Traitors' Gate (124 page)

“I would say she serves the goddess. It may not be exactly the same thing. For I would call it very interesting indeed that she—of all people—has come here—of all places—just now—of all times.”

Mai lifted the pot. “She told me she requested service at this temple so she could be near her brother. More tea, Priya?” She poured gracefully and lifted the lid to see how much was left and, after consideration, decided to let it be as it was. “I'm so glad you've come, and come to stay. Yet I think of Atani, left alone there.”

“He's well taken care of. The women spoil him. Commander Anji loves the boy, Mai.”

She watched the face of her sleeping daughter wistfully. “That will have to be enough, won't it?”

A rowdy group of twenty or thirty reeves surged into view, singing raucously but in remarkable harmony.

“Mai!” Peddonon stumbled on the lower step as he leaped onto the porch. “The hells! My knee!”

“You're drunk.”

The baby, startled, woke and began to bawl lustily.

“I beg you, verea, let her uncle take her! She's crying because she misses me!”

Peddonon swept her out of Priya's lap and began to dance and sing along the porch as Mai winced, hoping he wouldn't topple off the edge, but in fact he wasn't drunk at all; he was just pretending as reeves tramped onto the porch and made a great deal of noise with a great swirl of currents during which Priya recovered the baby and Miravia brought out cordial and a tray of cups and Peddonon caught Mai's arm within the
concealment of all the commotion and pulled her back through the house to the quiet courtyard and garden that, in the Mar style, ran the length of the back of the house.

“How a prim Ri Amarah woman like Miravia came to develop such a crude sense of humor I will never figure,” said Zubaidit, stepping out of the shadows under a towering paradom bush.

Mai yelped, both hands slapped to her breast. “Eihi! You startled me, sneaking up like that.”

“I like that rat screen in the public room,” added Zubaidit, “but I feel I have seen it before.”

“I used to own it, but it was sold away. I tracked it down specially and had it carted here.”

“In fact,” said Peddonon, “I had it wrapped in layers of canvas and flew it here. You were terrible gloomy, Mai. A man would weep to see it. We had to do something to lighten you. My wise grandmother always said that a sad woman gives birth to a fussy baby.”

She stretched on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “You're a terrible good man. Now why have you two sneaked me out here?”

“To admire your plantings.” Zubaidit drew Mai into the heart of the garden in all its evening solemnity, although the reeves' chatter, laughter, and song rose overhead like so much heady wine. “Is that muzz? Proudhorn? Musk vine? Stardrops! You'd think you were planting a Devourer's garden here, Mai. Or thinking of one, anyway.”

She flushed. “I like their scents. You know what my situation is.”

“Well,” said Zubaidit with a shrug, “he only specified men, didn't he? You're always welcome at Ushara's temple, whatever you choose. He'll hear nothing from me.” She removed her hand as they reached the long, open stretch where dirt had been marked with flags and ribbons tied to and between sticks for the digging of an ornamental pool, meant to commence two months ago but suspended because of the siege. “Look there, Mai.”

Three figures waited at the end of the garden, discernible by the glamour woven into the cloaks they wore.

Mai halted as her hands clenched. “Have you betrayed me?” she whispered.

“The hells!” Peddonon turned on the hieros. “I told you this was a bad idea to spring it on her without warning.”

“There!” Zubaidit looked skyward.

A shadow covered the stars. A vast weight thumped down right in the middle of the open ground, crushing the carefully surveyed flags and ribbons. It was, Merciful One protect her, an eagle, even though she was sure eagles didn't fly at night. A lithe figure unhooked, dropped, and strolled forward, grinning.

“Greetings of the dusk, you cursed show-off,” cried Peddonon, rushing forward. But he pulled up short before, tentatively, reaching out to grasp arms with the man as the others came forward.

Four Guardians. The last of their kind.

She recognized the envoy of Ilu leaning on his walking staff; his cheerful smile coaxed an answering smile from her even as he was careful not to look too hard into her face. She shied away from the girl who wore the face and body of the slave Cornflower, who had killed Uncle Girish, three Qin soldiers, and, if the stories were true, an entire cadre of the enemy; a mirror hung from the girl's belt, an incongruity against her rough traveler's clothing.

It was the Guardian reeve's identity that shocked her. “Joss? I thought you were dead! I would never have said—”

He released Peddonon and grasped her hand as much to hold her off from the lamp-like shimmer of the cloak that swathed him. “You would never have said what?”

He looked into her face, raised to his.

“The hells! You told Anji
what
?”

“I didn't
say
so, I just let him assume you might be the father—”

“The hells!”

“It was the only way to get Anji to release me. It was just an idea I had, that you were the only man he really feared.”

“Because he thought you would have wanted to sleep with me?” He clipped off the words, broke off the contact, smiled glancingly and heartbreakingly at Zubaidit, and turned to the
woman wearing a death-white cloak as she walked up beside him, a sword sheathed at her side. “This is Marit.”

Zubaidit said nothing, her gaze fixed on the shadowy net of an arbor of patience, still so young and sparse that its characteristic falls weren't yet long enough to dangle over the horizontal posts. She might have been smiling, but it was difficult to tell under evening's cloak.

“Well, this is more awkward than I had realized it would be,” said Peddonon. “Do I babble to smooth over the unexpected undertow, or do we move straight to business? Straight to business it is, then. You may wonder, Mai, what brings us here tonight, or how it comes that four Guardians are walking in your garden.”

“No,” said Mai, taking his hand and smiling when he squeezed back, the pressure of his fingers warm and comforting. “I am honored to welcome four holy Guardians into my courtyard. Joss surprises me, and while it pleases me and heartens me to see him, I have to say, beautiful Ox you may be, but I think you're a little old for me.”

Joss laughed, and Peddonon relaxed, and the woman called Marit smiled. Zubaidit bent her head and brushed at an eye as though flicking away a gnat.

“I'm surprised all four travel together, as vulnerable as they must be now anywhere they could be boxed in, trapped, and cut down. The black wolves are hunting you.”

“We know,” said Joss, rubbing his left shoulder. “We've made a few tactical errors. We've spent months searching out people we can trust.”

“Like Peddonon and Zubaidit,” she agreed. “Who in the end must have led you here. I expected one or more Guardians might eventually track me down to find out if I knew what Anji had done with the cloaks he took off the other five.”

“He told you?” Joss demanded.

“Neh. He did not tell me. He could not, considering the first cloak he killed was my beloved Uncle Hari, who trusted him only because I had assured him that Anji could be trusted.”

“We tracked the commander's movements eventually to Merciful Valley, but it's under heavy guard.”

“I told you not to rush in,” observed Marit with a tone of amused if critical intimacy that made Zubaidit wince and Mai suddenly wonder if Joss and Marit were lovers. Surely this could not be the very murdered reeve his heart had pined for all those years?

“It is,” said Joss wryly, and Mai jerked her gaze away, realizing she had been staring at him.

He's tethered to one post
, Anji had said scornfully when they had first heard the tale from Joss. Hu! And look how things had turned out for Anji, riding all the way across the Hundred to try to get her back.

Maybe the breeze shifted. Maybe the singing changed cadence, or one of the budding night candles opened to release its heart-easing scent. The night was still dark, but her mood unaccountably lightened. She had a life yet before her, and with the grace of the Merciful One it might be a long life. There were a hells lot of things you could do with a long life.

“Yes,” she agreed. “It would make sense that Merciful Valley is heavily guarded. There are five chains hammered into stone just beneath the rim of the pool, under water. At the end of each chain, in the depths of the pool, lies a small jeweler's chest, wrapped in chains. It's easier to throw them in than to drag them out. During the season when the firelings are birthing, or if the ancient ones are wakened, the water burns you. But the rest of the time, it's just water.

“I admit, I love my silks, and such clasps and hairpins and other ornaments that go with them. When I was stabbed, no one thought to clean out my garments and such trivialities as I had brought with me to the valley. My things were just shoved into a cupboard and forgotten, as some of my clothes chests were forgotten in the compound in Astafero. So it was possible for me, with Miravia's help, to drag five small chests up from the deeps and hide them in one large chest, and toss five objects down into the depths in their place.

“I asked myself, if Anji truly wanted to rid the Hundred of the Guardians, why not throw the chests into the pool without a chain? Why not sail them out onto the ocean and dump them overboard weighted with rocks so no one could ever hope to
retrieve them? Because he would never take the chance that they might not serve him as weapons later. Yes, I know where the cloaks are. They're right here, in my house.”

A burst of laughter rose from the porch, and there was whooping and stomping in appreciation of some doubtless crude jest. But in the garden, it was silent.

Finally, Joss whistled softly.

“And an outlander will save them,” he said with a smile so charming and bright and handsome she was glad he was too old for her because she might otherwise have been tempted.

“Zubaidit,” she said softly, “come with me?”

They went inside to the dark house. Mai paused, after she'd slipped off her sandals, to light a lamp with which she illuminated their progress down a corridor to her private rooms.

“Are you crying, Zubaidit?” she asked as she slid the door aside. Priya was sitting comfortably beside the baby's cot in the darkness, and she nodded but did not leave the baby as the two women quietly walked past her and into a narrow storeroom with closed cupboards and shelves stacked with bolts of silk.

“A little.” Swallowed tears made Zubaidit's voice hoarse. “It was cursed good sex, I have to tell you, not that you really want to know, and it hurts to know that was the one and only time. He's a holy Guardian now. You can see he loves her. But I swore my oath to the goddess years ago. I know my path.”

“Well,” said Mai, “I'm sorry. Or not sorry. However you wish it.” She kissed the other woman's cheek before turning to the second cupboard and opening it.

She had hidden the chests in plain sight, stacked among her other chests and fripperies. Easy to pull out, they had so little weight she could stack three in Zubaidit's arms and easily carry the other two. Such a small thing, to mean so much.

Peddonon and Joss were deep into a serious conversation, heads down, not touching but standing close together as Peddonon sounded irritated and Joss regretful, when Mai and Zubaidit returned. The men broke off as the women set the chests down on the ground. Mai went into the garden shed and returned with a wedge and a big hammer, which she handed to Peddonon.

He bit his lip. Then, with a set of neat blows, he shattered the locks. They watched her unwrap the chains and, one by one, open the chests.

Uncle Hari's cloak was first. She hadn't meant it that way, but it seemed appropriate. There was something unsettling in the way they slithered and twisted out of their cages, and yet their flare and flash caught at her heart like banners rumbling in a bright joyful wind. Twilight-sky; blood-red; earth-brown; seedling-green. Last rose night, sewn with stars fallen deep within a cradle of black, its corner brushing her hand with a shiver of memory. It's the ones who can't let go—of fear or anger, lust or greed, vanity or pride or power—who are most at risk of becoming corrupted.

Then they were gone, vanished into the darkness.

On their wings the Guardians took their leave. They were no longer truly part of that world where fussy babies slumber restlessly, and reeves sing bawdy tales on the porch, and a young woman contemplates her future, which after all looks like a series of gates, one after the next and no two alike. Hard to say what lies beyond each threshold.

We must be ready for anything.