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Traitors' Gate

Page 89

by Kate Elliott


  “Do you still weep for your son and daughter and wife, Tohon?”

  “I remember them every day, when I see some new thing I’d like to share. A bolt of red silk. A red-capped bird. The way pipewood sets up a rustle when the wind runs through it. There’s no other sound like it. That Mount Aua, a fine bold peak, don’t you think?” He’d learned to point with his elbow, indicating the distant mountain, tipped with white, towering and strong.

  “ ‘Mount Aua, who is sentinel,’ ” murmured Shai, “ ‘We survive in his shelter.’ Tohon, are you sure the children are safe?” He’d asked a hundred times, and yet he must ask again, always, because his heart ached so.

  Tohon’s answer was always the same, and delivered in the same patient tone. “I delivered them to Nessumara before the city fell under siege. I believe they were shipped to Zosteria to keep them out of enemy hands. Eridit and the two militiamen knew enough to take care of them. I think they were going to head to Mar. But sometimes, lad, you have to accept that you may never know.”

  “Is that how the Qin manage? Riding away from their families for years, or forever? Sending their sons away to war, and never knowing?”

  Tohon had a firm grip, and he knew exactly where he could grasp Shai’s arm without bruising tender skin. “You learn to ride on the path and keep your eyes open so you can see what is there, not what you wish were there.” His gaze was level, and after a moment he smiled. “And then after all you might discover that what is there is what you wished for all along.”

  THEY SIGNED UP with a new caravan out of Horn, heading along the West Track to Olossi. Riding was harder—it chafed, and he had to wear trousers—but each day he rode for longer at a stretch. By the time they reached Olossi, he rode half the day and walked half the day and split wood every evening as the driver sat on a folding stool and watched, commenting on his form and likely chance of hurting himself, and how he could be more efficient if he altered the angle of his axe. When he got tired of hearing her criticisms, he altered the angle, and was surprised to discover she was right.

  They passed through checkpoints and entered the inner city. At the gate of the Qin compound they were met by a woman with a debt mark at her left eye who told them cheerfully that, no, the Qin no longer owned this compound. It had been sold last month to Master Calon, who was her new master, a decent man for all that his grandfather had come up from Sirniaka.

  Who had the authority to sell it? Everyone knew that the new mistress of the Qin household was the commander’s mother, a formidable woman before whom the entire market quaked, known to be intimate with the Hieros and, indeed, every head priest of every temple in the city as well as having already secured a seat on the city council and gotten herself invited into the compounds of the Ri Amarah.

  No one had any great affection for her. She wasn’t the young mistress, the one who’d been killed by red hounds, agents of the southern empire whose eye was now turned north and whose reach was cruel and arbitrary, for truly why would anyone want to kill Mistress Mai, who had overthrown the corrupt Greater Houses and secured wives for the Qin soldiers and nurtured the new settlement of Astafero in the Barrens that supplied the city with oil of naya and a very good grade of wool? And who had been kind and generous while doing it, never a harsh word or a cutting remark either to your face or behind your back.

  Be that as it may. The empire was a terrible threat, everyone understood that now, here so close to the Kandaran Pass. The murder of the commander’s beloved young wife proved that, didn’t it? As for the mother, all approved of her devotion to her grandson. The baby had been sent to Olossi with his nursemaid last month, hadn’t he? While the commander was on campaign in the north, naturally he would entrust the little lad to family. The grandmother was devoted to her grandson. It was sweet to see her with him in the market, dandling the boy—for he was a beautiful and lively baby with whom everyone fell in love at first sight—while ruthlessly ordering around her slaves and hirelings and bickering with the market women in that imperious way she had, as if she thought the sun rose and set on her likes and dislikes . . .

  “Our thanks, verea,” said Tohon, steering a stunned Shai away from the gate. “We’ll just find our own way, then.”

  Shai’s head was whirling. He couldn’t keep track of where they were going. As his feet slapped on stone, the impact jarred up through his bones to addle his thoughts yet more. But Tohon knew the twists and turns of the lanes and each rise and fall of hill, and so they climbed to the height, to a substantial compound sprawled next door to a compound whose walls flew the banners of a Ri Amarah clan. The Qin guards at the gate recognized Tohon, although they were not soldiers Shai knew; they were newcomers, from a cohort of Commander Beje’s men sent north with the Qin princess and now likely to spend the rest of their days in the Hundred.

  “We need cordial and juice,” said Tohon to the guards, “and a place to sit in the shade.”

  “Better than that,” said the young man, eyeing Shai’s scars or his muscles, hard to say. Shai was showing a cursed lot of skin in his kilt and sleeveless vest. “We got word you arrived. Come this way.”

  He led them to the porch, where they took off their sandals, and thence deep into the house past several layers of sliding doors, each threshold guarded by more black-clad soldiers, until they came to a long, quiet chamber covered with woven mats and furnished with a single low table and a single pillow on which sat Anji. Chief Tuvi, kneeling behind him, was twisting up Anji’s topknot and fixing it with a gold ribbon. A pair of Qin soldiers were standing to either side of three small chests bound by chains. Shai felt a sting on his skin, and he shuddered. He knew what was in those chests.

  “Sit,” said Anji without looking up.

  Shai sat, trying not to remember how the cloak had smothered and burned him. He dared not shut his eyes, so he watched as Tuvi finished his task in silence. When the chief sat back, Tohon spoke.

  “We’d be appreciative of a cup of cordial, or some juice, Commander. We just arrived after a long journey.”

  “So have I also just arrived,” said Anji, rising, “although by reeve.” He examined Shai without expression, then nodded. “I wasn’t sure you would live, but I see Tohon has taken good care of you.”

  Shai could say nothing. Watching Anji, he could only think of Mai.

  “Come with me,” said Anji.

  He led them into a courtyard guarded on one side by Qin soldiers and on the other by massive men of foreign mien, muscled like wrestlers, and as clean-shaven as Toskalan men. They entered a narrow antechamber. After a pause during which Shai heard female voices murmuring and the faint fragile kiss of a delicate porcelain cup touching to plate, doors with painted screens were slid open. The chamber beyond was a wide porch, its plank floor heaped with carpets, its far side open to a courtyard infested with fountains, ornamental pools, and dwarf trees carefully pruned. Its ends were hung with curtains which rippled as unseen people moved behind them. Eyes peered through gaps as Anji, Tuvi, Tohon, and Shai entered the room.

  Two women sat facing over a low table. The elderly Hieros sat on a pillow, while the Qin princess reclined on an embroidered couch. The Hieros wore a simple taloos of best-quality burnt-orange silk, wrapped to expose her arms, thin and age-worn but still wiry with strength. The Qin princess wore robes that covered her from wrist to ankle to throat. She glittered with gold chains and a gold-knit headdress stabbing like a tower from her head.

  “Ah, Anjihosh,” she said. “You have come at last. Sit down.”

  No pillow was offered for the men with him.

  Anji indicated that Shai should take the pillow. He remained standing while Shai, too exhausted to care how it looked, sank down to rest.

  “This must be the uncle,” continued Anji’s mother, surveying Shai. “Hard to say if those scars will ever entirely go away. I suppose he was a good-looking young man once, although nothing like the niece.”

  “Anjihosh,” said Tuvi quietly, like a rider calming a storm-madd
ened horse.

  The Hieros lifted a porcelain cup and sipped, watching the interplay between mother and son. She set down the cup with a crooked smile. “A dark day, Commander Anji, when we heard about the murder of your devoted and beloved wife by red hounds out of the empire.”

  “The red hounds?” blurted Shai, seeing a flash of triumph in the Qin princess’s eye. What had he to lose by speaking out? They could do nothing worse to him than had already been done. “You were the one who killed her!”

  Anji’s mother regarded him with amusement. “I? I did not stab her. The slave Sheyshi stabbed her. It is to be supposed—how else are we to explain it?—that she acted as an agent for the red hounds. Every son and grandson of Emperor Farutanihosh was under a death sentence. The boy’s mother simply got in the way as she protected her child.”

  “So it is to be supposed,” murmured Anji, like a spike of lightning as Tuvi rested a hand on the commander’s forearm.

  “It’s a lie! A lie you have all agreed to tell to protect—!”

  “Shai! Silence!”

  Once, that tone from Anji would have silenced Shai, but no longer. “Is there to be no justice for Mai?”

  But his cry rang in empty air, and their silence was his answer. He might as well have remained mute, for all the notice they took of him. Tohon laid a hand gently on his arm, that was all.

  Anji turned away. In a hoarse voice, he said, “Where is my son?”

  His mother clapped her hands. A slave slipped out from behind a curtain. “Fetch the boy.”

  The Hieros’s gaze paused on Tohon as she accepted from him a nod, and moved again to Anji. “As folk are saying, Commander, the eyes of the south have turned this way. The empire now knows—and cares—we exist. Because of you.”

  “My apologies,” he said, and the words sounded sincere enough. “I did not seek their attention.”

  “Yet you have it. I suppose if I could rid myself of you and your beautiful son and thereby end the problem, I would. But that would leave me with your Qin soldiers, and your Qin-trained militia, and enemy cohorts still at large in the north. They are still at large, are they not?”

  “We have not yet marched into Herelia to take down their headquarters in Wedrewe. We have spent our efforts over the last month securing Istria and Haldia, the countryside, the towns, and the cities. I’m particularly concerned that every farmer can plant as soon as the rains come without fear he will be vulnerable to attack out in his fields. Starvation is a significant concern across the north, and it will only get worse. If folk cannot plant now, the situation will become catastrophic. As it is, it may take years for people to rebuild. Wedrewe, and the remnants gathered in Walshow, are a danger, but they can be dealt with later.”

  “I suppose they can,” murmured the Hieros. “What do you want, Commander Anji?”

  He had the grace to look startled. “Why, to raise my son in peace. A peace that will shelter all the people of the Hundred.” His gaze sharpened. “Isn’t it the same thing you have many times told me you want, Holy One?”

  “Ah.” She sketched a series of fluid movements with her left hand, in a language that would have meant something to the wildings and to any Hundred-raised folk. “And therein lies the tale, does it not? If you die, we are left as in the tale of the Guardians. ‘Long ago, in the time of chaos, a bitter series of wars, feuds, and reprisals denuded the countryside and impoverished the lords and guildsmen and farmers and artisans of the Hundred.’ This time, I fear, we cannot rely on the Guardians to establish justice.”

  “The assizes must be reopened,” agreed Anji, “without the interference of demons. The roads must be safe, tolls and tithes and taxes fair. People want to eat. I could go on, but I won’t. For all this, we need peace.”

  A slave entered, and behind him walked Priya, carrying a plump baby whose luminous face and brilliant smile brought as much radiance into the chamber as a hundred lamps. Shai could not help himself; he began to cry.

  The baby spoke up in a piercingly sweet voice: “Dada! Dada!” He reached; he yearned.

  Anji strode across the chamber and engulfed the baby, showering his black hair and dusky face with butterfly kisses that made the little lad chortle as he tried to purse his tiny lips in imitation. Priya looked away, bowing her head.

  The Hieros watched, sipped her tea, and set down her cup. “So, Commander Anji, do you suppose you and your son can ever hope to live in peace? That you’ll be safe from those who might wish to kill you?”

  Anji glanced up, tucking the child into the curve of his left arm. “I rely on your support.”

  “And you have it, because I, too, have people I wish to protect.” The Hieros’s smile did not reassure, but it possessed the pinch of finality. She looked at the Qin princess and received from her a nod no less final. An agreement incubated, hatched, and thrived in that wordless exchange between two women who knew how to order the domains they ruled. “I am a weary and elderly woman. This trouble has harmed the Hundred grievously. We are not ready to fight another war while this one is not yet ended and the empire in the meantime shrugs a shoulder our way, wondering what mosk has stung its ear. Let it be stated, therefore, that we are allies.”

  “Let it be said,” agreed Anji. “I have every respect for you, Holy One. I will work in concert with you and the temples. We seek the same goals.”

  “I suppose we do. Now, I am finished here for today.” She rose with light grace to her feet, needing no aid, and paused by the door to look at Tohon.

  “My apologies, Holy One,” Tohon said regretfully. “I’m not at leisure at this time.”

  She nodded with careful neutrality, or rueful resignation. The doors slid shut behind her.

  “Well, Mother,” said Anji, “now you have what you want.”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything except my affection. Which you will never have.”

  She twitched out of the hands of a hovering slave a square of cloth so lushly embroidered with fine silver thread that it glittered. After patting her forehead, she handed it back and sat straight, tucking her feet sideways under her, her skirts heaped in ravines and ridges around her.

  “I do not need your affection, Anjihosh. I only need you to survive. That is my victory. You will marry the emperor’s sister to placate him. I have dulled the knives of the Hieros and her spies and assassins, and will mock into submission those on the council who voice doubts about any aspect of your enterprise. The rest you are already on your way to accomplishing. The Hundred is a fine inheritance for your son, don’t you think?”

  “Why would the emperor’s sister allow Mai’s son to live, after she bears a son of my siring?”

  “Because I will command it done that way. Let Atani be her son, Anji. Let him call her ‘Mother.’ She is a biddable creature, and desperate to please. Let her bear daughters in plenty to dote on, and I will rid you of any inconvenient sons who might trouble the waters, for you and I can both see that Atani will shine brighter than any of them possibly could. There, it is settled.”

  Anji was, Shai saw, on the edge of tears. He was trembling. The baby, looking worried, patted his father’s mouth.

  With an effort of will that seemed to actually reverberate through the room as a lute’s string vibrates, the more powerful for its lack of sound, Anji reined himself in. He buried the tears. He kissed the baby’s palms, first one, then the other.

  He said, “It is settled.”

  Tohon grunted, as though he’d been punched in the gut.

  Carrying the boy, Anji turned his back on his mother and walked out of the chamber. Shai scrambled up to follow Tuvi and Tohon through the courtyard and into empty chambers furnished with nothing but the barest comforts, absent any of the wild, artful abandon with which Mai would have filled a house. Where were the taloos-wrapped rats flying kites, the first screen she had purchased in Olossi’s market just because it had delighted her so? All trace of her was gone.

  All except the baby.

  Anji came
to rest in the chamber with the three chests. He turned to Tuvi. “We’ll fly at dawn to Merciful Valley,” he said. He looked at Shai. “Not you, I think.”

  “Not me? Is there yet more you have to hide? Did you conspire with your mother to have Mai killed, and now fear I will speak to her ghost and she tell me the truth? Can it be true you have just told your mother that you’ll marry the woman she killed Mai to force you to marry? I don’t believe you wanted Mai dead. I think you loved her, as much as you can love anything. And even so—can it be true?—you’ll allow the baby to grow up thinking your new wife is his mother, as if Mai never existed?”

  “Anjihosh,” said Tuvi in his hands-on-the-reins voice.

  Anji had walked beyond anger. Indeed, Shai thought, he had walked beyond shame. He had walked beyond honor. He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it; the ghost of another man, a man he might have been, faded behind him.

  “It matters not,” Anji said. “It’s done. It’s over.”

  Tohon said softly, “A man can be waylaid by demons wearing many guises. Maybe they cloak him with a lust for flesh or for gold, or with vanity or a lack of discipline or the scourge of disloyalty. Or maybe they cloak him with unchecked ambition. A good woman is a man’s knife. She protects him against demons. And if he loses her, and does not honor her memory properly, I suppose he risks becoming a demon himself.”

  After the silence died to something more stifling, Anji spoke. “Are you finished, Tohon?”

  “I am, Commander. I’ve said what I felt needed saying.”

  “Then you’re dismissed.”

  “Yes, Commander. I suppose I am. Are you coming with me, Shai?”

  Anji held the baby, the last piece of Mai existing on earth. The baby who would never know who his true mother was.

  “I want to see where Mai was killed,” said Shai raggedly. “That’s all.”

  “Very well,” said Anji. “That much I will offer you, for her sake.”

  So it was done. It was over.

  THE REEVE FLIGHT, rising into the steep foothills over which towered the gods-touched mountains, left Shai speechless, not that words had ever come easily. Six reeves deposited six travelers in the valley midmorning and departed immediately, promising to return in the afternoon, as Anji requested.

 

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