Mai was fortunate. She was escaping.
Not that she would think of it that way.
His younger nephew came running, looking important and annoyed. 'What is it?'
'I have to go down,' Shai said, gesturing toward town. 'I'll be back this afternoon.'
'You better be. I don't want to sleep out here worrying about thieves!' He scuffed his feet among the wood shavings and sat down hard on the bench.
Not that there were thieves anymore, not since the Qin took over. Still, no one left good tools and precious wood unguarded, even so.
'What do you have to go down for, anyway?' The boy shaded his eyes and squinted toward town. 'Uh!' He grunted and rolled his eyes, seeing his older cousin far down, retreating on the path. Because of Ti's way of walking, she could not be mistaken for anyone else: all bouncing sleeves, a spring like that of an antelope in her step. 'That Ti! Just a big boiling teakettle, that one! It must be about Mai and the wedding, eh?'
Shai shrugged.
'Make sure you're back here soon. No shirking!' His nephew was eldest son of second brother and, therefore, had more clout than his young uncle Shai, but not enough to overrule Ti's request, because she was daughter of Father Mei. If Ti asked, Shai must go.
So Shai left. An ugly scene would no doubt ensue once he reached the compound, but there was no reason to worry about that on the walk down with the day so fine and the sky so merry and blue. The wind skated up from the east, which meant it was clear of dust torn up from the desert. The tips of the mountains to the northwest could be seen, three deep; that was unusual, quite striking. He thought he heard a hawk's piercing call but when he paused and spun slowly he saw no speck in the sky, nothing flying except one wispy cloud spinning out along the ridge of Dezara Mountain. The slopes still had a hint of spring green in them although they were fading to summer gold. The sheep were hidden above in a fold of land, but he heard a second flock bleating off to the right. That would be the Gandi clan's herd. There had been talk about a marriage between Mai and an elder Gandi boy, but of course the attentions of the Qin captain had cut those right off.
Poor Mai. No wonder she was crying. Still, it wasn't really a surprise. Mai had been doomed from the start.
He stared east, into the wind. Because it was so clear, he could see the old road winding along the mountains for an unexpectedly long way before haze and distance cloaked it. No clouds of dust betrayed a merchant train or travelers. All was quiet and at peace. Shai liked things at peace.
It wouldn't last.
He started down again and soon enough was nodding to the guards at the gate-two grizzled veterans of the town militia who had survived the Qin takeover-and crossed into the verdant oasis of the orchard gardens. The noise of the town was audible but muffled by green leaves and the laughter of the orchard workers. He crossed the Merciful Prayer bridge, passed under the arch of the inner wall, and came out into the sun-blasted citadel square, where no one walked at midday. By the commander's quarters, two stocky Qin soldiers rode patrol, their heads covered by felt caps whose tilted brims shaded their eyes.
The gallows and the posts cast almost no shadows. Widow Lae's remains, dangling from the middle post, clattered in the wind. Keeping his head low, Shai twisted his clan ring three times around his middle finger and walked, trying not to look at the strands of black hair fluttering from the widow's skull and the tattered remains of her red silk tunic, her best garment. Most of her flesh had been picked clean by wind and vultures and sun, leaving these strings of tendons that bound together her bones, the last remnants of hair and clothing, and her ghost.
'I did it!' she shrilled. She was a wraith, more mist than form, a handsome young woman of about twenty although she'd been three times that age when she'd died. 'I'll get my reward soon enough! Then you'll all be sorry!'
The entire town had been forced to assemble to see Widow Lae put to death after she insulted a Qin officer, although everyone knew that she'd been condemned for a more serious offense. A foreign merchant had testified that the widow had asked him to smuggle a letter, whose contents betrayed Qin military secrets, to Tars Fort on the eastern border. At least, that was what the merchant had told a drinking companion at the brothel when they were both drunk. When he'd refused to take the letter, the widow had sent one of her grandsons instead. The young man had never been found or seen again nor had anyone managed to trace his trail, and after the execution all the widow's dependents had been sold into slavery and her possessions confiscated by the Qin commander, who had given the merchant a percentage of the profits. Her distant kinfolk weren't even going to be allowed to bury her bones. So shameful!
No wonder her ghost clung stubbornly to her anger, even though that anger chained her ghost to the earth, to this very citadel square where she had died.
Shai often wondered what had been in that message, in part because naturally he was curious and in part because Widow Lae's death had altered the course of Mai's life. On the day of the widow's execution, with every man, woman, and child of Kartu Town assembled in citadel square, Captain Anji had first spoken to Father Mei about marrying his beautiful daughter.
The walls of the town's many residential compounds closed around him as he left the square and its ghost behind. He whistled under his breath. Father Mei's second wife, the younger of the two sisters, the one who was also Ti's mother, hated whistling. He'd learned to amuse himself softly.
Five turns left, past the town baths, two turns right, and one final left turn down an alley brought him to the servants' entrance to his family's compound, just around the corner from the main entrance. He shook the bell. The peephole opened to reveal two suspicious dark eyes that crinkled up as the unseen mouth smiled.
'Master Shai!'
One Hand let him in and barred the door behind him, the movements smooth with long practice despite the slave's disability.
'Lots of trouble indoors?' Shai asked.
The old man shook his head with a wry smile. 'We are all sad to see the flower leave us, Master. She bears the Merciful One's gentle disposition in her heart, and holds mercy in her hands.'
Shai sighed. No doubt the household slaves would miss the extra food Mai slipped them when she thought no one was looking, and the ointments and infusions she smuggled into their sleeping room when one was sick. It would have been easier to stay up on the mountain than face what lay within. It was tempting to enjoy the sun and the quiet of the courtyard and pretend the rest of the world had gone to sleep.
'Not a lot of people in the streets today,' he said. 'No one out on the Golden Road, either, not as I could see from Dezara Mountain. I wonder if this talk of troubles on the eastern border is scaring people. If merchants won't travel, the markets will suffer.'
'Storm is not going away while you wait out here, Master Shai,' said One Hand.
Shai sighed again, but delaying changed nothing. He crossed the dusty courtyard, pausing twice to savor the shade, once under a peach tree and once under the grape arbor. He went into the house past the whitewashed slave barracks, past the tapestried halls that led to his married brothers' suites of rooms, past the curtained alcove where he and his nephew Younger Mei slept-
He stopped and stuck his head in. Mei had thrown himself down on the bed they shared. He was weeping, trying to mute his noise in his wool tunic, which was wadded up and squashed against his face. Startled, the boy lifted his head. His entire body shook with a gasp of relief.
'It's you! Don't tell Father Mei.'
Shai let the curtain fall and sat down at the end of the bed. The rope base sagged under him, cutting lines into his buttocks; the servants had taken the mattress out to re-stuff it with new straw just this morning.
'I can't believe she's leaving. My dearest sister! We are twin souls! Born together! Now I'll never see her again.'
Since it was probably true, Shai didn't murmur reassurances. He listened for the tread of hard feet, keeping Mei company while he sniveled. Slaves passed twice, but they walked with light footsteps and none were foolish enough to tell tales on the youth who would one day be head of household, should he live so long. Poor Mei. Father Mei and any of Younger Mei's other uncles would whip him for crying if they heard. In a way it was better to be least and superfluous, seventh of seven sons, an unlucky position certainly but one without expectations and demands beyond remaining silent, keeping out of the way, and doing what you were told.
'All right,' said Mei finally. He sat up and wiped his face dry with his tunic. 'I'm ready.' He stood, straightened
