by Kate Elliott
He elbowed into the mob surrounding the reeve and, finding the innkeeper, grabbed him by the arm. “Heya! Heya! Pay attention! We need to bring in wounded men, maybe a dead one. An envoy of Ilu needs our help! Quick!”
Kesh’s fierce words cowed the man, and the reeve looked his way with the calm expression of a man completely in his element.
“Go on,” said the reeve to the innkeeper. “You heard what he said. Bring in any wounded at once. Find that envoy! If there are any innocent folk these ospreys killed, I’ll need their name and clan, so we can make an accounting and see that any death tithe is offered correctly.”
Kesh tugged the innkeeper after him. The reeve, meanwhile, gestured to the others to move back to their wagons. Afterward he walked to the black-clad guardsmen. Kesh saw the envoy’s bright blue cloak on the ground and he broke away from the innkeeper and ran to kneel beside him. The arrow had an ugly look to it. The shaft had broken four times and it was clear that the envoy had been tumbled when the horses were ridden over him.
“Is there a healer here?” he asked the innkeeper.
The man gave a groan of despair and shook his head. “Nay! Nay! It’s many days’ walk to the closest temple devoted to the Lady! We haven’t seen a mendicant in weeks.”
“What about the Merciless One? Sometimes there are healers there.”
“The closest temple is all the way north by Olossi.”
“I know that place,” said Kesh grimly.
“Eiya! Horrible!” wailed the innkeeper as he stared at the body. “To have it known that an envoy of Ilu died here! No one will want to bide here or sup and drink at my inn. It’s an ill omen! We’re ruined!”
“Get a flat board—a tabletop—a door—something! We must carry him inside.” He looked up at the sky. “It might rain, and it will soon be dark.”
The innkeeper needed no greater encouragement. He bolted back the way they had come. Kesh pressed a hand gently to the envoy’s neck. He breathed still, if shallowly. Life pulsed in his body. The breath of the gods had not yet left him.
Kesh curled his hand around the arrow as close against the envoy’s back as he could and tested its grip by slowly twisting it. To his surprise, it slid free easily. Amazingly, the point had not pierced the fabric of the cloak but only driven it deep into the body. He cast the arrow away and swiftly pushed the cloak to one side as blood gushed up through the yellow silk of the tunic. He got out his knife and slit open the back of the tunic to expose the wound. The tumbling by the horses had done the most damage by disturbing the point, but it was remarkable how the silk had not torn despite the speed and force of the missile. He pressed the heel of one hand on the wound to stem the flow of blood and closed his eyes, trying to sense the pattern of the body’s humors beneath the skin, as it was said true healers might do who could breathe and smell and even hear the whispering complaints of illness or injury.
“Ssa!” came the whisper. “Sshuu!” And then, “Where did they come from? Who set them on us?”
Kesh opened his eyes to see that the envoy’s eyes were open. One of them, anyway. He couldn’t see the other since the man’s face was turned to one side because he was laid out on his stomach.
“Please lie still,” said Kesh. “Don’t talk. I got the arrow out. Hang on. We’ll get you to the inn. You’ll rest there.”
The first winds heralding dusk sighed down off the mountains, and the cloak rose and sunk into ridges and hollows as if something living were moving inside it. The envoy did not reply, but perhaps he had passed out again. His left arm lay at an awkward angle, and bruises were purpling all along his back where hooves had struck him.
“How badly hurt?” The reeve crouched beside Kesh. He was younger than the envoy but a fair bit older than Kesh, a good-looking fellow with short black hair teased by a few strands of white. He stood at medium height, lean but very fit, and he moved with the strength of a man who has confidence in his ability to stick it out in a brawl. A dangerous man, in his own way, and not unlike his eagle in the way he examined the envoy with a keen gaze, without actually touching him, as predators seek from above the sign of their prey by studying the ripples in grass and the flash of sudden movement along the ground.
Kesh eased the heel of his hand off the wound. Blood oozed, but the gushing had stopped. He pushed the envoy’s cloak off the body and into a heap at one side, then slit the tunic from neck to base and opened it like wings.
“Trampled and shot,” mused the reeve, “but still breathing. Good thing those ospreys are all dead, as it’s more merciful than the death they’d receive for killing a holy man.”
“He’s still breathing! He spoke to me.”
The reeve grunted and glanced over his shoulder. Kesh looked, too, and saw that the black-clad guards had dismounted and spread out, and were hauling the corpses of the bandits into rows the better to tally, identify, and dispose of them. Locals and servants hovered close by, hoping to strip the bodies of second-rate but still precious silk.
“That’s one band,” remarked the reeve, more to himself than to Keshad, “but it won’t be the end of it.”
“The end of what?”
“These attacks along the roads. I came south from Clan Hall to investigate.”
“I heard there’s been trouble. I’ve been south some months. You’d think Argent Hall would have been patrolling.”
“So you would think. Worst, it turns out it’s the captain in charge who has made common pact with these ospreys.”
“The captain? The one in charge of the border post? Captain Beron?”
“The same,” said the reeve. “How do you know him?”
“I heard the clerks speak his name as I passed through earlier today. He seemed a decent man.”
But the thought struck him hard enough that he fell silent: It was my treasure the ospreys sought. He saw it, and let me pass, and sent these men after.
He said nothing, although the reeve waited, as if sensing that Kesh clutched a secret to his heart.
“Beron?” The envoy stirred. His voice had the hoarse gurgle of a man talking past blood. “Dedicated to the Earth Mother at birth. Crane-born—did you see his Crane mark? Sworn to Kotaru the Thunderer. Well. It’s no wonder.” That wheeze was, perhaps, meant to be a laugh, but it sounded more like a death rattle.
The reeve regarded the envoy with a look of mild amazement.
“What’s no wonder?” demanded Kesh. “Yet if you would be silent, uncle, we might save you!”
“Cranes are orderly. . . . Thunderer likes discipline. . . . Earth Mother arranges all things but . . . can be rigid. Overturn these . . .” He gargled on blood as he tried to suck in air.
“Overturn these,” said the reeve softly, “and you have chaos.”
“It is easy to subvert a man . . . who is in all parts desiring order . . . imposed from without. Eh! Eh! Any envoy of Ilu would have advised against . . . dedicating this child . . . to Kotaru.”
“Uncle! Keep still! You must spare yourself.”
The reeve looked fixedly at Kesh as the innkeeper trotted up, gasping and grunting and leading a pair of men who carried a tabletop on which to bear the wounded man. The envoy closed his eyes. They shifted him over and hurried off, but Kesh grabbed the innkeeper by the sleeve.
“There’s a pair under the Ladytree. A poor brave lad who I fear is dead. And my driver, who needs his wound washed and bound with a salve. If you have any starflower or soldier’s friend, they are good for such injuries. Or Bright Blue, which stems bleeding—nay, it’s too far south for that.”
The innkeeper gave him a fearful grimace and tore away, shouting at a pair of untidy lads loitering by the gate to come and give a hand, and he lumbered off toward the inn after the envoy while his servants, or slaves, ran toward the Ladytree.
“You know something of the healing properties of plants,” said the reeve, who had not once taken his gaze from Keshad during this exchange. He rose, brushing the dust from his knees, and when Keshad looked past
him at the black-clad foreigners tidying the field, he looked, too, to see what caught Kesh’s interest.
“Where did those come from?” asked Kesh. “Were they patrolling? I’ve never seen such a company of guardsmen in Olossi.”
“No. They’re the hired guard for another caravan. It was running about half a day behind yours. I saw them coming down the pass. As a reeve, I have the power to deputize folk when I need their aid.”
“They’re not Sirniakan.”
“Are they not?” The reeve sat back on his heels with a look of pleased interest. “What are they, then?”
“I’m not sure, but I think they’re Kin. Qin. I can’t say it right. Grass eaters. That’s what they’re called in Mariha.”
“Mariha?”
“That’s a princedom west of the empire. They were ruled by five princes for a long time, so I was told, and none were happy except those who ruled. Then these Qin people came out of the west and killed the ruling princes. Now the Qin rule in Mariha.”
He was about to say more, but he faltered, seeing too late that the reeve’s pleasant interrogation had been meant to draw him out.
“Beyond the western edge of the Sirniakan Empire?” mused the reeve. “Well, I’ve seen no maps nor have I patrolled those lands, so I can’t say I understand it. These men and their captain claim to be mercenaries. They hired themselves to the caravan as guards.”
For a while that seemed drawn out far too long, the reeve smiled at Kesh as Kesh squirmed, shifting his feet and berating himself in his thoughts. This reeve was a truly dangerous man, for all his cordiality. He must start to wonder why the ospreys had attacked in such numbers and into the village rather than waiting and raiding along the road. He must start to wonder what it was they were after so urgently.
“I’d like to talk to you further,” said the reeve.
“I have to leave at dawn.”
“As must I. Come see me in the inn later, when you’ve a chance. Don’t forget your accounts book and tallies.” He said the words with such a benevolent smile that Keshad knew he absolutely would be rounded up by those grim-faced guardsmen and marched before the reeve as before the assizes if he did not present himself before the man this very night. When a reeve said such words, in that tone of voice, a man had to obey.
“It’s getting dark,” he said, to escape.
He fled to the Ladytree to find Tebedir arguing with the lads from the inn. The driver had already poured a dram of his potent brew onto the cut and bound it with a strip of linen, and he refused any other aid.
“Best see to the boy,” he said.
“He must be carried,” said Kesh to the lads, who bent to grab the youth by ankles and wrists. “Nay, not like that, you fools. His guts will fall out.”
“What matter?” asked the shorter lad. “He’s dead, this one. Just not yet.”
“Wish he’d stop squealing,” said the taller one. “Makes a lot of noise for a dying man, don’t you think?”
“No one can survive a plug to the guts. Gah! He smells!”
“Go get something to carry him on!” shouted Kesh.
They fled as Kesh cursed after them.
The lad was whimpering and keening, and the sound did grate the ears, but Kesh felt pity for him, and anyway the lad had probably saved Kesh’s cargo with his stalwart defense of his master’s wagon. He crouched and smoothed the lad’s forehead and talked to him as he would talk to an injured dog, letting the sound of his voice act as a focus as the lad’s breathing caught, ceased . . . and gasped again as he fought back to life.
Tebedir offered a bowl of water and a cloth to Kesh, who wiped the lad’s brow as he mewled and cried for his mother. Flies gathered on the dead ospreys, and flies buzzed around the lad’s ghastly wound, all pink and gray with oozing blood draining his life as it dribbled onto the ground. Wind whispered in the Ladytree, and between one breath and the next the lad escaped into the air, slipped away on the breeze, his breath following the shadow path toward home. A sprawled hand lay open; the mark of the Ox decorated his wrist.
Tebedir murmured a prayer. Kesh sank back on his heels as the pair of lads trotted up empty-handed. A stout man wearing a stained merchant’s coat labored along behind them. When he saw the dead boy, he slapped a hand to his forehead.
“Not under the Ladytree! Now I’ll have to pay the death offering to the Lady, too!”
Tebedir raised an eyebrow and looked at Kesh.
“This boy saved your cargo,” said Kesh sharply. “He defended your wagon with selfless courage. I can’t say the same for you.”
“This is none of your business! Move aside! Oh, by the Witherer’s Kiss, you fools!” he shouted at the lads. “You should have dragged him out from under the tree! Now I’m stuck with the cursed Lady tithe.”
Kesh rose and turned to Tebedir. “Watch the cart, if you will. If I have to stand and listen to this any longer, I’ll hit him.”
“Please hit,” said Tebedir. “That boy fought like brave man.”
“Pissing foreigners!” snarled the merchant. “Get out of my way!”
Kesh lifted a fist, and such a tide of loathing swept him that he hauled back—the merchant shrieked—and from the cart a female voice said words in a language Kesh had never heard before. It was like a bucketful of icy spring water splashed over him. He recovered; he remembered: Hit a man beneath a Ladytree, violating the Lady’s law, and you paid a fine to her mendicants. They always knew; you could never get around it. Pay a fine, and it was that much coin thrown away. He could afford to lose none of his profit, not now, not this time. Not because he was disgusted by a self-important, selfish jackal of a man who paid his lackwit servant in sticky buns since the poor boy was too ignorant and too stupid and now too dead to demand better pay.
Shaking, he lowered his hand, gave the bowl and cloth to Tebedir, grabbed his ledger and pouch, and strode away. The merchant began yapping after him, but Kesh walked fast and didn’t listen.
Dusk lay heavily over the commons. A cheerful fire burned in the outdoor hearth of the inn’s courtyard, and men gathered there, drinking, but no songs warmed the twilight and the talk looked intense but muted. No one laughed. Other merchants hunkered down beside their carts. A half-dozen hirelings prowled around the ranks of corpses, but a quartet of black-clad mercenaries guarded the dead men, and Kesh guessed that no one would strip those bodies, not tonight, not without permission from the mercenary captain or the reeve. He paused by the gate to look over the mercenaries from a safe distance, not so close that they might feel he was challenging them. A few were setting up crude tents, canvas stretched out as a lean-to over bare ground to provide shelter against rain and wind. A pair rode off toward the south gate. Others moved among the horses, unsaddling some and stringing their spare mounts along a line for the night. They watched the movement of merchants and hirelings and slaves in the commons in the same way that wolves study the behavior of deer in a clearing. They ignored the corpses, though Kesh could not. The souls of dead folk begged for release, and the longer they lingered here, the more likely they would get up to some mischief.
He touched fingers to forehead and lips, and patted his chest twice, remembering the words of the Shining One Who Rules Alone: Death is liberation.
“There are no ghosts,” he said, as if saying it would make it true.
Too late he noticed a young man coming up to the gate carrying a full kettle of steaming barsh. He halted and stared at Kesh strangely, as if he’d heard the comment. Kesh opened the gate for him, and the young man nodded in thanks and hurried toward the mercenaries, looking back once. He was dressed differently, in loose trousers and a short kirtle bound at the waist with a sash. His red-clay coloring and pleasant features reminded Keshad more of his two Mariha slave girls than of the stocky riders with their flat, broad cheekbones, sparse mustaches, and predator’s gaze.
Inside the inn, the reeve had set up court. He had drawn up a table parallel to one end of the long room. Here he sat, stripped out
of cloak and sleeveless vest and down to shirtsleeves, on a bench between table and wall, and seated beside him the man who must be the mercenary captain. The contrast between the two men made Kesh pause beside the door as he tried to decide whether to get in line with the other merchants being interviewed by the reeve, or grab a drink first to fortify himself against the coming interrogation.
The reeve had an easy way of talking to the merchants who laid out their ledgers and tallied their chits in response to his smiling questions. His manner suggested this was merely an inconvenience between friends. The other man was a stranger, reserved, removed, but aware of every action within the smoky interior. He glanced at Kesh, noting his scrutiny, and marked him with a nod before looking elsewhere. That he understood the words flying back and forth Kesh guessed by the way he would cock his head at intervals and glance sideways so as not to seem to be paying too much attention to the talk of cargoes and tallies. He had much the look of the Qin soldiers, but a striking nose and the shape of his eyes gave him the look of a man who has been twisted out of different clay. Kesh wasn’t sure which man made him more nervous: the genial eagle or the silent wolf.
The innkeeper sidled past, on his way to the door, and Kesh caught his sleeve and tugged him to a stop.
“Here, now, you old toad. Those two lads you sent were useless. There’s a boy dead beneath the Ladytree—”
“Thank goodness!” wheezed the innkeeper, trying to pry his sleeve out of Kesh’s grasp. “That’s none of my trouble, then. I have enough as it is!”
“As sour as your cordial! Where is the envoy?”
“Lying as peaceful as he can, out on the shade porch.” He recoiled, although Kesh did nothing but give him a disgusted look. “He’s under a shelter! If he dies under my roof it’ll cost me half my season’s profit for the purification ritual. I am not a cruel man, ver, but it will not help me or my family if I lose everything we have, will it?”
