strode into the chamber with his gaggle trailing him in the manner of nervous goslings. Attendants shoved the doors shut, screens colliding with other screens in a series of sharp reports like staffs whacking wooden targets.
That nasal soprano rose again, calling the council to order in rapid-fire words Mai had trouble following; at speed, and muffled by the closed doors, the differences in pronunciation and phrasing made it difficult to understand. The long wait and the stifling heat had turned her thoughts to mud. She found it hard to concentrate as words and comments emerged from the council hall.
'… never allow outlanders to settle… bad luck… goes against the gods…'
'… fools not to hire out a guard for caravans going north.. '
'… we must get the trade going again!'
'… no need, the road is still safe…'
A burst of furious and disorderly disagreement, shouted down.
'… no news from the five-flags caravan that left after the rains…'
'… no trade out of…'
'… desperate!.. need that wood in order to…'
'… you have stuck your heads in the sand… the threat.. '
'… perfectly safe… this other is exaggeration… heavy rains have washed out the roads…'
A loud voice penetrated clearly. 'Rains! Last year's rains, perhaps! How long must we wait while our commerce dies?'
Others took up the call. 'We have lost patience…' And were called to order.
'Strange,' said Anji in a soft voice. 'Any merchant of Sirniaka speaks the arkinga, but the holy language of the empire is nothing like the same, although bits of it show up in the trade tongue. We among the Qin have our own speech, but most of the Qin who ride the Golden Road also learn the arkinga. So do the folk in Kartu Town. Yet haven't you an older speech there?'
She was startled. 'The grandmother words, we call them. I knew enough to speak to my old aunt, though she's dead these ten years. They still speak that speech in the temple. The Qin forbade its use in town. Everyone uses the arkinga now.'
'Here, too, it seems they use the arkinga, not just in the marketplace but in their council halls. Maybe it came from here first.'
'Can a language travel?'
'It must, just as folk do.'
Of course that was obvious, once you thought of it. Mai blushed, not liking to look stupid; it was the worst thing people had said of her in Kartu. Good thing she's pretty. She hasn't otherwise many eggs in that basket. Not much to say! Not like the chattering of the others, which they kept at all day. Better to keep your mouth shut to keep people guessing than to open it and prove yourself a fool. How glad she was to be rid of her family!
She smiled a little, thinking of it.
He brushed his fingers over her left hand.
'What are you thinking?' he asked her softly.
'Are you nervous?' she asked, surprised he had touched her in public.
'I suppose I am,' he said, savoring the moment of consideration. 'We can't go back.'
It was true. The thought of returning to Kartu Town was like poison. In a way, it was a blessing that they had lit a fire behind them in the empire. They dared not travel back that way. And could not return whence they had come, because Anji's life also was forfeit in Qin territory.
A hush fell abruptly within the hall. On its wings, a door slid open. Captain Waras appeared and beckoned to them. 'You are called.' He surveyed their attendants, and motioned that the slaves and soldiers must stay behind.
Anji rose, waited for her, and strode confidently into the hall. She could not match his stride, so walked with clipped steps, trying to remember how to glide, how to compose her face into an expression both pleasant and unthreatening.
The hall opened above them, crossbeams floating away into shadows; the opened windows fed light mostly onto the floor of the hall. In such a building it was easy to imagine mysteries and secrets and whispered intrigues despite the crowd that jammed the space now. Benches were packed with seated people crammed in legto-leg; more folk stood behind them, elbows rubbing the backs of heads, or lined up along the back of the room and along the side aisles against the windows and even up on top of the long strip of bench that ran along each of the long outer walls. Every human emotion was displayed among those faces: a sullen old man; disdain and envy in a pair of elegant women; a bored girl, half sleeping with chin propped on a hand; anger in some faces and bitterness in many; a woman who looked frightened and a man who looked sardonically amused; that handsome young man from the entryway who was now, oblivious of all else, flirting with a pretty young woman dressed in a gorgeous length of gold-white silk wrapped cleverly around her body in the fashion that most of these women wore, a costume both discreet and enticing. Mai looked for the father, but he stood a few steps away from his son and had his attention fixed on the council table. The broken-nosed reeve stood with his back to the far wall, watching with an ugly sneer on his face.
A rectangular platform was built in the center of the hall, crammed between the innermost interior columns. At one end of this platform was a roped-off section; the rest was taken up with an enormously long table that had the center cut out and one end open. Around the table sat-she had the gift of counting quickly-thirty-one council members. The grand gentleman sat at his ease, smirking. The proud lady yawned as if to say that her time was too valuable to waste on such trivia. The ancient woman sat hunched in her chair, with a young attendant whispering into an ear. One at that table could not hide the cloud of anger on his face. He tapped the fingers of his left hand impatiently, repetitively, and with a reckless energy. Some glanced at him with a flash of annoyance in the grimace of their mouths or the narrowing of their eyes; others ignored him; a few looked at him with anxious mouths and then glanced toward the silent reeve, if that's what he was. These were all signals to one trained in the exacting commerce of human interaction. The restless council member didn't matter to the others seated at the council table, she realized. He was the odd man out, and somehow it was the presence of the observant reeve they wondered at, and worried about. Yet time and again, the restless council member glanced into the crowd and met the eye of some attentive soul, like the turbaned older man. Then he would nod, acknowledging that one-or another-or another. He had a huge following in the hall. He did not look once at the reeve.
In the open section where the table had been cut away, at a minuscule writing desk, sat the harried clerk, pen scratching on paper. Next to and above her stood an elevated platform not much more than a stride's length squared, ringed with a railing that also served as the ladder to get up and down. Here presided a small woman wearing a brilliant peacock-blue robe belted with a wine-red sash. Her hair was mostly hidden by an artfully folded kerchief of an eye-dazzling yellow that did not, in truth, flatter her complexion.
'The suppliants approach,' she cried in the nasal soprano that had opened the proceedings. She bent an arm, gestured, and the caravan master stepped up onto the platform. 'Master Iad, do you give witness that this is the mercenary captain who guarded your caravan from the town called Sarida in the empire and over the Kandaran Pass here to Olossi? That this is the woman he names as his wife and business partner?'
A second attendant scurried over to hand Master Iad a lacquered stick.
Taking it, he spoke. 'I do witness it, in the name of the Holy One, Taru the Witherer, to whom I served my apprentice year.' He looked at Anji, nodded with a flicker of movement in the way his mouth turned down. A message, but Mai could not interpret it.
'Will you state, again, that they misrepresented themselves to you when you first met them at the caravansarai in Sarida.'
His mouth twitched. He rubbed his right eye with his left hand. 'They did, but as I said before, they were completely honorable and discharged their obligation-'
'Step down, Master Iad. You are finished.'
Master Iad flinched, and hesitated. Before he could speak again, the attendant snatched the stick out of his hands and scuttled away to stand behind the writing desk. With a shake of the shoulders, the caravan master stepped down. If one could judge by the rush of emotion that softened his taut expression and heightened the color in his cheeks, he was either grateful to be released from cross-examination, or shamed by his own testimony.
'Let the suppliants step forward.'
Anji and Mai stepped up. Out of the back of the hall, from the direction of the handsome young man, burst a
