'I beg your pardon, exalted lady. What is this?'
'Gold.'
The slave released the sack. Kesh caught it; his arms tensed under its unexpected weight. 'I can take no payment for an act I have refused to perform.'
She smiled with real amusement, and for an instant he saw the personality that had captivated an emperor. Captain Anji's smile was more spontaneous. Hers was a weapon.
'This is not payment. It is not obligation. Nor is it a reward or a bribe. It is a gift. If it were anything otherwise, you would know. But I have the pleasure of making gifts exactly as I wish. I respect your honesty, Master Keshad. Now you may leave.'
So he left, burdened with gold and with a sense that he had missed something important. As soon as he was out on the porch, as soon as he had pulled on his boots and began walking down through the quiet evening streets of Astafero where a man might perfectly well carry a bag of gold without fearing he would be robbed and killed, he saw away beyond the walls in the lowland plain a pair of torches marking Ushara's temple.
Sixth bell had not yet been rung.
32
The baby sprawled naked in his cot, netting draped over to keep off mosks and flies and gnats, to discourage scorpions and snakes. Here in the Barrens the houses had to be elevated off the ground to keep away vermin, or else, as in Kartu Town, furniture must elevate the body away from the earth where poisonous creatures scuttled.
The commander's complex of tents had likewise been built up off the ground, canvas raised over raised plank flooring. Mai knelt behind Miravia, combing out her hair, which had a tendency to snarl. They were alone except for the sleeping baby.
'It's very irritating,' said Mai, 'that we cannot sleep in the house we raised but must push Chief Berkei out of his accustomed place to accommodate us. Not that the chief complained.'
'You were invited to sleep in the house, were you not?'
'Anji was. In the suite of rooms set aside for his use just as if that woman had built and furnished the house and overseen the settlement. No doubt I was meant to sleep like a beggar on the steps.'
'She's been kind to me. Not kind, precisely, but- Ouch!'
'Don't move! There, I got the tangle out. Hard to imagine her as kind.'
'A poor choice of words. She has treated me with respect. She asked about you, but I pretended stupidity and told the other hirelings to do the same. I'm sure she did not believe us. She ordered me to take her shopping in the market and bargain for her. She seems to know no other way of talking to people except to command them. She talked a great deal about Keshad. He traveled with them all the way from the south. She seems to think he is a promising young man.'
'Do her words stand in his favor, or against him?'
Miravia raised a hand to a cheek.
'You're blushing!' said Mai with a laugh, although she could not see Miravia's face.
'I don't think she speaks well of many people,' said Miravia in a choked voice. 'Oh, Mai, do you think of Anji every waking moment? When you close your eyes, do you see his face? Imagine his voice? Wish you might taste his lips? All the while knowing you are an utter fool for being obsessed?'
'No.'
'No!' Miravia turned so quickly Mai lost hold of the comb, which remained trapped in her curls. 'No?'
'Of course I think of him often. But I have other responsibilities, obligations, duties. Atani. My business interests. The household. I can't think of Anji all the time! I think of him enough! You are infatuated with Keshad. There's nothing wrong in that unless you lash yourself off a cliff for a man you don't know.'
Miravia leaned back against her, and Mai wrapped her arms around her as Miravia spoke. 'It's true you hear tales and songs telling of a glance seen across a street or looks exchanged in a garden that seal two hearts. How the arrow of a lilu hits its mark and makes the victim miserable for the rest of her days. I saw him that day, in your courtyard, that one time. Now I can't stop thinking of him.'
'That isn't love, dearest,' said Mai, as a pressure of annoyance built in her chest. 'You can't love someone you don't know.'
'Do you love Anji?'
'Of course I love Anji.' She disentangled herself from Miravia and went back to combing her hair, because combing hair calmed her surging heart. 'But I didn't love him when he plucked me out of the marketplace.'
'You told me you did!'
'I was very frightened. So I had to believe it, didn't I? I had to sing the songs that allowed me to ride each day into unknown territory. Then, afterward, well…' Her hands ceased their stroking; she wrapped her fingers in Miravia's hair as she recalled the sweetness of Anji's lovemaking.
'You're blushing,' said Miravia with a laugh, not needing to look at her to know that heat had flooded her skin. 'Stop that! Your husband will return soon enough, a moth to your flame. Let me comb out your hair, or does he like to do that for you?'
They both began to snort and giggle, and Mai had to wipe her eyes and her running nose with a scrap of cloth. 'Oh, hush,' she said, 'we'll wake Atani.'
The curtain swayed, and a dark hand pressed it aside. Priya looked in, smiling. 'Is all well? Have you awakened the baby?'
'No, thank you, Priya. All is well. Is there any signal of Anji's return?'
'No.' She vanished behind the curtain.
'Where did he go?' asked Miravia, settling on her knees as Mai hitched up her taloos to her hips and sat cross-legged with her back to the other woman.
'I don't know. I sat through the entire afternoon at his side. He wanted me to tell the chiefs and sergeants about life in the Hundred and how I would help them find local wives and settle into local households once the war was over.'
'Is he that sure we will win?'
'That's the story he must tell himself and others, isn't it? It's the tale I tell myself. They asked about the brothel, very shyly, I must admit, for they didn't wish to trouble me with such questions, but Anji told them that they must ask me everything even though he didn't expect that question! That's how he found out that since last time we were here, a temple to the Merciless One was dedicated and raised, at the order of Astafero's council! I thought he was going to ride down and burn it to the ground at that very instant. He said before he would permit no temple of Ushara in the settlement. He's still angry about' — she faltered, because she had
never told Miravia about Anji hitting her — 'about me taking you to Ushara's temple in Olossi. But I turned his anger to my advantage, because he hadn't a word to say that he was willing to say in front of others. That allowed me to speak. I told the men about the local customs and that they must never offer coin in Ushara's garden and so on. You know all that better than I do. After all that, he calmed down, and the meeting was over at nightfall, right before you returned. Then an urgent message came from his mother.'
Miravia pulled the hairsticks and combs out of Mai's hair and let it fall. 'You shouldn't fight her.'
'I don't want a battle. But what am I to do? Accept a place as his second, inferior wife?'
'You cannot ever be that to him!'
'I am a merchant's daughter. She is an emperor's sister.' Hu! Now she was crying.
'It won't come to that. He loves you.'
'As you love Keshad, perhaps?' she asked bitterly. 'He loves my beauty, anyway. People do not marry for that kind of love. Their clans arrange a contract. Or a woman is purchased. Or two families seek an alliance. Or cousins pool their family fortune with a wedding. There are many reasons, but not that one. He would be a fool not to marry her and secure the benefits she brings to him. Anyway, if he does not marry her, his cousins will try to kill him.'
'They may try to kill him no matter what he does or says. She might try to kill him, once she's in his bed. With
