by Kate Elliott
They are coming to kill me.
She had been kneeling on her pillow, but smoothly she rose, and faced them. It was her training, honed in the market. Even in her early days, no customer had ever torn her facade, not even the ones who had surprised her.
“Who are you?” she said in the cool voice she might use to a matron who offered a deliberately insulting price for her wares.
They faltered. Sheyshi moaned in fear at Mai’s feet. The two men exchanged a glance, speaking without words. Their smell, like everything in this country, hit her strongly: straw and stables and leather and a hint of piss and a spice that made her nose itch. Her instincts were good. Even in this extremity, she could see into them, men determined but not subtle.
They are surprised by what they find. This is not the face and form and reaction they expect.
The man on the left raised his sword. The other one tightened his grip on the knife hilt. So slowly it all transpired: they took another step, while she considered the strength of the walls behind her and whether it was likely she could smash through them.
A rush of footfalls swept up the corridor. Chief Tuvi burst into the room with Anji behind him as the assassins turned to meet them, but those who wished to protect her had a kind of rare fury to aid them. With a few strokes the men were cut down. They fell to the floor, and they bled and bled, croaking and gasping, until Tuvi cut their throats.
Anji looked at her from the other side of the corpses. “Can you speak? Can you move?”
“Yes, but Sheyshi is having hysterics.”
“We’re leaving now. If she does not get up, then Tuvi will kill her and leave her with these.” He paused, cocked his head as he listened, and dashed out of the room. On the heels of his exit, Priya ran in, tears on her face.
“Mistress!”
“I’m unharmed.”
Priya knelt, gathered up cup, pillows, bedding, and carried these out into the corridor. Mai took in a breath, aware suddenly that she had not breathed for forever. She knelt beside the sobbing Sheyshi.
“We must go now. Now. Do you hear? Come. Stand up.”
The girl pulled her hands from her face, saw a trail of blood oozing toward her, and wailed. She rolled backward to get away from it.
Mai took hold of her shoulder. “Close your eyes. Do it. Close your eyes and get up.”
“Leave her,” said Tuvi. “I’ll kill her after you’re gone. Not worth dying for, that one.”
“Sheyshi! Close your eyes. I’ll lead you.”
Tuvi leaped over the corpses. The stink of fresh blood became overpowering, and Sheyshi began to retch, although nothing came up.
“It’s very bad, Mistress,” Tuvi said reasonably. “Some local agent has guessed the truth. We are a day’s ride from Sarida. We must get there before those who suspect the captain’s identity get news back down the line to a commander who can do something about it. Leave this one. Go!”
“Sheyshi!” Mai was angry now. It was so stupid to die this way. “Come now, or I’ll have to leave you. Come now!” She hooked a hand under the girl’s armpit, and tugged, and at last, spitting and groaning, the slave staggered to her feet. Limp and passive, eyes squeezed shut, she allowed Mai to lead her along the wall and out of the room, across the corridor, through the women’s courtyard where a huddle of women crouched on the ground under the guard of four of Anji’s men. Mai could not see their faces. They had thrown their colorful shawls up over their heads to cover themselves. A toddling boy crouched between two of them, bawling, until one of the women slapped him, and then he bawled louder and was wrestled under the tent of her outer shawl, where his cries were choked off.
The gate that led out of the women’s courtyard stood open. Hesitantly, she stepped through. The late-afternoon shadows stretched across the large inn courtyard, but despite the late hour, Anji’s men went about their purposeful business, saddling horses, tying on packs. The palanquin stood to one side, sliding door open, interior stripped and empty. Anji led a horse to her.
“You’ll wrap yourself as Priya shows you, covering your face.” He did not look at her; already he scanned the wide gates that let onto the thoroughfare. Despite the imposing blockade of a dozen of his soldiers, passersby had gathered to gawk and point and comment. Some, seeing Mai, gave up a shout, and Anji called, and his soldiers pushed into the street by laying their whips about them viciously.
“Aren’t we making a stir?” she asked, looking toward the palanquin.
“Too late now,” he said. “One of the red hounds got away. We must outrun them. Cover your face.”
He thrust the reins into her hands and strode off. Priya ran up and wrapped a shawl tightly around Mai’s head and neck and shoulders, twisted it, knotted it, tucked it; gave Mai a pair of hands to boost her into the saddle. The first rank of mounted soldiers pressed forward through the gate. Chief Tuvi came up beside Mai.
“You stick with me, Mistress,” he said. “You’re never to leave my sight.”
Fear clenched like a fist in her stomach. Priya had tied the shawl so tight that the cloth flattened her nose, making it hard to take in a full breath, but Mai was afraid to adjust anything in case it fell off. Already they were moving; the transition occurred without her awareness, only that her muscles tensed as her mount trotted forward alongside Chief Tuvi. She looked for Shai over the heads of the men around her, but she could not see him.
As they pushed through the gate she saw, in the distance, a flower of smoke blooming in the hard bright sky. A high-toned bell began to ring, joined by a second and a third. The noise of crowds of men in a panic swelled like the boom of gusting wind in a storm. A racket of clattering sounds—like sticks striking stone—echoed from out of the streets. She smelled smoke, and turned in the saddle with the shawl almost blinding her, cloth rucked around her eyes. Flames leaped from the steep roof of the inn where she had just sheltered. She stared, unable to comprehend it, because the roof was formed of planks of wood. No one had that much wood, to waste it on roofing! Runnels of fire coursed along the pitch. Smoke poured out from under the eaves.
They turned a corner and, riding fast, hit the outskirts of the town along a series of tenements and hovels fenced into corral-like compounds by waist-high plastered walls. Open fields stretched ahead. Farther out, terraces heavy with crops and, above them, wooded slopes marked the limits of the valley. They turned north, whipping the horses into a jolting run. The road was paved but the roadway itself was much wider than the central stone corridor, which was paralleled on either side by dirt tracks fuzzed at their verge by wisps of grass and weeds. Men straightened from their labor in the fields to stare. Workers toiling over stinking tanning vats leaped up in surprise as the troop raced past them. Folk trudging in toward town with burdens balanced in baskets on their heads or slung along their backs fell backward to get off the road. Glossy orange and red fruit spilled and rolled and was trampled under hoof. Uncannily, no one screamed imprecations after the troop as they scrambled to get out of the way. Theirs was the silence of obedience. Only dogs yipped and chased them. Behind, more bells joined the clamor.
Mai’s eyes stung with tears. She gripped the pommel to keep herself steady, although in truth the Qin saddles were built to keep the rider stable, able to stay on the horse while handling bow or spear or sword. They rode at a draining pace through a countryside whose lands were in fields out to every available cranny and corner. Compounds plastered to a gleaming white stood in the midst of grain fields.
Soon it grew too dark to observe the surrounding landscape. Torches were lit, and tailmen took them up, riding at stages within the troop, lighting their way. Naturally, their pace slowed, but the road was smooth and level, nothing like the haphazard tracks whose intertwining threads made up the Golden Road, the route along which trade flowed east and west along the northern shore of the vast desert.
The stars made a brilliant ornament above them. The moon rose, adding its handsome light as they pushed on into the night. Very late, they
stopped where an irrigation canal cut close to the road. Here Anji allowed the horses to be watered while the soldiers switched mounts, saddling up those horses that hadn’t borne weight on this first leg. They worked in a disciplined silence. Now and again a murmured comment surfaced and was tersely answered.
“This strap has broken.”
“Here’s a cord to replace it.”
“This mare is blown.”
“Cut her loose. She’ll follow if she can.”
“Let me use your knife.”
“Lost yours?”
“Stuck in bone. Didn’t have time to get it out.”
“Huh. Clumsy of you. Chief ‘11 send you back to be a tailman!”
The horses were tough, and the men showed no sign of strain, but she was weary and her thighs hurt and her hands ached. O’eki brought fresh horses. Sheyshi crouched on the ground, rocking obsessively. Priya stood beside Mai, saying nothing, watchful and alert, although the darkness around her eyes betrayed her exhaustion and fear.
“Where are the bearers?” Mai asked. “Where is Shai?”
“I don’t know,” Priya whispered. “There were fires. Fighting in the rear guard.”
“I heard it too,” Mai said, recalling now the rhythm of the clattering sounds she had thought were sticks.
A short distance away, Chief Tuvi was conferring with Anji. Horses stamped. A soldier jerked a gelding away from the water, where it had been drinking too long. Mai wanted to go looking for Shai, but the urgency of their flight pinned her to this one place, even though she had to pee. If she wasn’t ready to go, they would leave without her. Shaking, she reached under the long silk jacket, undid her loose trousers, and squatted right there while Priya swiftly unwound the shawl that covered her head and torso and held it up to shield her.
“This is so hard,” Mai whispered when she was done, and standing again. “What happened?”
“Some kind of agents from the palace,” said Priya. “I have seen many strange things in these few days, Mistress. Everything in this land is done one way only. The gates are locked at night and unlocked in the morning. Women live in one place and men in another. Each town has fields laid out in the same pattern, allowing for differences in the lay of the land. Each town looks alike. There is a temple in the center of each town, but the women told me that women are not allowed to go there. They were shocked I should think so. I! Who served the Merciful One as an honored acolyte! That’s not all. There are spies everywhere, that is what Captain Anji said. He told us to keep watch for them, and for their scat. He calls them the red hounds. I think they must be like the demon dogs who chased the Merciful One across the bone desert. Their eyes are red with blood and their bodies are feathered with dust and iron shavings.”
“It was men who tried to kill me.”
“They can appear in any guise. They are not earthly creatures like you and me. They are born out of sparks of anger and despair. The whirlwind twists them into a material form.” Priya shuddered. “You were very brave, Mistress. You stood up to them.”
The memory of that moment did not disturb Mai. It was sealed as in glass, separate from her. But she was still shaking from the rush of the ride, and the stench of smoke in her nostrils. Had those women crouching in the courtyard, with their hidden faces, gotten out of the burning courtyard in time?
“I didn’t see,” said Priya. “We left too quickly. But it would be better for them if they did die.”
“How can you say that?”
“The red hounds will question anyone who survives the fire. It would be better to be dead than to suffer their questions.”
“What about Shai?” she asked Priya. “I don’t see him. What of the bearers?” Where were the nine slaves who had borne her so faithfully for so long?
Priya cupped her hands in emulation of the Merciful One’s offering bowl, and dipped her face toward her hands, to show the spilling of sorrow, tears unwept. “They guarded the entrance to your suite of rooms. The red hounds slaughtered them. That’s how we first knew something was wrong.”
Tears unwept, Mai heard the call to mount. She touched Priya’s hand, to give comfort, to get comfort. O’eki returned, leading four horses, and without further speech—for what was there left to say?—they rode on.
18
“With me,” said Tohon, jerking Shai’s attention away from the open shopfronts where carpenters worked. The street was lined with workshops. The smell of wood shavings brought a sense of peace, the memory of honest industry on the slopes of Dezara Mountain, but Tohon was already riding off and Shai had to follow.
Tohon balanced two sealed jars on his thighs. A pair of tailmen—Jagi and Tam—came with them, Tarn leading a packhorse with six or eight jars bound in netting and slung over the beast and Jagi with a bundle of greasy sticks clutched under his left arm and a slow-burning torch held in his right. Down the main avenue they rode. Men paused to watch them pass, curious or suspicious, then turned away with a passivity in the face of the unusual that made Shai feel both safe and queasy. In Kartu Town, folk treated the Qin that way, too, looking away because to question brought punishment. Now he was one of them. Not above the law, but holding the law with the sword in his hand.
This town like all towns in the empire was laid out in an orderly octagon. Fields and orchards gave way to stockyards, tanning yards, construction yards, threshing yards, smithing yards, any kind of activity whose stench or fire danger or need to sprawl made it inappropriate to the orderly and narrow lanes. Next came compounds of humble dwellings with plastered walls surrounding each one and a single gate for entry. Then they came into the market, where they always halted for the night at a compound flying the orange banner stamped with an unreadable blot of lines and circles that, Shai had worked out, denoted an inn. They were not allowed to ride farther in, to the larger residential compounds with their higher walls, the military garrison, and the spires marking the precincts of the holy temple.
Turning right and right again on the narrowing streets, Tohon cupped a hand under one of the jars and flung it into the air. It fell in a long arc and broke, smashing on the roof of a carpenter’s compound. Potsherds skittered into pipewood gutters. Oil glided down over the plank roof.
Shai stared, then urged his horse after Tohon. A man shouted in protest. A bright flare flashed behind him, and he turned in the saddle. Behind, Jagi had lit one of the sticks on fire. He tossed it onto the roof.
Spilled oil exploded into flame. They turned right again, rode on, turned left. Tohon flung another jar while Tam, with the skill of a born horseman, extricated a third jar from the netting on the back of the packhorse. Tohon drew his sword and nodded at Shai, a signal to draw his as well. How strange it was to push through the streets with death in your hand. Always, before, he had stepped out of the path of passing soldiers. Now folk fled from him. He grinned, although the expression fit his face strangely. Their fear gratified him, but the pounding of his heart and the flush of excitement along his skin made him uneasy. Should he like this so much? When he looked at his comrades, they looked like men about their everyday business, nothing thrilling or horrifying about it, just doing their job.
They moved through the outer streets, tossing jars and flaming sticks. Bells began to ring an alarm. By the time they circled back to where they’d started, the inn was on fire, roaring and snapping with sheets of heat pouring off it. Tohon rode past without stopping, making for the countryside. Shai slowed down as they passed the open gates. Corpses sprawled in the courtyard, but the smoke made his eyes water, hid their faces from view. He thought some might be Mai’s slave bearers. Some were women. Wisps of ghostly fabric were only now oozing from the bodies, cowering over the severed flesh. They were not yet aware that they were dead.
The streets were mobbed with men running in a panic, some hauling buckets, others desperate to save anything they could from the fires. A child screamed. The distinctive incense of cedar and sandalwood burning penetrated the acrid taint of smoke. Then they pu
shed out beyond the streets and turned north on the road, following the trail of the main troop. Behind, the southern quarter of town was going up in flames, serenaded by the clangor of the alarm bells.
THEY RODE HARD to catch up with the others, rode at intervals all night, rested in the hour before daybreak when the moon had gone down, and as soon as it was light moved on. The road pushed upward at a steady incline, enough to really strain the horses. Five more were blown and their blood drained into cups to strengthen the men, but the rest pushed on with the same placid tough-mindedness as their riders. Maybe the horses knew what fate awaited them if they faltered. Although Shai did not know the details, they had lost two tailmen, a young groom, and all nine of the slave bearers in the conflagration. No one spoke of the dead men.
The valley broadened but the heights beyond grew higher and more rugged. They came at midday to a spectacular overlook. Beyond, the valley split into three forks, each one plunging into the most impressive highlands Shai had ever seen, steep hillsides so green that the color burned the eye. Slopes blazed under the hot blue sky. Terraces of ripening grain stair-stepped down steep hillsides. Streams coursed down from every height. He glimpsed waterfalls like hidden ribbons caught among the crags.
Below, the road split, like the valley, into three distinct paths. Just north of this crossroads lay a startlingly blue lake and beside it a town.
“Sarida,” said Captain Anji.
Mai was haggard and tense, with her head wrapped in a shawl to leave only her face exposed.
The town had the usual octagon shape but fewer spires in its central temple and an untidy growth on its southern walls: a mass of wagons and livestock seemingly disgorged from the market quarter but not in motion. Any person who lived on the Golden Road could recognize, even from a distance, the caravan quarter. It was the lifeblood of a town, where merchants, carters, drovers, and guardsmen seeking a hire met, mingled, and made mutually advantageous bargains. No one traveled any distance alone.
