Shadow Gate (15 page)

“What have we found?” Mai asked finally.

“A treasure! Six of the scrolls are written in script unknown to me. They might be anything. But the other six are discourses and threads. I have not touched holy books since the day our temple was burned and we were taken away by the raiders.” She wiped tears from her cheek. “I thank you, Mistress. This treasure brings me great joy.”

Mai sniffled, wiping away her own tears. “We'll make an altar. You can teach me all the holy prayers.”

“We will not build an altar in the house of the Ri Amarah.”

“No,” said Mai with a frowning laugh. “I suppose we will not.”

The brush paused halfway down her length of hair.

“Mistress, what altar will you build?” Sheyshi asked. “Can I pray there? I know the words ‘the Merciful One is my lamp and my refuge.' But that's all I know.”

Priya touched each of the scrolls in turn, as if she could absorb their holy essence through her skin. “Of course you will pray, Sheyshi. The Merciful One hears the prayers of all people.”

“Even women?” Sheyshi whispered. “Even slaves?”

“Especially women. Especially slaves.” Priya sat back. She had grown thin. In Kartu she had been more robust, favored with extra food in her capacity as nursemaid to the house's favored daughter, Mai. But the long journey had whittled at her flesh to expose the ridges and hollows of bone.

“You must eat more, Priya,” said Mai, scooting forward to touch one of Priya's hands with her own. “And rest. I could not bear to lose you.”

“I will recover, little flower. Do not fear for me. You are the one who must be careful to eat plenty, now that you are with child. Look. Here comes Miravia.”

The guesthouse attached to the Ri Amarah compound was separated from the street by gates, and further separated from the main compound of the family by another set of gates.

Miravia entered, ran over, and kicked off her sandals before she dropped down beside Mai on a neighboring pillow. “Sheyshi, what a lovely brushing you've done!” The young slave dipped her head shyly, smiling at this praise. “Priya, you look tired. I will take Mai into the house for supper and afterward I will bring a tray of food for you and Sheyshi myself. That way you can rest.”

“Let me put your hair up, Mistress,” said Sheyshi.

Sheyshi braided Mai's thick black hair into the loose arrangement which she then twisted and bound up on Mai's head with combs and hair sticks, while Mai and Miravia discussed the shopping expedition and the scrolls.

“Don't mention that they are holy scrolls,” said Miravia, with a look of alarm as if she thought invisible spirits might be eavesdropping. “They might make you get rid of them.”

“Even if we just keep them here in the guest house with our other belongings?”

“It would be better if you did not mention it. Might you teach me the reading of the script, Priya?”

“Certainly,” said Priya. “Must you ask permission from your elders?”

“I won't, for they would forbid it.”

“Then not in this house. It would not be fair recompense for their hospitality.”

Miravia sighed, and made no reply. She took Mai's hand. “Come, Mai.”

They slipped on sandals and walked to the inner gate. “My mother is particularly keen to talk to you. She wants to know what you thought of our markets.”

“I don't think it's right you're not allowed out to shop! Yet you visit the prison!”

“To bring food to indigent prisoners. That they cannot forbid me to do because of our obligation to act for justice and mercy where we can. But only adult women are allowed to go out into the marketplace.”

“And even then, with a veil covering your face!”

“Mai, let it go, I beg you.”

They had reached the gate. Mai embraced her friend as they waited for the mechanism to be drawn back from the other side. “I'll say nothing more. But I have my own plans. You'll see.”

A
FTER SUPPER
, M
AI
accompanied Miravia on her lamp-lighting rounds.

“Do you miss him?” Miravia asked as she stood on tiptoe, pressing a lit taper to a wick. With a hiss, flame brightened.

Mai closed and latched the glass door. “Yes. But I don't like to think about him. What if he is killed? That would be too painful to bear, wouldn't it?”

“If you cared for someone, it would. Otherwise maybe it would be a relief, wouldn't it?”

Her voice had such a finely grained dark tone that Mai touched her hand, to let her know she was not alone. “When my uncle Girish died, I think everyone wept only because they were ashamed that they were glad he was gone. But people will feel relief, if a death lightens their burden.”

Miravia wiped her cheek with the back of a hand, but she did not reply. She walked on to the next lamp in the vast rectangular courtyard of the women's side of the Ri Amarah compound. Older children not yet sent to bed played in the open space, shrieking and giggling as they dodged around benches and the twisting forms of pruned trees. A hearth glowed in the kitchens, and beside it a pair of old women prepared pots of steaming herbs. At a raised trough, chatting girls scoured dishes. Most of the
married women had gone to the innermost apartments, leaving the supervision of the courtyard to the unmarried women and elderly widows.

“What if another's misfortune brings relief to you?” asked Miravia as she lit a lamp, keeping her face turned away from Mai. “If something you never wanted is made impossible through no effort of yours, only through trouble afflicting others?”

“What happened?” asked Mai as she latched the tiny glass door. They stood in shadow far from the running children, the clatter and laughter in the kitchen, and the intermittent cries and complaints of younger children being coaxed to bed in the sleeping rooms. “No one can hear us here. You know I'll keep secret any word you tell to me, Miravia.”

A bench stretched below the lamp, the polished wood gleaming under the illumination. Miravia sank down, and Mai sat beside her, taking her friend's hands between her own.

“A courier came from Clan Hall to Argent Hall, a reeve bearing letters. One of the Ri Amarah houses in Toskala paid to have a message delivered to us. High Haldia is fallen—” Her voice broke on a caught breath.

“Yes, I heard that, too.”

“I spoke once to you of the young scholar it was arranged I would marry. I should have gone a year ago but the roads weren't safe. To High Haldia. Where their house is.”

“Oh, no,” murmured Mai.

“A few survived the assault, and fled to Toskala with their news. But he's dead. Mai, he's dead. And I'm relieved to know it. I never even met him. It's just I didn't want to marry someone I never met and never knew. But you did.”

“I always knew I would marry someone my father chose for me.”

“He didn't choose your husband.”

“No,” said Mai with a strangled laugh. “He was very
upset when Anji picked me. Father had no choice then. No more than I did. In Kartu, you could not say no to the Qin.”

The lamplight made Miravia's face ghostly and vulnerable. “Where did you find the grace in your heart to accept it? And not fight it?”

“The only place to find happiness is inside. In the house I grew up in, the ones who fought to no purpose, who thrashed and flailed like Mei and Ti, they were the unhappiest ones. Even Uncle Hari didn't know how to be happy even though everyone loved him because he was so funny and charming. But a worm gnawed at him. He was dissatisfied. He never learned how to use his anger to build, only to tear down.”

“How did you learn?”

Mai shrugged, amused at herself and saddened by Miravia's distress. “Maybe because I am like my father in wanting to control things. So if I can control myself, then no one can touch that part of me. That's my garden, where my spirit rests.”

“My spirit flies in the mountains and fields and forests,” said Miravia with a grimace, “or it would, if I could ever go there. They'll just arrange another marriage for me.”

Mai felt her trembling. She kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Maybe you'll be fortunate, as I was.”

“Maybe so,” she said without meaning it. “But there was talk, before the scholar, of an old rich man who's already buried three wives, and needs a fresh young one. A lecherous goat!”

“Miravia!”

“It's true. You know how they talk around what they don't want said. Hearing nothing ill means there is nothing good. If a man is rich enough, he can buy what he wants. He has a daughter fit for Eliar, an excellent match for our family, but Eliar refused the match the first time it was offered two years ago because the agreement was for him to marry the daughter and I to marry to the
old man. Eliar knew I would hate living trapped in Nessumara in a house said to be much stricter than our own. So he refused to make the bargain, knowing how I would hate it.”

“How can a house be stricter than this one, with a men's court and a women's court?”

“Most everyone here is related, so we have more freedom of movement between the two courts than may be obvious to you. In a very strict house, all movement is regulated, and women who have married in especially are confined to the women's court and to a private family chamber where their husband meets with them. It's like a prison.” The last lights in the weaving hall were extinguished, and the counting rooms went dark. “Even here, it was more informal when Eliar and I were little. But in the last few years we've had marriages, apprentices, and fostered girls brought in to complicate matters. And we absorbed a smaller cousin house from Horn that was driven out.”

“Driven out?”

Miravia walked on to the next lamp, opened and lit it, and gravely regarded the light as it flared. “In fire and blood. Many in the Hundred still consider us outlanders although my people have lived in this land for a hundred years. We are honest merchants. Sometimes there is resentment, because we look different and don't worship their gods. Because we are wealthy, I suppose. Anyway, our house is now large enough that it will branch soon, sons and cousins splitting off to make their own house. Not like that rich old man in Nessumara, who clutches all the generations beholden to him in his fist.”

“Maybe he found another wife when he heard you were betrothed to the scholar.”

“Maybe he did.” Miravia rose, shaking out her loose trousers and the calf-length pleated jacket worn over all. “Poor young scholar. I wonder how he died.”

“In fire and blood,” said Mai, remembering how the tents had burned outside Olossi, remembering the rising
and falling whoops of men too weakened by burns for full-throated screams. She let her tears flow, knowing better than to suck them down. There was nothing shameful in sorrow.

“I've made you gloomy, too,” said Miravia, hugging her. “How dare I! I'm sorry.”

“It would be worse not to think about it. But we lived and won, and they lost and died.”

“Thanks to Captain Anji and his company. And that reeve my friend Jonit cannot stop talking about.”

“Marshal Joss is charming and handsome, I'll have you know, although he is pretty old.”

Miravia laughed. In lamplight, the courtyard glowed. Mai brushed the last glistening tear from her friend's face. She wanted to assure Miravia that all would be well, but who could ever know? It was better to be honest, and remain silent.

Several women emerged from the weaving hall, walking the length of the porch around to the living quarters, where they disappeared inside. Girls carried heavy ceramic pots on trays across the courtyard and went in after them. Miravia tipped back her head and inhaled. “Ah! Can you smell it? Warmed cordial.”

“It must be time for me to return to the guesthouse.”

“Yes, it is, just when families gather in the evenings to exchange their news of the day.” She snuffed out the taper. “I'm sorry you always have to go back to the guesthouse alone.”

“Never apologize to me, Miravia. That you are here is what makes my days tolerable.”

“A sad tale, to be sure, if listening to me complain is the best part of your day!”

Companionably, they strolled across the courtyard on one of the gravel paths, brushing against the waxy leaves and soft petals of night-blooming paradom. Fumes from the hearth fires and the lingering smells of clove-spiced meats and sharp khaif roiled out as they passed the kitchens.

“Miravia? Is that Mai, with you?” The mother of Eliar and Miravia crunched toward them down an intersecting path. “Come with me, Mai, if you will. Miravia, please fetch warmed cordial and a pot of khaif and bring it to Grandfather's rooms.”

Miravia gave her mother a startled look, but she released Mai's hand and hurried off.

Puzzled, Mai asked, “Isn't Grandfather dead?”

“So he is, but his rooms will go to Eliar when he marries.”

“That's a notable honor.”

“Eliar is Grandfather's eldest living male grandchild, although naturally my husband and his brothers hope for more sons. However, since Eliar has not yet married, the rooms remain unoccupied and therefore available.”

Available for what? Her worst fears intruded. Barely able to speak, she choked out words. “Is there somewhat amiss?”

“Not at all. Your husband is back.”

“Anji?” The drowsy languor of falling night vanished as quickly as droplets of water steam off a hot brick.

“This way. Your hirelings have already been informed that you won't be returning to the guesthouse tonight.”

On the porch, Mai slipped off her sandals and found cloth slippers that fit well enough. Public rooms faced the courtyard. Beyond them lay a warren of inner chambers separated by papered walls, sliding screened doors, and corridors. Some rooms lay dark and quiet, or alive with the excited whispering of children who everyone pretends are asleep. Other rooms were lit. As Mai followed Miravia's mother, turning left and right and right again, she heard voices chatting in the companionable way of families catching up on their day.