Shadow Gate

by Kate Elliott

  “Anji?”

  “No fears, Mai. We are prepared for them.”

  “For poisoned knives? Why not poisoned arrows?”

  “Even so, Mai. Therefore, you must go immediately.”

  “I’ll take her myself,” said Joss.

  “Too bad about the marriages!” she said, really angry now. “How unfair to interrupt the festival! Now it will have to be done all over again.”

  “If they’ve placed all the offerings, verea,” said Joss, “then the ceremony is complete. The feast can be celebrated later. Will you come with me?”

  She burst into tears and, hating herself for the weakness, sucked them down. “Yes. Of course. I’ll do whatever is necessary.”

  Anji had never told her! He and Tuvi had kept secret from her all along the troubles they foresaw!

  “Take her to the Ri Amarah,” said Anji.

  “I would attend the mistress as well,” said Priya.

  Joss nodded. “I’ll assign a second reeve to convey you, verea.”

  “Mai, be strong.” Anji released her, turned away and, with the chief and his guardsmen around him, took off at a run.

  Sheyshi began to weep noisily. “Do you leave me behind, Mistress? Do you leave me?”

  “Hush,” snapped Priya.

  Mai was shaking, but she began walking up into town, Joss beside her.

  “Easier to make a quick break,” he said, “than drag out the parting. And if it makes it any easier, he didn’t tell me either about this secondary arrangement he made with the Hieros. A secretive man, your husband.”

  She wanted to defend Anji, or agree with Joss, but she was already out of breath. A second reeve landed in the market square. A woman ran to them.

  “Marshal! Did you hear the news? There’s a party of about two hundred men spotted two mey south on the track.”

  “Saw it myself. Miyara, you’ll be transporting Priya to Olossi. Hitch her in now, but make a detour to the camp and give Arda these directions.”

  Pain gripped her midsection so tightly that she did not hear as Joss continued.

  Then it faded.

  “—just make sure she coordinates the hall’s actions with Captain Anji. Are you well, verea?” He took Mai’s arm.

  “Yes,” she said, shaking him off. She had lost all that hard-won equilibrium, her market face burning away in the face of trouble.

  Sheyshi trailed behind, irritating everyone with her wails. “Mistress, let me help you.”

  “No! I’m fine.”

  They reached the market square. Mai panted and puffed as the marshal hooked into his harness. To walk under the shadow of the huge eagle took courage, but Anji had done it, so she could, too. Then the harness had to be adjusted to fit over her distended belly, but at least the sling under her hips supported her weight comfortably. Priya was being hooked in by the female reeve. Sheyshi slunk away, still bawling, a Qin soldier in awkward pursuit.

  “Are you ready?” asked Joss.

  “Yes.”

  He blew a tone on his whistle: Up!

  Mai laughed first as fear squeezed her heart, and then she laughed because, as the ground dropped away and they picked up and up, the entire settlement fell into her view in the most astonishing manner. She could see everything! The mountains striped with late afternoon shadows. Sheep pouring over a slope as they moved to pasture. The skin of water gleaming in the irrigation ponds and the net of canals moving water into greening fields. The racks of drying fish. The sky, so blue above, and the mirror of the sea so wide below, fading in the east to dusk.

  No wonder reeves left their families behind and never looked back.

  She spotted the procession returning from the Ladytree, everyone chanting and dancing, but as she watched, twisting because the view was falling away behind them, a pair of figures reached the crowd and a trickle of tiny figures spun out of the celebratory mass as oil separates from water. Anji was already spreading the word, putting his plan in motion.

  Then they were over the water, and she lost sight of the settlement. Why did Anji not trust her? Or was it those around her he did not trust? Agents of the Red Hounds might infiltrate in many guises. As for the Hieros, that knife could cut both ways: Her agents could spy on foreign agents, but they could also spy on him.

  With mighty wings outstretched, the eagle glided. The land receded behind them. She had never ever imagined anyone could travel so fast. The wind rumbled in her ears, and carved scallops in the glittering surface of the water far below.

  On and on they flew. The sea darkened in the east, promising night. Joss had his arms around her shoulders in a discreet lover’s embrace and, abruptly, he relaxed his grip and withdrew his hands.

  She gasped, gripping the harness because she felt suddenly how fragile were the straps holding her in.

  “How are you doing?” He was very close, accustomed to embracing women, no doubt, while she had never been this intimately close to any man except Anji.

  “Hu! I have to pee, but I should have known that would happen! No, don’t worry.” She giggled, so giddy she thought her spirit must be flying even higher than her body. “I’m joking.”

  Her abdomen clenched so hard her next words were choked off, a fist clenched to squeeze her breath right out of her lungs. Warm liquid gushed down her thighs.

  “The hells!” cried Joss. “I thought you said you were joking.”

  Eldest daughter, she had attended at every birth in the Mei clan since she was old enough to run errands in and out of the birthing room. “That was my water breaking. I’m going to give birth.”

  “Now? Right now? The hells you are!”

  A spark of panic surged to a flame. She shut her eyes and let it run, as a pure, wild fire might rage along her skin. Let it fall away, like clothes shed from the body. Her fear died. She would live, or she would die. She must accept what was, in order to think and to act.

  He was still babbling. “How could it—? Aren’t you—? What do you mean, that was your water?”

  Liquid ran down her leg; there was plenty of it, since the womb is a vessel of water and blood in which the growing seed is nurtured. In the desert, as the saying goes, without water there is no life, without blood you have no kin.

  “My womb’s water. Now I will deliver the baby.”

  “Eiya! What if it slips out and falls into the water?”

  “It won’t come right away. My womb’s passage has to open. How long until we reach Olossi?”

  “I am not flying over the sea all night with a laboring woman whose baby might drop out at any time.” He tugged on the harness and the eagle began a low slow curve. The other reeve signaled with flags, querying, and Mai saw Priya dangling, like her, and staring toward her, trying to read the situation. “The hells! The nearest village is south, but there might be agents of the Red Hounds in hiding there. The Ireni Valley lies too far north through barren, uninhabited, rough country, not a place I want to have to set down. May those cursed Sirniakans have their balls eaten off by demons! Could they not have waited to attack?”

  She began to laugh again, because she had never imagined him the kind of man to start raving. Then another pain caught, and he swore, and she rode it out by measuring each breath in four counts and out four counts, trying to picture the peaceful altar of the Merciful One, who brings ease to women in the throes of birth.

  “Mai? Mai!”

  “Oof! No, it’s just—it’s fine. What about that valley? The Naya Hall reeves say it can only be reached by air.”

  “True enough, and it’s not far as the eagle flies. Aui. I’ve only been there once, though, and not so late in the afternoon as this with the cursed sun going down. The hells. Gods rot it, what choice have we?”

  They swung around, flying toward the setting sun and the dull red gleam of far distant mountains. The female reeve followed, and for a while they flew in silence with the marshal breathing raggedly while Mai counted off the intervals between her pains. Not too close together, enough that she
began to get tired of counting. Yet Joss was right: They could not fly all night over the water, with a chance the baby might drop before they reached Olossi.

  “What can I do?” he said after pain had ripped away her breath again. “I’m cursed useless.”

  “Eh! Ah! The hells.” She pressed a hand to her head as the pain receded, relieved she had a respite, however brief. “Get us put down in a safe place. The pains will come more quickly, and be more severe. We’ll need a fire, boiled water, scraps of cloth or grass for the bleeding afterward. Priya knows a tea to brew for the pain, but she hasn’t any with her, never mind.” On she talked, because it kept him quiet and her mind busy, sorting through her memories of births she had attended, only one of which had ended in a mother’s death.

  Do not think of that, nor of early babies and how difficult it was for them to survive.

  The shore rose into view. To the right she saw the settlement’s embankment.

  “Too close,” muttered Joss. “Eh, well, now I know my heading.”

  They passed above the turbulent break between sea and land. Mai glimpsed a party of unknown mounted men wheeling to face trouble: a mass of Qin and local riders approaching both from the direction of the settlement and, somehow, from the road behind the out-landers. The outlander troop broke toward the sea, the Qin in steady pursuit over rugged ground. Down the Qin drove them. A pair of arrows tipped with fire traced a spectacular arc out of the Qin company and up into the sky before plunging into the sinks and shallows along the shoreline.

  Flame licked the surface, boomed in a sink with a startling burst, and then raced in a flare of light along the shore as the oily smear that stained the surface caught fire and spread.

  The Qin pushed their enemy down into the burning sea.

  PART SEVEN: CLEANSINGS

  52

  TWO RIDERS ON winged horses emerged from Toskala’s council hall and rose, flying, into the gathering night. In quick succession, four more emerged and galloped into the heavens in pursuit. The people crowded into Justice Square began to call and scream and argue in a clamor that made Nallo wish she could smack each one until they all shut up.

  Pil was crouched beside Volias, his own face hovering just above the reeve’s parted lips. Straightening, he shook his head. “He’s dead.”

  “The hells!” She ran up the ramp, pushed past some idiot shrieking woman in blood-soaked merchant’s robes, and stopped at the threshold, slammed by the reek of blood and the stench of death. Gagging, she backed away, and bumped into a person crowding up behind. She turned and slugged; Pil caught her arm.

  “Cursed demons slaughtered them all,” she said, voice breaking on the words. “Nothing we can do here. Let’s get back to the hall.”

  Pil slung Volias’s corpse over his shoulder. Nallo took point, shoving down the ramp and through the crowd with vicious pleasure in seeing people flinch away. Tears washed her face. She wanted to rip someone’s cursed ugly face off just for all the gods-rotted useless nattering, no one taking charge, an assembly of weak-hearted fools.

  No one guarded the gate to Clan Hall, but a swarm of reeves and fawkners were streaming in and out of the lofts and buzzing in the torch-lit parade ground like bees smoked out of their hive. Seeing her and Pil, Peddo ran over.

  “Ah, the hells!” he cried, but he wasn’t surprised to find Volias dead.

  “There’s been a massacre at the council hall, demons guised as Guardians from the tales,” said Nallo. “Then Volias just dropped dead. What’s going on?”

  “Bring him to the lofts.”

  Inside, she smelled blood enough to make her choke. Likard ran up. He’d been weeping. Others were still crying as they wriggled aimlessly here and there like so many decapitated eels.

  “Are you just always that sloppy about fixing the cursed bird’s hood?” Likard shouted at her.

  “What?”

  Unlike the big, open barracks rooms, the lofts had separate sections and separate entrances, linked by corridors for the fawkners to move quickly from one cote to another. She ran ahead, but the side door to the loft where Tumna sheltered was already open. She staggered to a halt inside. Two young men sprawled on the floor, one headless. Tumna’s feathers were stuck out in a rage, and she was still swiping at them with her talons, rolling them over as if they were toys. Her hood was crumpled in a corner, as if it had hit the wall.

  “Slow down,” wheezed Likard, behind her. “Cursed if those two hells-bitten bastards weren’t hopeful fawkner’s assistants at all, but agents for the cursed army, come up here to kill the eagles while everyone slept. They slaughtered Trouble and Surri in the first two lofts. When they snuck in here ready to stab Tumna and Sweet, I tell you that cursed ill-tempered raptor must have torn off her hood and skewered them. She ripped the head clean off that one. May he rot and roast and freeze in the hells.”

  Tumna was alive. Exasperated, the huge raptor chirped, glaring at Nallo in the muzzy lamplight as if in complaint: Thugs disturbed my night’s rest! How like them!

  Nallo began sobbing. Folk came up to touch her as if to make sure she wasn’t a ghost, while others ran up and down the corridors to see if anyone else was sneaking around, anyone not accounted for. Murderers!

  The shouting and anger and all manner of voices churned as if a storm blew through. Trouble dead. Volias dead. Surri dead, whichever eagle she was, and her reeve with her. Nallo hadn’t even learned every reeve’s name yet, much less figured how to tell the eagles apart.

  Sweet, still hooded, shifted restlessly on her night perch, much disturbed. Pil appeared at Nallo’s side.

  “The hells,” he muttered, sounding very like a Hundred man. “After that time Sweet pulled off her hood, I made sure to fasten it correctly. I’m glad you didn’t!” He fixed his eagle with a possessive stare.

  “Where’s Volias?” she asked, surprised into speech by his volubility.

  “At rest by the dead eagles. Him and the other reeve. What now?”

  “No one’s in charge! All the senior reeves are cursed dead, aren’t they? After that first day, I don’t think I exchanged more than twenty words with the commander, eh? ‘How’s the training going? Ofri treating you well?’ ”

  “Who will the others listen to?”

  “How can you be so cursed calm! They’re all dead. Volias just dropped dead. And those in the hall—the reeves, the council members, the cursed militiamen—they were cut down like sheep, stinking with it, and you can stand there because you’re a cursed rotting outlander who doesn’t know . . .” He took in the abuse that poured out of her until she ran out of breath and heaved, thinking she was going to retch out the boil of anger and heartbreak, but nothing came but dry sobs.

  “Who will the others listen to, Nallo?” he said in the exact same tone.

  She wiped her eyes. “Peddo, maybe.”

  He left.

  “I’m a cursed idiot,” she said to Tumna, who looked over at the sound of her voice, probably to agree with her. “You’re the best raptor who ever lived. You know that, don’t you?”

  The bird tipped her head sideways, considering this statement.

  “So you stay here, with your prizes. Eat them, for all I care, although their flesh will likely poison you. Ah, the hells!”

  She stepped into the corridor and grabbed Likard and the fawkner next to him. “Are there other murderers on the loose?”

  “Those are the only two hired in within the last year,” said Likard. “So likely they were sent in on purpose, don’t you think? Cursed traitors. Wish I could strangle them myself.”

  He seemed likely to go on in this vein, so she went back into the loft, untangled the hood, and approached Tumna, tapping the signal that made the raptor flutter back to her night perch and lower her head. But she couldn’t bear to hood her. She turned to face a crowd of fawkners.

  “What are you gawking at? Can you haul this rubbish out of here? It stinks!”

  She remained by Tumna while others dragged away the corpses. Eiya! She
hadn’t believed Volias, had she? Just a cursed stupid thing to say, she’d thought, a crude form of arm-twisting: If your eagle dies, you die.

  Tears flowing, she circled the compound but didn’t find Pil. The commander’s cote was empty, the old reeve who attended her sobbing so hard on the porch that he didn’t notice Nallo come or go. Folk were poking spears into every hidey-hole and dark corner, making sure no one was sneaking around to strike again. Someone had set a dozen furious, frightened fawkners and assistants to guard the gate. They pointed her toward the stairs that led down into the city.

  A cataract of sound poured up from Toskala. Rubbing against it in a chatter that irritated her even more, the refugees mobbing Justice Square waved their hands in the air to no purpose, jabbering and complaining and then having the nerve to yell at her as she elbowed them aside to get to the overlook. A pair of lamps hanging from posts illuminated the balcony that jutted out over the cliff face. She identified Pil’s topknot. The two other reeves had very short hair, and the fourth person wore a firefighter’s brimmed leather helmet and fitted leather coat. They made room for her at the railing.

  They stared over the city, delineated by torches flaring in lines that snaked along avenues as the army spread out to overtake the population piece by piece. In one quarter, a fire burned, so far confined to a single block. A pair of guardsman stood at the edge of lamplight, posted at the gate marking the head of the stairs. All traffic in either direction had ceased.

  “How did they block the stairs?” Nallo asked finally.

  Kesta set a hand over hers on the railing. “Some old trap from ancient days. It made a terrible noise. Eiya! A lot of people on the steps died when it was sprung.”

  “Captain Ressi did that?”

  Her usually lively face looked drawn and aged in lamplight. “Neh. Captain Ressi was at council hall. A sergeant sprang it. Killed himself in the process. Knew he was going to, I think.”

  “What do we do now?” asked the fire captain. He was surprisingly young, with a short-clipped beard and an annoying habit of drumming his fingers on the railing as he started talking. “The senior militia captains are dead in the council hall, or trapped in the city and surely dead by now.”