Traitors' Gate (6 page)

Or was Eliar one of those who spoke words of regret but didn't really mean them if it meant he had to give up the privilege that came from another's sacrifice?

A line of light appeared ahead like a beacon. They crossed under a lintel and into a round chamber faced with marble. Kesh looked up into a dome whose height made him dizzy. A balcony rimmed the transition from chamber to dome; red-jacketed soldiers stood at guard beneath lamps hung from iron
brackets. The amount of oil hissing as it burned made it seem as if a hundred traitorous voices were whispering in the heavens.

A person dressed in a plain white-silk jacket and the loose belled trousers common to wealthy empire men sat in a chair carved of ebony. He was a man, but odd in his lineaments, his face looking not so much clean-shaven as soft like a woman's, unable to bear the youthful burden of a beard. Yet his posture was strong, not weak, and his hands had a wiry strength, as if he'd throttled his enemies without aid of a garrote.

He said, in the trade talk, to the soldier in the red jacket, “These are the two?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

His voice was a strangely weightless tenor, but his words rang with the expectation of authority. “I've interrogated four others already this morning, and they were not the ones I am seeking.”

The captain frowned in a measuring way, not an angry one. “What are your names?”

Eliar opened his mouth, and Kesh trod on his foot.

The soldier smiled, just a little.

The man in the chair spoke. “You are perhaps called Keshad? Sent to spy in the empire at the order of my cousin Anjihosh, son of Farutanihosh out of the barbarian princess?”

All the market training in the world, all those years as a slave, had not prepared Kesh for being called out deep in the bowels of an imperial palace by a man he did not know but who was, evidently, one of Captain Anji's royal cousins.

His surprise and silence was its own answer, even as his thoughts caught up with his shock and he cursed himself for a fool. He'd been warned about the empire's secret soldiers, known as the red hounds, fierce assassins and spies in their own right. Anji had warned him, yet it appeared their intelligence gathering was more formidable than anyone suspected.

Too late now.

When cornered, you can choose submission and surrender, or you can leap to the attack and hope the fierceness of your resistance will give you an opening for escape.

“Begging your pardon, Your Excellency. But if you and your brother have only recently defeated the Emperor Farazadihosh in battle, how comes it that you are privy so suddenly to the secrets that could have been brought south only by agents of the red hounds? Who are sworn to serve the emperor? Not his rivals.”

“An interesting question,” agreed the man, with a nod of acknowledgment.

“And furthermore,” continued Keshad, feeling really borne up now on a high tide of reckless anger at being trapped so cleanly and easily, all his hopes wrecked, “if it is true that the cousin of Farazadihosh has taken the throne, and therefore the right to be named as emperor, through victory on the field of battle, then how comes it that a brother of that man—as you imply yourself to be—remains alive? The heir of the ruling emperor has all his brothers and half brothers killed in order that none shall contest his right to the throne.”

Captain Sharahosh made a gesture, and four of the guardsmen on the balcony raised bows with arrows nocked. “You are imprudent in your speech,” said the captain, “more bold than is fitting.”

“Nay, let him speak,” said his master. “I would like to know how a man posing as a simple foreign merchant knows of the existence of the red hounds. For surely they are only known to those raised in the palace, and those who oversee the temple.”

“What is it worth to you?”

The prince's smile was brief and brutal. “What makes you think it is worth anything to me? It might be worth something to you.” His gaze flicked to Eliar. “These questions are meaningless, because a Ri Amrah walks beside you.”

“Ri Amarah,” said Eliar.

“Ri Amrahah? Ama-ra-ah? A-ma-rah. Ah. Is that the way your own people speak the word? It is recorded otherwise in our chronicles. Is it true you have horns? And sorcerous powers brought with you from over the seas beyond which lies your original home, from which you are now exiled? Is it true the women of your people keep your accounts books, which as you
must know goes against the will of the Shining One Who Rules Alone?”

“We do not worship that god.”

“There is only Beltak, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Shining One Who Rules Alone.”

“So you say.”

The prince's amusement reminded Keshad startlingly of Captain Anji's way of smiling: he was not one bit flustered by those who contradicted him. “I do not ‘say so.' I am repeating the truth.”

“Why on earth,” demanded Kesh, “would it be against the will of God for women to keep accounts? Women keep accounts as well, or as badly, as men do. How can anyone imagine otherwise?”

The prince clucked softly, still deigning to look amused. “No wonder the Hundred is in chaos. Can it be otherwise, with the rightful order turned on its head, and what should be forward facing backward?” He turned his gaze back to Eliar. “Unwrap your turban.”

“I will not!”

The prince gestured, and the other eight guardsmen raised their bows, targeting Eliar. “Unwrap your turban so I may satisfy my curiosity, or I will have you killed.”

Keshad wanted to take a step away, but he feared exposing himself as a coward.

“No.” Eliar lifted his chin, jaw clenched. “Kill me if you must. When I am dead you can assuage your curiosity, if the Hidden One allows it.”

The prince laughed, and the guardsmen lowered their bows. “You are the ones I seek. You are Keshad, without patronymic to identify your lineage, and you are Eliar, a son of the Ri Amarah, son of Isar, son of Bethen, son of Gever. Sent as spies into the empire, which is ruled by the rightful heir, my elder brother, Farujarihosh, may his reign be blessed by the glory of the King of Kings who rules over us.”

There followed a moment of complete silence, punctuated once by a drifting lilt of some kind of stringed music, cut off as
quickly as if a door had closed. The prince studied them. Eliar wiped his brow. Kesh was panting. How could it be he had come so far and risked so much, only to have it all snatched out of his hands?

Aui! Captain Anji had warned him. He'd understood the empire better than anyone, because he had spent his boyhood in the palace. He'd been willing to gamble with the lives of Keshad and Eliar, and the drovers and guardsmen, because it cost him nothing personally to make the attempt should it fail, and offered him benefit if they succeeded.

Fair enough. Kesh had accepted the bargain. No use blaming anyone now that disaster sat in a serviceable chair and stared him in the face, mulling over how best to use him.

To use him, not to kill him.

The prince nodded. “I am not the enemy of my cousin Anjihosh. His mother made plain her intent to remove him from the battles over the throne when she smuggled him out of the palace and sent him west to his uncle, the Qin var, the year Anjihosh gained twelve years of age. But that does not mean my brother and I can pretend he does not live and breathe. He remains the son of an emperor. You may see that this presents a problem for us. Yet we are peaceable men, seeking order, not war. Our father taught us that it is better to be prosperous than to quarrel. Thus, when my brother sired a son, I accepted the place foreordained for me, so that we could work together rather than sunder what would otherwise be strong.”

“You've been cut,” said Eliar, going pale about the mouth. “I've read such stories, but I didn't think—”

Cut?
What on earth did that mean?

The prince whitened about the mouth but spoke mildly enough that Kesh wondered if he were a man trained never to show overt anger. “We do not use such a crude term.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Excellency,” said Eliar. “I know no other. There is no word in the Hundred that describes . . .” He blushed.

“In the trade talk they might say gelded, but we have a more honorable term in our own language, which is more sophisticated than the crude jabber used in the marketplace.”

Gelded! Kesh had to actually stop his own hand from reaching down to pat his own privates, to reassure himself they were intact. “Captain Anji isn't the kind of man to accept a knife cut so as to live.”

“We have something else in mind. And you, Keshad of no patronymic and Eliar son of Isar of the Ri Amarah, are the ones who will deliver our offer to our cousin. You will accept the assignment?”

Kesh looked at Eliar. Eliar lifted a shoulder in a half shrug.

“What choice do we have?” Kesh said.

The prince lifted both hands. “You can be brought before the priests and accused and convicted of being spies. It is a choice. An honorable one in its own way, since an honorable man speaks truth at all times.”

“What punishment would we then face?” Kesh asked.

“A merciful one. A swift execution, rather than burning such as heretics and nonbelievers suffer. You, Keshad, in any case. I am not sure how the Ri Amarah would fare as those of his people who lived in these lands were banished from the empire one hundred and eighteen years ago because of their heretical beliefs. He might merit burning.”

“Yours is a cruel law,” said Eliar.

“Hsst!” Keshad kicked him.

“Men are cruel,” observed the prince without heat. “The law binds them in order to mitigate their cruelty. Such is the wisdom of Beltak.” He folded his hands on his lap. He was as sleek and well groomed as any treasured gelding, a strong work horse, and a handsome person in his own way, better-looking than Anji if measured by symmetry alone. “So. I have found you, and made my proposal. Do you accept? You two, to carry our offer of peace across the Kandaran Pass to our cousin in the Hundred.”

“This is no trick, no hidden poison or sorcery meant to kill him?”

“No trick, no poison or sorcery meant to kill him. It is an honest offer, the best one he will get.”

“What else can we do?” muttered Eliar.

Kesh had spent too much time as a debt slave to trust
masters and merchants who, given a monopoly, did not exploit their advantage. But that didn't mean a clever man couldn't gain advantage for himself on the sidelines as the powerful wrestled. “Very well, Your Excellency, we'll take your offer to the captain. What is it?”

The prince nodded at the captain, who gestured. The guardsmen on the balcony backed up out of sight. The captain crossed to a door set on the far side of the chamber. He opened it and went through, leaving the prince—apparently unarmed—with Kesh and Eliar and their swords.

“So do you have horns?” asked the prince in a pleasant voice. “I've always wondered.”

Eliar flushed.

The door opened and a woman entered the room. She was veiled, perceived mostly as cloth obscuring both face and form, yet she walked with confidence and carried a short lacquered stick with a heavy iron knob weighting one end. She was short and, it seemed, a bit stout, but vital and energetic. As soon as the door was shut behind her by an unseen hand, she pulled off the veil that concealed her face and tucked it carelessly through her belt.

The hells!

She was an older woman, not yet elderly, and she had a face so distinctively Qin that Keshad at once felt he was back riding with Qin soldiers. She circled the two young men as a wolf circles a pair of trapped bucks as it decides whether it is hungry enough to go to the bother of killing them. Then she turned on the prince.

“These are fearsome spies?” The trade talk fell easily from her lips.

“An exaggeration, I admit,” the prince said with a careless smile that had something of a scorpion's sting at its tip. “Do not trouble me with your contentious nature.”

“You will be glad to be rid of me.”

“I need have nothing to do with you. From what I hear, the women's quarter will be glad to be rid of you after all these years. My brother has thankfully decreed there are to be no
more foreign brides, only civilized women, admitted to the palace quarter.”

“He says so now. But wait until your brother, or his heir, or that heir's son, sees benefit in contracting a foreign alliance. When the gold, or the land, or the horses, are too tempting to refuse. Then your words will change and your hearts will turn, and some poor young woman will be ripped from her family's hearth and thrust into a cage, as I was.”

Eliar gasped, as if the words had been aimed at him.

The prince rose, his eyes so tightened at the corners that Kesh supposed him to be very angry. But he spoke in the blandest of voices, addressing Kesh and Eliar. “This woman carries our offer to Anjihosh. You will escort her and those attendants she brings with her. Be assured that agents of my choosing will ride with you over the Kandaran Pass. If you do not deliver her safely, they will kill you.”

Kesh looked at Eliar; the young Silver was his only ally. “Yes, Your Excellency. Can you tell me who we have the honor of escorting?”

“And idiots, too, in the bargain,” she said. She walked to the door, rapped on it with the iron knob of the stick, and, as soon as it was opened, vanished within.

“You claim to be a believer,” said the prince, “because of which I will offer you a piece of advice. That woman is a serpent, with a poisoned tongue and a barbarian's lack of honor. Do not trust her.”

“That's Captain Anji's mother, isn't it?” As soon as Eliar spoke the words, Keshad realized she could be no one else.

“The palace is rid of her at last,” said the prince. “As for you two, should either of you set foot in the empire again, you'll find your lives swiftly forfeit.” He clapped his hands thrice.

The door opened, and the captain strode swiftly out, posture erect and shoulders squared, like a man about to take his place in the talking line and perform one of the tales, a martial story told with defiance and bold gestures. These people knew what they were doing, entirely unlike Kesh and Eliar, their expedition begun as a toss of the sticks and exposed so easily
Kesh felt the shame of it. Now they were delegated to be mere escorts to a bellicose woman being returned in disgrace to her son.