need.'
The Qin soldier nodded and limped out, brows drawn down.
'What's happened, curse you!' demanded Keshad.
'Close up your books quickly, Kesh,' snapped O'eki. 'Grab anything you need. Make it fast.'
The hells!
They launched from Assizes Square. O'eki hooked in with Siras, and Kesh was handed over to Reeve Miyara, who looked as if she hadn't slept in a week.
'What happened?' he asked as she hooked him in.
'Anything the chief wants you to know, he'll tell you.'
The earth lurched; the ground leaped away from under him as wings battered the air. He yelped, squeezing shut his eyes. She offered no word of encouragement, no friendly banter to ease the transition. After a while he cracked an eye only to find the land falling away so rapidly he felt sick to his stomach, so he clamped his eyes shut again.
'How do you get used to this?' he muttered. Her knee jabbed into his back. 'Aui!'
He took the hint. If she didn't want to talk, then he wouldn't talk. But it was cursed hard to keep your eyes shut for so long, and the next time he opened them there was nothing but water beneath, swaying and glittering under a cloudless sky.
Better not to look. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes, but after a while his arm got tired, and then the other arm got tired, and eventually the steady rumble of the wind and the tense silence of his companion numbed him enough that he could regard the sea below with resigned terror. Just let Miravia be alive. As long as he held to that thought, he could endure.
They'd launched before noon and soon he had to piss, even though they'd warned him to relieve himself before flight. But there was nowhere to land except the south shore shining gold off to the left, and he sure as the hells wasn't going to ask her to detour just for him. They rose higher yet until the air stung in his
chest and his eyes watered, and he started to shiver, but she said nothing and the eagle flew on, alternating gliding on strong winds and then beating for stretches. To cross the Olo'o Sea by ship took two days, or a long day and night, yet the waters quickly slid past as the day wore on. Late in the afternoon they passed above the hinterlands of Astafero, the settlement a smear of buildings far below, and sped straight for the magnificent Spires. The winds buffeted them, and he shuddered convulsively in a cold blast that swept off the high, forbidding peaks wjiose crowns glittered a blinding white.
They plummeted and he shrieked as the earth hurtled up. They hit and he fell hard to his knees as she unhooked him without warning. He knelt at a cliff's edge, the spray of a waterfall spanning the gulf of air. He crept away from the chasm, and the first time he tried to stand he could not. The reeve was shucking the harness from her eagle, releasing it, and by the time he got his feet under him she was walking in company with a Qin soldier into the trees. Another sentry waited at the path's edge, so he hurried after.
'Where's O'eki and the other — what was his name?' he called.
'Master O'eki is a heavier burden, and Siras hasn't as much experience to push his raptor so hard.' She tossed the words over her shoulder and kept walking. He struggled past the sentry, who nodded at him but stayed where he was, waiting for the other reeve. Aui! He had to piss so badly that he staggered a few steps off the path, shook himself free of his trousers, and released.
Afterward, legs steadier, he loped through the forest and caught her up as she and her escort emerged into the clearing with its living shelters and storehouses and a herd of goats ransacking their way along the tree line.
Soldiers came running. Priya, sitting on the porch with the baby in her arms, looked up, then stood, her posture inexpressibly weary. She had cut off all her hair, shorn like a sheep every which way, and by the look on her face as she watched him stumble over the uneven ground toward her, he knew what had happened.
He should have understood. He had met the emperor's brother. He knew what manner of people the Sirniakans were. He knew what the captain's mother was. She had warned him.
'It can't be true,' he said, stubbing his toes as he tried to take the steps in a single leap. 'It can't be true. I could have saved her if I'd agreed to marry her. If I'd taken her away-'
Her voice was as colorless as undyed linen. 'Chief Tuvi wishes to speak to you, Master Keshad.'
He balanced on the porch's edge, heels bouncing over air. 'Does he think I had something to do with it?'
Soldiers had fenced him in while he wasn't looking. These men had been sent to Merciful Valley to protect Mai's life, and they had failed.
'I'll go in,' he said. They had all failed.
Priya nodded. The baby was suckling on a bottle sewn from a sheep's udder, content for the moment, eyes shut.
It was easier to shut your eyes, wasn't it? To pretend you didn't have to look at the horrible truth. He shed his sandals and pushed aside the canvas. The outer chamber was empty, two rolled-up pallets stowed out of the way, but a curtain was tied up to reveal the inner chamber. The canvas wall on the far side had also been tied up to allow in light and air. Miravia was sitting on a pillow beside a man reclining on a pallet, his legs covered by a length of silk and his torso belted into a silk jacket. She bent forward, setting a cup to Chief Tuvi's lips as she smiled and began to speak in response to something he had just evidently said.
She smiled at Tuvi!
Kesh's feet scuffing startled her. She spilled the liquid on Tuvi's chin as she jerked upright, head whipping around to stare. Her lips moved, forming his name. She had hacked off her hair, and what was left spiked in ragged clumps likely a badly mown hayfield. She was more beautiful in her grief than he had ever seen her, sorrow honing her spirit so its beauty stabbed like lightning.
The chief raised himself on an elbow, his gaze an arrow pinning Kesh. 'Here you are,' he said, his voice hoarse with pain. 'Sit if you will, Master Keshad.'
'You don't think I had anything to do with it!'
'To do with what?' asked the chief.
Miravia burst into tears and, sobbing, jumped to her feet and ducked out through the back flat onto the wraparound porch. When Kesh moved to go after her, Tuvi stopped him with a word.
'Sit.'
Kesh sat, missing the pillow.
The chief pulled the silk off his legs. He wore a local kilt, and his skin, in the fading light, was revealed as a mass of welts and blisters.
'Bringing you here, did the reeves speak of what I told them to keep secret?' asked the chief as Kesh tried not to stare.
'No.'
'Did the captain's mother ever speak to you of her plans?'
'I told Captain Anji everything! She offered to give me Miravia if I would take Mai as well. It was cursed obvious she wanted to be rid of Mai. What in the hells happened?'
'Sheyshi was her agent all along.'
'Sheyshi? The slave? But she's… stupid. How could she be-?'
If you shut your eyes, you would not see what walked and talked right in front of you. Was anyone ever really as stupid as Sheyshi had constantly been?
'We saw what we expected to see.' Tuvi grunted and lay back on the heap of pillows. 'If you will, a sip of juice.'
Kesh found the cup Miravia had set down before she had run off. How odd to feel compassion for his rival's pain. The man had never done him any harm, as far as he knew. After swallowing the juice, the chief breathed as his eyes watered.
At last, he sighed. 'We were all taken in. She stabbed Mai by the pool. When Mai fell in, I tried to drag her body out but the pool's sorcery burned me. She sank into the depths.'
'Are you saying you've no body?'
'I lost her. The demons — or maybe the gods of this place — took her.' Tuvi raised a hand, welted with fine red scars, and covered his eyes as he wept.
He wept, as hardened a soldier as he was.
