Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (88 page)

As soon as every room was accounted for, the troop set to work. Anji and his officers inventoried the contents of the storerooms. The militiamen dressed in the garb of the hall’s hired men. The Qin soldiers rolled wagons into position and took their stations. Joss hooded Scar in an empty loft, to rest him. Men napped, hoarding their strength. Shai was too restless to sleep. He walked back through the compound and found the garden and its cottage, where he had stabbed that man. No body lay on the porch, of course, but strangely, no blood stained the boards either. For the longest time, as light rose and the night softened with dawn, he stared at the spot. There was no evidence that anything at all had happened. Inside the cottage, the lamp still burned, but it was guttering on the last of the oil. He moved toward the entry door, thinking to go inside, to blow it out. To look for something he had surely misplaced, only he wasn’t sure what it was.

“Hey! Shai!” Jagi waved at him from the shadowed alley. “Come on! We’re supposed to take up position. You’re with me.”

He shook himself. To his surprise, his hand was already on the door, which was closed, but he wasn’t sure whether he was about to open a closed door, or had just closed an open one. Uneasy, he backed up, then jumped down the stairs and hurried over to Jagi.

As Shai came up to him, Jagi punched him, hard, on the arm. “Tohon says you struck down the marshal. You didn’t let us tailmen down.”

Shai could only grit his teeth so as not to wince in front of his companion. He did not look back at the deserted cottage as they trotted away down the alley. The night’s activity seemed like a dream to him, something best left behind. They took up their station on the wall walk where scaffolding gave them protection; they still had a good view over the courtyard. It was very quiet, very still. Jagi readied his bow.

To kill a man, you must be willing to see the ghost he becomes. Such was the curse set upon him. He was not sure he was willing to be a soldier, if he must face, every time, the ghost he had created. Yet releasing ghosts did not seem to bother Anji, and anyway, Shai knew he would never have the courage to ask the captain if it did.

A militiaman rang the first bell as soon as the sun’s rim broached the eastern horizon.

“Captain has a new idea,” said Jagi. “Something to do with the oil he found in the storerooms. He’s talking it over with that eagle rider, right now. I wonder, though.”

“You wonder what?” asked Shai. He wondered, too, at the empty courtyard, the abandoned rooms: Argent Hall’s ghosts had fled quickly, almost as if they were happy to find release.

“Let’s say we survive this. I wonder what kind of wife I can find here. She won’t be able to cook the things I like to eat. I tried a bit of their yoghurt and milk. Gah! It had no bite to it! I suppose I’ll have to learn to eat what she cooks. That’s what my mother would tell me to do.”

He settled down with chin on crossed wrists and bow tucked beside him, dozed off . . .

A bell woke him. Just as he opened his eyes and remembered where he was and who he was with, a whistle called the alert. Jagi tipped from slumping against the wall to a low crouch so fast that one instant he seemed asleep and the next ready to loose an arrow.

Shai peered over the wall. If you looked hard you could see specks in the sky.

Argent Hall’s eagles were coming home.

At dawn, a wind rose off the Lending as if earth itself exhaled. Grass bent under the blow. The sun rose. One by one, the reeves of Argent Hall took off for home. Although Horas exhorted them to stick in their flights, so that they could ward off Clan Hall should the other reeves attack again, no one listened and many were, of course, too far away to hear him. With his own eagle injured and refusing care,
Horas knew he’d lost any respect these arse-faced bastards might ever have had for him, which wasn’t much.

He waited until the last were no more than a speck of dust in the sky, and waited yet longer as Tumna kept her gaze turned to follow their flights, for Tumna could see much farther than he could. At length, the eagle swiveled her head and gave Horas a glare that would have peeled the skin off a lesser man. The eagle walked to the crest of the ridge, where there was a bit of a cliff to help her lift. Once there, she looked again at Horas, curled her talons into fists, and settled. All was forgiven.

Horas approached cautiously, and paused when the eagle stood. Tumna suffered him to hook into the harness. Wings spread, the eagle thrust, and they leaped into the air. The ground sped up beneath Horas’s feet, and he sucked in his breath for death’s scream, but just before they hit, Tumna beat hard, caught an updraft, and they were up and rising.

Even so, it was a long, slow, difficult flight, managed only because Tumna rode the winds until they were so high that Horas had to shut his eyes lest he weep, and then the raptor angled a slow glide that ate up the mey as they crossed the Olo Plain. The least movement on that injured wing, the better, it seemed.

The road was a faint ribbon seen far below, and on its track Lord Radas’s army oozed along like so much sludge, dark and nasty. The army would reach Olossi by midafternoon, Horas judged. But he was so weary he could not care one way or the other. Tumna was wounded, and angry at him. No reeve could live without his eagle. Aui! So the tales went: the glory and the honor and the fine adventure and thrill to ride aloft, to fly into any town or hamlet with such a formidable creature at your back that all folk must acknowledge you. But the tales lied. Everyone lied. He hated them all, and they deserved his hate, for the world was nothing but a smear, a bit of smut, a spat word and a kick in the ribs.

He would have wept again, but he was too ashamed. Fear was a worm in his belly. He knew himself for a coward and hated himself most of all. He had seen the truth in that clerk’s gaze. He was ash, muck, nothing but leavings.

All at once, Tumna chirped as though to tell him something. Good news! Good news!

Aui! It was obvious, now he thought on it. The clerk’s gaze had lied, too. No sense in believing her, when he had no reason to trust her. He might yet make something of himself, but he guessed, now, that he’d find no comfort at Argent Hall.

“We’ll fetch our things and get out,” he said to Tumna, and the eagle chirped, as if in answer to his tone.

No hall would have him. But they needed no hall. He felt no duty to the reeves, not any longer. They’d fly to the Barrens, find a place to live, and hunker down until the shadows passed.

Tumna chirped a third time. The sea glittered ahead, flat and gray. Horas saw eagles circling as they waited to land at Argent Hall, still too far away for him to quite distinguish. But Tumna was excited. Tumna saw what he could not.

They glided down, and down, and the confusion of eagles circling began to take on a frightening significance. Those pale streaks flashing up from the ground were arrows and javelins. Of the eagles circling, some were trying to land while others
were trying to get a lift to move away. Already a quartet of reeves was beating north, fleeing the skirmish.

Above the walls of Argent Hall, an eagle tumbled so suddenly that he thought it was a clot of dirt flung out of the sky, until the poor creature tried to spread its wings and could not. It fell, out of his sight behind the walls, into the sea. With his gaze drawn that way, he saw along the shore coming up from the south more flights of eagles, too many and in too regular a formation to belong to Argent Hall.

He began to tug on the jesses, trying to get Tumna to angle away, to fly north, but the eagle ignored him. Still at a good height, Tumna found a thermal along the shoreline and rode it, and they soared as both reeve and eagle examined the swirl of raptors below. A group of about twenty reeves lost heart and wheeled away in the face of the flights approaching along the shore. But more carried the fight to the invaders, although it seemed strange that they should do so when those on the ground had the better position.

Reeves dangled like dead men in their harness as their eagles kept passing over and over as if seeking a landing. Although a few of the Argent Hall reeves were loosing arrows down into the hall, the arrows streaking up from below had, it seemed, manifold advantages: their archers were good shots, they had stable footing, and all had taken cover behind posts, wagons, and scaffolding. Strangely, certain of the eagles were trying to land within the hall despite the resistance. A dozen or more had taken perches, as many as could come to ground at one time, and either their reeves were already wounded, or the eagles were injured and could not fly; but in any case, those reeves were at the mercy of the people who had taken over Argent Hall. A dozen or more eagles had come to earth outside the walls, and as Horas tugged and tugged at the jesses, trying to get Tumna to move off, he saw a band of horsemen race out of the walls and, keeping their distance, shoot arrow after arrow into reeves trapped because their eagles would not fly.

Horas could bear it no longer. He was helpless. Argent Hall had fallen to what villains he did not know, although he could guess that the Clan Hall reeves had turned against every oath sworn by hall and eagle and with unknown allies betrayed their fellow reeves.

Tumna closed her wings and plummeted. Horas shrieked. With his staff he jabbed the eagle’s breast. With an angry call, Tumna pulled up, swooped over the hall, and dropped toward the earth beyond. Horas slapped at the eagle again, aiming for the injured wing, and with his other hand tugged at the jess.

“Up! Up! Damned eagle! We’ve got to get away from here! North! To the Barrens!”

They hit hard in a dusty rice field. Horas unhooked and stumbled out the harness. Tumna struck at him with her beak. Horas leaped away, shouting. He caught his heel in a hole and fell on his backside. The eagle settled back and, with the greatest dignity and a look of affronted pride, tried to preen at the oozing wound on her wing, which she could not quite reach.

Pissing, stupid eagle!

He scrambled up. Argent Hall stood several fields away. A trio of riders galloped in their direction along a raised path between fields.

His string of oaths did nothing to gain Tumna’s attention. He got a good grip on his short staff and marched over to the idiot bird.

“Up! We’re getting out of here!” He whacked it alongside the head to get its attention. “I’m in charge, you stupid arse-wit!”

Wings flashed out. He sucked in a breath to speak, took a single step toward the harness.

Tumna struck.

The weight of her talons pitched him sideways. At first, there was no pain. But when he shifted, thinking to rise, he found himself pinned to the ground. Blood soaked the dirt, and it was still spreading.

“Gah!” he said, as he tried to speak. A shadow covered him. Tumna loomed above.

She wants to be rid of me.

Then the cruel beak came down.

At dawn, Eliar’s mother came to the guesthouse and, in a gesture offered in the most casual manner imaginable, invited Mai to take khaif with the other adult women in the women’s tower. To do this meant entering the family gate.

Sheyshi must be left behind because no unmarried woman not born to the Ri Amarah could ever be allowed within the walls. Priya, offered the gate, told Mai she thought it best to remain behind.

“You will keep your head about you,” she said to Mai. “But this one may panic if I am not here to calm her down. I will also keep an eye on our possessions.”

“I don’t think they’re likely to steal what they could have taken at any time,” said Mai, but she did not press the point.

Eliar’s mother opened the gate herself; no servant performed this mundane chore for her, as one would have in the Mei clan. Behind the gate lay a brick-walled room, already uncomfortably hot, with slats in the roof and one heavy gate in the opposite wall. She rang a bell, and waited as a series of bolts were shot on the other side.

“You can see,” said Eliar’s mother, “that we guard ourselves well.”

“It is kind of you to admit me.”

Mai had to skip back as the doors opened out. A second set of doors, set right up against the first when closed, had already been opened. They passed through a dim corridor and emerged into a vast rectangular garden with well-tended greenery, benches, and several open shelters for shade. A covered porch stretched along the other three sides. All along the edge of the raised porch were scattered indoor and outdoor slippers in matched, or mismatched, pairs.

The narrow end of the garden opposite their gate abutted a three-storied tower. One long wall opened to living quarters, many sleeping and sitting rooms alive at this hour with children running in and out and along the covered porch. A harassed
matron tried to herd them into some manner of hall whose doors were slid open to give light and air. The other wall opened onto kitchens set back from the main buildings.

As Eliar’s mother led her along a gravel path the length of the garden, the children were chivvied inside and seated in rows alternating between boys and girls. At some command Mai could not hear, they bowed their heads and cupped hands over mouths and noses. Not one peeped.

At the porch, Mai followed the example of Eliar’s mother and exchanged one pair of shoes for a pair of cloth slippers. Inside, the ground floor of the tower was a warren of narrow halls with whitewashed walls and polished plank floors. Where wall and floor met curved an inlaid strip of blond wood minutely carved with vines and flowers. Now and then a plain wooden door banded with iron stood closed. Oddly, these were not normal house doors, but fitted in the same manner as gates in a wall, with hinges, so that they opened inward. Hanging on each door was a chalked board on which were scrawled strange symbols.

“This way,” said Eliar’s mother.

Mounting stairs, they passed through a weaving hall with its clatter and chatter just getting started. A second set of stairs took them through the second floor, a spacious chamber open on all sides to a screened balcony and furnished with low tables, cubbyholed shelves, the entire apparatus of a merchant’s counting room. This room was empty.