by Kate Elliott
Merciful Valley was aptly named. Its beauty softened grief, if grief can be softened by anything except time. A mist of cool rain kissed the trees and sang a lullaby over the grass, herald to weather brewing within the peaks.
In addition to a contingent of Qin guards stationed in the valley, two people remained here. One Shai vaguely remembered, an impetuous and irritating young man named Keshad who ignored Shai while he attempted to ingratiate himself to Anji while casting dagger glances at Chief Tuvi, although why anyone could dislike Tuvi, Shai could not figure. Tuvi was a decent man, solid, honest, and loyal.
The other inhabitant of the valley was kinder, a young woman whose grief for Mai was a comfort to Shai. In the humble audience chamber of the two-room shelter, she offered hot bark tea to suit the chill in the air.
“The soldiers say you pray every day, Miravia,” said Anji after he had handed the baby over to her. She kissed Atani’s hair and unhooked the baubles hanging from her ears so he could clutch them in his chubby little hands.
“It’s our tradition, among my people. After the death of a beloved relative, we pray each day for one year.”
“To ease their passage to the other side, or to ease your own heart?” he asked between sips of steaming tea.
“Does it matter?” She wiped away tears.
Anji cast a sidelong glance at Keshad. “Miravia, I would be grateful if you would honor Mai’s memory by remaining here for the entire year and praying each day. It would ease my grief, to know you watched by the place she died. I would remain here, but I’m called away. The campaign continues.”
“Of course, Commander Anjihosh!” she cried.
“Keshad, I understand your sister has returned alive to the temple. Which means you are free to go.”
“I heard,” he said, with a grimace of relief that then shaded into irritation. “And also that she is staying as a hierodule in the temple. I don’t know what the old bitch said to her—” But he broke off and looked at Miravia. All at once the young man’s motives unfurled to Shai’s gaze as a flower under the sun. “I prefer to stay here, if I may be permitted to.”
Anji’s answering smile troubled Shai. He looked exactly like a man who has just watched his bets in a wagering game fall into place.
“I think it can be allowed for you to remain here, if Miravia has no objection.” But Anji glanced at Tuvi as Miravia blushed, and Tuvi shook his head, as if to answer for her. Anji rose. “I wish to pray at the altar and make an offering in Mai’s memory. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Do you want me to go up to the waterfall with you, Captain?” Miravia asked.
“No. I’ll go alone.”
He did not go alone. He carried Atani, and Tuvi and two guardsmen—men who flanked Anji everywhere he went, just as Sengel and Toughid had once done—each carrying one of the small chests. Another pair of guards followed. Shai was allowed to walk behind them.
“I’ll just come along with you,” said Tohon, falling into step beside Shai.
“You think he’s going to kill me, too? What benefit is there in that? I’m nothing to him.”
“I’ll just come along,” said Tohon, patting him on the arm. “Hush, son. Don’t tire yourself out. We’ve got a long way to go yet.”
It was a hard, long hike for a young man recovering from such burns as he had sustained. Odd how Chief Tuvi did not labor as much, or seem as weak, although he bore ropy scars as if he’d been lashed by a fiery whip. The Qin forged ahead, while Shai, shadowed by Tohon, fell behind. Losing sight of the others, they trudged up a trail fenced in by thick walls of vegetation. The trail had been dampened by mist, but the dirt wasn’t yet mud.
Into a clearing they walked. Beyond the ruins, a waterfall and pool churned as mist spattered the stones. Atani was chortling, reaching for the pool and babbling complaints when his father would not let him touch it. Distant thunder boomed in cloud-shrouded peaks. A dark shape roiled the depths. Blue fire like spikes of lightning snaked through the water and vanished as Atani laughed.
The Qin stood a few paces back from the lip, where waters rippled and sighed. There was no sign of the three little chests, as if they’d thrown them into the pool. Anji gripped the struggling baby more tightly and, leaving his guardsmen to wait, he crossed behind the curtain of water into the overhang behind.
But Shai could not move to follow him. For a ghost sat on one of the low walls, hands resting on thighs as he tracked Anji’s departure. Looking back, his ghostly expression flickered with startlement as he rose.
“Hari!” breathed Shai.
Hari’s essence looked exactly as Shai had seen Hari last, dressed in the local manner with loose trousers and a tunic tied at the hips, except he was a ghost, not truly substantial. His crooked smile hadn’t changed at all, for he was angry at the world and laughing at himself for the futility of it.
“Hello, little brother. Hu! I hoped you would find me. How can it be you walk beside the man who killed me?”
Of course Anji hadn’t wanted Shai to come here. He’d known there was a chance Hari’s ghost might linger. He’d known Shai could hear as well as see ghosts. But Shai already knew enough to condemn Anji. This was just one more stab wound.
“How did he kill you, Hari?” he said past this fresh grief.
Anji’s men looked at Shai, looked at each other, shrugged, and went back to waiting.
“He walked up here alone. I thought he was come to deliver a message from Mai, or check to see if I was alone before he allowed her to come up. He does guard her so, does he not? You’d think he actually loves her, which I suppose might even be possible for a Qin. Then before I knew what he was about he drew his sword and cut me down. He unclasped the cloak and tore it from me. It was easy to let it go, once a person with more determination than I had was willing to relieve me of it. I’m free, Shai. Spirit Gate calls me. But I can’t cross. I need to warn Mai what manner of husband she has, that he would promise her one thing and then turn around and do the opposite. He’s veiled, did you know? Like you. That’s why I couldn’t see it coming. Is Mai safe, Shai? Tell me she’s safe.”
Ghosts are caught in the moment of their death. They do not know past or future; they cannot feel the passing of days or years. That is their fate, and their misery.
Shai could not add to Hari’s misery. Not now. After all, those who are veiled may lie to both cloaks and ghosts.
“Yes, Hari. She’s safe.”
“Don’t weep for me, little brother. It’s for the best. It’s only that I worry about Mai.” He laughed the familiar, mocking laugh. “Now you can take my bones home to our ancestors, can’t you? If you can find my sorry remains. Not much to show for a life, is it? Yet Mai would poke and prod in that way she had, wouldn’t she? Getting you to do more than you had any intention of doing. I had just started to hope I could learn what it truly meant to be a Guardian.”
Tohon cupped a supporting hand under Shai’s elbow. Anji emerged from the spray, the baby still squirming, quite the handful as he babbled as if to spirits in the air that no one else could see, batting and waving his hands. Anji’s gaze caught on Hari’s ghost, then tracked to Shai. He halted, waiting for Shai to speak.
What was there to say? Mai’s father had told Shai to bring Mai home if Anji didn’t treat her well, but what a pointless little speech it had been. Father Mei had only said it to make himself feel better, knowing he’d sold away the treasure of his house. The road that passes under Spirit Gate runs in only one direction. There is no going back.
“I need my brother’s bones,” said Shai.
Anji nodded. “I’ll have my men dig up his remains.”
Wind moaned along the cliffs. The waterfall wept its constant tears. The baby buried his sweet face against his father’s neck.
“I’ll take you home, Hari,” Shai said, “if it’s truly what you want.” But already Hari’s ghost was dissolving under the chill spray of falling water. He’d held on. He’d given warning. Too late.
“Ah
, well,” murmured Tohon. “Kartu Town is on the way, if we take the northern route.”
“The way where?”
Anji and his men walked down through the ruins and vanished into the forest. Only Chief Tuvi glanced back.
“I thought . . .” Tohon tugged at an earlobe. He examined the lofty peaks as if seeking a lofty speech there. Abruptly his gaze fastened on something Shai did not see. He tracked it, lost it, shrugged. “You’ll take his bones to Kartu Town. What about the mistress’s bones?”
“There are no remains. Anyway, she doesn’t belong to the clan. She was sold to the captain. Her bones belong to him.”
“Indeed, they do. We’ll go to Kartu Town, then.”
“I don’t want to return there.” To think of being trapped again in the Mei clan made his stomach roil and his anger burn. “I can’t, and I won’t.”
“No, of course not. You’re not the lad you were then, are you?”
Yet his tone had changed. Cool, calm, collected Tohon sounded unsure. He fussed with his knife. He patted his hair as if he’d forgotten his cap, but he was wearing neither cap nor helmet today. His words fell diffidently.
“After you get your brother’s bones settled, you’re welcome to come home with me.”
Shai staggered. When had he gotten so dizzy? He groped, found a broken wall, and sat. “Home with you?”
“I’ve been dismissed from Captain Anji’s service. I’ll have to report in to Commander Beje, but I’ve served with honor. It’s time for me to go home to my youngest son’s wife’s tent and meet my grandchildren. Come with me, Shai. We’ll find you a good woman to marry. She can be your knife, as you can be hers. You’ll be my son, and I’ll raise your children as my own.”
Tohon watched him with dark eyes and a vulnerable smile. He’d been hit hard before, but he knew how to keep riding even if the path didn’t open onto the vista he wished was there. That didn’t make the question any easier to get out. “What do you say, Shai?”
Beneath the water’s roar and the wind’s cry, a voice as sweet as Mai’s whispered: Yes.
Shai could say nothing, not with words. So he grasped Tohon’s hand and then, unexpectedly, Tohon pulled him up and embraced him, as Shai had never once been embraced by his own father.
At length, Tohon pushed him gently back and looked him over with that same smile. “Hu! A long journey ahead of us, neh? Come on, son. Let’s get what we need here, and go home.”
PART SEVEN: GATES
52
KESHAD HATED DAWN most. At dawn, the first bell woke the city of Olossi. Its clangor jarred him out of the glorious oblivion of sleep and into the sickening realization that he was still enslaved by his debt, that he must rise as he did every day and labor under Master Feden’s cruel yoke. Each morning, waking, the pain blossomed as brightly as it had the very first morning, when he’d been a child of twelve bewildered by having had his own kin push him and his younger sister up onto the auction block. The knot of anger never softened.
Now he woke and braced himself as memory flooded: I am a slave, my sister is a slave, and this day will be no different from the days that came before.
A warm, naked body stirred against his, and Miravia rolled over, her swelling belly pressed into his abdomen, and kissed him. “I thought you would never wake! Didn’t you hear the rooster?”
He clutched her close, tears brimming, and buried his face in her thick hair. It was shoulder-length, still ragged at the ends where she had chopped it off seven months ago.
“Are you crying?” She brushed a finger along his cheeks before letting it tangle in his curls.
“Just a bad dream.”
Beneath blankets and on a plush cotton-stuffed mattress raised on a pallet of wood, they made their cozy nest. He would have lingered here half the morning stroking her hair and caressing her skin, but after frowning at him, as if she wasn’t sure he was telling her everything, she wriggled out of his grasp and rose. How glorious she was, all curves, and her smile in the dim sleeping chamber as she looked down on him was the most glorious curve of all. Her belly was growing each day.
If joy could kill you, he would be dead right now. He would have expired seven months ago, the first time they had kissed.
She poured water into the basin and washed, then deftly wrapped a taloos around her naked body. Pausing with a hand on the curtain that partitioned off the sleeping chamber, she swept her hair back from her face.
“I’m going up to the pool to pray,” she said, as she did every morning at dawn.
The curtain slithered down behind her. Her footfalls tapped on the planks of the porch that wrapped the shelter. She exchanged a greeting with someone farther off, and moved away.
Canvas walls tied down between floor and roof beams blocked the wind, which moaned over the sturdy roof. A pair of chests lay closed, with clothes draped over them. A bowl of oil blended with mosk-chasing purple thorn had burned out during the night, leaving its lingering scent. He closed his eyes and luxuriated in the fading heat within the comfort he had made for them out of Miravia’s grief. As he drifted between waking and dozing, he smiled, breathing in the scent of jasmine she always left behind. Maybe in the world beyond Merciful Valley she would have refused to eat his rice and chosen Chief Tuvi instead, out of loyalty to Mai, but Tuvi had left to serve Captain Anji, and Kesh had stayed. So the world beyond the valley didn’t really matter, did it?
“Keshad? Aui! Come out here and help me, you cursed lag!”
He sighed. Rising, he wrapped a kilt around his hips and, shivering, pulled on a wool tunic over it. It was cursed cold up here in the mornings, with the season of rains fading. His toes ached as he yanked on a pair of the woven socks necessary up in the mountains. He hurried outside just so he could pull on his boots over his freezing feet.
Reeve Miyara was waiting at the steps, arms crossed, scanning the darkening clouds spilling out of the west on a driving wind. “We’re in for another storm. You’d think the cursed storms would stop with the end of the Whisper Rains, eh? Do you think the firelings bring the storms here? For I’ve never seen so many firelings as I have in this place. It’s like they’ve come to visit that Silver prayer ritual with Miravia. There were so many in the cave the day Mai gave birth to Atani. Maybe they’ve all come to visit the place she died.”
“Surely they were here before you reeves ever discovered this valley and used it as a refuge.” Kesh put out a hand. Was that a drop of rain? He’d heard no thunder.
“It’s hard to think of firelings as being like us, as having a home, isn’t it?”
If it rained, Miravia would run back home and strip off her soaked taloos, and . . . He smiled.
She laughed. “You’re not truly listening, are you? You’re wishing you were back in your bed. What is it about men that they get that idiotic look on their faces when they’re getting good sex regularly?”
She was an honest, hardworking Lion fifteen years older than he was. He did not know her well; she visited once a month, an assignment mandated by Captain Anji. She arrived on Wakened Eagle with a sack of rice or nai and a pouch of salt and spices. More important, she came bearing an offering to be presented at the altar at dawn on Transcendent Deer, which was the day Mai, stabbed by her traitorous slave, had vanished into the pool. Then they would share a meal, while she and Miravia would reminisce about Olossi’s markets and festivals or discuss flowers and herbs, a passion the two women shared. She usually left at dawn on the next day, Resting Crane, but today she seemed inclined to linger. Nor did he see her eagle.
“Why did you agree to the assignment?” he asked, emboldened by her joke. “Flying supplies for us? Visiting the cave?”
“I grieve for Mai. I didn’t know her well, but I loved her, too. The Hundred was a different place, when she was still with us.”
“What do you mean?”
By the way she took a step back and pinched her lips together, he realized she did not trust him. What in the hells had he ever done to earn her mistru
st? He’d been loyal to Miravia. As bored as he often became isolated up here, he never for one breath regretted his choice to stay.
Miyara’s distrust annoyed him. “I know you asked for the assignment, after Captain Anji asked for the valley to be set off limits until Miravia’s year of mourning had passed. So he can send his offerings and observe the proper rituals, too. You and Reeve Siras are the only people we ever see.”
Her frown passed swiftly, like dawn’s rising. “If he’s truly observing a year of mourning, then it seems strange he married again so quickly. But maybe it’s all of a piece. Maybe Joss was right.”
“He married again? When? Who?”
“Neh, think nothing of it. Outlanders have different ways.” She licked her lips nervously and gestured toward the thatched roof that sheltered the kitchen. “Miravia put on the rice before she went up. I came over to ask you to help me choose among the turnips and radish, which you’d like me to harvest, it being your garden.”
“The hells!” He tromped down the steps, and she stepped back, a hand curling around the reeve’s baton that swung from her belt. He stopped short as his irritation sparked from a smolder to a flame. “You can’t just let a remark like that flash like lightning and not think I’m going to jump! Married! It’s true most folk wait a year, unless there are young children who need care and not enough aunties and uncles to—” He broke off, thinking of the infant child Tuvi had carried off with him. Surely that baby had plenty of uncles! “What else has been going on out there we don’t know about? Why don’t you and Siras tell us anything?”
“Do you ever ask a cursed thing about what is going on beyond this sheltered place?” she retorted. Her anger boiled up as suddenly as the thunder now rumbling out of the peaks almost as if it had been birthed by the force of her words. “Or wonder if we’ve been commanded to keep our mouths shut?”