Shadow Gate

by Kate Elliott

  “Kedi!”

  Lord Radas reined his horse into hers, forcing her back. She slid off one side as Warning flicked a wing half open, and crawled under the horse’s belly. A tremor stirred beneath the planking, a whispering pulse she recognized as the tracery of a Guardian’s altar hidden under the Assizes Tower. Her skin throbbed, gooseflesh rising.

  Coming up, she found herself face-to-face with Miken, the spy. “They caught me on the river,” he murmured, and his blood-soaked shame pressed like a blade at her throat.

  I had to kill, in exchange for the lives of my sister and her children.

  “They’ve lied to you,” she said.

  She pushed past him, but the senior staff of Clan Hall were dead, dispatched cleanly. Despite being inside the tower, and with the riot of sound aloft in the air outside drowning out much else, she felt more than actually heard the distinctive squalls of eagles sundered from the bond that jesses them to their reeves.

  Three of the killers knelt, heads bowed. A fourth was doubled over, fluid leaking out where he’d been stabbed by someone who had, briefly, fought back. Five guardsmen and merchants remained standing, weapons poised, but there was no one left to kill except a single gasping woman dressed in a merchant’s tabard badged with a green sun.

  “This isn’t what I thought you meant!” she said accusingly to the air, or the cloaks, or the living captain—it was hard to be sure. “This isn’t what I intended, at all!”

  “Someone must bear the blame.” Lord Radas touched his arrow to Miken’s chest. “You are all traitors. Murderers! Do you deny it?”

  Miken sobbed.

  “So are you judged,” said Lord Radas.

  Miken exhaled sharply, his hand raised to grasp at a flicker of light that sparked before his face, then fell. He was dead.

  “But you commanded us to kill them!” cried the militia captain.

  “Did you commit the act?” asked the cloak of night from the speaker’s platform.

  Crouched by Kedi’s lifeless body, Marit watched the murderers fall one by one, all but the merchant woman, who collapsed in a babble of hysteria. She rose, sheathing her sword.

  “This one, who lied about her name, is also a traitor.” Lord Radas pointed his arrow at her.

  “You can’t kill me,” said Marit, edging toward Warning. “I’m already dead.”

  “It is time, Radas,” said the cloak of night, “to grant our companions their full power. We are forced to pass judgment on one of our own, because of her deeds.”

  “Folk who are accused are allowed a hearing at an assizes,” said Marit.

  “We stand in an assizes court. We do not act out of haste. We will pass considered judgment, not like it happened the other time, long years ago, when those who had the majority acted out of spite and jealousy to condemn one who had done nothing wrong.”

  “How long ago was that? Who did they judge, and what had that person done wrong?”

  “I had done nothing to warrant obliteration! But the majority passed judgment out of fear and anger. So in their actions, I saw the truth of what they had become.”

  “I can’t argue with you,” said Marit, stepping over Miken’s corpse. “Words mean nothing when acts tell the true tale.”

  “You know nothing,” she said. “You only think you do. You think you are dead, but you are living. It is others who tell you you are dead, and you believe them, and by believing them you corrupt the strength the gods pour into their chosen vessels.”

  “Maybe so,” agreed Marit, fingers tangling in Warnin’s mane. “But if I know nothing, it’s only because no one ever told me what became of the Guardians. And what became of me.”

  “Because you refused to come to us in the beginning! You never trusted us, and therefore we can never trust you. There must be trust between Guardians. There must be unanimity. All must agree. And when one does not agree, when one cannot be trusted, then for the good of all, that one must be destroyed.”

  “Agree about what is truth? Or just agree with you? With whatever you want, and whatever you have already decided?”

  “Yordenas.” The cloak of night tossed a knife, blade flashing. He caught the dagger easily, as if the hilt had twisted into his hand by sorcery.

  He yelped, as if its touch stung. “I could have cut them down! Murderers and traitors! I could have punished them, if you’d given me my staff before.”

  “Bevard.” She gave the green-cloaked man a pointed green stick, like a poor farmer’s implement for digging out offending weeds. All were objects that pass judgment, that can sever spirit from flesh and that which is healthy from that which is diseased: a writing brush, a dagger, an arrow, a weeding stick. Even a mirror.

  “A majority pass judgment on a renegade,” the woman said. “Five, to judge one, standing on an altar, which completes their judgment.” She touched her brush to paper.

  Yordenas advanced cautiously toward Marit with dagger raised. Lord Radas stretched out his arrow. The green-cloaked man hesitated, but when the women gestured, he, too, approached.

  All this the ghost girl watched, her pale figure overlooked, ignored, forgotten.

  “Kirit,” said Lord Radas. “Remember what I told you. She’s not one of us. She must be killed, so we can remain safe. We need your strength added to ours.”

  She turned the mirror to reveal her own white face and blue eyes.

  “In their actions, we see the truth of what they have become,” said the girl. “You are not Guardians, seeking justice. You are demons. I will not be one of you.”

  She reined her horse around.

  Marit tugged on Warning’s mane, ducked as the mare opened a wing, and jumped up belly-down over the saddle. Yordenas grabbed at her, and she kicked hard, connecting with flesh, hearing him grunt and stumble backward. Lord Radas’s arrow jabbed her shoulder, but Warning, once she knew she was going to get her way, nipped and kicked to force a way to the entrance. Kirit crossed the threshold and clattered down the ramp. Marit cleared the door as the other horse took wing, bearing west-southwest over the Lesser Istri.

  What if it had been Hari, instead of Kirit? Eiya! Would he have resisted, or joined the others and betrayed her? Killed her?

  Spreading her wings, Warning leaped into the sky while below the hundreds gathered in Justice Square shouted and wept, their voices rising as if it was their cries that lifted her.

  51

  In the settlement, men and women ringed the council square, weaving a song to accompany the bridal couples who walked a circuit of the seven altars to present offerings to the gods.

  A garland of flowers.

  A handful of rice.

  Nai, wrapped in se leaves.

  Silk as your banner.

  Build a house! Build a house!

  Walk this path into the next day.

  Flowers were hard to come by in the Barrens, even during the rainy season, but the reeves on training sweeps had discovered the lush valley hidden deep in the foothills mentioned by the envoy. With so many marriages waiting on a proper feast day, and every person in the settlement dreaming of a festival to interrupt the steady grind of labor, Mai had asked the reeves to fetch the appropriate offerings and assigned a propitious day after consultation with holy priests from the temples in Olossi.

  She stood on the porch of the house with Anji, fanning herself as they watched the procession wind away from the benches. Twenty-seven couples in turn offered spikes of purple twilight-stupor at the flat boulder sacred to Hasibal. Bright red blooms of blood-star and falling-shields woven into necklaces draped the stone walls of the Thunderer’s enclosure. They strewed petals beneath the Herald’s gate, a path from west to east. The procession, accompanied by the singers, continued down to the market square.

  Mai folded up her fan and, taking Anji’s arm for balance, indicated the steps. “Now they’ll go to the Lantern, the Witherer, the Lady, and the Merciless One. Then we’ll gather here in front of our house for rice wine and a feast.”

  The kitch
en yard was bustling, but he scanned the settlement sprawling below, the brick wall, the embankment, the green fields and, beyond all, the pale countryside, dotted with herds of sheep and tendrils of smoke where shepherds had set camps. Above, eagles circled. “Should you walk so far?”

  “Would I be healthier if I lay in bed? Is that how Qin women spend their days when they are pregnant?”

  His grin, like the day, was bright. “No, it is not. But you are getting very big, close to your time. Naturally, I worry. I have spoken to the Ri Amarah women. Maybe, after all, I must return you by ship to Olossi, so you can give birth surrounded by their medicine and sorcery.”

  “I wish you had thought of that before you exiled me here.”

  “Maybe so, but I am impressed with what you have built.”

  More people—the entire settlement, really, except for the women cooking in the kitchens—had fallen in behind the procession as the singers switched rhythms and began to chant a complicated and somewhat lewd tale that everyone seemed to know, about a blind woodcarver and the blacksmith who courted her by forging fine tools for her use. Voices were raised in answer to the singers, punctuating the long descriptive verses with quick refrains: “Too sharp!” “Too dull!” “Just right!”

  Mai surveyed the settlement. “I have not built it. They are the ones who built it.”

  “Yours is the overseeing hand that guides them.” He looked at Tuvi, and the chief nodded. They began walking down, guards ahead and behind, Priya and Sheyshi following. “That girl who knew about herbs and plants—why did she refuse Tuvi?”

  “They wouldn’t have suited. I have someone else in mind for Chief Tuvi.”

  “Do you? Does he know?”

  “Of course not! These matters must be dealt with more subtly.”

  “So it seems.”

  She braced her hand on his elbow as they negotiated a rough patch of ground. Taking a breath, she ventured onto new ground. “I hear a rumor that you fought a battle.”

  “Was that meant to be subtle?”

  “No. But I worry, so if you tell me the details, then I’ll worry less because I will not be weaving stories in my own mind to pass the days while I wait for you to return.”

  “You are right to wish to know details.”

  He sketched the scene: night on the river, the demon he had faced, the battle that came afterward, the old villager who had died. Anji had been very brave, and foolhardy, she supposed, but perhaps he would not measure it as foolishness but rather as prudence. Know your enemy if you want to defeat him. It had worked out this time. That was all you could really hope for.

  The Lantern’s one-room counting house was ringed by twenty-seven stone cups filled with oil, the last one taking fire as Avisha and Jagi touched the wick with a burning stick, an offering of Sapanasu’s fire. A new song rose as the procession descended to the gate, everyone clapping.

  “ ‘Empty your basket! Don’t carry stones! Heya! Heya! Today we celebrate.’ ”

  “Our children will know these songs well,” said Mai, “even if we stumble through them.”

  Beyond the gate, laborers from the fields and reeves and soldiers from the barracks joined them, the sung responses turning deep with so many male voices. They marched to the Witherer’s altar and draped the thatched roof with curtains of green leaves strung on fishing line while Mai and Anji observed from a distance. Priya offered Mai juice. Sheyshi held an umbrella over her head to keep off the sun. Anji tilted his head back to watch the eagles overhead, marking, Mai supposed, the pattern of their sweeps. Chief Tuvi watched the crowd.

  “I thought we made it clear that we wanted no temple raised to their Merciless One, not in our settlement,” said Anji as they walked behind the procession toward the irrigation ponds. The singers formed up on either side of a walled garden.

  “It’s only a garden, planted with useful medicinal herbs and other spices. And it’s all the way out here by the irrigation ponds.”

  “Near the training grounds and the laborers’ camp.” He frowned. “It’s trouble, if you ask me.”

  She snapped open her fan. “Would it be less trouble if a merchant opened up a brothel? There are plenty of men here, just like in Kartu.”

  “Has that old woman been to see you? She’s dangerous.”

  She laughed. “Anji! No, the Hieros has not visited, although I am sure I would enjoy her conversation, since so few interesting people travel to the Barrens. I am bereft of company, which I was not in Olossi.” She fluttered her fan.

  “Hu! I am struck.”

  Her belly tightened. She sucked in a breath and let it out as the contraction released its grip.

  “Mai? Are you well?”

  “It’s nothing. It comes and goes, not often. Priya says it is perfectly normal.”

  “She is a trained midwife?”

  “She attended births in our household in Kartu. Before that, she read texts written about medical matters.”

  “I am sure she did, but I will breathe more easily when you are shipped off to the Ri Amarah. Tomorrow, at first light.”

  So suddenly he changed his mind! She might have spent the last months in company with Miravia, and yet as she watched the couples enter the garden and pour rice wine onto the soil, she could not regret seeing the settlement expand and ripen. In the months to come, more Qin soldiers would cycle through and, she hoped, find wives, while meantime Anji had told her that another dozen or so men at other forts and stations looked ready to marry. Now they could truly say they were building homes in the Hundred.

  Everyone was laughing, clapping rhythms. “Aiyiyi! Aiyiyi! ‘Bring me . . . to a good family, bring me . . . to a warm hearth.’ ”

  There were almost a thousand folk living in the various nearby camps or within the walled town with its market and burgeoning crafts and artisan quarter. So many! Anji halted, and his guards stopped, and she watched as the procession paced farther away toward the sapling Ladytree about half a mey distant down the track that led south along the shore of the sea, to other places and other villages not under Qin control.

  “Too many people,” said Anji. “Too far from the gate. We’ll go back now, Mai.”

  She sighed and, fanning herself, went without protest. Anyway, her feet were swollen, and she was really getting hot as the long afternoon baked the earth. As they trudged past the irrigation ponds, the cheerful shouts and singing faded into the shimmering heat-haze behind them. The barracks and training grounds lay empty. Everyone had followed the procession, except for the soldiers on watch.

  “What about this valley the reeves found?” Anji asked. “Who has been there?”

  “Only the reeves. They say you can only fly in and out. It’s lush and beautiful, so they say.”

  “I’ll ask Marshal Joss.”

  “I thought I would see him here today, since he brought you in yesterday.”

  “He’s on patrol. For a man who charms women so readily, I’m surprised he never married.”

  “There’s a tale fit for a song. A sad, sad song.”

  “Not one I’m likely to enjoy.”

  She tapped him on the arm with the folded fan. “I forgive you for finding the old songs ridiculous, Anji. But I love them.”

  To her surprise, he kissed her lightly on the cheek. Certainly his Qin escort looked as startled as she was herself at such a bold, public gesture.

  “Captain?” inquired Chief Tuvi with a look of concern.

  “The heat has overcome me, Tuvi-lo,” said Anji with a laugh.

  An eagle plummeted out of the sky. Mai shrieked, caught by surprise. Her belly contracted, and she bent over as the muscle clenched with an iron grip around her middle.

  “Priya, help me!” Anji supported her as Priya held her other arm. “Tuvi, that eagle is Scar. Go see what Joss wants. I want a cart for Mai—”

  “It’s easing. I can walk. A cart would jolt me worse.”

  “Let’s move,” said Anji as she straightened.

  They halted in the s
hadow of the gate to wait for the reeve sprinting down from the empty market square where his huge eagle had landed.

  “What is it, Marshal?” Anji called.

  He shook his head, handsome face creased with a deadly frown. “Trouble.” Then he had to stop to catch his breath.

  “Call the alert,” said Anji.

  The reeve heaved a pair of breaths, trying to get enough air to speak. “Wait, wait! Give me a moment.”

  Anji waited.

  “A group of perhaps two hundred armed men. About three mey south of here. Riding hard up the main track. They must have worked their way at night northward through the wilderness and only now broken cover.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “Outlanders. Wearing red sashes or some such garb.”

  “The Red Hounds? Riding in such numbers?” He swore, such an ugly word that Mai flinched away and he did not even notice.

  Tuvi said, “We did not expect a show of force, captain.”

  “Where are the agents we suspect?”

  “All under observation. But they would have heard the plans for the wedding festival and could easily have passed out a message.”

  “And I arrived only yesterday, with no prior warning.” Anji shook his head. “We should have expected them to strike today. Tuvi.”

  “Anji-hosh.”

  “Now the soldiers you’ve trained will prove their worth. We’ll call a general alert, and proceed as we discussed.”

  “They’ll know you’re on to them,” said Joss.

  “It is a game of hounds and wolves, Joss. We knew the agents of the Red Hounds would penetrate this settlement, despite all our precautions, so the Hieros lent us certain of her agents to keep track of their agents.”

  “Aui! You never told me!”

  “The fewer who know, the less can be spoken. Now they strike, seeing an opening, hoping and perhaps believing we do not suspect. They’re taking a risk with an open attack knowing we have eagles who can spot them—” Abruptly, he grasped Mai’s arm, harder than she expected, pinching her skin. “It’s a feint, Tuvi. To make us careless. Joss, can you take Mai out of here? If I know she is safe, then I do not fear them.”