Traitors' Gate (58 page)

“A demon? I don't know about that, but I've seen a Guardian order the deaths of many people, most innocent and some criminals. As for the gods-touched, with my own eyes I saw her captain kill a young gods-touched woman named Navita. With my ears, trapped in a cell, I heard her order soldiers to kill others whose only crime in her eyes was in being gods-touched.”

“So besides inflicting harm on humankind, this cloaked one has ordered the death of demons. Ones like you.”

“I'm not a demon! Among my people, demons are—” The word in his grandmother's tongue, the old speech of Kartu Town that had been outlawed in favor of the trade speech Kartu's conquerors preferred, had no corresponding word:
evil
. “Demons are beings who are corrupt in their heart, in their flesh, in their spirit.”

Her frown cut him. That quickly, he disliked her. “Outlanders have a perilous and imperfect understanding of the world, it is true. I suppose that is why the Four Mothers did their best to protect the Hundred against the flood of unwanted humanity that must continually wash in on the tide of years. Eight varieties of children were born to the Mothers: firelings, wildings, delvings, merlings, lendings, dragonlings, demons, and humankind.
Once they were equal in numbers, and each had their role to play in the life of the Hundred: humankind, with their busy hands; the merlings in the sea and the delvings in the stone; the lendings to walk the boundary between earth and sky, and the wildings to tend the net that binds the Hundred, all that lives and grows and changes. The firelings, who are the thread that binds spirit and flesh, the keepers of the Spirit Gate. The dragonlings have vanished and are seen no more, while demons are rarest of all. It's true demons are often born to humans, and like humans may be bold or timid, cruel or kind, silent or talkative, hungry or satiated. They even look like humans. But you are veiled to my Guardian's sight. Therefore you are a demon. Has no one told you?” Her smile mocked him.

He said nothing.

“Do you even know the tales of the Hundred, outlander?”

“One of Hasibal's pilgrims taught me a few refrains,” he said, thinking of Eridit.

“Why do youths like you blush when thinking of sex?” she said with a snort.

His flush deepened as heat scalded his cheeks. “How did—?”

She was a sarcastic old woman, the worst kind. “Easy to know such signs when you have lived as long as I have. Listen, boy, the wildings recognize a demon when they see one.”

“Is that why they rescued me?” He gestured more broadly, to show the conclave that he was addressing them, not the cloak. “Were Brah and Sis out looking for demons to rescue?”

He waited as the old woman talked in gestures to the conclave.

She laughed curtly. “It seems that, like many youthful ones, they ranged out to have a little fun. An adventure. Instead, they discovered humans up to worse trouble even than usual. And they discovered Guardians killing demons, which runs quite against what the gods intended. The justice of the Guardians was meant only for humankind. That's why they brought you back. To save a cousin. They would have saved others, had they been able to do so. The elders tell me they are curious as to why you—an outlander—were spared when other demons were killed.”

The stars burned, distant lamps illuminating the mercy of the Merciful One, which is infinite. The wildings moved closer, more of them coming into view within the aura of the tapers.

“My brother Harishil is a Guardian. He wears the cloak of Twilight. Night kept me as a hostage, because Hari does not cooperate with her as she wishes him to do. Otherwise, she would have killed me as she did the others. I came to the north to find him, and he tried to get me out of the camp of Lord Radas's army before one of the other cloaks caught me. He knew they were killing those who are veiled to their sight. Hari got me smuggled out. How the rebels who took me in got ambushed I don't know. I really don't. But Night and her soldiers caught me. They took me to Wedrewe. Brah and Sis found me there.”

“How did you escape Wedrewe?”

“In the back of a wagon of corpses.”

“They say you wish to go to a reeve hall. What will you do, if they convey you to a reeve hall? Where will you go? Back to the land you came from?”

He shook his head. “Kartu Town is no longer my home. Maybe that's the secret of demons, that they have no true home, always wandering.”

She laughed. “Not so witless after all. Why do you want to go to the reeves? Where do you expect the reeves to take you?”

He folded his hands in his lap, thinking of the demon who had taken the form of Cornflower and murdered Qin soldiers. Thinking of angry Yordenas, and that pervert Bevard. Thinking of Lord Radas's poisonous voice, and Night's terrible, twisted heart. Even Hari, torn between honor and fear. “I cannot trust you, because you are a Guardian.”

On her lap a snake raised its hooded head and hissed softly, but a rustling sounded among the branches as the wildings objected, and the snake subsided at the touch of her hand.

“You say so, to me? I, who am the last true Guardian?”

“That means nothing to me,” said Shai. “I'm just an outlander. All I can judge is by what I have seen the cloaks do.”

“Enough!” She spoke past Shai, addressing the conclave. “I came in respect and in humility, cousins, and now I am to be subjected to this outlander's insults? What do you want of me? I beg you, you who know the map of the Hundred better than any others can, all its forgotten caves and old ruins and secret glades and hidden valleys, grant me at least this much, that you tell me of some haven where the people I have sheltered can live in peace.”

“No one can hope to live in peace,” cried Shai, “until Lord Radas's cruel army and the cloak of Night's twisted plans are defeated! Hide if you wish. But in the end, if you do nothing, they will find you anyway. And then there will be no one left to turn to.”

The ears of the elder wildings flicked high and flattened low, a sign of displeasure, but he plunged on.

“I must leave the Wild. I did not betray the rebels, nor will I ever betray the wildings, because they saved me and have shown me hospitality. But I must go to join those who fight Lord Radas's army. To say more would be to betray their secrets. Put me on the road to a reeve hall, or a port, any place not overrun by Lord Radas's army. All of this I have said already, a hundred times. What else must I say?”

She watched the elders, then spoke. “Where did Lord Radas's army come from?”

Startled, he tugged on an ear. “I truly don't know. That all happened long before I came to the Hundred. There's a camp in Walshow. Isn't that in the north? And the town called Wedrewe, in Herelia. That's some kind of headquarters.”

“The wildings have never before involved themselves in human quarrels. Why should they start now?”

“If they don't wish to, they can let me go and go back to guarding their boundaries! Maybe that will protect them for now. But in the end, it's like hiding your eyes while the sand of the desert engulfs you. That you refuse to look doesn't drive away the storm.”

All at once he was seized by such frustration that he feared he would leap off the netting just to relieve the pressure. He
groped in the pouch Sis had woven for him, and withdrew a small block of deadwood, caressing it and listening to what it told him. Its glossy grain shimmered in the tapers' light. He unsheathed his knife and began to carve, revealing a horse's muzzle as the conclave watched in a kind of silence. They weren't voicing sounds, but they were speaking with their hands in the most ancient language of the Hundred, the one he did not know.

“How old are you, Holy One?” he asked. “You look older than the cloak of Night. Is she also one of the first—the true—Guardians?”

“How can she be, if I am the last of the true Guardians?”

“She told me she was responsible for the greatest act of justice known in the Hundred.” He shaved down the slope of a long, elegant neck. “I may only be an outlander, who knows the tales poorly, but isn't the tale of the Guardians the most important tale sung in the Hundred?”

“According to humans.”

“It's humans I've walked among, demon that I am. And in the tale of the Guardians, isn't it the orphaned girl who prays for peace to return to the land? Isn't she the one the gods listened to?”

The tapers illuminated the Guardian's aged face and bitter smile. “ ‘In the times to come the most beloved among the guardians will betray her companions.' Only we did not realize then, that those of us first raised as Guardians would not remain Guardians forever. That some would grow weary and ask to be released, that one might become corrupt and need to be removed. That new faces—new guardians—would rise wrapped in the cloaks. And when she whose pleas the gods heard and responded to became a Guardian in her turn—for did she not offer her life for the sake of justice?—how could any of us have supposed she was the one who would in the end betray us?”

“Night is that girl? The very orphaned girl from the tale?”

Wind rattled in the branches. The wildings listened intently, as if by listening they spun yet more detail onto the map of the Hundred, the unfolding tale of the land. The cloak of Earth did not speak, and for the first time Shai felt pity for her, because
although she was veiled to him, as he was veiled to her, her expression spoke as any face might: it seemed to him that it was an inconsolable grief mixed with furious regret that stilled her tongue. To be betrayed by the one we have loved best is the worst pain.

“There's a way to kill her and the others, isn't there?” he asked softly as an elaborate fold of feathered wings came to life beneath his knife. “To take their cloak and pass it to a new person. Not the Guardian council, five to remove one, but a different way. A way no one is supposed to know.”

A sigh fell like wind through the wildings.

“Tell me what it is,” said Shai, “and then maybe I—or others like me—can stop these cloaks from killing demons and innocents. And if that's what the wildings want, that demons no longer get killed, then perhaps in exchange they'll tell you what you need to know, about a haven for your people.”

She bowed her head. Many among the wilding conclave flicked their ears, but whether to show approval or hostility he could not tell.

Without looking at him, speaking into the darkness and the silent stars, she said, “There is a way.”

M
AI BIDED HER
time and made her plans, and early in the Month of the Horse when Anji returned flushed with pride over a successful negotiation with the lendings for breeding stock, she struck.

“I would have liked to travel to the Lend with you, Anji,” she said in the privacy of their innermost courtyard as she poured tea and flirted with him. He was freshly bathed, wearing a silk robe and soft slippers and lounging on pillows. “I am shocked beyond measure that you bargained such a poor deal.”

“You mean when their headwoman offered ten horses in exchange for Tohon, I should have taken the horses?”

She laughed. “Did that really happen?”

“They remembered and valued him from their last encounter. But you would have approved. I said ten mares wasn't nearly enough, and they wouldn't go any higher.”

“I suppose you did as well as you could. I would have held out for one horse in exchange for each lethra of oil of naya.”

“No doubt you would have. I knew I was overmatched the moment she started negotiations by offering for Tohon.”

“Then why didn't you take me? You've taken me on a circuit of Olo'osson now.”

“I control Olo'osson. I cannot take my troops into the Lend without violating border rights, and I will not risk you and Atani out in such territory with no proper protection. I do not know what manner of creatures the lendings are.”

“Except that they value men like Tohon.”

“Yes. It was better to pay a worse price and not take the risk that they would value
you
.”

He was in a good mood. The sun was shining over blooming troughs of gold butter-bright and blue heaven's-kiss; her favorite white and blue falling-water tumbled out of pots hung from the eaves of the little gazebo under whose shade they rested.

“It's almost around again to Wakened Ox. Time for our monthly trip to Astafero.”

“You are eager to see Miravia,” he said, humoring her.

“I have been thinking, Anji.” She sipped at her tea, composing herself. “Since our circuit of Olo'osson back in the Ibex and Fox Months, I've been in correspondence with many village and town councils. I attend Olossi's council meetings every week. The question that most troubles people is the situation in the north. Naturally people fear the Star of Life army will return to Olo'osson.”

He nodded.

“But the question of the assizes also troubles people. Two generations ago the Guardians presided over the assizes—”

“So folk say. Whether the tales are true, we cannot know.”

“The Lantern's hierophants have shown me records held in Sapanasu's temple recording assizes a hundred and more years ago. They were presided over by Guardians.”

“Or folk calling themselves Guardians, pretending to a tradition they believed was inherited from even more ancient times. Maybe it's true; maybe it isn't.”

“Yes, exactly,” she said, more tartly than she meant to, “but they believe it, and they are not content with the manner in which their assizes are now conducted. Should reeves preside, or are they only meant to patrol and bring in people accused of committing crimes? Should councils preside, or may they be disposed to judge according to what benefits those with the most wealth and power?”

He set down the cup, his expression as smooth as the balmy sky, untroubled by cloud or wind. The cool weather of the early dry season was passing off and it was getting hotter each day heading into the last season of the year, Furnace Sky.