Traitors' Gate (3 page)

“What do you? What do you?” The sergeant loomed over him, swiping smears of blood from his beard with his left hand while he extended the right. “Good, good.”

Hesitantly, Keshad reached out, and the man clasped elbows in the grasp of kinship seen in the market among believers but never extended to foreigners.

 

S
OON AFTER DAWN
, a squad of mounted soldiers resplendent in green sashes and helmets trimmed with gold ribbons clattered up to the closed gates. Smoke drifted over the rooftops. The merchants who had sat the rest of the night on watch on the roofs hastily clambered down as the gates were opened.

The sergeant genuflected before the squad's captain. As the
sergeant kept his head bowed, they exchanged a running jabber in their own language. An older merchant murmured a translation.

“There was trouble all across the market district last night. There is to be an inquiry anywhere local men were killed.”

“Against the mob, or against us?” Kesh muttered.

Worry creased the sergeant's face as he surveyed the merchants. The captain snapped a command that made the sergeant wince. With an apologetic grimace he pointed—quite rudely, as outlanders always did, using the fingers—at Keshad.

“Bring him.” The captain's gaze paused on Eliar, with his butter-yellow turban. “You come, also.”

Eliar took an obedient step toward the squad, but Keshad held his ground.

“What about our trade goods? What surety do we have they'll not be stolen while we're not here to guard them ourselves?”

The captain raised a hand, and soldiers drew their swords. “You come. Or I kill you.”

Keshad wiped sweat from his eyes as his throat closed over a pointless protest. He shrugged, pretending calm. Eliar looked as if he'd been struck.

They walked under the market district gate and into the main city, a place no foreign merchant was ever allowed to enter. The empty streets were broad and clean-swept, walled on both sides, with gates opening at intervals into compounds. The hooves of the horses echoed in an eerie silence. Once Kesh saw a face peeping over a wall, dropping out of sight when their gazes met. Their procession wound inward and upward as the sun rose, and just when it was beginning to get really hot they arrived at a vast gate that opened into a grand courtyard lined with pillared colonnades carved of finest white marble.

The captain indicated a bench in the shade. “Sit there.”

They sat. Four soldiers settled into guard positions while the captain rode into a farther courtyard glimpsed through a magnificently carved archway.

“Look at the figures carved on the arch,” whispered Eliar. “There is the sun in splendor, the moon veiled, and the stars
assembled in ranks to acknowledge the suzerainty of the god they worship here.”

“ ‘The god they worship here'? That kind of talk will get you burned.”

Eliar shrugged. “I'm saying it to you. Not to them. What would they do? Force me to worship at their god's temple?”

“How naïve are you? Don't you know anything about the empire? They could tell you to say the prayers to Beltak, or suffer the punishment meted out to those who don't believe. Who in the Hundred could do a cursed thing if they killed you, eh?”

Eliar's smug smile infuriated Kesh. “I am a faithful son of the Hidden One. That is all that matters. Look there!”

Kesh looked up and their guards came alert, then relaxed, tossing remarks to each other as he sank back on the bench. Eliar had just been pointing to a different section of the arch.

“There, the different officers of the court pay homage before the emperor's throne.”

“There's no one sitting in the throne.”

“He is holy, like the god, not to be pictured.”

“How do you know?”

“I read it! I know most of you in the Hundred don't read—”

“ ‘You in the Hundred'! I thought you Silvers keep claiming you are simply humble Hundred folk just like the rest of us.”

“That's not what I meant—”

“If the emperor's not to be pictured, then why is there a statue of the emperor in the marketplace?”

“That's not the emperor. It's a statue of a male figure representing Commerce, richly clad and adorned with gilt paint to remind all those in the marketplace that through trade the empire becomes wealthy.”

Kesh puzzled over the vacant throne. Sure enough, there were the officers of the court attended by an array of half-sized men, meant perhaps to represent their underlings, and certain animals that evidently had some significance to each officer's mandate. At the height of the arch, above sun and moon and stars, was carved an elaborate crown ornamented by wavy lines most likely representing fire.

Mounted soldiers clattered in and passed through the open
gates. Their garments were splashed with blood, and they looked grim.

“Did you really learn all this from books?” Kesh asked finally. “How can you know it's true?”

Deep in Eliar's answering smile rose a glimpse of the sister, seen once and never ever to be forgotten: a reckless, bold spirit, unquenchable. “Of course I can't know it's true. Someone thought it was, but that doesn't mean the one who wrote it was correct, does it? The person might have been wrong. Or might be right.”

“How do you Silvers—” As Eliar's mouth twisted in disapproval, Kesh caught himself and changed course. “How comes it that you Ri Amarah possess books with so much detail about the empire?”

“Many of our houses—our clans—lived here for six generations, as it says in the prophecy, until they were driven out by the Beltak priests for not worshiping the empire's god. It's said in our histories that some among us renounced the Hidden One and stayed in the empire, because they prospered here, but I don't believe that.”

“You don't believe they prospered here? That any foreigner could?”

“I don't believe they renounced the Hidden One. How is it possible to renounce the truth?”

Keshad laughed. The guards turned, and he clamped his mouth shut.

Eliar fulminated. “Are you laughing at me?”

“You've never been a slave. People renounce the truth all the time if it will give them an advantage. Then they convince themselves that what they wish to be true is the truth. Think of Master Feden, who once owned my debt. How could he have allied himself with that cruel army out of the north? He told himself he was doing the right thing even when everything he saw must have told him otherwise. Olossi is fortunate he's dead and that the army was driven away. Otherwise, where would you and I be?”

As soon as the words left Kesh's mouth, he was sorry he had spoken them, and yet not for Eliar's sake. Where would
he be now? He and his sister Zubaidit would be somewhere in the north, starting over as free people unencumbered by debt slavery or obligation to the temple. If the defenders of Olossi had lost the battle, then they would not have been able to track down him and Bai and haul them back to stand before the Hieros of Ushara's temple in Olossi. There, Kesh had been condemned for a theft he had committed without knowing what he was doing was a crime.

Folk claimed a man could expect to be rewarded for good deeds and punished for bad ones if he made the proper offerings. The temples said so, and the Beltak priests said so, and no doubt the Hidden One said so. The only god he'd run into who didn't seem to say so was Mai's god, the Merciful One, who offered shelter in times of trouble, of which there were plenty. Yet had the gods cared for him and Zubaidit after their parents had died?

And yet. And yet. If it all had not fallen out as it did, he would never have seen Miravia.

A man dressed in a red jacket hurried toward them. The four guards kneeled. There was an extended consultation in the local jabber so quick Kesh could not pick out words. The red-jacket guard gave an order and gestured at Kesh and Eliar in trade sign:
Rise.

They followed him into a courtyard bustling with movement as soldiers assembled in ranks while others, dismounting, handed their horses over to grooms. The red-jacket guard led them through a second pair of gates into a dusty square where several hundred riders loitered beside saddled mounts, with a train of laden packhorses and a herd of spare mounts besides.

“You go.” The red-jacket guard indicated two sturdy geldings before moving away to exchange words with a young captain resplendent in green jacket, helmet adorned with gold plumes.

“Where are we going?” Eliar whispered, but Kesh shrugged. What use to speculate?

And yet he could not stop wondering, thinking, sorting. They rode out through the city on a wide avenue empty of
traffic and thence out a handsome stone gate into the pattern-work countryside, everything tidy, nothing out of order.

Only the empire was not truly in order. The emperor had been killed in battle by his own cousin as they fought over the throne. Which faction had taken them prisoner? What did they mean to do with them? Because there was another thing blazingly obvious about the soldiers who escorted them. Half wore green jackets to mark them as underlings of the gold-plumed captain, a man who did not over the course of that first day speak a single word to Kesh or Eliar. But the rest were Qin, with their phlegmatic expressions, unadorned armor, and scruffy little horses that were nothing much to look at but as tough as any creatures Kesh had ever encountered. And that raised a cursed uncomfortable question, didn't it? Where had these Qin soldiers come from, and why were they riding in company with Sirniakan troops?

“H
EYA, KESH
!” eliar called to him from a nearby campfire where he sat with a gaggle of junior officers, all quaffing from brass cups. “This poocha's so strong it'll make your eyes water. Come try some?”

The junior officers looked nervously toward Kesh, and then, politely, back at their cups. How like Eliar not to notice their discomfort, although it pranced right in front of his face. Keshad glared, but the cursed Silver could not see him well enough in the dusk to be properly stung and instead went back to his drinking and chatting and laughing, although how he could understand half of what the locals jawed on about Kesh could not imagine.

“You do not approve of your companion.”

Kesh jumped to his feet. “Captain Jushahosh.”

A slave opened a camp stool, and the captain sat.

“I have no wine or poocha to offer you, Captain.” Kesh sat likewise.

Slaves approached bearing trays laden with cups, pitchers, eating utensils, and platters that they placed on a camp table. The captain murmured a blessing over food and drink before continuing. “As you are my prisoner, I cannot expect you to offer hospitality. I see, Master Keshad, that you have remained aloof these ten days from the junior officers, who are merely warrior-born. Your companion seems easy with them. He is one of the heretics, is he not?”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

“There is a story taught to educated men of a tribe of men who came by sea out of the east to settle in the empire. In our own tongue they were given the name, the men with silver arms. They lived with proper comportment for six generations, as it says in the holy books, but then their error was revealed and the priests were shown the truth of their hidden ways, that they spat upon the commands of the Shining One inside the walls of their own compounds. Out of respect for a kindness shown to the emperor by one of their number—or, as I consider more likely, because of a massive bribe paid to the temple—they were allowed to depart the empire without molestation, leaving behind all they could not carry. This they did. Some went north over the mountains and some west into the desert and some south into the forest of choking vines, but none sailed back east over the ocean to the place they had came from. You are a believer. You pray with us morning and night. Do you trust this man Eliar, with his silver arms?”

The captain stabbed a slice of spiced meat and popped it into his mouth. Keshad copied him, gaining a respite while he chewed and swallowed. The meat was moist and peppery.

“Have you some reason not to trust him that I should know of?”

The captain was sleek in all aspects; dressed and shod well, he carried a fine sword and rode a string of beautiful horses with roan coats like enough in texture and color that Kesh supposed them bred out of the same stable. “He might be a spy.”

“So might I, then, as we are business partners.”

“One partner may not always know what the other plots in the shadows.”

“True enough. Eliar is decent enough, for a Silver.”

“A Silver?”

“That's what we call them in the Hundred, Captain. For the silver bracelets they wear on their arms. It seems your chroniclers called them the same.”

“He's like a creature out of a story walking into your father's palace. Does he have horns?”

The captain looked very young, and Kesh realized they were of an age but separated not by their lives as men of different countries but rather by the circumstances of their birth. Kesh was born to a humble clan whose kin had seen fit to sell him and his sister into slavery when their parents died; Jushahosh was born into a palace, son of a noble lord with many wives and slave women and therefore many such lesser sons.

“I don't know,” Kesh said confidingly, leaning closer, “for he clings to his privacy, as his people do. I've never seen him without the turban covering his head.”

They shared a complicit smile.

A prisoner who is a foreigner pretending to be a legitimate merchant only while being in truth secretly a spy and who fears he is being taken south to be burned as a spy must yet attempt to gather information, in case he gets out of his current situation alive.

“Strange to see the Qin soldiers here,” he added, nodding toward the circle of fires where the Qin had set up their own encampment. “Are they under your command? Do they take your orders? Don't they speak a different language?”