by Kate Elliott
“How can I possibly find the cloak of Earth?” he added. “A woman named Eyasad wore Earth’s cloak when I last saw it. A young woman, small, vibrantly plump. With black hair like silk spun by the wildings out of forest spiders’ soft webbing. Easy to become entangled in.” His expression softened as his gaze turned inward toward memory.
“And did you become entangled?”
“Eiya! I would have liked to have done, but she was not fashioned that way. Anyhow, why should she trust me now? I suspect, with the exceptional hindsight I possess, that Eyasad perceived the threat before the other cloaks believed it might be possible Night could have fallen so far into the shadows despite honey smiles and generous gestures. That was a great round of years or more ago. Twelve rounds of twelve years, a very long time. Her cloak may have passed to another, or she may be in hiding still. So how am I to find her if, after all this time, I have not already done so wandering the Hundred as an envoy of Ilu?”
“Because you have a reeve as your ally,” said Marit with a grin. “A cursed observant reeve, if I may say so. You said one time that the cloak of Earth carries a staff which is also a snake. I now understand I spent many years awakening, wandering on the paths between death and life. Early on, before I comprehended what was happening to me, I encountered a shepherd boy in the mountains south of here. It was near an altar set into a ledge on a black cliff face, rising out of the wooded hill.”
“In Heaven’s Ridge? These western mountains? Above the altar where lies only rock, and the cliff ends in jagged teeth?”
“That sounds right.”
“You must be speaking of Crags. What has that to do with Earth?”
“I saw into the boy’s heart. I didn’t know at the time what I was seeing, but he and his village had a measure of protection set over them. He thought of a snake.”
“I’ve seen her staff appear as a hooded cobra.”
Marit shuddered. “I’d have remembered seeing a venomous snake.”
“But it appears also more benignly as a garden snake, if those who come before her for judgment have committed no serious crime.”
“It is worth seeking, is it not? Just as Hari may be willing to listen to me because we shared—Aui!—” She blushed, recalling Hari’s grin, his attractive body. Jothinin waved away smoke, trying not to laugh, and it made her happy to see his melancholia slide away. “We shared what two lonely people who find each other attractive may share. He will at least listen to me.”
Then he did laugh. “As a man, I can assure you, he will. If you call that listening.” He wiped grease from his lips, and looked at Kirit. The outlander in her cloak of Mist nodded at his unspoken question. “Very well. Kirit and I will go south, to Crags, and see what we can find. Is that the whole of your plan, Marit?”
Marit sat on the rock and, suddenly voracious, ripped apart a coney.
Kirit said, “Tell a story, Uncle.”
“A difficult task for a water-born Blue Rat, who loves nothing more than to talk,” he said, smiling. “Give me a moment to think. Hmm.”
“Tell me again the story of how this wide salty lake up here was made,” Kirit said.
The morning sun lanced over the waters and the rocky ridge that rimmed the plateau, which the delvings, according to the tale, had built as a vast salty prison for a merling they had taken captive. In the gulf beyond the ridge, scraps of cloud floated so close it seemed to Marit that she might comb out cloud-silk from which to weave a pillow for a lover. Why must she think of Joss? She imagined him young and vibrantly alive as he had been twenty years ago, and then older and still handsome, as he was now. She had seen into Joss’s heart, and she did not want to look there again because she did not want to know: that he had loved her, so long ago his memories of her were a tangle of regret and nostalgia overlaid with years of fleeting relationships with other women and a cursed lot of cordial and rice wine. It was his life, not hers. It could never be hers.
She realized Jothinin had fallen silent when he grasped her forearm as an uncle might, to comfort a distraught niece. She had to choke down the taste of dreams, the life she had once thought she would have.
Let it go.
“Uncle,” she said.
He released her arm. “What is the rest of the plan?”
“You’ll seek Earth. I’ll look for Hari. I’ll seek what information I can about Night. We’ll meet here at the end of the year. If we gain a majority on the council, it may be possible to resolve this without killing. But we must have a second plan, if this one does not work.”
Kirit pulled her bow into her lap. Jothinin shut his eyes.
“Lord Radas commanded a guardsman to stab Hari. To inflict a mortal wound, knowing Hari would suffer as he died and healed. So that means if that guardsman could do it, others could as well. A Guardian could be mortally wounded, if taken by surprise, and their cloak stripped off when they fall into the healing trance. As Kirit did. If we can’t kill them, someone else will have to.”
The fire popped. A puff of ashes rose and settled.
He opened his eyes. “Do you believe there are any who can be trusted with this knowledge? To kill for us? On our behalf? And not turn against us afterward, once they know it can be done?”
“One man might.”
19
FOR THE QIN, the pace of travel from training camp to militia fort and on around the wide plain of Olo’osson was slow. For poor Miravia, who had never before ridden a horse, it was brutal. They arrived at Candra Crossing in the rain six days after they departed Olossi, a pace of about six mey each day. The folk busy thinning burgeoning rice and nai fields ignored them, but once in town people emerged onto the porches of the shops and inns and warehouses to gesture a welcome. The river crossing, glimpsed through gaps between buildings, was lined with sodden flags; a flat-bottomed ferry crammed with wagons and livestock was being winched across toward people huddled beneath a shelter on the far shore.
“Was this place attacked?” Miravia asked as they approached the center of town.
“The temples and council house were damaged,” said Anji, “and a few buildings burned, but otherwise the enemy pushed through here so quickly they hadn’t time to do permanent harm.”
He rode ahead to the militia encampment east of town, leaving the women and their escort, commanded by Chief Tuvi, at the council hall. They dismounted in a courtyard flanked by two wings, one braced with scaffolding. Men set down planking for a floor. A trio of council members greeted the party and showed Mai onto a porch out of the rain and thence into a suite of rooms in the travelers’ wing.
“It’s small,” said their escort, “but the other rooms are occupied.”
The outer room was floored only with refurbished planks but the two sleeping rooms had fresh floor mats. The walls were washed white, as stark as the furnishings: pallets rolled up along one wall, a long low table, a stack of pillows, and an unlit brazier set in a corner next to a covered bucket.
“Will this suit you, verea?” asked the eldest, a woman so old that her back was bent, although her walk was spry. “We haven’t the fine furnishings and silks rich folk in Olossi can afford.”
“It’s very pleasant,” said Mai with a smile. “You have my thanks. If we might have water to wash in?”
“There’s good baths in town, verea.” The old woman’s gaze strayed to Miravia, and a frown flickered and vanished.
“If there is time, I’ll go gladly to the baths,” said Mai, “but for now, a basin of water to wash off the worst of the dirt would be much appreciated. And kama or sunfruit juice, if you’ve any. Khaif, perhaps? What is the market price here?”
“Neh, verea. The council will feed and house you. Without Captain Anji’s militia, we’d not be back in our homes. Do you see how folk work in the fields? Carts and wagons on the roads? The ferry carrying again? To feed and house you is a small enough tithe in exchange. If there’s anything else you need?”
“I would gladly meet with the council and indeed any merc
hant.”
“Do you represent the Olossi council, verea?”
“I have a seat on the council as a merchant, although I do not come today as an official member. Yet I would gladly ask what problems and questions folk here may have regarding the security of the roads and the safety of trade within the region. I can discuss supplies of various oils, which I sell. Also, as you may have heard, we are still looking for women willing to consider marrying the Qin soldiers. Over the last six months I know of forty-nine marriages between Qin soldiers and local women. We hope to arrange more. So if you’ll just give us time to wash and rest and eat something—”
A meeting was arranged, and the women hurried away to spread the word in town. Miravia had stood all this time not saying one word, but as soon as they were alone she limped into one of the sleeping chambers, eased down to her knees, and tugged open one of the pallets. She collapsed forward across it.
Mai took a basin of water brought by a curious pair of girls and carried it into the sleeping chamber while Priya and Sheyshi shook out their rain cloaks, hung them from rods set along the porch, and rinsed the mud off the outdoor shoes.
“Let me wash your hands and face,” said Mai. “Is the ache better?”
“It’s less worse.” Miravia’s groan was half a laugh. “Will I ever stop hurting?”
“Yes.” Mai bathed her hands and face as Miravia relaxed, the grimace of pain smoothing away.
Priya brought in a tray of juice and some rice cakes flavored with red berry, very tart, but restorative enough that Miravia sat up.
“Eiya! I never imagined it would hurt to ride. Where is Atani?”
“Anji took him to the encampment.”
“How he loves to display that baby! Not that Atani is not a fat and handsome boy, well worth showing off to everyone.”
“Best you walk around before you stiffen up.”
“Of course.”
She insisted on walking with Sheyshi to the well to help haul water. Tuvi had seen to the horses and to setting up guards around the compound. He paused on the porch beside Mai to watch Miravia and Sheyshi set off out the open gate toward the town well.
“She doesn’t complain,” he said.
“No, she does not,” agreed Mai, carefully examining his face. But he was not looking after Miravia with the smiling sigh of a hopeful lover; he was just stating what he observed, as the Qin did.
The door to another room along the long porch slid open, and a woman and child peeked out. The child shrieked as the woman quickly shut the door.
“Refugees from the north,” said the chief. “There’s a steady stream of them coming through who’ve heard there’s safety to be found in Olo’osson. Some are folk ferried down here by reeves, people who were stuck up on a rock in Toskala.”
“Toskala was attacked almost three months ago. That’s a long time to be stuck on a rock.”
“Maybe they ran out of food. Best you remain inside the compound, Mistress. No running out into the market until the captain returns. Just as a precaution.”
Already locals were trickling in through the gate in twos and fours to take a seat on the council benches under an open-sided shelter. Mai knew better than to argue with Tuvi on such grounds. She went back into the outer room, washed her own face and hands and tidied her dress and hair; drank and nibbled, to refresh herself; sat cross-legged on the matted floor and shut her eyes for as long as it took to recite the Ten Blessings under her breath. Miravia and Sheyshi returned, lugging water for the barrel in a corner of the room.
“I’ll just lie down,” said Miravia, and promptly fell asleep on a pallet.
Mai went outside and approached the council benches. “Greetings of the day.”
“Sit,” they said, offering her a place.
Names, markets, goods, gossip, grievances. Mai had grown up in the marketplace; she knew this talk to her bones. The merchants and businessfolk of Candra Crossing had nothing but praise for the militia, but they were angry about the middlemen charging exorbitant rates to cart goods along the West Track from Olossi. Two clans who used to cart goods in this region had taken heavy losses in the attacks of last year; no one was willing to set up in their place out of respect for tradition, because those two clans had always been the local carters. Meanwhile, with their equipment stolen by the invaders and never recovered, the clans hadn’t the wherewithal to regroup.
“Young women from those clans might consider marrying Qin soldiers stationed out here. We’ll settle a fair price on such alliances, for we’ve a wish to see the men peacefully housed and connected with local families.”
“Are you trying to buy brides, verea?”
“Aren’t most alliances settled with goods and coin, and a mutually beneficial agreement? Do you act otherwise when it comes time to marry your own children out of the clan?”
They did not, of course. No one did. And when she mentioned the trade in oil of naya, and the possibilities for business and herding and irrigation farming in the Barrens, folk listened more closely and asked more questions.
The council had absorbed the costs of housing refugees from Toskala, as well, people who must be fed and sent on their way with nai bread for the journey downriver to Olossi.
“They brought no coin with them from Toskala?” Mai asked.
Though traveling merchants and guildsmen certainly paid to stay at inns, a destitute or holy traveler was never charged, in honor of Hasibal the Pilgrim. At Mai’s innocent question, a debate caught fire over the proper designation of refugees. Were they a kind of pilgrim, able therefore to ask for the gods’ tithe to be fed and sheltered for a night or two before they moved on? Or were they properly to be treated as paying customers because they were going to set up a new life elsewhere?
“What do you think, verea?”
“Surely not every instance is the same. A young woman who comes to my gate asking for refuge and a chance to consider marrying one of the Qin soldiers because her village has been burned down and her family is dead and she has nothing but the clothes on her back must be treated differently than I was myself treated on reaching Olossi. I had coin, a husband, a clan if you will call a troop of soldiers and grooms and servants a clan. For me, it would have seemed shameful to receive the gods’ tithes not because I would consider it shameful to take food and shelter from the gods but because it might be better used to help those who truly have nothing. So if a refugee comes from Toskala with his sleeves full of strings of leya and a heavy chest of gold cheyt, then I would treat him differently from a poor woman and child who are hungry and lost. I don’t think we have to be rigid in holding to the law. We must consider justice and mercy, and mix it with common sense.”
Instead of inspiring a stately philosophical discussion of justice, her fine words merely sparked accusations that some people along the West Track had aided the invading army in exchange for coin or certain expensive trade goods, or that other people had made such accusations not because they were true but to impugn the reputation of market rivals who were innocent of wrongdoing.
The old woman who had first greeted them said angrily, “In the old days we’d have held such charges for an assizes and the Guardians would have come and seen the truth of the matter. But now the cloaks have been stolen by lilu, so these disputes fester because there’s none we can trust to judge.”
A company of riders approached, hooves heavy on the road. Soon Anji walked under the arch into the courtyard, attended by local militia officers. Mai spotted the infant comfortably in the arms of Chief Esigu, who was in command of the eastern militia. The locals made a place for Anji on the benches, and he listened to their complaints about the disarray of the local assizes and their inability to resolve disputes with people from outside Candra Crossing’s environs. What was to be done about the refugees from the north who were placing such a burden on the town? Why couldn’t the reeves fly people all the way to Olossi?
He politely refused to discuss security and militia matters and deferred the
other questions to Mai.
“It seems to me,” Mai said at last, “that you’re most frustrated that your voices and concerns aren’t being heard. Perhaps a greater council can be chosen from among the local districts of Olo’osson and meet in company with Olossi’s council. The question of assizes is a serious one. To rely on the old ways when they no longer function is like rebuilding a house without first making sure your foundation is solid.”
Anji cut through the murmur of commentary following this speech by rising. “I beg your indulgence.” He nodded around the benches. “I’ve a wish to stroll up to the beacon tower with my wife before the sun sets.”
They fell over themselves to graciously retreat so the captain and his wife could enjoy what all described as a particularly fine view of the river and town, especially now that the rain had moved off and the sun was shining. After, Mai nursed Atani, and she and Anji, in company with Chief Tuvi and a cadre of soldiers, made their way through the late-afternoon bustle of town to the stone path that led up Candra Hill. Chief Tuvi carried Atani; Anji walked ahead with Mai up the steep stairs.
“You understand,” he said when they were halfway up, out of earshot of the guards in front and behind, “that if you wish to see your uncle Hari again, I cannot discuss militia matters in your hearing. If he is a spy for Lord Radas, he can learn what you know.”
“I do not believe he is Lord Radas’s ally. Anyway, I doubt it is so easy even for a Guardian to know all that lies in a person’s mind and heart. It must be more like searching for a child’s doll lost in a field of ripe wheat.”
“Perhaps, but I cannot take the chance.”
“Then I accept the condition. I would rather visit Uncle Hari. Must I avoid all councils altogether? I would be sorry if that were so.”
“Not at all. You do well with these local councils. They do not feel intimidated by you, and yet they respect you because of your wealth, your trade connections, and your ability to listen. It makes sense for you to push to create a wider regional council, one that can later act in concert with the militia. Since you are accompanying me on this circuit, it would be useful for you to broach the idea in every place we stop, even in the humblest village.”
