a cutting remark either to your face or behind your back.
Be that as it may. The empire was a terrible threat, everyone understood that now, here so close to the Kandaran Pass. The murder of the commander's beloved young wife proved that, didn't it? As for the mother, all approved of her devotion to her grandson. The baby had been sent to Olossi with his nursemaid last month, hadn't he? While the commander was on campaign in the north, naturally he would entrust the little lad to family. The grandmother was devoted to her grandson. It was sweet to see her with him in the market, dandling the boy — for he was a beautiful and lively baby with whom everyone fell in love at first sight — while ruthlessly ordering around her slaves and hirelings and bickering with the market women in that imperious way she had, as if she thought the sun rose and set on her likes and dislikes…
'Our thanks, verea,' said Tohon, steering a stunned Shai away from the gate. 'We'll just find our own way, then.'
Shai's head was whirling. He couldn't keep track of where they were going. As his feet slapped on stone, the impact jarred up through his bones to addle his thoughts yet more. But Tohon knew the twists and turns of the lanes and each rise and fall of hill, and so they climbed to the height, to a substantial compound sprawled next door to a compound whose walls flew the banners of a Ri Amarah clan. The Qin guards at the gate recognized Tohon, although they were not soldiers Shai knew; they were newcomers, from a cohort of Commander Beje's men sent north
with the Qin princess and now likely to spend the rest of their days in the Hundred.
'We need cordial and juice,' said Tohon to the guards, 'and a place to sit in the shade.'
'Better than that,' said the young man, eyeing Shai's scars or his muscles, hard to say. Shai was showing a cursed lot of skin in his kilt and sleeveless vest. 'We got word you arrived. Come this way.'
He led them to the porch, where they took off their sandals, and thence deep into the house past several layers of sliding doors, each threshold guarded by more black-clad soldiers, until they came to a long, quiet chamber covered with woven mats and furnished with a single low table and a single pillow on which sat Anji. Chief Tuvi, kneeling behind him, was twisting up Anji's topknot and fixing it with a gold ribbon. A pair of Qin soldiers were standing to either side of three small chests bound by chains. Shai felt a sting on his skin, and he shuddered. He knew what was in those chests.
'Sit,' said Anji without looking up.
Shai sat, trying not to remember how the cloak had smothered and burned him. He dared not shut his eyes, so he watched as Tuvi finished his task in silence. When the chief sat back, Tohon spoke.
'We'd be appreciative of a cup of cordial, or some juice, Commander. We just arrived after a long journey.'
'So have I also just arrived,' said Anji, rising, 'although by reeve.' He examined Shai without expression, then nodded. 'I wasn't sure you would live, but I see Tohon has taken good care of you.'
Shai could say nothing. Watching Anji, he could only think of Mai.
'Come with me,' said Anji.
He led them into a courtyard guarded on one side by Qin soldiers and on the other by massive men of foreign mien, muscled like wrestlers, and as clean-shaven as Toskalan men. They entered a narrow antechamber. After a pause during which Shai heard female voices murmuring and the faint fragile kiss of a delicate porcelain cup touching to plate, doors with painted screens were slid open. The chamber beyond was a wide porch, its plank floor heaped with carpets, its far side open to a courtyard infested with fountains, ornamental pools, and dwarf trees carefully pruned. Its ends were hung with curtains which rippled as unseen people moved behind them. Eyes peered through gaps as Anji, Tuvi, Tohon, and Shai entered the room.
Two women sat facing over a low table. The elderly Hieros sat on a pillow, while the Qin princess reclined on an embroidered couch. The Hieros wore a simple taloos of best-quality burnt-orange silk, wrapped to expose her arms, thin and age-worn but still wiry with strength. The Qin princess wore robes that covered her from wrist to ankle to throat. She glittered with gold chains and a gold-knit headdress stabbing like a tower from her head.
'Ah, Anjihosh,' she said. 'You have corpe at last. Sit down.'
No pillow was offered for the men with him.
Anji indicated that Shai should take the pillow. He remained standing while Shai, too exhausted to care how it looked, sank down to rest.
'This must be the uncle,' continued Anji's mother, surveying Shai. 'Hard to say if those scars will ever entirely go away. I suppose he was a good-looking young man once, although nothing like the niece.',
'Anjihosh,' said Tuvi quietly, like a rider calming a storm-maddened horse.
The Hieros lifted a porcelain cup and sipped, watching the interplay between mother and son. She set down the cup with a crooked smile. 'A dark day, Commander Anji, when we heard about the murder of your devoted and beloved wife by red hounds out of the empire.'
'The red hounds?' blurted Shai, seeing a flash of triumph in the Qin princess's eye. What had he to lose by speaking out? They could do nothing worse to him than had already been done. 'You were the one who killed her!'
Anji's mother regarded him with amusement. 'I? I did not stab her. The slaye Sheyshi stabbed her. It is to be supposed — how else are we to explain it? — that she acted as an agent for the red hounds. Every son and grandson of Emperor Farutanihosh was under a death sentence. The boy's mother simply got in the way as she protected her child.'
'So it is to be supposed,' murmured Anji, like a spike of lightning as Tuvi rested a hand on the commander's forearm.
'It's a lie! A lie you have all agreed to tell to protect-!'
'Shai! Silence!'
Once, that tone from Anji would have silenced Shai, but no longer. 'Is there to be no justice for Mai?'
But his cry rang in empty air, and their silence was his answer.
He might as well have remained mute, for all the notice they took of him. Tohon laid a hand gently on his arm, that was all.
Anji turned away. In a hoarse voice, he said, 'Where is my son?'
His mother clapped her hands. A slave slipped out from behind a curtain. 'Fetch the boy.'
The Hieros's gaze paused on Tohon as she accepted from him a nod, and moved again to Anji. 'As folk are saying, Commander, the eyes of the south have turned this way. The empire now knows — and cares — we exist. Because of you.'
'My apologies,' he said, and the words sounded sincere enough. T did not seek their attention.'
'Yet you have it. I suppose if I could rid myself of you and your beautiful son and thereby end the problem, I would. But that would leave me with your Qin soldiers, and your Qin-trained militia, and enemy cohorts still at large in the north. They are still at large, are they not?'
'We have not yet marched into Herelia to take down their headquarters in Wedrewe. We have spent our efforts over the last month securing Istria and Haldia, the countryside, the towns, and the cities. I'm particularly concerned that every farmer can plant as soon as the rains come without fear he will be vulnerable to attack out in his fields. Starvation is a significant concern across the north, and it will only get worse. If folk cannot plant now, the situation will become catastrophic. As it is, it may take years for people to rebuild. Wedrewe, and the remnants gathered in Walshow, are a danger, but they can be dealt with later.'
T suppose they can,' murmured the Hieros. 'What do you want, Commander Anji?'
He had the grace to look startled. 'Why, to raise my son in peace. A peace that will shelter all the people of the Hundred.' His gaze sharpened. 'Isn't it the same thing you have many times told me you want, Holy One?'
'Ah.' She sketched a series of fluid movements with her left hand, in a language that would have meant something to the wildings and to any Hundred-raised folk. 'And therein lies the tale, does it not? If you die, we are left as in the tale of the Guardians. 'Long ago, in the time of chaos, a bitter series of wars, feuds, and reprisals denuded the countryside and impoverished the lords and guildsmen and farmers and artisans of the Hundred.' This time, I fear, we cannot rely on the Guardians to establish justice.'
'The assizes must be reopened,' agreed Anji, 'without the inter-
ference of demons. The roads must be safe, tolls and tithes and taxes fair. People want to eat. I could go on, but I won't. For all this, we need peace.'
A slave entered, and behind him walked Priya, carrying a plump baby whose luminous face and brilliant smile
