Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (29 page)

“The most beautiful silks,” Priya reported. “Inside the home, the women are most beautiful and dressed as richly as queens. Loose silk trousers and long silk jackets that reach almost to the floor and are clasped with braid across the torso. I wish you could admire the fashion here.”

“No one will ever believe I am a royal concubine if I am not dressed in the proper manner. These jackets and robes from Kartu are well enough for a woman of the Mei clan. Yet I wonder if they would seem poor to a royal concubine. You must say we met with some manner of trouble on the way, my wagons lost in a ford when we crossed. When we come to a town with a proper marketplace, it will be necessary for me to replenish my wardrobe.”

Through Priya she sent this message to Anji, and soon thereafter, at each stop, silks arrived, gifts from local lords and magistrates hoping to curry favor.

Here were colors to delight her—marigold yellows as intense as sunlight, coral reds and blood reds and rust reds, joyous oranges and plangent blue-greens—and patterns to astonish, blossoms and vines and bulbs and leaves, every manner of floral gaudery both woven and embroidered in the style proper to a woman of rank.

“I will die of boredom in this seclusion,” she said one evening to Sheyshi as they sat in a narrow room whose white walls and papered windows oppressed her. “How soon will we come free of the empire?”

“I do not know, Mistress.” The Mariha girl was combing Mai’s hair in long strokes. She seemed content enough. Mai thought it possible the girl was a little stupid. No fault of the girl’s, of course. Sometimes things just worked out that way.

“When does Priya return with our supper?”

“I do not know, Mistress.”

“It seemed to me this might be a larger town than the others we’ve come to,” she added, because the rumble of traffic had been so loud together with the rattle and shrill of pots and laughter, the barking of dogs and the cackle of fowl, and the drone of myriad voices. As she had rocked along the thoroughfare, she had heard the scrape of carpenters’ adzes and had smelled wood shavings, as if they passed through a carpentry district. She thought of Shai, who loved to work wood, and wondered what he thought of all this. Had Uncle Hari seen similar scenes when he was marched north out of the empire with whatever doomed troop he had fallen in with in the end?

A door slammed shut with a sharp report. Footsteps drummed erratically on wood. A woman shrieked a protest.

The door into her seclusion opened with the same quick spasm as of a gasp drawn inward in surprise. Two men pushed in. One held a long knife. The other drew his sword. Sheyshi screamed and fell flat to the floor, covered her eyes with her hands.

Mai stared at them for a thousand years, it seemed, although in that space of time they did not move more than one step each. They had complexions not darker but different from Kartu folk, and they had also sharper faces, while Kartu folk had broader cheeks and gentler eyes.

They are coming to kill me.

She had been kneeling on her pillow, but smoothly she rose, and faced them. It was her training, honed in the market. Even in her early days, no customer had ever torn her facade, not even the ones who had surprised her.

“Who are you?” she said in the cool voice she might use to a matron who offered a deliberately insulting price for her wares.

They faltered. Sheyshi moaned in fear at Mai’s feet. The two men exchanged a glance, speaking without words. Their smell, like everything in this country, hit her strongly: straw and stables and leather and a hint of piss and a spice that made her nose itch. Her instincts were good. Even in this extremity, she could see into them, men determined but not subtle.

They are surprised by what they find. This is not the face and form and reaction they expect.

The man on the left raised his sword. The other one tightened his grip on the knife hilt. So slowly it all transpired: they took another step, while she considered the strength of the walls behind her and whether it was likely she could smash through them.

A rush of footfalls swept up the corridor. Chief Tuvi burst into the room with Anji behind him as the assassins turned to meet them, but those who wished to protect her had a kind of rare fury to aid them. With a few strokes the men were cut down. They fell to the floor, and they bled and bled, croaking and gasping, until Tuvi cut their throats.

Anji looked at her from the other side of the corpses. “Can you speak? Can you move?”

“Yes, but Sheyshi is having hysterics.”

“We’re leaving now. If she does not get up, then Tuvi will kill her and leave her with these.” He paused, cocked his head as he listened, and dashed out of the room. On the heels of his exit, Priya ran in, tears on her face.

“Mistress!”

“I’m unharmed.”

Priya knelt, gathered up cup, pillows, bedding, and carried these out into the corridor. Mai took in a breath, aware suddenly that she had not breathed for forever. She knelt beside the sobbing Sheyshi.

“We must go now. Now. Do you hear? Come. Stand up.”

The girl pulled her hands from her face, saw a trail of blood oozing toward her, and wailed. She rolled backward to get away from it.

Mai took hold of her shoulder. “Close your eyes. Do it. Close your eyes and get up.”

“Leave her,” said Tuvi. “I’ll kill her after you’re gone. Not worth dying for, that one.”

“Sheyshi! Close your eyes. I’ll lead you.”

Tuvi leaped over the corpses. The stink of fresh blood became overpowering, and Sheyshi began to retch, although nothing came up.

“It’s very bad, Mistress,” Tuvi said reasonably. “Some local agent has guessed the truth. We are a day’s ride from Sarida. We must get there before those who suspect the captain’s identity get news back down the line to a commander who can do something about it. Leave this one. Go!”

“Sheyshi!” Mai was angry now. It was so stupid to die this way. “Come now, or I’ll have to leave you. Come now!” She hooked a hand under the girl’s armpit, and tugged, and at last, spitting and groaning, the slave staggered to her feet. Limp and passive, eyes squeezed shut, she allowed Mai to lead her along the wall and out of the room, across the corridor, through the women’s courtyard where a huddle of women crouched on the ground under the guard of four of Anji’s men. Mai could not see their faces. They had thrown their colorful shawls up over their heads to cover themselves. A toddling boy crouched between two of them, bawling, until one of the women slapped him, and then he bawled louder and was wrestled under the tent of her outer shawl, where his cries were choked off.

The gate that led out of the women’s courtyard stood open. Hesitantly, she stepped through. The late-afternoon shadows stretched across the large inn courtyard, but despite the late hour, Anji’s men went about their purposeful business, saddling horses, tying on packs. The palanquin stood to one side, sliding door open, interior stripped and empty. Anji led a horse to her.

“You’ll wrap yourself as Priya shows you, covering your face.” He did not look at her; already he scanned the wide gates that let onto the thoroughfare. Despite the imposing blockade of a dozen of his soldiers, passersby had gathered to gawk and point and comment. Some, seeing Mai, gave up a shout, and Anji called, and his soldiers pushed into the street by laying their whips about them viciously.

“Aren’t we making a stir?” she asked, looking toward the palanquin.

“Too late now,” he said. “One of the red hounds got away. We must outrun them. Cover your face.”

He thrust the reins into her hands and strode off. Priya ran up and wrapped a shawl tightly around Mai’s head and neck and shoulders, twisted it, knotted it, tucked it; gave Mai a pair of hands to boost her into the saddle. The first rank of mounted soldiers pressed forward through the gate. Chief Tuvi came up beside Mai.

“You stick with me, Mistress,” he said. “You’re never to leave my sight.”

Fear clenched like a fist in her stomach. Priya had tied the shawl so tight that the cloth flattened her nose, making it hard to take in a full breath, but Mai was afraid to adjust anything in case it fell off. Already they were moving; the transition occurred without her awareness, only that her muscles tensed as her mount trotted forward alongside Chief Tuvi. She looked for Shai over the heads of the men around her, but she could not see him.

As they pushed through the gate she saw, in the distance, a flower of smoke blooming in the hard bright sky. A high-toned bell began to ring, joined by a second and a third. The noise of crowds of men in a panic swelled like the boom of gusting wind in a storm. A racket of clattering sounds—like sticks striking stone—echoed from out of the streets. She smelled smoke, and turned in the saddle with the shawl almost blinding her, cloth rucked around her eyes. Flames leaped from the steep roof of the inn where she had just sheltered. She stared, unable to comprehend it, because the roof
was formed of planks of wood. No one had that much wood, to waste it on roofing! Runnels of fire coursed along the pitch. Smoke poured out from under the eaves.

They turned a corner and, riding fast, hit the outskirts of the town along a series of tenements and hovels fenced into corral-like compounds by waist-high plastered walls. Open fields stretched ahead. Farther out, terraces heavy with crops and, above them, wooded slopes marked the limits of the valley. They turned north, whipping the horses into a jolting run. The road was paved but the roadway itself was much wider than the central stone corridor, which was paralleled on either side by dirt tracks fuzzed at their verge by wisps of grass and weeds. Men straightened from their labor in the fields to stare. Workers toiling over stinking tanning vats leaped up in surprise as the troop raced past them. Folk trudging in toward town with burdens balanced in baskets on their heads or slung along their backs fell backward to get off the road. Glossy orange and red fruit spilled and rolled and was trampled under hoof. Uncannily, no one screamed imprecations after the troop as they scrambled to get out of the way. Theirs was the silence of obedience. Only dogs yipped and chased them. Behind, more bells joined the clamor.

Mai’s eyes stung with tears. She gripped the pommel to keep herself steady, although in truth the Qin saddles were built to keep the rider stable, able to stay on the horse while handling bow or spear or sword. They rode at a draining pace through a countryside whose lands were in fields out to every available cranny and corner. Compounds plastered to a gleaming white stood in the midst of grain fields.

Soon it grew too dark to observe the surrounding landscape. Torches were lit, and tailmen took them up, riding at stages within the troop, lighting their way. Naturally, their pace slowed, but the road was smooth and level, nothing like the haphazard tracks whose intertwining threads made up the Golden Road, the route along which trade flowed east and west along the northern shore of the vast desert.

The stars made a brilliant ornament above them. The moon rose, adding its handsome light as they pushed on into the night. Very late, they stopped where an irrigation canal cut close to the road. Here Anji allowed the horses to be watered while the soldiers switched mounts, saddling up those horses that hadn’t borne weight on this first leg. They worked in a disciplined silence. Now and again a murmured comment surfaced and was tersely answered.

“This strap has broken.”

“Here’s a cord to replace it.”

“This mare is blown.”

“Cut her loose. She’ll follow if she can.”

“Let me use your knife.”

“Lost yours?”

“Stuck in bone. Didn’t have time to get it out.”

“Huh. Clumsy of you. Chief ‘11 send you back to be a tailman!”

The horses were tough, and the men showed no sign of strain, but she was weary and her thighs hurt and her hands ached. O’eki brought fresh horses. Sheyshi crouched on the ground, rocking obsessively. Priya stood beside Mai, saying nothing, watchful and alert, although the darkness around her eyes betrayed her exhaustion and fear.

“Where are the bearers?” Mai asked. “Where is Shai?”

“I don’t know,” Priya whispered. “There were fires. Fighting in the rear guard.”

“I heard it too,” Mai said, recalling now the rhythm of the clattering sounds she had thought were sticks.

A short distance away, Chief Tuvi was conferring with Anji. Horses stamped. A soldier jerked a gelding away from the water, where it had been drinking too long. Mai wanted to go looking for Shai, but the urgency of their flight pinned her to this one place, even though she had to pee. If she wasn’t ready to go, they would leave without her. Shaking, she reached under the long silk jacket, undid her loose trousers, and squatted right there while Priya swiftly unwound the shawl that covered her head and torso and held it up to shield her.

“This is so hard,” Mai whispered when she was done, and standing again. “What happened?”

“Some kind of agents from the palace,” said Priya. “I have seen many strange things in these few days, Mistress. Everything in this land is done one way only. The gates are locked at night and unlocked in the morning. Women live in one place and men in another. Each town has fields laid out in the same pattern, allowing for differences in the lay of the land. Each town looks alike. There is a temple in the center of each town, but the women told me that women are not allowed to go there. They were shocked I should think so. I! Who served the Merciful One as an honored acolyte! That’s not all. There are spies everywhere, that is what Captain Anji said. He told us to keep watch for them, and for their scat. He calls them the red hounds. I think they must be like the demon dogs who chased the Merciful One across the bone desert. Their eyes are red with blood and their bodies are feathered with dust and iron shavings.”

“It was men who tried to kill me.”

“They can appear in any guise. They are not earthly creatures like you and me. They are born out of sparks of anger and despair. The whirlwind twists them into a material form.” Priya shuddered. “You were very brave, Mistress. You stood up to them.”

The memory of that moment did not disturb Mai. It was sealed as in glass, separate from her. But she was still shaking from the rush of the ride, and the stench of smoke in her nostrils. Had those women crouching in the courtyard, with their hidden faces, gotten out of the burning courtyard in time?