by Kate Elliott
“Some old beggar, you mean. Anyone can wear rags and stumble along the road mumbling well worn phrases. ‘The twice dead cannot love!’ Burn it! Now what do we do?”
“I have a hankering to get ourselves into the trees and hide for the night. Scout ahead at dawn.”
“You don’t believe in all that ranting?”
But she did believe. She had been raised in the temple, at the heart of the goddess, if the Merciless One could be said to have a heart.
He touched the blessing bowl at his belt, thought about his evening prayers, and shrugged. “The woods it is. Must we take turns at watch?”
“No need. The ginnies will warn us if any come close.”
HE SLEPT HARD, curled on his side, but an animal pushing up against his back made him snort awake.
“Hush,” murmured Bai. He saw her form sitting upright beside him. Her hand touched his hair. “Don’t move.”
To sleep, they had crawled into a thicket situated on a rise that allowed them to see the road with little risk of being seen themselves. One of the ginnies was pressed against his upper back and neck as if trying to hide behind his body. He found himself staring through the patternwork of branches, toward the road. Torches flickered a dull red. Banners tied in fours drooped from poles. People tramped along, too many to count, strung out in a line and jangling with the ring and clatter of armed men. They had many horses, all on leads, but only one man was mounted. He rode in the middle, surrounded by the shield made by the rest. The hood of his long cloak shielded his face and fell in massive, lumpy folds over the body of the horse. Except for the sound of their steps and the occasional soft whuffle of a horse, the group moved without talk, striding briskly as they moved west—Olossiward—along the road.
The light faded away. A night-hatch chirped, answered by a second.
Bai leaned so close against him that her hair tickled his cheek. Her breath was hot on his ear. “We’ll go just before dawn. Follow after them. See what they’re doing.”
“We won’t! We’ll head east and then north!”
She shifted away, but remained silent. The ginny—he still didn’t know which one it was—stuck its head up to look over his neck, then ducked down again, pressed right up against him most uncomfortably. He didn’t want to shoo it away because he didn’t know if it would bite. It was as uncomfortable as a branch sticking into his back. The dreary hours passed in an agony of slowness, but at length he discovered that the mass of shadow off to the right was dissolving into the discrete twigs and leaves of the vast tranceberry bush that had helped shelter them. It was the wrong time of year for berries, which would, he noted with that part of his mind that never stopped toting things up for their market value, have brought thirty vey for a bucketload.
“Come on!” Bai rose. She slung the rolled-up cloak and jacket over her back. “Let’s go. It’s light enough to walk the road.”
“Who do you think they were?”
She was already moving through the brush, pausing at the sloped verge to listen and look. Then she scrambled up, the ginnies surprisingly agile, racing in front of her up the slope. She was already fifty paces ahead before he got on the road, and she glanced back, slowed, and waited, tapping a foot. Birds sang their dawn songs in anticipation of day.
“Come on, come on.”
“What’s the hurry? The sun isn’t even up.”
“Just a feeling in my bones.”
From Olossi to a short way past the East Riding, West Track ran on an almost due west to east axis, parallel to the River Hayi. Past the East Riding, the river curved to the northeast and the road with it, the river dwindling as it moved upstream toward its source and the road reaching for its terminus at Horn.
Standing on the road, Kesh faced Hornward. Bai faced Olossiward. He began to walk east, not looking back. The idiocy of throwing away coin on a useless old beggar still made him burn. His stomach gnawed at nothing. He was hollow and he was angry. But at least he was free. Even free to walk away from Bai, if need be. From everything and everyone, alone in a way that made a smile tic up on his face every time he bit it down, because if he let that smile hit his face in full he would laugh, or he would cry, and he wasn’t sure which.
She padded up beside him. The ginnies were draped over her shoulders like an expensive bit of ornament. She didn’t look at him. She said nothing. For a long while—at least a mey—they walked east on the road in a silence that was both at odds and in harmony.
How could anyone be so stupid and pious as to give away coin that recklessly? To rack up debts the way she had?
And yet, did it matter? After all these years of toil, of being separated, they had actually succeeded. They were free, and together, able to walk where they willed and disagree as they wished, and no one to tell them otherwise!
Even the road welcomed them, although it could be said that the road welcomed all travelers. It was the coolest part of the day, and the sweetest. But at last the sun rose above the trees and chased away the shadows that protected them.
“The ginnies smell something that’s making them restless,” said Bai. The lizards were raising their crests and kneading their feet into her shoulders, tongues flicking as they tasted the air. “I didn’t like the looks of those men. That looked like an army to me. Three hundred and twelve. Enough to cause serious trouble.”
“Three hundred and twelve?”
“I probably missed a few. Three cadres should have three hundred and twenty-four, plus their sergeants and captain.”
He whistled softly, wondering if she were joking, or if she had really been able to count them all.
Her stride caught a hitch; she skipped a step to catch up with him, grabbed his elbow, tugged him to a staggering halt. “Look! Crows and vultures.”
North, above the trees, the dark wings circled.
33
On the morning of the third day, the day set for the council meeting, Captain Waras came to their island camp with an invitation to the long-promised baths for Mai, her attendants, and the captain and a pair of men, all that would be allowed to enter the city.
In the inner city, on the low ground near the docks, stood a baths complex fit for a rich man, with one wing for men and another for women. Midmorning, Mai found herself here, seated on a stool in a tiled room while attendants soaped her and scrubbed her and rinsed her with bucket after bucket of lukewarm water, just the right temperature for the hot day. After that, she refused the outdoor soaking pool where, it appeared, men and women sat naked together without the least interest in modesty. Instead, there was a smaller pool hidden in a shaded courtyard with little brightly colored lizards scrambling along the latticework walls, pots of orange and yellow flowers, and a dwarf fruit tree whose ripening bulbs were mottled in greens and pale yellows.
The water was very hot. There were several fires tended and tested by the older woman in charge of this wing which kept the temperature stable and a constant supply of steaming hot water at the ready. Mai was the only customer on the women’s side except for Sheyshi and Priya. Sheyshi refused to undress in front of people she did not know, while Priya, after washing, proclaimed the pool water to be too hot to be healthy.
Mai sank onto the submerged bench gratefully. Ah! It had been so long since she had really been clean.
Through the lattice she saw a plain courtyard lined with stone benches and wooden racks on which her laundered clothing had been spread out to dry in the blistering sun. It was already a hot day. There also lay Anji’s tunic and leggings, now clean. She leaned back and closed her eyes, imagined him joining her in the pool, the two of them, alone and uninterrupted. This was the lowest tower of heaven, where the song of the Merciful One lulled you and you were always clean and well fed.
“Mai?”
She jolted awake, up to her nose in water. Her unbound hair had made a veil around her, floating on the surface of the water.
“No men on this side! No men on this side!” The attendant had a stick, which she brandi
shed with a well-muscled arm.
Anji, dressed, held Mai’s clean and dry clothing draped over an arm. He dropped the clothing on a bench and, grinning as he retreated, slipped out through a gap in the lattice.
“We must leave to walk up to the council chambers, plum blossom,” he called over his shoulder.
She was blushing.
The old woman cackled. “Good-looking boy, that one! What a smile! Cocky, though, coming right in here.”
“We’re strangers here,” said Mai, trying out this bid for sympathy. “We don’t know your customs.”
The old woman spat on the dirt. “Outlanders! I never trust them.”
Startled, Mai said, “Why not?”
The old woman sat on the other bench and launched into a complicated tale, only partially understandable, about a southern merchant she had taken a fancy to back in the days when she was young, and how he had treated her badly and broken her heart. . . .
When Mai realized that the story was going to go on for some time, she got out of the pool, dried herself, and dressed, punctuating her actions with a murmured “That can’t be!” and “Then what happened?” By the time Sheyshi and Priya were waiting anxiously for her to go, Mai and the old woman—“call me Tannadit, dear heart”—were best of friends.
“I mean nothing by it, what I said before. It’s only the southern men, you see. I’ve never seen a woman before you who came up from the south who wasn’t a slave.”
“All the men are like that one, who come up from the south?”
“Oh, yes, all of them. I’m sure your man is a good one, though.”
“He is. But I’m anxious.”
“What about, dear heart? Pregnant already?”
She felt herself flush. “Oh! I don’t know. I don’t think so. We’ve been traveling a long way, and . . .”
Tannadit’s wrinkled hand clasped hers. She had a milky gaze. She was blind in one eye and the other was clouding, but her hearing was sharp and her attention fixed on Mai. “How can I help?”
“I just wonder if there’s anything we need to know of your customs, so as not to offend you folk. Did you know that in the empire, the priests burn any person who worships another god besides their god? That anyone who speaks out of turn to a priest is put to death?”
“Aui! What monsters!”
“That doesn’t happen here?”
“Well! Naturally everyone here worships the seven gods. But if a person wanted to speak her prayers to some other god, that would be on her head, wouldn’t it? No one here would take any mind of it. Although why anyone would want to worship that cruel Beltak god, I certainly don’t know. Not very kind to women, he is.”
“I’m sorry to be so ignorant. Who are the seven gods? How are we to recognize and respect their holy priests?”
The old woman laughed heartily. “Why, every soul you meet in the Hundred has apprenticed to one of the seven gods. You might as well respect them all, even those who aren’t worth your respect! We all serve a year at one of the temples when we’re young. Some serve longer, eight years or more, binding over their labor to the temples. Some serve their entire lives because they are poor or because it is their calling to remain in servitude to the temple.” She flexed her arms; she still had strength in her muscles. “I served a year as one of the Thunderer’s ordinands, for I did enjoy cracking lads over the head with my staff. You, I think . . .”
She considered Mai with her good eye, a look of such seriousness that Mai was taken aback. Yet the measuring quality of that gaze had an odd element of respect in it, as if this woman meant to see Mai for what she actually was rather than what people thought she ought to be. “Some might mistake your beauty for your calling, and send you off to be a hierodule to the Merciless One, but I don’t. The mendicant’s life in service of the Lady of Beasts is not for you, I am thinking. Nor would you feel comfortable as one of Ilu’s envoys. You are one who observes more than she talks, yet I do not see you as one of the Lantern’s hierophants. A diakonos of Taru, the Witherer, perhaps? Patron of increase and decrease.”
“Fitting for a merchant!” said Mai with a laugh. “But that’s only six.”
She frowned. The brief shadow in her expression made Mai shiver. “That leaves only the Formless One. A pilgrim of Hasibal? Perhaps. A difficult path to follow, but the deepest. Few walk that road.”
Mai judged her new friend’s mood to a nicety, and plunged in. “Do any outlanders ever come here to settle? Is that allowed? I mean, besides those brought here as slaves.”
“Well they should want to settle here, if everything I’ve heard is true of that awful place down south of the pass! There’s a merchant house whose grandfather came up out of the empire and never went back. Now I know why! Put to death, indeed! Just for speaking out of turn to a priest! I’d have something to say about that!”
“Who would that be? Who came as an outlander and settled here?”
“Master Calon’s house, of course. His grandfather—the one who was born in the empire—had a foreign name, but we all called him Beyar.”
“I wonder if he was a third son,” mused Mai.
“He established the house of Three Rings. They mostly deal in flesh.”
“In flesh?”
“Slaves. You might look to Master Calon for advice. He pays his bills promptly. That’s how I measure a decent man. He’s on the council this year, although he’s not among those whose dogs bring back a bird in the hunt, if you take my meaning.”
“I’m afraid I don’t. What do you mean?”
“Dear heart, how young and sweet you are, with that disarming smile. I hope your man appreciates you, and treats you well. There’s sixteen houses who call the dance in this town. They don’t call themselves the Greater Houses for nothing. But these days the Lesser Houses and the guilds are making a lot of noise. Now, I admit, the Silvers keep quiet because no one trusts them. The others know they don’t have enough official votes to change things, yet they also know that if you counted each household’s vote, they could take power. You can be sure the Greater Houses like things the way they’ve always been, because that means they get to keep what they have. They won’t give up their power on the council easily.”
“I know how that goes,” said Mai, because she did know. This did not sound promising. She’d heard stories in Kartu’s market about disputes in other towns getting murderous. “What about the land beyond Olossi? How is it there?”
“Beyond Olossi? What would you be wanting to go there for? Farmers. Fishers. They stink. I hear village folk out in the Barrens take a bath only once a month. Whew!” She waved a hand in front of her nose. “No wonder everyone leaves them alone.”
“Aren’t there other towns in the Hundred?”
“Oh. Yes.” She released Mai’s hand and found an outlet for her disdain by sweeping the already spotless pavement. “But those are in the north. You don’t want to go there. It gets cold there after the Whisper Rains. That’s why they call it Shiver Sky up there. Brrr! Anyway, everyone knows it isn’t safe along up in the north anymore. Nothing but trouble up there. All gone to the hells, if you take my meaning.”
Mai knew all about the nine caves of hells, where demons festered and fed on the souls of those who hadn’t the strength to be reborn. “What about other lands? Are there places north of the Hundred?”
“I suppose there must be. West of Heaven’s Ridge they say it’s barren country, nothing but dry grass and rolling hills with no end to it, and only beasts and barbarians roaming the land. North of the Hundred lies the sea. I hear there are folk living far away, to the northwest, beyond Heaven’s Ridge and the sea, but it’s very cold there, so the tale says. People actually die of it being so cold. Imagine that!”
Mai sighed. “Best we stay in Olossi, then?” But she wondered if Olossi was far enough from Sirniaka. “Is anywhere safe?” she added plaintively.
Tannadit slapped her on the buttocks. Mai yelped, for the old woman still had a strong arm.
; But Tannadit only laughed. “Don’t you worry. A pretty girl like you can always find a man to take her in.”
34
It took Keshad and Zubaidit a while to reach the spot where the crows and vultures had gathered. The road descended into a hollow where debris lay strewn to either side like so much flood wrack. At first it was difficult for Kesh to make sense of what they saw, but shapes came clear as they moved closer. Corpses were beginning to bloat in the sun. An overturned kettle had tumbled off a cart with a broken wheel. A dead dog lay on its back, its legs stiffening. Orange silk fluttered, caught in the claws of a thornberry bush. These were the ruins of a caravan, hit by ospreys, as at Dast Korumbos. It smelled like a latrine.
Bai strode into the carnage as if she were wading into storm-tossed waters: careful to keep her balance. The ginnies seemed to be trying to flatten themselves against her shoulders. There were about a dozen open-bed wagons, at least as many handcarts, and no animals except two hands of dogs, all dead. It was a fresh kill. The bodies hadn’t yet started to rot, but they would. Kesh kept to the road, which remained clear except for a pair of wagons tipped off the verge.
The line of march, in trying to escape the slaughter, had spilled onto the cleared ground that lay between the road and the straggling pipe-brush and pine forest. At least twenty vultures had settled to feast. They eyed the intruders irritably, and as Bai explored, all but one flapped away to wait in the branches of the nearby trees.
This was not the same kind of attack that had hit the caravan in Dast Korumbos. Kesh fished for a kerchief in his sleeve and tied it over his nose and mouth. There, arched backward over a mound of thick grass, sprawled a girl not more than ten or twelve years of age. Her hands had been chopped off.
He retched into the kerchief, although nothing came up.
Bai knelt, and lifted a baby, but by the way its delicate limbs dangled, it too was dead. At first he thought it wore dull red silk, and then he saw it was naked, covered in dried blood. The beds of those wagons did not carry merchandise; they carried dead people: an eyeless old woman, her toothless, shrunken mouth pulled back in a death’s grimace; a pair of boys, each lacking a right hand; a man with a crutch thrown across him, the angle of a tipped wagon concealing his legs. Baskets had tumbled off carts, spilling grain in heaps and mounds. A bladder of ale had been trampled and punctured, and the smell of its good yeasty brew still brushed the air as the last leaked out into puddles. All the harness for the wagons had been cut. What had become of the beasts once pulling them he could not tell.
