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 breath, 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,
