Traitors' Gate (45 page)

Night had traveled for a few days with Marit, testing her—Marit saw that now—to see if Marit, too, might be corrupted. In a way, it was good to know Night had preferred to see her killed. Which meant the cloak of Night had waited, great round of years by great round of years, probing to seek awakened hearts she could corrupt: Radas, Yordenas, Bevard. Even Hari.

The sun rose over the salty inland sea. Beyond the rim of the high plateau lay a vast gulf of air. Shimmering into the west stretched the endless desert, an outlander country where no human could live. Into that wilderness the cloak of Mist, then named Ashaya, had walked, and an outlander girl with demon-blue eyes had found what she thought was a dead body and stripped the cloak from it, hoping to help her tribe survive. The girl had not died then. She died much later, in a sandstorm, on a southern desert. Somehow the cloak had found and claimed her. In time, it brought her to the Hundred.

Marit walked back to the overhang, where Kirit was teasing the conies off the spit and splitting them with her knife. She
had a neat, practiced hand. She licked her fingers and looked up at Marit. She ventured a quirk of the lips that was, perhaps, an attempt at a smile. Not friendly, precisely, but inclusive.

“The cloak of Night. Do you know her name?” Marit asked.

Jothinin shook his head. “I never did. She was best loved, you know. Always pleasant. Always helpful. Always cheerful. I never would have thought she would walk into the shadows.”

Marit smiled as she might at a child she wanted to reassure. He had that quality, that she wanted him not to fret, even if she knew he would. “Sometimes those who seem strong prove to be weakest. And those who seem weak or light-minded and foolish, are in truth strongest of all.”

He shrugged away the compliment.

“How did you discover the plot to corrupt the Guardians?”

He looked at the irregular rock wall and the shadows and light that spilled in ripples along it. “To my shame, I did not. I walked from assizes to assizes, pleased to bring justice to the Hundred. I was oblivious to the signs of trouble among the other Guardians. Ashaya was the one who warned me, before she fled.”

“How did Night corrupt the others?”

“All I know is what Ashaya told me: false words and exaggerated suspicions. Whispers that some Guardians were not doing the work of the gods and must therefore be eliminated. Too late she realized she had herself become as corrupt as those she thought to guard against. She fled the Guardians' council, warned me, and left the Hundred. After that, I disguised myself as an envoy of Ilu and avoided the altars and my winged horse. An envoy of Ilu is a humble man, easy to overlook. I blame myself for not seeing sooner what was going on.” He sighed, shoulders drooping.

Kirit said, “Are you hungry, uncle? Here is meat.” Then, after a hesitation, “And for you, Marit.” She set down her knife and popped a strip of meat into her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and considered. “A little tough. Not bad.”

Jothinin straightened as he forced a smile. He tore meat from a steaming carcass, watching Marit. “You have a plan. I see it in your face.”

“Why did the cloak of Night turn against the Guardians? Why then destroy the other Guardians? Does she truly want chaos? Murder? Rapine? Villages burned and children orphaned? It seems unlikely, shortsighted, messy. I talked with her, traveled with her for a hand of days. She did not strike me as shortsighted or messy.”

“We must judge them,” said Kirit unexpectedly, “not by their words but by what they allow to be done under their authority. The headwoman of a tribe who shows hospitality and generosity is pouring those qualities into the heart of the tribe over which she sits in authority. Likewise, a headwoman who is greedy, who is already rich but allows her people to steal from those who are weak and poor, who steals children and sells them into the hands of demons, she will poison her tribe long before they become aware that a sickness has overtaken them and ruined their herds and children.”

“I may wear a Guardian's cloak,” said Marit, “but in my heart I'm still a reeve. I'm going to Iliyat and Herelia to investigate. To see if I can find out who Night is, and what she wants. If we understand her, we may be able to figure out how to defeat her. Also, I must find Hari, and convince him to join us.”

“Is it wise to split up?” asked Jothinin.

“I won't leave you, uncle,” said Kirit.

“Lord Radas is busy conquering Haldia,” said Marit, “so it's unlikely they have more than one or two cloaks out searching for us. Meanwhile,
you
must find the cloak of Earth. It will be easier for me to convince Hari to join us if he is sure he is on a side that can win.”

“I am pretty sure the cloak of Night holds his staff,” said Jothinin. “The spear of Twilight, which penetrates from day into night and from night into day. Even if he joins us, we still cannot pass judgment if he does not hold his staff. Consider this, Marit. Once we begin to pass judgment in the Guardians' council, we are then doing to the other Guardians exactly what the cloak of Night did to those who came before us.”

“What choice do we have?” she retorted bitterly.

“We have to fight,” said Kirit. “It is worse not to fight.”

Surprised at this unexpected support, Marit smiled at her,
but the girl had fixed her gaze on the man. Grotesque she might be, with that ghastly pallid complexion and those demon-blue eyes and the serious frown of a youth who has forgotten how to play, but there was something reassuring in the way she watched Jothinin.

She is trying to remember how to be human. She thinks he can teach her how.

“How can I possibly find the cloak of Earth?” he added. “A woman named Eyasad wore Earth's cloak when I last saw it. A young woman, small, vibrantly plump. With black hair like silk spun by the wildings out of forest spiders' soft webbing. Easy to become entangled in.” His expression softened as his gaze turned inward toward memory.

“And did you become entangled?”

“Eiya! I would have liked to have done, but she was not fashioned that way. Anyhow, why should she trust me now? I suspect, with the exceptional hindsight I possess, that Eyasad perceived the threat before the other cloaks believed it might be possible Night could have fallen so far into the shadows despite honey smiles and generous gestures. That was a great round of years or more ago. Twelve rounds of twelve years, a very long time. Her cloak may have passed to another, or she may be in hiding still. So how am I to find her if, after all this time, I have not already done so wandering the Hundred as an envoy of Ilu?”

“Because you have a reeve as your ally,” said Marit with a grin. “A cursed observant reeve, if I may say so. You said one time that the cloak of Earth carries a staff which is also a snake. I now understand I spent many years awakening, wandering on the paths between death and life. Early on, before I comprehended what was happening to me, I encountered a shepherd boy in the mountains south of here. It was near an altar set into a ledge on a black cliff face, rising out of the wooded hill.”

“In Heaven's Ridge? These western mountains? Above the altar where lies only rock, and the cliff ends in jagged teeth?”

“That sounds right.”

“You must be speaking of Crags. What has that to do with Earth?”

“I saw into the boy's heart. I didn't know at the time what I was seeing, but he and his village had a measure of protection set over them. He thought of a snake.”

“I've seen her staff appear as a hooded cobra.”

Marit shuddered. “I'd have remembered seeing a venomous snake.”

“But it appears also more benignly as a garden snake, if those who come before her for judgment have committed no serious crime.”

“It is worth seeking, is it not? Just as Hari may be willing to listen to me because we shared—Aui!—” She blushed, recalling Hari's grin, his attractive body. Jothinin waved away smoke, trying not to laugh, and it made her happy to see his melancholia slide away. “We shared what two lonely people who find each other attractive may share. He will at least listen to me.”

Then he did laugh. “As a man, I can assure you, he will. If you call that listening.” He wiped grease from his lips, and looked at Kirit. The outlander in her cloak of Mist nodded at his unspoken question. “Very well. Kirit and I will go south, to Crags, and see what we can find. Is that the whole of your plan, Marit?”

Marit sat on the rock and, suddenly voracious, ripped apart a coney.

Kirit said, “Tell a story, Uncle.”

“A difficult task for a water-born Blue Rat, who loves nothing more than to talk,” he said, smiling. “Give me a moment to think. Hmm.”

“Tell me again the story of how this wide salty lake up here was made,” Kirit said.

The morning sun lanced over the waters and the rocky ridge that rimmed the plateau, which the delvings, according to the tale, had built as a vast salty prison for a merling they had taken captive. In the gulf beyond the ridge, scraps of cloud floated so close it seemed to Marit that she might comb out cloud-silk from which to weave a pillow for a lover. Why must she think of Joss? She imagined him young and vibrantly alive as he had been twenty years ago, and then older and still handsome, as he was now. She had seen into Joss's
heart, and she did not want to look there again because she did not want to know: that he had loved her, so long ago his memories of her were a tangle of regret and nostalgia overlaid with years of fleeting relationships with other women and a cursed lot of cordial and rice wine. It was his life, not hers. It could never be hers.

She realized Jothinin had fallen silent when he grasped her forearm as an uncle might, to comfort a distraught niece. She had to choke down the taste of dreams, the life she had once thought she would have.

Let it go.

“Uncle,” she said.

He released her arm. “What is the rest of the plan?”

“You'll seek Earth. I'll look for Hari. I'll seek what information I can about Night. We'll meet here at the end of the year. If we gain a majority on the council, it may be possible to resolve this without killing. But we must have a second plan, if this one does not work.”

Kirit pulled her bow into her lap. Jothinin shut his eyes.

“Lord Radas commanded a guardsman to stab Hari. To inflict a mortal wound, knowing Hari would suffer as he died and healed. So that means if that guardsman could do it, others could as well. A Guardian could be mortally wounded, if taken by surprise, and their cloak stripped off when they fall into the healing trance. As Kirit did. If we can't kill them, someone else will have to.”

The fire popped. A puff of ashes rose and settled.

He opened his eyes. “Do you believe there are any who can be trusted with this knowledge? To kill for us? On our behalf? And not turn against us afterward, once they know it can be done?”

“One man might.”

F
OR THE QIN
, the pace of travel from training camp to militia fort and on around the wide plain of Olo'osson was slow. For poor Miravia, who had never before ridden a horse, it was brutal. They arrived at Candra Crossing in the rain six days after they departed Olossi, a pace of about six mey each day. The folk busy thinning burgeoning rice and nai fields ignored them, but once in town people emerged onto the porches of the shops and inns and warehouses to gesture a welcome. The river crossing, glimpsed through gaps between buildings, was lined with sodden flags; a flat-bottomed ferry crammed with wagons and livestock was being winched across toward people huddled beneath a shelter on the far shore.

“Was this place attacked?” Miravia asked as they approached the center of town.

“The temples and council house were damaged,” said Anji, “and a few buildings burned, but otherwise the enemy pushed through here so quickly they hadn't time to do permanent harm.”

He rode ahead to the militia encampment east of town, leaving the women and their escort, commanded by Chief Tuvi, at the council hall. They dismounted in a courtyard flanked by two wings, one braced with scaffolding. Men set down planking for a floor. A trio of council members greeted the party and showed Mai onto a porch out of the rain and thence into a suite of rooms in the travelers' wing.

“It's small,” said their escort, “but the other rooms are occupied.”

The outer room was floored only with refurbished planks but the two sleeping rooms had fresh floor mats. The walls were washed white, as stark as the furnishings: pallets rolled up along one wall, a long low table, a stack of pillows, and an unlit brazier set in a corner next to a covered bucket.

“Will this suit you, verea?” asked the eldest, a woman so old that her back was bent, although her walk was spry. “We
haven't the fine furnishings and silks rich folk in Olossi can afford.”

“It's very pleasant,” said Mai with a smile. “You have my thanks. If we might have water to wash in?”

“There's good baths in town, verea.” The old woman's gaze strayed to Miravia, and a frown flickered and vanished.

“If there is time, I'll go gladly to the baths,” said Mai, “but for now, a basin of water to wash off the worst of the dirt would be much appreciated. And kama or sunfruit juice, if you've any. Khaif, perhaps? What is the market price here?”

“Neh, verea. The council will feed and house you. Without Captain Anji's militia, we'd not be back in our homes. Do you see how folk work in the fields? Carts and wagons on the roads? The ferry carrying again? To feed and house you is a small enough tithe in exchange. If there's anything else you need?”

“I would gladly meet with the council and indeed any merchant.”

“Do you represent the Olossi council, verea?”

“I have a seat on the council as a merchant, although I do not come today as an official member. Yet I would gladly ask what problems and questions folk here may have regarding the security of the roads and the safety of trade within the region. I can discuss supplies of various oils, which I sell. Also, as you may have heard, we are still looking for women willing to consider marrying the Qin soldiers. Over the last six months I know of forty-nine marriages between Qin soldiers and local women. We hope to arrange more. So if you'll just give us time to wash and rest and eat something—”