The Very Best of Kate Elliott (20 page)

“Not that you heard it from me,” Zubaidit murmured,“but I might I have heard that story in Ushara’s garden. Either it’s true, or he’s a cursed good liar.”

“I believe Badinen,” said Peddonon. “We’ll miss having an ear in Horn Hall, but I could not force him to stay any longer, him being so miserable. Seven years is a long time to live a lie.”

“If I were Anji, I would have been foresighted enough to place a spy or two in the group who left Horn Hall with you seven years ago.” Mai brandished her knife, with its one blunt and one sharp edge. “So here’s another way to look at it. Tesya might accuse Badinen of being a spy to draw attention off of herself while she stole the bag and afterward killed Orhon”

“Hammerer’s Balls!” Peddonon ground a boot into the gravel, rubbing it around like killing the idea.“You’ve a cruel imagination, Mai.”

“I think Mai has a practical turn of mind, myself.” Zubaidit reached for a stalk of proudhorn and snapped it off. “But Tesya could not have wielded the knife herself. She spent the night in Ushara’s temple with one of the acolytes. If she’s the one, then she had an accomplice and we are back where we started.”

“I just think it’s odd she was so quick to go after Badinen,” said Mai. “She could have been setting Badinen up by making little thefts herself.”

Peddonon ran a thumb along his short beard. “I’ve not heard of any little thefts in the hall. But it’s not necessarily the kind of thing that would be brought to my attention.”

“Send Tesya to Horn Hall for a year,” said Mai. “If she’s loyal, she’ll report back on what she hears, and meanwhile Anji will know we suspect he has had a hand in the disruption at Bronze Hall. If she is the real traitor, then Anji will wonder how much we know and how we knew it.”

She thought of the men with red caps who kept watch outside her compound. She thought of the attractive man on the street wearing a wolf ’s head ring.

“Or if there is a spy in Bronze Hall, maybe they are only there to pass on information,” she went on. “Anji knows about the existence of Ushara’s hidden acolytes, the ones who can be hired to kill. We all know he will have considered training his own stable of skilled and lethal people.”

Her words produced a simmering silence. A bird flitted like a spy through shrubs of sweet-scented muzz before fluttering off.

Zubaidit began pacing restlessly, odd to see in a woman who usually could absorb any shocking news without a murmur. “The murder has the taste of a deliberate assassination meant to let us know that the man who did it can act whenever he wishes. Even the chief of my order would not act as a lackey to a man who calls himself king when there was never a king before in the Hundred. So I think you are right. He has decided to create his own executioners and spies, who act only on his behalf. Just as a tyrant must.”

Peddonon scratched his head.“Why act now?”

Mai caught Zubaidit’s wrist and drew her to a halt, so the three of them stood tightly together. “He is giving us notice that he is done letting Bronze Hall maintain its autonomy. He’s moving in. This means our uneasy truce is over. We truly are at war with Anji now.”

Zubaidit tapped a foot on the ground as she shook her head. “We have always been at war with him, since we all broke with our superiors and came to live here. I’d best return to the temple. I will speak to you both after the Ghost Days.”

She kissed Peddonon on the cheek and Mai on the mouth, and left.

Mai resumed picking shoots into the shallow basket set on the earth. Peddonon sat on a bench, tapping one foot on the ground, watching her.

“I should have been able to prevent Orhon’s murder,” he muttered.

“Can you prevent something you never expected?” She smiled sadly at him. “Do you know, it’s my old dreams that plague me most, the story I told myself of how the tale would have a fine, romantic ending. In my heart I guessed that the tales of true love and noble adventure where justice wins and wrongdoing is crushed were a sort of falsehood. I saw the evidence for that every day in the home in which I grew up, for it wasn’t a happy place! But I wanted to believe so badly. The bold captain! The shy fruit-seller he plucks out of the market! I thought with Anji that my tale was one of those rare few that would have a happy ending. So after all, it’s really myself I betrayed, isn’t it, by insisting on something that could not be true?”

“I don’t think so, Mai. I think he betrayed all of us, and you most of all when he stole your son. As for the rest of us, he brought us peace, at a cost. But peace nevertheless. He’s a fair man in his own way. That he is also a tyrant simply makes the situation more complicated.”

“Now that I think about it more clearly, Anji would never agree to send a good-looking man like Badinen to spy on me. His weakness is that he believes he cannot hold onto a thing he desires without a chain to leash it.”

Peddonon’s was an observant gaze, and he had an even temper even in such circumstances, but his anger was visible in the deep lines at his eyes. “Is peace and order nothing more than a harness that keeps us bound?”

“I can’t answer for the other people of the Hundred. I made my choice by leaving Anji.”

“You lost your child.”

As sharp as a well-honed blade, that pain would never ease. She scooted to a parallel row and began stripping dill for a garnish.“The boy had already been taken from me. I see now I could never have gotten him back.” She shook her head to throw off the old sorrow. “I think of my beautiful little Atani every day, but he calls another woman ‘mother’ and I have to believe that she cherishes him or I would not be able to sleep at night.”

“War, then,” said Peddonon with a sigh. “I did not much like Orhon but I respected how he ran Bronze Hall. His ‘old ways’ were what kept Bronze Hall from being absorbed into the new reeve hall structure imposed by King Anjihosh. That, of course, and your presence here in Mar.”

“Yes.” Her lips twisted as the memory of her months as Anji’s wife floated before her. Those days had been sweet because she had been so ignorant and so young. “I still have power over him, of a kind, because he still desires to possess me. But he is not a man who chooses to reveal his weaknesses, so up until now he has held Mar at arm’s length because I live here. I suppose that sounds terribly vain, but I fear it is true.”

“One thing you are not is vain.”

“Certainly not! That is why I own the finest collection of silks in Salya and likely all of Mar. Not liking to risk my complexion being seen contrasted with second-quality silk.”

He laughed.

She shook her head as her smile faded.“I’m not minded to acquiesce. Are you?”

“I am not.”

“Then we must plan our own campaign.”

The bell rang from the kitchen.

“You’ll stay for the feast?”

“Of course. Let me go make sure all is settled with my eagle.” Broad face creased with a frown, the reeve crunched away over the garden path.

She lingered in the garden and when she was sure he was well gone she entered the house by a hidden entrance that led directly into her private chamber. In a narrow storage room lined with shelves stacked with more gorgeous silk than any one woman could realistically wear— silk was her weakness—she fished a chain off a hook. An iron ring dangled from the chain: the wolf ’s head that was the sigil of the clan she had been born into in a faraway desert town. She already knew it was the same design as the one the young man in the street was wearing. She studied it for a while, thinking of the man she had married, the son he had taken from her, and the daughter he had left behind.

Then she put the ring back and joined the others.

Old Priya and her husband O’eki walked down from their house for the last meal.

Together the household made the proper offerings, sang the customary songs, and ate their feast in the prescribed order, finishing with the sweet pudding just as the night bells rang down the end of the day, and the end of the year, across the town. Three-day candles were lit in ceramic holders and set one in each room and two on the porch to mark the entry. All the doors were left open so wandering ghosts could exit as easily as they entered. The girls, tucked into bed, made silly jokes about ghosts and giggled a lot. Keshad, Peddonon, and O’eki got into a long and involved discussion about the nature of ghosts as they cleared and washed the dishes with Edi helping. The women sat on the porch, sipping the fermented petal wine that was only drunk during the Ghost Days.

“I hope the baby doesn’t come during the Ghost Days,” whispered Miravia, stroking her belly. Her gaze shifted inward for a space before she offered them a weary smile gilded by candle-light.

Priya said,“How often is your womb tightening?”

“Just now and then,” said Miravia. “I suppose I should never have walked down into the market today.”

“The child will come when it will come,” said Priya more gently.“Best you rest now. Come inside.” She rose with Derra’s help and at the door the three women turned.“Mai, are you coming?”

“I’ll sit the first watch,” said Mai.“I’m not tired yet.”

She sat in the gloom beyond the reach of the candlelight and watched the empty street. Strangely no red cap was visible in the accustomed place. Maybe even the red caps feared to walk at night on the Ghost Days. With no red cap to trail her a woman might walk right down off the porch and into the ghostly city and go anywhere, really, walk to the inn where that good-looking young man was staying. But no person moved about at night during the Ghost Days except for the fire watch, who walked in pairs during these ill-omened nights and besides that went attended by picked ordinands of Kotaru specially blessed and trained to cast off ghostly assaults.

On Ghost Nights, after the end of the old year and before the priests of Sapanasu rang in the new year, ghosts walked freely at night. You were only safe if you remained within the boundaries of your own compound sealed by offerings and prayers and with the doors left open so no ghosts got trapped inside. Mai did not worship the Hundred’s gods, but she accepted their pre-eminence and followed the customs of her adopted home. So she stayed on the porch and sipped petal wine and listened as the wind sighed over the town.

“Mai?” Peddonon stepped out from inside the house, then yawned, stifling it behind an open hand.

“I’m well enough. You sleep now and take the late watch.”

He bent to kiss her in a brotherly way—the only way he would ever kiss a woman—and went back inside to sleep.

She sat as the silence drifted down around her like settling dust. Peace kissed her, as on wings. These quiet Ghost Nights held a special place in her heart now, an interval suspended out of time in which she might allow her worries and aggravations to sleep. She tasted on her tongue the waxy lavender scent of the three-day candles. The bones of the house creaked softly. The world breathed, and if she made herself very very still in the midst of it all she could hear the pulse of the land’s bright heart, a thread of blue-white light that tangled with her own being.

“Momma?”

She startled back to awareness. “You’re meant to be in your bed, Arasit.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” said the girl with her mouth turned down and one foot scraping on the planks as though sweeping them. She had Anji’s features more than Mai’s, those brilliantly intense eyes. That absolutely stubborn intransigence was Anji’s as well although he had learned to hide it while playing at being the most reasonable of men.“I want to see a ghost. I’ve never seen a ghost, even though I peek every year. I don’t think there are ghosts.”

Mai beckoned, and the girl snuggled into the curve of her mother’s arm.“There are ghosts.Your father could see them.”

“I can’t see ghosts. And I’ve never met my father, so how do I know he even exists? He might be a pretend person you made up. I think my father ran away because he didn’t want me. Because I’m a brat. I wish I had a father like the other girls do.”

Arasit was still young enough that Mai knew how to stroke her scalp so as to relax her. “I tell you what, little one. You close your eyes until I count to ten, but if you open them before I’m done, I have to start over. Then afterward, I’ll tell you a story. One. Two . . . Three. . . .”

By “seven” the girl was asleep, all curled up like a flower in bud,waiting for the dawn to open. Mai despaired of Arasit sometimes. She was a brat, full of wild outbursts usually calmed only by Miravia and Keshad’s eldest child, Eiko, who was the same age and as steady as Arasit was difficult. But it was more than that. The girl wore a strangeness about her. If a thunderstorm boomed down over town the girl would rush outdoors and refuse to come in. Once in the midst of a frightening crash of lightning and thunder she had climbed up onto the roof and Keshad, raging and cursing, had had to clamber up and actually wrestle her down, not an easy task for she had kicked and screamed the entire time. She adored Priya, though, and would spend entire days there patiently helping grind herbs and blend medicinal pastes. She and Eiko were old enough to attend the children’s school, and Mai would soon have to let her go, although she feared the child would become disruptive or that Anji would send soldiers to kidnap her . . .

A noise scattered her thoughts into the wind. Her heart lugged, and sweat flushed on her brow, and then she realized she was hearing the unhurried clop of horse’s hooves. More than one.

Did spirits truly pass through the streets of villages and towns and drag unwilling victims into their saddles and away into one of the hells? She had heard plenty of tales of ghostly vengeance taken for an old grievance. The tales were full of insubstantial Night Riders who abducted people bold and foolish enough to chance the darkness of a Ghost Night, or who unpredictably left dangerous and precious gifts on porches.

She shivered despite herself. But, in truth, the clip clop sounded like perfectly ordinary hooves. Rising, she stepped in front of Arasit’s sleeping form just as the shadowy figures of three riders sifted out of shadow into view on the street. Anger scalded her, succeeded by fear for her child and, if she were honest, for herself. She knew those silhouettes instantly. She recognized the distinctive armor and stocky horses of Qin soldiers as if they were the familiar profiles of kinfolk, and in some way they were. She had grown up thousands of mey from the Hundred in an oasis town ruled by the Qin, nomadic raiders who built an empire by capturing what they desired to possess. She had been married off to a prince of the Qin although at the time she had thought he was a simple captain. She had borne to him two children. Once, she had believed she loved him.