Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

  The place was deserted. Scar shifted, head up, looking around without any of the hackling or flaring he would have displayed were there unmet eagles nearby. The wind vanes slowed, halted to point west-southwest as the wind steadied. Grit skittered along the rock. A moan came from the forward watchtower as the wind found a voice within the framework.

  Joss left Scar on a perch, with his beak to the wind. He walked a circuit, checking first the open shelters and then the lofts. They weren’t stripped bare. Each of the shelters housed a pair of benches pinned down with screws into the rock so they wouldn’t blow loose. The lofts included a dozen perches as well as tiny sojourning rooms, each tidily set to rights with a rope bed, a low table, hooks to hang clothes and harness, and the closets with their doors neatly slid closed and, inside, containing one folded mattress, a sitting mat and thin sitting pillow, and a bronze pitcher and bowl for washing up. He wiped a finger through dust, and judged that no one had stayed here for a while.

  Like most reeves who had survived twenty years, he had a finely honed sense for trouble, for unseen watchers, an instinct for ambush, the things that made the back of his neck prickle, but the flavor here was all dead. He returned to the open space and signaled to Peddo and Volias to hold their positions. They signaled back the all-clear.

  A stairway, cut into the side of the cliff, led to the wide ledge beneath. There was no railing, and despite his head for heights he got dizzy descending the stairs. He kept his hand on the rock to steady himself. He didn’t look down. He could have flown down, of course, but he just didn’t like the situation. He didn’t want Scar on that ledge with those tricky winds; best risk only himself, because Scar would chose another reeve, although preferably someone with a better personality than the Snake.

  The ledge was itself as long and wide as the parade ground in Clan Hall, the shape of a huge oval. A rock wall, rimmed with perches, ringed the outer edge. According to the Tale of Struggle, this rock eyrie had always been here, but he wondered how such a thing had been hewn out of hard rock, and especially how the work could be done so high off the ground. His footfalls clapped on the ground; there was some kind of echo off the cliff face, subtle and confusing.

  The place looked recently swept. At any instant, he expected a reeve or hireling or hall slave to walk out of one of the five gaping cave mouths, the entries to the eyrie within. But no one did.

  He walked to the wall and stood with hands on the grainy surface. Morning shadows darkened most of the ledge, but the rising sun was now high enough that it kissed the leading edge. Soon the whole place would be flooded by sun, and by midafternoon in this season, Furnace Sky, it must be hot enough to bake flatbread out here.

  The view was tremendous. Only the east was closed to him by the cliff at his back and, of course, the Ossu Range behind that, running east all the long mey to the Istrian Bay and the ocean. Here at Horn Hall, facing west-northwest, he looked across the broad saddle of the Aua Gap to the magnificent face of Mount Aua some ten or fifteen mey distant, visible this morning in the clear, bright air. South onto the high plains there was already a haze, but a couple of mey to the north under the shadow of the last spur of the Ossu Range lay the whitewashed walls of the city of Horn, barely visible from this angle.

  Peddo dipped down, flying past through the gulf of air; it was a drop of at least a hundred batons to the scree-laden slope that marked the base of the cliff. Off to either side the ridge fell into folds and ravines, just as deadly. To the south, out on the rolling grasslands, grazed a herd of beasts, hundreds of them, but from this distance he couldn’t mark what kind they were or if they were being shepherded by human agency.

  Joss turned away from the view and walked in through the highest mouth, into the high hall where he had jessed and hooded Scar years ago on a visit to Horn Hall, then busy with reeves and eagles and hirelings going to and fro. The big hole on the height opened into this chamber, flooding it with light; he’d forgotten about that. He walked on into adjoining passages, all carved out of the rock by hands that must have labored for endless years. Most likely they’d been delved; no one else could do this manner of work. In a nearby chamber, a vast space lit by arrows of light that shot down through slits cut into the air-facing wall, the reeves and their guests had taken their feast. There were lofts for the eagles, quiet and dim. There were three chambers linked into a row given over to the care and manufacture of tack and harness. Next to them, with its own entrance onto a smaller ledge actually on the other side of the ridge, lay the kitchens. The hearths were cold. The pots were stacked neatly. No one had cooked here this morning.

  He explored down a corridor lit by cunningly angled shafts along which lay rooms for Horn Hall’s reeves. Every one had a blanket folded at the end of the bed, and a table with a lamp or whittling knife or spoon or cup set on it, or the other little things that marked something of the character or habits of the reeve who slept here: a half-sewn glove; a set of ceramic bowls painted with scenes of acrobats; a leather vest hung from a hook, stained at the underarms and with a musty smell; a basket covered with a striped cloth, beneath which he discovered a cache of handsome dolls gotten up to represent each of the fourteen guilds; a set of dancer’s wristlets and anklets tucked beneath the two wool blankets folded at the end of the bed; a whip, left right out in the middle of the floor; a forgotten loaf of bread tucked in the back of one of the freestanding storage closets, quite desiccated now and almost as hard as stone.

  It was as if they’d all grabbed their traveling cloaks, packs, and weapons, and left at dawn, for there wasn’t any dust to speak of. Horn Hall was well kept and well supervised. Even the sliding doors on the closets moved effortlessly, recently oiled. He felt like a ghoul, desecrating the body of the dead.

  The master’s cote had a separate entrance, but it was a place so bare of any personal touch—there wasn’t even a change of clothes in the tiny closet—that he could make no guess as to what kind of woman, or man, it was who was now marshal at Horn Hall. If that swordsman hadn’t been lying about that, too.

  Farther back lay storerooms and the stairs that led down into the depths of the cistern, but it got dark too quickly and he’d left his lantern tied to the harness. A cursory search did not turn up the halls’ store of candles, rushlights, or oil lamps. The air moved softly through hidden vents, and the whole place breathed an uneasy peace, the calm of a spot where the storm has just passed, maybe, and has swept everyone away, or one where the folk have abandoned their home to escape the storm they know is coming.

  Gone altogether beyond.

  That line from the Tale of Struggle, in the episode of the cunning outlander, had always stuck with him. He had no idea what it meant—or at least, what the cunning outlander had meant by using it—but he felt now that he understood it in a way meaningful to him, at this moment. Maybe he was crazy, and probably he was, but it seemed to him stepping at last back out onto the ledge, now half covered in blinding sunlight, that the soul of Horn Hall had fled together with its inhabitants.

  This time Volias and Peddo were both circling within sight of the ledge, watching for him. He gave them a wave and trudged back up the stairs. This time, the lack of a railing did not bother him. He could have tumbled forever into the gulf of air, and then he would have sprouted wings, and come safely home.

  “THERE’S SOMETHING ALTOGETHER strange here,” he said after the other two landed on the parade ground. “It’s deserted.”

  “All gone out on patrol?” asked Peddo. “That doesn’t fit protocol. There should be three duty reeves left on hall at all times.”

  “Best we ask at the town,” said the Snake.

  “Best we do,” said Joss.

  HORN WAS NAMED after the hall, or the hall after the town. No one was sure.

  This was sure: The folk working in the fields ducked and scattered when the three reeves approached overhead, and the militia standing at guard on those whitewashed walls took up their bows and loosed warning arrows.

  No a
rrows came close, but the shock of having arrows shot after them at all hit Joss so hard that he spent some wasted time circling high over Horn’s sturdy walls and knotted streets trying to sort it out into any pattern except the obvious one: The people of Horn did not trust reeves. And how in the hells had that come about?

  At last he set a course out to the crossroads where the Flats, West Track, and East Track met, not more than half a mey from Horn’s gates, and circled there over the wreckage of a line of wagons that, by the look of them, had been burned and upended recently. Folk in the nearby fields retreated, bunching into groups for safety or grabbing their tools and running back toward the gates.

  He wanted to investigate, to see if he could estimate how long ago those wagons had burned, but they were still visible to the militia’s watchful eye since the town lay upslope with no woodland to break the line of sight. Instead, he turned south with Peddo and Volias off to either side, and they flew along the empty road and fields that, out of eyeshot of the walls, had been left fallow. This was a landscape of smooth ridges and hollows that rolled like sea swells out beyond the breakers. They had flown for not more than a mey when they crossed over a tumble of old boulders and outcrops where the soil had worn down to expose ancient seams of rock. Peddo’s whistle blasted within moments of the Snake flagging an alert.

  Among the rocks lay scattered remains, skulls and leg bones and scraps of cloth visible. A dark shape moved within a shadowed crevice, difficult to make out from this height. They circled low. The remains spread beyond the outcrop into mixed grass and scrub woodland. Where a stream wound along somewhat upslope, another dense scatter of remains lay strewn along the bank.

  It was a battlefield, easy to read: the first engagement had taken place where the stream afforded cover, and then the losing side had retreated in a straggle through heavy growth to the greater defensive position offered by the rocks. It was by no means clear who had won, and who had lost. Wind, rain, and animals at work among the dead had taken their toll of the evidence.

  As had human agency: Four figures picked their way along the stream’s bank, overturning skulls, using a spade to pry loose rib cages overgrown by grass. They were so intent on their task that they didn’t notice the eagles passing overhead.

  Peddo stayed aloft. Joss sent Scar down. The eagle fanned his tail and threw his legs forward. They thumped home. Trouble came down right beside him, and both reeves were out of their harness and scrambling as the children—for they were children—gawped up at them with their scavenger’s tools hanging forgotten in grubby hands.

  The eldest among them, a girl, began to cry without audible weeping, just a smudging trickle on dirty cheeks. She was that scared. The littlest was a scrap of a thing, and it took off only to be grabbed by the Snake and slung roughly back to stand with the other three. There it cowered, hiding its left arm behind its back. Looking them over, Joss saw that one of the middle children was lacking an ear and the other had a twisted hand broken somehow and healed all wrong. The younger two had swollen bellies, and all four had various sores on crusted lips, swollen red-rimmed eyes, flies buzzing around pus-ridden blisters on their bare arms and legs, and besides all that an unhealthy stink in addition to the obvious stink of children who haven’t been taken to the baths in months.

  They stood in the midst of tumbled remains, which were scoured until nothing but bone and scraps of decaying cloth was left. He was surprised that none of the Lady’s wandering mendicants had gathered the bones and burned them in order to properly complete the rites to placate the restless dead.

  “What you going to do, ver?” asked the eldest. She had a squint that made her look defiant, but in fact it came from a cut at one eye that had scarred and pulled her lid tight. Like the others, she was as thin as if she’d been constructed out of sticks, with a hollow face and deep-set eyes.

  “I’m Reeve Joss,” he said gently. “What are your names?”

  She looked at him as if he were crazy, and did not answer.

  He tried again. “Where is your family? Kinfolk? Parents?” But he knew what the answer would be before he heard it.

  She shrugged. “Gone,” she said as her hand dropped down to brush the shoulder of the earless one. With her good hand, Broken Hand took hold of the elbow of Littlest.

  “How came that about?”

  She shrugged.

  “What of other kin? Aunties and uncles? Anyone to take you in?”

  She shrugged. The others stood stock-still with well-practiced silence. They had been alone long enough that they knew the routine.

  “The temples take in such as these little criminals,” said the Snake.

  “We’re not going there!” she said fiercely. “They just make slaves of us, and split us apart. City folk are that way, willing to make slaves of themselves, that’s what my dad says. But our people don’t do that. We’re doing okay. We’re doing good enough.”

  The Snake chuffed a laugh. “Doesn’t look that way to me.”

  “What are you doing out here?” Joss asked before he lost her, for he knew how some clammed right up when faced with scorn.

  She indicated the rib cage she’d been trying to pry up. “There was a battle here, oh I don’t know, a year or two ago so they say.”

  “White Lion year,” chirped Broken Hand. “During the Flower Rains.”

  “That’s right,” said Eldest. “We got rights just like anyone to come see what we may find, ver.”

  “Looters!” said the Snake with his habitual sneer. “Grave robbers.”

  “Shut it!” snapped Joss. He looked back at the girl, who appraised this exchange with a raised eyebrow and a nudge of the foot to Earless. “Looks like this field is well scavenged already. As it would be, since it’s coming on three years since the battle happened. What are you finding?”

  “You going to try to take it from us, ver?” she asked, not with any sort of challenge.

  “If I was, I wouldn’t say so at first, would I?”

  He thought to crack a smile from her, but she just looked at him and considered what he had said with the flat stare of a child who has long since hunkered down to the serious business of survival and is doubtful she will make it. She might have gotten on better without the littler ones, but people often made that choice because they could make no other. Sometimes they even made it because it was the just thing to do.

  “You’re reeves,” she said.

  “So we are, as I said.”

  “Those reeves out of Horn Hall, they don’t come around no more. You from Horn Hall?”

  “We’re not.”

  “Didn’t think so.” She shrugged again, as though ridding herself of a weight. “We none of us know why—that they stopped coming round, I mean. It just is that way now, and were that way from before.”

  “From before what?”

  “Before we come to Horn.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  The Snake moved off upwind, wrinkling his nose against the stink, but Joss held his position despite the strength of their sickly sweet-sour smell.

  She looked away from him, blinking rapidly. “Dunesk Valley, up in the Ossu. We come from there. Can’t live there now.”

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged.

  “Where do you live now?”

  “Horn. At least, the folk mostly leave us alone if we bide in the alleys and bother no one. If we find something or other, maybe we can sell it.”

  “Found a ring,” piped Littlest proudly. “I did!”

  “Hush,” said Broken Hand, pinching Littlest’s skin until it whimpered.

  “That was last month,” said Eldest hastily. “Lest you’re thinking it was just now.”

  Which, by the nervous set of their chins and the way her gaze flicked toward Earless, made him understand that in fact they had found something just now. In fact, they believed that two reeves might likely steal what they had. That’s what they thought of reeves. It made him want to shout in frustration.<
br />
  “You need to tell me what happened in Dunesk Valley,” he said instead, because understanding a thing was often the only way to solve it. “I need to know, because I’m a reeve. You know it’s our job to set things right.”

  “That’s what we used to think, but them at Horn Hall just stopped coming.”

  “When was that?”

  For a long while she was silent. Earless let go her hand and edged a few steps away, crouched down at the bank, and ladled some water into his mouth. The Snake had backed up and was staring toward the distant boulders. Peddo was nowhere in sight.

  Then she started talking in a voice as flat as her gaze, as if all emotion had long since been crushed out of her. “Dunesk’s about a day’s walk, by the trail, and one time we come down to Horn a few years back—”

  “Snake year it was,” said Broken Hand.

  “—that’s right, just after that one made his second year.” She pointed to the littlest.

  “Four years ago,” Joss said.

  She nodded. “We came down because Dad and Uncle had hides to trade. But then the raiders came. There was all kinds of things they were doing, so our dad he sent us into town because it isn’t safe up there no more. We sleep on the street. Mostly folk leave us alone, not always.”

  That not always made him wince. She was old enough, if a man had a fancy for veal, which he did not, and anyway any child was old enough for those who had a taste for that manner of cruelty.

  He asked, “What of your dad? Or your uncle? Are they still living?”

  She choked. “I hope so.”

  “It sounds awful, living in Horn as you do. You ever thought of going back home?”

  She would not meet his eye. “Awful is what they do in the villages, if they catch you.”

  “What do they do?”

  She shuddered and would not speak, and when finally he offered some dry flat-bread out of his pouch, she pointed at Littlest, who lifted his left arm out from behind his back to display a scarred and seamed stump. For a moment Joss couldn’t figure why he was doing it.