by Kate Elliott
He sat on the steps of his wagon to watch the sun set. Red spilled along the waters, painting a gods’ road where no mortal could walk. Much of the company settled down for the night, though a fair number felt safe enough to get drunk and sing.
Kesh was too restless to sleep. He sat late, marking the slow wheeling of the stars. The sigh of the water on the flat shore nagged at him all night, like his doubts and fears. Twice, he thought he heard the soft sound of weeping from inside the wagon, and twice, it ceased as soon as he rose, thinking to look inside. Shadows crawled along the shoreline. He saw a dark figure striding knee-deep far out in the quiet waters, a death-bright white cloak billowing out behind as though caught in a gale. He blinked, and it was after all only the light of the rising moon spilling along the sea. It wasn’t even windy.
In the morning, the caravan pushed north along the road, which took the upland route, always within sight of the Olo’o Sea. This good road, which he had walked before, was packed earth. The sights were familiar and comforting, the glassy stretch of sea to his left and the long rolling swells of the grassland to his right, shimmering under a wind out of the east. It was nice to walk in the front for a change. Each of the next five days, he marked the remaining four of the five fixed landmarks of the West Spur: Silence Cliff; the Scar; Rope Tree; the intersection with the Old Stone Road that led to the Three Brothers, the intersection that was the terminus of West Spur, the last mey post.
An hour after dawn, they passed the alabaster gates of the Old Stone Road. Other folk were also on the road and its attendant paths this early, most carting goods toward town: a girl drove a flock of sheep alongside the road; a dog trotted beside a lone traveler with pouches and loose packs hung from his shoulders and belt; a cripple seated on a ragged blanket was selling oranges, but no one stopped to buy.
Kesh stepped aside from the line of march and walked over to touch the mey post that marked the intersection. The gesture made him think of the envoy of Ilu. It was strange how a brief acquaintance could haunt a man, even a man like himself who kept all those who wished to call him “friend” at arm’s length. He watched as the point of the caravan turned southwest onto West Track. It had taken nine days to travel the West Spur from Dast Korumbos. Now the three noble towers of Olossi shone in the distance, where the land sloped down to the wide river that snaked along the lowland plain.
Tebedir, making the turn, waved at him, and he left the mey post and hurried after.
On the long slow descent down the gradual incline, they maintained an excellent view of the mouth of the River Olo and its environs. The alternating colors of the patternwork of agricultural fields, cut into sections by irrigation canals, faded into the hazy distance to the north and west on the Olo Plain. The town itself lay upstream. The walled inner city was nestled on a swell of bedrock almost entirely surrounded by a stupendous oxbow bend in the river. There were walls of a sort even around the sprawling outer districts, but although Sapanasu’s clerks and Atiratu’s poets related stories of sieges and attacks fended off by the impressive inner wall works in days long past, the outer wall was little more than a palisade thrown up in stages to mark the slow outward crawl as Olossi “let out her skirts.”
“A disorderly town,” remarked Tebedir. “In the empire, all is laid in a double square. Every door and gate has a number and name.”
“With the Shining One’s aid, I will leave that place by tomorrow, and never return,” Kesh said reflexively. Olossi’s shortcomings did not interest him.
His gaze followed the winding river downstream to where the delta glistened with a dozen slender channels. Tiny fishing boats worked the estuary, sliding in and out of view among great stands of reeds. Even from this distance he saw the rocky island in the delta crowned with a compound of whitewashed buildings. The temple had high walls, four courtyards, and three piers: one for supplies, one for those coming to worship at the altar of the Merciless One, and one for those departing sated or scarred.
He was then and for a long time as he trudged beside the wagon almost delirious with fear and hope. He was sick and dizzy. To keep his balance he had to clutch one of the stout posts that held up the taut canvas cover that tented the wagon’s bed. He silently wept with longing, and fixed his gaze on the ground to watch his feet hit, one after the other and again and again. That repetition soothed him as he tramped along. The steady plodding impact of his feet, like the post, was something to cling to as he cut away his fears and hopes and ruthlessly consigned them to the furnace, where they burned; to the cold ice, where they grew a sheen of frost. He set them aside. He must not be weak. Not now.
A pair of horses moved alongside him, riding from the front toward the rear, and one rider turned to keep pace with his wagon.
“Are you well, merchant?”
The clear voice made him startle, and he looked up into the gaze of the young woman who was the wife of Captain Anji. Once or twice on West Spur he’d seen her studying his little camp, as though Moy and Tay—when he let them out—interested her. But she’d never spoken to him before. Her husband watched as wolves did who have recently eaten: curious but not ready to attack.
“A long, weary journey, Mistress,” he said with a forced smile. He let go of the pole and wiped his sweating brow.
Her smile had the strengthening effect of a cool draught of water. “Close now, I see. Is Olossi your home?”
“No, Mistress. But it is my destination.”
She glanced at his wagon. He had never been this close to her before. She was stunningly lovely, and dressed in a magnificently rich Sirniakan silk robe cut away for riding, with the sleeves sewn so long they covered most of the hand. These were the sleeves of a woman rich enough that she was not obliged to perform manual labor. Her long nails were perfectly kept, painted in astonishing detail with tiny golden dragons curled against a blue sky.
She caught him looking, nodded with a look both polite and reserved, and moved on. He turned to watch her go. No man had the power to resist a second look: She had features not so much perfectly proportioned as entirely captivating, marked by an exotic touch around the eyes, which had a narrowing slant rather like the slantwise eye folds of the Silvers, now that he thought of it. Certainly, she was beautiful, the kind of woman a man must marry if he could. But he possessed a treasure much more valuable. As the pair moved back along the line the captain looked back over his shoulder, and Kesh smiled, finding strength in the thought.
Much more valuable.
He would succeed. He had to.
SOME MANNER OF accident—a broken axle—held up the rear portion of the train, but by midmorning the forward half of the caravan clattered through Crow’s Gate in the outer wall to the sprawl of Merchants’ Walk, the way station, clearinghouse, and bazaar for traders who came from all parts of the Hundred and from over the Kandaran Pass out of the south, and for that trickle who walked the Barrens Road out of the dry and deadly west. Wide, dusty avenues were lined with warehouses and auction blocks. Behind them, alleys plunged in and out of warrens where the lesser merchants and peddlers and cartmen lodged in narrow boarding-houses. Sapanasu’s clerks kept two temples here, alive at all hours with bargaining, recordkeeping, and argument.
At the Crow’s Gate temple, shaven-headed clerks stood sweating under the shade of a colonnade as they settled accounts. Kesh stood in line with the rest to pay his portion of the guards’ fee, and after signing off and paying up he was free of his obligation to the caravan and free to continue into Merchants’ Walk. He handed over the last of his leya. Except for a string of twenty-two vey, which was not even enough to fill his leather bottle with cheap wine, he had nothing left except his merchandise and his accounts book.
“We haven’t much time,” he said to Tebedir. “Shade Hour is coming. Everything closes down.”
Beyond Crow’s Gate Field, the road split into three. Kesh directed Tebedir to drive to the right, and they soon rolled into Gadria’s Oval, commonly known as Flesh Alley.
T
he broad oval, which maintained a surprising bit of grass, was ringed by stately ironwood trees and by the accounts houses and holding pens for merchants who specialized in buying and selling debt, or paupers and criminals destined for slavery. In the middle of the oval rose the stepped marble platform with its spectacular ornamented roof, where at this moment a pair of boys, guarded by bored hirelings, were being offered for sale. The crowd was sparse. Many turned to look at the wagon. It was not an exciting day at the market.
“The house with the mark of three rings,” he said.
The master of the Three Rings offered shade and water gratis to any customers or purveyors arriving by cart or wagon. Kesh got Tebedir settled, then opened the door of the wagon.
“Moy! Tay!”
They ventured out cautiously, staring around with wide eyes. They looked at him, at the accounts house with its open doors, then saw the marble platform and the business going on there. The younger girl whispered fiercely to her sister, and they clutched hands, bent their heads, and waited.
“Come on,” he said, not liking to look at them. It wasn’t right to go so meekly. He would have respected them more had they raged and fought against their fate, but they never had. They had come to him obediently, and it seemed they would leave the same way.
He herded them up to an open door and inside. The room was empty except for a two-stepped wooden platform, ringed by a rail, that stood in the middle. There was nothing else, only tall windows open to admit as much light as possible, and the packed earth floor. Kesh closed the door and rang the bell hanging from a hook to the left of the entryway. He led the girls up onto the platform, where they stood holding on to the railing and looking around with frightened expressions. Yet, knowing a bit about them from the long journey, he understood they had long since accepted their fortune. Neither cried. They still held hands.
The spy window opened and, after a moment, closed. Footsteps pattered away within the house. From outside, the patter of the auctioneer wound up and down. A dog barked. Wheels ground along the dirt.
The inner door slid open, and Merchant Calon stepped down into the room.
“Keshad! I knew you would bring me something of value!” He was a tidy man, narrow, neat, and dressed in an austere tunic scarcely more than what an honored slave might wear. He circled the girls, who watched him as mice might eye a stoat. They did not whimper or cry. In their own way, they had courage. “This looks promising in a month in which I have suffered many disappointments. Quite unique.” Calon called into the house, where a figure stood half in shadow beyond the door. “Where is Malia?”
“She is coming, exalted.”
“Listen,” said Kesh. “We have dealt fairly with each other for several years now. I have always brought you the best of what I’ve found in the south.”
“So you have. I think we have both profited.”
“I know Malia will want to inspect them first, but let me speak bluntly. Offer me a fair price, and I won’t haggle.”
Calon paused and, without looking at Kesh, touched first the ivory bracelet on his left wrist, and after this the one on his right.
“I call them Moy and Tay, which means in their language ‘one’ and ‘two.’ Tay is not yet in her bleeding. The elder girl is also young, a year or two older. They may be sisters. That wasn’t clear to me when I obtained them. They have not given me a moment’s trouble on the long journey, nor did they ever try to escape.”
An elderly woman appeared at the door, leaning on a cane of polished ebony. She wore both bronze slave bracelets and the ivory bracelets reserved for those who were free. “Keshad,” she said in her spider’s voice, whispery and tough. Her smile was tenuous. She was not, in Kesh’s estimation, a cruel woman, but she was not compassionate either. “What have you got here? Southern. Look at those complexions. Very fine.”
Calon rang the bell twice. A servant appeared with a trio of silver goblets, each half full of sweet cordial. He offered one to Kesh. The two men turned their backs so Malia could inspect the girls closely. Kesh sipped as cloth rustled and slipped, as each girl spoke a few words and, when Malia sang a phrase, mimicked her. They had voices as sweet and clear as the cordial. Feet and hands and teeth would be examined, and skin and body prodded and stroked.
Malia took her time, most of it in silence. Kesh sipped.
“What news from Master Feden’s house?” Calon asked with seeming casualness.
“We just walked in today through Crow’s Gate. I came here first.”
Calon grinned. “I see. Best not to let Feden’s fat fist grab the best of your merchandise. He would only find a way to cheat you, him and the other Greater Houses.”
“I never said so.”
Calon nodded. “Nor can you, so I’ll say it for you. Those who sit at the voting table with a majority of votes held to themselves can play the tune the rest of us must dance to. They see only what is good for themselves, while the land falls into ruin around them. They are made shortsighted by their own greed. Eiya! So be it. Those of us in the Lesser Houses are ready—poised—to make a change, whether the Greater Houses will, or no. As are you. Listen, young man, I expect the day comes quickly when you are able to buy yourself free.” With his chin he gestured toward the girls. “If you’ve a mind to, I would offer you a position as a junior trader in my house, for it seems, alas, that I may have an opening. You’ve a good head, a clear mind, and a cool heart. Consider it.”
Kesh met his gaze, respect for respect. “If I meant to stay in Olossi, I would consider it, Master Calon. You’re the only merchant here I respect enough to work for.”
“I’ll take that as thanks, then. Malia? A fair price.”
She circled around once more before standing in silence for a time, calculating. She had never been a beauty; intelligence and ruthlessness had bought her freedom. Kesh smelled the lemon water in which she washed, a bracing and cooling scent even on such a hot day.
“A good investment,” she said. “They are young enough to learn. They are healthy. They have clear voices. I think they can be trained as jaryas, if it so happens that they are also intelligent. If not, they can be trained to sing what others compose. Although they’re not great beauties they have an unusual coloring that will attract notice. Three hundred leya apiece. Six hundred, altogether.”
Kesh pressed teeth into his lower lip, so he wouldn’t yelp with triumph and thus betray himself. Ten cheyt! Ten gold pieces was the best haul he had ever made. And he would need every vey.
“A fair price?” Calon asked.
“More than I expected,” said Kesh.
Calon grinned. “Malia is never wrong. I’m of a mind to have them trained in my own house. That younger one, now . . . in a few years, if she has the talent, she might hope to marry one of Olossi’s old merchants who has lost his first pair of wives from childbearing or the swamp fever. I can expect to sell her for ten times what I paid. So you’re getting no bargain, Keshad. Do not think I am sentimental.”
“I am satisfied it is a fair price. You’ll have to train and feed them. Let us seal it.”
Malia led the girls away. They did not look back as they vanished through the inner door into their new life.
MASTER FEDEN LIVED in the inner city, but his clearinghouse, like those of the other sixteen Greater Houses, stood in the outer city along Stone Field, the rectangular plaza at the heart of Merchants’ Walk. Paving stones rumbled beneath the wheels of Tebedir’s cart, an oddly comforting sound after months squeaking along packed-earth roads. With afternoon settling over the day, traffic in the plaza was thinning out. Shade Hour beckoned. Olossi was slipping into its daily drowse.
Feden’s clearinghouse wore a banner of green and orange silk, ghastly colors pieced together in a quartered flower. Its front had seven gates, doors built to a doubled height and width, but only the servants’ entrance remained open at this hour. They drove through the open doors, nodding to the yawning guard, who recognized Keshad and passed him through with an unintereste
d wave. The wagon rattled down a high arched corridor built of stone and into the dusty, treeless courtyard where Master Feden’s hired men and slaves hauled water from the cistern, laded handcarts for transport into town, and loitered in the shade offered by rooftops.
“It’s Kesh!”
The slaves sweating at their labors set aside their tasks and came over to gather beside the wagon. They looked, but did not touch.
“How’d the run go?” asked old Sushad, wiping sweat from the drooping side of his mouth.
Kesh nodded, too full to speak, and the others, who had been whispering and eager, fell silent and moved away to let Tebedir drive the wagon into a bay at Kesh’s direction. Tebedir unhitched the horses and led them to a trough built against the outermost wall of the courtyard. Kesh counted up costs in his head. Feden would charge him for water and feed and stabling, so he had to work quickly and reach the master before it came time to raise the Shade Hour flag.
Footsteps slapped the dirt. He turned.
Nasia slipped into the shaded cover of the cargo bay. She wore a short linen tunic. Her legs and feet were bare, dusty from the courtyard, and she had a smudge of whiting powder on her nose, a smear of oil across her knuckles, and a fresh bruise on her cheek.
“Is it true?” she asked in her soft voice. She didn’t touch him. Her slave bracelets glimmered as she raised her hands, and dropped them again. “They’re saying in the halls that you’ve earned enough to buy your freedom.”
