Shadow Gate (90 page)

Shai sagged, all his readiness blown.

“Did that man go away?” asked Vali, venturing up behind Eridit. “He was following me before. He tried to touch me.”

“Sheh!” said Eridit in disgust. “You're not even of an age, Vali. But I'm not surprised by any crude thing I hear or see in this place.” She loosed an accusatory glance at Shai, pushed past him, and crossed over the open space to the man selling white plums and cawl petals. There she smiled prettily, and she and the man entered into a protracted haggle, which she no doubt drew out to annoy the poor merchant.

“Why do you argue with her all the time?” asked Vali.

“Shai's a prude,” said Yudit, laying her head against Shai's shoulder.

“Neh, he isn't,” said Eska. Dena and others in the interior echoed her, defending him.

“Oh, shut it, little plum,” said Yudit affectionately. “I'm not ragging him. I'm just saying so, because it's true. Nothing wrong with it.” She shuddered, and he put an arm around her. Vali leaned against him on the other side, and they watched as the market street cleared of
soldiers and the merchants packed away their wares for safekeeping.

He felt a prickling on his skin, maybe the same one Bai had spoken of, like the way air changed before a storm.

Eridit returned triumphant, her long jacket cradling cawl petals weighted down with white plums. “Look at all this, and for only two vey!” She pushed rudely past Shai. “Here, Eska. Let's put this in the pot. Then we can make soup later.”

“I'm scared, too,” said Yudit softly. “But that's no cause for you two to keep fighting. It worries the younger ones.”

“I don't fight with her because I'm scared!”

She smiled, a rare gift, and shame shut him up. Maybe she was even right. He missed Tohon bitterly, but the Qin scout had been left in the woodland to scout the environs, meeting with Bai long past midnight on specified nights.

“Whsst!” Bai came striding out of the gloom, waving at them to fall back. “Here, now, Shai,” she said, catching him by the arm. “The password worked. Although why Edard told you instead of anyone else I can't figure.”

They retreated into the interior, stuffy with so many bodies crammed inside. After so long without a bath, they all stank. Eridit lit a lamp and hung it from a pole.

Bai surveyed her troops. “You're leaving tonight. You'll travel to the ford where we crossed ten days ago. You'll meet Ladon and Veras there, with a wagonload of supplies. You'll cross to the far shore and travel about a mey downstream. There, you'll meet Tohon on the road, and he'll lead you to a hidden dock where you'll rendezvous with a barge owned by our dead comrade Edard's kin. They're going to take you to Nessumara, to his clan's compound. Do you understand?”

They nodded.

“I want you to know something,” she went on. “Lone wolves are rightly viewed with suspicion and treated as spies. I'd do the same, in their place. But having you
here has given me entrance to every cursed company in this camp, talking up my wares, how juicy they'll be as soon as I get a bit more fat on them, all untouched, never bitten. Folk who want something from you are a cursed reach stupider than those who want nothing.” She sketched a gesture in the air, and the children smiled in response. “By having the courage to walk in here and just wait, not knowing what might happen and if you'd get abused again, you've done more service to Olossi than the entire cursed Olossi militia.”

“Should we stay, holy one?” asked Yudit in a low voice.

“No. Edard's kinfolk were tipped off by some woman who married into the clan from the Green Sun clan. They're getting out, and they're willing to take you lot downriver with them. Eridit, there's a passing phrase you must speak to get across the river at the ferry. ‘Flying fours lost,' the sentry will tell you, and you reply, ‘Five cloaks won.' ”

Eridit mouthed the words twice, then nodded. “Got it.”

“Shai, you can see them to the ford, make sure they get across safely. Then you have to come back to me.”

The children groaned, and murmured rebelliously.

“What's happening?” asked Eridit, all saucy anger fled.

“Lord Radas's army is attacking Toskala tonight. I don't know the details, but I'm cursed sure there's treachery on the wind.”

“Why does Shai have to stay behind?” Yudit and Vali asked at the same moment.

“He's the only one of us who is protected against the demons. Veiled to their sight. That's what both cloaks said.”

“And what in the hells do you mean to do?” asked Eridit. “The two of you can't fight the entire cursed army.”

Bai grinned, and everyone paused to admire her because she made them all want to be able to grin like that. “The Merciless One will guide me.” She rocked back,
listening to the murmur of a camp rising instead of settling. “Now get out of here.”

They walked in a tight line, four abreast with the younger ones in the center rows, Eridit and Wori in the lead and Shai and Yudit as tailmen, the ones least likely to get attacked from behind. If you acted like you were about your business, then folk did not question.

The vendors following the army had set up farthest away from the siege line, and the usual busy twilight market had gone to ground, blankets rolled up, folk hiding inside their tents or huddled in whatever scrap of protection they could find in ragged hedgerows or the remains of a lot of firewood commandeered by the army. It felt like it was about to rain, but the skies remained dry. They descended through a series of orchards, and held their noses as they skirted the edge of tanning yards before coming to the main crossing of the Lesser Istri, two sets of paired cables strung across the wide river.

The guards had lamps out at the barricade, and they considered Eridit with suspicion as she sauntered forward, playing too much, Shai thought, to their lust.

“Here, now,” said the first. “Shouldn't you be at home with your husband, eh, verea?”

“I don't see your red bracelet, sweetheart,” said the second. “But I'll give you a taste of married life.”

The third man shushed them. “Flying fours lost,” he said.

“Five cloaks won,” she answered, and her posture shifted so swiftly that Shai blinked. She was another person now, someone rigid and irritated. “Didn't think I'd have trouble here. You lot need to attend to your duty.”

The two who had been rude grumbled.

The third man shook his head. “Where are you going with all these children?”

“We were ordered to get them out of the area.”

“Who ordered you?” demanded the first man, anxious to show he could be a hard-ass.

“Shut up,” said the third man to his comrade. “I remember you lot. You in particular.” He looked Eridit up and down, and Shai found that he'd closed a hand into a fist. Yudit patted him on the elbow, like calming a tense dog. “You lot crossed eight or ten days ago, neh?”

“Can't get buyers for what we're trying to sell, can we?” she said with a smirk.

The first two men looked at each other, frowning as they considered the insinuation in her words, while the third man grimaced. “Sheh! Are you saying—? Most of those kids aren't old enough—Eiya! People like you ought to be hanged up on a post, eh? I've got little sisters and brothers, eh? Haven't you any shame?”

“Those with plenty of coin don't need to bow before shame, eh? And we've got coin for the fare, don't we? Now just shut up and let us cross.”

“What if I won't let you pass, you cursed foul degenerate—”

Down at the platform, the winch-turners had stirred from their cots, rising to get a look at the commotion. Wagon wheels ground on paving stones, and a wagon appeared out of the gloom lit by a lamp swaying on a pole. Ladon and Veras had arrived just in time.

Curiously, a slender man of mature years, not yet elderly, strode alongside the wagon, chattering in the most inanely cheerful manner. He wore a long cloak against the expected rains, and the garb Shai had come to recognize as typical of the priests known as envoys of the god Ilu.

“—then I said to him, ‘Ver, death's wolves aren't greedy. They only eat when they're hungry, not like the wolves among men.' I was speaking, of course, of the Sirniakan toll collectors, who I will tell you charged me double and triple only because I was a foreigner in their lands! Outrageous!” As the wagon rattled to a halt, the envoy smiled at the guardsmen. “Greetings of the dusk, my friends. What's this? A full raft for the twilight pull, eh? Good fortune for those who collect the toll.”

The guards took a step back, and the children shrank against each other. Eridit expelled a hot gasp, as though she'd just been insulted, and Ladon and Veras—the idiots—sat like nimwits on the box of the wagon, struck to silence. The big raft bumped gently at the dock. From the shelter of the platform, the winch-turners stared. No one moved.

Shai trotted forward, pushing right up to the guards. “We're in a hurry, ver. And I'd sooner piss on you than listen to you tell me what you think of our business. You want to fight? Call out your fellows, and let's fight, eh?”

“Neh, neh, you go on. Vermin.”

Shai shouldered past them, and the children hurried after with the wagon rumbling in their wake. The winch-turners peered out as Shai strode out onto the landing stage and pulled open the railings to allow the wagon to maneuver onto the raft. He stepped back as the children flooded on afterward.

That cursed envoy was nattering to Eridit. “. . . Water-born Goats like you do have an unfortunate tendency to be self-centered, wanting the attention of others always fixed on them. They might not mean to be petty and selfish, but too often they don't notice if they've violated the honor of other people, which is why it can be hard to trust them—”

“Who asked you?” she demanded furiously, half crying as she stormed past Shai and hopped over the widening gap onto the raft. She grabbed a rope and yanked the raft's railings shut, latched them, and shouted to the laborers. “We're ready!”

Gears ratcheted. Rope trembled.

Shai gripped the outer railing. “Behave!” he called to the children. “Don't be stupid.”

“You're not going with them,” said the envoy.

“Neither are you!”

The envoy met his gaze for a long careful while and then, abruptly, smiled with great sweetness. “I remember you.”

“Eh?”

“You see ghosts.”

The winch clanked, and footsteps trod the boards on the platform behind.

“Shai! Shai!” cried the children as the raft lurched a hand's span out from the landing stage. The rope tautened.

“Aui!” continued the envoy. “So you are Shai, the one I've been searching for, eh? There's a young woman looking for you. I fear she means to do you ill.”

“How do you know me?”

“You were with the Qin soldiers riding out of the empire. I saw your eyes follow the Beltak priest. A terrible thing to imprison their spirits in the bowl, isn't it? You're rare, you folk who see ghosts. You're veiled to our sight. I don't know why.”

Words croaked up, made hoarse by everything happening at once. “Who are you?”

“Beware,” said the envoy. “But be honest. Honesty might save you.”

“Shai!” As the raft slid away from the river, rocking in the current, Yudit pressed to the railing, the others crowding behind, their faces fading into the night. Then he heard their voices as they began to chant.

I sing to the mountain,

Mount Aua, who is sentinel

who guards the traveler

who watches over us.

He carries us on his shoulders

because he is strong, kissed by the heavens.

We survive in his shelter.

The river's voice drowned theirs. His face was wet with river mist and tears.

He ran to the winch and found a place to slide in with the other laborers, pushing pushing pushing until his shoulders ached and his legs strained, until the mechanism
caught and the rope, sighing, slackened. They were safely across. The men grunted and, straightening, rubbed their lower backs.

“Thanks for that,” they said. “Eihi! You've got good shoulders on you. Want our job?”

“Good fortune to you,” he said, and stepped out from under the platform, remembering suddenly the envoy of Ilu who had known he could see ghosts. He scanned the docks, the road, but all he saw were the slouching guards and, strangely, a pair of lights weaving up and down in the heavens like candles carried aloft by drunken soldiers.

The envoy was gone.

Far away, horns blatted, and drums beat an angry rhythm. He stared toward the far bank, but of course he could not see it, nor hear the creak of wheels and the patter of feet as they headed downriver along the road. Not out of danger, never that, but away from the worst if their gods chose to be merciful.

The envoy had told him,
You're veiled to our sight.

You're the only one protected against the demons,
Bai had said.

Veiled against demons,
Shai thought.
They can't eat out my heart the way they eat out the hearts of others.
He brought the wolf ring to his lips as he thought of his clan, of Mai, of Tohon, of the children. Even of Eridit. He thought of Hari, whose spirit was still not at rest.

Even at a distance of several mey, he heard a steady rumbling rising from the city: treachery on the wind.

I can fight them.

He headed back toward the city.

“Brought your shadow along, eh, Nallo?” said the vendor, scooping fried eel into her bowl.

She had walked down from Clan Hall into Toskala to haggle over a bed net, since no such item had been issued by the hall. With her purchase draped over her shoulders, she had stopped at her favorite stall for her favorite snack. Pil hung at her back.