PART FIVE: SLAVES

23

JUST BEFORE SUNSET a man appeared on the road, entirely alone, walking up out of the south. He was a holy man, and he wore the gaudy colors of an envoy of Ilu: a voluminous cloak of peacock blue, wine-red pantaloons, and a tunic dyed the intense yellow gotten only from cloth dyed with that dearest of herbs, saffron, whose value in the markets of the Hundred Keshad knew down to the last vey. Along with the rest of the small merchant company, Kesh stared as the man strode to the spot they were settling in for their night's camp, cheerfully greeted the caravan master, and began chatting as though he'd been traveling with them all along. The envoys of Ilu were known to be insane, not mad in their minds but willing to endure hardships and risk dangers that no ordinary person would get near. This certainly proved it.

But Keshad had his own business to attend to, a wagon, mules, driver, and most crucially the goods he was transporting north over the Kandaran Pass to the Hundred. He had a very particular and complicated routine he must follow at night to keep his goods safe. So he dismissed the envoy of Ilu from his thoughts, and did no more than glance his way once or twice, until midway through the next day when the envoy, pacing the caravan, drew up alongside Kesh where he walked at the front of the line.

"Greetings of the day, nephew."

"Greetings of the day, Holy One."

As the two men walked along the ancient trading road, they talked. It was a good way to pass the time. Their feet scuffed up dust with each step. The rumble of cart wheels and the clop of pack animals and the laughter of a quartet of guards striding out in front serenaded them. Behind, the rest of the caravan clattered along. That ensemble of noises always seemed to Keshad the most reassuring of sounds when he was out on the road. If safety could be found in the world, then surely it was found where folk banded together to protect themselves from predators.

"In ancient days," the envoy was saying, "the Four Mothers created the land known as the Hundred with its doubled prow thrust east and north into ocean and two great mountain ranges to the south and the west to protect the inhabitants from their enemies. The Mothers joined themselves with the land, and in that transformation seven gods emerged from the maelstrom to create order."

Keshad shrugged. "So the story goes, at any rate."

"Ah. You're clearly born and bred in the Hundred." The man touched his own left eye, as if to bring to Kesh's attention that he had noticed the debt scar on Kesh's face. "Yet you don't believe the Tale of Beginning?"

"I believed it when I was a child."

"You've gone over to the Silvers' way of believing?"

"The Silvers? No, I don't know anything about that."

The envoy was old enough to be Kesh's father, had Kesh still had a father; a man beyond his prime but not yet elderly.

"Something else, then. Hmm. Keshad is your given name, so you say. That means you were dedicated to the Air Mother at birth. Too much thinking. That's often a problem with Air-touched children. In what year were you born?"

Kesh brushed his elbow, where his tattoo was. "Year of the Goat."

"Even worse then! Goats are inconstant and unstable, prone to change their thinking, especially if they're Air-touched and liable to think too much. Still, they can survive anything. Look at you, a young man, in the prime of your strength, good-looking, all your teeth—oh, no! missing one, probably from a fight."

"That's right. But the other man lost more! And he started it!"

"Happy is Ilu when he hears of those who gain justice!" The envoy grinned, and Kesh laughed. "Good eyes, not bloodshot or yellow or infected. Strong limbs, open stride. Health in order. It must be your Goat's heart that is distracting your Air-touched mind."

Kesh rolled his eyes, but he did not want to insult a holy envoy, who was a nice enough fellow, cheerful, lean, strong, and with an amazing set of white teeth that made his grin contagious. Obviously, the man was crazy.

"So, then, lad, you are born to be skeptical. How do you think the world came into being, if you don't believe my tale?"

"I hadn't given it much thought. I'm too busy wondering if we'll be attacked on the road, and if the guards we hired will protect us. Or run."

"That's always a distraction," agreed the envoy amiably.

Still, as the small merchant train and its armed escort trudged down the hip-jarring slope of the Kandaran Pass, Keshad studied the terrain of the rugged foothills where bandits lurked. He cast his gaze up at the spires themselves, shining in the afternoon sun. Light splintered off the snowy peaks. Clouds spun off into threads where they caught on summits and pinnacles. It was easy to imagine the fiery eye of a god glaring those formidable mountains into being as a warning to mortal man: Do not cross me.

"The way I see it," Keshad continued, "it doesn't matter how the world came to be. It matters what path a man takes as he walks through the world."

"A fine philosophy! Did you serve your apprenticeship to Ilu, perhaps? You sound like a Herald's clansman."

"No."

"One of the Thunderer's ordinands, perhaps? I see you carry a short sword and a bow. That's not common among merchants."

"I am not," he said curtly, and was then sorry at his sour tone. The envoy had treated him with good humor and deserved as much in return. "I have spent a lot of time thinking about journeys, because of my own. For instance, a merchant has a choice of three paths to reach the markets of the Hundred."

"Three paths? I would have thought only one." The envoy indicated the road on which they walked, but his sharp gaze never left Kesh's face.

"He can brave the seas—"

"And their treacherous currents! The roil of Messalia! Reefs and shoals!"

"That's right. Or the desert crossing to the west over Heaven's Ridge."

"And thereby across the Barrens! There's a reason they're called that, you know!"

"That's so. But it can be done, and folk do it."

"True enough." The man coughed. "So I hear."

"Or he can pass this way, as we're doing. Paying a tax to the empire for right-of-way on the Kandaran Pass, because it's the only route leading over the Spires that we know of."

The envoy's steady gait did not falter, but his eyebrows rose in surprise and his voice changed timbre. "That we know of? You think there's another way over the Spires?"

"If there was, and you knew about it, wouldn't you keep it hidden?"

The envoy snorted and lifted his walking staff, letting its crest of silk ribbons flutter as he waved the staff toward the heavens. "That I would, lad! If I were a merchant, and prized profit above all things. Or one of the Lady's mendicants, desiring secrecy. How comes it that you know so much about traveling into and out of the Hundred, if you're not heart-sworn to Ilu the Herald, as I am?"

"I'm a merchant, and therefore I prize profit, so I've tried all three in my time—"

"Ah. As well you might, being an Air-touched Goat. Still, you're yet a sprout. Young to be so well traveled!"

"Not so very young!"

"Three and twenty seems young to a man of my years!"

Kesh laughed. "Do you want to hear what I've concluded about the three paths?"

The envoy's expression was full with laughter, although he did not laugh, and for some reason Kesh could not explain, the holy man's amusement was not condescending but warm and sympathetic. "I've heard a great deal about you so far! Why stop here? Go on!"

"Well, then. I've concluded that while Death might find tax collectors amusing, She doesn't often masquerade as one. Therefore: I choose taxes."

"Taxes?"

"Best to risk taxes now, and death later."

"As they say, both are certain. Still, I can't help but think they're gouging us."

"Who is? Death's wolves?"

That grin flashed again. "Death's wolves aren't greedy. They only eat when they're hungry, not like the wolves among men. I mean the Sirniakan toll collectors, the ones we've left behind. Double and triple toll they charged me! Even a man such as myself who is only carrying two bolts of silk. Just because I'm a foreigner in their lands."

"It's true their tolls cut down on profits, but taxes are still preferable to death. A man can't work if he's dead."

"So it's said. Is that all life is for you? Work?"

Kesh looked back at his cargo. He'd rented the wagon, mules, and driver at great expense in the south, and spent yet more to rig up scaffolding and waxed canvas so his treasure would be concealed from the eyes of men, although naturally every person in the wagon train believed they knew what he had purchased. If he listened closely, he heard the two chests shifting and knocking together and the two girls whispering as the wagon juddered along. Otherwise, his cargo was silent and seemingly ignored by merchants and guardsmen and travelers alike, but he saw the way they glanced at his campsite in the evenings, every man of them. Wondering.

The envoy said nothing, waiting him out.

Kesh discovered he'd tightened his hand on the hilt of his own staff so hard his fingers hurt. He shifted the staff to his other hand and opened and closed his fingers to ease the ache.

"Work is the road I must take to reach the destination I seek," he said finally, knowing the ache would never ease.

"Ah." Again, the envoy brushed a finger alongside his own unscarred left temple. If he wanted to question Kesh about the debt mark, he kept his curiosity politely to himself.

"What of you, holy envoy? That's a long way to walk just to buy silk, when you can buy Sirniakan silk in the markets of the Hundred. Had you no other purpose? Sightseeing?"

"As if any priest would wish to risk execution in the south just to see the fabled eight-walled city," replied the envoy with a chuckle, easily falling in with Kesh's change of subject. "Silk, it's true, can be bought anywhere, but I was looking for a particular . . . grade and pattern. "His frown was startling for being so swift and so dark, but it passed quickly, and Kesh wondered if he'd mistaken it. "I did not find what I was looking for. Did you?"

The riposte took him off guard. "I'll only know when we reach Olossi."

"Who will you sell the girls to?"

"Girls?"

"The two girls."

Keshad smiled nervously. "Whichever man will pay the most."

The envoy glanced back at the wagon. His gaze burned; for an instant, Kesh thought the man could actually see through the canopy and mark the treasure Kesh had hidden all this way by using the time-honored method of illusionists: distract the gaze with the things that don't matter so that your audience doesn't notice the one thing that does. Ilu's envoys were notorious, seekers and finders who noticed everything in their service to Ilu, the Herald, the Opener of Ways. They were always gathering news and carrying messages; the temples even sold information to support themselves.

Still, this was none of Ilu's business. Kesh had come by this treasure as honestly as any man could. It was his to sell and profit by, his to use to get what he needed most. After so many years toiling, this trip promised to be the one that would at last bring him what he had worked for, over twelve long years.

It hurt to think of it, because he wanted it so much: Freedom.

"Look there." Perhaps the envoy meant the distraction kindly, seeing Kesh's distress, but even if this were so, it was just as obvious that the sight relieved him. "The first mey post. We have reached the Hundred at last."

The white post had carved on it the number one, being the first mey of the road. Above that was engraved the name of the road, written in the old writing, more picture than letter, and recently repainted in the grooves with black ink: WEST SPUR.

The envoy padded to the side of the road to cover the top of the post with his palm. The mey post stood chest height. It was square at base and top but tapered so that the base was larger than the squared-off top where, in time of peril, the base of a wayfarer's lamp could be fixed into a finger's-width hole drilled deep down into the wood. At first the envoy stared north along the road, which began here its most precipitous drop out of the mountains. Then he shut his eyes and bowed his head in prayer as the seventeen carts and wagons of the merchant train trundled closer. When he looked up, he gazed toward the nearest prominence. A rugged mountain rose just off to the east with forested slopes and a bare summit surrounded on all sides by bare cliffs. Keshad thought he saw light winking up there, as if caught in a mirror, but when he blinked, the illusion vanished.

"Home," said the envoy with satisfaction. He removed his hand and began walking again to keep ahead of the wagons. Kesh hurried after him. "And hope of a dram of cordial at the Southmost."

Brakes grated against wheels as wagons hit the incline. Kesh looked back. The black mey marking, which had numbered one viewed from the south, numbered sixty-four seen from this direction: the distance of the road called "West Spur" from founding post to founding post. The other end of the West Spur lay a few mey outside the market city of Olossi, their destination. For him, this was the last road he would walk as the man he was now.

He felt sick with determination, with hope, with memory.

"I will let no obstacle bar my path," he muttered.

"What? Eh? Forgive me, I didn't hear."

"It was nothing. Just thinking out loud."

"Like the winds, to whom voice is thought, and thought voice."

"No, more like a mumbling madman who doesn't know when to shut up. There's the border gate."

Stone walls stretched east and west as far as Kesh could see, with miniature towers anchoring each side of the road. Armed men leaned on those narrow parapets, eyeing the approaching caravan. Below, by the log barrier, a pair of young ordinands lounged against the fence, laughing as they traded stories with those of the caravan's guards who'd been walking point.

"Heya! Heya!" shouted their captain from the east tower. "Get you, and you, to your posts!"

The ordinands scampered back across the ditch on a plank bridge to take up their places at the second fence, this one gated and closed.

"The guard force has doubled since last time I came through here," commented the envoy.

"Are they expecting trouble?"

"It's always wise to expect trouble in border country."

Kesh grunted in reply as he dug into his travel sack for his permission chits, his ledger, and the tax tokens he had received from the Sirniakan toll stations they had passed.

"If you'll excuse me, holy envoy. I must see to my cargo. If you would be so kind as to share a cordial with me at the Southmost, I would be honored."

"Indeed! I thank you. I'll drink with pleasure!"

The envoy strode ahead. His staff, tattoo, and colors were chit and ledger enough. In the Hundred, the servants of Ilu could wander as they, and the god, willed. Only Atiratu's mendicants had as much freedom. Kesh certainly did not. He dropped back. The forward wagons creaked and squealed as drivers fought against brakes, beasts, the weight of their cargos, and the steepening pitch of the road. It was a good location for a border gate. Any wagon that did not slow to a stop would crash into the ditch, and charging horsemen who cut off the road to avoid fences and ditch would shatter themselves against the stone walls.

Farther back, a wheel, stressed to its limit by the wear of the brake, wrenched sideways and broke off its axle amid curses and shouting. The wagon tipped sideways and with a crack and a shudder blocked a third of the road.

"Out of the way! Out of the way!"

"You cursed fool!"

Kesh jumped back as his hired driver, Tebedir, barely swung past the wreck; then Kesh got a toe on the boards and leaped up beside him.

"I replace wheels before they is too weak to take the strain," said the driver without looking at Keshad as the wagon rocked with the shift in weight. "No savings in scanting on repair, if you ask me."

"It's why I hired you," said Kesh, "despite the cost."

"No savings by hiring cheap."

They jolted to a stop behind the third wagon, to wait their turn. Ahead, a pair of Silver brothers or cousins—identifiable by their pale complexions, slant eyes, turbaned heads, and the silver bracelets jangling from wrist to elbow on their arms—were arguing with the clerks checking off their ledger. Kesh chewed on his lower lip. Tebedir chewed a cylinder of pipe leaf, spat it out, thumbed a new leaf from the lip of his travel sack, and rolled it deftly before slipping it between parted lips. His teeth were stained brown, but he had a nice grin.

After a while, rubbing his stubble of black hair, Tebedir said, "Slow today."

Kesh wiped sweat from his forehead, although it wasn't unusually hot. "The guards are expecting trouble."

"Rumor in camp tells it no merchant can travel north past a town the Hundred folk call Horn."

"It's hard to imagine, although I've heard those tales, too. That would mean the markets of Nessumara and Toskala are closed to every merchant trading out of Olossi."

"Still, young master, we are only going this far as Olossi. It is no matter to us."

"That's right. No matter to us."

As the second wagon moved through, Tebedir gave the reins to Kesh and clambered down to take the beasts and guide them over the plank bridge. Kesh didn't like heights—they made him dizzy—so he didn't look over the edge and down into the ditch, although he'd heard that the ordinands cultivated adders in that trench. It always seemed when he crossed that he heard hissing, but that might have been the wind scraping through the pines and tollyrakes that grew in the highlands around them.

No, that was hissing. Aui! Had she taken it into her head to waken now? He turned. One of the girls was peeking through a gap in the canvas sheeting tied over the scaffolding.

"Tsst! No! Not allowed!"

She saw him. One dark eye, all he could see, flared as she startled back. The cloth was pinched shut. A voice murmured, too soft for him to hear syllables. Anyway, they didn't speak a language he knew, nor had he taught them words beyond the most basic commands. That way they couldn't talk to anyone.

Tebedir pulled the wagon to a stop where the guards waved him down. Keshad tugged his sleeves down to conceal his bronze bracelets. The captain strolled up, examined Kesh's face, and held out a hand.

"Let's see your ledger, ver," he said in a friendly way which suggested he preferred cooperation to belligerence.

And why not? A captain at this border station could turn back any man to whom he took a dislike. The Silvers' wagon had been released and was rumbling down the road toward the village that waited two mey farther along. Where the dust settled, the envoy walked along briskly in its wake, his arms swinging. He seemed to be singing, but he was too far ahead for Kesh to hear. The second wagon, piled high with bolts of silk wrapped in burlap, was under assault by a pair of shaven-headed clerks who laboriously matched each bolt to what was written in the merchant's accounts book.

"How slow they are," said Tebedir, indicating the clerks. "Why you Hundred people allow women perform the work belonging to men?"

"No use arguing against the gods of the Hundred," said Kesh.

Tebedir merely grunted in reply, then led the beasts off to a generous patch of shade, beneath trees planted long ago for this purpose. He sat down on a log placed there for drivers, sipped from his ale pouch, and settled back to wait as Kesh handed the ledger over to the captain. The man paged through it. Naturally he couldn't read, but a man in his position knew the old ideograms well enough to mark if everything was in its proper place. As his arm moved, Kesh glimpsed the tattoo on his wrist: the Crane, resting between the clean squares and angles that marked an Earth-born child.

"Looks in order," he said to Kesh, handing the ledger back, "but the clerks will have to set their stamp. What's this?" Kesh offered him the tangle of chits, and he plucked the rare one out of the group and dangled it. "Two ordinary, one exalted. What have you got in there?"

"I call on the law of Sapanasu," said Kesh, "to ask for the veil of secrecy. You check yourself, Captain, and see that all is in order. I've no contraband, no weapons, no goods not accounted for in my ledger. I'll pay extra for the veil. It's my right."

"It's not cheap."

"I've these tax tokens to prove I've paid the worth of my cargo all the way north out of Sirniaka."

"I see it. This ledger is stamped with Merchant Feden's seal. We know his mark here. I'll accept your call for the veil. Now let me look."

Kesh gave his two-note whistle and called, "Moy. Tay."

The curtain at the back of the cart parted, switched sideways by a brown hand, and the older girl peeked out. The captain eyed her as she unfolded the step and cautiously descended to the ground. She was small but well formed, if too slender for the taste of most men. The younger followed her out, keeping her gaze lowered. She was plumper but not quite ripe. Under Kesh's gaze, they lifted out the two chests and opened them to display their contents.

"Sisters or cousins," said Kesh.

"Umm," agreed the captain. "Too skinny. Might not be bad, though, with a few more years and more flesh. Where are they from?"

"I picked them up in eastern Mariha, along the border country there. I was hoping to sell them to one of the jarya houses in Toskala or Nessumara, but I hear it's not safe to travel so far."

"It's true. You've been out of the Hundred for some months?"

"Yes."

"Roads north out of Olossi aren't safe. That's the word. It would be a shame to lose a good cargo like that to a pack of filthy bandits. But what's this veil you're wanting?" He picked carelessly through the contents of the two chests. "I see nothing unusual here. Vials of saffron, clove oil, mirrors, a basket of shell dice, ivory combs—very handsome!—and so on. You're not even carrying silk."

"Go in, if you will. Here come the clerks."

The captain paused with a foot on the step.

"This one next, Captain Beron?" asked the male clerk.

"Yes."

Moy and Tay kept their gazes fixed on the ground as the clerks moved in with their charcoal pencils, carved wood stamps, and ink. The clerks wore the nondescript, undyed robes common to those who labored for the Lantern of the Gods, Sapanasu. Like most of Her hierophants, they had shaved their heads, and their brown skin had a pleasing gleam from being oiled. They poked and prodded the girls delicately, and in their efficient way tallied each least item in the two chests and checked it against his account. They were so tidy that they packed everything back in just as they had found it, not a corner's fold of fabric out of place.

The captain ducked inside the wagon, which rocked under his weight. Tebedir dozed. A fly crawled on one of the driver's eyelids, and without seeming to wake he lifted a hand to brush it away.

"All accounted for." The female clerk dipped a stamp in ink and pressed it to the appropriate line in the ledger while the male clerk copied down figures in the record book he carried. "Or was there something else? What's this chit for?"

She held up the rare oblong, carved out of shell into the shape of a leopard.

The curtain trembled. The captain pushed out, wiping his brow, then the back of his neck. He stumbled as he came down that one step. He was flushed and sweating, and looking a little ashamed and yet at the same time a little amused at his own shame, but only a little.

"Tsst! Where'd you get such a thing?"

"I found it. Unclaimed. Mine by finder's right. You know the law."

He took a long look at Kesh. What passed in his mind was unfathomable.

"Anything we must know, Captain Beron?" asked the female clerk.

"No, set him his tariff and let him go on. He's invoked the veil."

"Very well." She and her fellow clerk consulted. They were no older than Kesh, but experienced and swift. They named the tariff. Kesh sorted through his coins, paid them into the locked coffer, and got his border chits to add to his collection. He was now almost broke, except for his trade goods, and paying for food and water would take the rest of his coin over the sixty-four mey of West Spur. It all depended on the price he could obtain for his trade goods once he reached Olossi. Everything depended on that.

"I've seen you before, last year," said the male clerk. "You're out of Merchant Feden's household, aren't you?"

"I am."

"Come on, Denni!" called the female clerk, who had already moved on to the next wagon. "The envoy said there was a bigger caravan coming up behind this one. We'll be stuck here all week if we stand gawking."

"Aui!" The male clerk looked Kesh over with a sneer. Boldly, he grabbed Kesh's elbow and rudely twitched back a sleeve to reveal a bronze bracelet. "Pretending to be what you aren't, as if you'd already bought your accounts bundle and cleared your debt! Don't think we can't see what's marked by your eye." He let go, and went after his companion.

The captain raised his eyebrows. "Isn't there a law against you slaves wearing sleeves that cover your wrists?" Recalling the ledger, he added ten to ten, as merchants did, and got twenty. "You're Feden's slave, aren't you?"

"I am." He felt how his ears burned, how his cheeks burned. How the shame took him, but also the anger and hope, because he was so close. "Do you know him?"

"You look like a good Hundred boy to me. What happened?"

Keshad wanted to say "none of your business," but the first rule of merchants, and slaves, was never to insult those who might have the means to harm you, or help you, later.

"Family debt. I was a boy. I never knew the details, only the amount."

"Eiya! If anything should clear your slate, young man, then this cargo should do it."

Kesh made the traditional gesture, hands to chest, the formal bow of not more than thirty degrees' inclination to show respect rather than submission, and turned to go.

"Whsst! In!" he said to the girls.

They clapped the chests shut and loaded them into the back while Tebedir yawned and got to his feet, stretching, flexing his big hands, clucking as he got the beasts out of their stupor.

"Coming up, Master?"

"I'll walk," said Kesh.

"If you ask me, a man can wear his feet out, walking too much. Women walk."

"I'll walk."

The captain watched them go, his gaze as sharp as the touch of a blade to Keshad's back, but in the end one of his men called to him and he went back to his task. He hadn't even demanded a bribe, but there were men like that. "Beron" was an Earth-touched name, and he'd worn the Earth Mother's tattoos. No doubt the envoy of Ilu would have a few words to say about the honesty of a man born in the Year of the Crane, dedicated to the Earth Mother at birth, and serving Kotaru, the Thunderer, as one of his holy soldiers, his ordinands.

24

By the time Keshad paid a half leya as toll to pass the palisade gate and walked beside his wagon into the village of Dast Korumbos, the envoy was already seated and drinking at the inn called Southmost. The village's eight rectangular houses were sturdily constructed of halved logs, and in the manner of the southern Hundred were not whitewashed. Chimes tinkled from every eave. The inn's shutters were open under the peaked roof to air out the loft. In the fenced forecourt, a trio of locals sat on stools around the envoy's bench, laughing as he told a story.

"So he said, 'No one wants to live so far south, right up into the mountains where anything might happen. But where else will folk pay double price for my sour cordial?' "

The innkeeper trotted out, cast a sour glance at his customers, and went back inside the house. The courtyard boasted two awnings and a grape arbor that also provided shade. The kitchen smoked out back. A chicken wandered past the benches, scratching and pecking. A dark-haired child stuck its head out of the loft where Kesh had slept once on a straw bed, the one time he had had Merchant Feden's coin to pay for lodging. The other times in Dastko he had slept on the ground beside the village well, under the branches of the Ladytree, where no one was allowed to charge rent.

The envoy saw him and lifted a hand in greeting. Kesh handed five vey to Tebedir. "For the well," he said. "See they drink deeply."

"If you ask me, they overcharge."

"That they do. You come have a drink, and we'll see what the inn is offering at a reasonable price for supper."

"We stay here tonight?"

Ahead, the wagon with the two Silvers trundled on through the far gate, headed down West Spur into the north, but the second wagon had already pulled up along the commons. Kesh squinted at the sky with its lacing of clouds and a peculiar purpling blue to the east, what could be seen of that horizon with the hills piled so high and the mountains crowded so close behind.

"It's a half day's journey to Far Umbos. We can't make it by dusk."

"That wagon goes on."

"Silvers have some kind of sorcery that protects them. Me, I don't want to sleep out under the trees tonight with any wild beast coming to eat us up. For free!"

"Lot of cold road here in the north," remarked Tebedir as he got down and hooked the leads onto the beasts' harness. "Lot of cold road and only wild forest and demon beast on every side. Not like in the empire. In the empire, there's always some person or village in spitting distance. Don't know how you folk stand it."

"I might say otherwise, wondering how you southern folk can stand to live all crowded together."

"Not crowded at all!" he retorted with a chuckle. "Lonely. Brrr." He shuddered as though troubled by a chill wind, gave a flip to the reins, and guided the team toward the well at the northeastern corner of the palisade.

The Ladytree was an old one, situated to the left of the well between the high outer palisade and the lower ring of stone wall that protected the well. A waist-high corral marked the limit of the Lady's generosity. The top of each post was carved into a representation of her sigil, the double axe, so no one could mistake this for anything but holy ground, but also to provide a hitching post for a traveler's mounts, dogs, or livestock. The Lady was practical in that way. The branches had grown out over the fence and had been twined in with it, and in spots he noted white scars where they'd been hacked back in defiance of the law.

Children loitered by the narrow entrance to the encircled well. Several sat on the high posts that jutted up from the wall. One man and one woman waited by the well gate to exact toll from anyone who needed to water a team. Keshad hoped Tebedir would not kick up a fuss about the woman wanting to take coin out of his hand, but the Sirniakan driver had worked the Kandaran Pass into the Hundred before; he knew the custom here. The wagon came to a halt under the sanctuary of the Ladytree. Tebedir unhitched the beasts with practiced skill and led them around the curve of the inner wall to the gate. The man put his hand out, not the woman. No doubt they'd seen plenty of Sirniakan drivers come through.

"Keshad!" The envoy beckoned. "Come sit, nephew. My friends here have already bought me a drink in exchange for news from the south."

The locals moved aside to let Kesh sit beside the envoy on the log bench. As a draught of cordial was placed before him by the smiling innkeeper, he glanced back toward the well, but Tebedir and the animals had vanished behind the inner palisade. One boy stood up on one of the high posts and, balanced there like a bird sentry, turned to watch what was going on at the trough, which was not visible from outside the little palisade.

"What about you, lad?" asked the locals. "What news from the south?"

Kesh shrugged. "Not much news you haven't already heard. The old emperor died. It's whispered there's a rebellion brewing in the south against the new emperor. A cousin thinks he has more right to sit on the throne, so there might be fighting."

"Oom. Hem," muttered the locals, nodding wisely. "That bodes poorly for custom, don't it?"

"It might," said Kesh, "if fighting reaches so far north no one dares trade from the Hundred into the empire. As for the western markets, the Mariha princes have fallen to an army from farther west, barbarians called 'Kin.'

"You traveled that far west?" asked the envoy, surprised. "All the way to Mariha lands?"

"I did. That's where I got the two girls. It was strange, though. Not one merchant I spoke to complained about their new overlords except that they have a habit of hanging thieves as well as murderers."

"That can't be all bad," said the older local, twisting greasy fingers in his beard. "Good riddance."

"Unless they call thieves and murderers those they want to hang, even if they didn't steal or kill!" said the younger as he rubbed a scab on his nose.

The trio talked for a while of their own expeditions into the south, though Kesh soon wondered whether these men had stirred more than a half day's walk from Dast Korumbos in their entire lives. Their stories sounded like such a tangle of tales that he suspected they might have heard them from others, and they could never verify details, but the envoy merely smiled at their stories, and nodded at Kesh as if to warn him that there was no harm in letting them spin their fantasies as long as they wished. Other wagons trundled in at erratic intervals. After two marks the traffic ceased. This late in the day, no one else continued north. By arriving early, the first wagons had gotten the prime spots under the Ladytree, up against the net of branches that, having grown into the fence, gave them a second wall of sorts at their backs. Other wagons had to pay for space on the commons or along the outer palisade, and soon most of the open space in the village was littered with a confusing maze of wagons and carts and a few tents being raised.

Tebedir took his time watering the beasts and getting things settled to his liking. After he hobbled the pair beside their wagon, he sauntered over to see about drink and taking a meal. The locals squinted at the driver, sketched hasty fare-thee-wells, and departed.

"I hear tell there's another caravan coming up behind this one," said the innkeeper as he brought Tebedir a cordial and all of them a pot of lovingly spiced barsh, a green mash of rice, chopped onion, and liver liberally sprinkled with pepper and sharp kursi, which was grown in the eastern marshlands.

"What's this?" Tebedir asked, making a face at the pungent barsh.

The envoy took in a deep breath and smiled broadly. With two fingers he dipped into the mash and tasted it. "Ah! A better flavor than your cordial, Master Innkeeper. Very good!"

The man grunted, both irritated and gratified. "The berries were sour this year. I can't afford to throw it out and buy elsewhere. No one wants to live on the pass, right up into the mountains where anything might happen. Heya! I was born here, and here I'll stay, but we have to pay rent and food to the ordinands who patrol the wall and control the gate, and to the clerks who account the trade and taxes. And it's a high toll ourselves to bring in any goods we want that we can't grow here. I don't like serving sour cordial, I'm proud of my inn and my service, but sour cordial's all I've got this year."

"Heya! Innkeeper!" a merchant called from another bench.

He sketched a gesture of leave-taking and hurried away. Kesh hitched the tripod holding the pot of barsh closer to the bench. They set to it eagerly.

Tebedir ate more slowly than the other two and was first to break the silence. "Not that tasty, if you ask me."

"What of your girls?" asked the envoy.

Embarrassed to be be taken to task in public, Kesh called the innkeeper over. "I want two tey of your second-grade rice, and a tey of beans—whatever kind—mixed in. I'll bring the bowl back when they're done."

"That's a lot of food for two young girls," said the envoy. He stared toward the Ladytree. Clouds had crept westward, making the late afternoon hazy. The wagon was half lost in the shadows under the spreading branches, but the envoy's gaze had a piercing quality that made Kesh nervous. What if the man could see through cloth?

Kesh forced a grin to his lips. "They're my merchandise. I'll get a better price for them if they're healthy and plump. No profit to me if the girls get sick or starve on the way to the block, is it?"

"No, certainly not. Nor is it any shame to hire folk who worship He Who Rules Alone when there are no good Hundred folk who can make the journey."

"The Shining One Who Rules Alone," corrected Tebedir genially. "King of Kings, Lord of Lords. You Hundred folk will all burn in the fire if you don't change your ungodly ways like Keshad here did."

The envoy raised an eyebrow but said nothing, and Kesh winced, thinking it would have been better had the envoy spoken his thoughts out loud. Anything would be better than that measured gaze turned on him now that seemed to eat him alive.

"Have you turned your back on your clansmen?" asked the envoy curiously, although no hint of anger tarnished his voice.

"They turned their back on me! Sold me into slavery to pay their debts!" He touched the crudely worked debt mark, more scar than tattoo, curving from his left brow and around the outside of his left eye.

"A sad tale heard all too often in the Hundred, I grant you. But under the rule of Beltak, once a slave you are a slave forever." He turned to the driver. "Is that not true?"

"Of course! No man become slave by the law of the Exalted One if he do not fall into disgrace." He nodded toward Keshad without embarrassment. "Is different here in the north. Tsst! First become slave, then buy free, and so on. But that is your way. Maybe it will change when Beltak's priests come."

"Maybe," agreed the envoy politely, "but in the Hundred, the gods and the land are as one, not to be separated." He looked closely again at Kesh as if trying to tease the strand of memory out of Kesh's mind that would explain to him why a good Hundred boy would betray his gods.

Kesh scratched the back of his neck, wondering how he could excuse himself without insulting the envoy. Whatever pleasure he'd taken in the day had vanished. Fortunately one of the innkeeper's lads bustled up with the boiled rice and beans.

"Best get the girls fed and settled down for the night," he said as he took the big bowl. "We rise before dawn. Get a brisk start to the day. Olossi Town beckons."

He tossed enough vey on the table to pay for everything.

"I thank you, nephew." The envoy smiled. "Rest well."

"Crazy priests," muttered Tebedir as they walked back to the wagon. "Best they all die in the burnings. Better for your people to worship the Exalted One and not these wrong things they call gods."

"Leave it, if you will," said Kesh sharply. The conversation had rattled him. He handed the rice inside.

After the girls had eaten, he returned the bowl to the inn, paid a pair of vey to empty their waste bucket in the inn's latrines, and returned to his little camp. Yet as he knelt in the shadow of the wagon, set a bowl of water before his knees, and said his evening prayers with palms turned upward to face the heavens, he found the words meaningless.

"Rid us of all that is evil. Rid us of demons. Rid us of hate. Rid us of envy. Rid us of heretics and liars. Rid us of wolves and of armies stained with the blood of the pure." He dipped a thumb in the water and traced that cool touch across his forehead. "Increase all that is good. Increase life. Increase wealth. Increase the strength of your devoted. Increase the power of your holy emperor, beloved among men." He dipped his little finger in the water and traced a line on each cheek. "Teach me to hate darkness and battle evil. Teach me the Truth, Exalted One, King of Kings, Lord of Lords. You are Beltak, the Shining One Who Rules Alone. Peace. Peace. Peace."

Wind shushed in the branches of the Ladytree, as if the Lady Atiratu Herself overheard him and muttered Her displeasure among the leaves. His thoughts wound away like the wind, seeking north. The town of Olossi beckoned, sixty-two mey from Dast Korumbos, more or less eight or ten days' journey depending on weather, road conditions, the state of the wagon, and the likelihood of accidents or obstacles as yet unknown.

Nine days! It seemed both far too many and so blindingly few. He could feel the taste of freedom on his tongue, as sharp as the blend of kursi and pepper that had spiced the barsh. His freedom. Her freedom. Both of us, soon to be free.

"Hei! Hei!"

The slap of feet on the ground startled him so badly he knocked over the blessing bowl. Water stained the dirt. He jumped up, but his view beyond the Ladytree was obscured by branches. A commotion roiled the commons. A youth came running from the direction of the southern gate with his broad sleeves fluttering back like bird's wings.

"Hei! Hei! 'Ware! 'Ware! Ospreys comin—!" He stumbled forward and plunged headlong into the ground. An arrow stuck out of his back. His arms jiggled crazily as he tried to crawl but could not make his legs work.

"Osprey?" Tebedir had heard the words but from his angle closer to the trunk of tree had not seen the lad fall. "What is that?"

"Trail robbers. Named for birds—what swoop down and grab their prey. But they never attack into a town. . . ."

"Robbers!" exclaimed Tebedir.

"Close the gate! Close the gate!" rang the frantic call.

Already out in the commons, a hand of men in guard tunics ran toward the southern gate. A pair of guards leaped on horses and headed toward the northern gate. A crowd converged on the inn, each man, and they were all men, yelling and gesticulating as they cried for protection, for news, for safety. Kesh grabbed his sword and slung it over his back, then buckled his quiver over it and with a quick tug and pop strung his bow. His stomach had fallen into a pit so deep he couldn't measure it.

"Tebedir, you can run, or stick with me, whatever you will, but if you run now I can't pay you your delivery share and you'll be taking your chances with robbers out among the trees."

He backed up until he pressed into one corner of the wagon, scanning with each step, and called out to Tebedir again, but the driver had vanished as if consumed by a stroke of lightning. Even the driver's blessing bowl was gone.

There were four vehicles under the Ladytree, crammed to fit: three wagons and one handcart. A sleepy lad draped along the driver's bench of the second wagon raised his head and stared around without comprehension. The others had been abandoned by men gone over to their supper who had, no doubt, paid their companion's lad to stand watch over all. Another merchant, less trusting, leaned against his handcart waggling his hands in fear as he stared at Keshad and his weapons.

"What to do? What to do? That boy just fell down with an arrow in his back! Os-preys never dive into a walled village! Everyone knows that!"

"Run for safety," advised Kesh roughly.

"And leave my cart? That's all my clan's savings tied up in silk—"

A bell jangled, twice, three times, and then the alarm was cut off by a shrill scream that went on for so long that Kesh realized it wasn't a dying man making that horrible noise but a living one. It was a battle cry.

The other merchant bolted out from under the Ladytree's canopy, but the fool ran for the mob gone into hysterics at the inn rather than seeking the sanctuary offered by the well. The two horses gone north returned at a gallop. One was riderless. The other, shot in the hindquarters, dragged its rider behind, but the fellow was dead or unconscious, his body turning and tumbling as the pain-blinded horse tried to shake him loose.

How could this be happening? How, when he was so close? Were the gods punishing him for turning his back on them? Yet he'd done that years ago and walked unmolested in the Hundred enough times that they'd had plenty of time to dissolve him with the blast of their angry gaze if that was their intent. No, no, it must be now, when he was so close that the taste of freedom had made him at last admit his hunger. The gods were cruel, that was it, and delighted in mocking his hopes.

He reached back and slipped an arrow free, set it against the string. "Curse you all," he muttered. "I won't lose all this now!"

"Kei? Kei?" It was the older girl, peering out from between the walls of cloth. "What go, Master? What go?"

"Down!" he snapped. "On the bed of the wagon. Down flat!" He heard them rustling, but he hadn't the leisure to look inside to make sure they obeyed. Just what he needed! A stray arrow piercing that precious neck and robbing him of all he'd worked for, for so many years. God, he was so furious at those damned robbers he could kill them and eat their hearts and savor the tang.

"Whass going on?" asked the lad.

"Robbers, you thick skull!"

The lad whistled. He was, it appeared, thick in understanding. He scratched his shaved head and wiped his nose. "Now what?"

"Run to the well. That's refuge."

"Can't leave the wagon. Boss said so."

"If they catch you, they'll kill you."

"Boss said so. Stick by, he said. Watch these other two, not just ours. Gotta do what Boss said. Plus there's a sticky bun in it for me. When we get to Old Fort. He promised."

"Hide under the wagon. You've got good position back here with me. Hard to come through these back branches, like a wall—" He pointed with the bow, and the lad nodded wisely. It was obvious that the boy didn't comprehend the danger they were in. "There's the cart, and that other wagon there, on the other side where it's more open. That's like wall, too. A bit of safety. The Lady's palisade, they call it."

"Eh," said the lad, squinting. "Eh! See there!" He pointed with his elbow, not that Kesh hadn't already seen and felt his insides go from falling to twisting into a tight, tight knot.

Where the caravan guards had got to he did not know, but the men now riding into the commons from both north and south were no raggle-taggle bunch but two dozen men armed with bows, spears, and swords and dressed in good silk. Not the best quality. He had a finely honed eye, and even from this distance he recognized that the shades of crimson, apricot, and azure were decent but second-rate. This was the kind of silk a well-to-do crofter might buy his young bride for her wedding price, or a rich merchant might clothe her servants in for a festival party to impress her rivals.

Behind, branches rustled. He spun. Tebedir pushed through the wall of hanging branches, holding an unlit torch in one hand and a shovel in the other.

"Tsst!" the driver hissed in disgust. "No robber in my land. God keep order!" He had tied his blessing bowl back onto his belt but now set down shovel and torch and set to work with flint and tinder to start a fire in the bowl. "Fire scare evil ones," he explained. "Burn them."

"My thanks for coming back," said Kesh, heartened by his reappearance.

"Never left. I swear my time of service according to the Exalted One. To break a swear—an oath—makes a man a slave! In my country, Master," he added. "Not yours. No such honor in yours."

Kesh grinned wryly but kept his gaze fixed on the way the robbers were closing in around the inn. A few of the merchants bore walking staffs or droving whips, but those that held them aloft did so more as if to say they were ready to surrender. The innkeeper emerged from the inn on his knees, hands clapped to his forehead, palms facing outward in the traditional gesture of submission.

"Mercy!" The man's voice carried easily over the commons. "By the mercy granted us by the Witherer's Kiss, take what you will and go on your way."

"Think they'll see us?" whispered Tebedir.

A strong voice called out from among the robbers.

"Move swift! Hurry! Find the treasure, and ride!"

They wheeled, scattering like a flock of chickens after thrown grain. One jumped his mount over the fence surrounding the inn and rode through, whip flashing to either side as men screamed and stumbled out of his way. Another cantered back toward the northern gate and a third toward the southern. Six dismounted and began to tear through the wagons parked all through the commons as that same voice called, "No, you slackabeds! A wagon with canvas walls! Yes, like that!"

The man giving the orders remained in the road, surveying the chaos, watching avidly as a wagon surmounted by a canvas cabin had its walls slit by spear point. The leader's mouth and nose were masked by a black scarf tied up behind his ears. His dark hair was short, like a laborer's, and streaked with enough gray that Kesh could make out the speckling from here. Two men turned their horses and trotted toward the Ladytree.

Streamers of colored ribbons broke out of the innyard as the envoy used his staff to help himself vault the fence. He cleared it easily and landed with remarkable agility for a man of his advanced years. He trotted through the chaos with a peculiar lack of concern, following on the trail of the two riders moving in on the Ladytree.

"Not much chance fighting these odds," said Tebedir. "If you ask me."

"I'm not asking you! You're free to escape, if you wish."

"Seems to me Hundred folk like killing southern folk. As good odds here as out on my own. I stick."

"With my thanks, then. If we survive this, I'll give you a bonus."

"Hei!" cried the lad, pointing toward the two riders.

Tebedir jammed the base of the torch into the dirt, held the shovel between his knees, and flicked open his tinderbox. Keshad sighed, nocked an arrow, and took aim. Once the first arrow went, he'd be marked and doomed. He could still surrender. The two riders closed. The envoy gained ground behind them, darting through the chaos. Kesh noted him grimly. Was it the envoy who had betrayed them to the bandits?

He loosed his arrow. It missed so wildly that in truth the two riders didn't even notice it, so intent were they on looking back over their shoulders at the fortunate men now looting the wagons out on the commons where merchants sobbed and slaves cowered.

The torch flared beside him, a wash of unexpected heat. Tebedir hoisted the shovel in two hands and gave it a test swing as Keshad set another arrow to the string. He loosed it, only to see it veer wide yet again. Beltak had cursed him, or the gods had chosen to punish him for his apostasy now that he was back walking in their Hundred.

The lad had come up with a bow from somewhere. With a blinking look of confusion, he drew and aimed and shot and the lead rider of the pair toppled off his horse with an arrow buried deep in his belly.

" 'Eir! 'Eir!" cried the second, waving and hollering until he got the attention of the leader. He drew his sword. "Got trouble over here."

The leader gestured. Three more riders turned to ride that way as the second rider bent low in his saddle, letting his mount's neck cover him. The lad fumbled for a second arrow. Keshad swore under his breath and made ready.

The envoy fell to his knees as though hit, but more likely he was only cowering as the new riders swept up beside him, ignoring an unarmed man dressed in the colors of a god. His arms shifted, and without warning he stuck his staff parallel an arm's span above the ground, right in the path of one of the horses. The creature tripped and tumbled and screamed as it went down with all that weight, slamming hard. The rider spilled forward over the horse's neck, hitting head and shoulder on the earth, and lay there like a dead man, although the horse struggled up at once.

"Beware!" said Tebedir in a sharp voice at Keshad's left ear.

Kesh stepped back, and loosed an arrow into the face of the first rider, who was just now ducking under the Ladytree. The man screamed and flailed as his horse swung sharply back the way they'd come to get out from under the branches. The turn and the scrape of branches toppled him from the horse, and he lay writhing in the dirt and moaning and bleating and clawing at his face. The horse trotted away.

Two riders still pounded toward them. Tebedir dashed forward to the cover of another wagon, holding both torch and shovel. The lad had strung another arrow, but the sight of the wounded man struggling and bleeding in the dirt distracted him as did the cries and shouts from the commons and the inn.

The envoy dashed after the riders, toward the Ladytree, only to stumble and fall. An arrow stuck out of his back.

Kesh loosed his arrow as the pair of bandits ducked beneath the tree, but it missed. The lad was still staring at the injured man and the arrow stuck in his eye with blood and matter smearing his cheek.

"Heya! Heya!" shouted Kesh, but the lad turned too late as the lead rider stuck him through the belly with a spear. Choking, the boy collapsed and was then spun sideways as the rider yanked his spear clean. Tebedir thrust the smoking torch into the face of the second horse, and as it shied back he swung hard with the shovel. Its edge cut deep into the second rider's ribs. The man shrieked and grunted; his sword caught Tebedir in the thigh, but only because he was already falling. He staggered as the rider landed at his feet, then battered the man's face with the shovel, cursing as he swung his arms. Blood stained the fabric of his leggings.

Keshad leaped back as the other rider advanced. The man's arm was cocked back with the bloody spear dripping and pointed straight at him. Kesh's hands shook so badly he could not get an arrow free from the quiver, and when his back slammed up against his cart he dropped the bow and drew his short sword, however stupid and hopeless that was. The bandit tried a thrust, but Kesh slapped it aside desperately. Beyond, more riders approached. Tebedir shifted to get a better position in the shelter of the foremost wagon.

"Here! Here!" shouted the lead man, keeping his distance now that he'd seen Kesh would fight back. "I've got them! Two armed, one wounded. The wagon's here!"

Although trapped against his wagon, Kesh could still see a portion of the commons. The bandit's captain raised his voice, and all heads turned toward the Ladytree. Every man of them reined their horses aside; they had seen their quarry and now moved, like ospreys, for the swift catch.

"It's all over," called the rider, sneering. "Throw down your sword and we'll kill you quick. Keep it, and we'll take longer."

"Is that meant to persuade me?" answered Kesh. "Can't you do better? Offer me a share in your company? Compliment my skills to your captain? Promise to lay waste to my clan house if I don't cooperate? Neh! You can't even finish me off before the rest of them get here to back you up! You probably need them to help you swive the goats, too—"

He expected the thrust, caught the haft on his blade and shoved it aside. While the man was recovering his balance, Kesh jumped up against the horse's withers, grabbed the rider's belt, and yanked him off the horse.

"Tebedir! Back to me!" he called as he skipped sideways. The rider hit his head hard enough to wind him, and Kesh stuck him up under the ribs with no more mercy than the man had shown to the poor lad, who was still gurgling.

"Not looking good," said Tebedir as he limped over, leaning heavily on the shovel.

A dozen men trotted over the limp body of the envoy as more came up from behind, converging on the Ladytree.

"You can give yourself up and beg for mercy. I won't mind."

Tebedir's breathing had gone raspy with pain. "Better to die with honor than surrender as a woman. I give my word to drive, to keep silence, to bring you and the cargo to Olossi. I keep my word."

A wind stirred the branches, as though the Lady were whispering. A strange prickling charge made Keshad's skin tingle. He looked around, expecting to see the Lady's servants leap out of the air to protect those who sheltered under her sacred boughs, but it was only the wind and a distant ripple of thunder, a change in the weather.

Too late for him. Too late for her.

"Now would be a good time for Beltak to show His power," muttered Kesh angrily, feeling tears sting and a vast crashing wave of despair and fury and hopelessness. From behind the canvas walls of the shelter he heard one of the girls sobbing with fear. He, too, wanted to weep, but he'd be damned if he would give in.

The thunder grew louder, and the riders toward the back of the group turned their heads to look south. He could not see their expressions, precisely, but he saw their postures alter. Elbows were raised, pointing, and then came an explosion of shouting and curses as they tried to shift direction.

Too late for them. They could not move quickly enough, having been too intent on the fish beneath the waters. A tide of black-clad riders swept through them, scattering them, cutting them down. What fine horsemen! This new company turned sharply and with ease and took from behind those who had been spared the first assault. It was a slaughter. Not one of the bandits, not even the captain, survived.

Tebedir took his shovel and beat in the heads of the men still moaning, until they stopped. He halted beside the lad, whose eyes were open and whose face was white with agony and terror. "Kill him?" he asked.

"No. No." Kesh could barely grip his sword's hilt, he was trembling so hard. Saved! Just as he had asked! "There may be a real healer here. Praise the righteous ruler of all! Who are those men?"

Unexpectedly, horses neighed shrilly, and some reared, only to be ruthlessly reined down and held hard by their riders. Those horses who had no riders scattered in a panic. At the command of their captain, the mounted company withdrew from open ground, back among the wagons. Merchants and slaves pointed overhead, yelling and exclaiming, and most sprinted for the inn as though a squall was about to hit. All this movement cleared a space in the commons beyond the tangle of wagons and carts.

Whoof!

The beast came down fast, body almost at the vertical and wings in a wide curve, and yet with such beauty that Kesh shouted aloud and Tebedir swore in the name of the god. It was a huge eagle with a gruesome healed scar above its piercingly bright right eye. The man hanging in the harness unhooked himself with a speed born of long practice and leaped out with reeve's baton raised and cloak swirling dashingly at his back. But as he surveyed the scene, he relaxed, then grinned, then lifted the baton toward the waiting horsemen as a salute. He turned to the eagle, spoke a word, and stepped back as it fanned out its wings with primary feathers and tail raising. With unnatural power, it thrust with its legs and lifted with its wings and took to the air again. Its wake fanned the air, and lifted the ends of the reeve's cloak. A man actually shrieked in fear, followed by a chorus of anxious laughter and a sudden gabble as all the merchants swarmed the reeve.

Tebedir grunted and sat gingerly on the tongue of the cart.

"Let me see that wound," said Kesh, but the driver waved him away.

"Best go, first. Talk and see. I not die with this cut."

"But without you . . . you stuck with me, beyond everything. . . . I can't repay you—"

"Oath is worth more than coin. No believing man go against his oath." Tebedir meant what he said; it was no use arguing.

Kesh sheathed his sword, picked up bow and quiver and slung them over his back, then headed out to the mob. It was true what Tebedir said: As a believing man, a true follower of Beltak, the Shining One Who Rules Alone, he could not forswear his oath to see the task through to its end. Of course, not every Sirniakan who claimed to be a believing man really was one, but in this case fortune had favored Kesh, and he murmured a prayer of thanks.

25

There was a lot to take in besides the twenty or so corpses, the stray horses, and the baggage that had been strewn on the ground around the carts as they were ransacked. Merchants and servants hurried to gather up those wares not spoiled or broken in the assault. One wept over a roll of golden silk that had been trampled, but surely the idiot could see that silk, at least, could be cleaned and repaired and sold at a reasonable discount; it was better than being dead. Other merchants crowded around the reeve, demanding aid or explanation or simply pouring out their fear and anger, but Kesh remained mindful of the force of men that waited off to one side. He estimated their number at about one hundred, all wearing black gear. They showed remarkable discipline, lined up in tidy ranks with a trio of men, their leaders, in front. They appeared foreign in both dress and facial features. He had never seen anyone who looked quite like them, except in Mariha.

He elbowed into the mob surrounding the reeve and, finding the innkeeper, grabbed him by the arm. "Heya! Heya! Pay attention! We need to bring in wounded men, maybe a dead one. An envoy of Ilu needs our help! Quick!"

Kesh's fierce words cowed the man, and the reeve looked his way with the calm expression of a man completely in his element.

"Go on," said the reeve to the innkeeper. "You heard what he said. Bring in any wounded at once. Find that envoy! If there are any innocent folk these ospreys killed, I'll need their name and clan, so we can make an accounting and see that any death tithe is offered correctly."

Kesh tugged the innkeeper after him. The reeve, meanwhile, gestured to the others to move back to their wagons. Afterward he walked to the black-clad guardsmen. Kesh saw the envoy's bright blue cloak on the ground and he broke away from the innkeeper and ran to kneel beside him. The arrow had an ugly look to it. The shaft had broken four times and it was clear that the envoy had been tumbled when the horses were ridden over him.

"Is there a healer here?" he asked the innkeeper.

The man gave a groan of despair and shook his head. "Nay! Nay! It's many days' walk to the closest temple devoted to the Lady! We haven't seen a mendicant in weeks."

"What about the Merciless One? Sometimes there are healers there."

"The closest temple is all the way north by Olossi."

"I know that place," said Kesh grimly.

"Eiya! Horrible!" wailed the innkeeper as he stared at the body. "To have it known that an envoy of Ilu died here! No one will want to bide here or sup and drink at my inn. It's an ill omen! We're ruined!"

"Get a flat board—a tabletop—a door—something! We must carry him inside." He looked up at the sky. "It might rain, and it will soon be dark."

The innkeeper needed no greater encouragement. He bolted back the way they had come. Kesh pressed a hand gently to the envoy's neck. He breathed still, if shallowly. Life pulsed in his body. The breath of the gods had not yet left him.

Kesh curled his hand around the arrow as close against the envoy's back as he could and tested its grip by slowly twisting it. To his surprise, it slid free easily. Amazingly, the point had not pierced the fabric of the cloak but only driven it deep into the body. He cast the arrow away and swiftly pushed the cloak to one side as blood gushed up through the yellow silk of the tunic. He got out his knife and slit open the back of the tunic to expose the wound. The tumbling by the horses had done the most damage by disturbing the point, but it was remarkable how the silk had not torn despite the speed and force of the missile. He pressed the heel of one hand on the wound to stem the flow of blood and closed his eyes, trying to sense the pattern of the body's humors beneath the skin, as it was said true healers might do who could breathe and smell and even hear the whispering complaints of illness or injury.

"Ssa!" came the whisper. "Sshuu!" And then, "Where did they come from? Who set them on us?"

Kesh opened his eyes to see that the envoy's eyes were open. One of them, anyway. He couldn't see the other since the man's face was turned to one side because he was laid out on his stomach.

"Please lie still," said Kesh. "Don't talk. I got the arrow out. Hang on. We'll get you to the inn. You'll rest there."

The first winds heralding dusk sighed down off the mountains, and the cloak rose and sunk into ridges and hollows as if something living were moving inside it. The envoy did not reply, but perhaps he had passed out again. His left arm lay at an awkward angle, and bruises were purpling all along his back where hooves had struck him.

"How badly hurt?" The reeve crouched beside Kesh. He was younger than the envoy but a fair bit older than Kesh, a good-looking fellow with short black hair teased by a few strands of white. He stood at medium height, lean but very fit, and he moved with the strength of a man who has confidence in his ability to stick it out in a brawl. A dangerous man, in his own way, and not unlike his eagle in the way he examined the envoy with a keen gaze, without actually touching him, as predators seek from above the sign of their prey by studying the ripples in grass and the flash of sudden movement along the ground.

Kesh eased the heel of his hand off the wound. Blood oozed, but the gushing had stopped. He pushed the envoy's cloak off the body and into a heap at one side, then slit the tunic from neck to base and opened it like wings.

"Trampled and shot," mused the reeve, "but still breathing. Good thing those os-preys are all dead, as it's more merciful than the death they'd receive for killing a holy man."

"He's still breathing! He spoke to me."

The reeve grunted and glanced over his shoulder. Kesh looked, too, and saw that the black-clad guards had dismounted and spread out, and were hauling the corpses of the bandits into rows the better to tally, identify, and dispose of them. Locals and servants hovered close by, hoping to strip the bodies of second-rate but still precious silk.

"That's one band," remarked the reeve, more to himself than to Keshad, "but it won't be the end of it."

"The end of what?"

"These attacks along the roads. I came south from Clan Hall to investigate."

"I heard there's been trouble. I've been south some months. You'd think Argent Hall would have been patrolling."

"So you would think. Worst, it turns out it's the captain in charge who has made common pact with these ospreys."

"The captain? The one in charge of the border post? Captain Beron?"

"The same," said the reeve. "How do you know him?"

"I heard the clerks speak his name as I passed through earlier today. He seemed a decent man."

But the thought struck him hard enough that he fell silent: It was my treasure the ospreys sought. He saw it, and let me pass, and sent these men after.

He said nothing, although the reeve waited, as if sensing that Kesh clutched a secret to his heart.

"Beron?" The envoy stirred. His voice had the hoarse gurgle of a man talking past blood. "Dedicated to the Earth Mother at birth. Crane-born—did you see his Crane mark? Sworn to Kotaru the Thunderer. Well. It's no wonder." That wheeze was, perhaps, meant to be a laugh, but it sounded more like a death rattle.

The reeve regarded the envoy with a look of mild amazement.

"What's no wonder?" demanded Kesh. "Yet if you would be silent, uncle, we might save you!"

"Cranes are orderly. . . . Thunderer likes discipline. . . . Earth Mother arranges all things but . . . can be rigid. Overturn these . . ."He gargled on blood as he tried to suck in air.

"Overturn these," said the reeve softly, "and you have chaos."

"It is easy to subvert a man . . . who is in all parts desiring order . . . imposed from without. Eh! Eh! Any envoy of Ilu would have advised against . . . dedicating this child . . . to Kotaru."

"Uncle! Keep still! You must spare yourself."

The reeve looked fixedly at Kesh as the innkeeper trotted up, gasping and grunting and leading a pair of men who carried a tabletop on which to bear the wounded man. The envoy closed his eyes. They shifted him over and hurried off, but Kesh grabbed the innkeeper by the sleeve.

"There's a pair under the Ladytree. A poor brave lad who I fear is dead. And my driver, who needs his wound washed and bound with a salve. If you have any starflower or soldier's friend, they are good for such injuries. Or Bright Blue, which stems bleeding—nay, it's too far south for that."

The innkeeper gave him a fearful grimace and tore away, shouting at a pair of untidy lads loitering by the gate to come and give a hand, and he lumbered off toward the inn after the envoy while his servants, or slaves, ran toward the Ladytree.

"You know something of the healing properties of plants," said the reeve, who had not once taken his gaze from Keshad during this exchange. He rose, brushing the dust from his knees, and when Keshad looked past him at the black-clad foreigners tidying the field, he looked, too, to see what caught Kesh's interest.

"Where did those come from?" asked Kesh. "Were they patrolling? I've never seen such a company of guardsmen in Olossi."

"No. They're the hired guard for another caravan. It was running about half a day behind yours. I saw them coming down the pass. As a reeve, I have the power to deputize folk when I need their aid."

"They're not Sirniakan."

"Are they not?" The reeve sat back on his heels with a look of pleased interest. "What are they, then?"

"I'm not sure, but I think they're Kin. Qin. I can't say it right. Grass eaters. That's what they're called in Mariha."

"Mariha?"

"That's a princedom west of the empire. They were ruled by five princes for a long time, so I was told, and none were happy except those who ruled. Then these Qin people came out of the west and killed the ruling princes. Now the Qin rule in Mariha."

He was about to say more, but he faltered, seeing too late that the reeve's pleasant interrogation had been meant to draw him out.

"Beyond the western edge of the Sirniakan Empire?" mused the reeve. "Well, I've seen no maps nor have I patrolled those lands, so I can't say I understand it. These men and their captain claim to be mercenaries. They hired themselves to the caravan as guards."

For a while that seemed drawn out far too long, the reeve smiled at Kesh as Kesh squirmed, shifting his feet and berating himself in his thoughts. This reeve was a truly dangerous man, for all his cordiality. He must start to wonder why the ospreys had attacked in such numbers and into the village rather than waiting and raiding along the road. He must start to wonder what it was they were after so urgently.

"I'd like to talk to you further," said the reeve.

"I have to leave at dawn."

"As must I. Come see me in the inn later, when you've a chance. Don't forget your accounts book and tallies." He said the words with such a benevolent smile that Keshad knew he absolutely would be rounded up by those grim-faced guardsmen and marched before the reeve as before the assizes if he did not present himself before the man this very night. When a reeve said such words, in that tone of voice, a man had to obey.

"It's getting dark," he said, to escape.

He fled to the Ladytree to find Tebedir arguing with the lads from the inn. The driver had already poured a dram of his potent brew onto the cut and bound it with a strip of linen, and he refused any other aid.

"Best see to the boy," he said.

"He must be carried," said Kesh to the lads, who bent to grab the youth by ankles and wrists. "Nay, not like that, you fools. His guts will fall out."

"What matter?" asked the shorter lad. "He's dead, this one. Just not yet."

"Wish he'd stop squealing," said the taller one. "Makes a lot of noise for a dying man, don't you think?"

"No one can survive a plug to the guts. Gah! He smells!"

"Go get something to carry him on!" shouted Kesh.

They fled as Kesh cursed after them.

The lad was whimpering and keening, and the sound did grate the ears, but Kesh felt pity for him, and anyway the lad had probably saved Kesh's cargo with his stalwart defense of his master's wagon. He crouched and smoothed the lad's forehead and talked to him as he would talk to an injured dog, letting the sound of his voice act as a focus as the lad's breathing caught, ceased . . . and gasped again as he fought back to life.

Tebedir offered a bowl of water and a cloth to Kesh, who wiped the lad's brow as he mewled and cried for his mother. Flies gathered on the dead ospreys, and flies buzzed around the lad's ghastly wound, all pink and gray with oozing blood draining his life as it dribbled onto the ground. Wind whispered in the Ladytree, and between one breath and the next the lad escaped into the air, slipped away on the breeze, his breath following the shadow path toward home. A sprawled hand lay open; the mark of the Ox decorated his wrist.

Tebedir murmured a prayer. Kesh sank back on his heels as the pair of lads trotted up empty-handed. A stout man wearing a stained merchant's coat labored along behind them. When he saw the dead boy, he slapped a hand to his forehead.

"Not under the Ladytree! Now I'll have to pay the death offering to the Lady, too!"

Tebedir raised an eyebrow and looked at Kesh.

"This boy saved your cargo," said Kesh sharply. "He defended your wagon with selfless courage. I can't say the same for you."

"This is none of your business! Move aside! Oh, by the Witherer's Kiss, you fools!" he shouted at the lads. "You should have dragged him out from under the tree! Now I'm stuck with the cursed Lady tithe."

Kesh rose and turned to Tebedir. "Watch the cart, if you will. If I have to stand and listen to this any longer, I'll hit him."

"Please hit," said Tebedir. "That boy fought like brave man."

"Pissing foreigners!" snarled the merchant. "Get out of my way!"

Kesh lifted a fist, and such a tide of loathing swept him that he hauled back—the merchant shrieked—and from the cart a female voice said words in a language Kesh had never heard before. It was like a bucketful of icy spring water splashed over him. He recovered; he remembered: Hit a man beneath a Ladytree, violating the Lady's law, and you paid a fine to her mendicants. They always knew; you could never get around it. Pay a fine, and it was that much coin thrown away. He could afford to lose none of his profit, not now, not this time. Not because he was disgusted by a self-important, selfish jackal of a man who paid his lackwit servant in sticky buns since the poor boy was too ignorant and too stupid and now too dead to demand better pay.

Shaking, he lowered his hand, gave the bowl and cloth to Tebedir, grabbed his ledger and pouch, and strode away. The merchant began yapping after him, but Kesh walked fast and didn't listen.

Dusk lay heavily over the commons. A cheerful fire burned in the outdoor hearth of the inn's courtyard, and men gathered there, drinking, but no songs warmed the twilight and the talk looked intense but muted. No one laughed. Other merchants hunkered down beside their carts. A half-dozen hirelings prowled around the ranks of corpses, but a quartet of black-clad mercenaries guarded the dead men, and Kesh guessed that no one would strip those bodies, not tonight, not without permission from the mercenary captain or the reeve. He paused by the gate to look over the mercenaries from a safe distance, not so close that they might feel he was challenging them. A few were setting up crude tents, canvas stretched out as a lean-to over bare ground to provide shelter against rain and wind. A pair rode off toward the south gate. Others moved among the horses, unsaddling some and stringing their spare mounts along a line for the night. They watched the movement of merchants and hirelings and slaves in the commons in the same way that wolves study the behavior of deer in a clearing. They ignored the corpses, though Kesh could not. The souls of dead folk begged for release, and the longer they lingered here, the more likely they would get up to some mischief.

He touched fingers to forehead and lips, and patted his chest twice, remembering the words of the Shining One Who Rules Alone: Death is liberation.

"There are no ghosts," he said, as if saying it would make it true.

Too late he noticed a young man coming up to the gate carrying a full kettle of steaming barsh. He halted and stared at Kesh strangely, as if he'd heard the comment. Kesh opened the gate for him, and the young man nodded in thanks and hurried toward the mercenaries, looking back once. He was dressed differently, in loose trousers and a short kirtle bound at the waist with a sash. His red-clay coloring and pleasant features reminded Keshad more of his two Mariha slave girls than of the stocky riders with their flat, broad cheekbones, sparse mustaches, and predator's gaze.

Inside the inn, the reeve had set up court. He had drawn up a table parallel to one end of the long room. Here he sat, stripped out of cloak and sleeveless vest and down to shirtsleeves, on a bench between table and wall, and seated beside him the man who must be the mercenary captain. The contrast between the two men made Kesh pause beside the door as he tried to decide whether to get in line with the other merchants being interviewed by the reeve, or grab a drink first to fortify himself against the coming interrogation.

The reeve had an easy way of talking to the merchants who laid out their ledgers and tallied their chits in response to his smiling questions. His manner suggested this was merely an inconvenience between friends. The other man was a stranger, reserved, removed, but aware of every action within the smoky interior. He glanced at Kesh, noting his scrutiny, and marked him with a nod before looking elsewhere. That he understood the words flying back and forth Kesh guessed by the way he would cock his head at intervals and glance sideways so as not to seem to be paying too much attention to the talk of cargoes and tallies. He had much the look of the Qin soldiers, but a striking nose and the shape of his eyes gave him the look of a man who has been twisted out of different clay. Kesh wasn't sure which man made him more nervous: the genial eagle or the silent wolf.

The innkeeper sidled past, on his way to the door, and Kesh caught his sleeve and tugged him to a stop.

"Here, now, you old toad. Those two lads you sent were useless. There's a boy dead beneath the Ladytree—"

"Thank goodness!" wheezed the innkeeper, trying to pry his sleeve out of Kesh's grasp. "That's none of my trouble, then. I have enough as it is!"

"As sour as your cordial! Where is the envoy?"

"Lying as peaceful as he can, out on the shade porch." He recoiled, although Kesh did nothing but give him a disgusted look. "He's under a shelter! If he dies under my roof it'll cost me half my season's profit for the purification ritual. I am not a cruel man, ver, but it will not help me or my family if I lose everything we have, will it?"

Kesh scanned the room. An elderly man was filling wooden mugs. A lad not more than ten was cleaning the floor where someone had sicked up. The rest of the staff, evidently, was outside clearing up from the attack.

"Can't get good help, anyway," continued the innkeeper as he weaseled his sleeve out of Kesh's grip. "Used to be my good wife and a niece and daughter helped me instead of these cursed useless hired louts, but after the midnight raids of four year back we moved all the women down road by Old Fort. I was lucky. I know a man lost both his strong daughters that summer to the raids. The gods alone know what became of them, poor lasses. Something awful. If you'll kindly let me get to my business, ver, I'll see you get a cup of cordial."

Kesh let him go as the reeve caught his eye and gestured, smiling as if they were old friends just now reunited. The innkeeper scurried away. Kesh pushed past a trio of grousing merchants and came up to the table as another man gathered up his ledger and chits, thanked the reeve profusely and, with an innocent man's flush of honest relief, headed for the door with a mug of cordial in one hand.

"I forgot your name, ver," said the reeve. "Sit down."

"You never asked it."

"In the heat of the moment, courtesy gets lost in the fire. I'm called Joss."

"Fire-touched," said Kesh, thinking of the envoy as he noticed the mark on Joss's wrist: like the dead boy under the Ladytree, the reeve was born in the Year of the Ox. Kesh's ken for numbers figured it up, unbidden. While the lad must be sixteen, this reeve was likely two cycles older, so he was forty.

Joss smiled. " 'A Fire-kissed Ox! You'll drive me to drink, lad!' That's what any one of my dear aunties always said. I don't think I was that wild. This is Captain Anji, who commands the guard of the caravan that was traveling behind you on the road. We're all fortunate they happened to be close enough to help us out. I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name again."

"I'm called Keshad." It was best to set all his chits on the table immediately. He opened the ledger to the current page. "I'm a debt slave bound to Master Feden of Olossi."

"Master Feden of Olossi," murmured the reeve, gaze fixing on the tabletop as though to seek answers there, or to remember a thing he had forgotten. "Feden."

"Do you know him? He's a member of the Greater Council of Olossi. One of the most prosperous and influential merchants in Olossi, in fact."

The reeve blinked, as though shaking awake, and he looked hard at Kesh. "How long have you been debt-bound to him?"

"Twelve years now."

"Twelve years? Did you know that on Law Rock it states that 'When a person sells their body into servitude in payment for a debt, that person will serve eight years and in the ninth go free.' "

He shrugged. "Everyone knows that covers only the original debt. Not any debts accrued in the interval."

"Is that what your master tells you?" asked the reeve in a tone Kesh couldn't interpret.

"That's the usual way. Have you heard different? Is it different in the north?"

The hard look on the reeve's face made Kesh nervous, but the man shook it off quickly.

"No, I don't suppose it is." He ran a finger down the neat column of the ledger, turning back a page or three. Kesh doubted he could read, but any educated person knew the ideograms for common market goods, the directions, numbers, and so on. "A trusted slave, I see, running your own trip south and even into lands where Hundred folk don't normally trade. Like Mariha."

"I like to find goods that will make a profit."

"For your master?"

"I must clear a certain amount for each trip. After that, I keep the rest of the profit for myself."

The reeve glanced up at him, then touched each of the chits. "Getting close?"

"Yes."

"After twelve years." He was clean-shaven like a lot of the men north of the Aua Gap: Toskala-chinned, people called it. He rubbed his smooth Toskala chin against an arm, sighed, and scooped up the rare chit. "The Sirniakans call this an exalted token." He tapped the last line of the ledger. "I see you invoked Sapanasu's veil for your cargo. Care to tell me anything about that?"

"No."

The reeve drew his finger up to the top of the page. "Whatever it is, it seems to have come your way in Mariha together with—" He clicked his tongue, studying the writing. "Females—two, young, unmarried. What's this?"

"Saffron."

"Ah. Oil . . ."

"Clove oil."

"These here—mirrors. I don't know what that is—"

"Shell dice. This one is ivory combs—thirty-two in number."

"No silk! That's unusual." His finger slid back to the last line. "Isn't that the mark for a bouquet of flowers? Or herbs of some kind?"

Kesh did not look at either of them. He kept his hands open, and was able to speak normally. "An aphrodisiac."

The reeve nodded, with a hearty grin and chuckle that suddenly struck Kesh as so entirely false that he shuddered and found he'd curled one hand into a fist. All this time, the mercenary captain had watched and listened and made no sound or reaction, like one of those stone monuments so old that any distinguishing marks have long since been worn off its face. This time he raised an eyebrow and said, in a cool, elegant accent, "Have the men of the Hundred need for such medicine?"

"We haven't any women as beautiful as your wife, Captain," said Joss, "or we should never want for desire."

The captain smiled blandly to accept the compliment. He did not deny it.

"Where are you come from, Captain?" Kesh asked.

"I have come from the south. I hire my company out as caravan guard. This is our first trip to the Hundred." Anji looked sidelong at Joss. "Maybe Hundred folk need guards to hire."

Joss shrugged. "Maybe so. Times are hard."

"I hear things are very bad in the north," said Kesh, happy to see the conversation flow into safer channels.

"So they are," said Joss with the merest flicker of his eyelids as he considered the north and what it meant to him.

"Maybe you know folk who are looking for honest men seeking employment," said the captain.

Joss let the chit fall to the table and regarded the captain. The two men had level gazes, and the ability to look each at the other without it becoming a contest. They were different men, with different authority, not rivals.

"It's come to this," said the reeve, "that merchants moving goods along all roads in the Hundred need caravan guards. I'll see what introductions I can make for you, in Olossi, in exchange for the good turn you've done me."

"One, in exchange for another." The captain extended an arm, and the men grasped, each with his hand to the other's elbow: So were bargains sealed in the marketplace, where the worth of a man's word was soon known to everyone.

"May I go?" Kesh asked.

"Certainly," said the reeve as though he thought Kesh had left hours ago. "Just one thing."

Kesh waited.

Pleasant expressions were traps for the unwary. The reeve wore one now. "An envoy of Ilu is dying out on the back porch. It's a bad thing in any event, that a holy man is murdered in this way, and I take it more personally because I was dedicated for my year to the Herald, so it's like one of my kinsmen breathing out his spirit a few paces from me. Here I was come too late to prevent it. That's a thing that really burns me hard, coming too late." His entire aspect shaded to an emotion so dark that Kesh took a step back, and that made the reeve take notice and that friendly smile crawl back onto his lips just as if he hadn't a moment before looked furious enough to rip someone's head right off. "Tell me, Keshad, did you witness the killing? Can you tell me what you saw? Leave out no detail. Mention everything you noticed."

"There wasn't much to notice. I retreated under the Ladytree to defend my wagon and cargo." The best defense was a good offense; he remembered that now. "You can imagine that I didn't want to lose what I'd bought in Mariha. I'm close—very close—to buying back my freedom, so you can imagine—" Even so, he choked on it.

The reeve nodded compassionately and took a slug of cordial while Kesh caught his breath and thought through his strategy. The captain did not drink.

"I stood there under the Ladytree hoping we wouldn't be noticed because of the boughs. Or that ospreys wouldn't blood sanctuary ground—scant chance of that! Anyway, men came riding our way, and that envoy just ran out toward us. At first I thought maybe he was in league with them, but he used his staff to bring down one of the horses and its rider, and then someone—I don't know who—shot him in the back as he was running, and after that he was run over at least once by a pair of horses. I was busy by then. I didn't see anything more."

The reeve asked, "Where do you think the envoy was running?"

"I thought toward the Ladytree, seeing as it is sanctuary ground. . . . "He timed his hesitation perfectly. "He couldn't be sure the ospreys would grant him safe passage. But he may have been running elsewhere. I don't know. I had my own troubles. We were attacked. My driver got wounded. That lad was killed. I should put in a complaint to you, now that I think on it, because the merchant who hired him looks like to shirk the burying tithe, and I'll wager he's got no interest in seeing the boy's family gets any death tax due them. He was a brave lad, a little weak in the mind, if you take my meaning, but he stuck his ground as brave as any guardsman I've seen, not that he had a chance against the ospreys."

Captain Anji had a little secret smile on his face that made Kesh turn cold inside. But the reeve said nothing, only stared into the depths of his cordial as if seeking the tiny stems that weren't quite all strained out.

"Did you know his name?" the reeve asked.

"His name? Whose name?"

"The envoy's name?"

"He never said, now that I think on it. They rarely do. I never thought—"

"Yes?"

"Just . . . it all came so fast, the attack, all of that. I really thought we were safe once we crossed the border." He wiped his brow and found that his hands were trembling. "Can I go now? Is there anything else you want to ask me?"

The reeve shook his head. "No. You can go." His smile was so cheerful that it was almost possible to believe they were two good friends parting after a sweet drink to chase down the day's travel. "If I think of anything else, though, be sure I'll ask."

"I'm leaving at dawn."

"So are we all. I believe your two caravans will be joining forces for the rest of the journey. I'll be patrolling the West Spur as you go, so I can always drop in if I have any more questions."

"I'll go, then." He nodded at both men and moved away, swearing under his breath, until he caught the innkeeper coming in from outside. "What about that cordial you promised me?" He glanced over his shoulder to see the reeve and the captain with heads bent together. The reeve glanced up at the same moment, saw him looking, and waved at him with the kind of bright, deceitful smile that cheating merchants paraded every day of their cheating lives. It reminded him of Master Feden.

"You're hurting my arm," whispered the innkeeper.

"Never mind the cordial. I'd like to see the envoy."

There wasn't much to see. The dying man had been carried out behind the main structure, and laid out on a table set up on a raised porch covered by a solid roof constructed of lashed-together pipe stalks and thatch-tree fronds, the kind of place where people congregated in the heat of the day to escape the sun. A single tarry lamp burned, suspended from a hook in the cross quarter beam. Its smell gave him a headache, but the glower of its light offered enough illumination to see. The envoy lay on his stomach with his blue cape bunched along his left side to make him more comfortable. Kesh crouched beside him. He gave no sign of life beyond the infinitesimal movement of one eye below its closed eyelid, as though he were dreaming.

"He'll be dead by midnight," whispered the innkeeper, too loudly, and—startled—Kesh fell on his butt, and put his head in his hands, and after a moment roused himself to get up.

"Has any effort been made to stem the bleeding?" he asked.

"Bleeding's stopped. Just a bubble of air coming out. See it pop—there! I mark that means it hit his lungs. That'll end him, no doubt." He gestured toward the smoke swirling up from the tarry lamp. "That stink'll fetch any mendicant close by, but if there is none of them near, then there's nothing we can do."

"You've no starflower? Soldier's friend?"

"Wouldn't know it if I saw it. Just herbs for flavoring food and the cordial spices, that's all we've got here."

Gingerly, Kesh traced a finger around the wound. It was deep and almost perfectly round, rimed with blood but barely oozing. Bruises were blooming all over the envoy's bare back. The bright saffron-yellow tunic lay in pieces, discarded to one side.

"It's the trampling that done him," said the innkeeper. "I've seen men run over by horses who got up and walked in for a drink as easy as you please only to die in the nighttime after with no warning. Something gets broken inside. No way to heal that."

"No," said Kesh quietly, "no way to heal the things that are broken on the inside." He touched the envoy's grizzled hair, as much silver as black. "Is there a Sorrowing Tower here?"

"Nay, none here. He'll have to be carted to Far Umbos. Another expense!"

"He had two bolts of finest quality silk with him," said Kesh bitterly. "That should cover your costs."

The bartender called from the back door. The innkeeper excused himself and hurried indoors.

Kesh was overcome by such a wave of exhaustion that for a moment he thought the blue cloak was slithering like a snake, as though something trapped inside it was alive. He dozed off. When he started awake, he remembered that the innkeeper was gone, leaving only him and the silent body. The envoy still breathed, slow and shallow. Something about the pale moon exposed in an inky sky and the harsh scent of the tarry lamp made Kesh shiver.

On the breeze he heard the sound of wagons rumbling in, and a few shouts of greeting.

"Farewell, uncle," he murmured.

In the commons, the second caravan had arrived at last, led in by a pair of scouts. It was a bigger company than the one Kesh had traveled with, about thirty wagons and carts in all although it was too dark to get an accurate count even with hirelings and slaves trudging alongside with torches. There was even one heavily guarded wagon, a tiny cote on wheels rather like his own, but he could not be sure what treasure, or prisoner, was held within. There were another hundred of those black-clad guardsmen riding in attendance. Captain Anji led a substantial troop.

Kesh walked back to the Ladytree and his own wagon, where Tebedir kept watch. He dismissed the driver to get what rest he could. After emptying the girls' waste pail out beyond the Ladytree's boundaries and returning it to them, he stretched out on the ground. There he dozed, restlessly, waking at intervals to stare hard into the darkness.

He had to stay alert. Someone was looking for the treasure he was hiding. A thousand needles could not have pricked so hard. But there was nobody there, and all around him in Dast Korumbos the survivors and the newcomers slept the sleep of the justly rescued. If any ghosts walked, he at least, thank Beltak, could not see them.

26

"We keep our heads down," Keshad said to Tebedir that dawn in Dast Korumbos as they harnessed the beasts and stowed the gear. "Stay away from the reeve. Don't let that foreign captain or his wolves notice us. Heads down. Tails down. Walk quietly. Draw no attention to ourselves. Keep in the middle of the group."

As soon as they left Dast Korumbos, a pattern developed: Each night the caravan halted where the reeve met them on the road, and each night Kesh built his fire, fed his slaves, and kept his head down, watching and listening but never venturing farther than he had to from his wagon. He heard the rumor that the faithless border captain, Beron, was being held as a prisoner, hauled along to face justice at the assizes in Olossi, but no one was allowed near that closed wagon, guarded as it was by a shield of grim wolves. Kesh had no desire to investigate. Best not to draw attention to himself. He was pleased to find himself assigned to the last third of the procession. They'd eat dust back here, but were perfectly placed to remain anonymous as the cavalcade lurched down the West Spur, moving north and east.

He looked for signs of that Silvers' wagon that had gone on ahead, alone, out of Dast Korumbos, but he saw no wreckage, no sign of them at all. Either they'd got away free, or they and their wagon had been hauled off into the trees, never to be seen again.

At length the caravan rumbled down the long slope out of the foothills where the high mountain pine and tollyrake forest gave way to an open, grass-grown, and rather dry landscape with few trees. They came to Old Fort, a low hill where the remains of an ancient monument thrust up into the sky, looking rather like the mast of a vast, buried ship. A palisade ringed the community at New Fort, rising beneath the gaze of the old ruin. The Olo'o Sea shimmered in the afternoon sun. The southern hills and eastern upland plains rimmed the waters of the Olo'o, but west and north the inland sea ran all the way to the horizon. Dogs lapped at the water and, finding it salty, shied back. Along the shore, fires burned merrily where families of fisherfolk smoked their catch beside reed boats coated with pitch to make them waterproof.

At Old Fort, the reeve left them and flew north. The merchants, bickering and complaining, found places in the camping ground built just beyond the palisade and its double stone watchtowers. Those merchants who had spent days walking in the rear of the cavalcade brought their grievance to the two caravan masters, and Kesh decided that he, too, had to demand a forward place lest folk wonder why he was content to skulk in the back. Others complained more loudly; he was quickly forgotten as the arguments ebbed and flowed. He waited at the back of the assembly. A man brought a complaint against a guardsman—not one of the Qin—who, the merchant claimed, had had sexual congress with one of his slave girls; three merchants carting oil of naya and barrels of pitch from the west shore of the sea begged leave to join the caravan; a dispute had arisen over payment for a driver and his teams. As soon as Master Iad handed out new places in the line of march, Kesh left. At the camping ground, the fisherfolk were glad to sell their catch at an inflated price. For his party, Kesh cooked rice, with one fish shared between them.

He sat on the steps of his wagon to watch the sun set. Red spilled along the waters, painting a gods' road where no mortal could walk. Much of the company settled down for the night, though a fair number felt safe enough to get drunk and sing.

Kesh was too restless to sleep. He sat late, marking the slow wheeling of the stars. The sigh of the water on the flat shore nagged at him all night, like his doubts and fears. Twice, he thought he heard the soft sound of weeping from inside the wagon, and twice, it ceased as soon as he rose, thinking to look inside. Shadows crawled along the shoreline. He saw a dark figure striding knee-deep far out in the quiet waters, a death-bright white cloak billowing out behind as though caught in a gale. He blinked, and it was after all only the light of the rising moon spilling along the sea. It wasn't even windy.

In the morning, the caravan pushed north along the road, which took the upland route, always within sight of the Olo'o Sea. This good road, which he had walked before, was packed earth. The sights were familiar and comforting, the glassy stretch of sea to his left and the long rolling swells of the grassland to his right, shimmering under a wind out of the east. It was nice to walk in the front for a change. Each of the next five days, he marked the remaining four of the five fixed landmarks of the West Spur: Silence Cliff; the Scar; Rope Tree; the intersection with the Old Stone Road that led to the Three Brothers, the intersection that was the terminus of West Spur, the last mey post.

An hour after dawn, they passed the alabaster gates of the Old Stone Road. Other folk were also on the road and its attendant paths this early, most carting goods toward town: a girl drove a flock of sheep alongside the road; a dog trotted beside a lone traveler with pouches and loose packs hung from his shoulders and belt; a cripple seated on a ragged blanket was selling oranges, but no one stopped to buy.

Kesh stepped aside from the line of march and walked over to touch the mey post that marked the intersection. The gesture made him think of the envoy of Ilu. It was strange how a brief acquaintance could haunt a man, even a man like himself who kept all those who wished to call him "friend" at arm's length. He watched as the point of the caravan turned southwest onto West Track. It had taken nine days to travel the West Spur from Dast Korumbos. Now the three noble towers of Olossi shone in the distance, where the land sloped down to the wide river that snaked along the lowland plain.

Tebedir, making the turn, waved at him, and he left the mey post and hurried after.

On the long slow descent down the gradual incline, they maintained an excellent view of the mouth of the River Olo and its environs. The alternating colors of the patternwork of agricultural fields, cut into sections by irrigation canals, faded into the hazy distance to the north and west on the Olo Plain. The town itself lay upstream. The walled inner city was nestled on a swell of bedrock almost entirely surrounded by a stupendous oxbow bend in the river. There were walls of a sort even around the sprawling outer districts, but although Sapanasu's clerks and Atiratu's poets related stories of sieges and attacks fended off by the impressive inner wall works in days long past, the outer wall was little more than a palisade thrown up in stages to mark the slow outward crawl as Olossi "let out her skirts."

"A disorderly town," remarked Tebedir. "In the empire, all is laid in a double square. Every door and gate has a number and name."

"With the Shining One's aid, I will leave that place by tomorrow, and never return," Kesh said reflexively. Olossi's shortcomings did not interest him.

His gaze followed the winding river downstream to where the delta glistened with a dozen slender channels. Tiny fishing boats worked the estuary, sliding in and out of view among great stands of reeds. Even from this distance he saw the rocky island in the delta crowned with a compound of whitewashed buildings. The temple had high walls, four courtyards, and three piers: one for supplies, one for those coming to worship at the altar of the Merciless One, and one for those departing sated or scarred.

He was then and for a long time as he trudged beside the wagon almost delirious with fear and hope. He was sick and dizzy. To keep his balance he had to clutch one of the stout posts that held up the taut canvas cover that tented the wagon's bed. He silently wept with longing, and fixed his gaze on the ground to watch his feet hit, one after the other and again and again. That repetition soothed him as he tramped along. The steady plodding impact of his feet, like the post, was something to cling to as he cut away his fears and hopes and ruthlessly consigned them to the furnace, where they burned; to the cold ice, where they grew a sheen of frost. He set them aside. He must not be weak. Not now.

A pair of horses moved alongside him, riding from the front toward the rear, and one rider turned to keep pace with his wagon.

"Are you well, merchant?"

The clear voice made him startle, and he looked up into the gaze of the young woman who was the wife of Captain Anji. Once or twice on West Spur he'd seen her studying his little camp, as though Moy and Tay—when he let them out—interested her. But she'd never spoken to him before. Her husband watched as wolves did who have recently eaten: curious but not ready to attack.

"A long, weary journey, Mistress," he said with a forced smile. He let go of the pole and wiped his sweating brow.

Her smile had the strengthening effect of a cool draught of water. "Close now, I see. Is Olossi your home?"

"No, Mistress. But it is my destination."

She glanced at his wagon. He had never been this close to her before. She was stunningly lovely, and dressed in a magnificently rich Sirniakan silk robe cut away for riding, with the sleeves sewn so long they covered most of the hand. These were the sleeves of a woman rich enough that she was not obliged to perform manual labor. Her long nails were perfectly kept, painted in astonishing detail with tiny golden dragons curled against a blue sky.

She caught him looking, nodded with a look both polite and reserved, and moved on. He turned to watch her go. No man had the power to resist a second look: She had features not so much perfectly proportioned as entirely captivating, marked by an exotic touch around the eyes, which had a narrowing slant rather like the slantwise eye folds of the Silvers, now that he thought of it. Certainly, she was beautiful, the kind of woman a man must marry if he could. But he possessed a treasure much more valuable. As the pair moved back along the line the captain looked back over his shoulder, and Kesh smiled, finding strength in the thought.

Much more valuable.

He would succeed. He had to.

SOME MANNER OF accident—a broken axle—held up the rear portion of the train, but by midmorning the forward half of the caravan clattered through Crow's Gate in the outer wall to the sprawl of Merchants' Walk, the way station, clearing-house, and bazaar for traders who came from all parts of the Hundred and from over the Kandaran Pass out of the south, and for that trickle who walked the Barrens Road out of the dry and deadly west. Wide, dusty avenues were lined with warehouses and auction blocks. Behind them, alleys plunged in and out of warrens where the lesser merchants and peddlers and cartmen lodged in narrow boardinghouses. Sapanasu's clerks kept two temples here, alive at all hours with bargaining, recordkeeping, and argument.

At the Crow's Gate temple, shaven-headed clerks stood sweating under the shade of a colonnade as they settled accounts. Kesh stood in line with the rest to pay his portion of the guards' fee, and after signing off and paying up he was free of his obligation to the caravan and free to continue into Merchants' Walk. He handed over the last of his leya. Except for a string of twenty-two vey, which was not even enough to fill his leather bottle with cheap wine, he had nothing left except his merchandise and his accounts book.

"We haven't much time," he said to Tebedir. "Shade Hour is coming. Everything closes down."

Beyond Crow's Gate Field, the road split into three. Kesh directed Tebedir to drive to the right, and they soon rolled into Gadria's Oval, commonly known as Flesh Alley.

The broad oval, which maintained a surprising bit of grass, was ringed by stately ironwood trees and by the accounts houses and holding pens for merchants who specialized in buying and selling debt, or paupers and criminals destined for slavery. In the middle of the oval rose the stepped marble platform with its spectacular ornamented roof, where at this moment a pair of boys, guarded by bored hirelings, were being offered for sale. The crowd was sparse. Many turned to look at the wagon. It was not an exciting day at the market.

"The house with the mark of three rings," he said.

The master of the Three Rings offered shade and water gratis to any customers or purveyors arriving by cart or wagon. Kesh got Tebedir settled, then opened the door of the wagon.

"Moy! Tay!"

They ventured out cautiously, staring around with wide eyes. They looked at him, at the accounts house with its open doors, then saw the marble platform and the business going on there. The younger girl whispered fiercely to her sister, and they clutched hands, bent their heads, and waited.

"Come on," he said, not liking to look at them. It wasn't right to go so meekly. He would have respected them more had they raged and fought against their fate, but they never had. They had come to him obediently, and it seemed they would leave the same way.

He herded them up to an open door and inside. The room was empty except for a two-stepped wooden platform, ringed by a rail, that stood in the middle. There was nothing else, only tall windows open to admit as much light as possible, and the packed earth floor. Kesh closed the door and rang the bell hanging from a hook to the left of the entryway. He led the girls up onto the platform, where they stood holding on to the railing and looking around with frightened expressions. Yet, knowing a bit about them from the long journey, he understood they had long since accepted their fortune. Neither cried. They still held hands.

The spy window opened and, after a moment, closed. Footsteps pattered away within the house. From outside, the patter of the auctioneer wound up and down. A dog barked. Wheels ground along the dirt.

The inner door slid open, and Merchant Calon stepped down into the room.

"Keshad! I knew you would bring me something of value!" He was a tidy man, narrow, neat, and dressed in an austere tunic scarcely more than what an honored slave might wear. He circled the girls, who watched him as mice might eye a stoat. They did not whimper or cry. In their own way, they had courage. "This looks promising in a month in which I have suffered many disappointments. Quite unique." Calon called into the house, where a figure stood half in shadow beyond the door. "Where is Malia?"

"She is coming, exalted."

"Listen," said Kesh. "We have dealt fairly with each other for several years now. I have always brought you the best of what I've found in the south."

"So you have. I think we have both profited."

"I know Malia will want to inspect them first, but let me speak bluntly. Offer me a fair price, and I won't haggle."

Calon paused and, without looking at Kesh, touched first the ivory bracelet on his left wrist, and after this the one on his right.

"I call them Moy and Tay, which means in their language 'one' and 'two.' Tay is not yet in her bleeding. The elder girl is also young, a year or two older. They may be sisters. That wasn't clear to me when I obtained them. They have not given me a moment's trouble on the long journey, nor did they ever try to escape."

An elderly woman appeared at the door, leaning on a cane of polished ebony. She wore both bronze slave bracelets and the ivory bracelets reserved for those who were free. "Keshad," she said in her spider's voice, whispery and tough. Her smile was tenuous. She was not, in Kesh's estimation, a cruel woman, but she was not compassionate either. "What have you got here? Southern. Look at those complexions. Very fine."

Calon rang the bell twice. A servant appeared with a trio of silver goblets, each half full of sweet cordial. He offered one to Kesh. The two men turned their backs so Malia could inspect the girls closely. Kesh sipped as cloth rustled and slipped, as each girl spoke a few words and, when Malia sang a phrase, mimicked her. They had voices as sweet and clear as the cordial. Feet and hands and teeth would be examined, and skin and body prodded and stroked.

Malia took her time, most of it in silence. Kesh sipped.

"What news from Master Feden's house?" Calon asked with seeming casualness.

"We just walked in today through Crow's Gate. I came here first."

Calon grinned. "I see. Best not to let Feden's fat fist grab the best of your merchandise. He would only find a way to cheat you, him and the other Greater Houses."

"I never said so."

Calon nodded. "Nor can you, so I'll say it for you. Those who sit at the voting table with a majority of votes held to themselves can play the tune the rest of us must dance to. They see only what is good for themselves, while the land falls into ruin around them. They are made shortsighted by their own greed. Eiya! So be it. Those of us in the Lesser Houses are ready—poised—to make a change, whether the Greater Houses will, or no. As are you. Listen, young man, I expect the day comes quickly when you are able to buy yourself free." With his chin he gestured toward the girls. "If you've a mind to, I would offer you a position as a junior trader in my house, for it seems, alas, that I may have an opening. You've a good head, a clear mind, and a cool heart. Consider it."

Kesh met his gaze, respect for respect. "If I meant to stay in Olossi, I would consider it, Master Calon. You're the only merchant here I respect enough to work for."

"I'll take that as thanks, then. Malia? A fair price."

She circled around once more before standing in silence for a time, calculating. She had never been a beauty; intelligence and ruthlessness had bought her freedom. Kesh smelled the lemon water in which she washed, a bracing and cooling scent even on such a hot day.

"A good investment," she said. "They are young enough to learn. They are healthy. They have clear voices. I think they can be trained as jaryas, if it so happens that they are also intelligent. If not, they can be trained to sing what others compose. Although they're not great beauties they have an unusual coloring that will attract notice. Three hundred leya apiece. Six hundred, altogether."

Kesh pressed teeth into his lower lip, so he wouldn't yelp with triumph and thus betray himself. Ten cheyt! Ten gold pieces was the best haul he had ever made. And he would need every vey.

"A fair price?" Calon asked.

"More than I expected," said Kesh.

Calon grinned. "Malia is never wrong. I'm of a mind to have them trained in my own house. That younger one, now . . . in a few years, if she has the talent, she might hope to marry one of Olossi's old merchants who has lost his first pair of wives from childbearing or the swamp fever. I can expect to sell her for ten times what I paid. So you're getting no bargain, Keshad. Do not think I am sentimental."

"I am satisfied it is a fair price. You'll have to train and feed them. Let us seal it."

Malia led the girls away. They did not look back as they vanished through the inner door into their new life.

MASTER FEDEN LIVED in the inner city, but his clearinghouse, like those of the other sixteen Greater Houses, stood in the outer city along Stone Field, the rectangular plaza at the heart of Merchants' Walk. Paving stones rumbled beneath the wheels of Tebedir's cart, an oddly comforting sound after months squeaking along packed-earth roads. With afternoon settling over the day, traffic in the plaza was thinning out. Shade Hour beckoned. Olossi was slipping into its daily drowse.

Feden's clearinghouse wore a banner of green and orange silk, ghastly colors pieced together in a quartered flower. Its front had seven gates, doors built to a doubled height and width, but only the servants' entrance remained open at this hour. They drove through the open doors, nodding to the yawning guard, who recognized Keshad and passed him through with an uninterested wave. The wagon rattled down a high arched corridor built of stone and into the dusty, treeless courtyard where Master Feden's hired men and slaves hauled water from the cistern, laded handcarts for transport into town, and loitered in the shade offered by rooftops.

"It's Kesh!"

The slaves sweating at their labors set aside their tasks and came over to gather beside the wagon. They looked, but did not touch.

"How'd the run go?" asked old Sushad, wiping sweat from the drooping side of his mouth.

Kesh nodded, too full to speak, and the others, who had been whispering and eager, fell silent and moved away to let Tebedir drive the wagon into a bay at Kesh's direction. Tebedir unhitched the horses and led them to a trough built against the outermost wall of the courtyard. Kesh counted up costs in his head. Feden would charge him for water and feed and stabling, so he had to work quickly and reach the master before it came time to raise the Shade Hour flag.

Footsteps slapped the dirt. He turned.

Nasia slipped into the shaded cover of the cargo bay. She wore a short linen tunic. Her legs and feet were bare, dusty from the courtyard, and she had a smudge of whiting powder on her nose, a smear of oil across her knuckles, and a fresh bruise on her cheek.

"Is it true?" she asked in her soft voice. She didn't touch him. Her slave bracelets glimmered as she raised her hands, and dropped them again. "They're saying in the halls that you've earned enough to buy your freedom."

"Maybe so."

She waited, but he shook his head.

"I told you already," he went on. "I told you honestly. I'm going for Bai."

Her face would never be beautiful, but she had eyes as lovely and expressive as a doe's, wide and almost black. "You can't," she said, trembling. "You can't possibly be able to buy her free from the temple."

"A treasure fell in my lap. It's now, or never."

She choked down tears, but he did not comfort her. He had told her the truth all along, and probably she had never believed him. Hope is a cruel master.

"Master Feden hoped we might tie the binding," she whispered. "He gave permission."

"And give him our children's labor to fatten his purse, and more debt for us to pay off? No."

"If you can hope to go for—her—you could buy off my debt instead. You could."

"I don't have time for this."

"Did you ever love me, Kesh?"

"I never told you I did. I like you, that's all."

"I got—I got—" She pressed a hand to her abdomen. "They made me drink the herbs. I lost a baby."

Eiya! Nasia had gotten pregnant. Maybe with his child. Or maybe with the child of one of Master Feden's customers. No matter.

"A child born to a slave is better off not being born," he said. "Would you want that? To begin a child's life when it's in debt already? It was for the best. You'll see that, in time. Anyway, this is the end of it, Nasia. You're a good girl. If I can ever help you, I will, but now I have to hurry. I can't afford to pay a whole day's stabling charge."

She began to cry, but silently, as slaves learned to do. Old Sushad slid into view from around the corner. He said nothing to Kesh, just a look with that half-frozen face and his little finger flicked up. Kesh turned his back. He counted the water skins and satchels hanging along the wagon on either side. He took two days' worth of the remaining flatbread and smoked meat, not at all tasty. The rest he left for Tebedir, who must make a return journey south over the pass to the empire, a good long way even if he got a hire. By the time he looked around, Nasia and Sushad had vanished away into the courtyard, where the ordinary noises of folk at their labor sounded again. Not one person, people he had known many years, came to greet him. Nasia was better-loved than he would ever be. No doubt they hated him for her sake, but he did not care.

By the time Tebedir returned, Kesh had unloaded the two chests, leaving only the treasure inside. Tebedir remained behind to guard the wagon, and Kesh hauled the chests to the wing door. It was a struggle to get them inside, as the door had been weighted so it easily swung shut if not being held. His fellow slaves passed him, going in and out. Not one stopped to help. No one looked him in the eye; not one person said a single word to him.

Aui! News of Nasia had traveled quickly.

But they were only bodies, moving in the monotonous dance of servitude. Their feet shuffled along a wood floor smoothed by generations of barefoot slaves walking quietly, as they must. They grunted, or coughed, or cleared their throats, and if they wept, they wept silently, as Nasia had. The men walked with heads bent. They went mostly bearded, trimmed tight along the jaw, and in general without the luxury of a mustache. Their hair was cut close to the head, easy to care for, nothing to get in the way of work. The women, depending on their station and age and what labor they were set, wore their hair shorn or pulled back in a ring and bound with slender iron chains so that the length of captive hair swayed along their back and buttocks.

He was well rid of them all.

He dragged the chests, one with each hand, and halted panting beside the rear door into the lesser exchange room, the only one he was permitted to enter without permission. He propped open the door and got the chests in, closed and locked himself in, and unrolled a colorless silk viewing cloth over the larger table. Dust motes spun where light poured through windows not yet closed for Shade Hour. It was hot, and getting hotter, but Master Feden would not quite be done for the day, not if his routine had remained unaltered in the last many months. Not if these windows were still open.

On the silk he arranged combs and mirrors and oil and saffron and shell dice, the handsome little items that he had picked up in southern markets on his journey. When he had all arranged to his liking, he rang the bell three times, twice two, and thrice again.

He was too unsettled to sit. He paced, wiped his brow, and rearranged the combs, liking the new pattern better, liking how it set off the richest among the lesser. Feden would want the best for his own family, to show off their long, glossy black hair, the pride of every man and woman who was neither hireling nor slave.

The master's door opened, and the man himself walked through with a shaven-headed clerk in attendance. He was a man made powerful by wealth, stout but not flabby, with his uncut hair braided and looped back in a man's threefold at his neck and shoulders.

Master Feden made no greeting, but walked slowly around the table while the clerk made a running tally and checked it against Keshad's accounts book. The pen scraped in the silence. Outside, the sun's light baked the stone plaza, seen beyond the thick posts where, soon, the slaves would unroll the cloth awnings over the wooden porch. So had Keshad done twelve years ago, when he was a lad sold into Master Feden's service. Unroll the awnings; close the windows; haul water; beat carpets; sweep and rake and look away when some clumsy soul got a hard cuff on the cheek for moving too slowly or simply for looking at a customer the wrong way or any way. Watch the massage girl you fancied be traded away for a mare. Listen as your young friend cried when he discovered he had missed the debt payment and was indentured for another year, during which new debts for food, drink, oil, pallet space, training costs, and interest would accrue, with more added on if you got sick or injured and a healer had to be brought in from the temple.

Pride, swallowed so many times, became a rock in the chest, and it had filled him with stone.

"Impressive," said Master Feden, with a contemptuous smile that made Kesh want to slap him because Feden never began his haggling with a compliment. "I congratulate you, Keshad. You have the gift. We need only set a price."

"As I carried all my possessions with me, no holding space was required for my goods while I was gone, which means the debt set against my freedom in addition to interest accruing on the regulated basis during my absence stands at five hundred and eighty-seven leya," said Kesh immediately. "Am I correct?"

Master Feden nodded at the clerk.

She tallied. "Yes, that's right."

"The goods you see before you are easily worth twice that on the market. But I offer them, to you, in exchange for the rest of my debt. Which is a bargain for you, Master Feden."

The master picked up a comb studded with whitestone and walked to the windows to peer at the subtle wash of colors that, Kesh knew, played beneath the surface of the stones. With his broad back to Kesh, he spoke. "I'm surprised you act in such haste. I wish to offer you a post in my firm."

The clerk actually gasped.

"You have promise. You've shown it time and again. I'll free the massage girl—what is her name?—the one you show particular attention to, although we had to have the herb woman in a month or two after you left to rid her of what she caught in her belly. I've been thinking of trading her debt to Mistress Bettia, who has a pair of fine embroidered couches my dear wife has been coveting, but I'll reconsider if you'll take her in marriage—both of you free—and sign a contract to trade for my firm—fifty-fifty percentages, we'll say—for ten years."

The clerk's mouth had dropped open, and this time she looked at Kesh and then at the master's back. She ceased writing, waiting for his response.

He rested his hands on the rim of the table. All that restless energy fell away. He was clear and sharp and clean and perfect in his clarity.

"The rest of my debt. Which is a bargain for you, Master Feden."

"Stubborn until the end." He returned to the table. He had fleshy hands and sausage fingers, but a delicate touch as he set the comb down into its nest of silk. "Very well. Settled."

The clerk stood stunned, gaping at Kesh as though he had been revealed as a deadly lilu.

"Record it!" Feden snapped with a burst of impatient fury that made the poor clerk flinch. "I have a meeting to attend. I must leave now!"

She spattered ink, blotted it up, and began scratching with her head bent in concentration and her shoulders hunched in case a blow came. But she was Sapanasu's hierophant, not Feden's slave. If he hit her, he would have to pay a fine to the temple.

Kesh lowered his hands to his side and tried not to twitch. Outside, a pair of lads stumped past; the awning creaked and dropped as they unrolled it. At once, the light through the windows muted to a less intense gold.

The clerk set down the accounts book. Feden glanced over the final entry, then made his mark. She turned it, and Kesh counted up the merchandise, saw that everything displayed on the table was accounted for, and with the pen marked the quartered moon that served as his seal.

"Sapanasu gives her blessing," said the clerk. "And her curse to any who turn their backs on what they have sworn in her name. Let it be marked and sealed."

"Let it be marked and sealed," said Feden with a smirk.

"Let it be marked and sealed." Keshad extended a hand. "My accounts book. It's mine now, free and clear."

Feden lifted a hand, still smirking. He had rosy lips almost hidden within his luxuriant growth of beard and mustache. "We have other business. There's a wagon and pair in one of my bays, and water taken from my trough. Stabling costs must be paid. With coin, or in labor." He chortled.

Out in the hall, a door slammed.

What a fool he was! Kesh discovered his hands in fists and his skin flushed with heat. The clerk, seeing his expression, fell back a step. But he refused to move. He had meant to specify that the stabling charges be included in the final reckoning. Haste is its own trap. He had fixed the bait and walked into it himself. Damn damn damn.

After taking four breaths as Feden watched with intense amusement, he spoke in a flat voice. "The usual stabling fee in Olossi includes hay, grain according to the nature of the beast, and twice watering. For one night, one leya or a day's labor in exchange. I have not been in this yard one night, nor has the pair under hire taken more than one watering. But I'll accept one leya as a fair charge."

"I am not a public stableyard. Nor do I charge piecemeal, but only by the night. My premises are more secure, indeed, you have now invaded them as an outsider, someone not of my clan or family and with no other claim or right for biding within my clearinghouse, so that will cost extra. And you know my policy about those cursed Southerners. I hate them, the thick-witted fanatics that they are, keeping women like sheep and slaves like pigs. I hear they say that once a man becomes a slave it's the god's doing, and he and any children or grandchildren he may ever quicken through his loins are marked forever with the slave's brand and can never again or any they marry become free men. So because of my distaste for such a person, and the cleaning I'll have to have my servants do after he's left the yard to wash away any stink he's left, I'll have to charge triple my usual fee. He comes under your hire, I believe. Nine leya. Or eighteen days' labor out of you, at the going rate, plus of course I'll have to charge you lodging and for your food for that time if you remain here to do the labor. And you'll have to stay here—you're obligated to do so—in case you choose to run to escape your debt. Three leya a day for lodging and food, to accrue while you work, unless you want to eat more than once a day, in which case a fourth leya for the second meal."

"It's true," said the clerk with a kind of dazed fascination, watching the exchange. "Sapanasu's law supports Master Feden's claim against you, on both counts."

"You cheating dog," said Keshad softly. "Nine leya is an outrage. As is three leya a day for costs."

"Not in my house. I do not run a roadside shelter offering a plank floor to sleep on and nai porridge for supper. Do not think I gloat over your mistake, Keshad. I am a man of business. I must protect myself and my house."

"You want me back. But I'm no longer your slave."

"Do you expect me to believe you have any coin left after that trip? Have you paid up that southern driver? All your expenses? And yet you cast your throw so carelessly. I trained you better than that."

Kesh let Feden keep talking. Indeed, he savored it, for the man did love to talk and did always believe himself to know more than others could.

"Sign on with me, and the stabling charge will be placed on your first accounts book as a junior partner. I'll still throw in the girl. For nothing. As a gesture of good faith. Otherwise, I fear me, Keshad, you'll be falling behind again. And if I choose not to allow you another trading venture, I am not one bit sure how you will overcome the debt."

Kesh smiled. For the first time, Feden faltered, mouth pursing with doubt. Kesh slid a hand into the pouch sewn into his sleeve, careful to hide how much coin he had on his strings. He drew off nine precious leya, weighed them in his hand, and placed them each, individually, with a snap on the table. Feden's eyes widened.

"One night, two waterings, hay and grain," Kesh said politely to the clerk. It was hard not to gloat, even if he was furious at himself for losing these leya through carelessness. He had better uses for the money. "I'd like to get this settled. I have other business to attend to."

"Where did you get that?" demanded the outraged merchant.

Kesh waited a few breaths, letting the other man stew. In his head, he tallied up the coin he owed Tebedir, a goodly amount. Everything now hinged on the treasure.

"Well?" Feden looked ready to burst.

With an exaggerated sigh, Kesh bent to close the chests, then straightened, fussing with his sleeves. "This is not the only merchandise I brought out of the south. You didn't bother to look into my accounts book because you were in such haste to cheat me. But we have already sealed that these items settle my debt price."

The clerk stared at the coins, which Feden had not touched.

Feden laughed. "Twice cursed, you are," he said to Kesh. "None of your aunts or uncles made the least effort to hold you after the death of your parents. Did I ever tell you that? They were eager to take the money and sell you flat, whatever they could get for a boy of twelve. They couldn't even be bothered to pay the temple for a legitimate debt mark, but only that botched tattoo from a back-alley vendor. That scar can never be altered, the mark of their dislike for you. What makes you think they'll want you back?"

"What makes you think I'm going back to them?"

"But you must!" The stout man looked genuinely alarmed. "Every man must cleave to his family and his clan. So the gods have set down."

"Settle the stabling debt," said Kesh to the clerk.

She did not look to Feden for permission. Kesh was a free man, now. She acted at his orders. She wrote; Feden fumed; Kesh wiped his brow, thinking that he ought to be sweating but he was cool, collected, wrung dry. He was free.

As soon as she was done writing, and marks made and seal set, she handed him the accounts book, the mark of his freedom. He tucked it into the lining of a sleeve, offered her a half leya as a tithe, which she took. Then he twisted the bronze slave bracelets off his wrists. Their weight, in his palm, seemed so heavy that he did not comprehend how he had borne it all these years. Deliberately, looking directly at Feden, meeting his gaze, Kesh placed the bracelets on the table. Feden turned away.

It was done.

Kesh left by the customers' door, which he had never once used in all the twelve years he had lived in this house. He did not look back.

" WHERE WE GO ?" Tebedir asked as they rolled out into the plaza. The heat made the beasts slow, and Kesh's throat was already parched. "Here, we roast, like fowl in the oven."

One slave trudged across the plaza, wearing sandals to protect his feet against the hot stones. He wasn't carrying anything visible, but his shoulders were bowed nonetheless. Gates were closed and awnings furled along the long porches of the clearinghouses. Beyond the flat plain of Merchants' Walk rose the inner city on its rocky bed, buildings pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Tile roofs and white walls baked; heat shimmered off them. The sun made the air a furnace. Only a wisp of pale cloud floated off above the eastern high plains, where, in the Lending, the grassland herders might have hope of a spatter of cooling rain.

Kesh was sweating, and dizzy. I'm free. But she isn't.

"We'll go now to Crow's Gate Field. I'll pay off the remainder of your contract."

"As agreed, the remainder, it is one hundred, eighty, and seven of leya. As agreed, in addition, my costs to stable at the hiring ground, for five days. There I seek hire for journey back to empire."

"That's right," said Kesh absently, because his thoughts were already plunging ahead. "I'll ask around and see who is hiring to go south before the end of the year and the rains. There'll be a caravan south within the week, I would wager. There's a particular chit I can see you get, so merchants know you're an honest and loyal hire. I can never thank you enough for standing beside me at Dast Korumbos . . ."

Tebedir nodded. "The Shining One rewards his faithful worshipers. Do not despair unless your heart is dishonest. Do not despair unless you have broken the vows you make in the name of the King of King and Lord of Lords."

Kesh barely heard him. Whatever calm had sustained him in Feden's house evaporated out here under the sun. His ears roared with the tumult inside him; sweat dripped from his fingers as his heart raced. Do not despair. He had stumbled onto the two Mariha girls in a frontier town and purchased them for a desperately cheap price, and for a while he had played the numbers in his head: Should he hire a drover and two donkeys to convey them with the other, smaller goods? Should he let them walk the entire months-long road to the Hundred, carrying the chests themselves, knowing that the journey might kill them but that he would save coin? Alone, they could not gain him what he wished, and indeed, they had brought him a greater profit than he had expected, enough to more than cover the expense of hiring a driver and wagon for the long haul once he had stumbled upon the treasure. They had enabled him to travel in what was, for him, relative comfort with his chests of carefully chosen luxury goods.

He had made his choices. He had bought his own freedom.

That night he slept on the hiring ground, under the wagon, with his strings of leya tucked against his chest.

In the morning, he bespoke a pair of bearers and their covered litter, nothing fancy but its cloth walls opaque and tied tight. Once he concluded his business and his contract with Tebedir and paid him the bonus he had promised, he had cleared all of his debts.

Only one thing remained: It was time to cast his last and most desperate throw.

27

The path out to the village of Dast Olo led along a raised stone causeway that ran first through grain fields, then through the pond-like dari fields, and finally into the tangle of reed flats and minnow channels that marked the edge of the navigable delta waters. Kesh walked briskly, but for all his travels he had trouble keeping pace with the two bearers who carried the curtained litter.

"Yah, so," said the talkative one, who walked at the front rails. "Brother and I, you know, it is the tradition out there in the Barrens border country, the village sends lads in to the green lands to work three years, and bring home coin and salt and silk. Maybe a wife, but that's hard to come by considering green-land women don't like the Barrens."

They were short, with broad shoulders and torsos and powerful hands. Talker wasn't even out of breath, and while Kesh had already broken a sweat under the clear early-morning sky, these two had not bothered with a drink from their leather bottles.

"Probably we'll marry Lariada, from out by Falls."

Silent grinned appreciatively.

"Yah, so, she's a strong girl, and more important a smart one who apprenticed to the Lantern, so she can keep accounts which is a powerful skill to have, to my way of thinking, if a pair of brothers are thinking to tenure good pastureland and build up a herd of cattle like our father and uncles never could do because of the drought back in the Year of the Goat, that would be the Gold Goat before either of us were birthed, not this last one. They lost everything but for the one heifer and the one dray."

"They didn't lose the goats," said Silent.

"Maybe not, but those goats'll survive anything, and grand mam said their milk was sour for two year after."

"How's the caravan trade going up the Barrens Road these days?" asked Kesh, wiping another waterfall of sweat off his brow. He carried a slight enough burden, a satchel slung over his back with nothing more than a change of clothes, his accounts bundle, and the detritus of traveling life: knife, spoon, eating bowl, worship bowl, a pair of wax candles, flint and steel to light them, one day's worth of food, a leather bottle full of cheap wine. His weapons. The coin tied into his sleeves. It weighed like bricks already, because it was everything he owned.

They got within sight of Dast Olo before Talker got through with his description of the last twelve-year of caravan stories, and given that no more than a pair or three of caravans braved the Barrens Road every year, he took a long time telling an awful lot about not much.

"So the strangest part of it all, after the last caravan left and the girl paid her fine to the Witherer's altar—and you can be sure that the arkhon had a long talking to old Silk Ears—!"

Silent snickered.

"—then we in the village were thinking it would be all the travelers until the flood rains passed, and we two were leaving anyway to come down here Olossi green land way for our three year, and what do we see as we start out the walk? Heya!"

Kesh barely had time to open his mouth for the polite reply before Talker rushed on.

"We go passing an envoy of Ilu, walking up the long west-facing slope as cheerful as a redbird and him walking west on the Barrens Road he told us because we did stop and ask thinking he was headed for the village or maybe Falls or maybe Dritavu, because you know that everyone knows there's a Guardian altar up past Dritavu way that is forbidden but sometimes we see a light up there."

"He talked as much as you do!" said Silent with another appreciative grin, although this one had no lascivious edge to it.

"I do not! That envoy, he'd have talked all five seasons from then until now if that reeve hadn't flown patrolling overhead and scared the donkey! So we must run after, and the envoy must go on his way west over the Barrens Road. I wonder if he's still alive, or come back to the Hundred as a living man, or only his bones! Say. Did I remember to tell you how we came to get that donkey?"

"We're here," said Kesh with relief.

Dast Olo rested on a huge platform that some said was a natural escarpment of rugged rock but which Sapanasu's clerks and the Lady's mendicants claimed was the base of an ancient fortress whose pillars and roof and walls had long ago been obliterated by wind and rain and the passing of years. The high ground kept the feet of the village out of the waters, even during a ten-year flood. Dast Olo boasted also a lucky five-set of inns catering to pilgrims.

"Straight to the pier," he said as they paused at the base of the wagon ramp. "I'll give you vey for beer at the inn once we get back from the island. In addition to your hire."

"Seeing so much water makes a man thirsty," agreed Talker as they trotted up the ramp, not even panting. They had a funny way of loping that made the litter skim smoothly over the ground, never jarring. Their legs looked as thick as pillars. Kesh's legs had begun to sweat freely. He was glad he'd stripped down to a simple knee-length tunic and leather sandals, with nothing to chafe as he walked.

Dast Olo's villagers were farmers, fishers, or marketers catering to the flow of pilgrims. The village was already awake. Most of the fishing boats were long since out on the waters.

"Only a city man sleeps abed after the sun is risen!" proclaimed Talker cheerfully as they trotted through the streets to the pilgrim's pier.

Used to everything and anything, none of the folk out on their errands gave the curtained litter a second glance. The transaction at the pier—the price of a half leya per person was fixed by the temple—went swiftly. He handed two leya to an uninterested man with a flat-bottomed scow. The boatman tucked the coin in his sleeve and waited as Talker and Silent hoisted the litter in and settled themselves cross-legged in the rear with practiced ease, barely rocking the boat. Kesh had an ungainly time of it. He was shaking. Every surface seemed slick under his hands. Once the boat stopped rocking, the boater sighed, then poled away from the stone pier, and pushed along the channel toward the temple island. The closest pier flew the silk lotus banner that marked every temple to the Merciless One. Red petals on white linen: passion and death. Kesh shut his eyes as if by keeping them open he might force the island to recede by dint of the intensity of his desire. The boatman hummed a tuneless melody. Talker said nothing. The wind hummed at Kesh's ears in descant to the boatman's song. Once, they hissed through a stand of reeds. He hung a hand over the side and let it trail through the water, which was gaspingly cold except where they passed through a warmer, saltier eddy.

At last, the boat nudged up against Banner Pier. Kesh scrambled out as soon as the boatman tied up the scow. From here, he could not see Leave-taking Pier. The Devourer told no secrets. Those on their way to worship were shielded from the sight of those departing, in the same manner that those departing could expect to skim home without being seen by every arriving pilgrim.

As Talker and Silent got the litter onto the pier, a bare-chested, dark-haired lad dressed in a novice's kilt walked up to Kesh. He was yawning as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"You're early." He grinned skittishly, as if he had just recalled that hierodules dedicated to the Merciless One cast no judgment and made no comment. He gave Keshad the once-over up and down, nodded genially to Talker and Silent as if they came here all the time either as bearers or supplicants, and finally looked over the featureless curtains that concealed the interior of the litter. "My old aunt spent five years as a Devouring girl before she married," he added, "and she used to say that no person comes concealed for any good purpose. 'Who is ashamed to be touched by the Devourer's lips'?"

"It's nothing to do with shame," said Kesh, a tide of heat and anger swelling over him. His head throbbed, and he wanted it all to be done with and him walking away with what he had come for.

"Eiya! No harm meant! Which house is yours?"

"I'm here to see the Hieros."

The lad's mouth formed a circle.

A raucous cry split the air. Keshad actually jumped because he was already so on edge, but the others only tipped back their heads as folk always did to mark a reeve passing over along the northern edge of the delta and circling in toward Olossi.

"Uncle Idan says there were more of them reeves back when he was a lad," said Talker. "Bad days, since that drought. It just goes to show that when folk don't keep order in their own houses, pretty soon the land begins to suffer. So the gods teach us."

"Bad luck on them who deserves it," muttered the lad under his breath, making the cross-fingers sign against ill fortune close against his body, as if he didn't want the others to see. He saw Kesh watching him, flushed, and turned his attention to the two bearers. "If you will wait in the outer court, I'd much appreciate it."

"I need the litter brought with me," said Kesh. "Then they can go and wait wherever you wish."

"Are you sure?"

"That I need the litter brought with me?"

"That you want an audience with the Hieros. No one ever asks for that. If you knew her, you'd know—" He flicked hair out of his eyes and sidestepped away. "No one in sight. Not a soul come so early, and there's none to leave."

"Damn all," said the boatman. "First come in the morning means a long wait, or a return trip made empty. My old arms!"

"Sorry, old man," said the lad. "It wasn't a lantern night, last night. You know the rules."

"I won't be long," said Kesh, "as I'm not here to worship the Devourer, just to conduct a bit of business. If you'll wait at Leave-taking Pier, I'll pay you passage back, same as came here."

The boatman grinned, showing brown teeth and gaps between. "Over there, then. Same number as coming. That's fair."

The lad hopped from one foot to the other. It was evident he wanted to ask what was going on, but novices did not ask about the business or predilections or desires or identities, if veiled, of pilgrims. It was against the rules.

"The Devourer eats secrets," he said at last, with a hopeful glance at Kesh, as if encouraging him to confide a pair or three of mysteries.

"I'm ready to go," said Kesh.

Unlit lanterns hung from the parallel ranks of posts that marked the path up to the outer court. To one side of the posts, the ground sloped down to the water's edge and a thin strand of pebble beach. To the other side, rockier ground had been manicured into a pleasing arrangement of rock, moss, and pruned miniature trees, these islands separated by raked sand. A big ginny lizard—one of the Devourer's acolytes, as they were called—perched on top of a rock, sunning itself. As they strode past, it cracked open its mouth just enough to show teeth.

A tall lattice fence grown thick with herboria and red and yellow falls of patience marked the beginning of the outer court. They passed through a gap in the lattice fence and walked toward the great gates between rows of benches. The outer court filled the wide space between the workshop wing and the long kitchen hall, which had a thatched roof but no walls. A dozen men and women chopped vegetables at tables, or sweated over hearths and grills. Halfway down to Tradesmen's Pier, a big rounded bread oven was being cleaned out. The smell of that fresh bread made Kesh's mouth water.

The lad beckoned them through the gates. "Heya!" he called to a pair of youths loitering in the shade. "Get down to the pier. You were already supposed to be there."

They walked into the Heart Garden, a square courtyard surrounded by blank walls. Three closed inner gates beckoned, one painted golden yellow and one the pale silver of moonlight. The third, opposite the bronze-colored outer court gates, was painted as white as the walls and in fact was rather difficult to discern against the white walls. The lad motioned to benches placed within pools of shade cast by a dozen vine-covered arbors and surrounded by beds of bright yellow-bells, blood roses, and blue and violet stardrops. This time of day it was quiet, and the scent of the flowers, particularly the glorious stardrops, was piquant and heady, like a drug. They sat in the shade and waited while the lad vanished through the white gates.

At intervals, Talker and Silent glanced at the litter. They knew its weight and balance, but they asked no questions. Kesh rubbed his hands as if washing them. He had never been as anxious in his life as he was at this threshold, not even when he had faced down Master Feden. A hush had fallen. Somewhere unseen, a door scraped open and slid shut. He jumped up when one of the white doors slid open. An elderly woman appeared. She beckoned.

"Bring the litter," he said.

The procession arrived at the white gate. The old woman was tiny, with chains of delicate dancer's bells circling her wrists and ankles. Her long hair was gone to silver and bound back into a braid brightened with moss-green ribbons.

"Set your burden down just inside and then return out here," she said to the bearers in a high, light voice. "We'll call you when you're needed." To Kesh she said nothing.

Past the white gate, a screen blocked their view of the courtyard beyond. Talker and Silent set down the litter, and as soon as they retreated the lad appeared; he closed the doors by going out after them, leaving Kesh alone with the old woman. She wore blue silk, and smelled of sweet ginger.

She moved away around the screen without looking back at him and with a remarkable and agile haste. He followed the chime of her bells into a court grown so lush with vines and hedges and carefully pruned trees that the scent of green watered growing things made the air almost too thick to breathe. Around every corner of the labyrinthine pathway a new and different tiny glade was revealed, soft and shadowed and usually ornamented by some cunning, tiny waterfall trickling along a sculpture shaped out of rock or pipewood. At length his steps led him to a graveled open space at the center. A fountain splashed, water caressing the flanks of a statue depicting a man and a woman in the grip of the Devourer.

"Crude, but it was placed here long before my tenure. I would never have chosen something so unsophisticated." The voice was low, harsh, and female.

He turned all the way around. He was alone, although the dense foliage offered a hundred hiding places.

"With what desire do you come to worship at the altar of the Merciless One?" the voice asked.

"I do not come to worship. I come to complete a transaction begun ten years ago. Where is Zubaidit?"

"She's not available right now. You can't see her."

"I'm not here to see her. I'm here to buy out her debt."

At a distance, a bell jangled. Nearby, he heard a hissed breath, the scrape of a shod foot on rock, and the whisper of dancing bells. The old woman, too, must be spying on him.

"She won't go! She is a true hierodule of the Devourer. Our best student and most devoted worshiper."

He heard her words with a contempt that made him snarl. "That's not true."

It can't be true!

"I know who you are. It has been two years since you have seen her. Many things can change in that time. She thinks you've given up on her, and she's turned her heart entirely to the goddess. She doesn't want to speak to you again."

Perhaps it was all for nothing. All those weary mey trudged; all the deals, the bargaining, the cold nights and hungry days and the endless hells of Master Feden's house that he had endured for twelve years because each morning upon waking he could take in a breath that was a promise, that he would be free. And that she would be free.

"That's what you say! I'll hear it from her own lips, not yours." He stooped, picked up a handful of pebbles, and cast them wildly toward a concealing thicket. They spattered. She mocked him with a laugh that made him grit his teeth. He fixed his gaze on the pour of the water as it coursed down the deep valleys made by the mingling of limbs, woman to man.

"You know the law," he said at last. "I've come, as the gods of the Hundred give me the right to do. You must accept my payment if the hierodule agrees."

Her voice hissed out of the shadows. "Spare yourself this humiliation. She won't leave the temple."

"Then she can live here freely, after I've spoken with her. She must tell me herself with her own voice. Unless you've cut out her tongue! But your hierodules need their tongues, don't they?"

"Impious scrat! The Devourer will eat your testicles!"

"I'll take my chances."

Branches rattled as if a rat scrambled away through the undergrowth. As he waited, he became convinced someone was staring at him. Scanning the under-growth, he saw nothing at first, but then, as his gaze picked out shapes, he distinguished the snout of a ginny lizard, shadowed under drooping striped-firecanth leaves. The creature stared intently down at him, from a branch higher than his own head. It bobbed its head at him but did not otherwise move; it watched him as if it were a sentry. A second head joined the first, an arm's length away, and this one bent first one eye at him and then the other, head turning almost flirtatiously.

Footsteps scraped on earth. He turned. A woman walked into view from underneath a tunnel woven of interlaced leaves. Of middle years, she had a bountiful figure wrapped in a patterned taloos covered by an undyed work shirt. But she only looked Keshad up and down with a measuring smile in a manner very like that of the second ginny lizard, and stood at the edge of the clearing to wait. Others appeared, exactly like loitering shoppers who canvass the market with no intention of buying. About twenty people filtered into the courtyard, strung around the clearing like so many jewels about an old granite-skinned widow's neck. He sensed a few standing concealed within the drowsy growth. A young pair sauntered up to lean on the sun-warmed stone rim of the fountain. Arms crossed, the lanky girl with luxurious hair and a lazy smile looked him over in a way that made him shiver. The youth, wearing only a kilted wrap around his hips, settled beside her; he nudged her foot with his and whispered into her ear. She narrowed one eye almost to a wink as if promising Keshad his heart's desire. When she shifted her buttocks on the rim, her long tunic, cut high, slipped to reveal a sleek flank. He flushed, and her companion snickered, but after so long in the south he had almost forgotten that Hundred women were the most beautiful of all, dark and lovely, although this one could have used a little extra flesh to round her curves.

Hundred women were the most beautiful of all—except perhaps for the captain's wife—and he looked down to hide his face so none of these, vultures all, could feed on any scrap of truth his expression might reveal. A steady step crunched on rock. When he looked up, there was Zubaidit striding barefoot around the curve of the fountain. She had grown since he last saw her, and even then she had been tall. She wore a tight, sleeveless, short jacket and a knee-length wrap of plain linen kilted low around her hips, leaving her brown belly bare. A jewel gleamed in her navel. She was well muscled, like an acrobat, and her skin glistened with oil and sweat, just as if she had come from exercise.

She saw him, and halted. Her eyes flared with surprise, while her left hand curled into a fist. A purpled bruise mottled her left cheek. Aui! Had they been beating her?

When she did not acknowledge him, he said nothing, and when he said nothing, she shrugged a shoulder and twisted to look behind her. Everyone swiveled heads as the tiny silver-haired woman who had let him into the inner court glided into view. She walked with a pitter-pat step that made her seem dainty, but her shoulders had the square stubborn cant of a swordsman's.

The lanky girl coughed, and her friend smirked.

"Are you the Hieros?" Kesh asked without preamble.

"I am," said the old woman.

"I am here to pay off the debt of Zubaidit."

Bai looked at him, gaze dark and intense, and her eyelids flickered as if she were sending him a message.

"By what right do you claim the right to act in her favor?" demanded the Hieros.

"Blood right."

The statement was a formality, so she dismissed it and went on. "Show the tally bundle." A young woman in an orange taloos unrolled a bundle of sewn-together sheets. Holding each end of the scroll, oldest to newest, forced her to open her arms wide.

"A tremendous debt," remarked the Hieros with a caustic smile. "Her purchase price, and the usual debits for lodging, drink and food, clothing, training as a hierodule." She ran a finger from top to bottom of each flat tally stick as she traced the account of Zubaidit's service at the temple. "Set against these debits, and in addition to the favor she accrued through her regular duties, she earned favor by comforting the gods-favored worshipers. Against this, additional training costs to the temple."

" 'When a person sells their body into servitude in payment for a debt, that person will serve eight years and in the ninth go free.' That's what it says on Law Rock."

She raised an eyebrow. "No assizes will rule in your favor, not when legitimate debt has accrued on an account."

He had known she would say it, but the distraction had allowed him a moment to calm himself, to ask the necessary question. "What is the tally?"

The Hieros grinned exultantly. Indeed, her smile was almost ecstatic, and he supposed she had long years of practice, as old as she was. "Thirty cheyt, seventy-one leya, and nineteen vey."

One thousand eight hundred and seventy-one leya.

The number dizzied Kesh. He stumbled to the fountain, sat down on the rim, and rested his head on a hand. When had he gotten so tired?

The lanky girl whistled appreciatively.

Her friend chortled, nudging her foot again. "I heard that one of the merchants of the Greater Council bought her only son the best stallion from the best herd off the grasslands and fitted it out with bridle and saddle trimmed with silver and gold—that was the price! Thirty cheyt! For a horse and gear! Can you imagine? And then it threw the fool, and broke his neck!"

"You've cheated me!" said Bai with a kind of parched hoarseness, as though her throat had been rubbed raw. Kesh looked up. She'd fisted her hands, as if ready to punch back.

He was genuinely shocked by the debt—he'd expected a similar price to his own, maybe a little more—but he'd known something like this might be coming. But what matter if the temple was cheating Bai? He raised a hand, thumb and three fingers curled and touching his little finger to his lips. Obedient to their childhood code, Bai subsided, turning her back on the Hieros.

"That's a staggering amount," he said to the Hieros. "Is that the full measure? Are there any other costs you aren't telling me, or that you mean to add on afterward?"

As her face relaxed, he glimpsed how she might look in the moments after satiation: a true devotee of the Merciless One, content only with the complete surrender of her victim.

"That is the measure in full, as of this meeting between us, now," she said graciously. "We'll set whatever coin you can offer today against her account. Next year, you can pay another installment." And another and another, she meant, an endless procession of hopeless payments that would never catch up to the galloping pace of debits.

"No, Kesh," said Bai urgently. "Keep whatever you have as seed coin. Come back when you have the whole thing. Don't waste it out like this. I know what it means, that you've come today. You must use it as we spoke of before."

At her words, he bent, splashed water on his face, and stood. The dizziness had fled. It was a relief, in a way, knowing that the sale of the Mariha girls would not have come close to covering the whole no matter what. The temple was cheating Bai, that was obvious, but it was also true she had no legal recourse given her circumstances, and neither did he, no matter what that reeve, Joss, had said. Knowing it had come to this, knowing he had made the right choices all along, made it easier to give up the treasure to free Bai.

He met Bai's gaze. She lifted her chin defiantly as he crossed his forearms at his chest, wanting to crow in triumph.

All done now! Finished. He had won that which he had sworn to do years back.

He nodded at the Hieros. For the first time, doubt flickered across her proud face. "By the gate you'll find a litter," he said. "Have it brought here."

"Rudely spoken, to command me as though I am your slave," she said, but she believed herself safe and so she remained amused. At her command, four young bodies hurtled away. Another dozen people pushed to the edge of the clearing, come to watch. Probably the news was all over the temple by now.

Bai looked down at the ground for all the world like a shy bride, yet her stance betrayed a body honed and strengthened by hard exercise. It disturbed him. She had changed utterly since the day she'd been sold away from him, little sister and older brother on the auction block of Flesh Alley with aunts and uncle looking on dispassionately as they mouthed each rising tally, as the bidding went higher. Bai had been a thin stick of a thing, first clinging to him, then sobbing and wailing as the servants of the Hieros dragged her away. Twelve years ago.

He had lost the desire to revenge himself on his aunts and uncle. They were meaningless; like the old ruins to be found along every road, they mattered nothing to the caravan of life that must proceed on its way to its next destination. He was so close to success that he felt tears, and gulped them down, and shook as with a palsy. He knew suddenly and with complete conviction that the litter would be gone or the treasure vanished. How could he have left it alone? Had he really been that stupid?

But after all here it came, swaying raggedly with four bearers off-step and ungainly as they crunched over the gravel to set the litter down in the midst of the open space, about halfway between the edge of greenery and the centerpiece fountain. As Kesh approached, everyone except Bai and the Hieros backed away.

"The payment." He hooked back the curtain, reached in, and grasped the first thing his hand came to, which was a braid. He tugged.

She came unresisting, as she had all along, and stepped out into full sun. She raised no hand to shade her eyes. Her body was hidden beneath her only piece of clothing, a voluminous cloak woven of a silverine cloth. She blinked several times as the light struck; that was all.

Breaths were caught short, or taken in hard. Several people skipped back, and one voice whimpered in fear.

"A ghost!" whispered the Hieros, crossing her forearms away from her chest to ward off the ill omen.

"Touch her. She is no ghost."

He pulled the cloak back, each wing over one of her shoulders, and heard their moans of fear and gasps of surprise—and their sighs—as her body was revealed, as pallid as marble, as smooth as goat's milk and as creamy. Her hair both above and below was as pale as a field of harvest-ripe grain. Her eyes were not natural eyes. They were cornflower-blue. Demon-blue.

"What I offer, you must accept," he finished.

Bai grinned in a way that terrified him suddenly. She leaped across the clearing like a cat, halting in front of the Hieros. With a laugh, she slapped her, a crack across that old face.

"Bitch! I've been waiting to do that for twelve years!"

No one moved.

Without lashing out in her turn or even losing her temper, the Hieros spoke. "Do what impulse tells you, Zubaidit, but it will make no difference in the end. You are meant for the Devourer. You will see."

Bai spat onto the pebbles. Grinning with a vicious glee, she tugged her slave bracelets from her wrists and dropped them on the ground.

"I'll meet you at Leave-taking Pier," she said to Kesh. She dashed away into the greenery under an arched lacework of flowering vines. In her wake, the two ginny lizards rattled away into the undergrowth.

No one spoke, and no one moved, all in thrall to the vision standing among them, no stunning beauty, not like Captain Anji's wife—nothing so pallid could truly be deemed beautiful—but a thing of horrible and irresistible fascination. A whirlpool into which all are dragged and can never fight their way out. She was an evil thing, and Keshad knew it, but he did not care. He was rid of her, and by this means had gained everything he cared about in the wide world: his freedom, and his sister's freedom. The temple could take care of itself.

The Hieros shook out of her stupor. She glided up to them and circled the slave as she would circle a poisonous snake. She hitched the cloak up and looked over the slave's backside, and after a long moment she reached a hand and, after the merest hesitation, brushed her fingers over a forearm. The slave did not even flinch, only stared unseeing toward the green tangle of a witch hedge.

"Where did you get her?" the Hieros asked.

"At the edge of a desert so vast you cannot imagine it."

"I can imagine a lot of things," said the lanky girl, giving a lazy and lustful hum.

"Shut up!" hissed her companion. He was not laughing, but staring at the slave as if a hammer had hit him.

"A desert of stone and red sand. She was wandering, lost, as mute and blank as you see her now."

"Insane!" The Hieros ventured to pinch the lean curve of that hip. If the girl felt the pull of those fingers, she showed no sign.

"But compliant!" he said hastily. That she might be insane had often occurred to him over the course of the journey. It was the only reasonable explanation.

"How do you know she is compliant? Did you go into her yourself?"

As Bai had, he spat on the pebbles, and the Hieros flinched away from him with a look of such anger that he shivered. She will seek revenge.

So he smiled, to taunt her. "You know what they say. It's bad luck to spit in your own trading goods. Men—and women—will come to see if they can bestir her. And even if they can't stir her, if she remains as limp as a puppet in their arms, they'll still come."

"Oh, yes. I can see it." She rubbed her hands, but he couldn't tell if it was the thought of caressing that white flesh that bestirred her, or the thought of so many worshipers waiting at the gates for the chance to gaze on—or touch—this living ghost with her demon-blue eyes. "Better than any aphrodisiac, indeed. I acknowledge that this covers her debts."

"I want Bai's accounts bundle, properly sealed and marked off."

The Hieros stepped back to face Keshad. She was truly a devotee of the Merciless One. He could see it in the set of her face, cold and cruel and passionate, devoured by the goddess until not even her soul was her own.

"You have earned an enemy today," she said as if these were the kindest words she had ever spoken, "and you will come to regret it, but you are correct that this payment cannot be refused. Take what you have paid for. All will be sealed legally." She smiled gently, but her eyes were like stones in that handsome old face. "Be sure that if I ever have a chance to repay you for taking from me my most valuable hierodule, I will do so swiftly and with pleasure."

"Do what you must." Kesh's limbs were loose, his jaw relaxed, and his heart calm, now that it was over. "As I did."