you. How that must rankle.' What power words had! With each stab of sharp words, he felt her anger grow. 'Yet if you have me killed, then you have no hold over Hari. And you need him, don't you? Him, or someone like him, a cloak you can control and corrupt. That's what Bevard is, isn't it? And Yordenas and Radas. You discovered their weakness, and you corrupted them. But Hari isn't proving so easy to corrupt, is he? Part of him is weak, but the part that is my beloved brother is strong, and he's fighting you.'
He'd overreached; he felt her anger swallowed as the stillness that follows a cessation of blustery wind, and he tensed, waiting for a blow. She swept up the brush, paper, and inkstone and tucked them in a sleeve. She extricated the spear from beneath the pillow on which she'd been seated.
'You are correct,' she said softly, 'that Harishil can be released from the cloak if he proves unreliable. It has happened to others before him.'
'Five to kill one, isn't that right? Without Hari, you're still one short.'
'So he may have told you. So he may believe. But there are other ways. Maybe you will be next, Shai. What would you do, if you were to awaken as a Guardian? Were you to stand on the threshold between death and life, what would you choose?'
He rose, and the soldiers stiffened, raising their weapons, but he opened his hands to show himself unarmed. As he was, except with words. 'I would do what is right.'
Her smile twisted condescendingly. 'So do we all say, at first, thinking we know what is right, and that what is right is easily known. It is easy to pray in ignorance and innocence that peace return to the land' — an expression chased across her face, fleeting, frightened, and quickly controlled — 'but to have to live for generation after generation with what you have yourself called forth, and the burden and struggle it entails, to see corruption strike and be helpless against its rot, again and again and again, that is not so easy, is it? Not when you are the one who will be blamed.'
Skin prickling, uneasy and indeed in some manner revolted, Shai took a step away, and she flinched, as if his disgust actually hurt her.
'Who are you?' he asked.
She gestured to the soldiers. 'Take him back to his cell. There he will remain until I — or the gods — free him.'
'This is to be my new home?'
From the porch of Mai's house in the Barrens, Miravia surveyed the town of Astafero sprawled down the slope below them. Mai held her hand, enjoying Miravia's unadorned pleasure as her friend scanned the vista with its staggering mountain peaks in the west and the green-blue waters of the Olo'o Sea shimmering in the early morning light out of the east.
'It is a dry and dusty place, nothing special,' said Mai. 'I spent many lonely hours here. The market is small.'
She glanced through open doors into the audience chamber where Anji sat listening to Chief Deze give a report. Tuvi was standing behind Anji, holding Atani — at any gathering of senior Qin officers, the baby was passed from one soldier to the next — and there were other officers, most Qin but two local men were in attendance as well as the Naya Hall submarshal and her chief reeves, Etad and Miyara.
'Maybe it is not allowed to go to the market,' Miravia added, accustomed to disappointment, 'because you were attacked by red hounds from the empire.'
'That was months ago. Now the militia guards the roads, and the Hieros's spies watch everywhere else.'
'I should like to be a spy, only I suppose my looks would betray me. Like Eliar's betray him.' She sighed abruptly, releasing Mai's hand as she stared toward the mountains. 'What do you suppose has happened to-' She coughed, shoulders tense. 'There was another person who went south, wasn't there?'
Mai put an arm around her. 'Keshad? I hope he's a good spy. He's a precise accountant and a good merchant. But very emotional. He is deeply attached-'
'To a woman?' Miravia's voice was sharp as she stepped out of Mai's embrace and into the sun; the light flooded her flawless skin and brush-tip eyes.
'His sister. Like you and Eliar.' Mai forced a smile. She did not want to speak of Eliar, who had traded away his sister's happiness for a chance to play at spying. On such a glorious day, it was easier to signal to Chief Tuvi, who handed Atani over to Chief Deze, where the baby settled comfortably. Anji's gaze flicked to Tuvi as the chief nodded, and Anji's right hand shifted. It had taken her months to learn to see the small signals the Qin used among themselves.
Tuvi walked up. 'Mistress?'
'We want to go down into the market, Chief. It is likely to be safe, is it not?'
'Safe enough, Mistress.'
'Will the officers be wanting tea?'
Tuvi looked surprised, then gestured toward the chamber. 'Did you not already order Sheyshi in with the cups? For there she sits.'
'I did not!'
Yet the young woman was seated in the shadows behind Anji. A tray with tea bowls and a ceramic pot sat next to her, but by the way her head was sagging forward, Mai guessed she was dozing off, no doubt bored by the lengthy reports concerning the spacing and timing of patrols along the network of roads and paths in Olo'osson.
'How odd,' added Mai. 'Priya must have told her-'
'Priya went to the baths.''
'Of course she did, at dawn. Hu! Perhaps Sheyshi thought of bringing the tea herself!'
She and Tuvi laughed at this absurd notion as they started walking down the hill, paced by their escort, but Miravia was not amused.
'Is it not wrong to belittle her? Besides that, why should any slave show initiative when they take no benefit from their labors?' She glanced at Mai and flushed deeply. 'Begging your pardon, Mai. I do not mean-'
Mai took her hand. 'I value your friendship because you are honest. Do not change merely to spare my feelings. I know you disapprove of slavery. That you wish I did not keep slaves in my own house.'
'Certainly you treat your slaves with more consideration than many do, Mistress.' Tuvi kept pace beside them with one hand tucked around his sword hilt and the other hanging at his side, his posture relaxed although Mai knew he was always alert, eyes and senses attuned to potential dangers.
'You gave me shelter, Mai. I don't mean to slap you in the face for it.'
'Neh, let's get it out in the open now you live with us. You must see every day that Priya, O'eki, and Sheyshi are slaves.'
'Not to mention the many debt slaves working off their debts here in the settlement,' added Tuvi with that typical Qin instinct for going for the throat. He nodded politely at Miravia. 'It is all very well to hold such views, just as it is all very well to chant prayers in the temples, but when we walk through the world we walk through things as they are. I had an older brother who became a priest of the Merciful One. I w,as a small boy. Once a year I would ride with my mother and sisters to visit him. How I admired him and the handsome temple buildings! He even learned to read the holy script, ring the bells, and chant the holy words. Then war came. He and his brother priests were cut down in the hall and the gold ornaments and silk vestments taken by soldiers. So I thought after that, that it was better to be a soldier.'
'Did he not pray to the Qin gods?' Miravia asked. 'Did he turn his back on the faith of his own people?'
'We Qin are not like you other folk. Our ancestors quarrel, and we are involved in the quarrels since we are their children. Besides that, the heavens watch over us. But that does not mean another holy one cannot walk on the earth. The Merciful One walks in some hearts and not in others. Yet a prayer does not stop a man, or a woman, from becoming a slave. Priya could tell you that. She is a wise woman. And like my older brother, she can read.'
'Among my people, all children are taught to read. Isn't that better?'
'Yet you chose to flee your own people rather than remain among them in the marriage they had chosen for you,' he replied. 'So maybe you did not like that life so much among your own people who do not approve of slavery. Is it not to a form of slavery you compared the betrothal? If you believe the men of your people treat their women as slaves, then how can you condemn other people for keeping slaves or owning a debt that must be worked off by
