped his hand. He had never stopped thinking of those three small children lost after Toskala’s fall. No matter how often he asked, he was never allowed to go outside the city.

  “I laid out five dead ones and sang the prayers of departing over their corpses.”

  He forced out the words, although they emerged with a vile taste. “Is it true they’re burning the dead?”

  She made a gesture to avert malign spirits. “There are fires, it is true, but I have not seen corpses placed on fire with my own eyes. If it is done, it is being done at night.”

  “What of the living?”

  “Those able to work I am not allowed to speak to. The weak, ill, and dying are dragged out of the way. Not even under shelter, mind you. Left out in the sun.” She swallowed several times, squeezed shut her eyes, and at length found enough breath to go on. “I got some honey water down the throats of three dying ones, enough to make their passage a little sweeter. I bound scrapes and cuts, and fed a strengthening tea to seventeen other children, although what good will come of that? All I have done is allow the poor things to be released to toil again.”

  “Better than dying.”

  “Is it?”

  He bent his head, the sun already hot on his neck. They were entering the season of Furnace Sky, when the heat would become brutal and the suffering more intense.

  “Yes, it is,” he said at last. “We resist by living.”

  She touched his hand. “Thank you, Holy One. I had forgotten.”

  Her fatigue was evident in her drooping shoulders and in the creased lines alongside her mouth. “Never think you have forgotten, because every day you walk out to treat those who are ill is a day you have remembered.”

  “Heya!” shouted the soldiers. “You old folk! Get on, or go home.”

  They parted, she to her tasks and he to his. First, he made his way toward the market, pausing by Astarda’s Arch. When the streets in either direction lay empty, he slipped into the old nook where, according to temple history, there had once stood an age-blackened statue of Kotaru the Thunderer. Five months ago he had arranged for a new statue to be placed there, crudely carved but with a compartment cunningly concealed in the Thunderer’s right palm in the hinge where the god grasped his lightning’s spear. He twisted open the compartment and fished out three rations chits, each one with three marks burned into the wood as a message: Nine provision wagons had entered Stone Quarter at dusk last night. There was something else rolling at the base of the hole: three glass beads and a single copper vey. The vey was new; he had no idea how to interpret it.

  He held still in the nook as men passed, none glancing his way, then slipped out and fell into step behind them. The market, too, had changed in the last six months. The lack of chatter and laughter always struck him first, and after that the absence of the much-loved smells of oily slip-fry stands and steaming noodle water. The only foodstuffs for sale were dry goods and garden produce being sold out of four permanent stalls guarded by soldiers and presided over by well-fed men who spoke too boisterously.

  The other merchants seated cross-legged on blankets or on stools under canvas awnings were older folk, mostly men but also some elderly aunties and grandmothers. They offered goods for sale, but few were buying. He paced down the lane of ornament sellers, who had combs and ribbons and such luxuries that no one could afford any longer, until he marked a shallow basket heaped with glass beads like those he held cupped in a hand. The woman was, like him, of middle age, with her hair bound in cloth. She had a scar on one cheek and her left arm in a sling.

  “I’m selling beads, not buying them, Holy One,” she said in a pleasant voice.

  He pressed the copper vey down beside the three beads.

  She bent forward as if to examine the vey. “Last week,” she murmured, “a work gang from Stone Quarter was sent out to fell trees. Now we hear the entire gang was pressed onto
a barge and sent downriver to Nessumara.”

  “Who did you hear this from?”

  “One lad jumped into the river and pretended to drown, but he was a strong swimmer. He’s in hiding. Clerks made a list of every man in that gang, so if they find him, they’ll cleanse him.”

  He rose. “Neh, verea, I can’t afford that today. My apologies.”

  She lifted a hand in the merchant’s gesture of acquiesence. “Tomorrow, then,” she said in the typical way of the marketplace. “Go well with the Herald, Holy One.”

  There were lines at the four stalls selling rice and nai, and as Nekkar approached the nearest one he watched as an old man made his slow retreat with a covered basket so small it was difficult to believe he was buying for anyone other than himself.

  “Ver, if you please, a word,” said Nekkar to the old fellow, but when the man looked at him with a frightened expression, Nekkar waved him on.

  Instead, he walked to the head of the line where a woman with her head and torso swathed in a shawl was trying to bargain with the bored merchant.

  “Ver, maybe if you would take this bolt of wedding silk in trade—”

  “For a tey of rice?”

  “One tey?” Her shock registered in her drawn and weary face.

  Nekkar stepped up beside her as the silent folk waiting in the lines pretended not to watch. “A fine piece of wedding silk, verea.” He smiled at the merchant. “A tey of rice, ver. That would feed me today. This bolt of silk is worth twenty leya, surely.”

  “It’s worth what I’ll pay for it,” retorted the merchant, adding, after a pause, “Holy One. Rice and nai are expensive. Those who can’t afford to buy must wait for their rations chit like everyone else.”

  “You have a good supply of provisions today, ver.” Nekkar indicated the sacks of rice and nai piled on wooden pallets. “Where are you purchasing?”

  “Same as always. What’s it to you?”

  “Some have plenty, while others starve. If you bring those sacks as an offering down to the temple, I’ll make sure to distribute them among the compounds.”