Traitors' Gate Read online

  At night, in the privacy of their tent, Kesh forced Eliar to go over and over the basic tale of their partnership, their trade, their expedition south. “So they can’t catch us out in contradictions and decide to burn us.”

  “Maybe I’d be better dead,” whispered Eliar.

  “Maybe so, but I wouldn’t. I intend to survive this interview, give a good account of myself, and go home with a decent profit.”

  “Yet if we fail—eiya!—when I close my eyes I see that poor little child with his head sliced off. And that woman—his poor mother—cut down like a beast. Doesn’t it haunt you, Kesh? Are you so unfeeling?”

  “Yes, I am. There’s nothing I can do for them. They’re dead. I concern myself with the living.”

  The living—like Eliar’s sister. The woman he could never discuss, whose face he ought never to have seen. That face—her glance—haunted his nights and his days.

  They rode ten days after the skirmish on a road marked at intervals with distance markers, just as in the Hundred, only the empire measured not in meys but in a measure known as a cali, about half the distance of a mey. Kesh was careful to count off their distance, and every night he had Eliar record the cali traveled in the accounts book Eliar had brought.

  “It’s a good thing you’re useful for something,” Kesh said, watching the young Silver slash marks by lamplight. “Did you make note of the two crossroads we passed and at what distance we reached them?”

  “Do you think I’m a fool?”

  Kesh did not answer.

  “Yes, you do. I did note them. I noted the letters marking the posts. They indicate which towns and cities lie along that road. I also recorded the number and density of villages we passed today, and the water wheels and forges that I could be sure of. All in a script which no one but the Ri Amarah can read, so we can’t be caught out if my book is taken from me. Unless, of course, the act of writing in a book is seen as suspicious, which I must suppose it will be.”

  “What are those?” Kesh asked, pointing to a secondary column of odd squiggles falling on the left-hand side of the page.

  “I’m recording the words and sounds of the Sirniakan language. Why do you think I talk so much with the officers? They’re not particularly interesting. We have in our archives a record of the language from our time of exile here, but we no longer know how to pronounce things properly and what certain words truly mean. That’s what you don’t understand, Kesh. All you can think about is how much coin you’ll get from this expedition. If we survive it, which I doubt. But there are more valuable things than coin. There is knowledge.”

  “Information to be sold—”

  “No. Knowledge in itself—Why do I bother?” He broke off and cleaned the brush and without speaking another word boxed his writing tools and lay down on his blankets with his back to Kesh.

  Kesh wondered what would happen if he grasped the cloth of Eliar’s turban and ripped the coiled cloth from his head. His hands twitched. With a laugh, he crawled out and paced to the central watch fire, where he found Captain Jushahosh still awake and conferring with an officer in a red jacket holding a fancy stick like a reeve’s baton, plated as in gold.

  The captain looked up sharply at Kesh’s approach, and without interrupting his flow of words to the other man, lifted his left hand and gestured with a flick of the fingers that seemed to say go away. Kesh stepped back, then took himself over to the pits as if that was where he’d been heading all along. He lingered, hearing scraps delivered too quickly for him to sort out what words he knew. In time, the stranger made his courtesies, and Jushahosh his own in response, and the man strode away. Kesh crept back toward the central watch fire and was rewarded with a cup of the spiced wine that was the only thing in the empire he had come to love.

  “In the morning, you’ll ride with Captain Sharahosh,” said Jushahosh. “We part here, for I’m sent on a new assignment, hunting down another infant son of Farazadihosh, if you must know. No glory there.” He sighed. “I was hoping for battle, but it seems most of the troops loyal to Farazadihosh have surrendered. There will likely be no more fighting. I was hoping for at least one battle.”

  “It seems the southern prince had more support than expected. He won quickly, did he not?”

  “The Lord of Lords, King of Kings, has showered His favor on the deserving. Now we will have peace.” He sketched the gesture signifying obedience to the god’s will, and Kesh copied it. The captain smiled, an odd light in his eyes that Kesh recognized, after a moment’s doubt, as admiration. “I thought all barbarians were brawling drunks with hot tempers, ready to fight at any excuse, like those Qin riders.”

  “Do the Qin get drunk and brawl? I’ve never seen—ah, one of these—lose his temper.”

  “Maybe not these, since they are under our command, but you know how barbarians are. Still, you’re different from the others, I suppose because you are a believer. You’ve walked fearlessly into the wilderness, stalked the desert’s edge, battled with naked demons, ridden over the snow-choked pass, bargained with deadly—what did you call them?—with deadly lilu. Is it true they have the bodies of women and the skin of snakes?”

  “Oh. Eh. Some of them.”

  “Whew!” The captain grinned. “I wish I had your cool. Having seen such sights as you have, and survived such dangers! My thanks to you, truly, for being generous enough to dine and drink with me. You being such an important man in your part of the world.”

  “Yes. Eh. And my thanks to you, Captain, for sharing your food and drink. You’ve shown me hospitality. I won’t forget it.”

  The awkward parting accomplished, Kesh took his leave.

  In the morning, he rose to find Captain Sharahosh in command with a new troop of Sirniakan cavalry. Captain Jushahosh and his troop were gone. The Qin company remained.

  Captain Sharahosh was an older man uninterested in conversation, and he held his soldiers aloof from prisoners and Qin alike. They rode for another day, following a road so wide that four wagons might roll abreast. Fields, vineyards, and orchards crowded the landscape, no scrap of land unmarked by human industry. The next morning a vast wall rose out of the earth. They entered a city through gates sheeted with brass and rode down an avenue bounded by high walls. At intervals, bridges crossed over the avenue, but Kesh never ascertained any traffic above, although he heard and smelled the sounds of men out and about in the streets beyond the walls. The rounded dome of the city’s temple grew larger as they rode into the heart of the city.

  The sun rose to its zenith before they reached a second gate, which opened into a courtyard lined with a colonnade, pillars hewn out of rose granite. The structure resembled in every detail the palace court in Sarida where he and Eliar had first been taken into custody. There was even a farther gate into a farther courtyard, spanned by an archway carved with reliefs celebrating the reign of the emperor: the officers of the court approaching an empty throne, the sun and moon and stars in attendance on the crown of glory that represented the suzerainty of Beltak. The temple dome could be glimpsed to the right, the sun glinting off its bronze skin. Maybe it was the same in every cursed Sirniakan city, the palace supported by the temple and the temple supported by the palace, one unable to exist without the architecture of the other.

  “Sit here,” said Captain Sharahosh, perhaps the tenth and eleventh words he had spoken to them in their days together. He dismissed his soldiers but left the Qin riders waiting in the hot sun in the dusty courtyard as he vanished beyond a more humble gate.

  In the Hundred, of course, the temples of the seven gods were the pillars that supported the land, and the tales wove the land into a single cloth. Or so the priests of the seven gods would say. And they had to say so. They had to believe, just as the priests of Beltak had to believe. What were they, after all, if the gods meant nothing?

  Kesh had all along prayed at dawn and at night with the empire men while Eliar and the Qin soldiers had stood aside in silence. But he did not believe, and Beltak did not s
trike him down, and the priest accompanying the soldiers did not see into his heart and know he was lying.

  “Do you think they will kill us now?” Eliar muttered.

  “They could have killed us before, if they meant to kill us. Anyway, we are simply merchants, traveled to Sarida to turn a profit.”

  Eliar wiped sweat from his forehead. “You’re right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “Don’t you recall what you said when we were waiting in the courtyard in Sarida? It looked exactly like this one, didn’t it?”

  Would the cursed man never stop chattering about his own gods-rotted fears?

  “You said people will renounce the truth if it will give them an advantage to do so. And then they convince themselves that what they wish to be true is the truth.” He twisted his silver bracelets as though twisting his thoughts around and around. “Folk tell themselves what they want to hear. I traded my sister’s happiness for my own—or what I thought would be my own happiness. Now I’m ashamed.”

  The tone of his voice seared Keshad. If they could join together and find some way to free her from the unwanted marriage, then surely they would be allies, not enemies. “Eliar,” he began, but faltered, not knowing what to say or how to say it.

  Eliar brushed at his eyes with a hand.

  In the shadows off to the right, tucked away in an alcove unnoticed until now, a door opened. Captain Sharahosh beckoned, his face impassive. Kesh cast a glance toward the Qin soldiers. He had a crazy idea of calling to them for help. Surely if he invoked Captain Anji’s name and lineage—the nephew of your var!—they would sweep him and Eliar up and gallop away to safety.

  But these were not Anji’s men. These men belonged to someone else, perhaps to the var, who had according to Captain Anji’s account tried to have his nephew murdered over a year ago. That very plot had precipitated Anji’s journey to the Hundred.

  Over a year ago, the Sirniakan civil war had not quite yet begun, although surely it was then brewing. The Qin var, it seemed, had chosen to back Farazadihosh. But that being so, then why was a Qin company riding like allies beside troops loyal to Farujarihosh, the prince who had rebelled against and killed his cousin, wresting from him the imperial throne?

  “At once,” said the captain.

  They crossed under the lintel into darkness. A lamp flared. By its light, they descended a long flight of stone steps and, reaching the limit of the lamp’s illumination, halted. The lamp sputtered and died, and a second lamp bloomed ahead. They walked down a corridor, lamps flaring and dying at intervals. Blackness unrelieved by daylight dogged them before and behind. The walls were painted in an elaborate hunting scene, but Kesh glimpsed only snatches of color, of a white hare, a gold lion, a red deer, and a green bird, each transfixed by an arrow. They walked thus a full ten lamps of distance. Captain Sharahosh uttered no words, nor did he deem it necessary to defend himself against them or even once look back to make sure they were following. After all, what could they do? If they drew their swords and cut him down, they were still trapped in the midst of—or underneath!—a building so vast Kesh could not visualize its proportions. Anyway, there might be traps. He tried to observe what he could see of the long scene, perhaps a representation of a tale unfolding along the walls, yet his thoughts turned and turned Eliar’s words. How deep ran Eliar’s regret? Could Keshad suggest to Eliar that his precious sister might be released from the marriage into which she had been forced? That they could work together to save her?

  Or was Eliar one of those who spoke words of regret but didn’t really mean them if it meant he had to give up the privilege that came from another’s sacrifice?

  A line of light appeared ahead like a beacon. They crossed under a lintel and into a round chamber faced with marble. Kesh looked up into a dome whose height made him dizzy. A balcony rimmed the transition from chamber to dome; red-jacketed soldiers stood at guard beneath lamps hung from iron brackets. The amount of oil hissing as it burned made it seem as if a hundred traitorous voices were whispering in the heavens.

  A person dressed in a plain white-silk jacket and the loose belled trousers common to wealthy empire men sat in a chair carved of ebony. He was a man, but odd in his lineaments, his face looking not so much clean-shaven as soft like a woman’s, unable to bear the youthful burden of a beard. Yet his posture was strong, not weak, and his hands had a wiry strength, as if he’d throttled his enemies without aid of a garrote.

  He said, in the trade talk, to the soldier in the red jacket, “These are the two?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  His voice was a strangely weightless tenor, but his words rang with the expectation of authority. “I’ve interrogated four others already this morning, and they were not the ones I am seeking.”

  The captain frowned in a measuring way, not an angry one. “What are your names?”

  Eliar opened his mouth, and Kesh trod on his foot.

  The soldier smiled, just a little.

  The man in the chair spoke. “You are perhaps called Keshad? Sent to spy in the empire at the order of my cousin Anjihosh, son of Farutanihosh out of the barbarian princess?”

  All the market training in the world, all those years as a slave, had not prepared Kesh for being called out deep in the bowels of an imperial palace by a man he did not know but who was, evidently, one of Captain Anji’s royal cousins.

  His surprise and silence was its own answer, even as his thoughts caught up with his shock and he cursed himself for a fool. He’d been warned about the empire’s secret soldiers, known as the red hounds, fierce assassins and spies in their own right. Anji had warned him, yet it appeared their intelligence gathering was more formidable than anyone suspected.

  Too late now.

  When cornered, you can choose submission and surrender, or you can leap to the attack and hope the fierceness of your resistance will give you an opening for escape.

  “Begging your pardon, Your Excellency. But if you and your brother have only recently defeated the Emperor Farazadihosh in battle, how comes it that you are privy so suddenly to the secrets that could have been brought south only by agents of the red hounds? Who are sworn to serve the emperor? Not his rivals.”

  “An interesting question,” agreed the man, with a nod of acknowledgment.

  “And furthermore,” continued Keshad, feeling really borne up now on a high tide of reckless anger at being trapped so cleanly and easily, all his hopes wrecked, “if it is true that the cousin of Farazadihosh has taken the throne, and therefore the right to be named as emperor, through victory on the field of battle, then how comes it that a brother of that man—as you imply yourself to be—remains alive? The heir of the ruling emperor has all his brothers and half brothers killed in order that none shall contest his right to the throne.”

  Captain Sharahosh made a gesture, and four of the guardsmen on the balcony raised bows with arrows nocked. “You are imprudent in your speech,” said the captain, “more bold than is fitting.”

  “Nay, let him speak,” said his master. “I would like to know how a man posing as a simple foreign merchant knows of the existence of the red hounds. For surely they are only known to those raised in the palace, and those who oversee the temple.”

  “What is it worth to you?”

  The prince’s smile was brief and brutal. “What makes you think it is worth anything to me? It might be worth something to you.” His gaze flicked to Eliar. “These questions are meaningless, because a Ri Amrah walks beside you.”

  “Ri Amarah,” said Eliar.

  “Ri Amrahah? Ama-ra-ah? A-ma-rah. Ah. Is that the way your own people speak the word? It is recorded otherwise in our chronicles. Is it true you have horns? And sorcerous powers brought with you from over the seas beyond which lies your original home, from which you are now exiled? Is it true the women of your people keep your accounts books, which as you must know goes against the will of the Shining One Who Rules Alone?”

  “We do not worship that
god.”

  “There is only Beltak, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Shining One Who Rules Alone.”

  “So you say.”

  The prince’s amusement reminded Keshad startlingly of Captain Anji’s way of smiling: he was not one bit flustered by those who contradicted him. “I do not ‘say so.’ I am repeating the truth.”

  “Why on earth,” demanded Kesh, “would it be against the will of God for women to keep accounts? Women keep accounts as well, or as badly, as men do. How can anyone imagine otherwise?”

  The prince clucked softly, still deigning to look amused. “No wonder the Hundred is in chaos. Can it be otherwise, with the rightful order turned on its head, and what should be forward facing backward?” He turned his gaze back to Eliar. “Unwrap your turban.”

  “I will not!”

  The prince gestured, and the other eight guardsmen raised their bows, targeting Eliar. “Unwrap your turban so I may satisfy my curiosity, or I will have you killed.”

  Keshad wanted to take a step away, but he feared exposing himself as a coward.

  “No.” Eliar lifted his chin, jaw clenched. “Kill me if you must. When I am dead you can assuage your curiosity, if the Hidden One allows it.”

  The prince laughed, and the guardsmen lowered their bows. “You are the ones I seek. You are Keshad, without patronymic to identify your lineage, and you are Eliar, a son of the Ri Amarah, son of Isar, son of Bethen, son of Gever. Sent as spies into the empire, which is ruled by the rightful heir, my elder brother, Farujarihosh, may his reign be blessed by the glory of the King of Kings who rules over us.”