Shadow Gate (50 page)

He grabbed, but the girl snatched up a peach and pressed it into his hand before he could topple her neatly stacked pile. He sulked, then spotted a pair of young men strutting down another lane. “Hei! Hei!” he called.

As he turned to go after them, Mai slipped a peach into her hand. “Here, Cornflower. Something for you.”

Horrified, she tried to hand it back, but he was already trotting toward his friends, and the leash, tugged taut, forced her to stumble along after lest he whip her for slowing him down.

His friends greeted him with lively expressions of joy—obviously drunk—and they fell to talking about some race meant to be held out beyond the walls in a few days' time, not that any of the locals were allowed to ride horses on penalty of death, but they could bet on the Qin soldiers who would be racing for the honor of their individual companies. Glancing back, his smile twisted and a flare of anger widened his eyes.

“Did you steal that, demon?” He snatched the peach out of her hand. “Whew! A nice ripe one. Here.” He offered it to his friends.

“Not after the demon touched it!”

He shrugged. “Eh, you're right. Tainted now. Probably make any of us sick.” He squeezed it until juices began to run, then gave it a heave up over the rooftops. They walked on, chattering, as she trailed behind, grateful she had not been beaten. At length the friends left him, and he made many twists and turns through back alleys and arrived at a tavern's back entrance. Slipping inside, he was stopped by two Qin soldiers lurking in the corridor.

“Chain the demon up outside,” they told him. “The commander does not want the creature anywhere close.”

“Chain her outside, and anyone who sees her will know I came here and wonder why.”

They grunted, and settled on shoving her into a tiny storeroom. She sank down between two barrels, head resting against the wall. It was nothing more than a thin barrier of wood, and through it she heard Girish's whine and the calmer rumble of a man speaking with the Qin way of chopping off
k
's and swallowing
r
's.

“This man said this, this man said that. . . .” Names and complaints rolled off Girish's tongue as the Qin officer questioned him for details of the most incriminating and treasonous remarks made by the inhabitants of Kartu Town.

She shut her eyes. If she did not think, she would not hurt. How many days until he went back to Ramda's? He usually could not afford to go more than once a month, so she had another passage of the moon to hunger for the smoke. She could still taste it in her mouth, but the warmth had drained out of her.

“Hei! Hei! Lazy demon!”

The leash flicked so hard against a breast that she gasped. Hurry. Hurry. She scrambled up, and he hit her a few more times as the Qin soldiers watched impassively. When he pulled her past them, they stepped back so as not to touch her. An open door revealed a man dressed in a golden tabard, sitting on a pillow as he sipped from a cup. He glanced up with his demon-scratched eyes. Seeing her, he made a warding sign and gave a signal, and an unseen servant closed the door.

Out on the street, folk stared as Girish strode past with her on a leash behind. The Mei demon, they called her. Girish liked their whispering and pointing. Today he hummed under his breath, always a bad sign. He rarely used her, and then only at night when he was particularly restless and couldn't sleep. His brothers, and the other males in the house, eyed her when they thought he was not looking, and their desire pleased Girish, who dragged her everywhere with him on the leash so he could gloat that he held what others lusted after. Everyone knew what he was, but they stared as at the smoke on the ceiling and pretended not to see and hear, not as long as the blood did not touch them.

Despite its orderly environs, the slave and livestock market stank of piss, fear, manure, and despair. Giggling now, he strode to the open corrals behind his favorite warehouse.

“Master Girish! So nice to see you. Please, please, this way. What are you looking for?”

“Ah, eh, yes. My mother desires a few children, pretty ones, to decorate her chamber and wait on her. What do you have that's fresh and new, nothing damaged.”

She stared at her feet, browned by the sun. Long sleeves covered her pale arms, and loose trousers covered her pale legs, the jacket buttoned up to her neck. A cap shaded her face; he whipped her if she forgot to wear it. But her feet and hands might turn brown, resembling the color of human skin. She wondered that if she were to turn brown all over, if she would become human, but maybe a demon could never be human, no matter what it once had believed it was.

“Cousin! Cousin!”

Her ears puzzled over the strange word. Her mind made a funny twist, and suddenly she was staring at her feet in the middle of a dusty, stinking, filthy pit of demons wondering why she was hearing true speech again. She looked up. In the fenced area in front of her huddled about twenty children, very young, dressed in little more than rags and looking thin and dirty. She saw him immediately because his dark hair and coloring and features were instantly familiar. He was a boy of the tribes, no more than eleven years of age, someone like her taken as a slave and sold away into demon land.

“I like the look of that one,” said Girish, following her gaze. He pointed at the boy. “Where's it from?”

The merchant shrugged. “Western tribes. There are so many of them out there, and they're all savages. I bought it on the Qin borderlands. You can see it's not a demon, not like that one you have there. I'll purchase her from you. Female demons are rare, I don't mind saying.”

“Not for sale.” Girish had a hefty pouch of coin in his hand. She'd never seen him with so much coin. He was usually begging for more, but not now. With a satisfied smirk, he counted out silver into the merchant's open
hand. “Send that boy and the other three I indicated to Ramda's house. You know the place.”

The merchant frowned uneasily, scratched his ear with his free hand, and sighed as he closed his hand over the payment. “If you say so, Master. It's just that Ramda's house is known for—”

“Eh? What's that?”

“Nothing, Master. I hear you can get a good smoke there. I'll have them there by this evening.”

A small voice trembled from the huddle of child slaves, speaking words no one but she could understand. “Cousin! Can you hear me? Aren't you of the tribes?”

Girish yanked so hard on the leash she fell onto her buttocks. Laughing, he dragged on her so she had to scramble backward on heels and forearms trying to get turned around as he cut back through the slave market. Eventually he tired of the joke and let her clamber to her feet.

“Come on, come on.” He took a brisk pace, humming and giggling, until they reached the Mei compound.

“Mountain!” he shouted. “Mountain! I want a bath. Right away, you fat oaf!” He slapped her. “Demon, brew me some tea. You know how I like it.” He strode off.

She remained in the family courtyard, shaking as with a fever. The boy's hopeful, frightened, desperate gaze burned in her mind's eye.

One never knows what gifts a stranger will bring. She touched the beaded nets that capped the ends of her braids. The memory of the boy's gaze was enough to make her remember Mariya and Orphan and Kontas and the tribe, when after all this time she had forgotten.

“Cornflower?”

The master's youngest brother paused while walking across the paved courtyard. Shai was the worst of them, because he stared the most at her when he thought no one was looking.

“You look like you've been dragged through the dirt,” he added. Mercifully, he looked away. He had thick arms and strong hands, these clenched now as he muttered.
“Why does everyone look away and say nothing when they know what is happening?”

She said nothing.

After a moment, with a mighty sigh of frustration, he walked into the house.

She knew what was happening, no matter how much she stared at the smoke curling along the ceiling. Enough. She would not give that boy to Girish, not him and not the others.

In the compound of the Mei clan, slaves padded silently about their tasks. Compared with the misery of the brothel and the nightmare of the caravan, it was not a bad life as long as you did not ignite Father Mei's legendary temper or get in the middle of a dispute between jealous wives or aggravate one of Grandmother's petty grievances. As long as you ignored what Girish was, and what he did.

She went back to the servants' court and washed her hands and feet and face. Afterward, in the kitchens, she brewed tea and padded with a cup and a tray to Father Mei's office. No one noticed her as she slipped inside, head bowed, to stand by the door waiting to present the cup; she had lived in the clan for many months, and although they would never be used to her, she no longer startled them. He was making accounts, something he did with a stick marking a tablet, and after a bit he raised his eyes and frowned.

“What are you doing here?”

The door opened and his two wives hurried in, shut the door, and began to squabble.

“You just think the Gandi-li clan isn't of great enough consequence for Mai.”

“I think the lad is more suitable for Ti, yes. If he can stand to hear her spout all day!”

“How dare you say Ti is worth less than Mai—!”

Father Mei slapped a hand on his desk. “Why have you barged in here to disturb my peace? I did not send for you. And who sent
her
in?”

The two wives turned, saw her, looked at each other in the way of enemies who have just become allies, and took a big step away.

He said, “What are you doing here, slave?”

She did not use her voice often. It was hard to find, and certainly it was easier to understand the words of the demon tongue when spoken by others than to get them to come out of her own mouth. “Father Mei. Pardon, I beg you. Master Girish is a bad man with a bad heart. He hurts children to make them cry. He ruts with them to make them cry—”

He rose, his expression hardening.

The younger wife hissed in fear and grasped her sister's hand. Yet the older wife pressed her lips together, looking first at her husband and then at Girish's slave.

“Do not speak of this again. You are a slave, and a demon. You do not have a voice.” Glancing at his elder wife, he frowned to see on her face an emotion he did not like. “Get out!” he commanded, and they fled the room, the door snicking shut behind them. In the room lay silence. Beyond the door, no footsteps pattered away, as if they had paused to listen.

He moved around the desk, took the tray out of her hands, and closed one hand around her pale throat, his palm coarse and warm against her skin.

“If you speak of such things again,” he said, “I will kill you.”

I
N DEMON LAND
, anything can happen. In every meaningful way, she is already dead. Except for the one last angry spark that has reawakened.

T
HERE WAS A
shrub whose name she did not know but that produced beautiful five-petaled pink flowers to adorn most every garden in Kartu Town. The old woman at the brothel had taught the girls to brew it for a
purgative that would loosen their wombs if they inconveniently caught a man's seed. It had to be brewed in just the right proportions: too little, and you would just vomit; too much, and it would kill you, as it had killed the second-best-earning girl in the brothel, the one whose death had precipitated her sale to the caravan.

They were accustomed to her presence in the kitchens. Late in the evening, it was easy to take Girish a cup he was too drunk to recognize as different from his usual tea. Because the brew sickened and weakened him, he suffocated on his own vomit as she held him down. But his thrashing death throes woke others. Her back was to the door of his chamber when it opened, and a woman screamed in a panic. Holding a lamp, Mountain stamped into the chamber while she sat beside the dead man and the half-empty pitcher. He blocked the door, so she could not escape. When the master's wives arrived, staring in shock and horror at the scene, she turned a calm gaze on them and, raising the pitcher, drank the rest.

I
N THE
H
UNDRED
, in the season of the Flower Rains, the rains bloomed and withered in erratic patterns that depended on the topography and how far west or north or east or south you stood. If you knew your geography, you could anticipate the weather. In the Barrens, a person could lie in a stupor out in the open for days, and still not get wet.

When at last the girl roused, she stared at the envoy of Ilu with a changed look. Sometimes a person knows who they are and wishes they did not. Ignoring his tentative greeting, she saddled Seeing and rode away without saddling Telling in turn.

“The hells!” By the time he got Telling saddled, she'd flown out of sight into the wispy clouds crowding the mountains.

He flew in sweeps, even near enough to survey the campsite where outlanders and local hirelings were digging a ditch and berm around a pair of hills. He searched but did not find her. Long after the light failed, he returned to the altar. With fumbling hands, he cared for the horse and released it. He collected firewood to augment an old stack piled here by another reeve, possibly himself. Disturbed by this activity, rodents and spiders fled.

He had failed her. He sank onto the sitting stone
beneath the overhang and stared as the red coals faded to ashes.

S
HE WOKE HIM
by touching his hand. As he started into awareness, she pressed an irregular oval object into his palm.

“Here, Uncle. It's sweet.”

He studied the fruit. The morning light described its lumps and hollows, the way its smooth skin gave slightly. Delighted, he laughed. “I haven't tasted a sunfruit for years! My favorite! Where did you find it? They don't grow in the Barrens.”