Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (16 page)

“Master Shai!”

One Hand let him in and barred the door behind him, the movements smooth with long practice despite the slave’s disability.

“Lots of trouble indoors?” Shai asked.

The old man shook his head with a wry smile. “We are all sad to see the flower leave us, Master. She bears the Merciful One’s gentle disposition in her heart, and holds mercy in her hands.”

Shai sighed. No doubt the household slaves would miss the extra food Mai slipped them when she thought no one was looking, and the ointments and infusions she smuggled into their sleeping room when one was sick. It would have been easier to stay up on the mountain than face what lay within. It was tempting to enjoy the sun and the quiet of the courtyard and pretend the rest of the world had gone to sleep.

“Not a lot of people in the streets today,” he said. “No one out on the Golden Road, either, not as I could see from Dezara Mountain. I wonder if this talk of troubles on the eastern border is scaring people. If merchants won’t travel, the markets will suffer.”

“Storm is not going away while you wait out here, Master Shai,” said One Hand.

Shai sighed again, but delaying changed nothing. He crossed the dusty courtyard, pausing twice to savor the shade, once under a peach tree and once under the grape arbor. He went into the house past the whitewashed slave barracks, past the tapestried halls that led to his married brothers’ suites of rooms, past the curtained alcove where he and his nephew Younger Mei slept—

He stopped and stuck his head in. Mei had thrown himself down on the bed they
shared. He was weeping, trying to mute his noise in his wool tunic, which was wadded up and squashed against his face. Startled, the boy lifted his head. His entire body shook with a gasp of relief.

“It’s you! Don’t tell Father Mei.”

Shai let the curtain fall and sat down at the end of the bed. The rope base sagged under him, cutting lines into his buttocks; the servants had taken the mattress out to re-stuff it with new straw just this morning.

“I can’t believe she’s leaving. My dearest sister! We are twin souls! Born together! Now I’ll never see her again.”

Since it was probably true, Shai didn’t murmur reassurances. He listened for the tread of hard feet, keeping Mei company while he sniveled. Slaves passed twice, but they walked with light footsteps and none were foolish enough to tell tales on the youth who would one day be head of household, should he live so long. Poor Mei. Father Mei and any of Younger Mei’s other uncles would whip him for crying if they heard. In a way it was better to be least and superfluous, seventh of seven sons, an unlucky position certainly but one without expectations and demands beyond remaining silent, keeping out of the way, and doing what you were told.

“All right,” said Mei finally. He sat up and wiped his face dry with his tunic. “I’m ready.” He stood, straightened his knee-length silk coat, and examined his spotless nails. “They’ve already gathered in the fountain court.”

The Mei family compound had the same layout as most every family compound in Kartu Town. First you would see the massive outer wall built of earth or bricks. Behind this wall, and usually ringing the inner portion of the compound, lay a buffering outer courtyard where livestock and chickens could be quartered, a garden and fruit trees could grow, and the servants could launder, cook, clean, and take care of the necessary chores that none of the household kin desired to smell or listen to. The inner compound had a barracks built on the eastern end and a maze of rooms for the family, the most recent added on only four years ago. Some compounds in town were smaller, scarcely more than hovels erected within a corral of sticks; others were palatial and boasted marble floors and second stories.

Unmarried men like Mei and Shai slept in alcoves; unmarried daughters slept in their mothers’ suites with the other children. At the center of the house lay the fountain court where Father Mei entertained guests or negotiated contracts. Although a painted, windowless corridor led from the main gate to the fountain court so that visitors would not glimpse the secret heart of the family’s private life, Shai and Mei took the slaves’ hall that wound through the warren of rooms. It let them in behind the hedge-like screen of flowering bitter-heart from which they might first observe before revealing their presence.

Everyone was assembled. Father Mei sat in the black chair, facing the splashing fountain. Grandmother—Shai’s mother—sat on Father Mei’s left. She was tiny, frail, and half asleep but otherwise quite magnificent in a gold silk woman’s coat, the extraordinarily long, square sleeves embroidered with red leaping antelopes. The uncles sat to Father Mei’s right, all in a line. The wives stood a step behind them, and there were at least a dozen children kneeling with heads bowed and hands resting on thighs off beyond the uncles. From this angle Shai could only see the top of Mai’s
head; she was seated on a pillow halfway between Father Mei and the fountain. In this same way he would present a valuable item to be admired and examined before the haggling began.

Captain Anji sat on the fountain bench with spray wetting the back of his gold silk Qin tabard and the peculiar braided topknot that all the Qin officers made of their hair. Remarkably, he had come alone except for two attendants standing with arms crossed back by the gate. The Qin were famous for their arrogance.

Cornflower was offering rice wine to each of the uncles. Someone had put her in a concubine’s revealing bedroom silks so that every time she bent at the waist to proffer the cup, a flash of pale hip was revealed. Despite this provocation, Captain Anji kept his gaze fixed on Father Mei. He was a man of powerful control.

Shai could not stop peeking through the bitter-heart. Her braids had a caressing way of sliding to and fro over her shoulders and upper arms. They were fastened at each tip by tiny nets sewn with lazulite beads as blue as her eyes. Shai shut his eyes.

Thank goodness the ceremony of receiving had almost reached its conclusion! The family had been out here for a while, while Shai was dawdling.

The sigh that escaped Younger Mei’s lips was as fragile as the ghost of a wind passing through scattered rose leaves. Shai looked at him, squeezed his arm, and lifted his own chin: Hold firm! Mei gave Shai a
look,
like that of a frightened rabbit determined to bite the hawk that has cornered it but not sure it will survive the altercation. Then he stepped out from behind the hedge.

The heir’s place, of course, was to stand at his father’s right hand. Mei did so, taking up position smoothly and without a sound. Captain Anji flashed the merest glance Mei’s way but did not otherwise betray that anything was amiss or that another man might have taken insult at the heir’s belated arrival. Shai waited behind the hedge, partly because he was so aroused by the sight of Cornflower in her bedroom silks but mostly because no one had bothered to place a chair for him with the rest of the uncles and he refused to kneel with the children. Ti was seated first among the children, her hands clenched and her round face streaked with dirty tears. She looked as if she’d rubbed her face in the dust. But she kept her mouth shut.

The last glass was sipped dry. With an annoyed gesture, Father Mei’s elder wife Drena sent Cornflower back inside. It hadn’t been the choice of the women, then, to see if Captain Anji could be embarrassed by revealing Cornflower’s charms.

“I apologize that we must speak in such haste,” said Father Mei, although the ceremony of receiving always took at least an hour and the usual opening negotiating formalities might take an equal amount of time. “I had thought the negotiations done and the contract sealed, Captain Anji, but now it appears otherwise. What brings you to us?”

Captain Anji had a soldier’s bluntness. “I sent a messenger ahead to inform you of my situation. You already know my predicament. I’ve received a change of orders. My company rides out in two days. I would like to marry tomorrow so my bride can journey with me. It is the fondest desire of my heart.”

Now he did smile, nodding at Mai. Shai could not see Mai’s reaction because he could see only the back of her head, but he thought her shoulders tightened slightly;
it was hard to tell because she was so heavily draped in the layers of blue silk appropriate to an affianced bride. Then again, lots of things were hard to tell with Mai. All loved her for her accommodating, placid nature. She was beautiful, but a little stupid.

“It will be a hardship for my clan to hurry the rites. It will cost us to pay the law courts to move the day, and to make room tomorrow in their schedule, and we won’t have ready the many fine luxuries we wish to dower her with.”

“I have some resources. I can pay the law court what they need. I ask nothing of you except your daughter, Father Mei.”

How coolly he said those words! Shai was impressed. Father Mei would inflate the costs and keep the difference for the family, but Captain Anji was apparently no merchant or bargainer and thereby, according to the rule of the marketplace, ripe for plucking. Or else he simply did not care. Beauty in women captured men that way sometimes.

“We will sustain a loss by having her torn from the house before her time.”

As if on cue, Younger Mei sniffled, then stiffened, knowing he must show no emotion. Emotion gave the opponent a bargaining chip.

The captain slipped a hand into the folds of one sleeve, searched for something, and withdrew his hand, now cupped. “I possess nothing to recompense you for your loss, which is extreme. However, two days ago I purchased an item which I think might be of interest to the Mei clan.”

He unfolded his hand to reveal a ring. It was silver, shaped to resemble a running wolf with its mouth biting into its tail. A rare and perfect black pearl was inlaid as the wolf’s eye.

Grandmother bolted upright in her chair. Her hands gripped the arms like a hawk’s talons. “Girish, bring it to me!” she said querulously.

The wives whispered, horrified. The uncles coughed and hemmed. Ti giggled nervously. Father Mei’s big hands closed, opened, and with his right thumb and middle finger he made the warding sign, but because he did not speak, no one spoke. No one dared correct Grandmother.

Captain Anji raised an eyebrow, puzzled by the exchange.

She seemed to collect herself, and her memory. “Shai!” she snapped. “Nothing-good boy! Hu! I don’t know why Grandfather thought you so clever! Come quickly. Get it and bring it here.”

He padded forward from behind the hedge. The uncles and wives and children seemed surprised to see him. Father Mei grunted, a sign that he was holding his legendary temper in check. It always exploded afterward. But as soon as Shai got between the captain and his eldest brother, blocking Father Mei’s view, Captain Anji winked at Shai as if in sympathy before dropping the ring into his hand.

“Hari,” breathed Shai, not meaning to talk, but the touch of the ring actually hit so hard that he rocked back on his heels and struggled against a wave of dizziness.

It was Hari’s ring. No doubt of that.

He took in a breath to steady himself, then walked back to his mother and placed it gently in her right hand. She slapped him hard with her left, the crack stinging and bitter.

He choked back his surge of anger. He’d gotten so good at doing it that it had become reflexive. The bitch would be dead soon, and he wouldn’t miss her. Anyway, her slap—her dislike of him—didn’t hurt nearly as much as contact with the ring had.

Hari was
dead.

He’d known it as soon as the ring had touched his skin, just as he knew that no one else would feel it.
Hari was dead.
He’d been wearing the ring when he died; he’d been angry in an amused kind of way—the anger lingered in the ring. But surely Hari’s spirit had already fled earth through Spirit Gate. There was nothing to hold him here, after all. Anger and bitterness hadn’t chained him in Kartu Town. He’d not waste time lingering on earth as a ghost when there were adventures to face in the afterlife. Not Hari, the boldest and handsomest and most delightful of brothers.

“Fool boy,” muttered his mother sharply. Her hands shook as she struggled to hide her tears, and Father Mei finally took the ring and examined it. As soon as it was out of her hands, she hid her face behind a sleeve.

“This belonged to my younger brother,” Father Mei said. “Hari marched east as a mercenary with one of your regiments six years ago. We have never heard from him. Where did this come from?”

Shai shuffled to the side, turning, to see Captain Anji shrug.

“Certain peddlers have a license to travel from fort to fort selling small wares, curiosities, such things. I found this yesterday among the goods offered for sale by a man who had come from the east along the Golden Road. He said it came from a place called ‘the Hundred,’ which lies north of the Sirniakan Empire. He bought it from a Hundred merchant, traveling in Mariha, who said it was found near a town he called ‘Horn.’ There’d been a battle there. Internal matters, lord fighting lord or some such. I’m not sure of the details. The Hundred folk are barbarians, it seems. They’ve never had a var—a king—to lead them. Scavengers will always pick clean the fields of battle, and it seems it was no different with this ring. I don’t know how many hands it passed through to get this far from the place it was found. But I recognized the ring at once. Mai has a ring like it.”

As did every blood member of the Mei clan.

“Does it bring joy or grief to your house?” the captain asked.

“I cannot know,” said Father Mei. “Is Hari dead, or alive? He cannot rest if his bones do not rest with those of his ancestors. We can never rest, not knowing what became of him.” His lips were thin, a sure sign of anger.

Lots of anger in this house. Shai waited for the blow. It came quickly.

“When my beloved and precious daughter goes with you, she must have servants, familiar ones who have served her for many years.”

“Of course.” Captain Anji nodded.

“She will be alone, who has never been alone. I ask you, Captain Anji, let my young brother Shai accompany her.”

The words struck, shivering like lightning through him. He stood, stunned, as his brother droned on.