Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

  Kesh scanned the room. An elderly man was filling wooden mugs. A lad not more than ten was cleaning the floor where someone had sicked up. The rest of the staff, evidently, was outside clearing up from the attack.

  “Can’t get good help, anyway,” continued the innkeeper as he weaseled his sleeve out of Kesh’s grip. “Used to be my good wife and a niece and daughter helped me instead of these cursed useless hired louts, but after the midnight raids of four year back we moved all the women down road by Old Fort. I was lucky. I know a man lost both his strong daughters that summer to the raids. The gods alone know what became of them, poor lasses. Something awful. If you’ll kindly let me get to my business, ver, I’ll see you get a cup of cordial.”

  Kesh let him go as the reeve caught his eye and gestured, smiling as if they were old friends just now reunited. The innkeeper scurried away. Kesh pushed past a trio of grousing merchants and came up to the table as another man gathered up his ledger and chits, thanked the reeve profusely and, with an innocent man’s flush of honest relief, headed for the door with a mug of cordial in one hand.

  “I forgot your name, ver,” said the reeve. “Sit down.”

  “You never asked it.”

  “In the heat of the moment, courtesy gets lost in the fire. I’m called Joss.”

  “Fire-touched,” said Kesh, thinking of the envoy as he noticed the mark on Joss’s wrist: like the dead boy under the Ladytree, the reeve was born in the Year of the Ox. Kesh’s ken for numbers figured it up, unbidden. While the lad must be sixteen, this reeve was likely two cycles older, so he was forty.

  Joss smiled. “ ‘A Fire-kissed Ox! You’ll drive me to drink, lad!’ That’s what any one of my dear aunties always said. I don’t think I was that wild. This is Captain Anji, who commands the guard of the caravan that was traveling behind you on the road. We’re all fortunate they happened to be close enough to help us out. I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name again.”

  “I’m called Keshad.” It was best to set all his chits on the table immediately. He opened the ledger to the current page. “I’m a debt slave bound to Master Feden of Olossi.”

  “Master Feden of Olossi,” murmured the reeve, gaze fixing on the tabletop as though to seek answers there, or to remember a thing he had forgotten. “Feden.”

  “Do you know him? He’s a member of the Greater Council of Olossi. One of the most prosperous and influential merchants in Olossi, in fact.”

  The reeve blinked, as though shaking awake, and he looked hard at Kesh. “How long have you been debt-bound to him?”

  “Twelve years now.”

  “Twelve years? Did you know that on Law Rock it states that ‘When a person sells their body into servitude in payment for a debt, that person will serve eight years and in the ninth go free.’ ”

  He shrugged. “Everyone knows that covers only the original debt. Not any debts accrued in the interval.”

  “Is that what your master tells you?” asked the reeve in a tone Kesh couldn’t interpret.

  “That’s the usual way. Have you heard different? Is it different in the north?”

  The hard look on the reeve’s face made Kesh nervous, but the man shook it off quickly.

  “No, I don’t suppose it is.” He ran a finger down the neat column of the ledger, turning back a page or three. Kesh doubted he could read, but any educated person knew the ideograms for common market goods, the directions, numbers, and so on. “A trusted slave, I see, running your own trip south and even into lands where Hundred folk don’t normally trade. Like Mariha.”

  “I like to find goods that will make a profit.”

  “For your master?”

  “I must clear a certain amount for each trip. After that, I keep the rest of the profit for myself.”

  The reeve glanced up at him, then touched each of the chits. “Getting close?”

  “Yes.”

  “After twelve years.” He was clean-shaven like a lot of the men north of the Aua Gap: Toskala-chinned, people called it. He rubbed his smooth Toskala chin against an arm, sighed, and scooped up the rare chit. “The Sirniakans call this an exalted token.” He tapped the last line of the ledger. “I see you invoked Sapanasu’s veil for your cargo. Care to tell me anything about that?”

  “No.”

  The reeve drew his finger up to the top of the page. “Whatever it is, it seems to have come your way in Mariha together with—” He clicked his tongue, studying the writing. “Females—two, young, unmarried. What’s this?”

  “Saffron.”

  “Ah. Oil . . .”

  “Clove oil.”

  “These here—mirrors. I don’t know what that is—”

  “Shell dice. This one is ivory combs—thirty-two in number.”

  “No silk! That’s unusual.” His finger slid back to the last line. “Isn’t that the mark for a bouquet of flowers? Or herbs of some kind?”

  Kesh did not look at either of them. He kept his hands open, and was able to speak normally. “An aphrodisiac.”

  The reeve nodded, with a hearty grin and chuckle that suddenly struck Kesh as so entirely false that he shuddered and found he’d curled one hand into a fist. All this time, the mercenary captain had watched and listened and made no sound or reaction, like one of those stone monuments so old that any distinguishing marks have long since been worn off its face. This time he raised an eyebrow and said, in a cool, elegant accent, “Have the men of the Hundred need for such medicine?”

  “We haven’t any women as beautiful as your wife, Captain,” said Joss, “or we should never want for desire.”

  The captain smiled blandly to accept the compliment. He did not deny it.

  “Where are you come from, Captain?” Kesh asked.

  “I have come from the south. I hire my company out as caravan guard. This is our first trip to the Hundred.” Anji looked sidelong at Joss. “Maybe Hundred folk need guards to hire.”

  Joss shrugged. “Maybe so. Times are hard.”

  “I hear things are very bad in the north,” said Kesh, happy to see the conversation flow into safer channels.

  “So they are,” said Joss with the merest flicker of his eyelids as he considered the north and what it meant to him.

  “Maybe you know folk who are looking for honest men seeking employment,” said the captain.

  Joss let the chit fall to the table and regarded the captain. The two men had level gazes, and the ability to look each at the other without it becoming a contest. They were different men, with different authority, not rivals.

  “It’s come to this,” said the reeve, “that merchants moving goods along all roads in the Hundred need caravan guards. I’ll see what introductions I can make for you, in Olossi, in exchange for the good turn you’ve done me.”

  “One, in exchange for another.” The captain extended an arm, and the men grasped, each with his hand to the other’s elbow: So were bargains sealed in the marketplace, where the worth of a man’s word was soon known to everyone.

  “May I go?” Kesh asked.

  “Certainly,” said the reeve as though he thought Kesh had left hours ago. “Just one thing.”

  Kesh waited.

  Pleasant expressions were traps for the unwary. The reeve wore one now. “An envoy of Ilu is dying out on the back porch. It’s a bad thing in any event, that a holy man is murdered in this way, and I take it more personally because I was dedicated for my year to the Herald, so it’s like one of my kinsmen breathing out his spirit a few paces from me. Here I was come too late to prevent it. That’s a thing that really burns me hard, coming too late.” His entire aspect shaded to an emotion so dark that Kesh took a step back, and that made the reeve take notice and that friendly smile crawl back onto his lips just as if he hadn’t a moment before looked furious enough to rip someone’s head right off. “Tell me, Keshad, did you witness the killing? Can you tell me what you saw? Leave out no detail. Mention everything you noticed.”

  “There wasn’t much to notice. I retreat
ed under the Ladytree to defend my wagon and cargo.” The best defense was a good offense; he remembered that now. “You can imagine that I didn’t want to lose what I’d bought in Mariha. I’m close—very close—to buying back my freedom, so you can imagine—” Even so, he choked on it.

  The reeve nodded compassionately and took a slug of cordial while Kesh caught his breath and thought through his strategy. The captain did not drink.

  “I stood there under the Ladytree hoping we wouldn’t be noticed because of the boughs. Or that ospreys wouldn’t blood sanctuary ground—scant chance of that! Anyway, men came riding our way, and that envoy just ran out toward us. At first I thought maybe he was in league with them, but he used his staff to bring down one of the horses and its rider, and then someone—I don’t know who—shot him in the back as he was running, and after that he was run over at least once by a pair of horses. I was busy by then. I didn’t see anything more.”

  The reeve asked, “Where do you think the envoy was running?”

  “I thought toward the Ladytree, seeing as it is sanctuary ground. . . .” He timed his hesitation perfectly. “He couldn’t be sure the ospreys would grant him safe passage. But he may have been running elsewhere. I don’t know. I had my own troubles. We were attacked. My driver got wounded. That lad was killed. I should put in a complaint to you, now that I think on it, because the merchant who hired him looks like to shirk the burying tithe, and I’ll wager he’s got no interest in seeing the boy’s family gets any death tax due them. He was a brave lad, a little weak in the mind, if you take my meaning, but he stuck his ground as brave as any guardsman I’ve seen, not that he had a chance against the ospreys.”

  Captain Anji had a little secret smile on his face that made Kesh turn cold inside. But the reeve said nothing, only stared into the depths of his cordial as if seeking the tiny stems that weren’t quite all strained out.

  “Did you know his name?” the reeve asked.

  “His name? Whose name?”

  “The envoy’s name?”

  “He never said, now that I think on it. They rarely do. I never thought—”

  “Yes?”

  “Just . . . it all came so fast, the attack, all of that. I really thought we were safe once we crossed the border.” He wiped his brow and found that his hands were trembling. “Can I go now? Is there anything else you want to ask me?”

  The reeve shook his head. “No. You can go.” His smile was so cheerful that it was almost possible to believe they were two good friends parting after a sweet drink to chase down the day’s travel. “If I think of anything else, though, be sure I’ll ask.”

  “I’m leaving at dawn.”

  “So are we all. I believe your two caravans will be joining forces for the rest of the journey. I’ll be patrolling the West Spur as you go, so I can always drop in if I have any more questions.”

  “I’ll go, then.” He nodded at both men and moved away, swearing under his breath, until he caught the innkeeper coming in from outside. “What about that cordial you promised me?” He glanced over his shoulder to see the reeve and the captain with heads bent together. The reeve glanced up at the same moment, saw him looking, and waved at him with the kind of bright, deceitful smile that cheating merchants paraded every day of their cheating lives. It reminded him of Master Feden.

  “You’re hurting my arm,” whispered the innkeeper.

  “Never mind the cordial. I’d like to see the envoy.”

  There wasn’t much to see. The dying man had been carried out behind the main structure, and laid out on a table set up on a raised porch covered by a solid roof constructed of lashed-together pipe stalks and thatch-tree fronds, the kind of place where people congregated in the heat of the day to escape the sun. A single tarry lamp burned, suspended from a hook in the cross quarter beam. Its smell gave him a headache, but the glower of its light offered enough illumination to see. The envoy lay on his stomach with his blue cape bunched along his left side to make him more comfortable. Kesh crouched beside him. He gave no sign of life beyond the infinitesimal movement of one eye below its closed eyelid, as though he were dreaming.

  “He’ll be dead by midnight,” whispered the innkeeper, too loudly, and—startled—Kesh fell on his butt, and put his head in his hands, and after a moment roused himself to get up.

  “Has any effort been made to stem the bleeding?” he asked.

  “Bleeding’s stopped. Just a bubble of air coming out. See it pop—there! I mark that means it hit his lungs. That’ll end him, no doubt.” He gestured toward the smoke swirling up from the tarry lamp. “That stink’ll fetch any mendicant close by, but if there is none of them near, then there’s nothing we can do.”

  “You’ve no starflower? Soldier’s friend?”

  “Wouldn’t know it if I saw it. Just herbs for flavoring food and the cordial spices, that’s all we’ve got here.”

  Gingerly, Kesh traced a finger around the wound. It was deep and almost perfectly round, rimed with blood but barely oozing. Bruises were blooming all over the envoy’s bare back. The bright saffron-yellow tunic lay in pieces, discarded to one side.

  “It’s the trampling that done him,” said the innkeeper. “I’ve seen men run over by horses who got up and walked in for a drink as easy as you please only to die in the nighttime after with no warning. Something gets broken inside. No way to heal that.”

  “No,” said Kesh quietly, “no way to heal the things that are broken on the inside.” He touched the envoy’s grizzled hair, as much silver as black. “Is there a Sorrowing Tower here?”

  “Nay, none here. He’ll have to be carted to Far Umbos. Another expense!”

  “He had two bolts of finest quality silk with him,” said Kesh bitterly. “That should cover your costs.”

  The bartender called from the back door. The innkeeper excused himself and hurried indoors.

  Kesh was overcome by such a wave of exhaustion that for a moment he thought the blue cloak was slithering like a snake, as though something trapped inside it was alive. He dozed off. When he started awake, he remembered that the innkeeper was gone, leaving only him and the silent body. The envoy still breathed, slow and shallow. Something about the pale moon exposed in an inky sky and the harsh scent of the tarry lamp made Kesh shiver.

  On the breeze he heard the sound of wagons rumbling in, and a few shouts of greeting.

  “Farewell, uncle,” he murmured.

  In the commons, the second caravan had arrived at last, led in by a pair of scouts. It was a bigger company than the one Kesh had traveled with, about thirty wagons and carts in all although it was too dark to get an accurate count even with hirelings and slaves trudging alongside with torches. There was even one heavily guarded wagon, a tiny cote on wheels rather like his own, but he could not be sure what treasure, or prisoner, was held within. There were another hundred of those black-clad guardsmen riding in attendance. Captain Anji led a substantial troop.

  Kesh walked back to the Ladytree and his own wagon, where Tebedir kept watch. He dismissed the driver to get what rest he could. After emptying the girls’ waste pail out beyond the Ladytree’s boundaries and returning it to them, he stretched out on the ground. There he dozed, restlessly, waking at intervals to stare hard into the darkness.

  He had to stay alert. Someone was looking for the treasure he was hiding. A thousand needles could not have pricked so hard. But there was nobody there, and all around him in Dast Korumbos the survivors and the newcomers slept the sleep of the justly rescued. If any ghosts walked, he at least, thank Beltak, could not see them.

  26

  “We keep our heads down,” Keshad said to Tebedir that dawn in Dast Korumbos as they harnessed the beasts and stowed the gear. “Stay away from the reeve. Don’t let that foreign captain or his wolves notice us. Heads down. Tails down. Walk quietly. Draw no attention to ourselves. Keep in the middle of the group.”

  As soon as they left Dast Korumbos, a pattern developed: Each night the caravan halted where
the reeve met them on the road, and each night Kesh built his fire, fed his slaves, and kept his head down, watching and listening but never venturing farther than he had to from his wagon. He heard the rumor that the faithless border captain, Beron, was being held as a prisoner, hauled along to face justice at the assizes in Olossi, but no one was allowed near that closed wagon, guarded as it was by a shield of grim wolves. Kesh had no desire to investigate. Best not to draw attention to himself. He was pleased to find himself assigned to the last third of the procession. They’d eat dust back here, but were perfectly placed to remain anonymous as the cavalcade lurched down the West Spur, moving north and east.

  He looked for signs of that Silvers’ wagon that had gone on ahead, alone, out of Dast Korumbos, but he saw no wreckage, no sign of them at all. Either they’d got away free, or they and their wagon had been hauled off into the trees, never to be seen again.

  At length the caravan rumbled down the long slope out of the foothills where the high mountain pine and tollyrake forest gave way to an open, grass-grown, and rather dry landscape with few trees. They came to Old Fort, a low hill where the remains of an ancient monument thrust up into the sky, looking rather like the mast of a vast, buried ship. A palisade ringed the community at New Fort, rising beneath the gaze of the old ruin. The Olo’o Sea shimmered in the afternoon sun. The southern hills and eastern upland plains rimmed the waters of the Olo’o, but west and north the inland sea ran all the way to the horizon. Dogs lapped at the water and, finding it salty, shied back. Along the shore, fires burned merrily where families of fisherfolk smoked their catch beside reed boats coated with pitch to make them waterproof.

  At Old Fort, the reeve left them and flew north. The merchants, bickering and complaining, found places in the camping ground built just beyond the palisade and its double stone watchtowers. Those merchants who had spent days walking in the rear of the cavalcade brought their grievance to the two caravan masters, and Kesh decided that he, too, had to demand a forward place lest folk wonder why he was content to skulk in the back. Others complained more loudly; he was quickly forgotten as the arguments ebbed and flowed. He waited at the back of the assembly. A man brought a complaint against a guardsman—not one of the Qin—who, the merchant claimed, had had sexual congress with one of his slave girls; three merchants carting oil of naya and barrels of pitch from the west shore of the sea begged leave to join the caravan; a dispute had arisen over payment for a driver and his teams. As soon as Master lad handed out new places in the line of march, Kesh left. At the camping ground, the fisherfolk were glad to sell their catch at an inflated price. For his party, Kesh cooked rice, with one fish shared between them.