around on my clean bench and moan about tradition while folk are being slaughtered, women assaulted, villages burned, children enslaved. But who am I to know? Just a cursed hill girl, born to goat herders, married against my will to a kind man who treated me decently despite my bad temper. I'd be dead if it weren't for the Qin.' The marshal was actually cringing, but that didn't make her feel the least stirring of shame for yelling at the sodden old fool. She fixed her glare on the captain, who watched her with unsettling interest. 'My thanks to your men.'
'Reeve Nallo, isn't it?' the captain said. 'Yours is the daughter — she must be your stepdaughter, for you're not old enough to have birthed her — who turned down my good chief's marriage offer in favor of a mere tailman.' He laughed, looking at the commander. 'Bring Reeve Nallo to the council meeting. She'll argue our case convincingly.'
'Because she's right,' whispered the old marshal. 'How many more must perish while we hang on to what is already dead?' With an effort he mastered himself, pushing up on his cane to regain some of the stature years and grief had taken from him. Behind that seamed visage trembled a younger man, the body and strength he had once worn: upright, pious, fair, or believing
himself to be. 'We believed the past could protect us. We believe that if we serve justice, then all will be well. But it isn't true, is it? Without order, there can be no justice. If the stubborn fools on Nessumara's council do not listen, then they deserve to have their beautiful city pillaged and burned and their corpses tossed into the channels to feed the fish!'
'Eiya!' began Joss. 'I grieve with you, Marshal, knowing your sorrow at losing your grandchildren and family, but surely you cannot wish upon others what you have suffered.'
'It is natural to be angry,' said the captain. 'But let me admit that I have taken part in the sack of cities.' His tone was so thoughtful and calm it was impossible for Nallo to imagine him engaged in any such horror, yet on he spoke, not making light, but making sense. 'I do not think even so that the folk in those places deserved what befell them. They were merely unfortunate enough to be there. If any should suffer, it should be their leaders, and yet too often those who rule can buy their way out of worse grief while those who live ordinary lives receive the full blast of the storm. How do you think I got my beautiful wife? I saw her in the market one day, and because I could, I took her. That she proved to be much more than even I had imagined is not to my credit, but to hers.'
A horn's sad voice raised in a long plaint, and faded.
'That's the call to council,' said the old marshal.
Nessumara's council was divided: Surrender and beg for protected status. Buy off the army with coin and supplies. Fight, despite not having enough men to defend the city after so many had been killed in the first battle nor an experienced commander to lead them.
It was pretty cursed obvious, thought Joss, that their arguing rose as much from the strain of a months-long siege as from any significant differences of opinion. They quieted respectfully when Marshal Masar braced himself on his cane to speak.
'The army has been spread out over Istria and Lower Haldia for weeks, but now they're joining forces and marching on Nessumara. You're cut off from the countryside, which itself has been pillaged and burned. While the delta protects you to the south and the swamp forest to the north, the eastern marshland is very dry. Lord Radas's cohorts don't need the causeway to advance from the east. This army has raised fifteen full cohorts.
They are turning on you now and they mean to fight until they win.'
His words fell hard; afterward, all sat in silence. Lamps hissed, a familiar and almost comforting sound. The council speaker carried an infant in a sling at her hip, its sleeping face illuminated by a pool of light. She took the speaking stick from Masar and offered it to Anji. 'Sobering words, Marshal. How can anyone defeat fifteen cohorts, Captain?'
T will not fight a pitched battle unless I can win it,' said Anji in his cool voice, the one people listened to because they mistook it for that of a man who harbors no strong emotion. 'There are many ways to win a campaign. If you sit here, you will starve even if you aren't overrun. Those of you who have ships can flee, as long as you are not caught and thrown into the sea. But in the end, the shores you run to will be overrun in their turn. A commander who can raise fifteen cohorts will raise more. He will take your sons as soldiers and your daughters to serve those soldiers-'
As voices swelled, people angrily protesting, the baby woke and began to fuss. Anji crossed to the council speaker and offered to take the child, a pleasing baby of about the same age as Atani. After a hesitation, she handed over the infant. Anji had a deft arm, and as he paced, the little one quieted and, likewise, the assembly fell silent, watching him calm the baby.
He kept pacing, his tone incongruously pleasant and his aspect, with the babe in arms, so harmonious that his words fell like rocks dropped from a clear blue sky. T ask you to hear me out. The Hundred is not like the rest of the world. Let this army overtake you, and you will discover you have far less control over your lives than you had before. Your sons will be forced to join as soldiers, or be killed. Your daughters will be raped. Your temples will be burned. Your coin and your children and your possessions and food stores will be stolen. You will be their slaves, because they will hold the sword. They are commanded by cloaks — whether demons or corrupted Guardians — who cut right into your heart. Who can kill you with a word. Is that what you want? As long as a single one of those cloaks walks on this earth, they have the power to raise another cadre, another company, another cohort. Another army.'
He shifted the now happy baby to his other arm so he could hold the speaking stick like a sword. 'Or do you want to fight?
Because the only army that can defeat them now is an alliance of all those remaining who do not want to suffer under their rule.'
The baby babbled in cheerful reply to Anji's brutal words. Was the man brilliant, or did he simply miss his son?
Joss scanned the assembly; this tidy speech had frightened the council more than the very events and consequences they had seen with their own eyes. People were strange that way. They pretended their bags of rice and bins of nai flour weren't almost empty, sang tales to wish away the news of spoiled harvests or a trade ship gone missing. And then the storm would hit, and they weren't prepared.
Yet was he any different? Sometimes he felt he was hooked into harness but held no jess, at the mercy of winds and wings, so far above he could watch the land unfolding beneath and yet never be touched by it. Until a baby's babbling set into relief the harsh reality of the situation.
He rose. He'd been quiet all evening, and Anji stepped back to give him the speaker's stick. 'Listen, I know a few of you remember me from when I was a young reeve stationed at Copper Hall on the Haya shore.'
Some cursed woman in the back benches whistled admiringly, and folk did chuckle, but this time he did not blush. It was good they remembered him. It gave him a weapon.
'I was known as a reckless young man. I lost a woman I loved, another reeve.' Who is a Guardian now, having died to protect you gods-rotted fools. Yet after Anji's talk of cloaks and corruption, he must speak circumspectly. 'She was killed twenty-one years ago, and I am pretty cursed sure she was killed by men under the command of Lord Radas. Why do I tell you this? Because I got in a hells lot of trouble when I was a young reeve. I broke boundaries, I flew to Guardian altars looking for answers, and in the end I was disciplined and sent to Clan Hall. In the end, I told myself my elders were right, that I was walking where I wasn't meant to go. But now I ask myself: what if we had understood what was going on sooner? If we'd made more effort to figure out why Herelia and Vess kicked out the reeve patrols. If we'd paid more attention to villages who cut themselves off from the assizes. If we had bothered to notice that young men were vanishing, that the settlements around Walshow were growing. If we hadn't avoided it then, maybe we wouldn't be in this terrible situation now. Do we keep avoiding the truth? Or is it time to accept that
this is no tale, this is no chance event. Like the orphan girl in the Tale of the Guardians, we cannot live in the world we grew up in. We have to ask the gods for the strength to change things. It is time to go to Indiyabu, as the orphaned girl did. Maybe you say, Indiyabu is just a tale, a place long since lost to humankind. But it is also a place in our hearts, a place where we find the courage to do what we must.'
Suddenly the air seemed too thick to breathe. His skin burned, and his hands and forehead went clammy. 'How long must this talk go on and on when we don't have a choice?' he demanded, and heard that he had spoken aloud what he'd meant only for his thoughts.
Anji handed the baby back to its grandmother and pulled his riding whip from his belt, pulling its length through his hand like a man impatient to ride. 'Honored council members, I cannot wait while you chew through all
