Traitors' Gate (88 page)

Eihi!

Was she
angry
?

She raised her chin proudly, touched her hair as if to make sure the hair-sticks and combs were all in place, not that any man ever looked beyond her remarkable beauty to find fault in the details, and swept grandly off the porch and over to Anji's side. The baby wanted his father; he always did; but for once Anji did not cater to his infant whims. He led Mai, with the baby, to the curtain.

“Can't I go with you, Mistress?” sniveled Sheyshi.

Ignoring Sheyshi, Mai turned to Tuvi with a parting blow. “Tuvi-lo, please accompany Master O'eki, Master Keshad, and Miravia to the naya store houses. I thank you.”

Cursed woman!

Priya came out from the antechamber. “Ah, Sheyshi, just who I was looking for. There is no hand for mending as clever as yours, Sheyshi. You have the neatest stitch of anyone in the household. One of the master's robes has a tear right where a perfect butterfly is embroidered. Can you fix it?” She led Sheyshi away on this innocuous errand.

“Do we need the clerks?” asked the chief as O'eki fetched the accounts books. He indicated the young ones, who were sitting in the shade near the kitchen women and sipping cordial.

“I am competent to deal with the books,” said Miravia. “I go the warehouses every day to discuss household requirements and cross-check the accounts books in Mai's name.”

The chief nodded at her. Did his gaze linger? Did she look at him a moment longer than was entirely necessary?

They walked, Chief Tuvi at the van, Master O'eki and Miravia in the middle, and Kesh fuming at the rear, to the warehouse complex built adjacent to the militia encampment and ringed by the same earthen walls. A level road had been cleared from the complex down to the strand, to make it easy to move supplies up or the volatile oil of naya down. The warehouse factor's greeting made it clear Miravia was not only familiar to him but had ingratiated herself. He was a middle-aged man. Did he admire her, too?

His counting room sat in the center of the warehouse complex. He took books from a chained cabinet and escorted them to a pair of low store houses dug into the earth so that, in case of accident, fire could not spread. Guards stood outside the double-chained and bolted gates, which the factor unlocked. They descended an earthen ramp to a musty dirt floor; a wide corridor extended into darkness. Each brick-walled storage chamber had a separate entrance off this corridor.

“Each vessel is numbered according to the store house, the chamber within the store house, and its place within that chamber,” the factor was explaining to Tuvi, who carried a lantern in each hand. “Mistress Miravia and I crosscheck each week when we do a full accounting. We maintain a standing order with two Ri Amarah houses in Olossi, who take best-quality water white for medicinal purposes.” He manfully did not look at Miravia as he said this, although they all knew what she was: her brushstroke eyes, lighter skin and square face betrayed her origins. “Otherwise, however, oil of naya is only conveyed to other militia encampments and to Argent Hall, by ship or via reeve flights. We control the naya trade, no one else. Mistress Miravia, will you mark off the vessels to be shipped?”

She took a lantern from Tuvi and moved into the first chamber.

“Chief, I would like to show you the locked vault where we
keep the water white. We lost a single pot of water white two months ago to theft, so we've had to increase our security.” The factor led O'eki and Tuvi into the gloom of the back aisles.

Tuvi's voice drifted back. “To theft? How can that be?”

Keshad drifted into the narrow chamber behind Miravia, who hung the lantern from a hook and began to mark a manifest as she logged the clay vessels. Such homely pots, to contain such treasure. The air was very close and the grit made him blink.

“Don't you worry the flame will light the oil and make everything burn?” he asked.

The scarf on her head could not contain her hair. Wisps trailed down the curve of her neck. Her profile, illuminated by the lantern's glow, had a glorious sheen; her eyelashes shadowed her dark eyes; her hand brushed steadily at the manifest.

“Why are you staring at me?” she said in a low voice, although she was not looking at him.

He had meant to be charming and patient, but what was the point?

“Because I love you.”

Still
she did not look! Perhaps her brushstroke stuttered; her hand, holding the ink bowl, might have trembled. “You can't love me. You don't know me. You must think you love me, and it must be some story you have told yourself about who I am that you love. But it can't be me.”

“I saw you that day in the courtyard in Olossi and ever after I can only think of you.”

Still writing, she licked her lips. The moisture made her lips glow, as kisses might. “That means you want to devour me, not that you love me. There's an easy way to slake that thirst, isn't there? When a pair of young people wish to devour each other but are already contracted to wed other people because of clan alliances? Then they go to the temple and slake their thirst there? There's a small temple dedicated to Ushara here. We could meet there—and then I could stop—” Ink spattered; she ceased writing.

He was shaking as he took a step toward her. “Then you could stop what?”

“I could stop thinking of you all the time!” She stoppered the inkpot, shoulders heaving.

“You love me!”

She turned, shoulders stiff and lips pressed together with anger. When she spoke, her words emerged like daggers as she glared at him. “I don't know you. I can't love you. Anyway, Mai wants me to marry Chief Tuvi. He's a good man. Why should you suppose I want to go off with you just because of wanting sex, and leave behind my dearest sister who is my only family?”

The lantern's flame made her skin gleam.

“I could be your family!”

“Just the two of us? And once the devouring urge is slaked, what is to keep two people together? Mai will always be my sister, because we are pledged in our hearts.”

“So you think! My mother's sisters sold me and my little sister quickly enough when my mother and father died! They felt no sentimental obligation to their niece and nephew, although we were only twelve and ten, mere children, helpless to save ourselves.”

Her mouth parted as she leaned toward him, genuinely shocked. “You were sold? As a slave?”

Like a good merchant, he sensed the weakness in her negotiating position and pursued it. “We were sold into debt slavery on the auction block in Gadria's Oval, which you might know is more commonly called Flesh Alley.”

Now he had her sympathy! He saw it in her bold eyes and clear expression. In the way she paused before she replied, as if overwhelmed by pity at the thought of two weeping children. “Is it true, then, as I have heard, that you yourself sold captives into slavery? Young girls? And used the coin to buy yourself free?”

She might as well have slapped him! “People sell slaves or debt all the time!”

“That doesn't make it right.”

“Only you Silvers say so!”

She was tall and magnificent in a taloos of dark silk, color impossible to distinguish in the dim light. “We are called Ri
Amarah, Master Keshad. To call us Silvers is to insult our men and ignore our women, for the women do not wear the silver bracelets.”

She was breathing as hard as if she'd been running, and she blinked multiple times, as if fighting tears or anger or some other mad impulse. “I don't like what you have done. You've selfishly traded in lives to benefit yourself, and without consideration of its effect on others.”

“You think those girls would have lived a better life in Mariha? Here they can hope for a bit of respect.”

“That's the story you tell yourself! If you say it enough, you may come to believe, and then you can sleep peacefully at night despite the harm you've caused others.”

The voices of the men approached down the length of the storehouse.

“You Ri Amarah can't walk into the Hundred and tell us what our obligations are,” he said in a furious whisper.

Her chin quivered angrily.

“But!” He ran a hand through his hair, trying to sort out thoughts and words. Her gaze fixed on the movement of his hand in his curls and her eyes widened with that glazed inward look women got when thinking of pleasure. “For you, Miravia, I pledge never to sell another slave, their body, their debt, their labor. Ever. Out of respect for you.”

With a shaking hand she unhooked the lantern and, turning her back on him, spoke in so low a voice he was sure he had not heard right. “I will go to Ushara's temple tonight at the sixth bell.”

She walked around him and out into the corridor, and he was too dizzy and his thoughts too scattered to move after her.

The factor stuck his head into the storeroom and said, “Master Keshad?”

“Yes! Yes, I am. Wagons.”

“I'm sorry?”

The captain had assigned him a task! “We'll need wagons, with plenty of padding to cushion the vessels. I want to be done loading by nightfall so the ship is ready to depart at dawn, just as the captain has ordered.”

I want to be done by nightfall. By sixth bell.

Only because he had years of experience separating his passions from the work he must do could he concentrate enough to supervise the bringing of wagons, the padding of wagons, the lading of wagons, the hauling of wagons down the long smooth road to the strand. A ship was already fitted with cradles for oil transport; its captain had hauled oil of naya, olive oil, and fish oil in plenty over the last months.

Down at the strand, other ships were being prepared for horse and troop transport. In the interests of time the entire Qin regiment was to be conveyed over the sea to Olossi despite their superstitious fear of water. But the weather was fair; the winds were mild; as the heat built, the days flattened into a monotony of predictable weather perfect for long journeys undertaken at speed over the gentle waters of the Olo'o Sea.

As dusk settled, Keshad trudged uphill with the last wagon to get a final load. The dray beasts were coated with the fine pale loess dust that covered everything in the Barrens. The carter, a voluble fellow, was discussing a recent hooks-and-ropes tournament held as part of the Breaking Ground Festival, in which a local group of laborers had defeated all comers, even several teams made up of young militiamen.

“Them Qin soldiers, they're taking to the game right enough,” he opined, “but it'll take them a few more seasons before they can really get the nuance, neh? Did you see the new fields?”

“No,” said Kesh, his attention attracted by a pair of men dressed in the Sirniakan style—flowing robes over loose pantaloons—who were striding out from the settlement. “What new fields?”

“It'll be ten years before we've really got irrigation enough to feed ourselves, but at the festival we harrowed five fields. Rice will be planted with the rains. Then we'll see how those irrigation channels work, eh? I tell you, best thing I done was to come out here and establish a branch clan of carters. I had my doubts, with the militia running things, but Mistress Mai made sure we have our own council.”

“Was there any doubt you would not have your own council?”

“With all these soldiers, we might just have been run as part of the army, neh? Not that I resent them, mind you. Two years ago I thought my clan was done for. We had no work. The roads weren't safe. Now, we're prospering.”

The Sirniakans were gaining, obviously in pursuit. Keshad swung his legs to the side and leaped off the slow-moving wagon. “Go ahead. Just one more load.”

The man turned. “I don't trust those Sirniakans, I don't mind saying. The Qin, they're all right, but those others—Aui! Very odd birds, if you ask me.”

“I'll head them off. I don't want them to know where we store the oil of naya, neh?”

He and the carter exchanged a friendly nod as the wagon moved on. Keshad waited on the road, cursed sure they were after him. They reached him at last, faces slick with sweat.

“Master Keshad?” asked the one holding the ebony baton that Keshad recognized as the symbol of the man's authority as a slave factor.

“I am Master Keshad. What do you require?”

“Your attendance, Master.”

The prospect of being summoned to an interview with Anji's mother did not please him. He retained a visceral memory of Anji's hand clutching his throat; indeed, he could not stop himself from touching his throat with a hand. But he'd accomplished the task set him by the captain, so there was no use delaying the inevitable.

Unlike the carter and the laborers with whom he had worked all day, the Sirniakan slaves did not speak as they walked to the settlement gates and up along the market avenue. As night fell, the market arcades were shuttered. From behind curtains and closed compound doors lifted conversation, laughter, song; an argument; a baby's squall. A dog barked to mark their passage. Up they walked past a newly built Lantern's accounting house. The council square had been expanded to include the stone walls originally built to house Kotaru's temple, which had been rededicated in a larger space outside the settlement walls near the militia camp. A wooden gate with three lintels marked the
domain of Ilu the Herald; it had not changed except for the addition of a thatched open shelter with cots where passing envoys could sleep. A flat boulder so deeply sunk in the earth that no one had bothered to excavate it offered a resting place for Hasibal, the Formless One; and in the fading light Kesh saw fresh offerings of flowers laid in a pattern that abruptly reminded him of the offerings Mai and her people made at the altar dedicated to their god, the Merciful One.

The two slaves climbed the steps and passed into the outer audience chamber without removing their outdoor shoes, but Kesh stopped and took off his boots.

“Hurry!” snapped the factor.