curiosity, some in the hope of currying favor, and a few with perhaps a bud of faith. Even Sheyshi accompanied them, although poor Sheyshi could still barely recite the most basic of prayers, stumbling over the same words every time.
Not that the Merciful One was a jealous or critical god, demanding fearful obedience or exacting perfection. Far from it! The Merciful One was a pilgrim who had wandered far from home, finding a resting place wherever folk raised an altar. The procession — fully eighteen people today including all six off-duty Qin guardsmen as well as the three on-duty ones — climbed to the rocky clearing around the pool. The waterfall boomed, which meant rains had fallen higher up in the Spires beyond sight and sound of the valley. The churning waters hid movement beneath the foam, but she never quite glimpsed an actual living creature swimming there.
She led the way through low walls that marked an ancient ruin. The walls had once entirely rimmed the pool, but now they were as broken and worn as the teeth of an elder. They entered the cave in single file along a ledge, cliff wall on the right and the waterfall's curtain on the left.
Two lamps burned within the cave. A slab had been set across the birthing stones where Mai had labored to create a humble altar covered with a red cloth. Here she laid today's offering of flowers as Priya intoned the first prayers.
' ' The Merciful One is my lamp and my refuge.''
The others settled, the most interested kneeling at the front behind Sheyshi, the merely curious to the back. Four had not come in at all, loitering in the ruins beside the pool hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious creature that lived within what all now called 'the birthing pool' in honor of Atani.
Yet as Priya chanted the Three Refuges, the Four Undertakings,
and the Five Rewards, as Mai repeated the responses and joined in where she knew the longer threads, she tasted an iron tang on her lips and felt the tingling in her bones that betrayed the presence of unseen others. The lamps burned, flames hissing softly, but she did not need oil's light to see within the cave's dim enclosure. Threads glittered along the ceiling of the cave. This morning, twenty-five days since she had given birth, less than a full month according to the calendar of Sapanasu but a full turn of the moon, fewer threads netted the ceiling than had been there yesterday, or the day before. That these threads were themselves living creatures she did not doubt. She had felt their touch while in the throes of labor; their net of light had clothed her when she was naked. When she entered the precinct of the sacred pool now, she still heard an echo of voices whose speech — if it was speech — she did not comprehend.
She did not fear them, nor did they fear her.
' ' Merciful One, your wisdom is boundless. Excuse me for the transgressions I have made through thoughtlessness, through neglect, through fear.''
Human voices whispered, their changed timbre causing her to turn. Did the glimmering threads brighten? Or was it only her own heart and eyes that caught fire as Anji ducked into the cave? He kneeled at the back of the group, asking for no special precedence; he bowed his head in the same manner as everyone else.
'' May the rains come at the proper time. May the harvest be abundant. May the world prosper, and justice be served. Accept my prayers out of compassion. Peace.''
Priya's attention never wavered from the altar, but as soon as she finished, she efficiently herded the others out of the cave, leaving Mai and the baby alone with Anji. Mai rose. While once she might have grasped for Anji immediately, seeking solace, protection, strength, and reassurance, now she waited, watching him.
'Well, Mai,' he said with that slight upward twist of the lips that signified his satisfaction. 'You are looking more beautiful even than before. By all reports — which I naturally have been receiving daily — the child remains healthy.' He glanced up at the threads gleaming on the ceiling, and a frown bruised his expression so briefly that in the instant after it cleared she thought she must have imagined it. 'Let's go outside.'
'It's been a full turn of the moon since I gave birth. I admit, I
was expecting you to arrive yesterday or today. Yet I had hoped for a more private reunion.'
His answering smile was sharp with desire; she felt it in her own flesh; maybe the air sang it. The baby stirred.
'Patience, Mai.' He grasped her wrist as his gaze swept along the ceiling with the look of a man deciding whether or not to commit his troops to battle. 'Not here. This valley puzzles me, and I don't like puzzles. I've come to take you home.'
'Back to the Barrens?' She sighed, thinking of how much dried fish she had eaten in the settlement in the Barrens. Atani woke with an exploratory mewl of discomfort. 'Am I going to be exiled to the Barrens forever?'
After all, he was teasing her. 'Home to Olossi.'
He was so close!
After a full turn of the moon, it was no longer forbidden. She could not resist.
She kissed him, and he caught her close, and they forgot to say the formal words in which the father greets the mother of his child and the child itself, who have survived for a full turn of the month without demons finding and devouring spirits made vulnerable by the precious and difficult passage known as birth.
He let her go and stepped back. 'Hu! This is not the place!' He wiped his brow. 'I have been considering the situation. As we have seen, the red hounds can track me anywhere. So it is better to accept the risk and attack in its turn that which we can alter. I'm making changes in how traffic is secured on the roads. Folk can still cross wilderness on deer tracks — we'll never be able to stop that — but we can place controls on the roads and gates that will alert us to anyone who does not belong.'
'Even so, we can never know what lies inside a man's mind,' she said. 'People can be bought, or coerced to act at another's command. And we never know until it's too late.'
'It's said the Guardians of old could know what secrets lay hidden inside a mind.' He scratched at his jaw thoughtfully. 'Such Guardians would be valuable allies.'
'Until they saw into your thoughts! I haven't forgotten the ghost girl who took the form of Cornflower and killed those soldiers! When she looked at me, it was like she tore my heart out!'
'Demons are a different matter. They must be killed.' He touched Atani's coarse black hair. 'Let's go outside. I'd like to look at the baby, where I can see him properly.'
The change in his voice stiffened her shoulders. He walked out, and she followed. The sun had risen high enough to flood the open area with its light. Only Qin soldiers remained in the clearing; Priya and Sheyshi had gone down with the others. Chief Tuvi hastened over as Mai lifted the baby out of the sling and presented him to his father with the words traditional in Kartu Town.
'Here is your son. Son of your seed, son of your blood, son of your bone. Let the ancestors favor him and strengthen him. Let him bring honor to your name.'
The baby's black eyes were open, and he stared gravely at his father, making no sound. Anji took him from Mai as Tuvi waited beside her. Anji's personal guards, Sengel and Toughid, and other senior soldiers filed up behind. Anji placed the baby on a smooth stretch of wall and began to unwrap the swaddling. He glanced up at Mai, who felt unaccountably nervous. What if the baby was not perfect? He was so silent, rarely crying, often sleeping. He was so small! Tuvi set a hand on her shoulder, grasping firmly as if to hold her still.
'Mai,' Anji said. 'I've news from the north. Shai is alive.'
Her legs gave way. She groped for a place to seat herself. As Anji laid bare the infant and examined him, head, genitals, torso, and limbs, she wept.
'A healthy boy,' said Chief Tuvi.
Only after all the senior men had admired the naked baby, nodded their agreement, and offered polite blessings to the mother did Tuvi remove his hand from her shoulder.
Twenty novice reeves were detailed to fly her retinue out of the valley. They could have flown all the way to the settlement, but for the last mey of the journey, Anji insisted they mount well-groomed horses ornamented with ribbons and silver-studded harness and ride in ranks appropriate to the occasion.
It was how the Qin did things.
At the gates, they were greeted with song punctuated by rhythmic clapping, for that was what folk did in the Hundred.
'Enter, enter, we welcome you.
That you walk here is like flowers blooming.'
The Qin soldiers had prepared a feast surely offered only to a prince among the Qin. Vats full of sheep's-head soup bubbled
