hands extended as a falling woman begs for help.
The hells!
He bolted, passing Miyara easily, and reached Miravia in time to catch her as her legs gave out. She was washed gray like a corpse, and breathing hard.
'My love! Ravia! What's happened? Are you hurt?'
Her mouth opened, but no words came out. In her stunned gaze he saw nothing but blank incomprehension, as if a lilu had sunk its claws into her heart and drained away all thought, leaving only emotion. But her body worked. She regained her feet, pulled away from him, and began running back up the trail. He had to follow, glancing back to assure himself that Miyara, armed with baton and sword, was jogging at his heels. A look of alarm erased the suspicion that had so recently scarred her expression. They wound up through the thickly perfumed trees, the late flowering bushes, the profusion of fruit. He bumped his head on a dangling sun-fruit, which dropped to thud on the earth and tumble away into the undergrowth. So much lay hidden.
Commanded to keep our mouths shut.
'Ravia!' he called, but she kept running, passion the wings that carried her.
He was puffing and heaving by the time they burst out into the ruins. He stumbled to a halt as Miyara stopped beside him.
'The hells!' cried the reeve with the breath he could not take.
The waterfall, swollen with the last of the rains, pounded its fury into the pool. Water lapped to the brim, wavelets spilling along flat terraces of smooth stone. The cursed pool was writhing with blue threads like infant firelings pouring up from the depths. Miravia was staring not at the pool but at something else entirely.
A slight figure huddled on one of the low stone walls whose tumbled remains graced the ruins. Black hair plastered her neck and wove trails down the soaking wet silk of her bloodstained taloos. Her mouth was parted, and slowly, as if it hurt to move, she straightened and looked toward them.
Thunder boomed. It began to rain in a fierce, unexpected cloudburst.
Mai.
Then she woke, coughing water out of her mouth. Only half
aware of what she was doing, she dragged herself onto a shelf of
rock and lay heaving until she could breathe again. Her chest
hurt; pain squeezed her ribs with each sharp inhalation.
A woman screamed.
Hu! What if Tuvi hadn't gotten here yet and Sheyshi tried again? What if the slave had gone after the baby?
She pushed up through an agony of tight muscles, but instead of Sheyshi and Priya and the baby, Miravia was standing a stone's toss from her with hands shielding her cheeks and her mouth and eyes gone all round as though an awful demon was rising out of the pool behind Mai about to pounce. She actually turned to look, the feeling was so strong, maybe Sheyshi climbing out of the water with her knife, but there was no one, only a shimmering surface of blue threads she recognized as the newborn spirits born in the womb of the firelings and not yet strong enough to take flight into the storms.
How did she know that?
'Miravia!' she rasped, but Miravia was already gone, fleeing flip flap flip flap, her footsteps reverberating through the empty ruins as water poured over the high lip and roared into the pool. Spray moistened her face. She staggered to the path that led behind a curtain of falling water and into the overhang. Priya might have hidden Atani in here, but the overhang lay dim and
empty but for the altar stone heaped with withered wreaths and flower necklaces and a fresh-blooming spray of plum blossoms. Out of season surely, she thought at random as she caught herself on the stone, trying not to topple over.
A ring sat on the stone. She stared at it a long time: a Mei clan wolf's-head ring, big enough to fit a man's finger. She'd given hers to Anji, but she knew who this one belonged to: It was Shai's ring. Left on the altar.
She snatched it up and stumbled outside, hand pressing into her stomach as a prickling pain spread across her midsection. Legs giving out, she sank onto the ruins of a low wall. Her flesh felt ragged beneath her probing fingers. The lips of the stab wound were still tender, felt through the wet silk of her taloos. Where had all that blood come from that soaked the silk? Why did it still hurt so much?
She had to go find Atani, but she didn't have the strength to rise. Just rest a little, and a little longer yet, and then strength would come. It must. She had to find Atani, and Priya, and O'eki. She had to warn Miravia. Sheyshi was a murderer, an agent long since planted into her household without anyone knowing. Not even Anji had known. She was sure of it.
Anji would never have acquiesced to her death. Or at least, not under these circumstances. He hated to lose, and he would never allow his mother to win. That was his weakness. Of course her beauty had attracted him in Kartu Town's market, but any Qin officer might admire beauty and even sample what could not be denied to him, and then ride on. Why hadn't she seen it before now? Perhaps he had been, as he claimed, amused or even impressed when she had tried to sell him almonds at a price twice market value. But now she wondered if it had irritated him as well. Folk feared the Qin. They were wise to do so. And here this slip of a girl from a dusty provincial trading town, a place of no possible importance in the wide world, had the gall to mock him by demanding such a price.
She could see the scene unfold with stark clarity. It was easy to see from this side of the knife that had plunged into her flesh, whose blade had wept her blood.
He had taken her, just like in the songs. The dashing, powerful officer. The humble fruit seller unable to say 'no.' Yet their hardships had bound them together; their journey had forced them to forge a partnership. They had been building something
worthwhile, hadn't they? Didn't Anji truly love her? Hadn't he defied his mother on her behalf? Or had he only been irritated at having his will crossed?
Because Anji had betrayed her anyway, when it suited his purposes. He had promised to safeguard Hari but had killed him instead. Who else would Hari have trusted to come so close? Who else could have walked right up to him without Hari having the least idea what was about to happen?
Only Anji..
Thunder boomed. Rain hammered the clearing as if it meant to disintegrate her and sweep her fragments back into the pool whose healing touch had saved her. Saved her for what? For waking up to realize that she could not trust the man she loved?
So when she heard the clap of running feet followed by the intake of shocked breath followed by silence as the rain gave out as abruptly as it had washed through, it was hard to be frightened of what they might'do to her. She'd already been stabbed in the heart and survived.
Miravia had returned, bringing with her Reeve Miyara, whose unsheathed sword and expression of stunned fear kindled a flame of indignation. What had she ever done to make people fear her} She was the one Sheyshi had tried to kill!
'Mistress Mai?'
'Master Keshad!' This was too much! Her sight wasn't clouded. He placed a hand intimately on Miravia's hip to shift the young woman behind him, but not before Mai realized that the bulge in Miravia's taloos wasn't the fabric twisted and pouching. 'Miravia! Are you pregnant? By him?'
'Mai!' Miravia pushed past Keshad and flung herself at Mai, her body solid and warm and comforting as Mai hung onto her and she hung on to Mai, sobbing and hugging.
'Best get away from her,' said the reeve into their blubbering reunion. 'She must be a lilu, Miravia. Come to lure you to your death by taking the form of one you love.'
Mai sat straight, releasing Miravia and wiping her nose. 'I'm the one who was stabbed! How can I then be the lilu? Where is Atani? Where is Sheyshi? Shouldn't you be chasing after herV She rose, and the reeve leaped back as if expecting Mai to smite her.
Keshad paced forward with hands extended in an annoying
way meant to placate, as if he too thought she was a lilu and must be bribed. 'Here, now. What do you want, lilu?'
'Miravia, you can't possibly believe I'm a lilu! Where is Atani?'
