by Kate Elliott
Arras rubbed his throat, and then his forehead. When had he gotten so sweaty? His hand came away smeared and dirty, as though his face had been rubbed in the earth by a bully, and he realized he was grinning.
Two First Cohort cadres—both lacking a full complement—waited alongside the road, watching him as if he were insane, or gods-touched. Waiting for orders. How many cursed companies did he now command? He’d not had time to count. He whistled over a runner and sent the lass to scout out Giyara, with an order to make an accounting and assign out the new cadres into the commands of his three subcaptains.
“Neh, neh,” he said, calling the lass back. “Tell Sergeant Giyara to attach as many cadres as she needs to her own staff, specifically for laboring. Got it?”
“Yes, Captain.” Off she ran, braided black hair tailing out from her boiled leather helmet.
He examined the two cadres left to him, one at half strength and looking completely demoralized and both missing their commanding sergeant, as if the enemy had specifically targeted sergeants as a way to break down and panic units. A smart tactic, if it wasn’t just by chance. He pulled the man standing straightest out of the larger cadre. “Your name?”
“Fossad, Captain.”
“You’re acting sergeant now, promotion to be reviewed according to performance. Your task is to find shovels, anything you can use, and start digging. We’ll be throwing up earth ramparts all around this island.”
“Yes, Captain!”
He turned to the final group, the sorriest-looking ragtag bunch he’d seen, scratched, limping, streaked with smoke, many with faces and arms reddened from burns.
“You lot were on the bridge?”
After a moment, the oldest among them spoke up. “Yes, Captain.”
“Get your wounded under cover in one of those warehouses. As for the rest of you, we’ll need a steady source of water. You make a survey of the island, you dig within the gardens if you have to, or you collect buckets and start hauling to fill cisterns. You’re in charge, Sergeant—”
“I’m not the sergeant—”
“You are now. Your name?”
“Segri, Captain.”
“Sergeant Segri, you’re in charge, under my personal command. Get moving!”
That was the last of them. Without looking, he could hear and sense the focused activity of his troops around him, and he thought too that he felt a stammer of hesitation among the enemy. They’d launched their attack, but he had responded, fenced off his own people as well as he could. They must decide how to answer. He called in his personal staff and trotted west to the forward bridge. The causeway, in a sense, cut straight across the island; the bridge lay at the same elevation, no ramp leading up, merely a continuation of the roadway.
Subcaptain Piri met him with runners in tow and they surveyed the rushing channel, the stalwart reeds that could conceal an enemy, more flat islands beyond. The militiamen who milled about on the far shore shook spears and swords in their direction; they paced among the fallen, dragging their wounded and dead free and stabbing any wearing the tabards of First Cohort’s companies. Like the other cohorts, First had brought along a number of Toskalan hostages, but he had no idea what had happened to them; he’d marked none among the survivors who had reached him.
Above, the sun had passed the zenith and begun its steady descent. Eagles sailed, sharp-eyed reeves dangling beneath in their clever harnesses, waving flags to send messages each to the others and to their allies on the ground.
“Hard to win a war when they’ve got the eyes,” he remarked to Piri as the two runners listened. “Good thing the reeve halls are split as they are, no one liking to take orders from the next.”
“Lord Commander Radas had the reeve commander executed in Toskala. That’s cut off their head.”
“If only we could kill the rest of the cursed reeves. Or unite them to work for us. I wonder who in Nessumara betrayed our plan.”
Piri laughed scornfully. He was an older man, his face pitted with scars and his back scored with the marks of many whips long since healed. He’d been one of the first soldiers assigned to Arras’s first command, a man with a reputation, nothing good, but he’d been steady and true for the last eight years. Tough as stone, steady as an Ox, which he was. “I can’t cry for those willing to betray their own when they’re betrayed in their turn, Captain. It just leaves us in a worse situation than we expected.”
“I did not want to be ambushed today,” said Arras with a laugh that made those around him chuckle nervously, attempting bravado. All but that young man, Laukas, who just watched, thin-lipped and serious. “But here we are. First Cohort is a loss. We’ll absorb their cadres into our own companies. It’s strange, though. They lost cohesion so thoroughly.”
“They were hit hard and fast.” Piri shaded a hand to survey the militia gathered across the rushing channel, their hurried councils as they tried to decide what to do next. “The militia killed a cursed lot of the sergeants. There’s not one captain left standing, like they were targeted specifically. Maybe you and I should tear off these horsetails, Captain.”
“Neh, we’re made of stronger stuff. The thing that concerns me is we’ve got no means to communicate with the other cohorts. Listen, Piri. Blood Cloak—Lord Yordenas—was marching in the front with First Cohort, wasn’t he? Leading the advance?”
“I saw him.”
“Yet no sign of him now. Do you think—” The idea did not bear voicing aloud, but the situation required it. “Do you think they killed him?”
“The cloaks can’t die, Captain.”
But if he’d been in the lead, and he wasn’t dead, then was he taken prisoner? Impossible. Had he fled? Abandoned them? Arras shook his head.
“Captain?” asked Piri.
“Neh, it’s nothing.”
“What do we do now, Captain?”
Arras surveyed the island, the sky and its spying reeves, the rushing water that would, he hoped, make boat travel on the channels more difficult for the defenders. They had too much daylight left, with reeves watching their every action. Later, night would cover the movements of their enemy, who knew the channels and mires as he and his people did not.
“We dig in.”
Across the way, a man approached the channel’s bank waving a strip of cloth, an offer to parley.
Arras grinned. “I know what they’re going to say. If we retreat in order along the causeway all peaceable like, they won’t let our sleeves get dirty.”
“Cursed liars.” Piri snorted.
“My thought, too.” He whistled for a runner. “No, not you, Laukas. I’ve got a more difficult job for you, if you’ll take it.”
The young soldier did not flinch or even look excited. “I will, Captain.”
“You. Lati, isn’t it? Get back to the gardens. Send Navi up to me. Also, I need a pair of sergeant’s badges. Any will do. I want all the Toskalan hostages bound and confined in one of the warehouses. Find me among the hostages the woman who calls herself Zubaidit, and bring her here. If she won’t be of use to me one way, then she can be in another.”
“What do you mean to do, Captain?” asked Piri.
“I’ll give her sergeant’s badges so if they kill her, we won’t have lost one of our own. She can do the parley knowing the safety of the hostages depends on her coming back. And Navi and Laukas can keep an eye on her, while getting a chance to prove themselves. What do you think of that, Laukas? Willing to take the chance, going over to walk among the enemy?”
His expression did not change. He nodded obediently, like a good soldier ought. “Yes, Captain.”
• • •
HAVING SLEPT PAST midday after several interruptions to nurse, Mai felt better. She nursed the baby, rose and washed, and ate crunchy stalks of pipe-stem slip-fried with steamed fish.
“Sheyshi, you’ll watch the baby. Come and fetch me if he cries. Priya and I will be in the counting room.”
A fair amount of rebuilding and fortification had
taken place in the compound in the months she had been gone. The main house’s entrance porch had a newly reinforced gate leading into the entrance courtyard; she heard horses, wagons, voices raised as the Qin guardsmen went about their morning duties on the other side of the high wall. The door to the counting room was on the left, and while before it had simply slid open and closed like all the other doors in this part of the world, now those doors had been replaced by a locked and barred door that opened on hinges like a gate. One of the soldiers standing guard lifted away the bars so Mai and Priya could cross into the office. As the door was opened, Mai heard O’eki scolding a young clerk.
“This is the accounts book we use for all shipments pertaining to the building of the mistress’s household in Astafero. This is the accounts book used for expenses pertaining to this compound. The two compounds are accounted separately, not together! Now, you’ll have to go back over the entire last month and divide the expenses out properly. Hu!”
The big slave nodded to acknowledge their presence.
The scolded clerk murmured a barely audible greeting.
Another clerk, even younger, blushed and stammered. “G-G-Greetings of the day, Mistress.” Hu! The poor girl’s head was shaven, and her thin face would have benefited from the softening ornament of hair.
“Sit down,” Mai said, hoping she sounded gracious as the clerk brushed at the stubble on her head as if she had guessed Mai’s thoughts. Eiya! Judging a young woman by looks alone was the kind of thing her mother and aunt would have done! Beauty was all very well, but Mai was painfully aware that if Anji had been a cruel man, then her beauty would have brought her tears rather than joy. She attempted a smile; the clerk groped for her brush and, having picked it up, set it down again immediately, thoroughly intimidated. Mai sighed. “O’eki, show me the books.”
Three lamps burned although it was day; there were only two windows that could be opened in the long room, one at each end and both set with grilles. The door into the warehouse was closed, but they received light through the porch door, which had been left propped open because the captain’s wife was inside. The customers’ door, leading into the warehouse, was closed and locked. So much was closed and locked!
The scolded clerk hunched his shoulders as Mai looked over his shoulder.
“Those are very clear entries,” she said. “Very readable.”
O’eki grunted impatiently. “Yes, but not all in the right place. You see this lumber, marked to this account when it should be here, while the settlement account has been debited with this purchase of dye stuffs.” He pulled a counting frame over and flicked wooden beads so quickly their colors blurred. “Just on this page alone you have two hundred and forty leya misaccounted.”
“Are you going to send me back to the temple?” The clerk looked so young! Although, Mai thought, he was probably no younger than she was herself.
“If you fix this properly and make no further mistakes, I’ll know you are learning,” said O’eki. The lad nodded gratefully as the other clerk looked on, with her face pulled into an almost comically anxious expression. “Lass, you double-check the spare ledgers against the main set.”
As the clerks bent back to their labors, Mai drew O’eki aside, over to the long drawers where Anji kept a set of maps. She opened the top drawer, in which lay a detailed drawing of the city of Olossi, how it nestled on bedrock in a bend in the river, how its streets climbed the hill toward Fortune Square, how its inner and outer walls separated the city into an upper and lower town.
“Where did these two clerks come from?” she whispered.
“The temple of Sapanasu. It’s the only place I can hire clerks, Mistress. It’s the custom here, to hire your accounts keepers from the temple. But these two are very inexperienced.”
“Their numbers and ideograms are very readable.”
He laughed, and both young clerks, startled, looked up from their books and self-consciously down again. “One thing I will say for that Keshad. He might have been arrogant and temperamental, but he kept excellent accounts.”
Mai closed the drawer and opened the one below it, whose lines described the region surrounding the Olo’o Sea, as much as the Qin scouts and Anji could describe of it. Past the town of Old Fort the road pushed into the foothills and thence higher up into the mountains here called the Spires. Precise handwriting that she recognized as Anji’s had inscribed “Kandaran Pass” above the village named Dast Korumbos; at the edge of the map where the pass sloped away south and west, the same hand had written “Sirniaka.”
That way lay the empire, whose red hounds still hunted Anji. He would always be in danger from that direction.
“I wonder how Keshad is doing,” Mai murmured. “Will he and Eliar be able to spy out information in the empire?”
Priya had come up beside them. “I wonder if they are still alive.”
“The empire is a terrible place,” murmured Mai. “If Anji’s half brother is now emperor, and has killed all his other brothers and half brothers, then he will not want Anji alive, even if Anji has no intention of claiming the Sirniakan throne. And there are other claimants, too. These cousins, sons of Anji’s father’s younger brother. How can I keep track of them all?” A few tears ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away. “How clever of Anji to label his maps with a script no one in the Hundred but he and Priya can read.”
“You are reading it now, Mistress,” said Priya with the smile she offered only to Mai or O’eki.
“I am learning.” She gestured toward a table. “I’ll sit here for a while. O’eki, maybe that young woman will sit with me and review the ideograms. I want to be able to write my own accounts book in the Hundred style.”
The girl’s name was Adit, and she had been born in the Year of the Ox, just like Mai, but she was a timid creature, hard to draw out, so after a while Mai concentrated on forming and memorizing the ideograms. Priya and O’eki had seated themselves together at a writing desk, heads bent intimately together as they discussed an unknown matter in low voices, hands touching.
A guard stepped in, glanced around, and stepped out. Sheyshi entered, carrying a fussing Atani.
“I’ll nurse him over here,” said Mai as she took the baby to the far end of the room where pillows were stacked for visitors. Atani was an efficient eater, very hungry but not one to dawdle. When he was done and she had burped him, Adit crept over and shyly asked if she could hold him, for it transpired she had left a beloved infant brother at home when she went to the temple. So then she could be coaxed to speak of her home and her family in northern Olo’osson, and when Mai at length had Sheyshi take the infant out, she and Adit settled back to work companionably, trading comments, chuckling over an awkward stroke, asking and answering questions. Eventually the lad rose and, in the course of stretching and straightening his already neat jacket, paused by the table where the two young women worked.
“That’s just the basic work,” he said in the tone lads got when they were showing off for girls. “Those ideograms are the old way of recording. Anyone can do that. That’s why the clerks of Sapanasu keep them around, because even merchants who didn’t apprentice with the Lantern can tally with numbers and ideograms. Writing is much harder.”
“Don’t try to boast, Wori,” said Adit in a low voice. “It makes you look stupid.”
“I would like to learn this other writing of the Hundred,” said Mai.
“If you didn’t apprentice with the Lantern, you can’t,” he said, tweaking his sleeves.
Adit hid her flushed face behind a hand.
“Why not?” Mai asked.
“Because you can’t,” he repeated stubbornly. She suspected he now felt trapped by her attention and Adit’s embarrassment. “No one does.”
“Not doing it is not the same as not being able to do it. For one thing, surely the Ri Amarah did not apprentice with the Lantern and yet they know how to write in the temple script—”
“Eiya! Well! Them!”
“What do
es that mean? Them.”
He shrugged. “They’re outlanders. They don’t even worship properly.”
“I’m an outlander.”
“Do you make offerings at the seven temples?”
“I don’t. I have a shrine to the Merciful One. That’s where I pray.”
“That’s the Merciless One,” he said with a smug smile.
“No, it isn’t,” said Adit suddenly. “I’ve talked to the women who work here, and they told me it’s the Merciful One. Full of mercy. There’s a prayer they say, ‘I go to the Merciful One for refuge. I go to the Truth for refuge. I go to the Awakened for refuge.’ ”
To hear these words flow from the girl’s lips surprised Mai. She had thought the local women who worked for her only came to listen to Priya lead the service in order to be polite to the employer who paid them. “Why, that’s right. That’s part of the prayer.”
Wori said, “Who ever says a thing like that? ‘I go to the truth for refuge.’ That doesn’t mean anything.”
Voices raised outside: men were speaking vehemently in the warehouse. There came a shout, and then a hammering on the warehouse door. Chief Tuvi called out an order; footsteps pounded like a cloudburst as men raced across the entrance courtyard.
She rose, her own heart at a driving run. Would she never be free of the red hounds?
Priya hurried over and grasped her elbow. “Quickly. Come farther inside.”
Soldiers appeared in the office door leading to the porch. “Quickly, Mistress. Come inside.”
“Will this never end?” she cried angrily.
A rhythm rapped on the warehouse door, the signal giving the all-clear.
“Seren,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “Open the door.”
The young soldier limped over to the door. His comrade drew his sword as Seren slid back the iron eye panel.
“Clear to open,” said Tuvi’s voice from the other side.
Seren undid the bolts and bars, braced his crippled leg, then swung the door open. Chief Tuvi entered first, marking the occupants with his sharp gaze. An older man wearing the turban of the Ri Amarah strode in behind him.
