by Kate Elliott
A cadre of men and seven women trained as reeves; not that he knew the drills and technique, but it was obvious who had an eagle at hand and who did not. Shallow-drafted cargo boats beached on the shore within the shelter of the bay. Laborers hauled logs from the boats to build crude lofts for the eagles: At least forty raptors were gathered in the greater span of this territory, a phenomenal number to be seen outside the reeve halls. Some were willing to share close quarters while others kept their distance in the Spires.
As for the fifty or so Qin, they ranged wide as they scouted the lay of the land until, he supposed, they knew it as well as a farmer knows his fields. They kept watch over lads who shepherded flocks of sheep and goats, and several of their number stayed with the herd of horses grazing the slopes. They supervised a contingent of debt slaves who were digging an underground irrigation channel farther inland. They hunted antelope and black deer through the tableland, not unlike the eagles. They explored the long-abandoned hilltop ruin in pairs, harvesting from sinks of naya near the ruins.
Every day they drilled the hirelings in weapons and formation. Those who could ride they brought hunting with them, although none could ride as well as the Qin.
Rats are known to be impatient, quick to become restless, eager for a change. But he had to think like a patient Crane. She was but one small pale young person. And yet she was born and raised on the grass, as the Qin were: She was a hunter. As animals return time and again to a watering hole, so did the Qin keep going back to the ruins.
HE APPROACHED THE ruins on foot just before dawn. Long-abandoned buildings leave a footprint: buried and broken walls; sunken lanes where folk once walked; scatters of potsherds and broken masonry. He almost stumbled into a well, half filled in with debris. At intervals, he heard hissing, and although he watched for snakes he saw only birds, rodents, and the ubiquitous thumb-sized flying roaches. He passed between the collapsed ruins of an old gate and climbed a ramp of stone now buckling and mostly covered by earth. Who had built all this?
A bewildering maze of ruins greeted him at the crown, whether residences, temples, storehouses, or courts of justice he could not tell. He heard snatches of a gulping sound, like a man’s exaggerated swallows. The hiss had returned, and the sulfurous smell grew stronger as he pressed toward a craggy bluff. He kicked through heaps of shattered pottery and broken figurines, fragments of stone carved with staring eyes that had no face, mouth with no eyes, a long-fingered hand, a bare foot—a woman’s foot, surely, for its delicacy. The ruins of an octagonal building and its pillared courtyard lay before him.
As he came to the crag’s edge, the rising sun spread a glow across the waters, several mey away but nevertheless striking as they shone with coppery-pink light. She had crouched beneath an intact archway cut low to the ground. She watched a pair of Qin soldiers who were riding toward the ruins.
Cursing, he ducked through another opening, crawling over rubble to get inside. He saw her form limned by the light. She did not acknowledge him. Within, steps carved out of the stone led down into the rock. A stink, rising from the depths, was strong. Cautiously, he edged down, stepping over fallen bricks, until he came into a wide underground chamber lit by shafts. He sneezed at the dust raised by his feet. In the center of the chamber rose a round platform with a cleft struck through its center, and in this cleft a disembodied flame burned. Its hiss echoed like a thousand whispers, a story told in a language he did not know.
For all the years he had walked on earth, he had never known of this place nor heard tale of it. With a shudder, he retreated back up the steps.
With her back to him, she said, “If you go back outside, they may see you and come up here to investigate.”
“Think you so?” he said, pleased by her words.
“Just to the west lie bitter springs. Mostly the Qin ride there to collect pitch. I hear them talk. They will bring a company of slaves to harvest the pitch and store it. The pit frightens them because the flame burns without fuel.”
“How long have you been hiding here?”
“Three days.”
“Why are you here?”
“I am waiting.”
It was like teasing splinters out of skin! “What are you waiting for?”
“What is a Guardian?”
With a sigh, he sank down a few steps from her and leaned against the wall. The smell made his eyes water, but he didn’t notice it as much. He brushed dust off his palms.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “what the Guardians truly are, or what they were meant to be. The gods awakened the first Guardians during a time of war, when every clan fought for itself and every clan did as it pleased. Without law, there is no order. The Guardians serve the law.”
“They are slaves, then. If they must serve.”
“If you serve only yourself, lass, then to whom are you really a slave? Even in the place you come from, you serve the customs of your tribe and do your work and marry and bear children and die in your time, all without considering yourself a slave.”
She was silent, her back a wall.
“The Guardians serve the law, and by serving the law they serve the land and the gods. Whereas in the days of chaos any person with power might dispense justice according to her whim, now the assizes courts were established in every city and town and the chief villages. The Guardians journeyed from one assizes to the next to the next. They stood over the court and heard witnesses and made judgments. They hold in their hearts Ushara’s gift: the second heart and the third eye, with which to see into the hearts of all. It is not so easy as you might think to seek truth within the hearts of women and men. At first, I thought I knew everything, but then I discovered that my own nature caused me to make assumptions and misread what I learned. I have become more cautious in passing judgment.”
“Who was the woman whose body I found on the grass?”
He nodded, although she did not turn to see him do so. There was so much to tell her. It was like running, and tripping over your own feet. “Yes, yes. You see, it is this way. Naturally, there is a risk. The powers the Guardians hold are also a temptation. Within the council of the Guardians, five—a majority—may judge one of their own who they feel has passed under the gate of shadow into corruption. They can strip the cloak from that Guardian and allow it to pass to another person, as it—the cloak—chooses. So you may possibly see the problem that confronts us. What if a Guardian succumbs to the shadows, and yet has the outward countenance of light? What if such a Guardian bides her time, out of fear, out of greed, out of anger, and in her turn corrupts one by one her fellow Guardians until four others walk at her behest? Five in all. Five, who can control the council and rid themselves of those Guardians who will not do as they demand. What is the handful who remain loyal to the gods meant to do?”
The tale came hard to his lips. He had not rehearsed it. To think of the long years in which, slowly and in secret, the corruption had eaten away at the council was too bitter to endure. It was “a knife in the heart,” as the tale said, a well-worn phrase but true enough when you felt the stab of pain. How blind might a trusting soul be! How foolish and naive!
“Ashaya was corrupted by promises and sweet words and reasonable explanations. She was corrupted by fear, since fear, beyond all things, brings with it the shadow. But in the end, she fled corruption. She knew if she passed on the burden of her cloak while still in the Hundred, that the others would find and control the newly awakened one. Instead, she walked out of the Hundred. And I waited for you—obviously, I did not know it would be you, Kirit—to return.”
“Because the cloak would bring me back.”
“By one means or another.”
“A cruel master,” she observed.
“Neh, neh. Not a master. It is our charge. Our responsibility. Our obligation.”
It was hard to meet those pale eyes because they did not look human, but her face was so young and vulnerable that he recognized the humanity in her, that which is capable of both
compassion and malevolence.
“Where are the assizes courts?” She stumbled over the unfamiliar words.
“Typically you find them in the cities, towns, and chief villages. But an assizes can be held wherever a Guardian chooses to stand.”
She rose. “Then it is time to make a judgment.”
THE QIN SOLDIERS were using fronds to scoop scum from one of a series of bubbling pools sited just beyond the tracery of the outer wall. Their horses took no notice of Kirit as she walked toward the two men, holding her strung bow and an arrow in her right hand but her mirror in her left. As he feared.
The soldiers leaped up and, in turning, brought their bows to the ready with arrows already nocked.
“Demon!” spat one man.
The other’s face was a mask of fear. His arrow slipped out of his hand to the dust.
The envoy sensed their fear and consternation as much from their posture and expressions as from his second heart and third eye. And since neither looked at him, only at her, he could not see into their hearts.
“I remember your names. Eitai. Sayan.” She gestured to the man who had spat. “You did not harm me, Sayan. Go, if you wish. Or if you want to be judged for any other crimes you may have committed, I will hold up the mirror, for the mirror reveals the heart.”
“We are Qin,” said the first soldier scornfully. He marked her companion and dismissed the envoy, unarmed as he seemed to be, as no threat. “We do not dishonor ourselves by abandoning our comrades. How has Eitai harmed you?”
“He raped me.”
Eitai lunged for the fallen arrow and, rising, nocked it. “I paid! It was perfectly legal! Your master made the offer, and I accepted in good faith. How was I to know your demon’s ghost would return to haunt me!” He loosed. The arrow shot true, punching her so hard in the left shoulder she staggered back two steps. But she did not fall.
She said, “In the tribes, such a crime is punishable by death.”
Sayan loosed an arrow and hit her in the belly. She grunted, but despite her evident agony, she did not go down.
“Stop this!” the envoy cried.
They ignored him.
“A man cannot do only as he pleases,” she said in gasps as blood soaked through her tunic. “Otherwise there is no law. Did you commit the act?”
Eitai’s answer was soundless, a sideways look through narrowed eyes, the tilt of his head as he leveled his bow.
“You cannot kill me,” she said hoarsely. “I will return again and again, and the next time I will kill you. See your fate in this mirror, that shows the heart of those who are guilty and those who are innocent.”
She turned the mirror’s face toward the men. Light caught and flashed. Sayan screamed with fear. Eitai collapsed in silence, his spirit taken.
Eiya!
The living soldier dropped to his knees and pressed a hand to the dead man’s neck, but such efforts would be in vain.
She stumbled forward. The living man shrieked. His gaze skimmed the envoy’s face, the blast of his terror like a cold wind out of the mountains. He bolted for the horses, and galloped away as Kirit dropped to her knees beside the dead man, grunting as the impact jarred the arrows stuck in her body. The fall had loosened the soldier’s topknot. Strands of black hair spread a delta of fine channels on the dirt.
She held her mirror a hand’s breadth above his parted lips. Breathing raggedly, she watched the mirror’s surface. “Is that his spirit? Caught in my mirror? How did he die?”
He had to speak, although he feared the consequences. “The Guardian’s staff—”
“It can kill. I killed him!”
“Vengeance is not justice.”
Her face was sheened white under sweat. She grinned, showing teeth. “The wolf pack picks off those in the herd who are diseased. It’s for the best.”
“We are not wolves. We are human beings, and we serve the law, not our own impulses. We do not bring down death with a casual flick of our hands. Death is the most severe sentence. It was long ago agreed that in death sentences, the council must be unanimous, all the Guardians must investigate such a serious case and agree, not just take matters into their own hands at their whim. The hells! Let me get those arrows out of your body.”
“Go away! I am not your slave!”
She grasped the arrow that protruded from her belly and, with a shrill yaaah!, yanked it out. With less difficulty, because it had already punched mostly through the meat of her shoulder, she pushed the second arrow out through the sinews of her back and, reaching under her arm, pulled it free. Weeping, coughing, mewling, she rested on her hands as blood dripped onto the dusty earth. The sinks of pitch burped like foul cauldrons.
He had no idea what to do now.
“I am not your slave,” she said, as if to the land itself. She rubbed a hand over the sticky patch of blood, smearing it into the dirt. Already her body would be healing itself, knitting what was severed, although the pain, naturally, was staggering. He tried not to think about the last time, when he’d been pierced by arrows and trampled by horses. That was the hells of it: The price you paid for your unnatural life was to learn to live again and again with the agony of dying.
She raised her head. Her demon eyes leaked water, which some might call tears.
“They cannot kill me, but I can kill them.”
“That’s not what the gods intended.”
She hissed, an attempt at a whistle. Sucking in more breath, she managed a sharp trill. Unlike him, who preferred to do his stalking afoot, she had hunted with her mount nearby. Obedient to her call, Seeing trotted into view, skittish at the smell of blood. The girl heaved herself over the mare’s back, groaned and, with another grating yell, dragged a leg over to sag into the saddle, clinging to the horn.
“It’s not what the gods intended,” he repeated helplessly.
As Seeing spread her wings, Kirit looked back, face white, lips as bloodless as a ghost’s, tunic blotched with red.
“They are not my gods.”
30
Just because Edard had to show off to impress Eridit, the scouts got in trouble as they rode east toward Horn.
“I’ll scout point today,” the ordinand said at dawn, then looked at Eridit to see if she made a comment or gave an encouraging look. She yawned, stretching in a way that made a man think of—
“Shai,” said Tohon. “You’ll ride rear guard, with me.”
Eridit flashed a smile their way, measured Shai’s expression, and arched her back which of course just made her breasts more prominent beneath her thin shift. Shai flushed and looked away, stumbled up to his feet as the militiamen, Ladon and Veras, laughed.
“You’d think you’d never seen a woman before,” said Veras.
“Outlander men and women live separate, didn’t you know that?” said Ladon. “Never touching. Eiya! Maybe they only do it with sheep.”
“Shut up,” said Edard. “Finish saddling the horses. Tohon, you take rear guard today.”
“As you say,” said Tohon with a genial smile. “You ready yet, Shai?”
They slung packs from their saddles, Eridit last of all.
Zubaidit appeared on the path, already kitted out. “What’s taking so long? Aui!” She prowled over to Eridit, just now bending over to tie up her pack while every man stared at her making a display of the curve of her rump beneath low-slung trousers. Shai turned away, afraid he was going to embarrass himself. Tohon started sweeping the ashes out of the fire pit.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” whispered Shai, but the scout just chuckled.
Bai said, “Eridit, I am so overcome with lust for you. Do you want to lie down right here now and get it over with? Or will you get the hells moving? Why did the temple council send you? Were you screwing them all? And if so, why did you bother to come?”
Shai looked up.
Even Eridit’s scowls were sexy. “I’m good at what I do.”
“In truth, I’ve seen you perform the tales at the arena. You are goo
d.”
“My thanks,” she muttered grudgingly as she hoisted her pack over the saddle.
“Good at your art. Don’t be an ass, Eridit.” Bai slapped her on the rump.
Shai jumped, and so did the other men, all except Tohon, who shook his head as if wondering how he had ever had the misfortune to end up on this deer track carved through woodland country, riding east into the heart of the enemy. If they ever got there. Eridit laughed.
Shai and Tohon hung back as the others set out in single file, soon hidden in the woods although he could track their noise. Tohon ruthlessly tightened the girths on both saddles, shaking his head. “Those lads are strong enough, yet not only the lass but even the horses play them. Hu!”
He paused, tilted his head back.
Shai looked everywhere, but saw nothing.
A shout rang out.
“Draw your sword. This is a good trail for an ambush.” He handed Shai the reins of all four horses. “Come up behind them. I’m going around.”
He slipped into the woods, and Shai stood there like an idiot while more shouts and cries broke. Then he got the horses strung on leads, mounted up, and pushed along the trail. A crashing in the brush alerted him. He swung in the saddle, glimpsed movement to his right, felt a kiss on the breeze, and slashed down, just missing a man who lunged at him brandishing a crude spear. With a hoarse gasp, the man fell across the path with an arrow buried in his back. Shai kept riding, the horses jumping over the body as they caught his tension. Ahead, Ladon had plunged into the trees and was hacking at a person on the ground, while Veras crashed through the forest in pursuit of unseen others.
Edard was swearing, clutching his right arm. “I didn’t see them! They jumped right out at us!”
“There’s four or five more,” said Zubaidit, holding a bloody sword. A man had crawled off the trail and collapsed. “Best we catch them. We can’t chance being recognized later.”
