Shadow Gate (32 page)

She looked him over. His gaze, on her, was not challenging but it was also not submissive. “I will listen to your words.”

He acknowledged her reply with a nod. “It is well known among my people that the water spirits hate human beings. They are kin to demons, and therefore there is a long war between us. We Qin know better than to trouble the spirits. Maybe you folk have a better understanding with them than we do. Anyway, my daughter drowned, and my wife died of grief from losing her to the water spirits.”

Kesh expected the Hieros to scoff at this ridiculous story. There weren't any spirits in water except for strong currents and unexpected eddies. The merlings lived in the sea, but they were living, material creatures like humans and delvings and firelings, not spirits. Even demons were living creatures with powers beyond human understanding. The only spirits abroad in the world were ghosts. Everyone knew that.

The Hieros touched fingers to her right ear and then her forehead, the gesture of hearing and understanding. “Very well. If you wish to walk in the temple, then come to me personally. Like all hierodules, I am trained in the act of cleansing a body in preparation for the act of worship. I am powerful enough to protect you against anything, within these walls, that might wish to harm you.”

The temple lad whistled under his breath, Bai looked baffled and Joss and Master Calon amazed, but the elderly hierodules made no comment at this remarkable offer. It was impossible to know what Captain Anji was thinking.

Tohon tugged on his left ear, blinked, and then met the Hieros's steady gaze. “My thanks to you, holy one.”

Kesh hadn't known the old bitch could smile in a friendly way, but she did so now, like a flirting girl all lit up when a boy agrees to meet her family. “That's settled, then. Now to our other business.” The smile vanished. She turned a cold shoulder to Kesh quite deliberately, drawing attention to his disgrace. “Marshal Joss, you've fulfilled your duty and brought me these criminals. Zubaidit I absolve from fault, although naturally she will have to return her accounts bundle and resume her service with the temple. She can't have known that her brother would use a stolen object to purchase her freedom. He, on the other hand, must pay full forfeit and be prosecuted for his crime of buying out the contract of a temple slave under false pretenses. He tried to cheat us. The temples cannot allow such behavior to go unpunished.”

“The girl came into my possession by finder's right, which none of you can dispute,” objected Kesh. “How can I have known some envoy of Ilu would come along to make a claim on her? How do I even know you're telling the truth? You could be trying to cheat
me,
to get Bai back into your claws.”

She continued as if he hadn't spoken. “How the assizes choose to deal with any complaint in the matter brought by his former master, matters not to me. Master Feden is dead and his house disgraced—”

“I bought out my own contract with trade goods! Nothing illegal about that!”

“—so it may be that the heirs of the House of Quartered Flowers will bring no claim against him. But the temple certainly means to take back what is rightfully ours—”

“Only because you'd been cheating her all along, you old bitch—”

“Keshad!” snapped the reeve. “Be quiet!”

“I won't be quiet! I've been found at fault without being allowed to speak in my own defense, or have any kind of representation at the assizes. She means to tilt the judgment against me before I ever stand up at the rail. What kind of justice is that? Or do the reeves simply stamp as justice what's the wish of those in power?”

Ha! That stung!

The reeve examined Kesh with a look that hadn't the hammer of the old bitch's look but which was just as annoying, like someone poking into you to see what would make you squeak. Kesh shifted on his pillow and rubbed his throat. Tohon coughed into a hand. Bai watched the Hieros much as the ginnies had watched her.

The captain broke in. “If you will. It appears the dispute rests on whether this man, Keshad, brother to Zubaidit, had a legal claim on the individual whose body he used as payment for his sister's freedom. He exchanged a girl he found in the south for the outstanding balance on his sister's accounts book, the unpaid balance of which kept her as a debt slave to the temple. Am I correct?”

“You are,” said the reeve.

“I accepted the female as payment because of her obvious value,” said the Hieros. “I would have been a fool to let such a treasure pass out of the temple's hands. However, it appears she belonged to someone else.”

“This is the part I do not understand,” said the captain. “A man came to the temple, at night, and claimed the female. Did he have a contract? Proof of ownership? He might himself have been a thief, a clever con man, who cheated you and left the blame to fall on Keshad.”

There is a silence that soothes, and a silence that frightens. Silence can conceal, or reveal. It can make you stop and think, or it can be a warning. The garden lay quiet behind them, smothered in green growing things.
Clouds scudded overhead, piling up over the Olo'o Sea. Kesh smelled rain coming, but it hadn't reached them yet.

“He was a Guardian,” said the Hieros, “and so was the girl.”

Nine simple words, coolly spoken. A cold thrill woke in Kesh. Guardians walking the land again! He could not imagine what it might mean for the Hundred. Or for him.

He got up clumsily and glared all around. “Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. But how would she ever have gotten to the Hundred, eh? Many months' journey! She could never have made it alone, a naked girl, with nothing and no one, starving, mute, lost.
I
brought her here.”

“You have no idea what Guardians are capable of, or why she might have been walking in the south,” began the Hieros in a cruel voice. “You are the worst kind, making excuses for your crime, refusing to accept responsibility for the acts you have committed. Don't think I don't have reports of what you did as Master Feden's factor, how you treated those in his employ, how you treated your fellow debt slaves, how you used them and discarded them—”

The captain broke in, politely. “I beg your pardon, holy one. It seems to me that, while you are perfectly reasonable in your assessment of the young man's faults, they are not among the concerns that trouble us most in these days.”

“That he cheated the temple is of no concern to you?”

Captain Anji had a pleasant smile that deflected anger. “It is of greatest concern to me, although naturally you understand that as a newcomer to the Hundred, I do not worship at the altar of your gods for I do not know them. But I am aware that every land is tightly woven with its gods. This dispute is a matter to be judged carefully, and thoroughly. My concern is that you may have no chance to do so if other events overtake us in the meantime.”

The old bitch counted her temple and her authority
higher than any cursed thing in the Hundred, that was obvious. But when she looked at the captain, she raised a hand, wristlet bells tinkling like whispers, and touched ear and forehead to show respect.

“Captain Anji, your actions in recent days saved Olossi, and this temple. You've earned the right to speak. Kass, pour wine around.”

The lad poured gracefully from a silver pitcher into goblets adorned with intricate silver patterns and tiny pearls: the Hieros first, of course, then the reeve who as marshal of Argent Hall deserved special respect, then Master Calon, then the captain followed by Tohon. Zubaidit and the two attendants were served last, and the lad took the pitcher away without offering Kesh anything.

They drank. Tohon nudged Kesh. The pressure jarred his aching shoulder. He hissed pain through his teeth. Tohon tapped the cup, still half full of wine, against Kesh's arm. Gratefully, Kesh took the cup and drank.

Anji set down his own cup on the floor beside his right knee. “I'll make short work of my accounting of events. Our company rode into the Hundred as guards for a caravan, but we were also looking for a place to settle and begin a new life.”

“Because there is a succession dispute in the Sirniakan Empire,” said the Hieros. “The current emperor, Farazadihosh, considers you a rival because you are his half brother, sons of the same father, Emperor Farutanihosh, now deceased. Meanwhile, his cousins—who are also your cousins, the sons of your father's younger brother—dispute Farazadihosh's right to the imperial throne and title.”

“You have good sources of information, holy one.”

“I do. It may be that your relation to the imperial court will cause trouble for us later, but for now I am content with matters as they stand because I do not see we have any choice. Go on.”

“The Hundred is no longer a peaceful land, that we can all agree on. There is trouble in the north. A city
called High Haldia has fallen to an army commanded possibly by a man known as Lord Radas. Toskala and the lands of lower Haldia lie under immediate threat. The commander of all the reeve halls sits in authority in Toskala, and there also many of your ancient traditions have their heart, although I understand that the largest city in the Hundred is called Nessumara and lies farther south, on the delta of the River Istri.”

“You've grasped a great deal of the Hundred in your short time among us, Captain.”

“I have good sources of information,” he said with a smile. Was he sparring with the Hieros, or dancing to her chant? It was hard to tell. “A second army marched south and west on West Track to attack Olossi. Too late the people of Olossi discovered that some among the Greater Houses had made a pact with this army, to consolidate their hold on the Olossi council. Too late, these same members of the Greater Houses discovered that the leaders of this army had no intention of honoring that pact but meant to burn and pillage Olossi as they did the villages lying along West Track. Together with Marshal Joss and the reeves of Clan Hall and the support of Olossi's new ruling council and their militia, my troop managed to rout the besiegers. We then pursued those who fled, and have killed as many we can. However, many have escaped back into the north and east whence they came. It is obvious to me, and I hope to everyone, that if they could attempt this attack once, they can regroup and try again. They have numbers, coin, wagons, weapons, and horses in plenty. And it seems to me that they have something more difficult to defend against, some manner of sorcery.”

He picked up his cup and drained it, set it down with a thap that made Kesh start. “I have come to the Hundred to make a home for myself in a place where I may know peace, and to raise children with my wife. That is all I hope for.”

“Where is your wife?” asked the Hieros. “I have heard many speak of her, but she has not come to the temple.”

“Nor will she.”

“Ooosh!” murmured Kesh.

The reeve coughed, while Master Calon gasped at the implied insult.

The Hieros pounced. “Why is that? Here today you are come to the temple.”

Captain Anji opened his mouth to speak, and then he closed it and said nothing.

Marshal Joss said, “Surely an outlander who worships another god is not expected to visit the temples of the Hundred.”

“What gods does your wife worship, Captain? Surely not the god of the empire, for that god does not look kindly upon women. Or so my sources tell me.”

His mouth twisted in annoyance. He picked up the cup, noted it was empty, and set it down again, but now his expression was neutral and his voice smooth. “The Lord of Lords and King of Kings rules each person as befits his nature, men according to what is proper to men and women according to what is proper to women. But you are right. My wife is not of the empire. She prays to the Merciful One, whose mercy is known all along the Golden Road and past the southern desert even into the lands beyond the Sky Pass and the towering heights of the Heavenly Mountains.”

“Ah,” said the Hieros. “The orange priests. There's an old hut far up on the Kandaran Pass where an orange priest once lived with his begging bowl. It's said he would give aid to travelers without regard to their station or their gods. Then he died. Gone altogether beyond, as they say in their prayers. Such a strange phrase, ‘gone altogether beyond.' What does it even mean?” She was still holding her cup. She handed it to an attendant, her wristlet bells chiming softly with the movement.
“So, Captain, it is true that a shadow has grown in the north, a shadow we cannot name. By your efforts and those of the reeves of Clan Hall, many of us were saved. Yet this war is not over.”

“It is assuredly not over.”

He had a whip, which he'd been allowed to keep on the temple grounds. He played with it now, pulling its length through a hand as he considered what he meant to say. At length, he turned an inquiring gaze on Master Calon.

Briskly, Calon said, “I am here as representative of Olossi's ruling council. This man has accepted as a temporary measure the responsibility to oversee the defense of the city and the surrounding region of Olo'osson. We ask for your cooperation and the cooperation of all the local temples in our efforts to live in peace in our own homes.”

Now Kesh understood. In the region of Olo'osson, long overseen by the town of Olossi, the Greater Houses had ruled until the battle two weeks ago, when a cabal of Olossi merchants and guildsman, a troop of outlander mercenaries, and that cursed reeve from the north had defeated the invading army and overthrown the Greater Houses. The Hieros was the most powerful temple official of any of the temples in Olo'osson. Joss represented the reeves, Anji the militia, and Master Calon the Olossi council. The four of them met now to decide what action they would take next.

So much for the vaunted council of Olossi, with its warring factions and voting members and raucous assemblies! So much for village elders and local authorities and temple priests. Here Kesh sat, witnessing the only council that mattered. He was here by accident, because he was a bit of flotsam that the Hieros wanted to sweep up, being the kind of person who didn't forgive anyone who defeated her in even the smallest way. Yet as long as they didn't kill him, he could find a way to exchange knowledge for coin or something even better:
freedom and the right to be let go without interference. They hadn't beaten him yet.