by Kate Elliott
“We do,” agreed Kagard.
Lenni was more voluble, perhaps seeing an opening to show off his youthful knowledge under the gaze of his seniors. “We’ve got cursed good records of family groupings. They say that Bronze Hall eagles cooperate better than those of any other hall. That’s why we keep visitors out here. Fewer tangles.”
“Good to hear.”
A pair of ordinands and a reeve trotted into sight under the archway. One of the lads carried a lamp. Joss strode over to meet them.
“Marshal Orhon will see you now,” said the reeve.
“Orhon?” Joss had no image of any such reeve. Not that he expected to know every gods-rotted reeve in the Hundred—obviously that was impossible—but after his years at Clan Hall he usually knew the names, at least, of the senior reeves at various halls because the legates of each hall did talk about the goings-on at their home compound. But an Orhon, out of Bronze Hall? Nothing.
How idiotic had he been to come here alone? A cursed headstrong fool, as always, acting on impulse instead of thinking. The Commander would never have acted so, but she was dead, wasn’t she? So far, he was still alive.
He hefted his pack to his back and noted that they did not ask him to give up either short sword or baton as they crossed under the archway and out into the odd stillness of dusk exposed on the high rock cliff of the islet. The water swirled in white foam still visible in the gloom. Stars bloomed. There was no moon. Their footfalls made an erratic rhythm on the plank bridge. A bell tolled in the distance, ringing the last fishermen home.
On the far side of the bridge, the trail divided. They followed a track to the left, set along a cliff and lit by lamps hanging from iron posts. As they came around the headland the wind off the ocean rushed in his face, but even in the last gasp of day crossing into night it was beautiful. Far out, the ocean rolled, billows drawing whitecaps in and out of the dusk.
A cottage was set alone in the midst of low-growing seawort and clumps of berrywax bushes. Lamps hung from the eaves. They clumped up onto the porch, where Joss pulled off his boots. The reeve, who had not introduced herself, rapped on the door. A hand bell chimed. The reeve indicated that Joss should let himself in. With a startled shrug, he slid open the door, stepped through onto mat, and closed the door.
The ocean’s breathing and the wind’s thrum beat in his ears as he stared at the man sitting cross-legged on a pillow in a chamber otherwise empty except for two flat pillows resting to the right of the door.
“I am Marshal Orhon.” The man had a shiny red blotch sprayed across the right half of his face. The left side of his face drooped, that eye fused shut, the skull shaved to stubble, the ear not much more than a twisted nub. His jaw didn’t work properly; that accounted for his soft voice.
“Where is Marshal Nedo?” Joss asked.
If Orhon’s expression changed, Joss could not interpret it. His voice’s timbre did not alter. “Her eagle was killed.”
“Was killed.”
“Deliberately killed. By raiders in the Beacons. They mutilated both bodies. To send a message.”
“We never heard—” Something in the twist of Orhon’s scarred mouth cut Joss so hard he closed his lips over the rest of the pointless words he’d been about to utter.
“There is a great deal Clan Hall does not know, if indeed you are from Clan Hall as you claim. Yet you cannot even respond to the formal greeting, the one passed down through generations of reeves. One which, according to report, your eagle recognized.”
“Everyone says Scar is smarter than me, and I see no reason not to believe them on that score.”
“Sit down,” said the marshal, and Joss wondered if his voice softened. Had he found the comment amusing? The confession humbling enough?
He grabbed a pillow and sat. Voices murmured on the porch; feet thumped; the door slid open.
“Sidya!”
Sidya, once Bronze Hall’s legate at Clan Hall, nodded at the marshal, not meeting Joss’s eye. “Yes, I know him. His name is Joss. He was legate from Copper Hall, in all kinds of trouble because he kept insisting on honesty and holding to the laws. He got sent off on an expedition to find out about some trouble on the roads. Last I heard before we were called back here was that he’d been named marshal of Argent Hall to try to clean the place up. As for the commander of Clan Hall, I know nothing about that, only the word we got a few weeks ago about a massacre in Toskala where the old commander was murdered. As for his claim to be the new commander—well—any reeve can name himself ‘commander’ but that doesn’t make it so.”
Orhon did not move. It was eerie, as if he were not a living man at all but disfigured skin stretched over the wooden frame of a man.
“Do you vouch for him, Sidya? Do you think he’s telling the truth?”
As the silence drew out, Joss grimaced. “The hells! I thought we parted on amiable terms. That was three years ago, Sidya.”
The comment cracked a laugh out of her, and he glimpsed the enthusiastic woman he’d shared a bed with for about half a year. She reached for the other pillow, tossed it down next to Joss, and sat beside him. “I’ve no complaints of you, Joss. Anyhow, I broke it off, not you. I’m just—” She looked at the silent Orhon, whose one good eye did not shift focus. “These are troubled times. I don’t know who to trust, but I guess I’d trust Joss as much as anyone. I’ve never known Joss to be anything but honest.” She looked back at him. “But why in the hells are you come here calling yourself commander of Clan Hall?”
“Because I’m the last person you’d think the Clan Hall council would elect?”
She grinned. “True enough.” Her smile flattened. “But if enough of their senior reeves were murdered . . .”
“There wasn’t much left to choose from,” he admitted. “I’ve gained experience as marshal at Argent Hall. Together with the militia there, and an outlander captain and his soldiers, we defeated an army that attacked Olossi. So I suppose that makes some folks think I might be able to protect the rest of the Hundred. I accepted the post and the responsibility because someone has to fight.”
“Why are you here?” Orhon asked him. “Bronze Hall has recalled its legate and attendant reeves from Clan Hall. We don’t intend to send them back, especially now that Toskala has fallen into the hands of a creature called Lord Radas.”
The words were not spoken in anger, simply as a statement of fact, the more chilling for its even temper.
“Surely you see we must stand together or fall separately. We’ve got to institute new practices. Reorganize. Work in concert with the forces assembling to fight Lord Radas’s army.”
“You want us to change. To give up our gods-given charge of enforcing the law and become soldiers instead?”
“I don’t want it. But we have come to that crossroads where we must choose the path of change.”
“So you say. But Clan Hall has failed the reeve halls. They’ve let the old formalities lapse. The old disciplines are not followed. Where the old order decays, then what is new has crept in with its rot.”
It was hard to hear because his voice was so soft, but Joss at last got a handle on the odd cadences in the man’s speech. “You’re not from Mar.”
“I fled Herelia fifteen years ago after my village was burned because we refused to submit to the rule of Lord Radas’s archons.” His good eye flickered as at a memory. “After years as a beggar and itinerant laborer on the roads, I washed up half-starved in Salya, here in Mar, where I found work in the marsh cutting reeds. Then an eagle chose me.”
“How did you come by these injuries? In the line of duty?”
“Neh. These I got the day my village in Herelia burned, when I tried to rescue my mother and aunts and the other children from the flames.”
“And an eagle chose you despite—!” Sidya cast an accusatory glance, and Joss broke off, flushing. “I beg your pardon, Marshal. But eagles choose—”
“Eagles choose men and women who are whole and healthy and strong, not those wh
o are crippled. Why did Stessa choose me? Because the gods made it known to me through the eagle’s calling that I must restore the proper forms, the proper discipline, the old ways. Adherence to tradition is the only way to defeat the pollution that breeds these troubles. It is the only way to defeat an army whose adherents wear the gods-corrupted Star of Life. Until Clan Hall recognizes this truth, we cannot support her. Or you.”
• • •
IN THE QIN style, the baby’s cot was placed beside the table as Mai spooned soup into bowls. In Kartu Town, children did not dine in company with the master, but the Qin did not consider a meal to be a meal if there were not children and kinfolk present. Food taken on campaign, among soldiers, took a different word, akin to horses and sheep grazing.
Horses and sheep would have been better company.
Mai had overheard Tuvi telling Anji that it would look bad to the men if he did not eat the homecoming meal with his wife and child. So there Anji sat, formally dressed, not a hair out of place. None of the senior officers were present today, although the doors were slid open so that anyone passing by could look in. The cooks had outdone themselves with dishes spiced both hot and subtle. Anji did not eat. He did not speak. He simply sat there, not looking at her. His silence made of the meal a mockery.
She would not succumb. It might seem that a hundred knives pricked her, so nervous was she, but she kept her hands steady as she ate. Even her dark mood could not kill her appetite. Also, handling spoon and eating knife gave her something to do as Anji did not talk and did not eat and did not look.
At length she finished, and called for Sheyshi to take away the dishes. As soon as Sheyshi had placed the dishes on a tray and carried them out, Anji rose. He caught up Atani and carried the baby to the door.
“Really,” said Mai in a voice that made him pause, back to her, at the threshold, “it shows no respect to those who have cooked, taking particular care to make special dishes, to refuse to eat this food simply because you are angry not at them but at another person.”
He said, in a lower voice, addressing the door, “The Ri Amarah showed us hospitality in every way openhearted and generous. That we have succeeded here is in great part due to their aid. Now you repay that hospitality by betraying them. Leaving me to make apologies and restitution, if any can be made given the enormity of the dishonor.”
He banged the door shut behind.
Mai rested her forearms on the table and her head on clasped hands. So had Father Mei sounded as he scolded one or another of his wives or brothers: never able to be satisfied.
Well. Anji could kill her. That would be painful, certainly, but then it would be over. Surely if he had meant to beat her he’d have done it already. Anji’s was a contained rage, and she supposed he might continue on in this horrible way for days or months or years.
What if he did? Her heart would weep, but hearts endure years of unhappiness all the time. She had probably breathed more happiness in this last year than Grandmother Mei had inhaled in her entire life. After all, she had always told herself that the only place to find happiness is inside. That was the lesson she had learned growing up in the Mei clan.
Yes, it would be difficult. Yes, she would cry. But she had a healthy son. She had a fine compound. She had plenty of coin, a house to run, a settlement to administer where folk praised her and asked for her to listen to their disputes and sit in judgment over them even though she was young. She could conduct trade in her own person and with her own collateral. She was learning to figure a proper accounts book and actually to write and read.
“Mistress?” Priya slid the door open just enough to slip through. “The captain has gone out, with the baby.” Her frown creased her forehead.
Mai opened her mouth to speak but no word came out. A hammer had smashed her heart, leaving her breathless. Priya sat down beside her and took her hand.
At length, Mai whispered, “I need something to do, Priya.”
“Yes, Mistress. We’ll sweep. Best to change out of that good silk, though.”
They swept the porches and the flagstone pavements, then raked the garden walkways in neat patterns until dusk made it impossible to continue and she had the beginnings of a blister on her right forefinger. She washed face and hands and feet, put aside her clothing, took down her hair, and lay down on the pallet unrolled by Sheyshi. But although she was exhausted she could not sleep. At length, she heard voices and the hiccoughing wails of the baby.
Priya crept in, holding the boy. Mai put him to her breast and his nursing calmed her and made all ill things seem, for the moment, too distant to matter. Male voices conversed nearby, tense but muted, and even their rumble faded as her eyes closed and she dropped away. . . .
To wake.
She was still alone in the bed, of course, a single coverlet nesting her and Atani. A light shone through the rice-paper squares set into the door. She settled the baby in his cot. Her sleeping robe, pale as silver, seemed poured over the chest set on one side of the room. She slipped her arms through the sleeves, bound it around her waist, fumbling the knot. She tried to open the door quietly, but he—still dressed, his hair still caught up in its topknot, and seated cross-legged on a pillow as though he meant to bide there all night—looked up at once as she paused in the opening, darkness behind her, the lamp’s flame dividing her from him.
His expression was as unforgiving as stone. “If you betray me, I will kill you.”
After everything, this was too much.
“When did I ever betray you? When have I ever given you reason to question my honor? You bought me from my father, did you not? Surely that gave me reason enough to feel I was nothing more than your slave. I could have resented you. I could have nursed sorrow. But I held my tongue in the early days. I hoped for something—I don’t know—perhaps just those tales and songs I grew up with that you think are so silly, the bandit and the merchant’s daughter, like the tale of the Silk Slippers that they tell here in the Hundred where the girl escapes all those who are hunting her and marries the carter’s son. Maybe it was foolish of me to dream of those tales as if they could ever have been true. But I wanted to make a decent life for myself out of what had been forced on me. Isn’t that what any of us want? Less pain and more joy? I wanted to love you. I wanted—”
The sharp movement of his head, as though she had just slapped him, caught her short.
The flame hissed. He lifted his chin, voice scarcely more than a breath of terrible yearning. “Do you love me, Mai?”
“Of course I love you. Has there ever been a stupider question heard in all the annals of the world than whether I love you? How can you even doubt it?”
“I see how you talk to other men. You smile at them exactly as you smile at me. Like that reeve.”
“Joss?”
“Of course you would think of him first!”
“Besides Miyara, he’s the only reeve with whom I’ve ever exchanged more than ten words. He’s personable, it’s true. And he’s an Ox, like me, and naturally those who are born in the Year of the Ox feel a particular affinity each for the others, because of the particular attributes of our character. Because we are hardworking and pragmatic, with a dreamer hidden inside.”
“The heart of an Ox leaps to the heavens, where it seeks the soul that fulfills it. For the Ox is very beautiful. Is he not?”
“Handsome, certainly, but very old!” she retorted tartly.
“Not too old to father a child.”
“Anji!” For an instant she was too scalded by fury to see, and then as the haze boiled away she stepped fully into the chamber and grabbed the first thing that came to hand: a ceramic cup off a tray. “All you think about is if I have dishonored you. What makes you think I would ever dishonor myself?”
She flung it at him, flung herself back into the sleeping chamber, and slammed the door so hard shut its reverberation startled the baby in his sleep, a flinch heard more than seen, and then he cooed within his baby dreams and settled.
Strangely, the cup had not shattered. Surely she had thrown it hard enough!
She fingered open the door, easing it back just enough to peer through. There stood Anji, in lamplight, holding the cup in one hand and staring at it as if its existence, such an object as a cup that could hold liquid that might please the tongue and warm, or cool, the throat, puzzled him.
Then he smiled, an expression touched by a whisper as of doubt throttled. He tossed the cup into the air and caught it in the same hand. He crossed toward the door, and Mai scuttled back and collapsed to her knees beside the mattress.
He slid the door open with a foot and came in carrying the tray with its two ceramic cups and a matching ceramic bottle, sealed with a cap, and the lamp, still burning. He set the tray on the chest and poured out rice wine into each cup. Offering her one cup, he sat cross-legged on the matted floor and drank the other down in one gulp. She sipped cautiously, watching him.
He undressed, and when he was in his robe he sat down on a pillow at the end of the mattress and handed her a comb, merely gesturing to his topknot, which it was her right and indeed duty as his wife to unbind and comb out.
His black hair was not as coarse and straight as that of the other Qin, but had a lustrous glow she never tired of. She stroked for a long time, enjoying the peaceful rhythm because it eased her heart. She knew they would have to discuss Miravia, but not now. In truth, she wanted desperately to lean into his back, to kiss the nape of his neck, to entwine him in an embrace that would cause him to turn and caress her, but she remembered what Chief Tuvi had said. She must not seem to be apologizing. Helping Miravia would cause trouble for them, but she could not have done otherwise and still lived with herself; she would accept the consequences. As for the other—going to the temple, and that ridiculous accusation thrown out against Reeve Joss—she had nothing to be ashamed of. He ought to be ashamed, for even thinking it.
He shifted, and she thought he was about to speak, but he did not. Yet he did turn, easing the comb from her hand, and turned her to face away from him. He gathered her unbound hair and started working through it with the comb from the top of her head down to its ends, which brushed the floor. It was impossible to concentrate on anything except the warmth of his breath on her neck, the way his fingers brushed against her back, or her arms, or the lobe of her ear. This state of suspension, him brushing and her sitting so still lest she utter his name or throw herself into his arms, was almost painful, and yet she dared not move for fear of breaking the connection. Anji was a patient man, very disciplined, and she began to wonder if he meant to comb her hair all night just to see who would break first. And because she was so very tired, and wrung tight, and aching with misery and hope, she began to laugh, a little hysterically perhaps, but laughter all the same even if there were sobs caught in it.