by Kate Elliott
Siras was bouncing on his toes as Joss walked up with Kesta. “The hells, Commander! What happened to you? You look gods-rotted younger, or something.”
The Qin soldiers delicately stepped away, one lifting a hand to show they were moving off now, no trouble.
“Keep walking,” muttered Joss.
Soldiers approached the awning with bowls and bottles and by lamplight Anji bent over his son to coax food into the squalling visage as his chiefs gave orders for the night’s sentries. The four reeves strode away, Kesta leading them toward the river’s shore where they might hope to find some privacy.
“What in the hells happened?”
“The captain sent Mistress Mai and a few attendants and guards to Merciful Valley. To keep her safe while he went on campaign.”
“From the red hounds? Those Sirniakan spies?”
Siras shrugged. “The rumor runs that the captain’s mother had Mai killed.”
“The hells! That’s what Chief Tuvi implied. Why would his mother kill his wife?”
“She brought a Sirniakan princess from the empire. She wanted him to marry the outlander, but he refused.”
“So she killed Mai? How in the hells would that serve to persuade her son to marry the woman she’d chosen for him? Aui! How can anyone understand outlanders? Is this what we have to hope for?”
“To hope for what?” asked Kesta.
“Not here,” said Joss, lowering his voice. They walked awhile until they reached the low bluffs that ran along the western channel. It was impossible to penetrate the river’s layers, the surface glitter, the streaming deeps, the muddied eddies where sticks washed up. This conflict was like the river. They thought they were fighting a single war, when in fact multiple wars were raging around and above and beneath their feet, unseen but nevertheless permeating the land until the Hundred overflowed with hostilities.
“Lord Radas is dead.”
“Thanks to you,” said Kesta.
He shrugged, shaking off the compliment. “Anji and his army have defeated major contingents of Lord Radas’s army.”
“Thanks be to the gods,” said Peddonon with a fierce sigh.
“Meanwhile, there remain remnants of that army wandering in the countryside, an outpost at Walshow, and headquarters at Wedrewe in Herelia. Why can’t Anji just take over the entire apparatus and stand as—what do the Qin call their ruler?—stand as var over the Hundred, with an army he trained and which is loyal to him to enforce his will?”
The river’s voice had the clarity his own lacked. The danger seemed so cursed obvious to him. How easy it was to cross under the gate of shadows, never knowing you passed the threshold of corruption until it was too late to turn back.
“Joss,” said Kesta in the voice of an auntie who is about to tell you that the woman you’re hankering after just isn’t interested no matter how many smiles and songs and silk scarves you ply her with, “don’t you think you’re spinning a tale out of your own fears? Have you thought maybe you’re a bit envious? I admit I’ve been startled by how quickly Commander Anji and his chiefs have taken to giving orders to the reeve halls, but hasn’t it worked? Aren’t we at the threshold of victory, after all the terrible things we’ve seen?”
“When in the hells,” Joss demanded, “did everyone stop calling him ‘Captain’? This isn’t about being commander of the reeve halls. For sure I never wanted the position, and if we can ever get the reeve halls to meet in council, then I’ll be glad to follow a new commander. But tell me this, Kesta.” He grabbed a rock off the ground and pitched it toward the river, waiting until he heard, like an echo of his doubts, its hollow splash. “If the reeve halls met today in council, if Anji stood up before them with his eloquence and persuasiveness and his good-humored smiles, what makes you think they wouldn’t elect him?”
49
SHAI WAS CONSCIOUS, and he was hurting, and his ears were filled with voices that nagged as stubbornly as young nieces and nephews wanting a ride on his broad shoulders.
How do I get home? Can you tell me?
I never wanted to march with the army. But it was cursed sweet to have my belly full every cursed day, eh? I don’t feel hungry at all now.
Aui! It hurts! I’m scared!
Gods-rotted cowards, falling back like that. If only we’d listened to—
Ghosts plagued him, worse than a horde of nieces and nephews because there was nothing he could do for them. He wanted to shout “I can’t help you!” but he had no throat, no tongue, no mouth. Sand had been poured over raw flesh and rubbed in until he was a single screaming wound.
Cursed if he would cry about it. Others had endured worse. This was only physical pain.
“Out!”
The voice rang strong, startling in its fury. The whispers snapped out, the ghosts fleeing as Shai took a breath, although even a simple breath hurt, scouring his lungs.
Yet he was still not alone. Two voices disturbed his peace.
“Now we talk, Captain Arras, here in this private place where no one will disturb us. Just you and me. I have a sword, and you have no weapon but your wits. Zubaidit served my army well, so as a favor to her I did not kill your soldiers or you immediately, although I could have. I have accepted the cloak you brought as an offering, and I’m appreciative that you have hauled this man Shai to my camp. I have allowed you to sit in my council and pretend to be my loyal officer. But you’re not. You’re a traitor.”
“I would argue it was Lord Radas who betrayed me and the soldiers who served him.”
“Go on.”
“The truth, Commander, is that I joined up with Lord Radas’s people because I was an ordinand of Kotaru who got into some trouble and I had no where else to go. I didn’t kill anyone, mind you, nor abuse those weaker than me, as some men will do if they can get away with it. But those who commanded in Kotaru’s temple didn’t like my attitude, and I didn’t like their incompetence. I sought scope for my talents. I served in Seven’s militia for a while, and that worked out all right, they are decent people there, except I wasn’t a local man and only local men got raised to positions of command. So then some men came recruiting, and what they promised sounded good to my ears. I came in as a sergeant and soon got rewarded with a company and later a cohort of my own. I had hopes of really doing something when we started our campaign. But as it turned out, Lord Radas was just as incompetent as my other commanders had been, in his own way. I suppose I thought a cloak who could rip out the hearts and minds of those who opposed him would be a better commander than ordinary fellows, but I guess after all that the magic a Guardian bears is meant only for the assizes, not the battlefield. The cursed cloak could look right into my heart, and steal my understanding of the tactics and strategy that would have worked best for the army, and still he made one bad decision after the next.”
“Will you judge me incompetent in my turn, and seek a bolder and more intelligent commander?”
“Is there one?” The question was not meant to flatter.
“Here, in the Hundred? I doubt it.” The answer was not a wishful boast. “But will you betray me in turn? People do it all the time, as I know to my cost.”
“An impossible question, because I have to deny it to win your trust. So, listen, Commander. I’m willing to suffer under your suspicion until I prove myself. I’ve no ambition to rule a vast army. I just want a cursed command that means something. I want it to matter that my men are well trained, and that I usually know what I’m doing. That my sergeants and subcaptains are competent soldiers who can be rewarded with higher command, if such comes open. Do what you must to prove to yourself that I’ll serve you. I’m patient. I’ll do what I must.”
The other man laughed, a bark of anger. “Until I give you an order you don’t respect?”
“If you’re the kind of commander I think you are, you’ll never give me an order I don’t respect.”
“You think a lot of yourself, Captain Arras.”
The man chuckled. “Someone must.
I’ll do what I can to make you think well of me. Even if you do kill me now, having decided I’m not trustworthy, I’d ask you to spare my soldiers. Let them serve you. They’re disciplined and loyal. They never betrayed their captain, did they? I’d hate to see them suffer for my decision, as I and they have suffered from the idiot decisions of our former commanders.”
“A captain is only as strong as his soldiers.”
“I’ll offer you one more thing. A piece of advice that comes with this small gift. Handle it carefully.”
“A hollow pipe, thorns, and—this?—some milky liquid.”
“Don’t open that. In the Wild lives a snake called a two-stepper. That is its venom. If it pricks you, you have two steps before you’re dead. This venom is deadly enough to kill a cloak. I knew a person like Zubaidit would be hiding weapons. Sergeant Giyara searched her thoroughly. If Zubaidit is your loyal servant, then you’re well served. But if she’s not yours, then I’d consider her a very dangerous weapon. Best you hope that the one who controls her doesn’t decide to go after you.”
“I appreciate your words, Captain Arras. They’re wisely spoken. Even I can be outflanked.” The speaker’s voice rasped with such a ragged edge that Shai moaned as if the tone were scraping him where he was raw.
“Call Tohon. He’s stirring. Captain Arras, be assured I have my own defenses and weapons. You may become one of them. Serve me ill, and you’ll fall hard and fast and dead. Serve me well, and you’ll find yourself rewarded.” A clap shattered the air. “Let Tohon in. Captain Arras, you’re dismissed.”
Shai’s hearing had become painfully acute. Boots scraped on dirt. A man was breathing swift and shallow as if he’d come running. A musty, dusty sweat of bracing familiarity breathed across Shai’s nostrils, and he turned his head like a blind man rooting for treasure.
Was it truly Tohon?
“Here, now, son. Can you open your eyes? Raise a hand to show you hear me?” A touch as soft as wind brushed his fever-dampened hair. “If you don’t mind, Captain Anji, would you hand me the bowl? My thanks.”
Gentle fingers dabbed a cooling infusion onto his burning skin, starting on his face and working down his neck and onto his bare shoulders and chest.
“You treat him as tenderly as you would a son.”
“I miss my sons and daughter. Whether they’re dead or living now, which I can’t know—except for the girl, of course, and the lad I know was killed in the wars—I miss them. A man likes to have a child around, as you must be well aware of at this moment, Captain Anji.”
What cools at first touch may turn to a blaze of heat. Pain flared across his body as though he were being smothered in a cloak of fire. Someone drew a sword.
“Did Commander Beje and Lady Cherfa plan Mai’s death all along in concert with my mother?”
“Put down the sword, Captain, or stab me in the back after I’m done here.” The voice soothed, not wavering. Nor did the hands falter, spreading the healing infusion down Shai’s raw, aching legs. “I’m Commander Beje’s man, serving at his order. He ordered me to serve you, so I did. I’m a Qin soldier, Captain. Not a red hound or an agent of the Sirniakan women’s palace. I’m not even a slave to Beje’s wife Cherfa.”
A sword hissed back into its sheath. “What did you know about Sheyshi?”
“Hu! If it’s true what they say, she fooled us all, for I thought her the most lame-witted female I’d ever encountered. Although now I think about it, looking back over ground I already scouted, I missed what was obvious. She was always skulking around, wasn’t she, pretending to drop things or forget what she was doing? She let us believe she was stupid, and that made us stupid, didn’t it? Seeing the face without ever trying to look behind it. No, I didn’t suspect her. But I suppose Commander Beje knew what she was and placed her in your troop at his wife’s request.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Surely you know, Captain, that Beje and Cherfa have been your mother’s allies from a long way back. It’s he who helped her get you out of the empire when you were twelve. It’s she who gave you their daughter to wed, to give you status in court when your uncle the var meant to belittle you, even if it didn’t work out with the woman in the end. It’s he who warned you that your uncle was out to kill you, wasn’t it? He—or his wife—intercepted a messenger out of one of those desert towns, some widow’s grandson. They knew beforehand what your uncle intended. He had time to set his snare. He sent me to intercept you and guide you to him, so he could warn you. That he placed your mother’s agent with your troop certainly couldn’t have been to threaten you. All your mother the princess has ever done has been to protect you, her only son. The slave was just one more knife at your service.”
Anji’s breathing had gentled as a horse’s might, being walked after a bruising gallop. The sting of fiery pain along Shai’s skin lessened. He tried to open his eyes, but a sticky paste held them shut. He tried to move his fingers, but he couldn’t feel his hands.
“She outflanked me,” Anji whispered.
“What will you do now, Captain?”
“We’re still fighting a war. Tomorrow, Tohon, I’ll need you to—”
“With all respect, Captain,” said the scout in a mild tone as cooling as the infusion he’d finished laying on, “I’ll not be going anywhere, nor will this lad. I’ve arranged for a bed in Skerru so he doesn’t have to be moved. He needs not to be moved, if he’s going to live. I’ve given you my report. There’s others who can scout for you—”
“All those reeves, you mean, who might yet fly off at a word from their handsome but rebellious commander just when I need them most. You’re my best scout, Tohon.”
“But I’m not your only scout, Captain. Now that Mistress Mai is dead, for which I truly grieve, for she was a fine woman, I am this young man’s only family. Hu! There was something about an uncle, wasn’t there? Uncle Hari?”
“No.” Anji’s reply was a knife in the heart. “There is no Uncle Hari. And Mai is gone.” The word broke; the heart shattered; the world wept. “For her sake and in her memory, then. Stay with him and make sure he lives.”
• • •
ZUBAIDIT WALKED BEYOND the ring of Qin guards to an open stretch of ground. The camp was held hostage under the uncertain grip of Commander Anji’s temper. Would he break down and weep? Strike out in anger? How strong was his self-discipline? She’d never in fact met his wife, the woman whose beauty all praised and whose intelligence was manifest in how often she had outnegotiated her rivals and how quickly she had woven her husband’s Qin soldiers into the intricate network of kinship and obligation that was clan life in the Hundred.
Bai had had a clan once, but they’d forfeited her loyalty when they’d sold her to the temple. How she had hated the old bitch who ruled in Ushara’s garden, even while respecting the woman’s devotion to the Merciless One. Yet walking away from the temple after Keshad had freed her, she had realized she could never walk away from the goddess. Once she accepted this, every decision became simple. Die in the service of the goddess? Of course, if it proved necessary. Live? Then she would do so, if that’s what was needed.
After so many months trapped in a guise worthy of one of Hasibal’s actors, Zubaidit embraced the prayers she had been so long denied because to pray would be to reveal the truth of what she was: one of Ushara’s devourers, devoted to life, death, and desire, sent as assassin and spy into the enemy’s camp. As lamps flickered among the shelters and campfires burned where a few soldiers still retold their stories of the day’s fighting, she stamped the rhythm with her feet and sketched the story with hands as she sang.
“The Four Mothers raised the heavens and shaped the earth,
and then they slumbered.
and then they grew large.
and then they gave birth.
The seven gods are their children,
who brought order into the world.
who built the gates that order the world . . .
and thus Shining Ga
te rose and Shadow Gate rose.
Thus day and night gave order to the world.
Look at the horizon! A voice calls.
Shadow Gate rises.
Night is come.”
He approached through the darkness, footsteps quick on the earth. He was not the man she was waiting for, but he was the one she had been expecting.
“Captain Anji. Or is it Commander, now? That’s what I hear folk calling you.”
He dismissed this trivial banter with a curt wave. She wouldn’t have thought this man had a temper, but she could see it in the creases of his narrowed gaze and in the way his mouth was shut as if he was holding back a scream of thwarted fury.
“We may have won a victory here,” he said, “but the war is far from over. We’ve accounted for eight cohorts, but Lord Radas and the cloak of Night raised fifteen cohorts. Even if we win another battle or two, how many will be left skulking in the woodlands and the hills, starving and without cordial or rice wine to slake their thirst? Hungry, you see, without the least scrap of remorse or control? What of them? What if the cloak of Sun, so recklessly released by Reeve Joss, raises another demon? One with less arrogance and more cunning? More discipline and less vanity? How do we protect ourselves against such eventualities if we can’t work together to make sure the cloaks are bound, so they cannot be used as weapons against us? If we who command the Hundred cannot even agree that the cloaked demons are our enemies?”
Overhead, the stars bloomed in profusion, like festival lamps. The churned earth was settling, but smoke from the forest fires tainted the air. A person might dart out her tongue, like the ginny lizards, and taste blood spilled in the past and blood yet to be spilled. She’d done her share of killing. As Ushara’s servant, she would kill again if the goddess so demanded.
“Shai told me the cloak of Night sought outlanders and the gods-touched. She saw them as a threat to her power. Are you by any chance a seventh son?”