'Certainly I believe laws are vital if we wish to live in peace. But I've lived in the empire, and among the Qin, and now I live in the Hundred. The laws here are not the same as the laws in the empire. Nor yet are they the same among the Mariha princedoms and caravan towns along the Golden Road, which the Qin army conquered. Still less are they similar to the laws enforced by the Qin var. What am I to think except that laws must change according to circumstance?'
'Maybe that is true in other lands, but here in the Hundred our laws were given to us by the gods.'
'In the empire, the priests and nobles say the same.'
'I'm sure they do. However, our laws are carved in stone, on Law Rock.'
'By the gods' own hands?'
Joss was surprised that this comment both amused and irritated him. 'No one knows.'
'Is there no tale that relates the carving of Law Rock?'
'None say what hand cut words into stone, or if it even matters.'
Anji nodded, standing again, as restless as Joss had ever seen him. Maybe he was more nervous about Horn council's deliberation than he cared to let on. 'I'd like to see Law Rock.'
'So you shall, because we'll go to Toskala, where we have stationed twenty reeves and one hundred and fifty firefighters and militiamen to guard the law.'
'So you prove my point, Commander.'
'Which point was that?'
'How quickly you forget my wisdom!' retorted Anji with a laugh. 'Only this. You have kept men on Clan Hall to protect a physical object. But it is our deeds, or a council's actions, or the decisions reached at an assizes, through which the law takes a presence in our lives, is it not?'
'Without Law Rock, who decides what is justice? The army we fight has its own measure of what is justice.'
'Do they? Maybe they just like having the power to enforce their will. If they were the ones without weapons and numbers, they would be asking for mercy.'
'Then after all, you are saying there is a law we must all follow. One carved in stone, or present in the world whether we recognize it or not.'
Anji gestured toward the city below. A few lamps bobbed in narrow streets; here and there a lantern hung to mark an entry-way; otherwise, all was quiet, only the faintest buzz of living chatter betraying folk settling down to another uncertain night.
'I am saying that certain principles, applied effectively, tend to result in certain outcomes. A king who displeases his populace must either rule by force of arms and custom, or he must give way and change, or he must die. The governance which promotes a peaceful life for many is most likely to be pleasing, is it not?'
'We do not have a king in the Hundred.'
'The Guardians did not rule in ancient days? Like kings?'
'The Guardians-' began Joss, thinking of the conversation they had not yet had about Guardians.
Anji shook his head, indicating the hedge.
'The Guardians did not rule,' Joss said instead. 'They presided at the assizes. They guarded justice. It was village arkhons and town councils, and in the north a few lords and chiefs, who ruled.'
'It is exactly that splintering that has made you vulnerable.'
'We have lived as the gods decreed. For a long time we lived with no wars or battles, so the tales tell us.'
'So the tales tell you. But tales tell us only what those who compose those tales and who pass them down over many generations choose to record and remember. The Beltak priests of the empire bind the empire so that nothing will change. They use their spirit bowls and their prayers and their spies and red hounds and informers to build walls so no man can be other than what the priests tell him he is. Yet I wonder. Are the priests enforcing the god's will, or their own?'
Joss shook his head. 'Can we blame the gods for our own weaknesses and faults?'
Anji again turned to stare west, as if he yearned for his absent wife. Mai had been taken by reeve back to Olossi two days ago. 'I blame the gods for nothing,' he said as night swept over them. His words weren't bitter or angry or joking. He said it as he might say I wield my sword with my right hand, a statement of fact.
'Are you not a believer, Captain? What gods do you worship? If I may ask.'
Anji did not answer.
Folk bearing lamps crowded at the gap in the hedge. A decision had been reached. Horn's council had voted to ally with Olo'osson.
Anji glanced with a wry grin at Joss as he stood. 'We'll feast and drink with Horn's council tonight in celebration, Commander. Tomorrow, we'll send a messenger to Mai and Tuvi in Olossi. It is time to mobilize the army. You and I will scout the ground ahead. I want to see with my own eyes what we're up against.'
The last time Kesh had walked on the shore of the Olo'o Sea in the Barrens, the wild lands had spread from the shoreline with its slicks and sinks all the way to the impregnable heights of the rugged mountains. Back then, a few tents had housed Captain Anji and his scouting party. Now they rode between fields of wheat, supplied with water from irrigation channels, and stands
of pearl millet on the dryland slopes above. Sapling orchards had taken root. The shore was lined with racks of drying fish. Folk hauled buckets of dirt; shaped bricks; fertilized the dusty earth with nightsoil. Laborers toiled on scaffolding for a brick palisade that would soon surround the entire double hill of the primary settlement.
At the gate, Chief Deze sent the new Qin troop to the distant barracks. The remainder of their group and the wagons lumbered up the main market street. A noodle seller set down her ladle and gaped. A seamstress seated on a mat in the shade of her humble porch dropped her needle. Ten men with hands slick from bean curd raced out of the back garden of a shop to stare. Anji's mother stared right back, meeting each gaze in a way that made a few grin, a few step back, and a few look startled or ashamed.
Under an arcade with a walkway of raised bricks and a canvas roof, shopkeepers had set up stalls that sold ribbons and cordage, banners and flags, and bolts of cloth ranging from least to best quality. Now, many of the shopkeepers stood to get a look, and their customers turned to stare, ribbons and unrolled silk forgotten. A woman with hair bound back under a kerchief stepped out of the shadowed arcade into a corner of sunlight, leaning out to get a better look by bracing herself on a post.
Her movement caught Kesh's eye. But it was her face that arrested him.
Seen only once, but never forgotten because unforgettable: a handsome, serious, somewhat square face with full red lips and eyes like two brushstrokes. They were the most beautiful eyes, windows opening onto a treasure house filled with mystery and promise. Her features had seared him, a brand burned into his memory, a scar that would always mark him.
But she wasn't looking at him. Her expression tightened, and she pushed back from the pole and ducked into shadow.
Too late.
Eliar jerked his horse to a halt and flung himself out of the saddle. He leaped onto the raised brick porch and grabbed her arm.
'Eliar-' She tried to drag herself free.
'What are you doing out here?' he shouted as he shook her roughly.
The cavalcade rumbled to a halt as the captain's mother signaled, regarding this curiosity with a look that reminded Kesh abruptly of her son's powerful reserve: impossible to guess what
she was thinking. Kesh dismounted, tossing his reins at the nearest soldier. He jumped up to the promenade and grabbed Eliar's turban at the base of the neck. The silk twisted cool and smooth under his ringers, best quality weave, very fine.
'Let her go,' he said in a voice only Eliar and his sister could hear. 'Or I'll rip this off right now. And we'll all know the the truth of whether you cursed Silvers have horns.'
Eliar let go. Kesh released the turban's silk.
'Get out of my way,' said Eliar, oblivious of multitudes who had swarmed over to stare at this delightful altercation between a Silver and a young woman everyone surely knew was an unveiled Silver woman walking in public as if she were no different from any other person there. 'To find my sister in such a place, so exposed, is a clan matter. None of your business.'
