Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (73 page)

Eliar nodded. “It is said in our lore that some among the clans betrayed our people and sacrificed to the false god in order to stay in the empire. But the rest came north into the Hundred to join their kinsmen. A few sailed farther north even than that, to the lands beyond.”

“Many things were written,” added Anji, “but I recall in particular that the priests of Beltak were outraged that among these ‘servants of the Hidden One,’ slavery was entirely outlawed in all ways and shapes, and in every manner. In the empire, clans and houses are required to provide slaves for service in the temples. This your people refused to do.”

Eliar nodded. “It is against the will of the Hidden One that any should hold another’s life in bondage, or aid in such a transaction.”

“But what of their labor?” asked Calon. “Labor is separate from life, as it is written in the law of the Hundred. Still.” He smiled as Eliar puffed up, ready to burst into a tirade. “This is a dispute for another time.”

“Everyone keeps slaves,” said Mai. “That’s just how it is. How can anyone change that?” She looked at Priya, but Priya remained silent.

Anji looked at Eliar, and then at Mai. “These are desperate times. But tell me, Master Calon, how are we to manage this overthrow, since it will take longer than one night to plan and execute? If we don’t depart in the morning, they’ll guess something is amiss.”

Calon took in a deep breath, and seemed to have breathed in a midge, because he set to coughing until Chief Tuvi slapped him on the back and dislodged the irritant from his throat.

“Eh. Gah. I thank you.” He wiped his brow. He was sweating, although it wasn’t hot any longer. “Misdirection. In the morning, ride west along West Spur, as if you mean to obey the council’s order. After a day or two cut south into the Lending.”

“The Lending?”

“The grasslands. The high plains land south of the Olo’o Sea. With good horses, and if you can hunt, you’ll manage. It’s a difficult time of year to find water, but the rains will come soon. We’re almost to the turn of the new year. Out there, the Greater Houses won’t be able to follow you, for despite the power they hold here in Olossi, they don’t possess more than the town militia. I guarantee you that the militia won’t march out into the Lending in pursuit. They’ve had trouble out there in the past, but if you’re hospitable to the tribes and raise no sword against them, you’ll be given free passage. Then you can await word, until we’re ready to strike.”

“A great risk, for uncertain gain,” said Anji.

Priya’s soft voice startled Mai, although the Qin did not seem surprised to hear her speak. “The Merciful One teaches that where a river cannot breach hard rock, it will find a softer path to go around.”

“True enough,” agreed Anji. “This may be the softer path.” He gazed into the darkness toward the distant watch lights burning along the city wall, barely visible from their campfire. “But a dangerous one, despite that.” He looked at each face illuminated in the circle of light thrown off by the fire before settling on Mai. “I cannot bring myself to allow you to ride out on such a perilous expedition.”

Calon made a noise, a soft grunt of surprise and pleased assent.

Anji nodded at Calon. “
Should
we agree to your offer, that is. Such a plan would not only put my wife at risk, but her presence on military maneuvers put the rest of us at additional risk because we will need to take additional measures to protect her. Therefore, Master Eliar, I ask you, would you on your honor as a servant of the Hidden One give shelter to my wife? I will pay for her lodging at fair market value—”

“Impossible!” cried Eliar.

Mai stepped back, startled by his vehemence.

Even Anji looked surprised.

“Cub, what are you saying?” demanded Master Calon.

“I mean only—I pray you—” He was flustered. “She would bide with my family as our guest. We cannot take payment. It goes against the law of hospitality.”

“Then you will have my undying gratitude,” said Anji as smoothly as if these were the very words he had expected to hear. He turned to Mai. “Sending you with them is a risk we must take if we mean this venture to succeed. For one, you will seek to free Reeve Joss. Also, the coin will go with you. If something happens to me, you will have the resources to set up a business for yourself.”

Eliar nodded. “My people will shelter her as one of our own. And do what is necessary to aid her, no matter what comes. I do make my oath on the heart of the Hidden One that she will suffer no harm nor will she be sold into bondage while in the
shelter of our house, and that she will leave that shelter only upon your return, or of her own choice if she is widowed.”

“So taken,” said Anji.

“So taken,” said Mai, but the words came roughly, and her eyes filled with tears. She had talked him into this, and now he would run the campaign according to his understanding of war even if it meant she was to be separated from him in this foreign land and sent to live with strangers. Yet it must be done. If you do it, don’t be afraid.

Priya took her hand in her own.

“A shrewd bargain,” said Master Calon. “So, Captain. Verea. Do we have a deal?”

Anji indicated Mai. It went against everything she had learned and lived in the marketplace to agree to any deal without negotiating for a better offer.

“Double the price. The balance to be paid if we succeed.”

Eliar whistled.

Calon took the bait. “Impossible. We’ve already given you everything we have with us.”

“Impossible, indeed, to ask our company to risk so much. Life cannot be bought by gold. Death cannot be bribed by gold. Double the price.”

“A third again as much.”

She glanced at Anji. He had his head tipped slightly and appeared to be looking not at her but at Toughid’s boots, with his mouth pulled tight as if he were trying not to smile. He flicked a finger against his chin as he sometimes did, to her chin, when they were alone, and she sucked in a breath to give her a volley of courage.

“Two-thirds again as much.”

“You’d do better to ride back to the place you came.”

“Master Calon, surely you do not expect me to believe you offered us everything you and your consortium possess in your warehouses and stock? No merchant of your undoubted prosperity offers his best price first. Something must always be held in reserve. Yet we are as you see us. We have no reserves, except what this payment will bring us. We are at the mercy of fate. Two-thirds again as much.”

“Half again as much.”

She nodded. “Agreed.”

Eliar laughed. “She has bested you, Calon. Take that!”

The merchant shook his head, giving a slow smile. “I am impressed. And I am also desperate, although it appears to me that while your desperation is equal to my own, you are not undone by it, as I am. I agree, as spokesmen for this consortium, as you term it. The rest of the payment to be delivered upon completion of the tasks.”

Anji stepped forward to shake hands with Master Calon in the traders’ manner, each man’s right hand grasping the elbow of the other as a seal to their agreement. After a hesitation, Mai stepped forward as well. In Kartu, only widows without husband or son to act for them dealt in public legal contracts. Master Calon grasped her elbow, squeezed, and let go without any surprise or answering hesitation; it seemed he considered her presence perfectly natural in a transaction of this kind.

“Let Sapanasu, the Lantern of the Gods, give Her blessing,” he said in the cadence of a ritual utterance, “and Her curse to any who turn their back on what they have sworn in Her name. Let it be marked and sealed.”

“Let it be sealed,” repeated Anji.

“Let it be sealed,” said Mai.

Lights scattered and flared along the outer wall as a swarm of torches moved out from the gates to engulf the singleton and escort it toward the walls.

“An irrevocable step for all of us,” said Master Calon. He blew out his breath. “I need a drink!” He gestured toward the darkened city and the distant torchlight. “I wonder what
that
is all about.”

He was dreaming, walking along the shore near Haya that he knew from his childhood. The strand ran for mey ahead in a curve that faded at length into distant hills whose heads were shrouded in rain clouds, although here where he walked the sun shone, its light winking on smooth waters. His feet crunched on coarse sand. The rhythmic shush and suck of waves along the shore and the shrill cries of seabirds overhead kept him company.

A mist rose off the surface of the wide bay. It boiled into a silver fog that rolled toward the land like a watery beast shouldering up out of the depths. On the crest of this fog, as on a wave, lifted a rider mounted on a winged horse, and it surely was Marit riding that horse because even at this distance he would know her anywhere. He ran toward the water, to meet her. The foam of the cresting wave broke over the form of rider and horse, obliterating it; he was left behind with wavelets lapping his toes and his hands grasping air.

“Reeve! Reeve Joss!”

The low voice woke him, or possibly he woke himself, moaning aloud. He stirred and sat, and found that he could sit. The bit of rice and water taken earlier had strengthened him. His head ached, but he could blink without wanting to pass out.

After all, he was only hearing things. He could see nothing in the blackness. The air smelled of rotting things and sickness and worse, a foul smell lightened only because it was rather dry, not at all fresh. Thank the gods.

“Reeve Joss!”

The hatch scraped open to reveal a light lowered through to dangle, swaying back and forth on a line. A hand appeared, fingers slender and strong. It fastened the lantern’s looped handle to a hook set in the ceiling off to one side, too high for him to reach. He blinked back tears as his eyes adjusted, and when he was able to look up past the light, he saw a face looking down at him through the hatch as hands lowered a rope until its end curled on the floor.

“Hurry up,” she said. “Are you strong enough to climb?”

The rope had been knotted at intervals to provide footholds and handholds.

“Very thoughtful,” he said, for it took him a moment—he was thinking slowly—to
recognize her. “But I’ll take my chances with someone who hasn’t already tried to kill me.”

“As usual, you men always jump to conclusions about what we women intend. It’s quite tiresome.”

“When I met you last, you tried to kill me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hmm. Let me think. A naked knife. A mostly naked woman. I admit that part was appealing.”

“Why in the hells would I come to kill you stripped to the waist?”

He chuckled, although it sounded exceedingly like rolling pebbles in his mouth, a trick he had tried when a lad with predictable results. He felt now, too, as though he had swallowed something small and hard that wedged in his throat. There was still a little water left in the cup, and he sipped at it and recovered and could speak.

“I thought it was a clever ploy to distract my attention.”

She laughed as she grinned down at him. The flame of the light gave her complexion a glowing cast, bathing it in gold. Her eyes were very dark, heavily lidded. Her mouth was lush and very red. Delectable.

“Aui! The hells,” he muttered. “I’m delirious.”

“No doubt. All the better reason to climb that rope and escape your prison.”

“With your help?”

“I’m the one with the rope.”

He lifted a hand and was pleased he had strength enough to gesture in a casual way, reflecting a degree of unconcern he did not, in fact, feel, not with her hanging over him in such a position that he got a look right down her vest to the rounded shadows beneath. He remembered—very well—the curves she had on her.

“I’ll pass.”

“You’ll wait for the justice of this corrupt council? I think you’d do best to be well shed of them, for they’ve been colluding with all manner of folk who will be happy to kill you once they have conquered Olossi. Which they are like to do if you can’t get a message to the northern reeve halls, which I wish you would do by climbing this rope, calling your eagle, and leaving this place as soon as ever you can.”

“Oh. Slow. I beg you. That was too much and too fast, my sweet.”

“I’ve not given you permission to call me your ‘sweet.’ ”

“Maybe not, but you ask me to trust you. That should give me a few privileges, don’t you think?”

“Why shouldn’t you trust me? You’re such an easy target now that had I wished to kill you, you’d be dead already.”

“It is a great comfort, knowing that. Why did you try to kill me before?”

“As I said, you misread the signals.”

“A knife thrust at my guts is a strange way to signal something other than murderous intent.”

“I had to protect myself. I wasn’t sure who had sent you. You might have been on the side of our enemies.”

“Who did you think had sent me? Who are your enemies? And who are you?”

She looked away, over her shoulder, then back down at him. “Best we get you out of here before we’re interrupted, then I’ll tell the tale.”

“So, again, you’re saying I must trust you.”

“Or stay here. Your choice.”

“How did you get here? Where are the guards?”

“Aui!” She had a very attractive way of setting her jaw when she was exasperated. “You talk too much, after all. Just like other men. Here I hoped you were different.”

“Oh! Eh!” He laughed, although it hurt his head and his ribs to do so. “Now you’ve appealed to my vanity. I can’t bear to be ‘just like other men.’ ”

He tried to stand but found he was too weak to do it easily. Setting a hand against the wall and one on the ground, he managed to lever himself up, but he had to lean against the wall lest he collapse. He was cold, and then hot, and then cold again, in waves that made him sweat and shiver. “Whew. I’m sorry to say, it’ll be hard for me to climb that rope.”

She withdrew. A second rope slithered over the lip and its end dropped to the floor. Two bare feet appeared, gripped the rope as she eased her body over the lip. She shinnied down hand over hand at a speed that should have burned her thighs, landed softly, and paused with a hand still on the rope to fetch a tiny globe from her cleavage. It was glass, of a kind. With it balanced in one palm, she blew into it, and it lit with a pretty flame that cast an aura of light before her.