by Kate Elliott
The settlers in this region had left the rank of ancient ironwood alone, but the woodland behind it showed all the signs of being second-growth, trees and shrubs sprouting where once a mature stand of forest had stood. His companions hacked a way through. He pushed past bushes whose crests waved above his head. His feet squelched on debris soaked by the rains.
A tiny campsite had been cut out of the middle of a particularly labyrinthine architecture of interlaced tranceberry bushes. It was wider than he expected, although still in shadow from the foliage all around it, and covered with a carpet of recently downed branches and the mulch of last year’s leaf litter. In this small clearing, eleven ordinands lay dead and two militiamen were wounded. Lehit had her back to him; she was hectoring some poor soul. She saw him, and limped over.
“What happened?” he asked. “I thought you wanted to capture them.”
Shock showed in the way she stared at him, as if she could not comprehend words. She shook her head, but was only trying to get strands of hair out of her eyes. She brushed them away with the back of a bloody hand. “Once we suspected they were here, it was easy to track them. We crept in on three sides, and attacked just as we said. They wouldn’t surrender. Once they saw they’d lost and that they couldn’t escape, they fought to make us kill them, or killed themselves rather than be taken prisoner.”
“A frightening sense of purpose. That lad crawled at me with two arrows stuck in his back. He meant to kill me.”
“Yet none of that is the worst you’ll see.” She gestured, and he walked with her over to a sliver of an opening in the pipe-brush.
They had dug a pit into the ground, deep enough that a tall man standing upright could barely touch the rim with outstretched arms. The walls of the pit were slimy with moist soil, worms, and bugs, and the stink of excrement and urine was strong in the depths. Into this pit they had flung children. One was a headless corpse, still dressed in the ragged remains of an everyday short tunic now smeared with dirt and spattered with blood. The rest were alive, staring up fearfully. He counted twelve.
“Are these the missing children?” he asked Lehit, feeling sick. “Do any of you recognize them? Here, let’s get them out of here.”
They were too afraid to reach up their hands to be pulled free. They didn’t know the guardsmen, and it quickly became apparent some had been raped. Coming out of the pit might bring a new round of horrors. One boy began to cry and, after a moment in which they watched the stunned and horrified guardsmen for their reaction and saw that nothing was to happen to the crying boy, the rest began to weep as well.
With an effort, Joss found his voice. “Lehit, send a couple of your guards and ask members of the families who are missing children to come out here.”
Two were sent. Lehit stayed, scratching her chin, while the heavyset woman jumped into the pit. The children shrank away from her, but she crouched and began talking in a singsong voice, telling the tale of the Swift Horse, a familiar and soothing bedtime story that every child knew by heart. She didn’t look at them or try to engage them; she just talked.
Joss moved back from the edge of the pit. In the clearing, the guardsmen were dragging the bodies to one side, while the older man and Pash knelt beside the wounded pair, stanching and binding.
“Bad enough to kidnap children,” said Lehit in a low voice. “But we all hear such stories, when a family becomes desperate without young ones to carry on the line. But to brutalize them in such a manner, and them not even having celebrated their Youth’s Crown to be of age! While meanwhile, the Devourer gives freely to any person willing to walk through Her gate. How could any decent person choose this over what the gods have ordained?”
The familiar throb of a headache was beginning to build. Joss rubbed his eyes. “They’d not been here long. It doesn’t smell bad enough.”
Lehit leaned close. She’d had a bit of rice wine; its sour brack perfumed the air briefly. “How did you know this camp was here? That these youths were part of the enemy’s army? We’re so overwhelmed with all the folk up in the haven that we’d never have known. I sent out a few patrols to search for the missing children, but . . . how did you guess?”
He thought of his dream. “A reeve asks questions when things don’t look right.”
“That other reeve didn’t ask. Seems to me you’ve better sight than most.”
He shrugged.
Pash walked over, wiping his hands on a bit of torn cloth. “Best we carry the wounded and the young ones back to the haven quickly, for a miasma dwells in this place that would corrupt the healthiest man.” He glanced toward the pit.
The woman’s voice drifted up, the tale unfolding in a soothing patter of words. The other guardsmen waited in silence.
“How did you know, Reeve?” Pash asked Joss. “We’d have never found them if you hadn’t guessed. Them so young to be so foul. Sheh! It’s beyond my understanding.”
Joss remembered words spoken twenty years ago. He still heard Marit’s voice as though she was speaking into his ear. “ ‘Make them ashamed of themselves and they will not betray you,’ ” he said, “ ‘because they will know they have stepped outside the boundaries and made themselves outcast by their deeds.’ ”
“As the captain’s wife said in the Tale of Fortune,” mused Pash, shaking his head. “True enough words. Thank the gods I kept my good daughters close beside me.”
“No wonder the temples want their spirits buried,” said Lehit. “Such corruption must be crushed beneath earth and never allowed to rise. We’ll bury them in the very pit they dug. Then we’ll lay offerings on the Thunderer’s altar so their blood doesn’t corrupt us.”
In the pit, the young guardsman’s voice flowed on. She’d gotten to one of the funny episodes, the encounter of the horse’s ass of a merchant and the horse’s ass itself, complete with a steaming pile of horse manure always calculated to amuse a child of a certain age, and sure enough there came a tiny childish chuckle, a sound so unexpected that Joss thought he might have dreamed it. Branches snapped, and a pair of young men loped into the clearing with their bare arms scratched up and their faces sweaty.
“We checked all around, Captain, but we saw no evidence that anyone got away.”
Lehit nodded. “Good work. No doubt once they’d murdered the reeve, they meant to run. Yet with the children, as well? It makes no sense. They’d be a burden to them. And that poor child—the hells! what do you suppose happened to its head? Why did they want to murder the marshal of Argent Hall?”
“Because we killed the one who came before me, who we have reason to believe was set in place by those commanding the northern army.”
“Will you be going back to Argent Hall, then? The hall might be the safest place for you, now you know they’re stalking you.”
Argent Hall awaited, and he had plenty to do there. “Not yet. There’s one last task I must accomplish out here. One last person to track down.”
SCAR WAS WELL rested and eager to go. Where the hills shouldered into the plain there were plenty of thermals. They rose, and glided far above the Soha Hills. This range was rugged although not high. Many a narrow valley and densely wooded vale offered shelter to fleeing men. Twice he saw cadres of Qin soldiers on the road, easy to mark because of their distinctive dress and manner of riding and also because one reeve was assigned to each cadre to scout for ambuscade or refugees in the lands along the Soha Cutoff.
Just after midday, they hit the shifting currents that marked the abrupt end of the hills where the land fell away steeply into the wide basin of Sohayil. In the distance, seen as green smudges, he saw hills to the north and east. These slopes were cut by the gaps of West Riding and East Riding, although in truth those gaps lay more to the north and south.
He banked low, spiraling down. Maybe his dreams spoke true, granted him by the gods. Maybe that really had been Marit talking to him, however impossible that might seem. Or maybe it was just a good hunch, filtered through his sleeping mind. For there they were, th
e pair of them with their three horses, plodding down the switchback trail from the height of the Soha Hills into the deep basin below. They were easy to spot, right out in the open on the bare slope, and they had nowhere to hide here in the afternoon with the rain holding off and no one else on the road. He recognized her the moment he saw her, for no matter how small she might appear there was something in her shape and posture he could never mistake for another. The fugitives paused to look up as he circled overhead, and although he was riding the thermals and quite high above them, he was sure she knew what reeve had tracked her down.
He sent Scar to earth at the base of the trail. The tall grass was greening under the onslaught of early rains. He unhooked from the harness, dropped to the earth, and strode forward to the road. Not too long after, they trudged into sight. It was obvious even from a distance that they were arguing, and soon enough he heard their conversation.
“Bai, we can’t just give up—”
“What do you intend to do? Turn around and toil up that damned steep road? It’s better to face what’s chasing you than to keep running.”
She was close enough that he could raise his voice and hope to be heard. “Good advice, verea. For here I am.”
Her gait shifted subtly, enough to make him catch in his breath as she sauntered in full swing toward him. She looked him up and down in a measuring way that made his ears burn. “Yet I must be wondering why you have come after us and, apparently, alone but for your fine eagle there.”
He grinned. “Reason enough.”
“So I imagine, by the look of you.”
“Bai!”
Joss spared a glance for the brother, then looked again, surprised that he recognized the young man. The intricate architecture of causation and consequence unfolded before him: he’d met this young man for the first time in the village of Dast Korumbos, when they were both standing over the body of an envoy of Ilu who had been mortally wounded by the ospreys—the bandits—who had invaded the village.
For a moment he was speechless; he’d known, but it hadn’t really occurred to him that so many of the players in this tale were linked so neatly. Then they halted in front of him, the horses blowing and stamping, eager for water and yet nervous of the eagle, the woman amused and the man irritated and anxious. Two holy ginny lizards stared at him. Their gaze was unnervingly disapproving, so he shifted his attention.
“Keshad, isn’t it?” he asked.
“So it is. We’re clear of our debts. We’re free to go.”
“As it happens, you aren’t.”
The young man had an expressive, passionate face, although his features were marred by a sense of perpetual impatience and anger. “That bastard Feden—”
“Master Feden is dead. His heirs, indeed all the Greater Houses of Olossi, are in disgrace. You’re safe on that count.”
“What does the Hieros want?” asked Zubaidit.
She was a truly magnificent young woman, handsome without shallow prettiness, built with the strength of a woman who knows how to labor, forthright, bold, unbelievably attractive. Her black hair was pulled back from her face, but a few thick strands fell over her shoulders. Her sleeveless vest was short enough to show a bit of belly; her kilted wrap left most of her long, muscular legs showing. The hike had made her sweaty; her brown skin glistened. Whew.
“What are you thinking?” she asked with a laugh.
“Just thirsty all of a sudden.”
“I can see you’re the kind who drinks a lot.”
“Eiya! I’m hit.”
“Maybe. You clean up well, I’ll say that.”
“Bai!” protested the irritable brother.
Joss chuckled. “Did I ever thank you for rescuing me?”
“Likely not. In my experience, men so rarely do. They get what they need, and they leave.”
“How can I thank you, then?”
“Not in the way you’re hoping.”
“How can you possibly know what I’m hoping? Verea, I fear it’s your own thoughts have taken charge of your lips. Not that I’m complaining.”
“Enough of this!” cried the brother. “Make your claim, or let us go on.”
“Yes,” she agreed, smirking in that maddening way that made Joss hotter than the day warranted. The larger ginny opened its mouth, showing teeth. “What claim are you making?”
The flirtation played between them lost its power to amuse. Whatever his expression showed, she caught his change of mood at once. The smaller ginny hissed.
“What?” she demanded.
He raised both hands, showing empty palms, the old gesture for “it’s out of my hands.” “I’ve been sent by order of the temple of Ushara in Olossi, by order of the Hi-eros with the backing of the Olossi temple conclave, to return both of you to Olossi. For breach of contract. For theft.”
She looked thoughtful.
Her brother was not so patient. “I delivered property to the temple, which the Hieros accepted as compensation for Zubaidit’s debt. The accounts book was marked and sealed. I have it here in my possession.” He patted the strap of the pack he had slung over one shoulder.
“New information has come into the light. That’s why I’m here.”
“What I offered, the Hieros accepted,” said the brother. “The payment was ample compensation for Bai’s debt to the temple.”
Bai turned to look inquiringly at Joss, as if to say, “How will you answer that?”
He shrugged. “What you offered in payment for your sister’s debt was not yours.”
“Of course it was mine! If I find a precious stone on the riverbank, it’s mine. That is the law, that any item which has no other claimant can be taken and owned by the one who finds it.”
“There was another claimant.”
“How can there have been another claimant? I found the girl abandoned and dying in the desert so far south of here that I wasn’t even in the empire, much less the Hundred! Am I to understand that now any person who likes can just claim whatever he wants? I claim your eagle, then. Or your sword. Or the temple itself! I’ll claim Master Feden’s storehouse, if I’ve as much right to do so as another person who dances in after me to claim what I found and I transported and I fed and cared for and I sold to pay off my sister’s debt!”
“Kesh,” said Zubaidit in a soft tone. “Let him speak.”
“A man, mature but not yet elderly, came to the temple some nights after you made the exchange,” said Joss. “According to the testimony of the Hieros, and corroborated by every hierodule and kalos I interviewed thereafter, he was dressed in the manner of an envoy of Ilu but claimed to be a Guardian.”
Kesh snorted. “Guardians! There’s a man who knows how to dance a fraud. The Guardians are gone. Vanished. Dead.”
“Kesh! Let him finish.” The teasing manner she’d had before had fled utterly. This was not a woman you wanted to cross.
“The man went on to say he was sorry if the treasure came into her hands in any manner which led her to believe she could own it.”
Kesh was really angry now, puffed up as certain animals fluff up fur or feathers to try to intimidate the beast that has cornered them. “I admit the girl’s coloring was odd, her skin as pale as a ghost’s and her eyes demon blue and her hair an unnatural gold-white color. But when has it ever been said that no one can own a slave? Except among the Silvers, I grant you. Heh! Did he claim that she was a Silver? None of us have ever seen the faces of their women, although the men don’t look anything like that.”
“The man claimed that the girl, like him, was a Guardian.”
“How can anyone have believed that?”
“The Hieros believed it. She let him take the girl.”
“To sell for a tidy profit elsewhere! I didn’t know that woman was a fool.”
“She’s no fool,” said Zubaidit.
Joss glanced at Scar, who watched the interaction with his usual uncanny alertness, ready for trouble. At the foot of the hills, the basin still sloped away, and f
rom this vantage one could see the vista rolling into a heat haze. Clouds covered the sun, and the recent rains had softened the air and made it bearable, but it was still hot. A man still sweated, thinking of how much he did not understand about the world. “He came attended by two winged horses.”
“Winged horses!” blurted out the brother. “What kind of child’s nonsense is this?”
“So my eyes were not cheating me after all. I saw a winged horse in the camp of the army.”
“So you told me,” Joss said. “I didn’t believe you at the time.”
“No, you didn’t. What happened at Olossi?”
“Captain Anji and his troop, two flights of reeves from Clan Hall, and the newly elected council master of Olossi using the local militia combined forces to drive the northerners away.”
She nodded. “There are two of us, and only one of you,” she continued amiably enough, but Joss’s instinct for danger crawled like a prickling on his skin. Like a fine steel sword, she was a honed weapon. “Even with the eagle, you can’t force us to go with you. You can’t carry us both.”
He braced with the haft of his reeve’s staff fixed on the ground, ready to move with a mere tightening of his grip. “I can track you until the Qin soldiers who are hunting down the remnants of the army catch up to us.”
“Ah.” She nodded with a faint smile. “I concede this match.”
The brother fumed, and the glance he loosed at his sister betrayed other emotions struggling beneath the surface.
Joss said, to her, “You truly saw a winged horse at the army’s encampment?”
“Yes, on West Track, a few days before the army reached Olossi. Even so, I find it difficult to believe I saw what I did. Do you think this supposed ‘envoy’ who approached the Hieros could be in league with the dark spirits that attacked Olossi?”
“Dark spirits, indeed,” said the brother with unexpected heat. “I’ve seen what they’re capable of. But now I’m wondering about that envoy. I met an envoy coming out of the south, but he was killed by ospreys in Dast Korumbos.”
“Ah.” Joss nodded. “You remember.”
