dawn bell. Best you and your company be ready to leave as soon as the sun is up.'
'We'll do what we're told,' said Anji, 'having no choice in the matter.'
As they walked back to their own campfire, Anji said to Shai, 'Do you think that went too easily?'
'Do you think he was suspicious?' Shai asked.
'I don't know. In the Qin territories, no one would have believed that sorry tale. Not after I'd publicly proclaimed her as my wife. Concubines and slaves may be shed and taken at will, but not wives. Still, in the empire, unless she had powerful relatives I did not dare to offend, no one would remark on it.'
'There was a man in Kartu Town who bought a slave. A year later he took her to the priests to have a scroll written to free her of all claim and to make a marriage contract, since he wished to marry her. And he did, and held a marriage feast, too. Three months later she stole his strongbox and fled from town with a passing caravan.'
'The authorities did not catch her?'
'No. It was during the rule of the Mariha princes. The captain of the guard wanted a bribe to go after her, and the poor man had no coin. He tried to sell his land and his business to raise money to go after her, but my father talked all the merchants in town out of taking advantage of his weakness. It was obvious to everyone he had been possessed by a demon. Later, he recovered, and after that he came to our house and thanked my brother, for by then my father had died and my brother become Father Mei in his place. That was the difference between my father and my brother. My brother would have bought land and business at the bargain price, and been happy to do so.'
Anji shook his head. 'The Qin would have brought her back and executed her as a thief. A crime of that sort weakens all of society. It's no wonder the Mariha princes fell so swiftly. They were already like a wood post that is rotten and soft all the way through. Easy to topple.'
'Do you trust this man? Master Calon? If his Lesser Houses have so many people who support them, then why haven't they already overturned the council?'
'They are frightened. They are shackled by habit. Or they are just now testing their strength, which they have only newly discovered. It may be these problems with the roads have only recently made them desperate enough to act. I can't tell.'
At last, swallowing, Shai asked the question he dreaded asking but must ask. 'Will Mai be safe with these 'Hidden Ones'?'
They had come to the fire, where Mai dozed, Sheyshi snored, and Priya watched. Father Mei would have yelled at Shai and struck him for his impertinence in asking such a question, since a younger brother must not question an elder, but Anji rubbed a midge out of his eye instead. His was a thoughtful expression.
'The priests of Beltak, in the empire, hold all men to be as slaves to the god. Those who do not believe are allowed to travel to only a few of the border towns, where they must remain in the markets. Within the empire, if you do not sacrifice to Beltak and pay his tithe, you are executed. Yet they wrote of the servants of the Hidden One with respect. They accounted, especially, any number of instances of their honest dealings. And they complained of their treatment of their womenfolk.'
'How so?' asked Shai, looking at Mai. Fearing for her. She had endured this journey better than he had, if you really counted it all up, but no one could look at her and not think her fragile, even knowing better. 'How do they treat their womenfolk?'
'It seems the servants of the Hidden One allow their women to keep their accounts books. In the empire, women are not allowed to handle money, so you can imagine that this offended and shocked the priests. But the servants of the Hidden One refused to alter their custom, saying it would go against the law of their god. So I am thinking, Shai, that if Mai will be safe anywhere, it will be in the hands of people who let women run their businesses, even if they are hiding away behind a veil. Perhaps especially, for Mai, in a strange land, where her beauty is hidden behind a veil.'
'But how did they know?' asked Shai.
'What do you mean?'
'In the empire, men live separately from women. So you told us. So I saw for myself. How could the priests of Beltak know who kept the accounts?'
Anji laughed, but his laughter ended abruptly when Tohon came out of the brush and began speaking to him. Without answering Shai's question, the captain walked away with Tohon to oversee, Shai supposed, the breaking of camp.
Shai sat down next to the fire and tried to sleep, but he could not calm himself. They were true mercenaries now, taking up another man's fight for coin. If they survived the first test, they would ride into unknown lands, to that town where Hari's ring had been found. At the start of this journey, the idea of actually finding the place where Hari had died had seemed impossible, but now it seemed he might survey the field of battle where, it was supposed, Hari had died. But would this knowledge, his witnessing, bring peace to the Mei clan? These thoughts unsettled him. He sought out Tohon, in the main section of camp. Shelters were already taken down and bundled up. Men made themselves ready. There was nothing for him to do. He was not only extraneous-he was useless. He went back to the fire and watched the lick of flame as it ate up branches. Priya nodded to acknowledge his presence. Mai still slept, and none disturbed her.
The slender crescent moon, the herald of dawn, was rising in the east. A nightjar clicked. A bird whistled, and there came an answering bird song out of the bushes. Out on the water, a few boats appeared, being poled or rowed downstream toward the estuary. Lanterns swayed from their bowsprits, hung on poles out over the water to attract fish. The color of night was fading as the tones of daybreak shaded the world around them and brought life to all those creatures who hid and slept at night, fearing what they could not see.
No different from me. For the first time, he thought longingly of home, of the sere slope of Dezara Mountain, of the tidy orchards and narrow streets, the familiar scents and angles of the town where he had lived his entire life. His brother Hari had left willingly, even eagerly, boasting of lands far off that would welcome him better than he had been welcomed in his father's house all the years of his erratic rebellions and outraged criticisms. But at least Hari had been bold. Shai had been pulled along for the ride, a twig tossed into the flowing stream, nothing done of his own volition but only caught and taken by the current.
A splash sounded in the shallows where a fish leaped. A series of chirrups chased a path through a clump of bushes. A twig snapped under the foot of one of the sentries, who later would be ridiculed for the lapse. Wind gossiped in the leaves, a murmur that never seemed to stop, just as the whispering in Father Mei's house, among the wives and cousins, never seemed to stop. These were his chorus, and after all maybe it was better to be standing here awaiting word of their departure than to be standing in the courtyard once again awaiting whatever crumbs the family would throw him, the seventh and least of sons.
Grandmother Mei had wanted a daughter last of all. That was the traditional way: a daughter to keep at home to care for you in your waning years, since a daughter-in-law, while under your rule, could not be trusted to be as faithful and considerate as a daughter of your own blood and body. But she had gotten Shai instead, and a pair of miscarriages, so he was often reminded, and after that she had withered in the way women do when they grow too old to bear any longer. She had used up the last of her birthing blood on a useless boy.
No, definitely, he was well rid of them all. It was only that he missed the wide vistas and the soft colors, the stormy height of Dezara Mountain and its spacious grazing grounds, and his solitary shelter.
'Look, there!' said Tohon, startling Shai when he appeared suddenly out of the night.
Shai went over to the scout. From this angle, he could see the city walls. A single torch-the second one they had seen that night-reached the city walls and vanished inside. Closer at hand came another splash. Anji came into the light and bent down to gently wake Mai. She woke quickly and without fuss, and was on her feet in a moments, alert and ready.
'Here he comes,' said Anji.
Escorted by Seren and Umar, Iad the caravan master skulked into view. The stocky man looked around nervously as if he hadn't expected to see people's faces, and he retreated to stand in the gloom with his face in shadow.
'I am surprised to see you here,' said Anji, not with anger, simply speaking the truth.
'I'm surprised to be here,' said the man. 'I've been sent as an emissary by the council of Olossi to make a proposal.'
'The council of Olossi?' Not by a hair or a shading of tone or a flickering of the eyes did Anji betray emotion or thought or any reaction at all. 'The Greater Houses?'
