by Kate Elliott
Uncle Hari was dead. Someone had killed him.
Someone who knew he was here.
The pain was already flowering: Anji had betrayed her and Hari both.
How could she bear it?
How could she not?
Anji was not the whole of her life.
I will live, she said.
She held on as pain engulfed her.
42
JOSS MET OLO’OSSON’S army a day’s stage from Horn. The army had made remarkable time, marching eighty mey in eight days, and yet as they set up their night’s encampment, the soldiers looked determined and eager, not exhausted. Anji sat under an awning on a cloth folding stool at a camp table on which a map was spread, its corners weighted by knives. Squares of rice paper and a clerk’s writing paraphernalia had been pushed to one corner. He was receiving a delegation of local villagers who had brought in wagons loaded with supplies.
As Joss entered, Anji beckoned him over. “Bring a stool for the commander,” he said, and another stool was unfolded.
Joss sat, looking around at the usual complement of Qin soldiers: Toughid was missing.
“We’ll leave you with fifty lame and blown horses,” Anji was saying to the villagers, “and we’ll take the fifty you’ve gathered. With proper care, the animals we leave behind will recover, but you may lose a few. I can’t guarantee you’ll ever again see any of the horses we’re taking.”
“Say nothing of it, Captain,” said their spokesman, an elderly fellow wearing a merchant’s silk robe and sash. “It’s a fair trade considering what you’ve done for us. A year ago we were hiding in the forest. We’ve thirty men wanting to join up and fight that cursed Star army.”
Anji took a sip of steaming khaif and set down the cup next to a knife hilt. “I can’t take untrained men right now, although men who wish to fight with the militia can join up at the training camp in Candra Crossing. However, if you’ve any experienced carters or grooms or smiths or harness makers, they can fall in with the infantry, which is marching about a day behind us. They’ll have to keep up. Any who fall behind will be left to make their own way home, even once we’re in enemy territory. Especially once we’re in enemy territory.”
It was understood that Anji was being not brutal but pragmatic. A baker presented him with a tray of sweet rice cakes and bean curd pastries, and there were other delicacies as well: mutton steeped in spices, a savory fish soup, venison, pickled radish, and nai bread sweetened with juice to cover its bitter aftertaste.
No rice.
Rice was a problem, as the villagers explained. Because of the trouble early in the rainy season, fields had been planted late and not as extensively as usual. There hadn’t been enough people to replant and weed and thin; losses had been higher and productivity lower than normal. There would be hunger later in the year; some households were already resorting to eating woodland roots and se leaves to fill their bellies. If the war did not end soon, the coming year’s planting would be at risk also. If they lost two crops in a row, there would be famine.
Anji listened, and ate, and shared out the food to every person who had reason to come in under the awning. Eventually, as twilight fell, the villagers were herded out.
Anji rose and paced once around the awning’s edge before returning to his seat. “Joss. I just joined the army today. I was flown up in two stages from Astafero, with a stop in Olossi. What news from Clan Hall? How are things going?”
“The stockpile of naya is safe. Copper Hall reeves are conveying vessels into Nessumara at Chief Sengel’s order. As for the enemy’s troop positions—”
A young reeve with a limp and a dusty face came in escorted by soldiers. Besides her reeve’s baton, short sword, and quiver, she carried a very small jeweler’s chest bound with chains and clipped to her harness.
“Captain Anji?” she asked. “I’m Beiko, from Copper Hall. Chief Sengel sent me. He said to give this chest and this report into your keeping only.” She unhooked the chest and handed it to him together with a folded and sealed square of rice paper. He gave the chest to Chief Deze, who slung it over his shoulder, no great weight.
Joss’s heart raced, and his fingers went cold. He could not keep his eyes from the tiny chest, no matter how innocuous it appeared to others. What in the hells had happened in Nessumara?
“Ah.” Anji rose, offered her his stool, and gestured for his soldiers to leave. Only Anji, Joss, and Chief Deze remained under the awning within earshot of the exhausted reeve. The reeve gulped down two cups of kama juice as Anji cut the seal and scanned a scribble of looping marks Joss could not possibly decipher, nothing like the ancient runes or the Lantern’s familiar syllabary.
The hells! Could Sengel write, too?
Anji said to Deze, “Have Esigu tell the villagers that a cohort of five hundred Qin riders will be coming up after the infantry in a few days. I forgot to mention it before. I don’t want them to be surprised.” He nodded at the reeve. “My thanks, Reeve Beiko. You’ll be shown to a pallet for the night. Take food and drink to refresh yourself. I’ll have a message for you at daybreak.”
“Yes, Captain.” If she was curious about the contents of Sengel’s message, she hid it well. A soldier led her off into the dusk.
Joss said, “What’s in that chest, Captain?”
Anji’s smile was like a fine steel blade. “To gain another cloak so soon is an unexpected advantage. They have no idea. Hu!” He handed the rice paper to Deze and pulled his whip from his belt, brandishing it with a flourish. “Events are progressing more quickly than we had hoped. Lord Radas’s army has massed at Saltow. Sengel sent a diversionary attack to trouble them, nothing big, but they shook it off and began advancing into the wetlands—dried up this time of year—last night. During the night a cloak rode into Nessumara’s council square, where Sengel holds his headquarters. Sengel had already uncovered a plot to assassinate the council members and Marshal Masar, so I suppose the cloak came to oversee the night’s work. And to discover our plans, figuring everyone would fear him too much to act. But Sengel knew what to do—” He broke off. “Hu! No fears, Commander. Your face has gone gray! It was a man, wearing a cloak the color of spilt blood.”
The hells!
Joss sank down onto the stool and, without thinking, took Anji’s unfinished cup of khaif and downed it.
“Would you like some cordial?” asked the captain. “Rice wine?”
“No. Go on.” His hands were shaking.
“That’s all. Lord Radas has no reeves so he won’t know how quickly we’re moving up. That being the case—” He indicated the map of the Hundred, using his riding whip to point first at Horn Hall and then at Toskala. “—I’ll need you to deploy your Clan Hall reeves to lift a strike force to Toskala. Once the battle is joined in Nessumara, a signal will be given from Law Rock to attack the garrison in Toskala. Do you have any questions?”
Joss bent close, lowering his voice. “I don’t know who this cloak of Earth is. But if Blood is gone, then according to what Marit said, Lord Radas and Night no longer have the five they need to control the Guardians’ council. It’s enough, Anji. Let the Guardians sort out their own struggle, as the gods meant them to do. To go on with this is wrong. We’ve broken the boundaries.”
“If we have, then so have the Guardians,” said Anji, tapping the whip on the square that marked Nessumara and the tangle of lines that suggested the delta’s web of water and land. “In truth, we’re fortunate.”
Joss sat back. “How can you say so?”
“They are poor leaders, these Guardians.”
“They’re not meant to be leaders! They’re meant to be judges, to stand outside daily life, not to rule or command.”
“How does that statement negate my point? This one called Night, eldest and most frightening, seems to have an ability to build armies but no interest in using them. Lord Radas seems interested in ruling but has relied on fear and intimidation and on the complete disorganization and lack of preparedness of the lo
cal militias. The enemy army sent against Olossi lost to our much smaller force because they expected to meet no resistance at all. From what accounts I have heard of the earlier assault on Nessumara, the enemy pulled back at the first sign of resistance. Yet you and I were told that Nessumara’s militia was stretched to its limits and ready to collapse.” He swept the whip to encompass the land, from north to south, east to west. “If Lord Radas’s troops had pushed on into the delta five months ago, they would have conquered Nessumara. Obviously, the Hundred does not know how to fight wars.”
“No, indeed,” said Joss hoarsely as his face went hot, “and a fine thing that is, too. Why should we want to fight wars and live in tumult, when we might have peace?”
“You might have had peace once, but you don’t have peace now. You see how vulnerable you have become. Do you suppose my cousins, knowing now that the Hundred exists beyond the Kandaran Pass and having their eyes drawn this way, might not covet your eagles? These guardian cloaks? Your rice fields? What other secrets hide in your forests and mountains and seas? Look at my map, see how much of it is blank. Who are these wildings and delvings and lendings and merlings? What are the firelings who embraced my son on the day of his birth? Do you even know what a rich land this is? Do you think that if the Sirniakans desire it, they will not march with many more than fifteen cohorts to take it from you and make you their slaves?”
“Commander!”
Joss looked up, but the man was speaking to Anji, not to Joss. A Qin soldier walked into the spill of lamplight under the awning.
“Toughid!” Anji met him with a grin. Forearms smacked together so hard Joss winced.
Toughid immediately noted the jeweler’s chest slung over Deze’s back. “Mai and the chief arrived safely in the valley. All is as you hoped. It’s unlikely your mother can reach her there.”
“Your mother?” demanded Joss. Why in the hells had he heard no word of this?
“Did I not mention that my mother has arrived in the Hundred? She was expelled from the women’s palace by the new emperor.”
“Your mother? She must be a formidable woman.”
Anji shifted a knife on the map, the meaningless gesture of a man who needs to take his mind off uncomfortable thoughts. “Formidable, yes. And as difficult to please as I remember from my childhood.”
The odd way Toughid had spoken scratched at Joss’s uneasiness. “What has your mother to do with Mai’s needing a safe place to shelter?”
For an instant, Anji looked as if he wanted to kill something. Joss reached for the hilt of his sword to fend off an attack. Guards stiffened; Toughid spoke a word in the Qin language.
Anji’s expression eased into a bland smile. “Enough. A boy reacts this way. A man does not. Mai is safe. We march at dawn.”
He sat, reaching for a square of rice paper and a writing brush. He poured a bit of water into the ink bowl to soften the ink, dipped the brush, and then paused with the brush poised above a untouched expanse of white.
“Hu! Joss, what other news have you?”
A bead of ink sank from the brush’s tip, hanging—like unspoken words—from the delicate hairs. But it did not fall. After a moment, Joss wrenched his gaze away from the drop to find Anji watching him with the same patient, guarded gaze with which he treated everyone. That he might once have been a brash, impatient, emotional child seemed inconceivable.
“You’ve anticipated me,” said Joss more brusquely than he intended. “Clan Hall’s scouts returned yesterday late in the afternoon with the news that Lord Radas’s army has massed around Nessumara. But that would have been before Chief Sengel’s attack and the subsequent night attack, so it seems you have more recent information than I do.”
Anji nodded. “Anything else?”
Joss pulled a scroll from his pack. “A formal accounting of Horn’s provisioning preparations for the army.”
“That can go to Chief Deze,” said Anji. The bead dropped and splattered on the fresh paper. “There’s a spare bedroll if you need it, in my tent. Or sit here beside me, if you wish. I’ll be awake a while longer and would welcome your company. Can you fly Toughid to Law Rock in the morning after you’ve delivered the orders to Horn Hall? Toughid will be in charge of the attack in Toskala, when it’s time.”
Beyond the awning, the camp was quieting as men finished their chores and meals and settled down to sleep, to conserve their strength for the battle ahead. There was no singing, no carousing, no jokes, no drinking or gossip. Such discipline was impressive.
“Joss?”
“You’re right, Anji. The Hundred never knew how to fight wars. My thanks for the offer of a bedroll. I have my own. Best I rest now. It will be a long day tomorrow.”
Anji returned his attention to the paper, his hand assured as graceful letters flowed from the brush. Chief Deze sat in the other stool, the chest dangling along his back. Joss walked into the dark camp and its scattering of campfires to find a patch of ground on which to unroll his blanket and cloak. When he lay down to stare up at brilliant stars not yet joined by the waning quarter moon, his thoughts kept him awake for a long time.
They had broken the boundaries.
Now they would be punished.
• • •
KESHAD DELIVERED THE oil of naya to Argent Hall, as ordered. Because the ship was headed back for Astafero and there were no horses available and no reeves who had the leisure to haul a person as unimportant as he was, he headed for Olossi on foot. It was an easy path, a one-cart road raised on a berm over a flat plain, but a full day’s walk.
He walked between dry fields awaiting the rains, the afternoon heat beating down over him, but he didn’t mind it. He had a hat with a brim to shade his face and neck; he stripped down to his kilt, knotting his jacket and trousers and stuffing them into his pack. The heaviest thing was that cursed sack of gold the Qin princess had gifted him. Overhead, eagles and their reeves departed Argent Hall in staggered flights, hauling sealed ceramic pots containing oil of naya. Kesh trudged.
At twilight, he spotted lamps to the east on a path running parallel to his own. He hurried across a dusty fallow field and caught up to a train of wagoners rigged out with lanterns, driving supplies through the night to Olossi. They were all female, and happy to have a young man with such fine eyes and such a pleasant expanse of bare torso to admire since the young men in their villages had joined up with the militia months ago.
“You’re not in the militia?” they asked him as they took a break to water and rub down their dray beasts.
He lounged against the foremost wagon, sipping juice their leader had offered. “I’m an agent for the command staff. I was on special assignment.”
“Then why are you walking to Olossi, eh?”
“The army has requisitioned all the horses.”
They knew it, for sure! And their dwindling rice stores were drawn down, too, with planting yet to come and it to be accomplished with a smaller workforce than normal due to so many lads and men gone with the army. But it was a small price to pay for not having to fear their villages would be burned like all those villages along West Track. They set off again, and their leader, a woman old enough to have girls of marriageable age, questioned Kesh closely about the Qin. Was it true they treated their wives and wives’ clans well? Were there still soldiers looking to marry into local families?
“If you’re truly interested, bring your offer to the captain’s wife, to her compound in Olossi.”
“They say she’s a sharp bargainer. Got the better of the old council of Olossi. I don’t know if I’d have the courage to face a woman like that. Have you met her?”
Kesh laughed, hoping the night hid his flush. “She’ll treat you fairly. Or you can go to one of the training encampments where Qin soldiers are stationed.”
“There’s a camp near us with a few Qin in residence, training the others. They took their pick of well connected girls. Not that they were rude about it, mind you. They took what seemed best to them. Anyway, al
l that militia have marched. While here we sit, waiting.”
“You’re not waiting, verea. You’re working.”
She shifted the reins to move the dray beasts across a transition where the one-cart road merged onto a wider two-cart path on a massive berm that speared straight south over the plain. The waning quarter moon was rising in the east. In the wagon behind, young women were giggling as they talked.
“Work’s a thing I’m accustomed to. Villages burned, refugees starving in the fields, roads unsafe—that’s nothing I ever want to get accustomed to. I make my offerings to the gods and pray that our army defeats the enemy and brings peace. That would be worth plenty, neh?”
O’EKI HAD RETURNED to Olossi with the ships transporting the new Qin cohort and their horses. At the Qin compound in Olossi the big man welcomed Keshad with such a genuine smile that Kesh was taken aback. The chamber, large enough to house ten clerks, was silent, with only a single guard, a local man, standing at attention at the open door into the warehouse.
“Where are the other clerks?” Kesh asked after he’d covered his discomfort by washing his feet, hands, and face.
“Hu! I let them go because they weren’t experienced enough. I keep the compound books myself. I hired the Haf Gi Ri house to keep track of the army’s expenses and revenues.”
“The Haf Gi Ri house? The Ri Amarah women?”
O’eki was cleaning his brushes and closing down his accounts for the day. Both doors were open in the accounts office, but no breeze blew through to cool them.
“In exchange for the contract, the Haf Gi Ri have undertaken to make no sales to anyone supplying the army. That way they can’t enrich themselves on the side by cheating the books.”
From the warehouse rose a genial exchange of greetings between locals. Indeed, there was not a single Qin soldier to be seen except for crippled Seren, who had command of the compound guard. A familiar figure clomped into the chamber from the warehouse, still laughing at a joke he’d left behind. Seeing Kesh, he coughed to silence. His silver bracelets, running three-quarters of the way up his arms, jangled as he stopped short. He had every bit of skin covered except hands and face, just like in Sirniaka.
