'Priya has the right to desire freedom, just as you or I would.' She shifted Atani to the other hip and crunched over the gravel to the porch. After mounting the steps, she kicked off her sandals and entered the lamp-lit audience chamber with its painted screens depicting rats dressed in human style and going about their daily lives: flying kites, throwing pottery on wheels, planting a rice field, rowing in a reed-choked channel of water while fishing.
A murmur of male voices caught her ear. Atani turned, caught by the same lilt, and her heart galloped ahead of her. She walked through the crane room, past the half-open door that looked onto the tiny altar room where Priya had promised to pray with her at dawn, and slid a closed door aside to step into the blazing lamplight of the dining chamber. Its doors were opened wide onto the innermost courtyard, her private sanctuary. On the porch stripping off his riding gloves stood Anji, attended by Toughid, Tohon, and a pair of Qin soldiers whose faces were hidden in shadow although she recognized Chief Deze by his thin frame.
'Anjihosh!' Chief Tuvi strode past Mai, across the matted floor, and out onto the porch. 'You have surprised me!'
'Is that disapproval I hear?' said Anji with a laugh. He tapped Tuvi on the shoulder with the back of a hand, affectionately, but already he had looked past him, his gaze meeting Mai's with a look that stopped her in her tracks. His expression was unfathomable, intense, possessive. Disconcerting.
Heat rushed through her. 'Anji,' she said, her mouth dry and her cheeks flushed.
Atani strained away from her, arms reaching toward his father as he babbled, 'badababa.'
Anji gestured, and Toughid took his riding whip and gloves. He hastily pried off his boots. In all his dust from his travels he crossed and in full sight of the men loitering on the porch he embraced her and kissed her full on the mouth, deeply, hotly, his body pressed against hers and already quite obviously aroused. Her own feelings spiked abruptly, but she could not forget the presence of his men. He abruptly pulled away and took the baby into his arms. And he laughed. His face was flushed and red; he had what appeared to be a burn along one cheek, blisters whitening along a reddened patch of skin in the early stages of healing.
'Anji! You're hurt. Your hands!'
His hands were wrapped in bandages of linen.
'It's nothing.' His voice was hoarse as he examined her. He bent his head to kiss Atani not once but a dozen times, the baby chortling as he smacked his lips to kiss his father back.
'We'll eat,' said Anji. 'Bring Keshad.'
'To the meal?' asked Tuvi, stepping into the dining chamber.
'I'll need a complete report from him. We depart for Astafero at dawn. Little enough time to learn what I must. I'll rest afterward.' The look he turned on Mai did not promise rest.
'Sheyshi,' she called, knowing her color was still high and that every man there could see it on her. The cursed girl wasn't there.
'Where is Priya?' Anji demanded impatiently.
She found words, clipped and short. 'I have freed my slaves, Anji. Priya and O'eki have taken a household just down the street. They will not be here in the evenings, but have taken on a day hire with us.'
Whatever passed in his thoughts he deliberately did not speak, so she could not tell if he was angry or bemused. 'I see.'
'I'll see what's happening in the kitchens. I thought Sheyshi-' To stumble over Sheyshi's dereliction of duty would only make Mai's householding abilities look suddenly suspect. Had Priya and O'eki done so much of the work that made the household run smoothly? Had she never noticed?
Where had that idiot girl gone?
Mai concealed her pounding heart and trembling hands by going to the side table and pouring water into the basin so Anji and his officers could wash before they ate. She poured too hard; water spattered along the polished wood. A droplet hung from the rounded corner, then separated and vanished into the mat. Exquisitely attuned as they were to Anji's mood, his officers
washed hands and faces in silence, following the custom of the Hundred, while Mai tossed down additional pillows around the table so there was one for each man and, of course, for herself.
The men unbelted their tabards and quilted silk coats and tossed the gear back out onto the porch for tailmen to tend later. For some reason, Toughid carried a small traveling chest, no longer than his forearm and heavily chained, into the chamber and placed it against one wall. The others set their swords and knives beside their pillows and settled cross-legged around the table, Toughid joining them. There was, at least, tea to be poured, and enough cups. As they drank, she escaped out of the chamber and stumbled into Sheyshi, standing right behind the door with an empty tray in her hands, mouth slack and eyes unfocused as if listening.
'Sheyshi!'
She started so badly she dropped the tray. Mai caught it before it hit the floor, then grabbed Sheyshi's sleeve and tugged.
'I beg you, Sheyshi! Hurry!' She bit down her irritation, for the young woman could not help what she was. 'Is the food ready?'
Sheyshi stammered as though a pack of amorous wolves were snapping at her heels. Mai composed herself as they hurried through the house, and when they reached the kitchens it was easy enough to calmly and smilingly designate portions and servers and return with a platter of dumplings as an appetizer.
She paused outside the closed doors of the dining chamber, tray in hand, leaning forward to listen. Inside, Anji was interrogating Keshad in that thorough way he had of uncovering each least detail, the one you thought wasn't important but which as it happened was the most important of all.
'How many soldiers?'
'I counted five hundred and thirty-seven.'
'All Qin?'
'All.'
'Do you know whose clan they serve?'
'They originally served under a Commander Beje.'
'Ah. And the rest of the party?'
'There are forty-three males, all gelded, none Qin. I can't know about the women, as all go veiled except the exalted lady.'
'How can you be sure that some among those who are veiled are not men?'
'Hiding in the company of women? Perhaps. It would surprise
me, having traveled in the empire. The men would sooner kill themselves than stoop to being mistaken for women, and the women would be killed for mixing with men. A foul place, if you ask me.'
'I did not ask. Numbers?'
Keshad did not sound the least cowed. 'Of women? Hard to say. At least forty?'
'A household,' remarked Anji in a tone that made Mai shudder.
Better to take action than stew in a brine of unexamined fear.
She pushed aside the door with her foot and entered briskly, setting down the tray. She washed, then murmured the ritual prayers to the Merciful One for the blessing of food, then seated herself on the pillow the Qin had carefully left for her at the central place at the table. The smell of sweat and horse was strong but not unpleasant. She offered dumplings and they fished them off the platter as Keshad, standing off to one side, shifted from foot to foot like a man whose skin itched but he could not scratch it.
'Master Keshad,' said Mai, meaning to be polite but with an edge to her voice she could not disguise, 'if you are hungry, please bring a pillow and join us.'
'My thanks, verea,' he said, answering curtness with equally clipped words, 'but I will remain here.'
Anji glanced at her. She shook her head minutely, and he snagged a second dumpling from the platter, wolfing it down. She was forcefully aware of his raised hand, his hips shifting as he changed position on the pillow; the way, when Atani grabbed onto his tunic with a chubby fist, he smiled at the baby and settled him on his left thigh within the crook of his left arm so he could eat more easily with his right. He glanced at her frequently, and there was a hungry sheen to him that made her feel he was holding himself in check by sheer will. No wonder the Hundred folk named their goddess Ushara, who presided over love, death, and desire: the Devourer.
Sheyshi led a train of four servers into the room. Mai served out soup and arranged platters, and herself ate. Atani sat contented on his father's lap and made a gruesome face when Anji got him to sip at the caul-petal soup and then coughed out the sip all over the best-quality silk of Anji's undertunic, which was an exceptional shade of
