'Keeping us in, or others out. Grab rope. And whatever you can carry that's too valuable to leave behind.'
'Climbing out of the compound is easy. But how can we get out of the city without being killed?'
'The hells!' Kesh collected the pouches of local spices, best-quality braid, and polished gems he'd brought south from the Hundred; he slung them over his back, buckling tight the straps so the pouches wouldn't shift as he moved. Then he grabbed rope coiled against the door that led into a small storeroom accessible only from this chamber. None of the goods he and Eliar had stored in there were worth his life.
'I'm ready,' said the Ri Amarah from the door.
Eliar's bulging packs brushed Kesh's arm. 'What in the hells are you carrying?'
'All the oil of naya.'
'Aui! Don't drop it by a flame.'
Kesh shouldered past and led Eliar to the archway of the inner gate. A few merchants were frantically shoving carts and benches in front of the closed double gates, but the rest were hiding in the storerooms. A struggle raged within the gatehouse, and outside the gates a crowd screamed words Kesh was pretty sure meant something like 'Kill the foreigners! Kill the traitors!'
'They haven't given us up,' said Kesh suddenly.
'What do you mean?'
'The sergeant and his guards could let that mob in. But they're defending us. Eiya! We'll need oil of naya.'
He expected Eliar to protest, but the other man swung down his bulky packs. Keshad ran to the cistern in the middle of the courtyard and climbed up.
'Heya! Heya! Get your weapons! Move! Our guards are
defending us against a mob that wants to kill us. If we don't help them, we're all dead. I need rags. Anything that will burn easily. Hurry, you cursed fools!'
He ran to the forecourt. The guards had abandoned the watch platforms that flanked the gates. Access to the platforms and the wall walk was from inside the guardhouse, now being fought over.
Merchants came running with weapons, with rags, one dragging a thin pallet. Two carried lamps. Eliar brought three leather bottles. Muffled crashes and shouts came from the guardhouse. Someone was taking a beating.
Keshad indicated the platforms above. 'We'll splash oil of naya over the crowd, light rags, and throw them down on top. That should drive them away'
'Heh. Just like the battle over Olossi,' said one man.
'I'll go up,' said Eliar immediately.
As Kesh slung a bottle over his shoulder he called the other merchants closer. 'Those who can fight, brace yourselves. Form up around the inner gate. Tip carts over, under the arch, to make a bottleneck. One of you roust out the cowards. We need everyone. Now, hoist me up.'
Kesh and another man climbed up on a cart. The man laced his fingers together and, when Kesh set a foot into the makeshift stirrup, raised him up so he could throw rope around one of the poles making the scaffolding of the platform. He clambered up and crouched on the platform as Eliar was helped up on the other side. The mob below hadn't yet spotted them. Men surged past the guardhouse door, pushing inside only to be cut down by the armed guardsmen. But the mob was growing, howling and barking like animals, or so it seemed to his ears. Working men who had, Kesh supposed, filled up with fear and now had to take it out on someone else, they were armed with torches, sticks, tools, and other such humble implements. None seemed to have bows. He licked his lips, tasted smoke. Elsewhere in the market district, compounds were burning.
The top of the twinned gates was broad enough to walk across if you didn't mind the height. Eliar hauled up a basket and crouched beside it, lifting out a burning lantern. Below, within the mob, a face looked up. Down along the street about ten men came running carrying ladders.
Keshad unsealed the first bottle. This was the dangerous part! He shook the vessel, oil spraying on the men crowded up below.
Eliar set fire to a rag and flung it outward, but it fell to the ground and was stamped out. Men threw sticks and debris up at them. The first ladder was pushed up against the gate. Keshad emptied the first vessel on top of the men at the base of the ladder. He unsealed the second and ran out along the top of the gate, flinging oil out as far away as he could. Men cursed at him, wiping away the oil that splashed on their faces. Spreading it. A second flaming rag fluttered down, and a third-
Fire touched oil on skin.
Shrieking, the man staggered, slamming into the men around him, half of whom had been splashed by oil of naya. The conflagration spread. The mob disintegrated as men fled in terror. The stench was horrible, and the screams were worse. But the street was clearing fast.
Keshad ran back to the platform, swung his legs over, and paid out the rope to let himself down to the forecourt. When he touched earth, his legs gave out. He pitched forward as the merchants babbled and cried.
Eliar bent over him. 'Keshad? Are you hurt?'
'Neh.' His speech was gone. His limbs were weak. He still heard screams.
'That saved us,' added Eliar.
'For now.'
'Clever of you to think of it. Just like at Olossi.'
The door to the guardhouse scraped open and the sergeant stumbled out, blood splashed all over him. Seen past the sergeant, a whitewashed room looked like a slaughterhouse, with tumbled corpses, the hazy smoke of torches, and a guardsman kneeling beside a fallen comrade.
'What do you? What do you?' The sergeant loomed over him, swiping smears of blood from his beard with his left hand while he extended the right. 'Good, good.'
Hesitantly, Keshad reached out, and the man clasped elbows in the grasp of kinship seen in the market among believers but never extended to foreigners.
Soon after dawn, a squad of mounted soldiers resplendent in green sashes and helmets trimmed with gold ribbons clattered up to the closed gates. Smoke drifted over the rooftops. The merchants who had sat the rest of the night on watch on the roofs hastily clambered down as the gates were opened.
The sergeant genuflected before the squad's captain. As the sergeant kept his head bowed, they exchanged a running jabber in their own language. An older merchant murmured a translation.
'There was trouble all across the market district last night. There is to be an inquiry anywhere local men were killed.'
'Against the mob, or against us?' Kesh muttered.
Worry creased the sergeant's face as he surveyed the merchants. The captain snapped a command that made the sergeant wince. With an apologetic grimace he pointed' — quite rudely, as out-landers always did, using the fingers — at Keshad.
'Bring him.' The captain's gaze paused on Eliar, with his butter-yellow turban. 'You come, also.'
Eliar took an obedient step toward the squad, but Keshad held his ground.
'What about our trade goods? What surety do we have they'll not be stolen while we're not here to guard them ourselves?'
The captain raised a hand, and soldiers drew their swords. 'You come. Or I kill you.'
Keshad wiped sweat from his eyes as his throat closed over a pointless protest. He shrugged, pretending calm. Eliar looked as if he'd been struck.
They walked under the market district gate and into the main city, a place no foreign merchant was ever allowed to enter. The empty streets were broad and clean-swept, walled on both sides, with gates opening at intervals into compounds. The hooves of the horses echoed in an eerie silence. Once Kesh saw a face peeping over a wall, dropping out of sight when their gazes met. Their procession wound inward and upward as the sun rose, and just when it was beginning to get really hot they arrived at a vast gate that opened into a grand courtyard lined with pillared colonnades carved of finest white marble.
The captain indicated a bench in the shade. 'Sit there.'
They sat. Four soldiers settled into guard positions while the captain rode into a farther courtyard glimpsed through a magnificently carved archway.
