Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (40 page)

Farther back, a wheel, stressed to its limit by the wear of the brake, wrenched sideways and broke off its axle amid curses and shouting. The wagon tipped sideways and with a crack and a shudder blocked a third of the road.

“Out of the way! Out of the way!”

“You cursed fool!”

Kesh jumped back as his hired driver, Tebedir, barely swung past the wreck; then Kesh got a toe on the boards and leaped up beside him.

“I replace wheels before they is too weak to take the strain,” said the driver without looking at Keshad as the wagon rocked with the shift in weight. “No savings in scanting on repair, if you ask me.”

“It’s why I hired you,” said Kesh, “despite the cost.”

“No savings by hiring cheap.”

They jolted to a stop behind the third wagon, to wait their turn. Ahead, a pair of Silver brothers or cousins—identifiable by their pale complexions, slant eyes, turbaned heads, and the silver bracelets jangling from wrist to elbow on their arms—were arguing with the clerks checking off their ledger. Kesh chewed on his lower lip. Tebedir chewed a cylinder of pipe leaf, spat it out, thumbed a new leaf from the lip of his travel sack, and rolled it deftly before slipping it between parted lips. His teeth were stained brown, but he had a nice grin.

After a while, rubbing his stubble of black hair, Tebedir said, “Slow today.”

Kesh wiped sweat from his forehead, although it wasn’t unusually hot. “The guards are expecting trouble.”

“Rumor in camp tells it no merchant can travel north past a town the Hundred folk call Horn.”

“It’s hard to imagine, although I’ve heard those tales, too. That would mean the markets of Nessumara and Toskala are closed to every merchant trading out of Olossi.”

“Still, young master, we are only going this far as Olossi. It is no matter to us.”

“That’s right. No matter to us.”

As the second wagon moved through, Tebedir gave the reins to Kesh and clambered down to take the beasts and guide them over the plank bridge. Kesh didn’t
like heights—they made him dizzy—so he didn’t look over the edge and down into the ditch, although he’d heard that the ordinands cultivated adders in that trench. It always seemed when he crossed that he heard hissing, but that might have been the wind scraping through the pines and tollyrakes that grew in the highlands around them.

No, that
was
hissing. Aui! Had she taken it into her head to waken now? He turned. One of the girls was peeking through a gap in the canvas sheeting tied over the scaffolding.

“Tsst! No! Not allowed!”

She saw him. One dark eye, all he could see, flared as she startled back. The cloth was pinched shut. A voice murmured, too soft for him to hear syllables. Anyway, they didn’t speak a language he knew, nor had he taught them words beyond the most basic commands. That way they couldn’t talk to anyone.

Tebedir pulled the wagon to a stop where the guards waved him down. Keshad tugged his sleeves down to conceal his bronze bracelets. The captain strolled up, examined Kesh’s face, and held out a hand.

“Let’s see your ledger, ver,” he said in a friendly way which suggested he preferred cooperation to belligerence.

And why not? A captain at this border station could turn back any man to whom he took a dislike. The Silvers’ wagon had been released and was rumbling down the road toward the village that waited two mey farther along. Where the dust settled, the envoy walked along briskly in its wake, his arms swinging. He seemed to be singing, but he was too far ahead for Kesh to hear. The second wagon, piled high with bolts of silk wrapped in burlap, was under assault by a pair of shaven-headed clerks who laboriously matched each bolt to what was written in the merchant’s accounts book.

“How slow they are,” said Tebedir, indicating the clerks. “Why you Hundred people allow women perform the work belonging to men?”

“No use arguing against the gods of the Hundred,” said Kesh.

Tebedir merely grunted in reply, then led the beasts off to a generous patch of shade, beneath trees planted long ago for this purpose. He sat down on a log placed there for drivers, sipped from his ale pouch, and settled back to wait as Kesh handed the ledger over to the captain. The man paged through it. Naturally he couldn’t read, but a man in his position knew the old ideograms well enough to mark if everything was in its proper place. As his arm moved, Kesh glimpsed the tattoo on his wrist: the Crane, resting between the clean squares and angles that marked an Earth-born child.

“Looks in order,” he said to Kesh, handing the ledger back, “but the clerks will have to set their stamp. What’s this?” Kesh offered him the tangle of chits, and he plucked the rare one out of the group and dangled it. “Two ordinary, one exalted. What have you got in there?”

“I call on the law of Sapanasu,” said Kesh, “to ask for the veil of secrecy. You check yourself, Captain, and see that all is in order. I’ve no contraband, no weapons, no goods not accounted for in my ledger. I’ll pay extra for the veil. It’s my right.”

“It’s not cheap.”

“I’ve these tax tokens to prove I’ve paid the worth of my cargo all the way north out of Sirniaka.”

“I see it. This ledger is stamped with Merchant Feden’s seal. We know his mark here. I’ll accept your call for the veil. Now let me look.”

Kesh gave his two-note whistle and called, “Moy. Tay.”

The curtain at the back of the cart parted, switched sideways by a brown hand, and the older girl peeked out. The captain eyed her as she unfolded the step and cautiously descended to the ground. She was small but well formed, if too slender for the taste of most men. The younger followed her out, keeping her gaze lowered. She was plumper but not quite ripe. Under Kesh’s gaze, they lifted out the two chests and opened them to display their contents.

“Sisters or cousins,” said Kesh.

“Umm,” agreed the captain. “Too skinny. Might not be bad, though, with a few more years and more flesh. Where are they from?”

“I picked them up in eastern Mariha, along the border country there. I was hoping to sell them to one of the jarya houses in Toskala or Nessumara, but I hear it’s not safe to travel so far.”

“It’s true. You’ve been out of the Hundred for some months?”

“Yes.”

“Roads north out of Olossi aren’t safe. That’s the word. It would be a shame to lose a good cargo like that to a pack of filthy bandits. But what’s this veil you’re wanting?” He picked carelessly through the contents of the two chests. “I see nothing unusual here. Vials of saffron, clove oil, mirrors, a basket of shell dice, ivory combs—very handsome!—and so on. You’re not even carrying silk.”

“Go in, if you will. Here come the clerks.”

The captain paused with a foot on the step.

“This one next, Captain Beron?” asked the male clerk.

“Yes.”

Moy and Tay kept their gazes fixed on the ground as the clerks moved in with their charcoal pencils, carved wood stamps, and ink. The clerks wore the nondescript, undyed robes common to those who labored for the Lantern of the Gods, Sapanasu. Like most of Her hierophants, they had shaved their heads, and their brown skin had a pleasing gleam from being oiled. They poked and prodded the girls delicately, and in their efficient way tallied each least item in the two chests and checked it against his account. They were so tidy that they packed everything back in just as they had found it, not a corner’s fold of fabric out of place.

The captain ducked inside the wagon, which rocked under his weight. Tebedir dozed. A fly crawled on one of the driver’s eyelids, and without seeming to wake he lifted a hand to brush it away.

“All accounted for.” The female clerk dipped a stamp in ink and pressed it to the appropriate line in the ledger while the male clerk copied down figures in the record book he carried. “Or was there something else? What’s this chit for?”

She held up the rare oblong, carved out of shell into the shape of a leopard.

The curtain trembled. The captain pushed out, wiping his brow, then the back of his neck. He stumbled as he came down that one step. He was flushed and sweating,
and looking a little ashamed and yet at the same time a little amused at his own shame, but only a little.

“Tsst! Where’d you get such a thing?”

“I found it. Unclaimed. Mine by finder’s right. You know the law.”

He took a long look at Kesh. What passed in his mind was unfathomable.

“Anything we must know, Captain Beron?” asked the female clerk.

“No, set him his tariff and let him go on. He’s invoked the veil.”

“Very well.” She and her fellow clerk consulted. They were no older than Kesh, but experienced and swift. They named the tariff. Kesh sorted through his coins, paid them into the locked coffer, and got his border chits to add to his collection. He was now almost broke, except for his trade goods, and paying for food and water would take the rest of his coin over the sixty-four mey of West Spur. It all depended on the price he could obtain for his trade goods once he reached Olossi. Everything depended on that.

“I’ve seen you before, last year,” said the male clerk. “You’re out of Merchant Feden’s household, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Come on, Denni!” called the female clerk, who had already moved on to the next wagon. “The envoy said there was a bigger caravan coming up behind this one. We’ll be stuck here all week if we stand gawking.”

“Aui!” The male clerk looked Kesh over with a sneer. Boldly, he grabbed Kesh’s elbow and rudely twitched back a sleeve to reveal a bronze bracelet. “Pretending to be what you aren’t, as if you’d already bought your accounts bundle and cleared your debt! Don’t think we can’t see what’s marked by your eye.” He let go, and went after his companion.

The captain raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t there a law against you slaves wearing sleeves that cover your wrists?” Recalling the ledger, he added ten to ten, as merchants did, and got twenty. “You’re Feden’s slave, aren’t you?”

“I am.” He felt how his ears burned, how his cheeks burned. How the shame took him, but also the anger and hope, because he was
so
close. “Do you know him?”

“You look like a good Hundred boy to me. What happened?”

Keshad wanted to say “none of your business,” but the first rule of merchants, and slaves, was never to insult those who might have the means to harm you, or help you, later.

“Family debt. I was a boy. I never knew the details, only the amount.”

“Eiya! If anything should clear your slate, young man, then this cargo should do it.”

Kesh made the traditional gesture, hands to chest, the formal bow of not more than thirty degrees’ inclination to show respect rather than submission, and turned to go.

“Whsst! In!” he said to the girls.

They clapped the chests shut and loaded them into the back while Tebedir yawned and got to his feet, stretching, flexing his big hands, clucking as he got the beasts out of their stupor.

“Coming up, Master?”

“I’ll walk,” said Kesh.

“If you ask me, a man can wear his feet out, walking too much. Women walk.”

“I’ll walk.”

The captain watched them go, his gaze as sharp as the touch of a blade to Keshad’s back, but in the end one of his men called to him and he went back to his task. He hadn’t even demanded a bribe, but there were men like that. “Beron” was an Earth-touched name, and he’d worn the Earth Mother’s tattoos. No doubt the envoy of Ilu would have a few words to say about the honesty of a man born in the Year of the Crane, dedicated to the Earth Mother at birth, and serving Kotaru, the Thunderer, as one of his holy soldiers, his ordinands.

By the time Keshad paid a half leya as toll to pass the palisade gate and walked beside his wagon into the village of Dast Korumbos, the envoy was already seated and drinking at the inn called Southmost. The village’s eight rectangular houses were sturdily constructed of halved logs, and in the manner of the southern Hundred were not whitewashed. Chimes tinkled from every eave. The inn’s shutters were open under the peaked roof to air out the loft. In the fenced forecourt, a trio of locals sat on stools around the envoy’s bench, laughing as he told a story.

“So he said, ‘No one wants to live so far south, right up into the mountains where anything might happen. But where else will folk pay double price for my sour cordial?’ ”

The innkeeper trotted out, cast a sour glance at his customers, and went back inside the house. The courtyard boasted two awnings and a grape arbor that also provided shade. The kitchen smoked out back. A chicken wandered past the benches, scratching and pecking. A dark-haired child stuck its head out of the loft where Kesh had slept once on a straw bed, the one time he had had Merchant Feden’s coin to pay for lodging. The other times in Dastko he had slept on the ground beside the village well, under the branches of the Ladytree, where no one was allowed to charge rent.

The envoy saw him and lifted a hand in greeting. Kesh handed five vey to Tebedir. “For the well,” he said. “See they drink deeply.”

“If you ask me, they overcharge.”

“That they do. You come have a drink, and we’ll see what the inn is offering at a reasonable price for supper.”

“We stay here tonight?”

Ahead, the wagon with the two Silvers trundled on through the far gate, headed down West Spur into the north, but the second wagon had already pulled up along the commons. Kesh squinted at the sky with its lacing of clouds and a peculiar purpling blue to the east, what could be seen of that horizon with the hills piled so high and the mountains crowded so close behind.

“It’s a half day’s journey to Far Umbos. We can’t make it by dusk.”

“That wagon goes on.”

“Silvers have some kind of sorcery that protects them. Me, I don’t want to sleep out under the trees tonight with any wild beast coming to eat us up. For free!”

“Lot of cold road here in the north,” remarked Tebedir as he got down and hooked the leads onto the beasts’ harness. “Lot of cold road and only wild forest and demon beast on every side. Not like in the empire. In the empire, there’s always some person or village in spitting distance. Don’t know how you folk stand it.”