Traitors' Gate (51 page)

Mai recognized the steep-sided valley carved into high slopes and the stark cliff where the land plunged away into a mighty ravine. Water spilled down the cliff face, the air broken by rainbows, and mist teased Mai's feet as they battled against a current of air and banked in over thick forest to land in the clearing.

The glade was empty but for the two platforms, canvas walls tied down tight now that no one lived here. Miyara helped Mai unhook herself and the big wicker chest she'd brought. As soon as Anji and the baby were free of the young reeve, Siras, the two reeves signaled and left, the eagles' huge wings casting shadows over the downy grass. Mai lugged the wicker chest over to the smaller platform.

“You're sure the reeves have no idea Hari might be hiding here?” Mai asked as Anji strolled up, his hand on Atani's black hair. The baby was awake, watchful, content.

“Only Miyara, because she led him here.” Anji scanned the clearing for signs of movement. “I've asked the reeves to stay out of the valley for the time being. I told them we must make privately all the necessary holy offerings in thanks for the boy's safe delivery to ensure he is not contaminated by demons.”

“That's not how the Merciful One is worshiped, in private, shutting out others.”

“They don't know that. Mai, it's necessary to keep your uncle a secret, isn't it? Besides Miyara, only Tuvi, Sengel, Toughid, and Priya know.”

“Sheyshi was asleep. I didn't even tell Miravia.”

“No one must know, not if we are to keep him safe. You understand the cloaks can see into our thoughts—”

“Into mine, and theirs. Not into yours.”

“You make my argument for me.” He untied the web of straps and cloth that had bound Atani against his chest and handed the baby to her. “We'll come up every month on Wakened Ox, that being the day of his birth according to the calendar kept by the clerks of Sapanasu, a reasonable time to make a thanksgiving offering.”

“Three months today,” said Mai with a satisfied sigh as she bound sling and plump baby against her hip.

“Although in truth just over four passages of the moon have gone by. The calendar here makes little sense to me. Why shouldn't each new moon begin a new month, as it does among the Qin? That's the simplest—”

“Anji.” She touched his arm. “What if he's not here?”

Anji shrugged. “We'll perform the offering we told the reeves we came to perform. If he chooses to reveal himself, we'll know he has listened to your wise advice. If not, it is out of our hands.”

He hoisted the wicker chest to one shoulder and began walking. His sword swayed at his hip; he had a knife tucked into each boot. She had her own pair of knives, bound at her back where they would not get in her way. She wrapped a shawl tightly around her shoulders as they passed from sunny glade onto shadowed path. The season of flowers and fruit had faded, but a few flowers lingered. She paused along the half-overgrown trail to cut stems and blooms and sprays until she had a respectable offering bouquet. Atani reached with his free hand for the bright colors. Anji paused, listening, but only birds sang, insects whirred, foliage rustled beneath unseen scrabbling claws.

They reached the waterfall and pool, the ruins at peace in the cold air. A tremulous wind spun leaves over the rippling water. The flow of water did not pound so hard; the rim of the water's edge was low, exposing a rocky shelf. Anji deposited the wicker chest on a remnant wall as she walked along the ledge into the womb of the cave behind. The curtain of falling wall had thinned enough that she needed no light to see the altar and a recent offering of flowers, petals scattered by animals and wind. Someone had been here, not long ago.

Yet the living guardians of the cave, whose shimmering blue threads had graced Atani's birth, were nowhere in evidence. Had they
died
?

She shuddered, stroking Atani's soft hair. As frightened as she had been at first, she had come to feel their presence in this holy place was linked to his well-being. In the songs she had grown up singing, such a child would be blessed by hidden spirits and gifted a spectacular destiny, or a brave death,
depending on the story's end. Now, she felt unprotected as she knelt before the altar stone and its humble carven image of the Merciful One, as she laid her offering of flowers and chanted the prayers for thanksgiving. Anji came up behind her as she finished. But for the falling water, silence surrounded them. Sunlight winked on the dark mirror of the pool. A twig floated like a boat on the waters of eternity.

“Mai?”

That was Hari's voice!

She jumped up, but Anji stopped her from rushing outside. He indicated the baby. At first, she did not understand his intent; then she did.

“Uncle Hari, is that you?” she called as she unwound the cloth and transferred the infant to his father with a quick kiss to his unclouded forehead. Anji took him firmly, protectively. Mai hurried outside.

A man stood in the shadow of the cliff looking exactly like her beloved Uncle Hari except for his weary expression and the terrible cloak draped around him, worse than chains for being of such a beautiful weave. She looked him straight in the eye, and the tumult of her own thoughts and worries spilled so fast and hard that she stumbled as though she had been slapped.

“He hit you!” Hari cried. “Just as your father used to—”

“No, it's nothing like that.”

Hari withdrew his reaching hand as if he were poison. “Tell me he treats you well.”

She found her footing and walked over to the wicker chest. “I am perfectly well! There was a day's misunderstanding, it's true, but you must not think—I am my own mistress, here. I am Anji's wife, of course, but I am not only that.” She fumbled with the cords, fixing her gaze on this task so she would not look at his troubled eyes. Why was her heart racing so? What was she afraid of? “Sit with me, Uncle Hari. I'll brew tea. There's a fire pit here that we became accustomed to using. Here is kindling and a flint.”

Abruptly, she understood her fear, and tears began to fall. “I was so afraid you would not be here!”

Blessed be the holy one for the mercy of simple tasks, for it was possible to lay a fire and get it burning while you wept.

He sank down on the wall, not close enough to touch. “Where else am I welcome, Mai? You are the only home I have.”

She wiped her running nose with the back of a hand. “Look at me! Just like Ti, a spouting teakettle, neh?”

“Do you miss Kartu Town?” he asked softly.

Everything she needed was in the chest: a tripod to angle over the fire from which to hang the little kettle in which to boil water, bowls to drink from, a straining spoon, the tea leaves blended by Miravia from different varieties. She need only dip water from the sparkling cold pool where its last ripples lapped the rocks.

“I miss Ti. And Mei—my twin! How it pains me I will never see him again! But no, Uncle. I don't miss Kartu Town. If I never went back there I would be sorry not to see my brother and sister-cousin, whom I love, but otherwise I am content here.” She looked up, feeling he needed the reassurance of seeing that she spoke the truth. Yet this time there was a gentle sweetness in the exchange, as if her openness lessened the assault of his gaze. Maybe it was fear that hurt you most; maybe those who caused the most pain to others sought that fear and fed on it.

His smile faded as he looked away. “You have always had the gift of being content, Mai. It is a more precious treasure than gold or silk.”

She fussed with the kettle, the firewood, the straining spoon, but in the end she must speak the question she most needed an answer to.

“Have you decided anything, Uncle?” At his ominous silence, she hurried on. “You need decide nothing, of course. You can just rest here. Tell me of your day. Or of some beautiful place in the Hundred you have seen. Or we can talk of anything you wish—the tea, if you like, or the weather, or this fine silk I am wearing, for I will have you know that I have more silk now than we ever had in the Mei clan, so much I must
force my hirelings to wear it to their festivals since there is no real purpose in hoarding silk if you do not mean to display its beauty!”

On she chattered, just as she had learned to do selling produce in the market, setting people at ease. It was no easy thing to sit for hours in the market, on slow days and busy days and all the days in between. Folk did love to talk, and talking did pass the time, and for those who were too shy or weary or beset by cares to have anything to say, talking made them feel welcome despite their silence.

She poured hot water and watched it darken as the leaves steeped.

“Did you come alone?” he asked.

His words surprised her. She had thought the cloaks could sense people with their third eye and second heart. “No, Anji came with me. He is praying at the altar.” She called, “Anji! Here is tea.”

He emerged from the cave, his expression carefully polite. The two men eyed each other warily as Anji sat.

“Where is Shai?” Hari asked abruptly, watching Anji. “Has there been news of him?”

Mai looked away.

“Your news is the last news we have had of him,” said Anji. “I will come to you with such news as soon as I have it. If I know where to find you.”

Hari's wicked smile flashed, but there was a sharpness Mai recognized as bitterness. “So am I trapped here, waiting to hear.”

Mai handed him a cup of hot tea, and he blew on the steaming liquid to cool it.

“Do you know what I miss most?” he added. “Companions. I am alone because I have been created to be alone. I cannot drink and gossip and boast with friends as I was accustomed to do. I am forever cut off from casual intercourse with people. So naturally that is what I miss more than anything.”

His tone made her heart twist with pity. “You always have a home with us, Uncle.”

Hari studied Anji, who had loosened the baby's wrap to soothe him as Atani started up with a mild fuss. “Tell me, Captain Anji, did you marry my beloved niece Mai merely for her beauty? Or did you know what a treasure you had found?”

Anji met his gaze squarely with a polite smile that told nothing and hid everything. “Naturally any answer I give within the hearing of my wife will have to be cut out of a cloth that will satisfy her. Let me just say she was bold enough to overcharge me at the market while all the other merchants fell over themselves to give away their wares. I admired her for that as much as I certainly admired her beauty. Will that answer content you, Uncle Hari?”

“I suppose it must. For like Shai, you are veiled to me.”

Anji hoisted the baby to rest on his shoulder, never shifting his own gaze from Hari's. “There are many ways to judge the intent of those you face.”

Hari laughed as he violently flung the dregs of the tea bowl to the earth. “Maybe I was just never a careful observer. It is easy to grow accustomed to living off one's glib tongue and pleasant manners. A young man may be reckless because he wants to impress his friends and in doing so overlook every good warning telling him not to act in such a rash way. Then he may find himself an exile, caught in a cage not of his own devising. Were you ever like that, Captain? Reckless? Rash? Leaping in with both feet onto ground you'd not measured beforehand?”

Anji glanced at Mai and slid the quieting Atani into the crook of his elbow, rocking him gently. “No,” he said calmly, “I don't suppose I ever was like that.”

•  •  •

“U
NCLE, I KNOW
we don't go to drink at the altars because the other cloaks might be walking the labyrinth, and then they would know where we are. But the horses go. What will happen to us if we don't drink?”

For several weeks Jothinin and Kirit had been running sweeps in widening circles out from the altar known as Crags, high in the mountain range called Heaven's Ridge that stretched
along the northwestern reaches of the Hundred. Earlier in the day they had made camp at the edge of a pine grove in an isolated mountain valley, its grass not yet whitened by the dry season cold, and released the horses.

“If we don't drink, we age. Very slowly, it's true.” He wrapped his cloak more tightly, shivering, although she seemed unaware of the chill wind cutting through their clothes. “When I awakened, I was a rather younger man than you see me now. I traded my youth to hide from my enemies.”

“I don't like hiding.” Kirit fed sticks into the fire with the intense concentration with which she approached every task, her serious face rarely smiling and yet never quite frowning. “Did the people who were grazing sheep here this morning see us coming and run away?”

“How can you know people were grazing sheep here this morning?”

“Uncle! If you look at the sheep droppings, they're still—”

“I need no description! I grew up in the city. I don't know sheep except to eat lamb on festival days.”

“You'd be warmer if you wore wool clothing.”

“Too hot for the delta! We scorned it as shepherds' and woodsmen's rustic garb. Nice for durable bags and blankets, but—”

“Uncle.” Her tone altered as she slipped her bow out of its quiver and stood, an arrow fitted to the string. Seeing and Telling were flying back from the distant altar, and a Guardian on a winged horse was following them. Had they been careless? Or was it inevitable they'd be hunted down?

“Move back into the trees, Kirit.”

She did not move. “I saw him before. On the rock with the others where they tried to kill Marit. He's one of the corrupted ones. I'll shoot him, like I did those soldiers. Do you remember when I did that by the sea, uncle? You told Marit we can't wield blades against the children of the Hundred. But once an arrow leaves my bow, it's not in my hand, is it? So maybe I can kill him. I'm a very good shot.”

The hells! Was this what he wanted?

Seeing and Telling cantered to earth. A man wearing the
cloak of Leaves rode onto the grass, reining aside his horse to look them over. Kirit nocked her arrow and took aim, a terrible sight indeed with her pale complexion and deadly blue eyes. She did not release. The cloak was clever enough to stay out of range.