by Kate Elliott
“The hells!” swore Giyara.
The cloak trotted to earth on the causeway before them, and the soldiers dropped to their knees, bowing their heads.
Lord Radas himself had come. His cloak—almost as bright in its golden splendor as the sun itself—rippled as in an unfelt breeze. Arras felt fear as a knife in his ribs, but he walked forward anyway, because he must. He was captain; he was responsible. He knelt on one knee and raised both hands to shield his gaze obediently.
“Lord Radas. What is your will?”
“What is your name?”
“Captain Arras, of the Sixth Cohort. I have with me remnants of the First Cohort.”
“You are retreating rather than holding the forward position. When Lord Yordenas spoke to you last night, you were encamped farther out, on an island.”
When thrown off balance, it was best to right yourself by throwing a punch. “Lord Yordenas ordered the retreat, my lord. I suggested we hold the forward position and asked Lord Yordenas to undertake a reconnaissance to estimate the true strength of the Nessumaran militia.”
“We were betrayed.” Lord Radas had a mild voice, nothing odd in it, only its tone had a timbre that made a man shudder even to hear simple words spoken in a seemingly reasonable manner. A madman might speak so as he was cutting your throat. “Look at me, Captain.”
Aui! A man in his line of work could never know, never plan for, and must never dwell on when death might arrive to carry him to the Spirit Gate.
No sense waiting.
He looked up.
The man had youthful features but did not seem young; rather, he appeared rather unsettlingly well-preserved. He had deep-set eyes and broad cheekbones set off by a mustache and beard; no dashingly handsome man, as in the tales, but an ordinary fellow if not for the eyes, which were a weapon cutting you open so your guts spilled out.
Here it is, all of it:
Lord Twilight told me to arrange for an outlander to be conveyed out of camp without the other lord commanders knowing of it and by chance I was able in addition to use the outlander’s trail to track down a nest of bandits and kill them. Kill me for it if you must; I obeyed the cloak, as I am required to do. I didn’t know who the outlander was, but then Night tracked me down to say she had captured him. She said he was Lord Twilight’s brother.
I don’t enjoy killing or savor its power. I don’t mind it, either, and if it has to be done I’ll do it, as I have done since the day I left my village forever. Nothing against my clan or anyone else there; it just wasn’t a life or a bride I was willing to accept. I like battle, because it tests the mind and the body and it tests your resolve, your reactions, your reserves.
As for Captain Dessheyi of the First Cohort—even in an ambush he ought not to have allowed his soldiers to break ranks and lose cohesion like that; he ought to have had a decent chain of command in place. But some of these men are cursed better at oiling up their superiors to grab for rank than they are at actually doing the work of fighting.
Lord Radas laughed, the sound so startling Arras flinched. “So Harishil and Night are playing a game of hooks-and-ropes. He’ll not survive her displeasure. Perhaps she means to replace one outlander with the other.”
Shaking, Arras brought his hands up to cover his eyes. He was on both knees, sweat streaming, hands moist.
“Keep the remnants of First Cohort as your own,” said Lord Radas as easily as if he were handing him a cup of cooked rice for his supper. “You have a full cohort now. It’s up to you to mold them into a cohesive unit. There will be a full war council in Saltow on Wakened Horse. I will be sure to consult your opinion at that time. I expect you to have a plan of action to present, that can be considered along with other strategies. We have underestimated the Nessumarans. Now we must defeat them.” He began to rein his horse around.
“Lord Radas! If I may be permitted to speak.”
The horse sidestepped as the cloak twisted in the saddle and Arras ducked his head to avoid that gaze. “It’s the reeves, Lord Radas. They see everything we do. As long as they have that advantage, we’ll struggle.”
“Be sure we are not finished with the reeves,” said the cloak over his shoulder before he urged his mount onward.
The wings unfurled, their span almost as wide as the causeway and so bright and powerful Arras forgot to fear and simply gazed in awe. In a transition he could not measure or mark, the horse ran off the causeway and up into the sky as if the roadway split and it had merely taken a path he could not see. The man and his billowing cloak seemed almost an afterthought to the magnificence of the beast’s wings and graceful form.
“Heya!”
Arras leaped up, whipping round to see a soldier racing up on the heels of Zubaidit. She staggered to a halt as she stared after the rippling sheen of the gold cloak falling away like rays off the rising sun. Her expression was unfathomable, mouth slightly parted, eyes narrowed. Is that what she would look like in the arms of the Devourer? Whew! He’d completely forgotten about her in the face of Lord Radas’s gaze.
“Cursed hostage took off running, Captain,” said the panting soldier. “Everyone was staring at the cloak.” He aimed the haft of his spear at her, taking a halfhearted swipe, and she turned on Arras.
“You cursed ingrate! I only went on that cursed negotiating expedition for you because you said you’d kill the other hostages if I did not. Now they’re all spitting on me and calling me a traitor.”
He dusted off the dirt on his trousers and, straightening, shook off the muzz afflicting his thoughts. “That would seem to make them the ingrates, not me.”
Her gaze flicked eastward toward the mainland, taking in the mire and the gods-rotted honking waterfowl dotting the sheets of water. Already the cloak had vanished from view.
“I’m tired of being strung along as on a rope,” she said. “First my clan marries me off north to a man I’ve never met. Not that I’ve any complaint of him, mind you. It’s just I had no choice. I’ve never had a choice.” Her tone hardened as old grievances bubbled to the surface. He saw that look in a lot of the young men who came to him. “Seems to me you lot have more choice in what happens in your life. I want to join your cohort as a soldier.”
“What’s in it for me?”
She snorted. “Do you ask that of every recruit?”
“I might have asked it of that cursed traitor Laukas. What’s to say you won’t betray us, as he did?”
“What’s to say anyone won’t? I’m one person, Captain. Not that difficult to keep an eye on.”
“Indeed not. I might have to keep you close by me, just to be sure.”
Her lips twitched, reminding him abruptly of a hook used to catch a fish. “Do you want me to play that game, Captain? I shouldn’t think your men will respect you for it.” She looked around, because of course everyone within earshot was listening openly, and no doubt those cursed boats bobbing off shore, out of arrow-shot, were also wondering what in the hells was going on.
“Tortoise up!” he shouted, angry at his lapse. The entire cohort could have been shot to pieces while he gaped like a lust-struck moonwit. “March!”
He fell behind the front rank of shields, and although the soldier who had chased her queried him with a gesture, he waved him off. She did not drop back to walk with the other hostages, nor did he make her go. Hadn’t he already decided?
“You’ll plague me until you get what you want, won’t you?”
“Yes.” She matched her stride to his.
“I won’t have it said I enlisted any soldier in my cohort in exchange for sex.” He glanced at Sergeant Giyara, who had dropped into step on his other side. She’d no doubt have an opinion to share with him in private, later. “That’s not the kind of unit I run.”
Zubaidit flashed that handsome smile. “That’s why I respect you, Captain.”
They walked in silence except for the tread of feet. The causeway stretched to the horizon.
“Captain,” said Giyara at length, as if
she’d been chewing for a while and had finally swallowed, “does that mean Lord Radas thinks we did the right thing by giving up our forward position?”
“Surely he knows I couldn’t refuse a direct order. He told me to present a plan at the war council on Wakened Horse. I’ve a few ideas. Spread into the countryside. Confiscate the harvest, all flocks and horses, take wagons and tools. We can cut off every land route into Nessumara. Field boats out of Ankeno and do damage to their shipping as well, cut off the flow of refugees fleeing the city. Trap them in the delta like rats. They have fields and storehouses, but surely not enough to feed all the refugees. And the dry season is coming. Maybe this cursed mire will dry out and we can advance across a longer front, off the causeway. Maybe we can set fire to the islands and drive forward under the cover of smoke, to hide from the reeves.”
Giyara whistled. “Fire is a two-edged sword. It can’t be controlled.”
“War is a fire, isn’t it? If we burned the grand and glorious city of Nessumara to ruins, what a message we’d send to any other people who think to resist us, eh?”
Zubaidit sucked in a sharply audible breath. Then she laughed, tossing her head.
“You find that funny?” he asked.
She lifted both hands, palms up, the well-known gesture of the-child-asking-an-obvious-question in any of the tales. “If you burn Nessumara, Captain, then what do you possess afterward?”
“Victory. What else matters?”
• • •
THIS TIME OF year, as the rains faded to a whisper, the winds drew cooler drier air out of the northwest. You could taste the change, the locals said, see the shift in the color of the vegetation, hear the altered voice of the river announcing the advent of the dry season.
Mai peeked out through a slit in the curtains she’d opened with her fingers. Where the River Olossi met the Olo’o Sea, a green sway of reeds carpeted the shallows while blue sky melded with blue-green sea out beyond the last channels. She licked her lips, but all she tasted was her own anxiety. She let the cloth close.
“You’re out early, ver,” said the boatman, speaking to the hirelings as they set the curtained palanquin on the dock. “Your mistress or master can’t wait, eh?”
“Don’t ask me,” said one of the hirelings brusquely. “We were hired to carry the palanquin at Crow’s Gate and were told to deliver it to the boat and wait to deliver it back to Crow’s Gate. Can we get going? Cursed cold out here by the water. We want to go wait in an inn.”
Mai had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, but not for the cold; it was for a covering should she need to conceal her face. Miravia sat on the narrow bench opposite, clutching the baby beneath her long cloak. She had looked so fragile at the beginning of this journey, and therefore Mai had handed Atani over to her as soon as they were hidden inside the curtains of the palanquin. Holding a baby gave one a measure of stability.
The palanquin was heaved up, pitched right and then left, and settled into the boat. Coins changed hands with a clink of vey counted out in pairs. The boatman grunted as he poled away from the dock. He made no attempt to converse. The boat rolled as they hit choppy waters, and then they glided through a long calm stretch and at last bumped up against another pier. The tang of salt was now flavored with a brush of bitter incense. A whisper of bells chimed an ornament to the hiss of wind and water in reeds. She heard the slap of feet running down to meet the boat.
“Eh, this isn’t our early day, ver. What were you thinking?” The voice was cheerful, followed by laughter from others on the shore.
Mai slipped a folded piece of paper through the curtains. “Take this to the Hieros, I beg you. I assure you, she will want to read it.”
A person wrenched the message from her fingers.
After a moment, the first voice said, “Go!” and footsteps raced away. “Bring the palanquin onto the dock. Quickly, you clod-foots.”
With much pitching, the palanquin got hoisted out of the boat and set on mercifully firm ground. Mai rubbed legs and arms sore from the journey smuggled in the chest. Miravia shut her eyes.
“Eh, that was a good game, the last of the hooks-and-ropes tournament,” said the boatman, determined to make the time pass by visiting with the unseen loiterers. “You see it?”
“You think we get a festival day off? Wasn’t there a new team competing?”
“A militia team, yeh. I was impressed. They’d only been practicing together for four months, at the order of the commander, and yet they came in third at the stakes. They’ll win next year.”
A new voice chimed in, older and female. “You see all the checkpoints and such they’re setting up? I’m not sure I like it!”
The boatman snorted. “I don’t mind! Better than fearing bandits and criminals, neh?”
Outside, the voices argued about the new road regulations. The curtains stirred, and a tooth-filled snout poked into the palanquin. A scaly shape shimmied in so fast Miravia shrieked, and Mai gasped, and the baby woke and began to cry.
Outside, the temple folk laughed.
Inside, a ginny lizard nudged Miravia’s leg and tried to crawl up onto the bench beside her.
Mai snatched Atani from Miravia as her friend smothered laughter and crying beneath a hand clapped over her own mouth. “I—I—I never thought I would see one,” she whispered. “I read about them in books.”
Mai was struggling with her taloos and at last got the crying baby latched on. He began sucking noisily. The ginny backed down from Miravia and spun so quickly it seemed it had levitated, turning with a whip of its long tail. It nosed at Mai’s feet, showed the merest edge of teeth, and tried to climb up on Mai’s lap.
“You will not!” she said indignantly.
Its crest lifted, and a spasm like faintly glimmering threads of blue traced its knobbly spine. Atani let go of the breast, milk squirting his round face as he turned his head. Almost as if he knew it was there.
A voice called. “Heya! The Hieros says to bring up the palanquin right away!”
The ginny scrambled out, curtains swaying in its wake. The palanquin rose; they rocked. The baby burped and burbled and, like any newborn, complained as he rooted, seeking the breast. Their bearers were less experienced than the hirelings who had carried them smoothly from Crow’s Gate to Dast Olo’s docks; Mai could not get a moment of stillness to let the poor little one fasten on, and by the time they were dropped roughly to solid ground, he was wailing, inconsolable.
Miravia twitched aside a lip of curtain to peer outside. Her eyes widened. “It’s a lovely garden!”
If joy had a fragrance, it might be something like this: flowers exhaling, the sun shedding warmth, the earth sighing, the air braced by a light breeze off the salty inland sea. Atani got hold again and began suckling. Mai sighed as the milk flowed, and a tingle of well-being, the breath of the Merciful One that penetrates all living things, coursed through her.
Miravia opened the curtain a little wider. “There’s a pavilion here. How pretty! But I don’t see anyone, just plants. Musk vine. Both orange and yellow proudhorn. Heaven-kiss. Look at those falls of purple muzz! I’ve never seen so thick a flowering!”
“What if we’re not supposed to see onto sacred ground—?”
“You say that now?”
Their gazes met. They both began to giggle, then to laugh, the anxiety and tension like water overtopping a cup, pouring over the lip, coursing everywhere.
“Are you coming out?” The voice was old, strong, and not kind. But it wasn’t angry. Like Anji, it expected to be obeyed.
Miravia grasped and released Mai’s hand before pushing aside the curtain. Mai tucked Atani into the crook of an arm and followed.
The Hieros sat on a low couch under the pavilion’s roof. Miravia and Mai kicked off their sandals and climbed three steps to kneel on pillows in front of her. For a while there was silence as Atani nursed contentedly. A spectacular taloos wrapped the old woman’s slender form: silk of the most delicate sea-green hue. Woven with a
n inner pattern of scallops like waves, it might have been an actual layer of water skinned off the surface of the deeps of the inland sea and spun into fabric.
The baby let go of the breast, smacked his tiny, perfect lips. As soon as Mai burped him he closed his eyes and sighed into a doze. She adjusted her taloos and shifted him to the other arm.
“I admit,” said the Hieros, examining first Mai and then Miravia with a cool gaze, “that I did not expect to see the wife of the outlander captain enter the precincts of the holy temple, not after he expressed so strongly to me on a separate occasion that his wife would never set foot in Ushara’s temple. Yet even less did I expect ever to see the face of a Ri Amarah woman.”
Miravia glanced at Mai, and Mai nodded. “I am named Miravia, ken Haf Gi Ri, daughter of Isar and his wife, whose name I am not free to mention.”
The Hieros looked at Mai. “Why have you come?”
“We have come, Holy One, to ask you to give refuge to this woman.”
“You have not come—one newly a mother and the other soon to be married, so it is rumored, to a rich man of poor reputation in Nessumara—to gain some pleasure in our gardens?”
“No!” said Mai, genuinely shocked.
The Hieros’s expression darkened as a storm front occludes the horizon.
Mai plunged on. “I beg you, Holy One, listen to my petition. Miravia has run away from her family. She does not want to marry the man they’ve chosen for her.”
“Does not want to marry? Is she asking to dedicate herself as a hierodule at the temple?” She surveyed Miravia with a look that made the girl blush to a sodden red.
“I am not, begging your pardon, Holy One,” Miravia said hoarsely. “Meaning no disrespect. It’s just—” She gulped out words between sobs. “Oh, what good will it do, Mai? No one will help us! Everyone will just tell me to accept the marriage for the honor of my clan! I would have been better off to sell myself as a debt slave!”