Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (72 page)

He was silent. The night wind murmured in the brush; beneath it, she heard the whispers of men, waiting on this decision.

He stepped up to her, took her hand, laid it on his palm. Without speaking, he twisted the wolf-sigil ring off her hand and slid it onto his little finger.

“There,” he said. “To remind me. But if we fail, and if we die, you must not reproach me.”

All at once, her words vanished. He was so handsome, a prince in truth, an exile, as she was now. She could never reproach him, not for anything. But she could not speak to tell him so; she was too full, choked with the tales she had grown up on, had loved and recited, had sung and played. Had used as an argument against him. She knew herself to be young and naive, stupid, really: she always had believed those tales, even in the ones where everyone ended up dead. She had always wanted to believe them, because they had seemed so much brighter than her own life within the Mei clan’s walls. But they had only been a way of hiding from the truth.

“No,” he added softly, so sweetly. “I suppose you won’t.”

He released her hand and stepped back, then whistled sharply. Chief Tuvi returned with the two merchants, and Shai and Priya walked back into view.

“Master Calon,” said Anji without preamble. “I am skeptical that you can accomplish your goals in the face of such difficulties. I doubt you can. And I doubt I am willing to risk my men, who rely on me to command them wisely and prudently. But perhaps you can give me a little more information.”

“Go on,” said Calon, with a glance at Mai that revealed nothing except, perhaps, a shiver of curiosity, of hope.

Eliar turned the silver bracelets that ringed his forearms, restless as he shifted from one foot to the other and back again. He seemed like a child who wants to speak but is trying to hold its tongue.

“Three things. First, what manner and number of soldiers serve the council of Olossi? What resistance will we face in helping you overturn the Greater Houses? Second, if we ride north, and return with the information you ask for, where do you advise us to go afterward? Gold is not enough. We wish to settle in a safe region nearby where my men might also find wives and sufficient pastureland to support herds.”

Eliar coughed, bracelets jangling as he shook his arms impatiently.

Calon nodded with a grim smile. “We are both desperate men, and dangerous for being desperate. Olossi has lived in peace for a long time and we have gone fat and lazy. Kotaru’s ordinands do most of our border guarding these days. You saw what came of that! By custom, any adult in Olossi is expected to lift a spear in defense of the city, but in truth we can call on no more than five hundred militiamen should it come to that. More could be called out of the countryside—many more . . .” He paused. All looked inland, as he did. That torch still stuck its stubborn path along the road, heading for the city. “. . . but most of them untrained and inexperienced. We are sheep, ripe for the slaughter. We can’t protect ourselves against a real attack, in force, in numbers. And that’s what I fear.” His voice fell to a whisper, and darkened. “That’s what I truly fear. As for the other, were you and your company to ride into the Barrens, and break up into smaller groups, you could find villages that would welcome more hands. It’s sparsely settled, especially along the west shore of the Olo’o Sea, in the valley of the River Ireni, and in the West Olo uplands against the mountains of Heaven’s Ridge. There’s decent pasturing—it’s not good for much else—and plenty of land unspoken for in the high reaches. Your men might even find wives there, for I’ve heard rumors in recent months that young men all around are leaving for the north country to find work and promises of gold, and never come home again. I can’t guarantee you’ll be welcomed there, but I can guarantee that if you form this alliance with us, the council will give you a legal right to settle in this region. What was the third thing?”

“We met a reeve at the border. He’d heard news of these troubles along West Spur, although he did not tell me how he had come by this information. He asked for our aid in tracking down the bandits, and we helped him. He left us on the road because he wanted to visit Argent Hall. After that, he was supposed to come here to Olossi ahead of us, to speak in our favor and preside over the arrest of the border captain, the one who died untimely. This reeve called himself Joss.”

“Heya!” cried Eliar.

“Hush, cub! Let him finish!”

Anji’s gaze sharpened; he was not accustomed to being interrupted. He coughed, and went on. “He rode an eagle whose name was Scar. Have you any news of him? Because it seems he has gone missing.”

“Argent Hall, eh?” Calon scratched his chin. “Maybe he changed his mind and flew back north. People do that, quit themselves of any claim to duty.”

Anji shook his head. “Perhaps, but he would have left word. He would have let us know the change of plans. He is a man of honor. He said he would meet us at Olossi. He did not.”

Meanwhile, Eliar was rolling his eyes and waggling his hands like a madman, although both of the other men ignored him.

“You’re stubborn on this point,” said Calon. “For you spoke of it in council as well.”

“It’s a point of honor.”

“I surely know nothing of this reeve, except for what rumor your comments caused after the council meeting.”

“Let him speak,” said Mai, almost laughing.

Eliar did not wait for permission. “It’s true a reeve did come to Olossi a few days back. Legate Joss was the name he went by.”

“How did you hear of this?” demanded Calon. “I never did!”

“That clerk who was recently assigned to work in Fortune Square at the council hall—”

“One of your flirts?” asked Calon with a laugh.

“She’s a friend to my sister,” he said with an unexpected bite.

“Begging your pardon, cub,” said Calon hastily. “No offense to your sister intended.”

Eliar fixed his sharp gaze on Anji. “Before I met up with Master Calon to come out here tonight, I related the events of the council to my sister. This clerk is a friend of hers. My sister told me in strictest confidence that her friend had confided to her that this reeve was arrested and taken to Assizes Tower. The clerk who witnessed his arrest is afraid she’ll be imprisoned in Assizes Tower herself if she speaks of what she saw. She’s that frightened. There were a number of witnesses to the arrest, folk waiting that morning for council desk to open, but even so, she fears to speak of it, because she heard his name.”

“How long ago?” asked Anji.

Eliar shut his eyes briefly, as if counting, then opened them. “Five days back. My sister said that her friend said he was a handsome man, I remember that particularly. That she’d been quite taken with him, and thus triply shocked that he’d been hauled away, thinking she’d been fool enough to flirt with a criminal. He was accused of murder.”

“That’s him,” said Mai.

“A murderer?” asked Calon.

She flushed. “No. He’s the kind women flirt with on short acquaintance.”

“Who was he accused of murdering?” asked Anji.

Eliar shrugged. “A captain, she said. A captain guarding the southern border.”

“Captain Beron.” Anji nodded. “Five days back, Reeve Joss was arrested, it seems.
Three days ago, Captain Beron was still alive. Before the dart stung his eye. So tell me, Mai, how could Reeve Joss have been arrested for a murder that hadn’t yet been committed?” He extended a hand, gestured, and Mai tossed him a gold coin, which he caught deftly. “He was arrested for a crime someone else was planning to commit, someone who discovered that Captain Beron’s operation was discovered, and that Beron himself had been arrested. Yet no man or woman left our caravan between the border and Olossi, none except Reeve Joss.”

“They betrayed him!” cried Eliar.

“So it seems, and another man besides,” said Anji. “Captain Beron was alive yesterday morning, and was dead by the time we reached the gate. Who killed him, and why?”

Master Calon shook his head, like a weary ox trying to shake away a pestering swarm of flies. “This grows deeper and darker,” he muttered.

“Truly,” agreed Anji, “since this man called Captain Waras was wearing, around his neck, the very bone whistle which we had previously seen in the possession of Reeve Joss. Without it, I think, the reeve has no way to call his eagle. How can a man be freed from Assizes Tower?”

Calon shook his head. “Assizes Tower was once the responsibility of the Guardians. After they were lost, the reeves came to sit in authority over the courts. Now even that measure of justice is lost. The Greater Council rules at its whim.”

“This reeve is not the only prisoner in Assizes Tower,” said Eliar with a frown. “All the criminals are taken there. Yet I know—as do you—of a well-respected man who vanished after he claimed that the Greater Houses were involved in a conspiracy, that they’d allied with unnamed villains out of the north. He’s not been seen since. He was murdered.”

“Hush, now, cub. That’s gossip, nothing proven. He was known to be of an envious, restless nature, an Air-touched Rat, and worse besides, if you take my meaning.”

“You suspect he was murdered, too,” retorted Eliar. “Who can measure his true crimes now that he has vanished with no chance to speak on his own behalf?”

Talk of prisoners made Mai uncomfortable. The Qin had been able to drag criminals and, indeed, any person at all off to their prison block in Kartu Town, where they held their own manner of court, and the law court of Kartu Town had no authority to stop them or even oversee the hapless prisoners. She began to replace the coins and bars in the bag. It gave her something to do with her hands.

“How can a man be freed from Assizes Tower?” Anji repeated.

“Impossible,” said Calon.

“Necessary,” said Anji. “First, I have an obligation to him, and my honor to uphold. Second, he knows things we don’t. We are grasping in the dark, and he holds a light insofar as he knows which people he talked to, and if he traveled to Argent Hall, and what he saw there.”

“I’ll see it’s done,” said Eliar.

Calon groaned, clapping a hand to his head in a gesture so very like Ti that Mai expected him to declaim in threes. “Fool!” he growled. “You can’t get into Assizes Tower.”

“My sister can. My sister was there today. She said there was one man in the deepest pit, untended and filthy. It could have been this reeve.”

“Your sister goes to the Assizes Tower?” Calon asked. “Whatever for?”

“She brings food to indigent prisoners.”

Calon laughed as though it hurt. “The hells, yes, you Silvers do go on about your ‘god rules’ in a way that does get to annoying people. Begging your pardon, Eliar.”

The youth gave something like a wink with his right eye. Mai saw at once that he was angered by this comment but didn’t want to show it. “We will be judged at the gate according to the measure of how we walked in the world and showed justice and mercy to poor and rich, innocent and guilty, those with power and those who are helpless, according to the law.”

Calon coughed. “That was the law in the land you came from. That’s why folk will keep calling you outlanders.”

“No, it is the law in all lands, not just the land we came from.”

“Let’s not have this argument, cub.”

Eliar turned his back and took several steps away, shoulders heaving, hands in fists up by his mouth.

Anji watched.

Mai said, “Master Eliar, even if you could get into Assizes Tower, how would you know Reeve Joss if you saw him, and why would he trust you, even if you could speak to him?”

From Eliar came silence.

Master Calon rubbed at his chin with a knuckle, looking thoughtful, and turned to Mai. “Perhaps you could go with that sister of his, verea.”

“How could I do that?”

“Because the Silver women only appear in public with veils covering their faces. No one need know it was you.”

Maybe this could work after all. Heart pounding, Mai turned to Anji. “I can’t fight. At best I can defend myself at close quarters with my knife, but any competent soldier would overwhelm me. This is something I could do.”

“No,” said Anji. “What do you trade in, Master Calon?”

“Flesh. In slaves.”

“So. This entire complicated scheme might be nothing more than a plot to rid yourself of my company, which seems dangerous to you, and steal my wife without any risk to yourself. You and I both know she would be worth a great deal of coin on the slave market.”

“I could sell her for twenty cheyt, at the least,” agreed Master Calon with a genial smile.

“I won’t have this talk!” cried Eliar, lurching back to the circle. “Never tell a man of my people that he has stirred his hand in the pot of slavery! Do you mean to insult me?”

“Cub, hold your tongue!” Calon grabbed hold of his arm, but Eliar shook him off.

“Enough.” Anji stepped between the two men, and they both backed off. “Answer me a few questions, if you will, Eliar sen Haf Gi Ri.” He grabbed a stick out of the
fire and held it up. Flames licked down the wood. “On what fuel does the flame sup?”

“The wood,” said Eliar, looking irritated. “What is the point of this?”

“And on what food did this wood grow?”

“On water and earth and sun. As any fool knows!”

“And water and earth and sun, where are they grown? What is their origin? Is it not the case that ‘all things blossom out of the heart of the Hidden One’?”

“I beg you, accept my apologies,” said Eliar in a stricken tone.

Anji tossed the stick on the fire. “No need. I studied the archives as part of my education at the palace school. Now I know who you are. Your people lived in the empire.”

“Not my clan, but distant cousins out of other clans, yes. After our people crossed the ocean, some of the clans fetched up on the shores of the Sirni Empire. They were driven out because they would not make sacrifices at the temple of the false god.”

“That’s not quite how it is written in the histories of the palace.”

Eliar had the grace to blush. “I suppose it would not be. I intend no offense.”

“You can be sure I take none, as I am not a believer. But you’re right. It was a long time ago, four generations. As it happens, the priests of Beltak had a lot to say about your people, as they have a lot to say in all their writings. But I never thought I would meet one of you. They called your people ‘the servants of the Hidden One, an avatar of the Lord of Lords, King of Kings.’ They claimed you lived half in light and half in shadow, and in the end the priests insisted that any of you who refused to perform the sacrifice at the temple depart from the empire or be put to death. It is written there were no executions, so I am minded to believe that the priests were merciful in your case.”