Traitors' Gate (36 page)

Priya touched her elbow. “In the Mei household folk often called you stupid, or light-minded, or simpering, or precious. But I know these words describe what they see, not what is there. If you show a calm face to the world, it is not because you are without passion. If you do not challenge those who command you, it is not because you are too placid to protest. If you are obedient, it is not because you obey thoughtlessly, knowing no other course of action. I hear defiance in your voice, even if I am surprised Chief Tuvi did not. What are you planning?”

“I'll need help from you and O'eki to get out of the compound and the city. No one else must know. Can you do it?”

From the porch, O'eki spoke as if he had already guessed her intentions and run through several plans. “It's possible to get out the back gate if you are willing to hide cramped in a chest, Mistress. I will need another hireling to help me carry it. Priya will have to stay here to guard the chamber and say you are sleeping. It will be easy enough to hire a covered palanquin down by Crow's Gate. Even so, our movements can be traced.”

“There lies the risk. I'll have to take Atani in case he wants nursing.”

“Chief Tuvi is right,” said Priya. “Captain Anji will tell you to return her to her father.”

With trembling hands, she grasped Priya's fingers. “I know.” She swallowed a sob, like drinking down sorrow. “But I will never forgive myself if I do nothing. Never never never.”

Miravia stirred. Abruptly, she sat bolt upright. “Mai?” she croaked.

Mai released Priya's warm hands and knelt beside Miravia, whose hands were cold. “Hush, my sister. You must wake now. We're going to leave right away.”

“Where are we going?”

A pallor had lightened the shroud of night to a gleam neither night nor day which is called twilight for partaking of both and yet sustaining neither. Priya watched Mai, expression quiet in the gloom. O'eki waited on the porch, big body blocking her view of the garden.

“The only place we can go,” said Mai.

•  •  •

S
OON AFTER DAWN
, Arras gave the order and his cohort moved out, shields tortoised and wagons crammed with wounded and provisions. He forced the hostages to walk outside the shields. If the Nessumaran militia broke the truce and attacked, they would kill unarmed civilians first. It's what he would do, in their position: he'd shoot down the civilians and break through the shield wall, because a cohort stuck out on an unprotected causeway was too easy to pass up. But he doubted the local militia had the stomach for such slaughter.

He hung back with the rearguard until the last soldiers cleared the bridge. Four sorry-looking hostages, the most truculent of the crew, trotted at the end, tied by long ropes to the rearmost wagon so they couldn't bolt. He moved up alongside the unit, marking their brisk pace and even footfalls, their confident gazes, their energy. The other hostages stared over the mire more than they watched their feet, although no one tried to run. If the enemy did not kill them, his people would shoot them in the back as they splashed into the swamp.

“Captain!” Zubaidit hailed him. “Must I walk out here with the rest? Didn't I prove my loyalty by walking in among the enemy last night to take your message?”

He kept striding along with his attendants streaming behind. He thought he heard a few among the hostages hiss at her words, but that sound might also have been the flutter and flurry of wings as waterfowl rose in numbers off their tranquil feeding ground, disturbed by the tread of feet. Boats bobbed
out of his reach. The rising sun glinted on stretches of water. Reeds swayed in the morning breeze.

They reached the front of the cohort. The causeway speared straight over the mire; he could not yet see the solid earth of the mainland, only the blur of gray-blue water and green reeds.

“Captain?” Sergeant Giyara gestured up.

Eagles soared overhead; those gods-rotted reeves would never let up. Then gold winked, like a spark of sunlight detached from the spreading rays. He squinted, shaded his eyes, tilted his head and tried to find that trick of the light again, but it was lost in the gleam.

“The hells!” swore Giyara.

The cloak trotted to earth on the causeway before them, and the soldiers dropped to their knees, bowing their heads.

Lord Radas himself had come. His cloak—almost as bright in its golden splendor as the sun itself—rippled as in an unfelt breeze. Arras felt fear as a knife in his ribs, but he walked forward anyway, because he must. He was captain; he was responsible. He knelt on one knee and raised both hands to shield his gaze obediently.

“Lord Radas. What is your will?”

“What is your name?”

“Captain Arras, of the Sixth Cohort. I have with me remnants of the First Cohort.”

“You are retreating rather than holding the forward position. When Lord Yordenas spoke to you last night, you were encamped farther out, on an island.”

When thrown off balance, it was best to right yourself by throwing a punch. “Lord Yordenas ordered the retreat, my lord. I suggested we hold the forward position and asked Lord Yordenas to undertake a reconnaissance to estimate the true strength of the Nessumaran militia.”

“We were betrayed.” Lord Radas had a mild voice, nothing odd in it, only its tone had a timbre that made a man shudder even to hear simple words spoken in a seemingly reasonable manner. A madman might speak so as he was cutting your throat. “Look at me, Captain.”

Aui! A man in his line of work could never know, never
plan for, and must never dwell on when death might arrive to carry him to the Spirit Gate.

No sense waiting.

He looked up.

The man had youthful features but did not seem young; rather, he appeared rather unsettlingly
well-preserved
. He had deep-set eyes and broad cheekbones set off by a mustache and beard; no dashingly handsome man, as in the tales, but an ordinary fellow if not for the eyes, which were a weapon cutting you open so your guts spilled out.

Here it is, all of it:

Lord Twilight told me to arrange for an outlander to be conveyed out of camp without the other lord commanders knowing of it and by chance I was able in addition to use the outlander's trail to track down a nest of bandits and kill them. Kill me for it if you must; I obeyed the cloak, as I am required to do. I didn't know who the outlander was, but then Night tracked me down to say she had captured him. She said he was Lord Twilight's brother.

I don't enjoy killing or savor its power. I don't mind it, either, and if it has to be done I'll do it, as I have done since the day I left my village forever. Nothing against my clan or anyone else there; it just wasn't a life or a bride I was willing to accept. I like battle, because it tests the mind and the body and it tests your resolve, your reactions, your reserves.

As for Captain Dessheyi of the First Cohort—even in an ambush he ought not to have allowed his soldiers to break ranks and lose cohesion like that; he ought to have had a decent chain of command in place. But some of these men are cursed better at oiling up their superiors to grab for rank than they are at actually doing the work of fighting.

Lord Radas laughed, the sound so startling Arras flinched. “So Harishil and Night are playing a game of hooks-and-ropes. He'll not survive her displeasure. Perhaps she means to replace one outlander with the other.”

Shaking, Arras brought his hands up to cover his eyes. He was on both knees, sweat streaming, hands moist.

“Keep the remnants of First Cohort as your own,” said Lord
Radas as easily as if he were handing him a cup of cooked rice for his supper. “You have a full cohort now. It's up to you to mold them into a cohesive unit. There will be a full war council in Saltow on Wakened Horse. I will be sure to consult your opinion at that time. I expect you to have a plan of action to present, that can be considered along with other strategies. We have underestimated the Nessumarans. Now we must defeat them.” He began to rein his horse around.

“Lord Radas! If I may be permitted to speak.”

The horse sidestepped as the cloak twisted in the saddle and Arras ducked his head to avoid that gaze. “It's the reeves, Lord Radas. They see everything we do. As long as they have that advantage, we'll struggle.”

“Be sure we are not finished with the reeves,” said the cloak over his shoulder before he urged his mount onward.

The wings unfurled, their span almost as wide as the causeway and so bright and powerful Arras forgot to fear and simply gazed in awe. In a transition he could not measure or mark, the horse ran off the causeway and up into the sky as if the roadway split and it had merely taken a path he could not see. The man and his billowing cloak seemed almost an afterthought to the magnificence of the beast's wings and graceful form.

“Heya!”

Arras leaped up, whipping round to see a soldier racing up on the heels of Zubaidit. She staggered to a halt as she stared after the rippling sheen of the gold cloak falling away like rays off the rising sun. Her expression was unfathomable, mouth slightly parted, eyes narrowed. Is that what she would look like in the arms of the Devourer? Whew! He'd completely forgotten about her in the face of Lord Radas's gaze.

“Cursed hostage took off running, Captain,” said the panting soldier. “Everyone was staring at the cloak.” He aimed the haft of his spear at her, taking a halfhearted swipe, and she turned on Arras.

“You cursed ingrate! I only went on that cursed negotiating expedition for you because you said you'd kill the other hostages if I did not. Now they're all spitting on me and calling me a traitor.”

He dusted off the dirt on his trousers and, straightening, shook off the muzz afflicting his thoughts. “That would seem to make them the ingrates, not me.”

Her gaze flicked eastward toward the mainland, taking in the mire and the gods-rotted honking waterfowl dotting the sheets of water. Already the cloak had vanished from view.

“I'm tired of being strung along as on a rope,” she said. “First my clan marries me off north to a man I've never met. Not that I've any complaint of him, mind you. It's just I had no choice. I've never had a choice.” Her tone hardened as old grievances bubbled to the surface. He saw that look in a lot of the young men who came to him. “Seems to me you lot have more choice in what happens in your life. I want to join your cohort as a soldier.”

“What's in it for me?”

She snorted. “Do you ask that of every recruit?”

“I might have asked it of that cursed traitor Laukas. What's to say you won't betray us, as he did?”

“What's to say anyone won't? I'm one person, Captain. Not that difficult to keep an eye on.”

“Indeed not. I might have to keep you close by me, just to be sure.”

Her lips twitched, reminding him abruptly of a hook used to catch a fish. “Do you want me to play that game, Captain? I shouldn't think your men will respect you for it.” She looked around, because of course everyone within earshot was listening openly, and no doubt those cursed boats bobbing off shore, out of arrow-shot, were also wondering what in the hells was going on.

“Tortoise up!” he shouted, angry at his lapse. The entire cohort could have been shot to pieces while he gaped like a lust-struck moonwit. “March!”

He fell behind the front rank of shields, and although the soldier who had chased her queried him with a gesture, he waved him off. She did not drop back to walk with the other hostages, nor did he make her go. Hadn't he already decided?

“You'll plague me until you get what you want, won't you?”

“Yes.” She matched her stride to his.

“I won't have it said I enlisted any soldier in my cohort in exchange for sex.” He glanced at Sergeant Giyara, who had dropped into step on his other side. She'd no doubt have an opinion to share with him in private, later. “That's not the kind of unit I run.”

Zubaidit flashed that handsome smile. “That's why I respect you, Captain.”

They walked in silence except for the tread of feet. The causeway stretched to the horizon.

“Captain,” said Giyara at length, as if she'd been chewing for a while and had finally swallowed, “does that mean Lord Radas thinks we did the right thing by giving up our forward position?”

“Surely he knows I couldn't refuse a direct order. He told me to present a plan at the war council on Wakened Horse. I've a few ideas. Spread into the countryside. Confiscate the harvest, all flocks and horses, take wagons and tools. We can cut off every land route into Nessumara. Field boats out of Ankeno and do damage to their shipping as well, cut off the flow of refugees fleeing the city. Trap them in the delta like rats. They have fields and storehouses, but surely not enough to feed all the refugees. And the dry season is coming. Maybe this cursed mire will dry out and we can advance across a longer front, off the causeway. Maybe we can set fire to the islands and drive forward under the cover of smoke, to hide from the reeves.”

Giyara whistled. “Fire is a two-edged sword. It can't be controlled.”

“War is a fire, isn't it? If we burned the grand and glorious city of Nessumara to ruins, what a message we'd send to any other people who think to resist us, eh?”

Zubaidit sucked in a sharply audible breath. Then she laughed, tossing her head.

“You find that funny?” he asked.

She lifted both hands, palms up, the well-known gesture of the-child-asking-an-obvious-question in any of the tales. “If you burn Nessumara, Captain, then what do you possess afterward?”

“Victory. What else matters?”

•  •  •

T
HIS TIME OF
year, as the rains faded to a whisper, the winds drew cooler drier air out of the northwest. You could taste the change, the locals said, see the shift in the color of the vegetation, hear the altered voice of the river announcing the advent of the dry season.