by Kate Elliott
He had made his choices. He had bought his own freedom.
That night he slept on the hiring ground, under the wagon, with his strings of leya tucked against his chest.
In the morning, he bespoke a pair of bearers and their covered litter, nothing fancy but its cloth walls opaque and tied tight. Once he concluded his business and his contract with Tebedir and paid him the bonus he had promised, he had cleared all of his debts.
Only one thing remained: It was time to cast his last and most desperate throw.
27
The path out to the village of Dast Olo led along a raised stone causeway that ran first through grain fields, then through the pond-like dari fields, and finally into the tangle of reed flats and minnow channels that marked the edge of the navigable delta waters. Kesh walked briskly, but for all his travels he had trouble keeping pace with the two bearers who carried the curtained litter.
“Yah, so,” said the talkative one, who walked at the front rails. “Brother and I, you know, it is the tradition out there in the Barrens border country, the village sends lads in to the green lands to work three years, and bring home coin and salt and silk. Maybe a wife, but that’s hard to come by considering green-land women don’t like the Barrens.”
They were short, with broad shoulders and torsos and powerful hands. Talker wasn’t even out of breath, and while Kesh had already broken a sweat under the clear early-morning sky, these two had not bothered with a drink from their leather bottles.
“Probably we’ll marry Lariada, from out by Falls.”
Silent grinned appreciatively.
“Yah, so, she’s a strong girl, and more important a smart one who apprenticed to the Lantern, so she can keep accounts which is a powerful skill to have, to my way of thinking, if a pair of brothers are thinking to tenure good pastureland and build up a herd of cattle like our father and uncles never could do because of the drought back in the Year of the Goat, that would be the Gold Goat before either of us were birthed, not this last one. They lost everything but for the one heifer and the one dray.”
“They didn’t lose the goats,” said Silent.
“Maybe not, but those goats’ll survive anything, and grand mam said their milk was sour for two year after.”
“How’s the caravan trade going up the Barrens Road these days?” asked Kesh, wiping another waterfall of sweat off his brow. He carried a slight enough burden, a satchel slung over his back with nothing more than a change of clothes, his accounts bundle, and the detritus of traveling life: knife, spoon, eating bowl, worship bowl, a pair of wax candles, flint and steel to light them, one day’s worth of food, a leather bottle full of cheap wine. His weapons. The coin tied into his sleeves. It weighed like bricks already, because it was everything he owned.
They got within sight of Dast Olo before Talker got through with his description of the last twelve-year of caravan stories, and given that no more than a pair or three of caravans braved the Barrens Road every year, he took a long time telling an awful lot about not much.
“So the strangest part of it all, after the last caravan left and the girl paid her fine to the Witherer’s altar—and you can be sure that the arkhon had a long talking to old Silk Ears—!”
Silent snickered.
“—then we in the village were thinking it would be all the travelers until the flood rains passed, and we two were leaving anyway to come down here Olossi green land way for our three year, and what do we see as we start out the walk? Heya!”
Kesh barely had time to open his mouth for the polite reply before Talker rushed on.
“We go passing an envoy of Ilu, walking up the long west-facing slope as cheerful as a redbird and him walking west on the Barrens Road he told us because we did stop and ask thinking he was headed for the village or maybe Falls or maybe Dritavu, because you know that everyone knows there’s a Guardian altar up past Dritavu way that is forbidden but sometimes we see a light up there.”
“He talked as much as you do!” said Silent with another appreciative grin, although this one had no lascivious edge to it.
“I do not! That envoy, he’d have talked all five seasons from then until now if that reeve hadn’t flown patrolling overhead and scared the donkey! So we must run after, and the envoy must go on his way west over the Barrens Road. I wonder if he’s still alive, or come back to the Hundred as a living man, or only his bones! Say. Did I remember to tell you how we came to get that donkey?”
“We’re here,” said Kesh with relief.
Dast Olo rested on a huge platform that some said was a natural escarpment of rugged rock but which Sapanasu’s clerks and the Lady’s mendicants claimed was the base of an ancient fortress whose pillars and roof and walls had long ago been obliterated by wind and rain and the passing of years. The high ground kept the feet of the village out of the waters, even during a ten-year flood. Dast Olo boasted also a lucky five-set of inns catering to pilgrims.
“Straight to the pier,” he said as they paused at the base of the wagon ramp. “I’ll give you vey for beer at the inn once we get back from the island. In addition to your hire.”
“Seeing so much water makes a man thirsty,” agreed Talker as they trotted up the ramp, not even panting. They had a funny way of loping that made the litter skim smoothly over the ground, never jarring. Their legs looked as thick as pillars. Kesh’s legs had begun to sweat freely. He was glad he’d stripped down to a simple knee-length tunic and leather sandals, with nothing to chafe as he walked.
Dast Olo’s villagers were farmers, fishers, or marketers catering to the flow of pilgrims. The village was already awake. Most of the fishing boats were long since out on the waters.
“Only a city man sleeps abed after the sun is risen!” proclaimed Talker cheerfully as they trotted through the streets to the pilgrim’s pier.
Used to everything and anything, none of the folk out on their errands gave the curtained litter a second glance. The transaction at the pier—the price of a half leya per person was fixed by the temple—went swiftly. He handed two leya to an uninterested man with a flat-bottomed scow. The boatman tucked the coin in his sleeve and waited as Talker and Silent hoisted the litter in and settled themselves cross-legged in the rear with practiced ease, barely rocking the boat. Kesh had an ungainly time of it. He was shaking. Every surface seemed slick under his hands. Once the boat stopped rocking, the boater sighed, then poled away from the stone pier, and pushed along the channel toward the temple island. The closest pier flew the silk lotus banner that marked every temple to the Merciless One. Red petals on white linen: passion and death. Kesh shut his eyes as if by keeping them open he might force the island to recede by dint of the intensity of his desire. The boatman hummed a tuneless melody. Talker said nothing. The wind hummed at Kesh’s ears in descant to the boatman’s song. Once, they hissed through a stand of reeds. He hung a hand over the side and let it trail through the water, which was gaspingly cold except where they passed through a warmer, saltier eddy.
At last, the boat nudged up against Banner Pier. Kesh scrambled out as soon as the boatman tied up the scow. From here, he could not see Leave-taking Pier. The Devourer told no secrets. Those on their way to worship were shielded from the sight of those departing, in the same manner that those departing could expect to skim home without being seen by every arriving pilgrim.
As Talker and Silent got the litter onto the pier, a bare-chested, dark-haired lad dressed in a novice’s kilt walked up to Kesh. He was yawning as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
“You’re early.” He grinned skittishly, as if he had just recalled that hierodules dedicated to the Merciless One cast no judgment and made no comment. He gave Keshad the once-over up and down, nodded genially to Talker and Silent as if they came here all the time either as bearers or supplicants, and finally looked over the featureless curtains that concealed the interior of the litter. “My old aunt spent five years as a Devouring girl before she married,” he added, “and she used to say that
no person comes concealed for any good purpose. ‘Who is ashamed to be touched by the Devourer’s lips’?”
“It’s nothing to do with shame,” said Kesh, a tide of heat and anger swelling over him. His head throbbed, and he wanted it all to be done with and him walking away with what he had come for.
“Eiya! No harm meant! Which house is yours?”
“I’m here to see the Hieros.”
The lad’s mouth formed a circle.
A raucous cry split the air. Keshad actually jumped because he was already so on edge, but the others only tipped back their heads as folk always did to mark a reeve passing over along the northern edge of the delta and circling in toward Olossi.
“Uncle Idan says there were more of them reeves back when he was a lad,” said Talker. “Bad days, since that drought. It just goes to show that when folk don’t keep order in their own houses, pretty soon the land begins to suffer. So the gods teach us.”
“Bad luck on them who deserves it,” muttered the lad under his breath, making the cross-fingers sign against ill fortune close against his body, as if he didn’t want the others to see. He saw Kesh watching him, flushed, and turned his attention to the two bearers. “If you will wait in the outer court, I’d much appreciate it.”
“I need the litter brought with me,” said Kesh. “Then they can go and wait wherever you wish.”
“Are you sure?”
“That I need the litter brought with me?”
“That you want an audience with the Hieros. No one ever asks for that. If you knew her, you’d know—” He flicked hair out of his eyes and sidestepped away. “No one in sight. Not a soul come so early, and there’s none to leave.”
“Damn all,” said the boatman. “First come in the morning means a long wait, or a return trip made empty. My old arms!”
“Sorry, old man,” said the lad. “It wasn’t a lantern night, last night. You know the rules.”
“I won’t be long,” said Kesh, “as I’m not here to worship the Devourer, just to conduct a bit of business. If you’ll wait at Leave-taking Pier, I’ll pay you passage back, same as came here.”
The boatman grinned, showing brown teeth and gaps between. “Over there, then. Same number as coming. That’s fair.”
The lad hopped from one foot to the other. It was evident he wanted to ask what was going on, but novices did not ask about the business or predilections or desires or identities, if veiled, of pilgrims. It was against the rules.
“The Devourer eats secrets,” he said at last, with a hopeful glance at Kesh, as if encouraging him to confide a pair or three of mysteries.
“I’m ready to go,” said Kesh.
Unlit lanterns hung from the parallel ranks of posts that marked the path up to the outer court. To one side of the posts, the ground sloped down to the water’s edge and a thin strand of pebble beach. To the other side, rockier ground had been manicured into a pleasing arrangement of rock, moss, and pruned miniature trees, these islands separated by raked sand. A big ginny lizard—one of the Devourer’s acolytes, as they were called—perched on top of a rock, sunning itself. As they strode past, it cracked open its mouth just enough to show teeth.
A tall lattice fence grown thick with herboria and red and yellow falls of patience marked the beginning of the outer court. They passed through a gap in the lattice fence and walked toward the great gates between rows of benches. The outer court filled the wide space between the workshop wing and the long kitchen hall, which had a thatched roof but no walls. A dozen men and women chopped vegetables at tables, or sweated over hearths and grills. Halfway down to Tradesmen’s Pier, a big rounded bread oven was being cleaned out. The smell of that fresh bread made Kesh’s mouth water.
The lad beckoned them through the gates. “Heya!” he called to a pair of youths loitering in the shade. “Get down to the pier. You were already supposed to be there.”
They walked into the Heart Garden, a square courtyard surrounded by blank walls. Three closed inner gates beckoned, one painted golden yellow and one the pale silver of moonlight. The third, opposite the bronze-colored outer court gates, was painted as white as the walls and in fact was rather difficult to discern against the white walls. The lad motioned to benches placed within pools of shade cast by a dozen vine-covered arbors and surrounded by beds of bright yellow-bells, blood roses, and blue and violet stardrops. This time of day it was quiet, and the scent of the flowers, particularly the glorious stardrops, was piquant and heady, like a drug. They sat in the shade and waited while the lad vanished through the white gates.
At intervals, Talker and Silent glanced at the litter. They knew its weight and balance, but they asked no questions. Kesh rubbed his hands as if washing them. He had never been as anxious in his life as he was at this threshold, not even when he had faced down Master Feden. A hush had fallen. Somewhere unseen, a door scraped open and slid shut. He jumped up when one of the white doors slid open. An elderly woman appeared. She beckoned.
“Bring the litter,” he said.
The procession arrived at the white gate. The old woman was tiny, with chains of delicate dancer’s bells circling her wrists and ankles. Her long hair was gone to silver and bound back into a braid brightened with moss-green ribbons.
“Set your burden down just inside and then return out here,” she said to the bearers in a high, light voice. “We’ll call you when you’re needed.” To Kesh she said nothing.
Past the white gate, a screen blocked their view of the courtyard beyond. Talker and Silent set down the litter, and as soon as they retreated the lad appeared; he closed the doors by going out after them, leaving Kesh alone with the old woman. She wore blue silk, and smelled of sweet ginger.
She moved away around the screen without looking back at him and with a remarkable and agile haste. He followed the chime of her bells into a court grown so lush with vines and hedges and carefully pruned trees that the scent of green watered growing things made the air almost too thick to breathe. Around every corner of the labyrinthine pathway a new and different tiny glade was revealed, soft and shadowed and usually ornamented by some cunning, tiny waterfall trickling along a sculpture shaped out of rock or pipewood. At length his steps led him to a graveled open space at the center. A fountain splashed, water caressing the flanks of a statue depicting a man and a woman in the grip of the Devourer.
“Crude, but it was placed here long before my tenure. I would never have chosen something so unsophisticated.” The voice was low, harsh, and female.
He turned all the way around. He was alone, although the dense foliage offered a hundred hiding places.
“With what desire do you come to worship at the altar of the Merciless One?” the voice asked.
“I do not come to worship. I come to complete a transaction begun ten years ago. Where is Zubaidit?”
“She’s not available right now. You can’t see her.”
“I’m not here to see her. I’m here to buy out her debt.”
At a distance, a bell jangled. Nearby, he heard a hissed breath, the scrape of a shod foot on rock, and the whisper of dancing bells. The old woman, too, must be spying on him.
“She won’t go! She is a true hierodule of the Devourer. Our best student and most devoted worshiper.”
He heard her words with a contempt that made him snarl. “That’s not true.”
It can’t be true!
“I know who you are. It has been two years since you have seen her. Many things can change in that time. She thinks you’ve given up on her, and she’s turned her heart entirely to the goddess. She doesn’t want to speak to you again.”
Perhaps it was all for nothing. All those weary mey trudged; all the deals, the bargaining, the cold nights and hungry days and the endless hells of Master Feden’s house that he had endured for twelve years because each morning upon waking he could take in a breath that was a promise, that he would be free. And that she would be free.
“That’s what you say! I’ll hear it from h
er own lips, not yours.” He stooped, picked up a handful of pebbles, and cast them wildly toward a concealing thicket. They spattered. She mocked him with a laugh that made him grit his teeth. He fixed his gaze on the pour of the water as it coursed down the deep valleys made by the mingling of limbs, woman to man.
“You know the law,” he said at last. “I’ve come, as the gods of the Hundred give me the right to do. You must accept my payment if the hierodule agrees.”
Her voice hissed out of the shadows. “Spare yourself this humiliation. She won’t leave the temple.”
“Then she can live here freely, after I’ve spoken with her. She must tell me herself with her own voice. Unless you’ve cut out her tongue! But your hierodules need their tongues, don’t they?”
“Impious scrat! The Devourer will eat your testicles!”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Branches rattled as if a rat scrambled away through the undergrowth. As he waited, he became convinced someone was staring at him. Scanning the undergrowth, he saw nothing at first, but then, as his gaze picked out shapes, he distinguished the snout of a ginny lizard, shadowed under drooping striped-firecanth leaves. The creature stared intently down at him, from a branch higher than his own head. It bobbed its head at him but did not otherwise move; it watched him as if it were a sentry. A second head joined the first, an arm’s length away, and this one bent first one eye at him and then the other, head turning almost flirtatiously.
