Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

  Peddo hesitated, then went to sit on the bench beside the Snake. Joss was left standing, an awkward position now that the other four people in the room were seated.

  “This is Master Tanesh.”

  “I remember your case, ver,” he said politely to the merchant seated cross-legged on a brocade pillow to the right of the commander’s desk.

  “Considering the trouble you caused me out at my estate in Allauk, I should think you would.” The man wore an overtunic of a florid purple brocade silk, embroidered with silver- and gold-thread flowers in case you were wondering how rich he really was. And if there was still then any doubt, it could be put to rest by admiring the strings of pearls adorning the loops of his threefold braid.

  “I simply followed the law, ver. ‘When a person sells their body into servitude in payment for a debt, that person will serve eight years and in the ninth go free.’ ”

  “In the ninth to go free,” agreed the man, raising his forefinger as though he were lecturing an ignorant apprentice, “but there’s nothing said in the law about additional debt run up in the meantime, which must be repaid in coin or in service, which all agree is fair. I was genuinely shocked by the decision. I don’t mind saying that I was offended by it as well, bullying my factor as this reeve did, and humiliating him in front of the witnesses just because he could.”

  “The law is clear,” said Joss, who was beginning to get irritated all over again although he could not show it. The merchant’s factor had possessed just this same manner of self-importance. “Indeed, we can walk up to Law Rock and see that the law is carved in stone.”

  “Legate Joss!” The commander rapped the table with her baton.

  “You’d think he was wed to a Silver the way he goes on,” added the merchant. “If it were allowed, that is. And I don’t mind saying I am not the only one who has gotten tired of those people putting in their petition every year at the Flowering Festival, although what right such outlanders think they have to change our holy laws I can’t imagine.”

  “The Ri Amarah clans are not the issue under discussion,” said the commander.

  He backed down unctuously. “No, no, not at all. That’s right. Let’s stick to the business at hand. It’s just one of my grievances that I’m sometimes on about.”

  No doubt he had a dozen wagonloads of grievances.

  “The matter will go before the Legate’s Council next week,” continued the commander, “and I assure you that you will not be disappointed in the ruling.”

  “The law is clear,” objected Joss. “I found according to the law that the man in question had served his eight years’ servitude in payment for his debt and was unlawfully retained against his wishes past the ninth year.”

  “In truth, Legate Joss,” said the commander, “the law doesn’t say anything about debt compounding through actions of the slave which accrue further debt during the period of servitude. Master Tanesh, if you will, we’ll send you a messenger when the case comes up next week.”

  The merchant rose and fussed and bowed. The commander, naturally, did not get up, and so he went on his way expeditiously. When the doors had slid shut behind him and a decent interval had passed in which the old reeve could escort him at least as far as out of the garden court beyond the possibility of overhearing any further conversation, she addressed Joss.

  “We’re already fighting what appears to be a losing battle, one that is spreading day by day, that might as well be a wildfire burning out of our control. You know that better than any person here, by the names of all the gods.”

  “You know he’s wrong! These people pad out debts and assign frivolous fines and make arrangements with corrupt clerks to work debt in their favor. That’s the beauty of the law. It’s simple, and it understands how to get around some people’s desire to take more than they ought just because they are greedy—”

  “Joss!”

  “Is it any wonder there’s been a rash of reports of slaves running out on their debts? Why shouldn’t they, if they believe the law is being twisted to work against them? Indenture was meant to be a temporary measure, not a permanent one.”

  “Legate Joss! You have to fight these battles when there is peace to fight them in.”

  “How can there be peace when the shadows have corrupted even the law? Hells, it isn’t the shadows that corrupted the law. It’s us, who have allowed it to happen by making an exception here, and another there.”

  “Certainly it would be easier to abide by the law of the Guardians if there were Guardians left to preside at the assizes. But there aren’t. As you know best of any of us.”

  In training, you learned how to absorb the force of a blow from a staff by bending to absorb the impact or melting out from under it, but this hit him straight on.

  “That’s silenced him, thank the gods,” muttered the Snake.

  He could not speak, not even to cut that damned snake to pieces. That Peddo was hiding his eyes behind a hand did not blunt the shock.

  The commander studied him. There was not a hint of softening, not in her, not even though she had let him into her bed off and on for over a year about twelve years back, before he became a legate and she the commander. Before her injury. She was not a woman swayed by fond memories. She was not sentimental, not as he was. If nightmares haunted her, she gave no sign of it. She was cold and hard and in charge of an impossible situation.

  The Guardians are dead and gone.

  And the young Joss, that utterly stupid and bullheaded youth who had thought far too much of himself back in those days, was the one who had brought that knowledge back to the reeve halls while abandoning his lover and her eagle to be murdered at the hands of a band of criminals who had never been caught and bound to justice for the deed. Maybe, somehow, by breaking the boundaries, he was the one who had brought it down on their heads.

  As if the commander knew the way his thoughts were tending, and because she would not have said those words if she hadn’t meant to hurt him, she went on.

  “So. That leaves us with a hundred towns, a hundred villages, a hundred arkhons, a hundred captains, a hundred lords and landowners, a hundred local guild masters, a hundred times over, according to the holy tales recorded by Sapanasu’s clerks and chanted by the Lady’s mendicants. Any of these towns and villages and lords and guilds may be governed by a wise or by a foolish council, according to what fortune or misfortune has befallen their leading clans. Any of these councils may support an indifferent or a useful militia, according to their custom and that of the surrounding clans. That leaves the holy temples, whose authority is unquestioned but diffuse. And that leaves us, the six reeve halls, over whom I stand as Commander. Which position, as you know, gives me no authority except that of suggestion and coordination. Not in the halls, and not in the temples, and not in the Hundred. This is the strength we possess against an enemy who may not even be an enemy, one who cannot be found or grasped.”

  “It’s part of what’s happened in Herelia,” said Peddo suddenly. “Every village and town asking reeves to depart and never come back. No reeve patrols in Herelia now. The folk there came to hate us because they didn’t trust us. Because they feared someone or something else even more. There’s a power at work in Herelia, everywhere north of Iliyat and the Haya Gap. Yet we can’t track it down.”

  Her gaze, bent on Peddo, caused him to sit back and grin nervously, as does a boy called out for whispering to his neighbor during recitation drill.

  “This is the strength we possess,” she repeated. “And it is failing us.” She turned that gaze on Joss. He stood his ground, even under her harsh stare. “I need Master Tanesh. He has supported the city by providing triple rations of grain and meat, although he’s under no obligation to increase his tithing, and a doubled complement of young folk to serve their rotation in Toskala’s militia.”

  “All of which serve to protect his estates and investments.”

  “Nevertheless, it ends up protecting all of us as well. I need Maste
r Tanesh’s support. And I need you concentrating on the matter at hand.”

  “I thought a reeve’s work to rule fairly and uncover abuses and bring criminals to justice at the assizes was the matter at hand.”

  “You are so damned naive. You know what they call you?”

  Joss glanced at Peddo, but the young reeve shrugged to show he hadn’t a clue what the commander was going on about.

  “The incorruptible,” she said with disgust.

  “I take that as a compliment.”

  “I suppose it is one given your predilection,” she said.

  The Snake snickered. He was enjoying the free show.

  “What I do when I am off duty has nothing to do with—”

  She lifted a hand. He shut his mouth.

  “I’m stripping you of your position as legate.”

  “Stripping me—!”

  She lifted her baton; she knew how to menace with it, although he wasn’t actually within reach. “I have already sent a messenger to Copper Hall asking Marshal Masar to appoint a new legate to Clan Hall. One who will replace you.”

  He cursed under his breath. Had the wall been close enough, he would have slammed his fist through it—

  “Never heard of a legate being stripped of his position like that before,” said the Snake. “That must hurt.”

  —Or into the Snake’s face for the second time that day. But, thank the gods, the distance between them saved him from that folly. “This is Master Tanesh’s doing, isn’t it? You’re doing this to placate that bullying, lying, greed-ridden bastard.”

  “No,” continued the commander in the manner of the flood tide, unstoppable, “it’s your own doing. You’ve forgotten that although the law is carved in stone, people are not. People are water, or earth, or fire, or air. They are not fixed and immutable. There must be room to maneuver, especially in an emergency. And this is an emergency.”

  “But it’s just that kind of thinking that’s caused us to lose so much ground—”

  She thwacked her baton against her desk, cutting him off. “Also, bluntly: You drink too much. You’re becoming unreliable.”

  He indicated the Snake, whose stare challenged him. “Reeves are often unreliable. In many different ways.”

  The Snake flicked up a little finger. Peddo, seeing the rude gesture, winced.

  The commander either ignored the exchange or did not notice it. “Neither I nor the six marshals can unmake a reeve. However, I can ask for a legate to be withdrawn and replaced. As I have done. Because legates cannot be unreliable. Now. Do you want to know why I called you in today?”

  “This hasn’t been enough?”

  “I’m hoping for much worse,” muttered the Snake.

  “Volias,” said the commander in a tone so genial it seemed threatening. “Do not tempt me to start in on you and your manifold faults.”

  Peddo sucked in a breath, as if in pain. Then, amazingly, he laughed, and somehow his laughter released a bit of the tension in the chamber. Joss wiped his brow, chuckling. Even the Snake cracked a smile.

  The commander nodded. “I have a mission of particular importance. It is customary for the merchants’ guild to hold its grand conclave in Toskala at the advent of every Year of the Fox. The fox being a cunning animal beloved of those who take to the merchant’s craft. And so the merchants and folk associated with the guild convened at the Guild Hall at the end of this last ibex year. Their meeting is now over. The first topic among them, I am reliably informed, was the safety of the roads. Roads are their lifeblood. Without safe passage, a merchant cannot arrange for the transfer of goods.”

  Joss’s attention began to wander during this schoolroom speech. He noted how sparsely furnished the chamber was. Only last week a low couch had stood in the far corner, but now that space was empty except for a thin mat rolled up and tied with red string. The cupboard with its multitude of cubbyholes and small drawers remained, on the other side, but the fine glazed vase, normally filled with flowers and set atop the cupboard to give the room some color, was missing. A large gold-plated hairpin weighed down papers on the desk. The commander had served the Lantern in her youth; her ability to write and read was one of the reasons she had been elevated to the post. Her pen-and-ink case, lid firmly closed, sat by her right hand. A painted chest sat on the matting behind her, so she need only turn to get into it. An enameled tray had been shoved back, to the left; it held an orangeware ceramic pot suitable for brewing khaif, as well as two thin wooden drinking bowls small enough to cup in the hands. No doubt Master Tanesh had been offered the hospitality of the hall. Where had the couch and vase gone?

  “According to the delegation who met with me this morning, the guild council in association with the guild of carters and transport compiled a list of roads along which caravans and wagons have been attacked in the last three years. These are attacks, mind you, in which both the attack and its aftermath were at no time witnessed by or in contact with reeves. The list is extensive, the danger widespread, and moving steadily into the southern regions of the Hundred. More importantly, of these attacks fewer than half were then reported to the local reeve halls, and of those reports, only a hand’s count were traced to their origin and the criminals brought to the assizes to face trial. The guild, need I say, is not pleased with the reeves. They feel we are not doing our duty. They want reeves assigned to caravans as permanent escorts.”

  The Snake grunted. “Begging your pardon, Commander, but we’re spread so thin patrolling the hinterlands and making sweeps along the roads and tracks that we can’t assign reeves to act as guards for the merchants. Aren’t the local militias responsible for the safety of the roads within five mey of every town? Can’t the guild hire guards, like they do in the south when they travel over the pass into the empire? Or are they just too cheap for that?”

  “As for hiring guards, I cannot answer for their quality, cost, or availability. But it seems the worst of the raids are carried out precisely to avoid the local militia, either by means of their speed or via misdirection.”

  “Ospreys,” said Peddo. “That’s what they call such outlaws in the south. Dive, and snatch.”

  Joss shook his head, raising a hand to ask for clarification. “Are you saying that the merchants suspect that some of these raids are carried out in coordination with local militia?”

  She shrugged. “That remains to be seen. As a gesture of good faith—for I assure you that we must retain the good faith of the guilds or else the halls will not be able to provision and maintain themselves—I have agreed to assign you as an escort for those merchants departing the conclave who are traveling the main routes out of Toskala.”

  The Snake chortled. “Aui! That’s a pup’s chore, first-year reeve duty, escort along the roads. You’ve had your wing feathers plucked, haven’t you?”

  “You, and you, and you. All three of you on this escort duty.” The commander did smile now, and the Snake choked on his laughter. Her smile was not a pleasant thing, after all. The Snake began to splutter a protest, but the commander’s gaze cut him off. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled.

  Joss’s head was pounding so badly that he could not taste even a grain of pleasure from the Snake’s discomfort.

  “How does it happen,” asked Peddo mildly, “that even the three of us can be spared just now? Given that we’ve lost fifteen reeves and four eagles to ambush and fighting in the last two years alone. Not counting the twelve reeves who asked to be transferred out of Clan Hall, and the twenty or thirty who have been recalled to their home clans by their marshals. Or all those lost in all the halls since it became clear many years ago that someone was targeting reeves and their eagles specifically. If you don’t mind my asking, Commander?”

  Even Peddo was taken aback by the intensity of her cold, frightening smile.

  “I don’t mind you asking, since we all know how serious the situation is. Or at least, how serious the situation is here in the north. Yet we must concern ourselves with the south
, too. We must concern ourselves with this report from the merchants’ guild’s council, and from the carters’ guild. We must work in concert, or we will not survive on our own.”

  “You’re pandering to them,” said Joss through his headache. “There are remote villages who rely on us to run their assizes. We provide the only justice they can count on. These guilds can afford to pay for their own protection. We have better things to do. More crucial ones.”

  “I’m doing this to placate the merchants’ guild and the transport guild, it’s true. I’ve told them you’ll patrol as escort for five days out of Toskala, after which you’re to return to Clan Hall with your report. I also want you three to range wide, keep your eyes open, and return each night to camp with the company you’re assigned to. I want you to listen to what the guild masters are saying among themselves.”

  “You don’t trust them?” asked Peddo.

  Her smile vanished, and she bent her head, eyes narrowing in an expression that did, at last, soften her. The gods knew everyone liked Peddo, and for good reason. He had never stabbed anyone in the back, or gossiped in order to cause harm, or told tales out of turn to get a man in trouble, or intimidated witnesses and pushed around locals just for the kick of feeling his power.

  “Oh, Peddo. My dear boy. You’re a good lad, and a competent reeve.”

  The commander’s instinct for trouble was legendary. Indeed, it was the other reason she had risen to her post: She had never gotten caught flat-footed. That instinct had allowed her to escape the hammer, the perfect ambush designed to slaughter her and her eagle which she and the raptor had instead survived. Not like Marit and Flirt. She touched the crutch beside her, without which she no longer could walk. She had survived, but not unscathed.

  “No, I’m not feeling very trusting in these days. Nor should you.”

  4

  They took flight at dawn from the prow of Toskala, riding the updraft high and higher until the city could be glimpsed as a whole below them. In days of old, Toskala had been founded on the promontory below which the muddy yellow-brown waters of River Istri, flowing inexorably down out of the north, met the bluer waters of its tributary, the Lesser Istri, rushing in from the northwestern foothills. The city had expanded beyond the original city wall onto the broadening spit of land between the two rivers, and was now protected by an outer wall and earthworks that spanned the ground from the western bank of the Istri to the facing bank of the Lesser Istri. The first ferries of the day had already started their crossings, men turning winches and hauling on rope as the flat vessels strained with the current.