The hells!
She was the ghost girl he had found at the edge of the desert. When he had found her, she had been naked but for that silk cloak, mute and unresponsive. Whatever stirrings of sexual desire her white skin and pale-gold hair and demon eyes might have aroused in him when he had stumbled upon her, curled up behind a rock at the side of a dirt path, were nothing compared with the greed she had enflamed when he had realized an instant later that she was a treasure of incomparable worth. He had brought her, in hiding and at great expense, all the long journey north through the empire and over the high mountain pass, just so he could exchange her for Zubaidit's freedom.
Her gaze passed on as she dismissed him. The Silvers cried out with garbled words, like men waking into nightmare, and ran into the house, crashing into furniture in another room. Nearby, a female sobbed as in agony.
The big man stumbled into the courtyard through another door. 'Priya! Where are you?'
The bold Qin soldiers were struck as into stone by the power of her demon gaze. She raised a hand, holding a mirror with brass fittings, chased in the old style. She turned the mirror to catch a reflection.
'Umar is now dead, like Eitai,' she said in her dead, flat voice. She pointed to Chaji, who cowered among the soldiers. 'You are the last one, Chaji. The wolf must cut out those who are diseased, to keep the herd strong.'
Lamplight flashed in the mirror, a doubling and tripling of flame.
Chaji collapsed to the paving stones as though the strings to a dancing doll were sliced through and the wooden body clattered to the floor. None moved to attack. They were utterly terrified.
The demon gaze shifted, and halted on the big man, who cowered for all his hulking size. 'You took the coin, and pushed me into the house, to let the others at me.'
Mai stepped forward, around Priya, and pressed the older woman behind her.
'What do you want, Cornflower?' she asked, her voice alive in the air like the scent of flowers. 'You are dead. Why do you haunt us? How can we help you rest?'
The two girls were of an age, Kesh thought idly and at random, both barely past girlhood and venturing cautiously into the bloom of young womanhood. But where Mai was sleek and cared-for, a well-tended garden showered with the constant rains of affection and admiration, the demon girl was all edges, no different really from the splintered doors hanging in tatters behind her.
She said, in her emotionless voice, 'You did not harm me, Mistress.'
'Neither did O'eki. He is a slave, as you were. He must do what his master commands. You cannot hold blame to him for that. Please do not harm him.'
The mirror, still raised, shifted as the girl twisted it. Priya groaned, but the demon lowered her hand, hid the mirror's face, and stared at Mai. 'What the master commands. Where is Master Shai? Tell me where he is. Then I will go.'
And kill him were the words she left unspoken.
'Shai never touched you.'
'He was my master. He took coin into his hand in exchange for three to rape me. How is it different to murder a man with your own hand, or step back and allow another to do the deed for you?'
Chief Tuvi struggled to raise his bow, and she fixed her gaze on
him until he wept. She looked at each of the others to cow them likewise.
Mai took another step forward. 'Shai is not your enemy. He was foolish, perhaps, but he did not hurt you. You don't know how many times he spoke to his brothers, asking them to take you away from Uncle Girish for fear and disgust at what Girish might be doing to you-'
The ghost girl gazed deep into Mai's face, and Mai's smooth facade crumpled as she moaned in pain.
'You suspected, but you did not know,' said the girl. 'Girish tried to hurt you, too.'
Rubbing her belly as if it hurt, Mai said in a ragged voice. 'Girish was a bad man, but Father never allowed him to touch any of us children. Shai tried to have you taken away from him because he pitied you. He pled your case — he did you no harm — I beg you-'
'North,' the demon said, as if the word had been spoken aloud. 'He went north, with the scouts.'
She reined around the horse and rode away into the darkness of the house, broken lattices and shards of ceramics cracking under hooves.
Chief Tuvi shook himself, staggered upright, and loosed an arrow after her. Its thunk — burying itself deep in wood — woke everyone else.
Keshad's gaze drifted, seeing now the outlander slave Sheyshi curled beside a lacquered tray as she scratched at her own face with her nails until she drew blood. Seeing now Priya sobbing disconsolately as she staggered over to embrace O'eki. Seeing now a young Silver man reeling backward as from a blow, hands groping at the turban wound tightly around his head as if he feared that the cloth had unwound to leave his hair naked to the sight of all.
One other person stood in the small courtyard, shaken more with wonder than with fear, an oddly joyful expression infusing her exotic features. The Silver girl had not feared the demon! She had a handsome, if serious and somewhat square face, full red trembling lips, and eyes like a brushstroke, dark and mysterious and bold as her gaze slid to meet his.
She stared at him until he could not breathe, and found his knees giving way beneath him.
Then she smiled, grabbed a fold of cloth off a pillow and, shaking it open, threw it over her head to conceal her face from all those forbidden to see her.
34
Joss had never seen the Qin captain lose his temper, and it made him cursed uncomfortable the way the man did not shout or gesticulate but rather grew still and cold.
'Mai could have been killed.'
'Here, now,' said Joss, with hand raised, as he might try to calm an angry eagle with the gestures used as signals to train the birds. Hoods worked best, but not on humans. 'It was a shock to me, as well, when I first heard. I came myself to find you. I wouldn't let anyone else deliver the news.'
Joss had tracked Anji well north of Olossi, to the village of Storos-on-the-water, where lay a temple of Kotaru. Anji was attended by his usual pair of guards, Sengel and Toughid, and by Chief Deze. The rest of his company — about forty soldiers — waited in the outer training yard with several hundred locals. Three Olossi men had accompanied Anji on this expedition, a militia captain named Lison and a pair of merchants, one an older Silver man wearing a full set of bracelets and the other a robust woman representing the council, whose names Joss had missed. These three had invited themselves into the sanctuary courtyard to hear the news Joss brought. Two local officials — the censor of the temple and the village council mistress — waited also, looking torn between uneasiness and confusion.
'You did not witness the attack yourself,' said Anji finally.
'I did not. Chief Tuvi alerted the reeve stationed in Olossi, who flew to Argent Hall at dawn and brought the matter to my attention. I returned to Olossi immediately and interviewed a number of people who were in the compound at the time as well as townsfolk who reported seeing a light and a winged horse above the city. Then 1 came to find you.'
The temple of Kotaru stood on high ground between road and
river; the creak of wheels as wagons rumbled along the Rice Walk melded with the flowing song of the River Olo. With towers raised at each corner of the square temple, it was a good place to oversee both river and road traffic. A good place to station a significant contingent of armed men.
'It's bad enough,' said Anji, 'to suspect Red Hounds from the empire are hunting me. To imagine that even after my mother cut my ties to the palace when I was twelve and sent me for safekeeping to her kinfolk among the Qin, my brother — and cousins, I suppose — still wish to kill me. Yet they are human, and might be reasoned with or outwitted. Nowhere is safe from demons.'
'If it was a demon,' said Joss.
'It was a demon,' said Anji. 'The person you describe was the slave. She died in the desert. No human could
