Traitors' Gate Read online

  “So might I, then, as we are business partners.”

  “One partner may not always know what the other plots in the shadows.”

  “True enough. Eliar is decent enough, for a Silver.”

  “A Silver?”

  “That’s what we call them in the Hundred, Captain. For the silver bracelets they wear on their arms. It seems your chroniclers called them the same.”

  “He’s like a creature out of a story walking into your father’s palace. Does he have horns?”

  The captain looked very young, and Kesh realized they were of an age but separated not by their lives as men of different countries but rather by the circumstances of their birth. Kesh was born to a humble clan whose kin had seen fit to sell him and his sister into slavery when their parents died; Jushahosh was born into a palace, son of a noble lord with many wives and slave women and therefore many such lesser sons.

  “I don’t know,” Kesh said confidingly, leaning closer, “for he clings to his privacy, as his people do. I’ve never seen him without the turban covering his head.”

  They shared a complicit smile.

  A prisoner who is a foreigner pretending to be a legitimate merchant only while being in truth secretly a spy and who fears he is being taken south to be burned as a spy must yet attempt to gather information, in case he gets out of his current situation alive.

  “Strange to see the Qin soldiers here,” he added, nodding toward the circle of fires where the Qin had set up their own encampment. “Are they under your command? Do they take your orders? Don’t they speak a different language?”

  “Their chief can talk the trade language, just as I can. What they jabber about otherwise I don’t know, but I suppose they mostly talk about sheep and horses.” He flashed a grin, and Kesh laughed. “You’re familiar with the Qin, eh? Seen them up in the Hundred?”

  Sheh! Caught at his own game.

  “I’ve heard of them, all right. Did I tell you the story of the journey I made into the Mariha princedoms? Two years ago, it was. I never saw so many strange creatures as out on the desert’s borderlands. Didn’t think I’d make it home. The Qin were the least of it!”

  “What did you see?”

  Kesh could embellish a story as well as anyone, for tales were the breath of the Hundred, exhaled with the beat of the heart and a lift of the hand. “Demons, for one thing. Maybe you call them something else here.”

  “No.” His gaze flicked, side to side, as he twisted his cup in his hands. “What did they look like?”

  “Ah. One was a woman—”

  “Of course!”

  “Her skin was as pale as that of a ghost. And her hair was the color of straw.”

  “Truly a demon, then!”

  “Her eyes were blue.”

  The captain had just taken a mouthful of poocha. He spat it out, coughing and choking, as Kesh sat rigid. But the man waved away his slaves and laughed through his coughing. “Horrible to look upon! Go on.”

  Kesh dropped his voice to a murmur as the captain bent closer yet. “She was enveloped in an enchanted cloak of demon weave, like cloth woven out of spider’s silk. And beneath that cloak . . . she was unclothed. That was the other way I knew she was a demon.”

  The captain’s eyes flared with shame and heat; a flush stained his cheeks. “What did she looked like, underneath?”

  “Exalted Captain!” A junior officer, wearing his watch duty sash over his green jacket, came running up, his face slicked with a sheen of sweat although the evening was only moderately humid and warm. “There’s a company of men upon the road. Imperial guards.”

  A blast from a horn brought the captain to his feet. He strode off toward the lines, where lamps bobbed along the length of the road. In his wake, slaves gathered up tray and stool with the same swift grace they’d shown in setting it up. Kesh speared meat off the platter before they could whisk it out of his reach, and a slave waited impassively until he’d gulped down the strips before taking the eating knife away from him and following the others to the captain’s tent. The junior officers set down their cups and charged off, chattering excitedly. Kesh hurried over to the fire and plopped down beside Eliar.

  “Is there anything left to eat or drink here?”

  Eliar rose, stepping away from him as if he bore a stench. He stared toward the lights half seen along the distant road. “Do you think there might be a skirmish? How can you possibly think of eating when—?”

  “You eat when there’s food. No telling when you’ll get more.” He hooked a triangle of flat bread off the common platter and crammed it in his mouth. He managed to down more bread and a crispy slice of a white vegetable, still moist and a little peppery, before servants descended to collect the trays and cups. Eliar was bouncing on his toes as if movement would help him see over the ranks of soldiers gathering amid the tents. Out by the road, men shouted, so much tension in their tone that Kesh rose likewise to stand beside Eliar.

  “If they start fighting, make for our tent. We might have to run for it . . .”

  Eliar grabbed Kesh’s forearm, the touch so unexpected that Kesh flinched. “I know you don’t like me, but promise me this. If we die here, you’ll tell the truth of it to my family.” He released him.

  “If I’m dead, I can’t tell anyone the truth, can I?”

  “You seem like the kind of person who can get out of anything,” said Eliar, his voice as hoarse as if he’d been running. “Even if it means abandoning others to do so.”

  “At least I know what you truly think of me. You think I’ve got no cursed honor, don’t you?”

  Eliar shook his head stubbornly. “If I die, Kesh, don’t let them sell my sister into marriage with the Haf Ke Pir house in Nessumara. Promise me.”

  From the road, the voices continued. The Qin soldiers had melted away to their horse lines.

  “Don’t you think it’s too late? By the time we get back, won’t they already have delivered her to Nessumara?”

  “How could they? The roads aren’t safe.”

  “Reeves could fly her there! Or did that never occur to you?”

  Eliar groaned. “Aui! But no. Reeves aren’t carters.”

  “Is there one single thing in this world that isn’t for sale if enough coin is offered? And if you get back safely and she’s still at your home? Will you escort her yourself to Nessumara, to her new husband? The one she doesn’t want to go to? It’ll be all right then, knowing you’ve had your adventure?” Kesh knew how the words must sound, greasy with sarcasm, but cursed if Eliar was too caught up in his own writhing discontent to notice.

  “If I die, I’ll have cast her into misery for nothing. She in her cage, I to be burned. What have I done—”

  What charged the air Kesh did not know, but before Eliar could draw another breath everything changed, as if lightning had struck. A trio of Qin soldiers, swords drawn, trotted out of the darkness masking the horse lines. Screams and shouts broke from the road. A flame—one of the lamps—arced high into the night sky as if flung heavenward, and then an arrow shattered it. The horn stuttered, answered by a call from down the road, a triple blat blat blat, and cursing and shouting and swords clattering like hooves in their staccato rhythm.

  Kesh grabbed Eliar’s wrist. “Let’s go!” He tugged, and yet Eliar would stand there like a dumbstruck lackwit gazing on the dance of festival lights.

  Suddenly, that trio of Qin soldiers trotted up beside them with the unsmiling but not precisely unfriendly expressions of men come to do their duty. One hooked a thumb to indicate they should move away from the altercation. Kesh yanked harder until Eliar stumbled after him, gaze turned toward the skirmish whose color and sound made the camp seem as bright as day and twice as fearsome. Kesh’s heart was galloping, like distant horses. Orders rang in a voice remarkably like Captain Jushahosh’s, lilting high as with fright. A rumble spilled an undercurrent through the clash of arms. A woman’s scream cut through the tumult.

  As Kesh sucked in a startled breat
h, the world fell silent. For one breath there were neither questions nor answers, only the shock of hearing a female voice where none belonged.

  The fighting broke out anew, redoubled in intensity. The Qin soldiers pressed them toward their tent. Eliar was so pale Kesh wondered if he would faint, while meanwhile he was himself looking in every direction, trying to figure out how and where he could run, how far he could get, and if it was worth trying to get the Silver to move with him lest he have otherwise to explain to Eliar’s beautiful sister how Eliar had gotten abandoned with their enemies. And yet, how thoroughly impossible it was to hope for escape through a countryside where he would be known for a foreigner at first glance.

  A swirl of Qin soldiers appeared out of the darkness, carrying on a running commentary with their fellows, words like the scraping of saws, all burrs and edges. They ran with choppy strides and corraled Kesh and Eliar. Movement roiled through the camp, a second wave of black-clad Qin soldiers driving the enemy before them like so many sheep.

  Captain Jushahosh limped, his face smeared with blood and his sword mottled.

  “Hei! Hei!” he cried. The Qin soldiers stepped away from their flock as more green-jacket guards streamed in and two aides brought forward lanterns. Four men had fallen to their knees, faces pressed into the dirt. The other figure was veiled, and she clasped a small body against her own, shielding it as the captain approached her. He gestured, and one of the junior officers stepped forward, grasped the little child, and ripped it out of her arms.

  Her silence was worse than a scream would have been.

  The Qin soldiers stared like dumb beasts as the junior officer cut the silk wrap off the child to reveal his sex. The child could not have made more than two years, a plump, healthy-looking boy with a strong voice exploding into a terrified howl.

  The captain gestured. The junior officer slapped the child so hard he was stunned, splayed his body on the ground, and stepped back. The veiled woman flung herself forward, but before she reached the child, the captain hacked off the boy’s head. She scrambled on hands and knees, a keening sound rising, and as she crawled to the body her veil and outer robes were wrenched into disarray, split to reveal an underrobe heavily embroidered with gold and silver thread. Her head, exposed as the veil ripped away under her crabbed hands, was that of a young woman of exceptional beauty; her eyes were dark, wide with stunned grief, and her hair, falling loose from its pins and clasps, was as thick and black as a river of silk.

  The Qin soldiers shook their heads, frowning.

  The captain raised his sword again.

  The Qin chief stepped forward, a man of easy competence who reminded Kesh of the scout Tohon. “Captain Jushahosh. No need to waste this young woman. I will take her as a wife if you do not want her.”

  But the motion was already complete, her fortune long since sealed. The cut drove deep into her neck, and she slumped forward, twitching, not yet dead, mewling and moaning. As the captain stepped back with a look of dazed shock, as if he’d thought to kill her in one blow, the Qin chief calmly finished her off but with a wry smile that Kesh took at first for cruel amusement. A murmur swept through the Qin soldiers like breeze through trees, but the Qin chief raised a hand and all sound ceased. The chief turned his back on the dead as a look of pure disgust flashed in the twist of his mouth and the crease made by narrowed eyes. Then he caught Kesh watching him, and his expression smoothed into the solemn look the Qin normally wore, as colorless as their black tunics.

  Perhaps the captain had seen. “A woman of the palace! She can have no honor left, her face exposed in such a manner. And her hair, seen by every man here, even by barbarians! Death honors her, although she disgraced herself.”

  “She’s dead now,” said the Qin chief, facing him with the same deadly smooth expression unchanged. “Why kill the child?”

  “That was one of the sons of the Emperor Farazadihosh.”

  “A boy can be raised as a soldier, useful to his kinsmen.”

  Servants brought canvas and silk to wrap the bodies. “Why do you think we found a palace woman on the road at all? Escorted by a contingent of palace guards? With Farazadihosh’s death in battle, the palace women who have borne sons of his seed have scattered. If even one survives, a standard can be raised against the new emperor. With a few such deaths, we bring peace. Isn’t peace to be preferred to war?”

  “This seems settled then,” said the Qin chief. “Are these slaves to be killed also?”

  “Slaves belong to the palace, not to the emperor. They obey those who rule them.” He handed his sword to an aide, who wiped it clean. “Master Keshad, will you continue our meal?”

  Eliar stumbled away, collapsing to all fours as he heaved. Kesh looked away from the bodies being rolled up, from the slaves awaiting their fate. He studied the Qin chief, but the man’s gaze made him nervous, like staring down a wolf who might be hungry and thinking of you as his next meal or might recently have fed and finds you merely a curiosity. It was not that the Qin were merciful, but rather that they valued their loyalty to their kinsmen above all. For that, Kesh admired them.

  But he was in the Sirniakan Empire now, and the Qin were, presumably, mere mercenaries. He turned to Captain Jushahosh.

  “Yes, certainly, Captain. I hadn’t finished my story, had I?”

  They walked back through camp to the fire where they had first sat. Here, the slaves had already set out folding table, tray, cups, a fortifying wine warmed with spices. The white-robed Beltak priest who accompanied their troop was being helped by a pair of underlings toward the road, his priest’s bowl hanging by a strap from his right wrist.

  “The skirmish did not last long,” remarked Kesh as he settled onto a folding stool opened for him. The stool marked, he thought, new status in their eyes.

  “They were desperate, but few in number. Still, there are dead, and the priest must oversee the proper rites. Those who fought must be cleansed at the next temple.”

  “You’re wounded? I saw you were limping.”

  “No, not a scratch.” His grin was lopsided, a little embarrassed. “Turned my ankle jumping out of the way of a man trying to stab me.” He sipped at the wine, and made a face. “Eh. It tastes of blood.”

  It tasted perfectly fine to Kesh, and when the captain had not the stomach to eat, Kesh finished off the spiced meat and freshly cooked flat bread. Slaves never knew when they would next eat. Not even the smell of blood and the memory of the little boy’s headless corpse could put him off a good meal like this one. Anyway, ten days from now, or tomorrow, he might be dead, and it seemed a cursed waste not to enjoy such pleasures when offered.

  The captain sighed. “I wish I had your stomach, eh? I admit, that’s the first battle I’ve been in. We missed all the action before.”

  “You’ve never killed a man before?”

  He waved a hand. “I’ve had to kill disobedient slaves on my estate. But that’s more like killing animals.”

  “Ah.” Kesh swallowed bile. A man in a position as precarious as his must not risk offending his jailkeeper. “How is it you come to this duty? Your house was an ally of the new emperor?”

  “That’s right. My grandfather went to the palace school with the younger brother of Farutanihosh for two seasons. They never cut that bond, the two men, even through all the years that followed. And of course the Emperor Farutanihosh never had his younger brother killed, as he ought to have done. It’s always a disruption of God’s order to raise the flags of war, but everyone knows that a woman who has birthed a son born of the emperor’s seed will rouse her relatives to war on that son’s behalf even though war is evil. That Farutanihosh did not foresee and prevent this by killing his younger brother was a sign of moral weakness, one that would be passed into his sons. Therefore, his sons must be corrupted by his failure and unworthy for the throne.”

  “Yet now Farutanihosh’s son Farazadihosh is dead, and it is his nephew, the son of the brother he left alive, who will become emperor.”

>   “That’s right. Ujarihosh will be seated on the gold throne in the eight-gated palace, and the priests of Beltak will anoint him as Farujarihosh, he who has gained the favor of the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Shining One who rules alone.”

  “How far are we riding?” Kesh asked, wanting to lick his fingers but taking a fine linen cloth from a slave to wipe his hands instead.

  “I’m not sure.” Jushahosh glanced toward the road, not visible from here, although they could hear the talk of men at the grisly task of clearing the road and the singsong chant of the priest. “Until we meet the one who has summoned you.”

  “Who is that?”

  The captain sipped at his wine. “I’m only a messenger. The truth is, I don’t know any more than you do.”

  WITH EACH DAY they rode deeper into the heart of the empire, traveling south through countryside so densely populated there was always at least one village within view, and more commonly three or four. Farmers laboring in their fields paused in their work, bent with hands on knees, heads bowed, as the company passed. Kesh wasn’t sure if they were showing obedience, or praying that the beast would ignore them rather than ravage them. But the captain and his soldiers took no notice of the common folk. Life went on unmolested. Whatever war had been fought between the noble heirs of the imperial house did not affect those who must bring in the crops. Not like in the Hundred, where the strife had precisely ripped through the houses and fields of the humblest.

  “We’ll never see home again,” said Eliar every morning as they made ready to mount and go on their way.

  “Speak of your own end, not mine,” replied Kesh every day, and every day he found a way to fall in beside Captain Jushahosh, because Eliar’s morose company had become unbearable. To risk so much and then grouse about it! Death was a small price, compared with his betrayal of his sister!

  But Jushahosh was a man like Eliar in many ways: son of a wealthy house, one of many such sons accustomed to a life of sumptuous clothing and platters piled high with food, who in his life had seen little enough hardship and so craved the excitement he kept missing out on. A civil war! How exciting! Yet his company, backing the eventual winner, had seen no action beyond that encounter on the road, which was nothing to be boasted of although they had pickled the heads of the woman and the child in a barrel of wine so the new exalted administrator of the women’s palace could make an accounting of who was dead and who, therefore, missing. He never tired of hearing Keshad’s tales of his travels. It seemed never to occur to the captain that a man could embroider a small tale and turn it into a large one. Kesh found him lacking in imagination.