Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (58 page)

A secondary road ran parallel to the outer walls, which were to Mai’s eye an unimpressive collection of log palisades and barriers crudely stitched together. They rode in the direction of the sea and came at length to the river’s shore. Here stood a closed gate, framed by stone and capped by a thick black beam. Two guard towers rose, one on either side, manned by archers who leaned on the rail and examined them with the intense and easygoing interest of men who have been bored beyond measure.

“What’s this?” asked the younger.

“Call Captain Waras!” called the older to unseen men behind the wall.

“I’m Master lad,” called the caravan master. “Well known here, although my family home lies in Olo Crossing. I lodge at the Seven Chukars in town, here. Any of your merchants along Stone Field will vouch for me.”

“You must speak to Captain Waras,” said the older.

The younger nudged him and pointed at Mai, and the older pursed his lips as if to whistle, thought better of it, and looked away.

They waited.

“I don’t like this,” Shai muttered.

“Hush.”

He gave her a bitter look, dismounted, and led his horse toward the river. She followed his progress with her gaze.

The field before Harrier’s Gate had most recently been used, it appeared, as pasture, cropped short and still sprinkled here and there with sheep pellets although no sheep grazed within view. Reeds and tall grass marked the course of the river, now a broad gray-blue flow spreading and slowing as it frayed into the dozen estuarine channels of the delta. Huts stood on the far bank, and a woman in bright blue silk poled a skiff into those distant reeds. The sun baked them; in patches, where bare earth showed through heavily cropped grass, the soil showed fine cracks.

Mai twitched her shawl forward to give more shade for her face.

A man came to the rail up on the river-side tower. He waved a hand. “I know you, Master lad,” he said. “You are well come back to Olossi Town!”

“Captain Waras! Well met!”

“What are these wolves you’ve brought to my gate?”

Hearing conversation, Shai hurriedly turned back.

“This company of soldiers has guarded us along the Kandaran Pass most loyally,” Master lad continued cheerfully, although there was an edge of anxiety in his tone. “Led by this man, Captain Anji.”

“A good number,” said Captain Waras. “And foreigners, besides.” The older guard was, laboriously and rather obviously, trying to count them all, although he had to start over several times. “Do they mean to camp outside the walls tonight and depart in the morning after they’re paid? I hear there’s a caravan pointed south, ready to depart in the morning, although it’s hot to be out on the road.”

“Not at all. They hope for a further hire here in the Hundred. I’ll lay their proposal out in front of the council as soon as the council meets.”

“It’s a good number,” repeated Captain Waras. “That’s a lot of men, there.”

“They’ve done us a service—every one of us, you and me and all Olossi—when we were attacked by ospreys up in Dast Korumbos. Killed them who meant to rob and kill us. The worst kind of knaves. The ringleader was taken prisoner, an ordinand by the rank of captain and the name of Beron. We’ve brought him to stand trial at the assizes.”

Captain Waras was a considering man, the kind who wasted your time examining each and every peach before he decided that the one you had placed so carefully on top after all was the one he wanted. “We’ve had word of some trouble up West Spur. But we heard that the man in question—named Beron—was murdered.”

“Murdered! Not so. We have him right here.”

Waras gestured, and a guard tossed a rope ladder over the railing. Down this the militia captain descended. He wore a heavy leather jacket cut to hang to his knees, and its stiffness made his descent awkward. Otherwise he wore no armor except a leather cap with a pair of red ribbons laced around the rim and his hair tucked up
underneath and, at his belt, a short sword. When he reached the ground, a guard, from above, tossed down a stout stick no longer than elbow to hand; it was painted in alternate stripes of red and black and weighted at one end with a shiny metal ball, like a club.

Anji dismounted. The two men surveyed each other, taking their measure.

“You’ve a strong force,” said the militia captain. “Two hundred disciplined, armed soldiers, strangers to our land. You can see we are reluctant to allow you to enter town without some surety that you’ll cause no trouble.”

Anji nodded. “You’re right to be cautious. It’s what I would do in your place. Let my soldiers camp outside this gate tonight. It’s no hardship for them, as long as they can water the horses and buy some manner of food—whatever is available—for their supper. I’ll come into the town myself with the prisoner, by your leave. Then I can speak in front of the council as soon as it meets.”

“The full council next meets in three days. Wakened Crane. You’ll have to attend alone.”

“Together with a small escort for my wife and her slaves. I would prefer it if she be found a decent place to stay. Some place with baths nearby, if you have such.”

She blushed, but he wasn’t looking at her although it seemed to her in that instant that he could
hear
her reaction, because of his slight smile, nothing too blatant. A promise, not forgotten even at this juncture. In response, she twitched the silk shawl back, and Waras got a good look at her face for the first time.

“Eh!” said the captain, forgetting words, and recovering himself with a tincture of grace. He nodded at the caravan master, as though the wordless exclamation had been meant for him, and turned back to Anji so deliberately it was evident he was having trouble not staring. She was pleased to see him shaken even in this small manner. When thrown into the wilderness, one must use every weapon at hand. “I can’t allow any of you to bide within the walls. But a bath seems fair. I’ll allow you two men for your own personal guard, ver, and four to escort you, verea.” He nodded at Mai.

“We were to meet a reeve here,” added Anji.

“That reeve was the one who alerted us when we reached the border crossing,” put in Master lad hastily. “He came in advance of us. You must have heard the entire story from him already.”

Captain Waras had a certain measure of dignity; he had heft and seriousness. “Given the severity of the accusations, I’d like to take a look at the prisoner. Get a statement from him, his name and clan. If he’s alive, that is. Or did you bring in a dead man?”

Master lad bristled. “We brought him in alive, so he could testify. See for yourself!” He unlatched the door, opened it, whipped aside the canvas drape, and stepped away.

Mai had lost track of Shai, but now he stepped into view. He had a clear line of sight into the wagon’s interior, and the look of consternation and shock on his face could not have been copied by any traveling performer as they acted out a tale.
Within that gloom sat the prisoner, cross-legged on the wagon’s bed, chin slumped to chest as if sleeping. There was a sudden cold silence, like an unexpected stirring of icy wind into a hot hot day.

“What is it, Shai?” asked Anji, who stood at an angle from the opening. He could not see inside.

Mai already knew. She knew that look on Shai’s face. It was the look he always got when he unexpectedly saw a ghost. Always the same look. Always the same.

“ ‘A dart, a dart in my eye, how it stings!’ ” murmured Shai.

“He’s dead,” Mai whispered.

CAPTAIN WARAS AND
his men collected more guards and escorted the Qin troop farther down along the river’s shore until they reached a side channel in that area where the river became a delta. They forded a shallow channel and fetched up on a small island. Easy to guard and hard to escape from, Anji said, because easy to hear the sound of horses crossing the sluggish backwater.

In this camp, the men had up their tents and set to work with the single-minded concentration she most admired about them. They had leisure now for a hundred tasks. Horses could be groomed properly, weapons polished, knives sharpened, clothing mended, harnesses repaired, pots polished and scrubbed clean. They set to these tasks with a will, all the while seeming to ignore the guards set around them. Yet she knew they were ready to fight. None strayed farther than an arm’s length from his favored sword or bow except when they went, in shifts, to wash themselves in a clear-flowing branch of the river; even then some stood guard while others dunked and splashed.

There was plenty of driftwood for campfires. She washed herself as well as she could, although it was not the same as a proper bath. She mended clothing because she had a neat hand with the needle, especially on the delicate lengths of silk. Anji worked alongside the other men, sharpening his sword and polishing his harness.

In truth, despite the threat hanging over them, she was glad for a pair of days where they weren’t moving. At first, her worst problem was bugs. But as the first day passed, and a second came to its close, she found herself made restless by anxiety.

“What will happen?” she asked Anji. It was late in the afternoon of the second day. He was seated beside her, replacing one of the leather straps fixed to his saddle. Stripped of grime, and polished, the silver fittings on the saddle gleamed.

He paused to consider her question, then lifted his head and stared across the shallow channel, the fence that bound them to this islet. He marked the placement of the Olossi militia on the far shore and then looked beyond them toward the distant escarpment that marked the high country to the south. There, Mai could just make out the narrow ribbon of road crawling down the long slope down which they had come two days ago. She had felt so hopeful, then.

“ ‘A dart in my eye,’ ” he mused.

They had gone over the ghost’s words again and again. It was the only phrase
Shai had heard before the corpse and the wagon had been hauled off by Captain Waras’s men; naturally, they had been given no chance to examine either.

“How did we miss the killing? Who wanted him dead?”

Anji had no answer.

Keshad sat on a mat under a Ladytree. Off in the distance he heard the river’s lazy voice, and the haunting call of a dusk wren. Yesterday morning he and Zubaidit had walked free, out of Olossi. They had walked relentlessly, neither of them flagging. In two full days, they had trudged more than twenty mey on West Track. It would take a caravan three or four days to cover as much ground.

He stared at the string of coin draped over his palm. “How could you have had that many debts racked up in town? How often were you allowed to leave the temple? How could any slave spend that much money?”

Bai was sprawled in grass just beyond the farthest reach of the canopy, eyes closed and a smile on her face as a fat golden rumble bug looped lazy circles around her head. For reasons beyond his comprehension, two ginny lizards had accompanied her when she had left the temple. Big enough to be intimidating, they were, fortunately, small enough to be carried. Both had spiky frills along their backs; both, he’d discovered, shifted in color depending on their mood and other less obvious changes. They had disconcertingly alert gazes. At the moment, they basked beside Bai, watching the rumble bug with what appeared to be friendly interest. Neither the ginnies or Bai responded to his voice.

“Bai! We only have eighty-four leya left. Oh. And twenty vey. But we can buy a day’s ration of rice with twenty vey. To be split between us!”

She sighed contentedly, without opening her eyes. “I can earn coin, or a night’s lodging. Don’t worry, Kesh. You worry too much.”

“I’m not worrying! I’m being realistic! How are we going to establish ourselves in a new town with so little seed money? We can’t afford to pay a leya here and another there for lodging and food as we travel. We can’t afford a ride in a wagon. We’ll have to walk the entire way. Not at the prices these villages charge. That man at Crow’s Gate wanted two leya for us to ride in the back of his cart, only as far as Hayi Fork. That’s robbery! And in that village we just passed through, they wanted a half leya apiece just to stay the night in their empty council house! Because their own Ladytree was so ill-cared-for that it had blown down in last year’s storms. That’s why we have to sleep out here under a wild-lands Ladytree like the paupers we’re going to become.”

She rolled up to sit. “I heard most of this same speech last night, didn’t I? Anyway, I like ‘out here.’ ”

She scritched Mischief under her chin and rubbed Magic on one puffy jowl, then rose lithely to her feet. She moved differently; the change was impossible to ignore. His strongest memories of her naturally involved the years they had been
little children together, when she had followed him everywhere, cried when she skinned her knee, or asked him for help at any and every least obstacle, whether a barking dog or a splinter in her finger or a shadow that had to be circumnavigated. Now she strolled to the traveler’s hearth with a feral glide and poked in the ashy remains with a stout walking stick she had cut for herself yesterday. It looked like she was stabbing a man to make sure he was dead. The ginnies ambled after.

The light deepened, made hazy by the heat. The wayside was quiet. They were the only travelers to stop here beside the road. Every one else was likely relaxing in a tub of hot water at an inn. Certainly they had seen no traffic in the hour since they had left the last village behind.

“Doesn’t it seem strange to you?” he said, watching her prowl in ever-greater circles around the hearth, pacing out the roughly oval clearing as she searched for certain plants the ginnies liked to eat. Magic had paused, scanning the tree line as if for trouble. Kesh swatted away a swarm of gnats. A pair of dark shapes glided out of the trees and swooped over him, through the heart of the swarm. He threw himself flat, and Bai, turning, laughed.

“Just senny lizards,” she said. “And a good thing. Sennies will keep the bugs off us tonight. What seems strange to me?”

“How little traffic is on the road.”

She shrugged, then walked over to stand beside Magic, looking in the same direction as the ginny. “Everyone says the roads are no longer safe. That no one dares walk into the north, past Horn and the Aua Gap. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken West Track at all. Maybe we should have walked into the northwest along the Rice Walk.”