by Kate Elliott
Anji nodded. “You’re right to be cautious. It’s what I would do in your place. Let my soldiers camp outside this gate tonight. It’s no hardship for them, as long as they can water the horses and buy some manner of food—whatever is available—for their supper. I’ll come into the town myself with the prisoner, by your leave. Then I can speak in front of the council as soon as it meets.”
“The full council next meets in three days. Wakened Crane. You’ll have to attend alone.”
“Together with a small escort for my wife and her slaves. I would prefer it if she be found a decent place to stay. Some place with baths nearby, if you have such.”
She blushed, but he wasn’t looking at her although it seemed to her in that instant that he could hear her reaction, because of his slight smile, nothing too blatant. A promise, not forgotten even at this juncture. In response, she twitched the silk shawl back, and Waras got a good look at her face for the first time.
“Eh!” said the captain, forgetting words, and recovering himself with a tincture of grace. He nodded at the caravan master, as though the wordless exclamation had been meant for him, and turned back to Anji so deliberately it was evident he was having trouble not staring. She was pleased to see him shaken even in this small manner. When thrown into the wilderness, one must use every weapon at hand. “I can’t allow any of you to bide within the walls. But a bath seems fair. I’ll allow you two men for your own personal guard, ver, and four to escort you, verea.” He nodded at Mai.
“We were to meet a reeve here,” added Anji.
“That reeve was the one who alerted us when we reached the border crossing,” put in Master lad hastily. “He came in advance of us. You must have heard the entire story from him already.”
Captain Waras had a certain measure of dignity; he had heft and seriousness. “Given the severity of the accusations, I’d like to take a look at the prisoner. Get a statement from him, his name and clan. If he’s alive, that is. Or did you bring in a dead man?”
Master lad bristled. “We brought him in alive, so he could testify. See for yourself!” He unlatched the door, opened it, whipped aside the canvas drape, and stepped away.
Mai had lost track of Shai, but now he stepped into view. He had a clear line of sight into the wagon’s interior, and the look of consternation and shock on his face could not have been copied by any traveling performer as they acted out a tale. Within that gloom sat the prisoner, cross-legged on the wagon’s bed, chin slumped to chest as if sleeping. There was a sudden cold silence, like an unexpected stirring of icy wind into a hot hot day.
“What is it, Shai?” asked Anji, who stood at an angle from the opening. He could not see inside.
Mai already knew. She knew that look on Shai’s face. It was the look he always got when he unexpectedly saw a ghost. Always the same look. Always the same.
“ ‘A dart, a dart in my eye, how it stings!’ ” murmured Shai.
“He’s dead,” Mai whispered.
CAPTAIN WARAS AND his men collected more guards and escorted the Qin troop farther down along the river’s shore until they reached a side channel in that area where the river became a delta. They forded a shallow channel and fetched up on a small island. Easy to guard and hard to escape from, Anji said, because easy to hear the sound of horses crossing the sluggish backwater.
In this camp, the men had up their tents and set to work with the single-minded concentration she most admired about them. They had leisure now for a hundred tasks. Horses could be groomed properly, weapons polished, knives sharpened, clothing mended, harnesses repaired, pots polished and scrubbed clean. They set to these tasks with a will, all the while seeming to ignore the guards set around them. Yet she knew they were ready to fight. None strayed farther than an arm’s length from his favored sword or bow except when they went, in shifts, to wash themselves in a clear-flowing branch of the river; even then some stood guard while others dunked and splashed.
There was plenty of driftwood for campfires. She washed herself as well as she could, although it was not the same as a proper bath. She mended clothing because she had a neat hand with the needle, especially on the delicate lengths of silk. Anji worked alongside the other men, sharpening his sword and polishing his harness.
In truth, despite the threat hanging over them, she was glad for a pair of days where they weren’t moving. At first, her worst problem was bugs. But as the first day passed, and a second came to its close, she found herself made restless by anxiety.
“What will happen?” she asked Anji. It was late in the afternoon of the second day. He was seated beside her, replacing one of the leather straps fixed to his saddle. Stripped of grime, and polished, the silver fittings on the saddle gleamed.
He paused to consider her question, then lifted his head and stared across the shallow channel, the fence that bound them to this islet. He marked the placement of the Olossi militia on the far shore and then looked beyond them toward the distant escarpment that marked the high country to the south. There, Mai could just make out the narrow ribbon of road crawling down the long slope down which they had come two days ago. She had felt so hopeful, then.
“ ‘A dart in my eye,’ ” he mused.
They had gone over the ghost’s words again and again. It was the only phrase Shai had heard before the corpse and the wagon had been hauled off by Captain Waras’s men; naturally, they had been given no chance to examine either.
“How did we miss the killing? Who wanted him dead?”
Anji had no answer.
32
Keshad sat on a mat under a Ladytree. Off in the distance he heard the river’s lazy voice, and the haunting call of a dusk wren. Yesterday morning he and Zubaidit had walked free, out of Olossi. They had walked relentlessly, neither of them flagging. In two full days, they had trudged more than twenty mey on West Track. It would take a caravan three or four days to cover as much ground.
He stared at the string of coin draped over his palm. “How could you have had that many debts racked up in town? How often were you allowed to leave the temple? How could any slave spend that much money?”
Bai was sprawled in grass just beyond the farthest reach of the canopy, eyes closed and a smile on her face as a fat golden rumble bug looped lazy circles around her head. For reasons beyond his comprehension, two ginny lizards had accompanied her when she had left the temple. Big enough to be intimidating, they were, fortunately, small enough to be carried. Both had spiky frills along their backs; both, he’d discovered, shifted in color depending on their mood and other less obvious changes. They had disconcertingly alert gazes. At the moment, they basked beside Bai, watching the rumble bug with what appeared to be friendly interest. Neither the ginnies or Bai responded to his voice.
“Bai! We only have eighty-four leya left. Oh. And twenty vey. But we can buy a day’s ration of rice with twenty vey. To be split between us!”
She sighed contentedly, without opening her eyes. “I can earn coin, or a night’s lodging. Don’t worry, Kesh. You worry too much.”
“I’m not worrying! I’m being realistic! How are we going to establish ourselves in a new town with so little seed money? We can’t afford to pay a leya here and another there for lodging and food as we travel. We can’t afford a ride in a wagon. We’ll have to walk the entire way. Not at the prices these villages charge. That man at Crow’s Gate wanted two leya for us to ride in the back of his cart, only as far as Hayi Fork. That’s robbery! And in that village we just passed through, they wanted a half leya apiece just to stay the night in their empty council house! Because their own Ladytree was so ill-cared-for that it had blown down in last year’s storms. That’s why we have to sleep out here under a wild-lands Ladytree like the paupers we’re going to become.”
She rolled up to sit. “I heard most of this same speech last night, didn’t I? Anyway, I like ‘out here.’ ”
She scritched Mischief under her chin and rubbed Magic on one puffy jowl, then rose lithely to her feet. Sh
e moved differently; the change was impossible to ignore. His strongest memories of her naturally involved the years they had been little children together, when she had followed him everywhere, cried when she skinned her knee, or asked him for help at any and every least obstacle, whether a barking dog or a splinter in her finger or a shadow that had to be circumnavigated. Now she strolled to the traveler’s hearth with a feral glide and poked in the ashy remains with a stout walking stick she had cut for herself yesterday. It looked like she was stabbing a man to make sure he was dead. The ginnies ambled after.
The light deepened, made hazy by the heat. The wayside was quiet. They were the only travelers to stop here beside the road. Every one else was likely relaxing in a tub of hot water at an inn. Certainly they had seen no traffic in the hour since they had left the last village behind.
“Doesn’t it seem strange to you?” he said, watching her prowl in ever-greater circles around the hearth, pacing out the roughly oval clearing as she searched for certain plants the ginnies liked to eat. Magic had paused, scanning the tree line as if for trouble. Kesh swatted away a swarm of gnats. A pair of dark shapes glided out of the trees and swooped over him, through the heart of the swarm. He threw himself flat, and Bai, turning, laughed.
“Just senny lizards,” she said. “And a good thing. Sennies will keep the bugs off us tonight. What seems strange to me?”
“How little traffic is on the road.”
She shrugged, then walked over to stand beside Magic, looking in the same direction as the ginny. “Everyone says the roads are no longer safe. That no one dares walk into the north, past Horn and the Aua Gap. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken West Track at all. Maybe we should have walked into the northwest along the Rice Walk.”
“We already talked this over. There aren’t any real towns to the northwest where newcomers can set up in business. You know how villagers are. Close-minded, close-fisted, and they smell, too.”
She looked at him. “I thought from the way you were talking that you’d been up West Track recently.”
“No. Better profits to be made trading south into the empire.”
She grunted. “Those empire men—drovers, mostly, and mercenaries guarding the caravans—they would come sometimes to the temple. It isn’t the law of the Merciless One to turn any devoured man or woman away, but I tell you, those empire men were dogs. It was just a dirty hump to them, nothing sacred. They would say all kinds of prayers afterward, like they were ashamed of what they’d done! Anyway, they didn’t smell good. I don’t know how you could stand trading with them.”
“My last drover was a good man. He kept silence for the whole trip, and he saved my life by sticking by me when he could have run.”
“Maybe.” With a shrug, she dismissed him.
“Why don’t you believe me? Without Tebedir, you wouldn’t be free!”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter, Kesh. What matters is that you’re finally free, and I’m with you. For a few days at least.”
“A few days? I don’t have any intention of indenturing us out, not when we’re free of debt.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She paused to look down at the male ginny. Magic gave a slight head-shake, then bobbed his head, as if he were actually communicating with her. She walked back to the cold hearth and set the walking stick on the ground. Both ginnies followed her. The sun had set below the trees, and the entire clearing had turned soft and handsome, like an eager lover glimpsed in shadow. “Help me walk the boundaries. I want to pray.”
“I won’t.”
“I can’t do it alone!”
“How can you worship her? After what she did to you?”
“What she did to me? The Devourer has kept faith with me. It was that old bitch who runs the temple who cheated me and abused me!” She crossed her forearms out in front of her chest in the warding sign. “That’s what you don’t understand, Kesh. They’ll try anything to get me back. We’re not free of them.”
He patted their packs. “We have our accounts bundles. It’s legal. There’s nothing they can do.”
“Don’t believe it!”
“Why do they want you back? You’re a good-looking girl, Bai, I’m sure, but there were plenty of sexier women there.”
“Like Walla?” she said with an annoying laugh. “I saw you sizing her up. She’s a real devourer, though. You have to be careful of them, they like to chew men up.”
“Why would they want you back, if you’re not a ‘real devourer’ like Walla?”
“Because I’m the best.”
“Been sucking up too much sap lately?”
“Don’t give me that look. I’m not some vain hierodule who serves the goddess for a year in order to have men drunk on wine and fumes worship her as if she was the Merciless One herself. My redemption price would have been much higher—”
“It was robbery!”
“—would have been much higher. You don’t know how hard I worked, the things I agreed to do. Gods, Kesh! You don’t know the things I did just in the days right before you arrived. All that, just to pay off the debits that accrued from my training.”
“How could your debt have cost more to pay off than it already did?”
That shrug was her way of casting him off, like slipping a cloak when you don’t want to wear it anymore. “Let it go. The faster we walk away from Olossi, the better for us.”
“If we don’t starve along the way, or puke out our guts from drinking bad water because we can’t afford decent wine.”
She circled back to Kesh. Mischief scuttled alongside, and Magic hesitated only long enough to give one last intense stare toward the trees before hustling after the two females before they got too far away.
Crouching, Bai grabbed Kesh’s wrist. Her grip was strong. “We did it, Kesh. Let that be enough for today. We did what we swore when the aunts and uncle shoved us up on the block and started counting their profit. They had enough, they could have kept us and raised us with their own. I’d like to spit in their faces.”
“It wouldn’t be worth it.”
Her jaw was tight. She had braided back her hair so no curl or wisp strayed, and then coiled it up atop her head, out of her way. All of her was like that now, streamlined, efficient, sleek, and without ornament. Her expression was unreadable to him. His little sister’s face stared at him, grown up and filled out, with that bruise she wouldn’t discuss. Little whiny weepy sweet-hearted Zubaidit had gone through a transformation and he did not know the woman before him.
She released his wrist. “No, it would be foolish. We’ll walk, and leave the old life behind.” She cocked her head to one side. “About that ghost you brought out of the south . . . or is she a demon?”
“Don’t speak of it. Let it go.”
“Why not? She was so . . . so . . .” She raised a shoulder, shifted her hip, scratched her bare knee. “Seeing her, I just wondered what it would be like—”
“Leave it!”
She rocked back at his tone. Both ginnies hissed at him. They had fierce-looking teeth, and their bite was said to be infectious.
“Heya!” he yelped, taken aback.
“Hush.” She stroked Mischief under the jaw, and the female lifted her chin a little and “smiled” warmly. Magic got a spot on his forehead rubbed. While they were looking at her, she gestured. “Go on, then. Brother’s just jumpy, that’s all.”
Mischief moved off, but Magic looked right at Kesh and bobbed his head decisively, as if to remind him who was in charge.
“Heya,” said Bai with a little more force. Magic moved after Mischief.
“Listen,” said Kesh, surprised at how powerfully his anger had erupted. “Let’s not argue. I’m sorry.”
“No. You’re right. Let it all be gone. Leave the aunts and uncle and ghosts and bitches and masters to the dying moon where they belong. Our old life is dead twice over, once on the block, and once in inner court three days back.” She rose from a crouch to the balls of her feet, swaying like a wo
man drunk on fumes. “Gone gone gone. Gone altogether.”
Branches rustled. Both ginnies stopped, and looked in that direction, but neither seemed alarmed when an apparition draped in rags stumbled into the clearing.
“Gone. Gone. Gone altogether beyond,” it echoed, spinning entirely around, arms pinwheeling. Its voice was a crazed whisper.
Kesh jumped to his feet and drew his sword, but Bai stepped inside his guard and pressed a palm against his chest.
It faced them, rheumy eyes blinking. It was a very old person, as thin as if built of sticks, with skin weathered from sun and wind and hair turned entirely to silver, not even one strand of black to be seen. Kesh could not tell if it was male or female.
“Walking north,” it said in a voice all raspy, neither high nor low. “Best not go that way. It’s all run to blood.”
“Where’s your string?” Bai whispered into Kesh’s ear. He had closed the string of coins into his weaponless fist, and she pried his fingers open, slipped off ten half leya, and strode across the grass to the creature. She sank gracefully to both knees—kneeling, she was still almost as tall as that shrunken, wasted body—and held out an open hand.
“An offering, holy one. Go in peace.”
The crabbed hand moved so fast that it was too late for Kesh to protest. It grabbed the silver, and scuttled away. “A blessing on you, child! Do not kiss ghosts. The twice dead cannot love. Also, a fire gnat has just bitten your left ankle. Don’t scratch! It only spreads the poison.”
It staggered out onto the road as Bai reached down and—as if bespelled—scratched at her left ankle, then barked a curse, jumped up, and repeatedly slapped the skin where she had just scratched, as though she could batter the stinging bite into submission.
“Five leya!” cried Kesh. “No wonder you ran up debts!”
“Are you blind? That was a gods-touched vessel!”
