Traitors' Gate

by Kate Elliott

  A huge promontory of solid rock thrust up at the southern point, a spear dividing the two rivers. The Greater Istri glittered like hope under the morning sun; its tributary, almost as wide, streamed into the greater in a web of currents and countercurrents as complex as the yearning and anger interlaced in her own heart.

  Miyara flagged them down over the huge rock, toward a reeve hall strung along the western cliff in a series of long barracks and open parade grounds. They landed in one of the parade grounds. After unhooking and handing her eagle over to the care of fawkners, Miyara led Mai aside to a tiny cottage set back in a small garden.

  “Vekess is marshal here, isn’t he?” she demanded of the elder ly man sweeping the porch. “I need to speak to him immediately.”

  “He’s out on patrol.” He frowned at her brash approach, and then he saw Mai. He smiled, setting his broom to one side. “What’s this? Where are you come from?” He looked up to see Keshad and Miravia hesitating in the alley, with Siras and Ildiya at their backs.

  “I’m Reeve Miyara. I have brought messengers from Merciful Valley. I was hoping Marshal Vekess could tell us where Commander Anji is, and arrange for the messengers to meet with him.”

  “I’m Reeve Odash. Sit down. I’ll send for someone from headquarters to speak to you.”

  “I beg you,” said Mai, “but perhaps there’s a place I might relieve myself. And change out of these dusty clothes?”

  Of course there was, a tiny square garden shed nicely made with sliding doors on two sides and cupboards and shelves inside so neatly organized with shears and rakes and digging spades in four different sizes that it was a pleasure to admire their disciplined ranks. The old reeve, with a grandfatherly solicitude not without a touch of a wistful lust, carried in a copper basin, a pitcher of cool water, and a linen towel. Even so, she could only wash her face and hands and feet and, with Miravia’s help, clasp and pin up her hair so it was tidy. Last, she succumbed to the vanity she had often pretended she did not possess. In Astafero, she had taken a first-quality taloos from the dusty storeroom. She shook out the cloth now. The intense blue green color mirrored the salty waters of the Olo’o Sea and was chased with faint silver threads outlining the foam and waves of a sea caressed by winds. She wrapped its silky glamor around her body as Miravia shook her head.

  “How do I look? You’re my mirror, Miravia.”

  Miravia’s frown deepened. “Are you meaning to confront him, or seduce him?”

  “Should I make my entrance in all my dust, in those unattractive trousers and vest? Looking like a—a—sheepherder?”

  A hand patted one of the doors. “Mai?” Miyara was whispering as if she dared not let anyone know who was concealed within. “Can you come out? Now?”

  A decisive step thumped on the porch and the door was slammed open to reveal a Qin soldier with sword drawn.

  “Tuvi!” She grasped Miravia’s arm, seeing the sword’s ugly curve, the tip as deadly as an eagle’s beak.

  His other arm flashed out and he caught himself against the wall. He stared at her as at a monster. The sword wavered, drooped. He took a step back, and Miyara had to jump back down the step to avoid being shoved off by his movement.

  “How can this be?” he said hoarsely.

  “Chief Tuvi.”

  “What are you, that comes here wearing Mai’s face and form?”

  “I’m Mai, Tuvi-lo.”

  “You can’t be Mai. She is dead. I saw her die. She vanished into the pool.” He found his balance and held out a hand to display the ropy white scars across the skin. “I tried to pull her out, but the demons had already claimed you.”

  “No. That pool is the womb of the firelings. They healed me.”

  “Of course that is impossible,” he said, “and it is foolish of you to claim it could be true. For then why do you only appear now? No person can breathe water. Only demons can. Therefore, you are a demon. Now you have come here with anger and a demon’s mischief in your heart. What do you want?”

  He shifted back one more step, enough to gesture toward people outside she could not see. “Sergeant! Hold the three reeves and that man Keshad under guard.” He stepped into the chamber, raising his sword. “Miravia. Go outside.”

  She stepped in front of Mai. “No. This is truly Mai, Chief Tuvi. I know it.”

  “She is a demon, what the people here call a lilu. She has seduced you, Miravia. Even you.”

  “I want my son!” cried Mai.

  “So after all it has come to this. The child was born in the midst of demons, and now they seek to claim him. Miravia, step aside. I don’t want to harm you.”

  “No,” said Miravia, but Mai shouldered her aside and placed herself in front, staring him down as she drowned in the death of her hopes.

  “Kill me then, Tuvi-lo. I do not fear death. Not much, anyway. But tell me, if you please, if it is true these stories I hear. That Sheyshi was his mother’s agent. That when he discovered who had me killed, he allowed his mother to take over the running of my household anyway! That he married the Sirniakan princess his mother brought for him. That his army is spread across the Hundred guarding every gate and road, just like the Qin army across the towns of the Golden Road? Paying taxes they call tithes. Hanging executed criminals from posts as a warning, just like you Qin did in Kartu Town in our citadel square after making us watch the executions. Is that all true?” The tears began to flood, but she had to speak. “Is Atani well? Is he thriving and healthy? Do they take good care of him? Did Priya and O’eki stay with him, or were they dismissed? And did Anji’s mother or his new wife find you a good wife, Tuvi? Someone special only, as I would have?”

  Mai had never set out to deliberately cause another person pain. She had never cut anyone, much less killed a man, but she saw the blow connect in the way he gasped as his eyes lost track of her briefly as the words stabbed home.

  No. The women in charge of Anji’s household had not found him someone special. Why should they? They didn’t care about Tuvi personally. He was just another weapon at Anji’s disposal.

  He sheathed his sword. “Miravia, go with the others. You—what must I call you?”

  “You know my name.”

  His mouth pinched closed as he refused to say it. “You will come with me. For after all, I find I cannot kill you, even knowing what you are. Let the captain decide.”

  Let the captain decide.

  “Mai?”

  “Do as he says.” She kissed Miravia on each cheek, and they embraced tightly, for it might be the last time. “Be happy with Keshad.”

  She must go quickly lest she lose her composure. For it was composure she needed more than anything. She walked through the garden with Tuvi at her back, close enough to kill her swiftly should it come to that. Reeve Odash leaned on his broom, his face seamed with confusion, but he did not protest. Tuvi’s escort of twelve men stared openly, as much delighted as startled to find Tuvi marshaling a beautiful young woman out of a garden shed. Two of the soldiers were Qin soldiers she knew, young men she’d traveled with. They gaped like fishes, but Tuvi’s fist nudged her in the small of the back so she kept moving without a word even as he ordered them to run ahead and clear a path.

  So it was that folk were ducking out of the way, hurrying into barracks, closing shutters, as Tuvi marched her through the alleys and training yards of the reeve hall. They passed under a gate guarded by two soldiers and along the verge of a cliff on a narrow trail paved with flagstones, past pools scratched into the stone, and thence to the very prow of Law Rock where the wind sang over the rushing waters. A humble thatched roof surrounded by a simple wood railing sheltered a dull stele, squat and wide, set in the earth, nothing much to look at except for the flower necklaces draped over its upright end. One had slipped off, the white flowers a blaze of brightness against the raked dirt.

  Then they came around the point and walked up a flagstone path on the eastern rim that ended in a wall and a gate guarded, once again, by soldiers. She did not
know these men, and they were definitely outlanders with smooth cheeks and eyes as hard as pebbles as they looked her over without lust but with a glint that warned her, too late, that they had recognized her.

  “What is this, Chief Tuvi?” they asked. “Isn’t this—?”

  “Let me through,” he said in the tone of a man who does not expect to be refused. They hesitated just long enough for his expression to kindle, and in that battle Mai saw the war within the household. Who ruled? Anji, or his mother?

  They rapped a signal on the gate. It was opened, and Tuvi guided her along a narrow whitewashed corridor and past several slits behind which she heard voices speaking in a language she did not know. Twice, Tuvi paused to answer a question posed from an unseen interlocutor, and twice another gate was opened and they passed through into an identical blank corridor. The third gate opened onto a porch that overlooked a garden, its ornamental bushes severely pruned and its flowering shrubs exceptionally elegant in a sparse aesthetic she recognized as Anji’s.

  The blow took her like the knife up under the ribs. There he was, seated on a simple camp stool under a simple awning beside a low table, bent over what was almost certainly a set of maps while he talked with a pair of local men she did not know. One was a militia captain and the other an ostiary of Ilu, if one judged by the stripe on his blue cloak. He smiled in that familiar, beloved way in response to a comment by the ostiary, but perhaps the wind alerted him to the scuff of their feet as Tuvi touched her elbow to bring her to a halt under the shade of the porch. Perhaps the birds—for there were birds, a pair of red caps and several bright yellow bellies with their green banded wings—called a warning. He stiffened. He lifted his chin, as though scenting the air. He rose and slowly, almost hesitantly, turned.

  Of course he knew her instantly. The air sang with his shock. The wind smothered its cry in the leaves. A petal spun lazily, drifting to earth.

  Her breath caught on a sob.

  There. It was done.

  He spoke, although he was too far away for her to hear. The militia captain looked startled, squinting at her as if the sun was shining in his eyes, while the ostiary’s posture suggested a more complicated wine fermented with equal parts rue, resignation, and compassionate amusement. They took themselves off, crunching away on a graveled path.

  Anji picked up one of the knives holding down a corner of his maps. Then he came, his trim figure simply arrayed in a tunic of first-quality silk dyed a shade of red so bold it seemed garish, like a fabric someone with poor judgment had chosen for him just because it was gaudy.

  She was shaking so hard she grasped at the thought, as trivial as it was. She needed something to hold on to as he mounted the steps onto the porch.

  “That color does not suit you, Anji. It reminds me of the way young men boast to get attention. Subtle greens and blues are more elegant.”

  He passed Tuvi, handing him the knife, and put his hands on Mai’s shoulders, holding her so he could examine her. The weight of his hands was familiar; his scent, laced with sweat and horse and the mild spice of khaif on his breath, made her want to wilt into his arms; his gaze devoured her.

  “How can this be?” he murmured, hands hot on her shoulders and face flushed with that same driving heat.

  Without another word he embraced her and kissed her, and although she had meant to say a hundred things to him, to negotiate, to name a higher price than the market value, she could say nothing. She clung to him. She twined her hands in his hair. She kissed him wildly. This was still her Anji.

  “Anjihosh!” Tuvi’s voice was the whip that separated them, and his the hand that wrenched Anji away from her. “She is a demon. You must see that.”

  Anji yanked his arm out of the chief’s grasp. “Of course.” He rested a hand so gently on the curve of her cheek that she sighed, feeling those cursed tears again. “Of course she must be.”

  Love is cruel. Could she do nothing but weep?

  She stepped back out of reach of his hand. “Anji. Your mother had me stabbed.”

  “I know.”

  “I fell into the pool, but the firelings healed me.”

  “The firelings?”

  “The pool is the womb of the firelings.” She could not make sense of her surging feelings, one instant wanting to kiss him and the next to rage. “Why did you kill Uncle Hari? You promised him safety. You promised me you’d protect him.”

  He shrugged off the question. “The cloaks are all corrupted. It was necessary to save the Hundred.”

  “Then kill me, too. If you think I’m a lilu, isn’t it necessary? Didn’t your mother think it was necessary to rid herself of a rival? Just be quick about it, so I don’t suffer more than I have already. Tuvi has a sword, and he’s holding your knife.”

  “You are my knife, Mai. Even if you are a demon. So be it. I am helpless before you. Or maybe the firelings fell in love with you as any man must love you, and have healed you and sent you back to me, where you belong. That’s all that matters, isn’t it? Now you are here.”

  “Anjihosh—” said Tuvi.

  “Give her the knife, Tuvi. If she wants to kill me, let her do it now.”

  “I don’t want the knife!”

  “What do you want, Mai?” He took her hand in his, turned it over, kissed her palm in a promise that made her flesh burn and her heart sing.

  I want it to be what it was before.

  “Papa! Papa!”

  Anji let go of her hand. Out of the garden had come a procession, unseen and unheard until now. A lovely little child toddled forward on stout legs toward the porch, half ready to fall forward in his haste. Anji laughed and leaped down to the path to scoop up the toddler before the lad tumbled onto his face on the gravel. Tuvi made a sharp gesture, and the half-dozen persons halted dead still back by a hedge that screened the far porch from the eye of this one. There they waited obediently. All were women, drawing up cloth to cover their faces so Mai saw nothing but a distant glimpse of kohl-lined eyes and expensive silks in colors as garish as Anji’s tunic.

  Anji hopped back up on the porch, holding Atani with the ease of much practice. How sweet the baby was! How much he had grown! How dear and precious her beautiful boy had become! He was a darling, as sunny as day and with a brilliant chortling smile that vanished as soon as Mai extended her arms to take him. He flung himself against his father’s shoulder to hide his face.

  “He’s shy,” said Anji. “It’s the age for it.”

  “Won’t he come to me?” She touched Atani’s back tentatively, that sweet flesh like balm to her aching heart, but Atani glanced up and, shrieking, squirmed against his father, anything to get away from her.

  She recoiled, gulping down tears.

  “Mistress,” said Tuvi, his grimace one of sudden sympathy. “He doesn’t know you. It’s been too long.”

  “I know,” she gasped.

  That didn’t make it hurt less.

  One woman stepped away from the others, still holding cloth across her face, but a gesture from Tuvi stopped her on the path, where she was too far away to really know what was going on. Anji’s expression clouded. A frown splintered his joy, and the child sobbed once and was silent.

  “That woman is pregnant,” said Mai.

  “Yes.” He descended and kneeled on the path, setting down the boy and speaking softly into his ear, then patting him on the rump. “Go to Mama,” he said, giving the child a swift, affectionate kiss on each plump cheek. “Go now, Atanihosh. Hurry!”

  The unfortunate stranger was forgotten. The boy set out with laughing determination. “Mama! Mama!” he cried, trundling down the path with his arms outstretched toward the other woman.

  “I have to sit down,” Mai whispered as her heart was ripped from her. It would have been better to be dead.

  Tuvi reached for her, but Anji had already jumped back onto the porch and he caught her and held her as Atani was swept up into the arms of the woman he called “Mama” and whisked away behind the hedge.


  “Mai,” Anji whispered fiercely, holding her close, “don’t leave me. Stay here with me. Don’t faint. I’ve got it all worked out.”

  “Anjihosh,” objected the chief. “Your mother—”

  “She’s got the treaty she wants. A grandson to raise. My wife will bear a child and we’ll be fortunate if it is a girl. Why should I not take a second wife? I suppose it was inevitable. It was just too difficult to consider at the time, with the demons’ army threatening the north. But now with the enemy army mostly hunted down and killed, there’s no impediment—”

  Mai shoved him off, slamming back into the wall, bracing herself against it. “None? Not after your mother tried to kill me when I wouldn’t agree to become your second wife? When I refused to step aside and let her rule over my household, the one I built and nurtured and fed? Knowing she set her agent on me, Anji, you think I’ll expose myself to her again?”

  He shook his head impatiently. “Of course not. I can see it would be impossible for you to live under her suzerainty. But it is easy enough to set up another household, one that you hold authority over entirely. Some place close by, that a reeve can lift me to—”

  “When you want sex? A second household? Close by? For your convenience? Do you expect me to agree to this?”

  “The boy can visit you, Mai. I would bring him with me.”

  “Visit? My son can live with me!” she cried, seeing the trap as it was sprung, the bait her hunger for her baby, as desperate as she was to hold her child against her breast.

  “Ah,” he breathed. “The boy.”

  He glanced at Tuvi, at the eaves, at the hedge behind, and at the empty, silent garden. At his own hands. He wore her wolf’s-head ring on his little finger, and it was this he stared at. She could practically see the thoughts chasing behind his eyes in currents and countercurrents, two rivers of desire colliding and mingling until, at last, his gaze hardened, even if the expression was tempered with regret.

  “Neh. The boy belongs to her now. That was part of the agreement, that he believe she is his mother. It’s the only way to ensure his safety. Surely, Mai, you can see that Atanihosh’s survival must be our chief concern. A bitter price, but a necessary one. You and I will have other children. Many others, plum blossom.”