She said nothing.
After a moment, with a mighty sigh of frustration, he walked into the house.
She knew what was happening, no matter how much she stared at the smoke curling along the ceiling. Enough. She would not give that boy to Girish, not him and not the others.
In the compound of the Mei clan, slaves padded silently about their tasks. Compared with the misery of the brothel and the nightmare of the caravan, it was not a bad life as long as you did not ignite Father Mei's legendary temper or get in the middle of a dispute between jealous wives or aggravate one of Grandmother's petty grievances. As long as you ignored what Girish was, and what he did.
She went back to the servants' court and washed her hands and feet and face. Afterward, in the kitchens, she brewed tea and padded with a cup and a tray to Father Mei's office. No one noticed her as she slipped inside, head bowed, to stand by the door waiting to present the cup; she had lived in the clan for many months, and although they would never be used to her, she no longer startled them. He was making accounts, something he did with a stick marking a tablet, and after a bit he raised his eyes and frowned.
'What are you doing here?'
The door opened and his two wives hurried in, shut the door, and began to squabble.
'You just think the Gandi-li clan isn't of great enough consequence for Mai.'
'I think the lad is more suitable for Ti, yes. If he can stand to hear her spout all day!'
'How dare you say Ti is worth less than Mai-!'
Father Mei slapped a hand on his desk. 'Why have you barged in here to disturb my peace? I did not send for you. And who sent her in?'
The two wives turned, saw her, looked at each other in the way of enemies who have just become allies, and took a big step away.
He said, 'What are you doing here, slave?'
She did not use her voice often. It was hard to find, and certainly
it was easier to understand the words of the demon tongue when spoken by others than to get them to come out of her own mouth. 'Father Mei. Pardon, I beg you. Master Girish is a bad man with a bad heart. He hurts children to make them cry. He ruts with them to make them cry-'
He rose, his expression hardening.
The younger wife hissed in fear and grasped her sister's hand. Yet the older wife pressed her lips together, looking first at her husband and then at Girish's slave.
'Do not speak of this again. You are a slave, and a demon. You do not have a voice.' Glancing at his elder wife, he frowned to see on her face an emotion he did not like. 'Get out!' he commanded, and they fled the room, the door snicking shut behind them. In the room lay silence. Beyond the door, no footsteps pattered away, as if they had paused to listen.
He moved around the desk, took the tray out of her hands, and closed one hand around her pale throat, his palm coarse and warm against her skin.
'If you speak of such things again,' he said, 'I will kill you.'
In demon land, anything can happen. In every meaningful way, she is already dead. Except for the one last angry spark that has reawakened.
There was a shrub whose name she did not know but that produced beautiful five-petaled pink flowers to adorn most every garden in Kartu Town. The old woman at the brothel had taught the girls to brew it for a purgative that would loosen their wombs if they inconveniently caught a man's seed. It had to be brewed in just the right proportions: too little, and you would just vomit; too much, and it would kill you, as it had killed the second- best-earning girl in the brothel, the one whose death had precipitated her sale to the caravan.
They were accustomed to her presence in the kitchens. Late in the evening, it was easy to take Girish a cup he was too drunk to recognize as different from his usual tea. Because the brew sickened and weakened him, he suffocated on his own vomit as she held him down. But his thrashing death throes woke others. Her back was to
the door of his chamber when it opened, and a woman screamed in a panic. Holding a lamp, Mountain stamped into the chamber while she sat beside the dead man and the half-empty pitcher. He blocked the door, so she could not escape. When the master's wives arrived, staring in shock and horror at the scene, she turned a calm gaze on them and, raising the pitcher, drank the rest.
PART FIVE
Mirrors
28
In the hundred, in the season of the Flower Rains, the rains bloomed and withered in erratic patterns that depended on the topography and how far west or north or east or south you stood. If you knew your geography, you could anticipate the weather. In the Barrens, a person could lie in a stupor out in the open for days, and still not get wet.
When at last the girl roused, she stared at the envoy of Ilu with a changed look. Sometimes a person knows who they are and wishes they did not. Ignoring his tentative greeting, she saddled Seeing and rode away without saddling Telling in turn.
'The hells!' By the time he got Telling saddled, she'd flown out of sight into the wispy clouds crowding the mountains.
He flew in sweeps, even near enough to survey the campsite where outlanders and local hirelings were digging a ditch and berm around a pair of hills. He searched but did not find her. Long after the light failed, he returned to the altar. With fumbling hands, he cared for the horse and released it. He collected firewood to augment an old stack piled here by another reeve, possibly himself. Disturbed by this activity, rodents and spiders fled.
He had failed her. He sank onto the sitting stone beneath the overhang and stared as the red coals faded to ashes.
She woke him by touching his hand. As he started into awareness, she pressed an irregular oval object into his palm.
'Here, Uncle. It's sweet.'
He studied the fruit. The morning light described its lumps and hollows, the way its smooth skin gave slightly. Delighted, he laughed. 'I haven't tasted a sunfruit for years! My favorite! Where did you find it? They don't grow in the Barrens.'
She gestured further into the foothills. 'There's a valley with many trees, and water. Someone was hiding there, but all I saw were threads like silk blown in the wind. The fruit is good. Try it.'
The sweetness cooled his dry mouth, and an odd expression
creased her face: she was trying to smile, to show she was pleased that she had pleased him.
'What is your name, lass?'
She backed away, unsaddled Seeing, and busied herself grooming. Ox-footed fool! He had shouldered in too quickly. He finished the fruit, wiped his hands and, because he had to do something lest he start jabbering again, began whittling.
After a while, still brushing the horses, she said in a low voice, 'What is the twisting path? When we walked on it, I saw other places.'
He kept up his stroke with the knife. 'There are a hundred and one altars spread across the land. Any Guardian, at one altar, can speak to any Guardian at another altar at the crossroads where our paths meet. You and I must beware, because the others who are like us wish to do us harm.'
She paused to look at him. 'The horses have wings.'
'Yes.'
'We are demons, aren't we?'
'No. Ghosts of a kind, perhaps. But alive in our own way.'
