that reminder of the Mei clan, all he possessed was mind and muscle.
He knew when Night came because of the way the voices of the guards changed. Many of the prisoners were taken away and never returned. At dusk, his door was opened. They herded him onto the porch. Out in the courtyard, a carpet had been laid over the gravel and a low table placed on it. A person was seated at that table, hard to see in the gloom.
'Strip,' said the sergeant in charge.
After he stripped out of the kilt and vest, they gave him new clothing, exactly the same, and led him to the table. A pillow waited; he settled cross-legged on its plush opulence opposite the woman wearing the cloak of Night. Her hands were clasped and resting on the table beside a sheet of rice paper, a writing brush, and an inkstone. A lantern had been hooked to a post driven in the ground to her right, its light illuminating her pleasant expression and a lacquered tray with a wooden cup and a ceramic pot.
'Will you drink?' she asked. 'It's a late harvest tea, sweetened with rice-flower-grain.'
'Do you intend to poison me?'
'You're too valuable to poison. You're my hostage for Harishil's compliance.'
The tea had a remarkable aroma that made his mouth water after so long on an unvaried diet. 'I'll drink,' he said, wondering if he could move fast enough to grab the lantern and bash in her head before the archers standing at a remove could kill him.
She smiled, as if guessing his thoughts, then poured. She, too, was sitting on a pillow, and beneath the pillow, sticking out on either side, lay a spear. His breathing quickened. She pushed the filled cup to his side of the table.
He lunged over the table, slamming her back and rolling to one side as he grabbed the spear's haft and yanked it free-
If thunder had shock rather than sound, it might lay a man flat.
Evidently, he blacked out.
When he came to, he was lying flat on his back with three spears — not the one he'd grabbed for — pressing into his chest. His right hand was in a hot flame of agony, and his mouth was as dry as if he'd not tasted liquid for days. His head throbbed.
'Let him up,' she said kindly.
The spears withdrew. He winced as he sat up. Grainy spots of light spun and flickered in his vision, and yet there sat the cloak on her pillow with the table arranged in exactly the same tidy way as if nothing had happened. Only a spot of moisture on the gravel betrayed where the cup had spilled. How long had he been out? The moon had not yet risen for him to mark time's passage by its height in the sky.
'As you have just discovered, not even one who is veiled to my sight can hold a Guardian's staff,' she said in her mild voice, lifting the pot. 'Tea?'
He drank three cups in quick succession, and the spots faded and the pain ebbed, although his hand still hurt.
'What do you want? If I am meant as a hostage to force Hari's obedience, why talk to me at all?'
'' One who is an outlander may save them.' Do you know the phrase?'
'It's from the tale of the Guardians. As a terrible war ravages the Hundred, an orphaned girl begs the gods for peace. The gods raise the Guardians out of a sacred pool and give them gifts and command them to establish justice in the land. But then after all that there is a prophecy that one among the Guardians will betray
the others. And one of the gods tells the orphaned girl that an out-lander will save them.'
She gestured, and a servant crept forward, gaze averted, and took away the tray. The soldiers, at their remove, remained watchful, every gaze fixed on Shai.
'Over the generations,' she said, 'it has become commonly understood that this phrase refers to the land and its people, but in truth, it refers to the Guardians themselves. One who is an outlander may save the Guardians. That is why I need Harishil's cooperation to eliminate those who threaten the rest of us.'
'Threaten you? Your army is the one that abuses and rapes children. That strings people up on poles. Attacks cities, burns villages — shall I go on?'
He meant to make her angry, but her calm was unshakable. 'Certainly you are a young man who speaks boldly. What you are actually thinking, of course, I cannot know, because you are veiled to my sight. By any chance, are you a seventh son?'
The question startled him, not least because of its accuracy. 'Why?'
'Not all the gods-cursed demons are seventh sons or seventh daughters, but many are.'
'I'm not a demon!'
She went on as if he had not spoken. 'Born from the same woman's womb, such a child will see and hear ghosts. Sired by the same father on different women, such a child will only hear or only see. So it is written in temple archives, and so I have ascertained in my time. I was just wondering if it might be true among outlanders as well.'
Was Anji a seventh son, Shai wondered? It was not a question he'd likely ever get a chance to ask. Nor was he inclined to answer any question she asked about him, or Anji. Yet he must keep her talking, to see what he could learn.
'How can you know the phrase about the outlander refers to the Guardians, and not to the land and its people? How can we even know the tale is true as told, and not altered over time as folk forget old words and make up new ones?'
Her smile troubled him because it hid so much. 'Some of us can know perfectly well what was meant, young man.'
'No one can know, unless they were there themselves!'
She looked away from him, as if hiding her gaze, and yet she
was simply beckoning to a servant to bring a new tray, with tea and sweet bean cakes. Hu! Seeing them, his mouth watered. He was so sick of porridge. But he kept his hands on his thighs, refusing to grab.
'Yet Harishil is not the only outlander. Here you are. What is your name, Shai?' She shook her head at his reaction. 'Surely you must realize that old woman in the woods, knowing your name, would have revealed it to me. What do you want? What is your desire?'
To kill you.
'Wealth? Sex? Land? Better food? Children and a wife? Power to rule others?'
'I want my brother back, and then I want to go home.' But it was a lie, because Hari had been eaten by a demon, and Shai could no longer imagine a life in Kartu Town.
'Harishil and the cloak are now one creature. A Guardian.'
'Hari only came to the Hundred a few years ago. He can't have worn that cloak always. Someone must have worn it before him. So if a cloak can pass from one person to another, then Hari can be released.'
'Then he will be dead.'
'Hari is already a ghost. The only difference is whether or not he is your slave.'
Her expression hardened. He drew back, suddenly afraid although she made no move or signal. The tightening of her eyes was threat enough. 'It is easy for you to pass judgment on what you do not understand. Harishil was given the gift of a second chance at living, a chance to repair and restore what had gone wrong in his life before. It is no simple thing to leave that opportunity behind. What of those who sacrificed to bring justice? Who gave everything, risked everything, to help others? Are they, having made one or two small mistakes as Guardians, meant to be destroyed by other Guardians too self-righteous to be merciful? Must I, who am responsible for the greatest act of justice known in the Hundred, stand passively as others judge me? As others call me corrupted? I will not give up my life-'
'You don't have a life to give up,' cried Shai. 'You're dead. All of you are ghosts. You just tell yourself you're alive. But it's a lie. Everything you do is a lie.'
She rose, and he saw in her an ancient power so twisted by fear it had become the opposite of what it was meant to be.
'Do you know to whom you are speaking? I am not to be spoken to with such disrespect.'
'No, I don't know who you are, or what is your name is, or why I should care.'
'I can have my soldiers kill you.'
'But you can't kill me yourself, because I'm veiled. That's how it is, isn't it? You can't kill me, and I can lie to
