Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (48 page)

As soon as she was done writing, and marks made and seal set, she handed him the accounts book, the mark of his freedom. He tucked it into the lining of a sleeve, offered her a half leya as a tithe, which she took. Then he twisted the bronze slave bracelets off his wrists. Their weight, in his palm, seemed so heavy that he did not comprehend how he had borne it all these years. Deliberately, looking directly at Feden, meeting his gaze, Kesh placed the bracelets on the table. Feden turned away.

It was done.

Kesh left by the customers’ door, which he had never once used in all the twelve years he had lived in this house. He did not look back.

“
WHERE WE GO
?” Tebedir asked as they rolled out into the plaza. The heat made the beasts slow, and Kesh’s throat was already parched. “Here, we roast, like fowl in the oven.”

One slave trudged across the plaza, wearing sandals to protect his feet against the hot stones. He wasn’t carrying anything visible, but his shoulders were bowed nonetheless. Gates were closed and awnings furled along the long porches of the clearinghouses. Beyond the flat plain of Merchants’ Walk rose the inner city on its rocky bed, buildings pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Tile roofs and white walls baked; heat shimmered off them. The sun made the air a furnace. Only a wisp of pale cloud floated off above the eastern high plains, where, in the Lending, the grassland herders might have hope of a spatter of cooling rain.

Kesh was sweating, and dizzy.
I’m free. But she isn’t.

“We’ll go now to Crow’s Gate Field. I’ll pay off the remainder of your contract.”

“As agreed, the remainder, it is one hundred, eighty, and seven of leya. As agreed, in addition, my costs to stable at the hiring ground, for five days. There I seek hire for journey back to empire.”

“That’s right,” said Kesh absently, because his thoughts were already plunging ahead. “I’ll ask around and see who is hiring to go south before the end of the year and the rains. There’ll be a caravan south within the week, I would wager. There’s a particular chit I can see you get, so merchants know you’re an honest and loyal hire. I can never thank you enough for standing beside me at Dast Korumbos . . .”

Tebedir nodded. “The Shining One rewards his faithful worshipers. Do not despair unless your heart is dishonest. Do not despair unless you have broken the vows you make in the name of the King of King and Lord of Lords.”

Kesh barely heard him. Whatever calm had sustained him in Feden’s house evaporated out here under the sun. His ears roared with the tumult inside him; sweat dripped from his fingers as his heart raced.
Do not despair.
He had stumbled onto the two Mariha girls in a frontier town and purchased them for a desperately cheap
price, and for a while he had played the numbers in his head: Should he hire a drover and two donkeys to convey them with the other, smaller goods? Should he let them walk the entire months-long road to the Hundred, carrying the chests themselves, knowing that the journey might kill them but that he would save coin? Alone, they could not gain him what he wished, and indeed, they had brought him a greater profit than he had expected, enough to more than cover the expense of hiring a driver and wagon for the long haul once he had stumbled upon the treasure. They had enabled him to travel in what was, for him, relative comfort with his chests of carefully chosen luxury goods.

He had made his choices. He had bought his own freedom.

That night he slept on the hiring ground, under the wagon, with his strings of leya tucked against his chest.

In the morning, he bespoke a pair of bearers and their covered litter, nothing fancy but its cloth walls opaque and tied tight. Once he concluded his business and his contract with Tebedir and paid him the bonus he had promised, he had cleared all of his debts.

Only one thing remained: It was time to cast his last and most desperate throw.

The path out to the village of Dast Olo led along a raised stone causeway that ran first through grain fields, then through the pond-like dari fields, and finally into the tangle of reed flats and minnow channels that marked the edge of the navigable delta waters. Kesh walked briskly, but for all his travels he had trouble keeping pace with the two bearers who carried the curtained litter.

“Yah, so,” said the talkative one, who walked at the front rails. “Brother and I, you know, it is the tradition out there in the Barrens border country, the village sends lads in to the green lands to work three years, and bring home coin and salt and silk. Maybe a wife, but that’s hard to come by considering green-land women don’t like the Barrens.”

They were short, with broad shoulders and torsos and powerful hands. Talker wasn’t even out of breath, and while Kesh had already broken a sweat under the clear early-morning sky, these two had not bothered with a drink from their leather bottles.

“Probably we’ll marry Lariada, from out by Falls.”

Silent grinned appreciatively.

“Yah, so, she’s a strong girl, and more important a smart one who apprenticed to the Lantern, so she can keep accounts which is a powerful skill to have, to my way of thinking, if a pair of brothers are thinking to tenure good pastureland and build up a herd of cattle like our father and uncles never could do because of the drought back in the Year of the Goat, that would be the Gold Goat before either of us were birthed, not this last one. They lost everything but for the one heifer and the one dray.”

“They didn’t lose the goats,” said Silent.

“Maybe not, but those goats’ll survive anything, and grand mam said their milk was sour for two year after.”

“How’s the caravan trade going up the Barrens Road these days?” asked Kesh, wiping another waterfall of sweat off his brow. He carried a slight enough burden, a satchel slung over his back with nothing more than a change of clothes, his accounts bundle, and the detritus of traveling life: knife, spoon, eating bowl, worship bowl, a pair of wax candles, flint and steel to light them, one day’s worth of food, a leather bottle full of cheap wine. His weapons. The coin tied into his sleeves. It weighed like bricks already, because it was everything he owned.

They got within sight of Dast Olo before Talker got through with his description of the last twelve-year of caravan stories, and given that no more than a pair or three of caravans braved the Barrens Road every year, he took a long time telling an awful lot about not much.

“So the strangest part of it all, after the last caravan left and the girl paid her fine to the Witherer’s altar—and you can be sure that the arkhon had a long talking to old Silk Ears—!”

Silent snickered.

“—then we in the village were thinking it would be all the travelers until the flood rains passed, and we two were leaving anyway to come down here Olossi green land way for our three year, and what do we see as we start out the walk? Heya!”

Kesh barely had time to open his mouth for the polite reply before Talker rushed on.

“We go passing an envoy of Ilu, walking up the long west-facing slope as cheerful as a redbird and him walking west on the Barrens Road he told us because we did stop and ask thinking he was headed for the village or maybe Falls or maybe Dritavu, because you know that everyone knows there’s a Guardian altar up past Dritavu way that is forbidden but sometimes we see a light up there.”

“He talked as much as you do!” said Silent with another appreciative grin, although this one had no lascivious edge to it.

“I do not! That envoy, he’d have talked all five seasons from then until now if that reeve hadn’t flown patrolling overhead and scared the donkey! So we must run after, and the envoy must go on his way west over the Barrens Road. I wonder if he’s still alive, or come back to the Hundred as a living man, or only his bones! Say. Did I remember to tell you how we came to get that donkey?”

“We’re here,” said Kesh with relief.

Dast Olo rested on a huge platform that some said was a natural escarpment of rugged rock but which Sapanasu’s clerks and the Lady’s mendicants claimed was the base of an ancient fortress whose pillars and roof and walls had long ago been obliterated by wind and rain and the passing of years. The high ground kept the feet of the village out of the waters, even during a ten-year flood. Dast Olo boasted also a lucky five-set of inns catering to pilgrims.

“Straight to the pier,” he said as they paused at the base of the wagon ramp. “I’ll give you vey for beer at the inn once we get back from the island. In addition to your hire.”

“Seeing so much water makes a man thirsty,” agreed Talker as they trotted up the ramp, not even panting. They had a funny way of loping that made the litter skim smoothly over the ground, never jarring. Their legs looked as thick as pillars. Kesh’s legs had begun to sweat freely. He was glad he’d stripped down to a simple knee-length tunic and leather sandals, with nothing to chafe as he walked.

Dast Olo’s villagers were farmers, fishers, or marketers catering to the flow of pilgrims. The village was already awake. Most of the fishing boats were long since out on the waters.

“Only a city man sleeps abed after the sun is risen!” proclaimed Talker cheerfully as they trotted through the streets to the pilgrim’s pier.

Used to everything and anything, none of the folk out on their errands gave the curtained litter a second glance. The transaction at the pier—the price of a half leya per person was fixed by the temple—went swiftly. He handed two leya to an uninterested man with a flat-bottomed scow. The boatman tucked the coin in his sleeve and waited as Talker and Silent hoisted the litter in and settled themselves cross-legged in the rear with practiced ease, barely rocking the boat. Kesh had an ungainly time of it. He was shaking. Every surface seemed slick under his hands. Once the boat stopped rocking, the boater sighed, then poled away from the stone pier, and pushed along the channel toward the temple island. The closest pier flew the silk lotus banner that marked every temple to the Merciless One. Red petals on white linen: passion and death. Kesh shut his eyes as if by keeping them open he might force the island to recede by dint of the intensity of his desire. The boatman hummed a tuneless melody. Talker said nothing. The wind hummed at Kesh’s ears in descant to the boatman’s song. Once, they hissed through a stand of reeds. He hung a hand over the side and let it trail through the water, which was gaspingly cold except where they passed through a warmer, saltier eddy.

At last, the boat nudged up against Banner Pier. Kesh scrambled out as soon as the boatman tied up the scow. From here, he could not see Leave-taking Pier. The Devourer told no secrets. Those on their way to worship were shielded from the sight of those departing, in the same manner that those departing could expect to skim home without being seen by every arriving pilgrim.

As Talker and Silent got the litter onto the pier, a bare-chested, dark-haired lad dressed in a novice’s kilt walked up to Kesh. He was yawning as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“You’re early.” He grinned skittishly, as if he had just recalled that hierodules dedicated to the Merciless One cast no judgment and made no comment. He gave Keshad the once-over up and down, nodded genially to Talker and Silent as if they came here all the time either as bearers or supplicants, and finally looked over the featureless curtains that concealed the interior of the litter. “My old aunt spent five years as a Devouring girl before she married,” he added, “and she used to say that no person comes concealed for any good purpose. ‘Who is ashamed to be touched by the Devourer’s lips’?”

“It’s nothing to do with
shame,”
said Kesh, a tide of heat and anger swelling over him. His head throbbed, and he wanted it all to be done with and him walking away with what he had come for.

“Eiya! No harm meant! Which house is yours?”

“I’m here to see the Hieros.”

The lad’s mouth formed a circle.

A raucous cry split the air. Keshad actually jumped because he was already so on edge, but the others only tipped back their heads as folk always did to mark a reeve passing over along the northern edge of the delta and circling in toward Olossi.

“Uncle Idan says there were more of them reeves back when he was a lad,” said Talker. “Bad days, since that drought. It just goes to show that when folk don’t keep order in their own houses, pretty soon the land begins to suffer. So the gods teach us.”

“Bad luck on them who deserves it,” muttered the lad under his breath, making the cross-fingers sign against ill fortune close against his body, as if he didn’t want the others to see. He saw Kesh watching him, flushed, and turned his attention to the two bearers. “If you will wait in the outer court, I’d much appreciate it.”

“I need the litter brought with me,” said Kesh. “Then they can go and wait wherever you wish.”

“Are you sure?”

“That I need the litter brought with me?”

“That you want an audience with the Hieros. No one ever asks for that. If you knew her, you’d know—” He flicked hair out of his eyes and sidestepped away. “No one in sight. Not a soul come so early, and there’s none to leave.”

“Damn all,” said the boatman. “First come in the morning means a long wait, or a return trip made empty. My old arms!”

“Sorry, old man,” said the lad. “It wasn’t a lantern night, last night. You know the rules.”

“I won’t be long,” said Kesh, “as I’m not here to worship the Devourer, just to conduct a bit of business. If you’ll wait at Leave-taking Pier, I’ll pay you passage back, same as came here.”

The boatman grinned, showing brown teeth and gaps between. “Over there, then. Same number as coming. That’s fair.”

The lad hopped from one foot to the other. It was evident he wanted to ask what was going on, but novices did not ask about the business or predilections or desires or identities, if veiled, of pilgrims. It was against the rules.

“The Devourer eats secrets,” he said at last, with a hopeful glance at Kesh, as if encouraging him to confide a pair or three of mysteries.

“I’m ready to go,” said Kesh.

Unlit lanterns hung from the parallel ranks of posts that marked the path up to the outer court. To one side of the posts, the ground sloped down to the water’s edge and a thin strand of pebble beach. To the other side, rockier ground had been manicured into a pleasing arrangement of rock, moss, and pruned miniature trees, these islands separated by raked sand. A big ginny lizard—one of the Devourer’s acolytes, as they were called—perched on top of a rock, sunning itself. As they strode past, it cracked open its mouth just enough to show teeth.