army whose soldiers wore a cheap star beaten out of tin whose leaders had promised them life but led them to death.
The Qin scout rode, switching off between a quartet of scruffy little steppe horses. Besides the four guards, only Tohon had horses. Half the Hundred, the merchants noted, had been cleaned out of riding horses for the army; these days, only soldiers rode, a fair exchange when you thought about it.
The driver was a taciturn woman old enough to be Shai's mother. She spoke only to complain about aches and pains or the weather, while handling the dray beasts with great ease and competence. Shai dozed on the pallet fitted into the bed of the wagon, under a canvas awning rigged up with rope to protect him from the baking sun. He wore a loose kilt and, when he had to, a vest; he healed best with his skin exposed to air. Each day in the morning he walked alongside the wagon for a while before resting; each day in the late afternoon he walked a little more. Tohon never once told him to be careful of overdoing it, although the driver often informed him that he was risking a relapse in this reckless way. More hair than wit! Not that he had much hair these days, that having been cropped down to his scalp.
'Eat a few more spoonfuls, son,' Tohon said each night, the only time he nagged him.
Each night, he ate a little more than he had the night before. He listened to the merchants chatter, sing, laugh, swap stories of the months-long siege of Nessumara. Where were you during the first attack? It was a close thing, wasn't it? If they'd not stopped when they did, we'd have been overrun. Did you see what happened to the Green Sun clan, after it was discovered they'd tried to trade secrets to the invaders? Every individual including the children sold into debt slavery, and their compound and storehouses gifted to Chief Sengel, in thanks. Why, the Qin chief had even taken a local delta woman — connected to several wealthy clans both by kinship and through her business dealings — as his wife.
One of the merchants had a cousin named Forgi who had been one of the scouts who'd guided Commander Anji's army north along the causeway, and he regaled the caravan with the story of how his cousin had been saved by a flight of reeves who had killed an entire cadre of men about to stumble on his hiding place. Too bad about that one reeve who had died, eh? Women all over Haldia and Istria were surely weeping their hearts out, for everyone said he was that handsome. Still, even and maybe especially a handsome man could be curdling with bitterness and ambition inside, for hadn't he been trying to claim he was commander of the reeve halls, when everyone knew that it took a reeve council to elect a new commander? Why, they'd convened just a few days ago, hadn't they, right there at Copper Hall? Every reeve hall except Bronze Hall had sent representatives, and they'd elected Commander Anji to serve as their commander, which only made sense. So it was just fortunate Commander Anji hadn't been killed when that cursed eagle had tried to rip off his head.
The outlander had saved them. Not that there weren't still stories out of the countryside of desperate men ransacking villages, and rumors of cohorts fallen back to Wedrewe in Herelia, making ready for a new assault. Thank the gods for Commander Anji and the garrisons and reeve patrols he was setting in place in the cities and major towns and all along the roads. The Hundred — well, those parts safeguarded by the army — was a peaceful, orderly place again.
So it proved on the eight stages — eight days — from Nessumara to Horn. Riders patrolled the roads in 'short' cadres of six and
eight horsemen with an experienced man as sergeant, a pair of corporals who had served in the commander's army, and the rest of each group filled out by local men glad to have a chance to feel they were doing something to keep the peace. All along the route, men and women worn thin by months of scarcity prepared the fields against the rains, due to come any day now, if the gods were merciful. May the rains come at the proper time. May the harvest be abundant.
How odd to hear prayers chanted to the Merciful One woven into the conversation and chant of the locals. Did they even know where they came from?
'You're getting stronger,' said Tohon approvingly as they wandered Horn's market with its scant pickings. 'You're ready to ride.'
They were buying supplies for the next leg of the journey. A young woman working a pair of slip-fry pans paused as the oil spit and the vegetables sizzled and gave Shai the once-over, a look torn between appreciation and pity. He hadn't known he could still blush.
An elderly man selling radish and nai — nothing special, but all he had on offer today — nodded as Tohon picked through the baskets. 'You're one of those Qin, eh?'
'I am,' Tohon agreed amiably. 'Just taking the lad back to Olossi.'
'I heard,' said the old man, 'from a merchant what come in yesterday from Nessumara I guess in the same caravan as you, that this lad was burned killing one of those gods-cursed cloaked lilus. Tell you what. I'll give you a sack of nai for nothing, as thanks. It'll be a touch bitter, as it's leftover from last season, but it'll feed you. The radish I have to sell, though, as I've a clan to feed just like anyone.'
They filled up their wagon cheaply enough despite the high prices at the market. Everyone wanted to thank the Qin soldier and the young man scarred by burns by offering them a bit of this or that — prickle headed apples, caul petals for soup, rices cakes and bean curd, a sack of rice — for under market price. At a loss.
Mai would have been appalled.
'There now, son,' said Tohon. 'You can't help thinking about her. It will come and go, but it will never stop hurting.'
'Do you still weep for your son and daughter and wife, Tohon?'
'I remember them every day, when I see some new thing I'd like
to share. A bolt of red silk. A red-capped bird. The way pipewood sets up a rustle when the wind runs through it. There's no other sound like it. That Mount Auaj, a fine bold peak, don't you think?' He'd learned to point with his 'elbow, indicating the distant mountain, tipped with white, towering and strong.
''Mount Aua, who is sentinel,'' murmured Shai, ''We survive in his shelter.' Tohon, are you sure the children are safe?' He'd asked a hundred times, and yet he must ask again, always, because his heart ached so.
Tohon's answer was always the same, and delivered in the same patient tone. 'I delivered them to Nessumara before the city fell under siege. I believe they were shipped to Zosteria to keep them out of enemy hands. Eridit and the two militiamen knew enough to take care of them. I think they were going to head to Mar. But sometimes, lad, you have to accept that you may never know.'
'Is that how the Qin manage? Riding away from their families for years, or forever? Sending their sons away to war, and never knowing?'
Tohon had a firm grip, and he knew exactly where he could grasp Shai's arm without bruising tender skin. 'You learn to ride on the path and keep your eyes open so you can see what is there, not what you wish were there.' His gaze was level, and after a moment he smiled. 'And then after all you might discover that what is there is what you wished for all along.'
They signed up with a new caravan out of Horn, heading along the West Track to Olossi. Riding was harder — it chafed, and he had to wear trousers — but each day he rode for longer at a stretch. By the time they reached Olossi, he rode half the day and walked half the day and split wood every evening as the driver sat on a folding stool and watched, commenting on his form and likely chance of hurting himself, and how he could be more efficient if he altered the angle of his axe. When he got tired of hearing her criticisms, he altered the angle, and was surprised to discover she was right.
They passed through checkpoints and entered the inner city. At the gate of the Qin compound they were met by a woman with a debt mark at her left eye who told them cheerfully that, no, the Qin no longer owned this compound. It had been sold last month to Master Calon, who was her new master, a decent man for all that his grandfather had come up from Sirniaka.
Who had the authority to sell it? Everyone knew that the new mistress of the Qin household was the commander's mother, a formidable woman before whom the entire market quaked, known to be intimate with the Hieros and, indeed, every head priest of every temple in the city as well as having already secured a seat on the city council and gotten herself invited into the compounds of the Ri Amarah.
No one had any great affection for her. She wasn't the young mistress, the one who'd been killed by red hounds, agents of the southern empire whose eye was now turned north and whose reach was cruel and arbitrary; for truly why would anyone want to kill Mistress Mai, who had overthrown the corrupt Greater Houses and secured wives for the Qin soldiers and nurtured the new settlement of Astafero in the Barrens that supplied the city with oil of naya and a very good grade of wool? And who had been kind and generous while doing it, never a harsh word or
