Maybe she was a very good liar. Maybe she was as ignorant as she seemed. He had no way of knowing, and no way of finding out.
How sad, really, that he sought to teach the girl to trust him, while refusing to trust this woman who was, after all, asking of him nothing more than he was asking of the girl. If she was what she said she was, then they might join forces. There was strength in numbers. There was hope in numbers. Alone, he and the girl could do nothing but run. Here she came, offering the thing he desired most. No doubt his enemies knew that. So easily they could tempt him, snare him, and destroy him. Take the girl for themselves. And plunge the Hundred so deep into the shadows that he couldn't see how the land could ever recover.
'The hells!' she said at last. 'Can you not help me? Will you not?'
Weary, he remained silent.
'Eiya!' Then she laughed. She wasn't a fragile creature, one crushed by a single blow. He could well believe she had been a reeve. She had a reeve's confident physical stance, and measuring, deliberate stare. A good reeve was stubborn and observant. 'Aui! The man I loved — and love still — now thinks of me only with regret and pain, while it's another, younger, woman who he burns for in his thoughts with passion and longing. While you won't talk to me at all. So be it. I've wandered too long hoping to find someone to tell me what I am and what I must do now. You've taught me something, ver, by just standing there with your friendly smile and wishing me gone. I have to find out the truth where it lies within myself. I must walk into the shadows, and see if I am strong enough to come out unscathed, with the truth fixed in my heart and my duty carried in my hands.'
She waited a moment longer. When he did not answer, she led the mare away into the trees. The rattle of their leaving faded. The wind sighed in the underbrush.
Seeing whinnied, and the other horse — now out of sight — called in answer.
'Have I made a terrible mistake?' he said to the;air, to the sky, to the earth, to the water.
The girl looked at him, her gaze a question, perhaps even an act of trust.
He nodded. 'We must pack up. It's time to move on. Quickly now, lass. Quickly.'
19
After the gates were unlocked, the women who had been waiting all morning on the hot Olossi street were herded into a courtyard surrounded by high walls. Avisha trudged in, carrying Zianna and holding Jerad by the hand. Their keepers, a foursome of militiamen hired to maintain order, kept up a running patter of crude jokes. 'Heh. I wonder if those Qin soldiers have swords or prickles, eh?' 'Sharp as their swords, eh? I wouldn't want one swiving me.' 'This lot hasn't much choice. Heya! Rufi, look there. Isn't that your mother? Eihi! No call to go hitting me, just a joke.'
Avisha kept her head down. Fortunately, she was not the only woman here burdened by children, so perhaps that wasn't an immediate disqualification for marriage. Her arms were numb from the weight of holding Zianna. Jerad was sniffling.
She pushed him over toward a small door set into one wall where the tops of pipewood rising on the other side of the wall offered a silver of shade. A beggar in a red cap and ragged kilt who was leaning against the door in that shade kindly moved away as she and the children approached. She sagged against the door, wiping sweat from her neck as she looked around.
The court's stone pavement and high, whitewashed walls suggested it was either an unloading ground for wagons, or an open space for people to work. She had no idea how things worked in a
city as big as Olossi, with its crowded streets and aggressive inhabitants as likely to shove you out of the way as wish you the blessings of the day. Her eyes watered from all the cook-smoke and from ash that still drifted off the burned sections of the lower city. Clouds were piling up in the east, and she was sure that on top of everything, it was going to rain.
'Vish.' Jerad's voice threaded into a whine. The sad little sprout sagged against the wall, his legs crossed.
'You have to be patient, Jer.' She shifted the sleeping girl, Zianna's weight aching her shoulder. The little girl's naming-day clothes — the nicest garments anyone in the family had ever owned — were dirt-stained and stinking from being urinated in more than once; the once-precious orange silk was probably beyond salvaging after all those days on the road. 'Just a little longer. See those double doors, there?'
She pointed with her free elbow.
The women pressed forward to cluster around the impressive wooden doors that gave access into a building bigger than Sapanasu's temple hall in the village. There was a door in each wall of the vast courtyard. To the east, gates led to the street. The warehouse entry doors carved with elaborately twined salamanders were set in the western wall. To the north stood a gate trimmed in iron, big enough for wagons. The small door against which Avisha and the children huddled was the kind of entrance regular people passed through. The trees rising on the other side of the wall meant there was a garden beyond, filled with cool shade and, perhaps, a fountain. She licked dusty lips with a parched tongue.
'Don't crowd!' shouted one of the militiamen as he reined his horse in a mincing circle, whip raised.
There were about fifty women, with perhaps twenty children in arm or in tow. Most of the women were young; some were older. Most were wrapped in a plain cotton taloos or dressed in the linen tunic and trousers worn by farmers and artisans and laborers. Poor clans desperate enough to send their daughters and sisters to make a marriage with outlanders; impoverished widows eager to find a home with their children. The beggar shuffled through the crowd, trolling for alms among folk likely as poor as he was!
A pair of elegant city girls passed him a few vey and returned to their conversation.
'My uncle told me to demand nothing less than forty cheyt as a marriage portion. They can afford it. They took the whole treasury. Greedy bastards.'
'Forty cheyt? Whew! You could never hope to see that much coin in your whole life. Who's being greedy?'
'It's fair payment for having to marry a dirty outlander.'
'Best make sure they don't find out about-' Their voices dropped to a whisper.
A girl with a bright red birthmark splayed over one cheek kept lifting a hand to cover her face. 'Auntie, don't you think they'll turn me away the instant they see me? Can't we just go home? I'd rather go to the temple than be scorned again.'
'Quiet! The dowry the temple is demanding is more than we can afford. We'll offer you to the outlanders with no request for a bride price at all. That might induce them to take you.'
A middle-aged man fussed over two girls dressed neatly in farmers' best, each in a cotton taloos, one dyed a calm sorrel green and the other a reassuring bracken orange-brown. 'Be polite. Be respectful. It's a good opportunity but there's no need to sign any contract unless you're truly willing.'
'Papa, you've said this twelve times.'
He smoothed down the hair of one, twisting the end of her braid, and tugged out a wrinkle in the cloth draped over the shoulder of the other. 'They have to prove themselves to you, girls, in the same way you have to prove yourselves to them. They're folk just like any other, even if they look different than we do and have different ways.'
Avisha wiped her forehead again. Taru have mercy! It was so hot. Thunder rumbled, but the clouds hadn't yet gotten to the city. Her hair felt stringy and tangled, however much she had tried to keep it combed and clean. She'd washed out her one good taloos a day ago, in a stream, but it had gotten stepped on and there was a big smudge of red clay dirt smeared across her hips. She hoped her face was clean, but Zianna would keep rubbing her hands in the dirt and then patting her big sister's cheeks.
i have to pee.' Jerad's body was jiggling as he tried to hold it in.
Tears dribbled down his face. 'I don't want to wet myself out here in front of everyone.'
If only Nallo were here!
But Nallo had been marched off to the reeve hall. They'd probably never see her again.
A shout from the gate startled her. A troop of grim Qin soldiers dressed in black rode into the courtyard from the street. She'd seen them during the long march from the Soha Hills to Olossi with the other refugees, but except
