Shadow Gate (31 page)

One of the hierodules was a tall, lanky girl with a teasing grin. “I'm Walla,” she said to Kesh. “Do you remember me?”

He tried not to stare at the swell of her breasts under the tightly wrapped taloos. Every part of him remembered her, although he'd never touched her.

“You're Bai's brother. You thought you were so smart, but you two are in deep trouble now. Hah!”

Chaji stood and grabbed Walla by the forearm. “I take this one.”

The look she turned on him should have killed him; he didn't even notice as he tightened his grip. The other holy ones became very quiet and very still. Even the breeze seemed to falter and catch its breath. Tohon rose. The younger soldiers watched with steady gazes.

“Eiya!” Kesh made a show of getting up with a hefty sigh. “That's not how you do it! There are customs to be followed. If you offend the holy ones you'll never be allowed to pass the gate a second time.”

Chaji, despite his pretty eyes or perhaps because of them, had a spoiled temperament. He stared blankly at Kesh and did not remove his hand from Walla's shapely arm.

Tohon said, “This is a brothel. We choose one. Coin changes hand with the mistress of the place. We get our pleasure. She gets the coin. We leave. Neh?”

“There are times I wonder why the Merciless One opens her gates to all,” murmured the kalos to Walla as the other three rolled their eyes, looking disgusted. “They're such savages. In their lands, those who should be allowed to offer pleasure freely are slaves forced to the work.”

“No,” said Kesh to him, “those who might offer freely aren't allowed to. It's considered shameful. Those who are slaves are forced to the work whether they wish it or no.”

Now he had shocked them. Here in the southwest, where they entertained the most traffic from outlanders of any of the temples, the holy ones ought to have known better. By their horrified expressions, they did not.

“The customs of your country are not the customs here,” said Kesh to Tohon. When he looked at Walla he received for his pains another mocking smile that made him sweat. “This is not a brothel. No coin changes hands. This is a holy temple. The holy ones give freely because they serve the goddess Ushara, the mistress of war, death, and desire.”

The Qin looked at him blankly, not understanding.

“Never mind,” said Kesh impatiently.

He closed a hand over Chaji's wrist and yanked to dislodge his grip. He barely shifted Chaji's arm, but the soldier sucked in breath with an audible hiss, then released Walla and slugged him.

The blow landed on his shoulder, and he staggered back with a yelp. The holy ones shouted for the warders, Chaji grabbed at Walla, and Tohon strode into the breach with angry words that sat Chaji down on the bench as though he'd been shoved. Everyone quieted. A pair of broad-shouldered warders, easily spotted in orange sashes, showed up from the outer court.

Walla examined Tohon and, then, Chaji with his petulant expression but obedient seat on the bench. She made a sign with her left hand, and the warders stepped back to lounge watchfully by the gate.

“Maybe we get tired of explaining ourselves to grasping, rude, horny outlanders,” she said to Kesh. Her stare made him self-conscious in a way both irritating and provocative.

“When you come to the temple, you are offering yourself at the altar of the goddess,” Kesh said to the Qin. “The hierodules and kalos choose you if they are willing to, ah, worship with you.” He brushed a hand over his curly hair, aware that he was blushing. Not that any of it was at all shameful, only that Walla was bullying him. He wondered if she hated Bai, and if this was payback for an old rivalry.

“
They
choose us?” Tohon tugged at his ear, obviously wondering if he'd heard wrong. Of all the Qin soldiers, this middle-aged man was the only one Kesh respected. He ruled his cadre firmly but without cruelty; he conversed pleasantly with Zubaidit, treating her like a comrade. The worst Keshad could say of him was that he seemed genuinely to like that cursed reeve, Joss.

“The hierodule or kalos makes the offer. You can refuse it, if you wish, and hope to receive another offer.
Which may come, or may not. Men walk through the gate of gold and women through the gate of silver, to the gardens, where the acolytes of the Merciless One wait. Then it's up to you to accept or refuse what is offered.”

“What of these four here?” asked Tohon, indicating the four hierodules and ignoring the young man.

“These
five
acolytes,” said Kesh, “all reside beyond the gate of gold, which admits men to the inner precincts. They came here to the Heart Garden because you're out-landers, and they wanted to see if you could behave according to the temple rules. Not all outlanders can.”

“I can behave!” said one of the young soldiers, Jagi, with a grin, and Walla looked right at him, seeing something in his smile that interested her.

The one called Pil looked sidelong at the kalos, then away quickly before anyone could notice, but the kalos marked the look and yet hung back.

Tohon was still stroking the nub of his ear. “Huh. What else are we to know?”

“You'll all need baths.” Walla bent her gaze on Jagi, whose grin widened. “But you won't mind that. Whew! You all do smell. How often do you wash those heavy garments?”

“Take a
bath
?” cried Chaji. “In
water
?”

“Here, now,” said Tohon, beckoning to Kesh. “Is that necessary?”

“I should think so.” Even the heady smell of blooming flowers could not cover the rancid odor of the men and, in particular, their clothing. “Folk in the Hundred bathe every day if they can. Don't you have bathhouses in your country?”

This word brought blank looks.

“Water weakens a man,” said Chaji.

“It's not what we're accustomed to.” Tohon had given up on the ear and was now twisting the few whiskers that grew, like a wraith's beard, from his chin. “There are evil spirits in water. Everyone knows that.”

The bold and brave Qin soldiers shuffled their feet
and looked toward the gate to the outer court, as if seeking escape.

“The baths lie just beyond the gate,” said Walla, “and you can advance no farther into the goddess's body without cleansing.” She beckoned to her companions. They sauntered back to the gate and went in, leaving the gates ajar.

“Baths aren't bad,” said Shai hesitantly, and the others looked at him, and away. “They never killed anyone, eh?”

Released by the sun's heat, fragrance poured off the flowers until it seemed to drown them. Birds flitted within the lush arbors of musk vine with their bright red passion flowers.

Jagi jumped to his feet. “I'll try it!”

That was enough for most of them. They trundled forward cautiously, leaving Kesh sitting on the bench beside Shai, Chaji, and Tohon. Tohon gestured to Shai, and the young man sighed but, obediently, stood and followed the others.

“It can't be right, this story about the whores picking and choosing and turning a man down if he wants them,” said Chaji after Shai was gone. “They're just saying that to take advantage of us.”

“Best you go in after them,” said Tohon to Kesh. “Make sure the lads do what is fitting. We have to learn to live in this land.”

He might as well have been in collusion with Bai! With a grimace, Kesh rose. “You're not coming?”

Tohon slanted a gaze sidelong toward Chaji. “Anyway,” he added, “I have an old feud with the water spirits. I'm not sure about these ‘baths.' ”

“There are bathing pools, it's true,” said Kesh, “but you can also just wash yourself out of a big basin. You just have to strip down and wash your whole body with a cloth and soap. You have to clean yourself before you can get in the pools anyway. And, honestly, you might want to—well—wash your clothes.”

Chaji rose, both hands in fists. “What makes you think you can insult us? You're no better than a naked rat, a worthless—”

“Chaji-na,” said Tohon sharply. The young soldier sat down, shoulders heaving.

Kesh was shaking, but he kept his voice cool. “I was born in the Year of the Goat, Gold Goat, as it happens, not that you would know what that signifies.”

“No need,” said Tohon mildly, “to keep talking, lads. I'd recommend you both to shut your mouths. Keshad, go on, as I told you.”

Chaji lifted his gaze just enough to let Kesh know he was looking. Those pretty eyes didn't impress Kesh; glaring, he crossed his arms.

“Go on,” said Tohon, voice like the snap of a whip.

Kesh grabbed his small pack; everything else they'd left at a stable in the village of Dast Olo, by the pier where they'd taken boats to the temple island. Behind, he heard Chaji murmur, his words too faint to understand, and Tohon's curt rejoinder. He reached the gate, set a hand on the painted door, and paused before stepping into the garden of gold. From inside, he heard the spill of water into a basin; he heard laughter. A woman was singing a familiar song in time to the beat of a hand drum and the rhythm of shaken bells:
I paused inside the gate and beheld the garden.

“Keshad!” A youth wearing the casual kilt of the off-duty acolyte stood over by the white gates, beckoning to him.

The hells! Kesh walked over to the youth, where Tohon met them.

“It seems you and I are called to the council,” said the soldier to Kesh. “Chaji waits here. The rest—hu!—let's hope they behave.”

Back on the bench, half concealed at this angle by the arbors and flowering trees, Chaji sat in sullen silence, fists pressed in his lap.

“The Hieros wants you right now,” said the temple lad impatiently.

Kesh and Tohon followed him through the white gates into a courtyard filled with a tangle of vegetation. A narrow path littered with petals and old leaves cushioned their steps.

“Hu!” muttered Tohon. “What a thick forest! I can see nothing.” His gaze darted this way and that, and once he stopped and abruptly brushed at his face. Then he stared into the shadowed branches. Draped on a limb, a ginny stared at the Qin with a look Kesh recognized as amusement.

“Huh!” grunted Tohon. “That's the male Zubaidit keeps. She let him go.”

“They're the goddess's acolytes,” the lad called over his shoulder. “They belong here, truly. Anyway, the Hieros doesn't like to be kept waiting. She's got many more things to accomplish today, and wants this business finished and closed.”

Kesh wiped his brow and scratched his chin. The shade gave relief against the sun, but the overwhelming scent of green growing things oppressed him. They strode out into the open space in the center where the fountain splashed, water tracing the strenuous curves of a man and woman intertwined in the act of devouring.

Tohon actually blushed, and looked away, gaze fixed on the back of the lad, who kept walking without a glance at the sculpture to another path on the far side of the clearing. This path wound through a jungle of spiky orange and yellow proudhorn and falls of purple muzz and white heaven-kiss, their scent almost too sweet. Tohon walked as if expecting an attack.

A steeply slanted tile roof rose from the greenery. They ascended a flight of stone steps, pressing through uncut shoots of musk vine that groped at Kesh's body. He staggered into a pavilion of surpassing beauty: the pillars painted in gold leaf designs; the benches upholstered
with rich fabrics so expensive that immediately his mind totted up their worth in days of labor and the price of slaves; the floor inlaid with a complicated pattern of precious woods. The lad threw out an arm before Kesh or Tohon could actually step onto the floor, and indicated that they must remove their shoes and then sit to one side on a pair of plain silk pillows.

Four waited in the pavilion, sipping wine. Zubaidit looked perfectly comfortable seated cross-legged on a pillow, ginnyless. Beside her, that cursed reeve flirted with a smile on his smugly handsome face as he made some quip meant for Zubaidit's amusement. Captain Anji sat quietly. Bai marked Kesh's arrival with a glance but did not acknowledge him. The reeve kept talking, attention fixed on Bai. The Qin captain noted Tohon, then Kesh, and gave each a crisp nod before turning back to the conversation.

The fourth person sketched a greeting. Master Calon was the head of a well-to-do merchant house whose faction had never before held power in the city, although today he wore the crossed sash of a seated council member with the red braid of power fixed to his right shoulder. In the aftermath of the battle, a huge change had swept the city and council of Olossi. The Greater Houses, who had held power for untold generations, had fallen to the machinations of the Lesser Houses and the guilds in alliance with Captain Anji and his troop.

A pair of elderly hierodules—by their age, lifelong slaves to the goddess—mounted the steps and with a tinkling of bells announced the arrival of the Hieros. All rose, Kesh last of all. How he hated this woman!

Her attendants helped her sit on a particularly fine pillow covered in a heavy damask of an intense jade green that set off the pale pipe-sprout of her rich silk taloos. For such a delicate, frail, elderly little woman, she had a stare that hammered you. And she was gloating. He could see it in her smirk as she addressed the gathered company.

“That man, the Qin sergeant. The stink of his clothing
offends me. Have your people some objection to bathing, Captain? Yet by all report you are yourself perfectly happy to indulge in the baths in the city.”

“I see you have a network well placed to bring you all manner of reports, holy one,” said the captain with a faint smile.

“As you will yourself in time, I expect,” she retorted. “You haven't answered my question.”

Captain Anji looked at Tohon, gave a nod.

Tohon's expression remained calm, his voice untroubled. “I can answer for myself, holy one. As a man who has earned respect, I ask to be treated with respect.”