by Kate Elliott
His shoulders relaxed. “True enough. I’ll treat him as my own cousin.” His wolf’s grin flashed. “By Qin laws of hospitality, I assure you, for in the imperial palace of Sirniaka, any male cousin or half brother of mine is dead by now.”
“I’ll see Keshad is well treated,” said Master Calon. “I know his worth.”
Kesh offered him a grateful nod.
Bai embraced him. “Courage, Kesh. Keep your eyes open and your heart bold.”
She released him. Let him go.
“I never had anything to do with the charges brought against your brother,” said the reeve to her, “and I’ll thank you not to imply I had.”
Kesh put on his shoes and, with the captain and Calon, descended by the stairs behind Kass. Bai remained in the pavilion, and it appeared she had fallen into a roaring argument with that cursed reeve.
“Whew!” said Kass with an appreciative look toward the pavilion and the pair under its roof. “She really fancies him, doesn’t she? She’ll chew him right up, and I bet me he’ll love every minute of it. I never saw her go after a man like that before.”
“She’s a respectable woman,” said Anji repressively. “It’s ill-mannered to speak of women in such a way.”
Kass laughed merrily. “You outlanders!” He looked around for someone to agree with him, but Kesh couldn’t be bothered and Calon was lost to sight down the path. Kass glanced back a final time. “Heya! She’s slapped him! I knew she had a temper, but—”
A thick curtain of patience cut off their view.
“Slapped him!” yelped Kesh, shifting to go back, but Captain Anji caught his wrist.
“If she didn’t fancy him, she’d have slugged him and been done with it,” said Kass. “That’s foreplay for certain folk.”
“I’ve heard enough,” said the captain.
Branches rattled. Bai appeared on the path, flushed and breathing hard.
“He wouldn’t lie down quickly enough, eh?” said Kass.
Her hand darted out.
“Ow! That hurt!” A mark reddened on the lad’s forearm.
“You pinched him!” said Kesh.
“Nothing the little pest hasn’t earned twelve times over!”
Grinning, the lad rubbed his arm.
Her glare did not cause the flowers to erupt into flames, but it was a close thing. Kesh remembered the woman who killed so skillfully that she couldn’t possibly be his timid little sister. He remembered the way the reeve had stared at her after the ambush. Troubled, Kesh had to admit, rather like Kesh was troubled. He wanted to hate that cursed arrogant reeve, but at the moment he wondered if they shared something in common, wondering what kind of person Bai had become, an assassin sent into the north to kill.
“There comes a time when change overtakes the traveler.” Bai pushed past Kass and Kesh, and skirted the captain more politely. “If you don’t mind, I’ll walk a little way with you. Where do you go now, Captain?”
He was an odd man, seeming such an outlander one instant and then, with an unexpectedly charming smile, such a familiar one. “Where do I always go, to find my heart’s ease? To my wife, of course.”
16
A trio of hirelings unshackled and dragged open the doors before retreating to the courtyard to await further orders. Sunlight poured a path into the dark interior. Mai ventured a few steps into the empty warehouse, smelling dust, the loft of air above her head, and a faint sweet rotting scent.
Chief Tuvi cut in front of her. “Let the lads go in first.”
She stepped back beyond the threshold as four Qin soldiers entered the building while outside the hirelings took down wooden shutters to reveal rice-paper windows. Each stripe of light revealed more of the warehouse, a long building with a bench built along one side and windows set above, a row of cubicles on the opposite side, and a complicated structure of roof beams visible all the way to the shadowed cleft within the peak. When the soldiers had checked out every corner, they gave the all-clear and she walked into the hall.
“What was this used for, and why was it closed up?” Mai asked Eliar.
“This warehouse is owned by the House of the Embers Moon. Thirteen years ago they fell into a dispute with the Greater Houses. I need not tell you that the Greater Houses went out of their way to ruin the house’s fortunes and destroy its reputation. In the end, the last adult member of the house made public what the gullible thought was a wild accusation: that the Greater Houses were involved in a conspiracy, that they’d allied with unnamed villains out of the north.”
“Which is true.”
Eliar snorted, flashed a grin, then sobered. “Yes, all too true, which I tried to tell everyone a thousand times for all the good it did. When he vanished, some said he’d been arrested by the militia and sent to the assizes prison. Others said he’d been murdered.”
“He’s the one Captain Beron murdered, isn’t that right? Master Feden ordered the murder done on behalf of the Greater Houses. And then the temple ordered Captain Beron’s murder when they discovered he’d carried out an assassination without their imprimatur. Are the politics of Olossi always this convoluted?”
Eliar heaved a passionate sigh. “Olossi got off easy. Thanks to Captain Anji. And to you.”
He smiled his charming, flirtatious smile. Chief Tuvi eyed him skeptically. As if Tuvi could possibly think an untested youth like Eliar compared to Anji!
“Anyway,” Mai said, waving Priya and O’eki forward for a look, “what’s that sad tale to do with this warehouse?”
Eliar’s gesture, indicating the echoing space, made the silver bracelets on his forearms jingle. “With no adults remaining to stand in authority over the house, the business was shut down by order of the Greater Houses. All their stock and their contracts and slaves and real estate were placed in administrative hold until the case be resolved.”
“There are child heirs? No adults at all?”
“Eight under-age children. No adults except for hirelings under contract and debt slaves. Many of the hirelings were naturally released from their contracts, and of the slaves, some were sold to pay for maintenance expenses.” Frowning, he glanced at Priya and O’eki.
“Hu! That’s one way to rid yourself of business competition. What merchandise did the House of the Embers Moon deal in?”
“Oil, of course. For as the moon wanes, you’ve more need of lamps, do you not?”
She smiled. She liked Eliar. He had a mind like hers in many ways, he treated her with a respect she’d never experienced in the house where she had grown up, and of course his clan had shown her nothing but gracious generosity. Most importantly, he was Miravia’s beloved brother.
And he was still talking. “Cooking oils, spiced oils.”
“Rose oil? Other perfumed oils?”
“I suppose so.”
“Oil of naya?”
“They would have had access to the trade route, since seeps lie in the western Barrens beyond the Olo’o Sea.”
“Nut oils? Thatch-tree oil? Mu oil?”
He smiled. “Oil is not my specialty, so I don’t know. This particular warehouse is set up to store their stock in storerooms depending on type and grade.”
She counted the narrow cubicles, opening doors and testing latches. “Each of these can be separately locked shut.”
“Mistress, I’ll check the rooms, take a count, and measure space,” said O’eki.
“Yes.” At the far end of the warehouse a single room ran the width of the space, with heavy braces and tripods for lamps and a pair of elaborately carved low writing desks beside two wide cabinets with numerous small sliding drawers to store parchment and scrolls. “The main office. What is through those doors?”
“The public receiving rooms of the house. There are private living rooms as well, accessible through a hidden door. This was the clan’s headquarters, their main compound in Olossi, so it’s an elaborate compound. They own two warehouses in the outer city and a small estate on West Spur where they grow olives. They
stored their best product here, under the watchful eye of loyal guards. The head of the household lived here while residing in the city.”
Mai was tired, her feet hurt, and she had constantly a bad taste in her mouth. She touched her belly, and with a blush drew her hand away in the hope no one had noticed.
Priya was there in an instant, hand under her elbow. “Mistress, do you need to sit down? I saw trees beyond the walls of the main courtyard. Perhaps there is a garden where you might rest.” The slave looked at their escort.
Eliar nodded. “I have the keys to the living quarters and gardens as well. Shall we go in?”
A pall of dust had settled over the living quarters. Mai shuddered, finding the vacant quarters eerie in neglect with the furniture left neatly in place and one cabinet door ajar as though someone had meant to get something and then left before closing the door. She kept expecting a stranger—or a ghost—to walk into the chambers.
The compound included two gardens, one an intimate herb and flower garden and the other a larger enclosure with a dozen fruit and nut trees ranked on either side of a pair of tiled basins filled with water and the scattered debris of fallen leaves and withered petals. Priya brushed windblown scraps off a bench under an octagonal pavilion sited between the long pools. Mai sank down gratefully. Several roof tiles had smashed on the paving, and an iron lamp stand listed on one broken leg.
“This is very pretty,” she said, because when she talked she could ignore the bile creeping up the back of her throat.
“It hasn’t been maintained.” Eliar surveyed the garden with a critical eye while Chief Tuvi paced the length of the basins and back, counting steps under his breath.
Mai coughed, and swallowed.
“Mistress?” Priya knelt beside her.
“Nothing I shouldn’t have expected.”
“Would you like to go back to my family’s compound?” Eliar asked, looking pink and embarrassed.
“No.” Louder and more firmly, she repeated herself. “No. If there are no adults remaining, then who can negotiate for use rights for this compound?”
“The council has appointed a temporary factor to oversee the clan’s interests. Usually in such matters a hierophant from one of the temples of Sapanasu is hired until the estate is settled or a child reaches legal age. In this case, as I happen to know. . .”
Mai pressed a hand to her collarbone as Eliar’s words blurred away into meaningless noise.
Chief Tuvi trotted back. “Mistress?” he asked.
Priya said, matter-of-factly, “Just the usual sick.”
Mai said, “Oh, no.”
She stumbled down off the pavilion and made it to a patch of bare earth before vomiting. The wet soil stained the fabric of her gown, and her hands came up dripping crumbs of earth. Yet even with the taste of vomit in her mouth, she felt better.
“Grandmother would say, ‘Now you have fertilized the garden, you must plant in it.’ ” She wiped her mouth with the back of a hand.
Eliar flushed as though he’d been burned. Tuvi laughed.
A door slammed shut with a sharp report. Footsteps raced on stone flooring.
Tuvi drew his sword, swearing under his breath. “Move behind me,” said the chief.
Mai had never forgotten the armed men who had burst into her private chamber in an inn in Sirniaka. She could still see their pragmatic expressions, men bent on killing with no feeling but of business that needed to be concluded. Not again! She ran over to the grizzled soldier, while Priya placed herself between Mai and the house.
Mai’s young uncle barged out into the garden. A pair of Qin soldiers followed, not hiding their grins.
“Shai!” cried Mai on a burst of expelled air. “You frightened me!”
“What’s this, Seren? Tam?” Tuvi’s glare jolted all three young men to a halt. “With all your clattering, I thought the Red Hounds had found this house.”
Shai said nothing, as usual.
Seren was first to speak. “This one”—he gestured to Shai—“was in a hurry. Sorry, Chief. Captain Anji is in the warehouse talking to Mountain.”
“His name is O’eki,” said Mai, more curtly than she intended, still panting from the scare.
“Shai calls him Mountain,” said Seren with a shrug.
“I’m going after Hari,” said Shai.
Now that Mai’s heart could slow down and with her stomach settling, she saw that Shai was holding his entire body as though ready to leap. “Uncle Hari? He’s dead.”
He hauled her out of earshot of the others. Tuvi grunted, but did not otherwise react.
Shai bent close, whispering in an urgent voice. “It’s my chance to prove myself, Mai. They’re letting me go on a scouting expedition into the north, with Tohon and some others.”
“How many of you?”
“Seven.”
Seven sent to scout the trail of a marauding army now in retreat! Already she imagined their violent deaths, just like in the tales, cut to ribbons and the pieces dropped into a dry ravine.
Shai was still talking. “Father Mei sent me to find Hari’s bones and return them to the family. Now I have a chance.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the waiting Qin as they both heard voices from the inner rooms. His hand tightened on her wrist. She gritted her teeth because he was strong from years of carpentry, and he was anyway more passionate now than she had ever seen him in all the years they had grown up together in the same clan house in faraway Kartu, where she had been everyone’s favorite child and Shai had been the youngest and least-favored of Grandmother’s seven sons, only two years older than she was. They had played together more like siblings than niece and uncle, and she knew him as well as anyone did.
His round face glowed, and maybe it was sweat but maybe it was determination that animated him. “I have a chance to prove myself to the Qin.”
More Qin soldiers poured through the doors into the garden. When Anji appeared, still talking to O’eki, Shai released her. She rubbed her wrist as Anji marked Chief Tuvi and Priya, greeted Eliar with a nod, and walked over to her.
“You’ll have heard,” he said to Mai. Shai dropped his gaze to the paving stones. “The scouts leave tomorrow at dawn.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned closer. “You are sick?”
“I am well, just the usual trouble.”
“What trouble?” demanded Shai.
She made a sharp sideways gesture with her head, and mercifully he took the hint and moved away, then halted to watch them.
“Why does Shai go?” she asked in a low voice. “He isn’t a soldier.”
“It’s true he’s not ready for the rigors and subtleties of such an assignment, but it would be dishonorable of him not to seek out his missing brother at Horn.”
“He could easily die!”
“Tohon will look after him. There’s another reason. You know and I know that for whatever reason, both Shai and I can see the ghosts of the newly dead. He can even hear their voices, which I cannot.”
“Yes, and in Kartu, people who saw ghosts were burned.”
“That may be true, but among the Qin, they were honored as holy ones, and in the empire, such boys were taken away to become priests.”
“You weren’t.”
“Because I was the son of the Sirniakan emperor, and nephew of the Qin var through his sister, who was my mother.”
“Yet both your father and your uncle betrayed you in the end.”
He shook his head curtly. “Leave it, Mai. My point is, we don’t know how such people are treated in the Hundred, whether honored or hated. But what matters right now is that a man who can hear the voices of newly-made ghosts makes a valuable scout.”
“What if he doesn’t come back, Anji? He’s my only kinsman here.”
“Then it has fallen out as it will fall out.”
Further argument was useless. Anji was determined, and anyway Shai did have to try to find Hari’s bones or he would dishonor the Mei clan. She nodded her acquiescence. Shai
, seeing her nod, smiled brilliantly at her, a rare gift from a young man usually frowning.
Anji went on. “I am thinking it is time for me to ride a circuit of the countryside to survey possible settlement sites for us and the men.”
Anxiety fluttered within her chest. So might a bird react, finding itself caged. Anything might happen. It already had. But Mai knew from long practice how to quiet her fears. She put on her market face. “Ride west, and survey the estate of the House of the Embers Moon. They also own this compound.”
Anji looked closely at her, rocked back on his heels, and forward again. “You are interested in renting from the House of the Embers Moon?”
“No. We should acquire the entire house, which has no living adult members, and its assets. I’ll have to look through their accounts first. Their specialty trade was in oil. Their primary olive estate lies on West Spur. That road gives access to the trade route for oil of naya.”
“King’s oil. Very good, Mai. King’s oil saved us.”
“So I was thinking. If we mean to establish ourselves in this country, then it seems to me we should make sure we always have king’s oil in our possession.” She frowned.
“What troubles you, plum blossom?”
“West and south lies the empire. I thought today—even Chief Tuvi thought it—what if the Red Hounds follow us here?”
He did not often touch her in public, but he did so now, a delicate touch as light as a bird’s as he brushed her hand. He did not smile to placate or reassure her. He never played that dishonest game. He knew the risks, as did she.
“Sometimes you have to fight where you stand,” he said, reminding her of her own words to him. He lifted his hand to show the wolf-sigil ring he had taken from her hand as a sign of the gamble they had mutually agreed on the night they had decided to make that stand, to build a new life in the Hundred. “We can prepare our ground, so any fight we enter is under circumstances and in the place of our choosing.”
17
The Barrens were a dry and brutal place, thoroughly unpleasant. Keshad winced as he walked down to the shore of the Olo’o Sea. The air stank, and his eyes watered, but the tears came mostly because of the stabbing pains in his buttocks and thighs.
