'How can I deny it, when it is true? Her words surprised me as much as they do you, Captain.'
'Her words do not surprise me at all.'
That look might scorch walls! But the captain muted his anger as quickly as an incoming wave washes away a piece of sea wrack on a sandy shore: no longer in sight, it yet remains trapped in the watery expanse.
The time to bargain was upon him.
'Your mother is a formidable woman, Captain. Mai is a treasure that any man — any clan in Olossi — would be pleased to acquire as, I believe, you acquired her back in that dreary desert town that had nothing more than a well and a stable and a herd of sheep, and one very beautiful young woman selling fruit in the marketplace.'
Chief Tuvi rested a hand on Anji's arm as the captain tensed, but Keshad kept talking.
'Indeed, your mother offered me both women — your wife, and Miravia. So tell me, Captain. It's a good offer. Why should I refuse it?'
'I'll kill you,' said Anji as Tuvi actually took hold of the captain's arm.
Although Kesh was shaking, with the coin chest wedged against his knees as a most hideously inadequate shield against the captain's coiled fury, he knew he was about to win this negotiation. Because the one thing Anji had not said, which Kesh had indeed expected him to say, was that his mother had no say in the matter of disposing of his wife.
'Will you kill your mother, then, as well? She seemed most insistent that you could not remain married to — not that she recognized it as a marriage, mind you — an inconvenient merchant's daughter.'
'Anjihosh,' said Tuvi.
'Captain,' said Toughid.
'My lord,' said Chief Deze, 'this man's blood is not worthy to stain these fine mats.'
If the captain had been wearing a sword, Kesh figured he would be dead by now. But Anji wasn't, and he had enough pride not to grab for another man's weapon.
The flame hissed softly. Anji breathed harshly. Kesh barely breathed at all. Slowly, Chief Tuvi released his grip on the captain's arm.
Anji fisted his hands, as if to punch Kesh; opened them, as if wishing to strangle him; at last found a spot of stillness within which to slaughter Kesh with his stare. 'What do you want, Keshad?'
Kesh glanced at Tuvi, but the chief remained impassive. 'I want Miravia.'
'Do you want to acquire her as you would a slave?' said Anji with a caustic laugh. 'Would that make her come willingly to you,
when you know she remains Ri Amarah in her thoughts and ritual, even though her family has abandoned her?'
Kesh indicated Tuvi. 'I want no other claim put in my way.'
Anji looked at the chief, but the chief shrugged. It wasn't negation; Tuvi had never said if he wanted, or did not want, the young woman; his gesture was a refusal to be roped in.
'If she eats my rice,' Kesh went on, 'then I want permission to leave Olo'osson. To ride elsewhere-'
'Into the teeth of the enemy?' said Anji. 'Reckless, to be sure.'
'There are other quiet valleys and market towns in the Hundred where we can make a peaceful life.'
'Maybe there are now. But we're fighting a war. You cannot be sure those quiet market towns and valleys will remain quiet and unmolested. I have no doubt the soldiers of the enemy's army would be quite eager to plow Ri Amarah ground, for the novelty of it.'
Kesh leaped up, charged past the chest, and lunged at Anji. His feet were kicked out from under him and he landed flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him, and Anji's hand wrapped around his throat and his knee dug into Kesh's chest. Kesh sucked air, but he didn't struggle.
The cursed man grinned, the more frightening because he hadn't loosed his grip on Kesh's throat. 'You've got stones, I'll give you that. I take it this was your effort to negotiate from a position of weakness.'
Anji knew exactly how much pressure he was applying to Kesh's throat and chest, as if he'd threatened, or even killed, men this way before.
'So you will listen to me now, Keshad. The only reason you are not dead is because I owe a debt to your sister.'
Zubaidit!
'Yes, that's got you thinking at last, hasn't it?'
'Prob'… dead… now…'
'Perhaps. Obviously I have more confidence in your sister than you do. She has a rare gift. You ought not to value her so low. You ought to value her, in her own way, as highly as I value my wife. Listen very carefully, Master Keshad.'
The mat pressed into his back. Anji's breath was sweetened with mint; his eyes were dark, and his black hair had slipped over his shoulder to brush against Keshad's shoulder as intimately as might a lover's.
'Mai belongs to me. Do not think to play this game, to go behind my back and make bargains with my mother. This is your only warning. I can kill you as easily as I breathe, and I will if you do anything to attempt to separate Mai from me. As for the other — who Miravia marries is no concern of mine, although Mai may have something to say about her wishes in the matter. It is with Mai you must negotiate, not with me, although I admit you might have preferred to negotiate with me knowing, as I am sure you do, that compared to my wife I do not know how to bargain at all. Indeed, Keshad, you might have learned this about me before you attempted it. I don't bargain, because I don't have to.'
He let him go, rose to his feet, turned away.
He paused, then turned back. The finely embroidered hem of his best-quality robe brushed Kesh's body as if to remind Kesh that he himself wore everyday-quality linen, the most he dared afford.
'We leave from the harbor at midday. I expect you in attendance.' He bared his teeth wolfishly, and Kesh shuddered. 'You are still my slave, Keshad, until such time as your sister returns alive, or we have proof of her demise in the course of her mission.'
'We might never know!'
'So we might,' agreed Anji with a lazy smile. 'You might wish to consider what that eventuality would mean to you.'
He gestured, and with his officers left the counting room. Kesh heard him speaking as they went out the door. 'Now, I will speak to O'eki and Priya. Given the situation, best if I go to them-'
Chief Tuvi shut the door and barred it from the far side without a parting glance. Kesh sat alone with his lamp and his coin. His heart burned, but his mind counted a colder price.
Anji would kill him; the man did not make idle threats. But if Anji was preemptively attacking Keshad to make sure he did not go behind Anji's back, surely that suggested that Anji feared his mother might manage to get her way despite Anji's wishes. In the light of the lamp, with his entire fortune contained in a chest that, like a heart's feelings, can be opened and perused by one who holds the key, Kesh saw better the shadows in the room. It was true he might negotiate with Anji's mother, betray Anji and Mai both, to gain Miravia.
Did he want to be that kind of man?
Miravia did not belong to him. Nor did he want her to, not in
the way his labor had once belonged to Master Feden, or Zubaidit's body and spirit belonged to the temple she served.
He had made a story in his heart about their mutual passion, but it was only a story. He could not help desiring the face he had seen, the woman he had so briefly spoken with among the scattered cord and ribbon of the marketplace. Maybe it was only lust that drove him; maybe it was the lure of the forbidden; yet perhaps a true spark had leapt between them, promising a deeper bond.
Almost two years ago he had trudged over the Kandaran Pass north back into the Hundred in possession of a treasure to buy his sister's freedom from the temple. Things hadn't worked out the way he had planned. But he had said something one day, high in the mountains, while speaking with another traveler, a man who appeared to be an envoy of Ilu:
It matters what path a man takes as he walks through the world.
He finally comprehended what those words meant. Miravia was the one who would have to decide. She was the one he had to negotiate with.
In the breath of gray lightening just before dawn, Anji woke Mai. His hands knew her body very well, and he
