Traitors' Gate (55 page)

“Outsiders? Like outlanders? A fishing boat or two, every year, from up north-away. They are very ugly people, skin like a white-fish's underbelly and—although I admit it is difficult to believe—some have red hair.”

“Red hair?”

“Like flames.”

Marit shook her head, unable to envision red hair. “What of folk from the Hundred?”

“There's a regular trader what comes in from High Point off Little Amartya once a year. Sometimes fisherfolk bide over here in a storm.”

“You're well cut off.”

“Are we? From what?”

They approached on a path through neat garden strips, the sturdy long houses rising beyond. The whole village had turned out, frail elders, wriggling little ones, restless youth, and stolid mature women and men. Singing and gesturing in a talking line, they chanted the familiar closing scene from the tale of the Silk Slippers in which the innocent girl is welcomed at long last to her home.

come in, come in, we welcome you with garlands
come in, come in, at long last you return
food and wine we will bring you
sit with us, for we have been waiting
come in, come in

A girl child and boy child were urged forward with a bucket of water and juniper soap so she could wash face and hands. A second pair offered a ladle of fresh water to rinse her mouth. A third presented her with a garland of aromatic maile. The porch of the most prosperous family in the village—they were proud to tell her they were blacksmiths who worked metal for most of the peninsula—had been hastily garlanded with kuka nut and myrtle wreaths. A low eating table and pillow had been set out where she sat. An elderly man ceremonially wiped out a drinking bowl of fine white ceramic, small enough to cup in her hand, a piece of exceptional beauty in such an isolated village. A woman carried in a vessel of heated rice wine, and some rice cakes arranged on a wooden platter. A different woman, head shaved in the manner of the Lantern's clerks, murmured over these offerings a blessing so ancient Marit had never heard it outside of tales:
Let the breath of the Mothers enter. Let the breath of the Mothers invest all things.
Had she walked into the past, through an unseen gate? The master blacksmith himself knelt humbly and poured out the wine. He stepped back.

“Let me not sit alone,” Marit said.

Aui! Everyone crowded forward; the frail elders were brought up onto the porch and helped to sit on frayed pillows brought by children racing away to other houses to fetch extra; children and youth hunkered down in a crouch, arms hooked over knees; the others stood or sat or crouched according to their wish. But she must drink and eat alone, regardless, their gazes intent on her in a way startling to her after all this time with folk avoiding her gaze. She was careful to look no person straight in the eye, and yet their fascination did not overwhelm her. Not that they were innocent; far from it! But they did not fear her. It was fear that made the intimacy of the exchange so invasive and horrible.

Their silence lasted as long as the rice cakes.

“Honored Guardian,” said the clerk, “we have sent runners to the other villages. Do you wish to visit each village separately, or meet at some central place? If I could recommend the Lantern's temple in Mulla—”

“Nay,” objected the blacksmith, “the Devourer's temple is more appropriate.”

“Only because your cousin is hieros there,” said the clerk.

“Begging your pardon, honored Guardian,” said Fothino. “What is your wish?”

“I have to go,” said Marit, surprised by their assumption that she had come on purpose to preside over an assizes. Yet why not? They knew no other story here, where they saw one trading vessel every year and, perhaps, a few flame-headed barbarians. Here came a Guardian, so naturally she would preside over an assizes.

“I have to go,” she continued, “in another day. Best call for the assizes tomorrow at a location folk can easily walk or ride to.”

“Begging your pardon, Guardian,” said Fothino, “but the folk from Rulla Village will take an entire day to walk even to Hasibal's stone. Can you not preside for two days at the assizes?”

They watched so expectantly and with so much hope.

A company from Wedrewe must march overland to the port of Dast Elia before sailing up the length of the Elia Sea and along a coast known for its rocky dangers and intemperate seas.

“Two days.” She could say nothing else.

 

L
ONG INTO THE
night the villagers chanted and danced, and golden mead and an amber ale with the essence of pears flowed as freely as if it were festival time.

 

W
ARNING RETURNED TO
her at dawn, an event that silenced the merrymaking. Leading the horse, she walked with the entire village singing and clapping in procession along a path that wound inland through woodland. Before midday, they arrived in a meadow partway up the slope of the northern peak. In this vale of the Formless One dwelt an ancient stone sacred
to Hasibal; flowers had been left as offerings on its flat water-pocked surface: a pair of fresh wreaths, withering bouquets, a desiccated necklace of blooms almost ground to dust.

She knew nothing about the rituals attendant on a Guardian assizes, but here the priests could recite the forms from memory. According to the gathered priests, the Guardian's seating place must face south in the morning and north in the afternoon; those who came to watch must stand at a distance; those who brought their cases must enter in groups and wait their turn at specific stations according to the nature of their complaint and whether they were accuser or accused. For the aged, pillows to sit on under shade; for young people come in from distant villages who could expect to meet and mingle with other young folk, a discreetly blind eye turned to the usual activities of youth. A makeshift market sprang up under the shadow of the wood.

No offerings of any kind were allowed, to avoid the appearance of bribery, and every village was expected to contribute food and drink in proportion to the number of people attending from that village. Folk must eat! For herself, she sipped at juice and ale, nibbled at flat bread, white pears, and a fish stewed with barley and some spices for which she had no name.

A pig had broken into a garden one too many times, destroying several crops of tubers, and the gardener had finally in a rage killed it and eaten it. The owner wanted damages paid; the gardener blamed the owner for not penning the pig properly after multiple warnings and demanded damages equal to her loss of crops. Five years had passed in which the dispute curdled on like a sour taste.

“What would content you?” In the face of her piercing gaze they agreed it was foolish not to have settled the matter much sooner: a piglet delivered to the owner in recompense for the lost meat; a stout pen built by the owner to avoid another incident, together with two baskets of pears, fifty tey of barley, and a bundle of sourwort leaves in exchange for the produce lost.

The placement of boundary stones must be reconsidered. Accusations of theft years old, suspicion still festering. Two bolts
of good dyed linen cloth filched a mere ten days ago. Inheritance squabbles were the worst; she knew that already from her years as a reeve. One group dragged on its self-serving arguments for so long she lost her temper and let them know in detail the scope of their manifold faults. How they then scrambled to seek a grudging solution, having lost face so nakedly before the entire assembly!

Night came on, and torches were lit, and still they came, patiently waiting their turn, more folk straggling in from distant villages to set up awnings as they accepted a place in line. Yet she did not tire. The pleas and arguments, even at their worst, were like nourishment.

A man was accused of hexing a fatal illness onto a woman's three children; he had become outcast and yet he was innocent of the deed.

“There's an old feud here,” Marit said as torches crackled, “that you are all covering up. I want the truth.”

The truth can be ugly. It was at last revealed that the woman knew who had poisoned her children: her husband had done it himself, because he knew that another man had fathered two of them and he did not want the shame and dishonor revealed as they grew into their adult faces. But his clan was powerful and wealthy—by local standards—and she was afraid to accuse him and yet must accuse someone—a man of no wealth and no connections—lest she herself be condemned.

“I wish I was dead with my little ones,” she sobbed.

So on through the night, so many grievances smoldering over the years and decades that folk did want, no matter the cost, to bring into the light. Marit wondered if the truth would ever be known about the man dead in the surf at Curling Beach. Maybe he was best left dead, his dying a mystery. Is this one of the truths that Guardians must learn? That the truth does not always bring closure?

Yet folk will go on with life, as a new day will dawn.

“But I don't want to marry him!” exclaimed the young woman, a strapping, beautiful creature with such an immense weight of self-satisfaction that it was like swallowing honey laced with garlic. “I want to marry his brother.”

“His brother does not want to marry you,” observed Marit, who did not even need to call for the brother's testimony. He was a handsome lad, one she would have liked to have tumbled when she was younger, but his embarrassment was apparent. “He was a kalos at the temple, not a suitor. He slept with you in the courtyard of the Devourer.”

“Yes! Oh! Yes!” She gazed adoringly at the hapless youth. He looked away, helplessly, toward his disgusted family.

“Lust does not make a marriage.” Yet she thought of Joss as she spoke the words. Had it been only lust she'd nurtured for Joss? They had spoken of bearing a child together. That was cursed serious, especially for reeves who served the gods and the Hundred; they didn't expect a normal life. “Daughter, you think too well of yourself. Refuse to marry the young man offered to you and have your clan look elsewhere. That is your right. But do not pretend that the worship shared in the Devourer's temple is meant to be carried outside the temple walls. The gods recognize that we are human in our greed and our lust and our joy and our striving, in the ways in which we fight and hate and nurture and love, in the ways we tend our fields with hard work or steal that which belongs to others when we know it is wrong. The laws of the Hundred allow us to live in harmony when otherwise all around us might fall into chaos and conflict. Marriage is for the clan. Desire belongs in the Merciless One's precincts, not in the village street.”

The young woman burst into flamboyant sobbing, aware of how fetching she looked in her misery. Her doting friends led her away.

“Make the marriage, or do not,” said Marit to the clans. “But I advise you to make your decision quickly. Seal the agreement, or make a clean break and go your ways without blame. This is a small matter. Don't let it fester until it becomes a big one.”

In the end it took three days to get through all the cases people were willing to bring before her. In the afternoon of the third day Warning paced up to the rock and dipped her head, and Marit said to the assembly, “Now I must go.”

They offered their thanks and, as they would with a reeve, a bundle of provisions for her trouble. She wanted nothing else, nor did she expect it. They had given her their trust; there was no better gift.

She and Warning rode into the sky as the gathering watched her depart. Down to the shore they flew. Was that a pod of merlings skimming the ocean's surface just beyond Curling Beach, where the waves formed tunnels? Was that smoke coming from caves along the northern shore just beyond the the thin ridge that connected the peninsula to the mainland? Did an outpost of delvings make their home in these far reaches, as Fothino had implied?

It was as if she had entered the Hundred at long last and now must leave it to return to lands where rot had wormed its way deep into the heart of what had once been solid.

Our thanks to you, Guardian.

For days onward these words sustained her.

Y
OU COULD KNOW
a lot about the wildings' moods from their ears. As they walked along a deer track through one of the thick stands of woodland where Shai now felt safest, Brah's ears rose, flicked, and lowered halfway. Sis—Shai had started calling them Brah and Sis, names which amused them—was up in the trees, unseen, but she hooted softly. Brah brushed an ear with a hand, to say, “Do you hear?”

Shai did hear a sound like a murmur vibrating through the soles of his feet: They were coming to a big river.

They had trekked for over a month, first creeping and crawling through cultivated Herelia, stealing fruit from orchards and forgotten radishes from last season's gardens, and later hiking through forested hills until they reached what Shai figured was the Haldian plain. Twice, in the hills, they'd been caught out by local woodsmen, but both times he'd managed to drop to the
dirt before being spotted while the presence of a wilding caused the folk to stammer formal greetings and back away.

Brah tapped Shai's shoulder in the gesture that meant:
Move.

After a while, they halted at the woodland's edge and looked over cleared fields to a well-maintained road and, beyond it, a swift-flowing river. The current looked plenty strong and it seemed deep, too, cut by powerful waters with a hard blue tinge. Beyond the river lay more woodland, changing color as the afternoon shadows deepened, yet this wall of greenery made him uneasy: It was like seeing foothills and sensing that behind them lay mountains as mighty as the Spires, a wilderness impossible for humankind to penetrate.

Sis dropped out of the trees with a fearsome display of incisors. Her hands moved through gestures so fast that Brah flicked his ears in dismissal as if to say: “No use, he can't understand you.”

But Shai did understand. “Is that your home?”