other side. The inner door within the double gates opened, and a young man who might have seen twenty years peered out. Joss smiled at him as the kalos sized him up appreciatively.
'Come in.' The kalos flicked a hand to shoo Kass away. 'I'll see if there are any women wandering free who might find you of interest, not that I can see why they wouldn't. You have any brothers?'
'As it happens, I don't. I was the only boy among more sisters and female cousins than I could count.'
The kalos laughed as he beckoned Joss under the threshold and latched the door behind them. They walked into the outer precincts of the inner garden, an open area paved with flagstones and moss and ringed with trees, bushes, and carefully constructed screens that concealed the greater part of the garden. To the right, a roof topped a bathing pavilion where four men were chatting companionably as they washed themselves while waiting for acolytes to come look them over. Their clothes were draped over benches. Pipes brought water for the rinsing buckets. There was a wooden tub as well, steam rising like breath. Set farther back, half hidden, were a few shelters for private bathing.
'I get the impression you've visited temples aplenty and need no instruction.' The kalos walked over to the pavilion and hitched up on a bench near to one man, starting a conversation.
Ushara's temple contained, like desire, an outer facing and an inner fire. To enter the outer court through the gate was to ask permission to worship. If granted, then within the central court you might loiter while you decided whether you truly wanted to approach, and by subtle signs you were shown whether any within would be likely to grant your petition. Only then did you cross under one of the gates — silver for women and gold for men. Past these gates waited hierodules and kalos, who might approach you according to how you were fashioned, if they so pleased. Water cleansed you.
Beyond that, the inner garden lay bathed in equal parts light and darkness, impossible to discern because of many warrens and walls. There rose an undercurrent of noise something like a constant wind in the branches that made his skin prickle with
anticipation. As well as private bowers in the grass, there were rooms and closets and attics in the farther buildings. Joss was pretty sure that in his time he had experienced pretty much everything the Merciless One's temples had to offer.
Yet even so, never once had he embraced the Devourer without thinking of Marit.
Aui! Wasn't it Zubaidit he'd just been thinking and talking of? He rubbed his forehead, wondering why he had come.
Two young women fetchingly dressed in taloos appeared with empty buckets resting on their hips. They slowed down as they passed the bathing pavilion and looked the men over; then one saw Joss and nudged the other, and they strolled over while the men under the pavilion made laughing complaints about being abandoned for a newcomer.
They looked him up and down, and they looked at each other and smiled.
Whew!
The splash of water startled him so much he looked away from the tight wrap of their taloos and their cocky grins, the vital young who expect admiration. Over by the bathing pavilion, a woman was pouring water into a bronze tub. She was a woman probably in her thirties, maybe one of those who served a shorter second apprenticeship later in life as an offering, or to break the monotony of their own lives, or to escape a difficult clan for a few months, or just because they'd enjoyed the service in their younger days and wanted to remember what it was like. She might have been dedicated to serve her whole life long. She might even have been a debt slave, although she had no debt mark by her left eye. But she walked nothing like Zubaidit; she looked and acted nothing like Marit; she looked comfortable and lush. From the distance she took her time looking him over as hierodules did, for in the measuring they decided whether they'd any interest. Indeed, the act of measuring was its own provocative delight.
For an instant, it was just like the first time he had entered Ushara's temple: Would she find him attractive?
She laughed, as if she could see right into his thoughts, and with empty bucket in hand she sauntered over. The two young women shook their heads as if scolding him for turning down a bite of sweet cake, but they walked back to the men waiting at the bathing pavilion.
The woman halted before him, bucket hanging from one hand
and the other hand set akimbo on the curve of a hip. 'You're the best-looking man I've seen this month, mayhap this year, not that you'll not have heard that line before. Do you need some help finding the garden where the young hierodules sit? Like those two.' She gestured with her chin.
He took the bucket from her hand as she smiled. 'My thanks, verea, but no. I've found what I'm looking for.'
'Commander Joss?'
He hadn't known he was so tired. He woke on a pallet set on the porch in the outer court of the temple, suitable for worshipers too exhausted to make it home in one evening. He had a vague memory of stumbling out here late, the worse for drink but otherwise well satisfied.
He cracked open an eye to see a youthful face looking down on him. 'Kesh, right?'
'Kass. There's, a boat waiting. Tohon says the captain's ship came in. We can see all the ship traffic off the sea, you know.'
The temple had kindly lent Joss a kilt to sleep in. He dressed quickly and slung his kit bag over a shoulder. Dawn had scarcely risen; the captain's ship must have rowed up the channel the instant there was light enough to see. Kass led him to the docks, so furiously not asking questions Joss supposed the lad had plenty of questions he wanted asked.
'How comes it she entrusts you to stand around at all her private councils?' Joss asked as they crunched down the path.
The lad had the wicked grin of a favored child who gets away with plenty of mischief but whose nature hasn't been spoilt to souring. 'I'm her great-grandson. Her daughter chose the path of a mendicant. Her son — my father — offered at the Witherer's altar and was able to marry into a farming clan. I'm in the middle of eight children, too many to feed. They sent me here when I was five. I'm not a kalos, you know, even though I'm old enough.'
'Do you serve the Merciless One?'
'I haven't served my temple year yet. I haven't discovered which god I'm best suited to serve.'
Joss laughed. 'And to think you've got that hard-hearted old woman keeping you here in luxury while you take your time making up your mind.'
The lad sobered as they approached the docks where Tohon waited. Mist rose off the waters. A heron flapped across ripples.
In the shipping channel, merchant boats sailed downstream for the sea, oars dipping in the placid water where the current broke into a dozen smaller channels. The River Olo's estuary was but a tiny spray of channels and islets compared with the vast delta in which Nessumara nestled.
'You'll send word of Bai, won't you?' Kass asked in a low voice.
'If I can. The Hieros will hear as soon as anyone.'
Tohon greeted him, and they settled into the boat as the oarsmen shoved away from the pier. The oarsmen worked upstream to Dast Olo through a backwater channel. Red-caps flitted among the reeds. A fish's silver back parted the surface. The oarsmen worked in silence, and Tohon seemed content to watch the banks slide past under the early-morning sun.
'Have a good night?' Joss asked finally, rubbing the last of the muzz out of his eyes.
Tohon tugged on an ear as the boat rocked under them and waves slapped the side. He didn't reply.
'Sorry. How'd you hear about Captain Anji arriving?'
'I saw the ship pass at dawn. There's a tongue of land at the point of the island, out behind the buildings. You can see where the river meets the sea.'
'They made a quick journey of it.'
'The captain has that habit.'
A woman knee-deep in mud, pulling a trap out of the shallows, lifted her gaze to watch them go by. She waved gnats away from her face as she stared at the Qin soldier, then shrugged and went back to work. Huts clustered on hummocks and racks of drying fish marked the edge of the village.
In Dast Olo they rented horses for the ride to Olossi. Joss offered the usual deposit to the stablemaster, to
