"Who do you think they were?"
She was already moving through the brush, pausing at the sloped verge to listen and look. Then she scrambled up, the ginnies surprisingly agile, racing in front of her up the slope. She was already fifty paces ahead before he got on the road, and she glanced back, slowed, and waited, tapping a foot. Birds sang their dawn songs in anticipation of day.
"Come on, come on."
"What's the hurry? The sun isn't even up."
"Just a feeling in my bones."
From Olossi to a short way past the East Riding, West Track ran on an almost due west to east axis, parallel to the River Hayi. Past the East Riding, the river curved to the northeast and the road with it, the river dwindling as it moved upstream toward its source and the road reaching for its terminus at Horn.
Standing on the road, Kesh faced Hornward. Bai faced Olossiward. He began to walk east, not looking back. The idiocy of throwing away coin on a useless old beggar still made him burn. His stomach gnawed at nothing. He was hollow and he was angry. But at least he was free. Even free to walk away from Bai, if need be. From everything and everyone, alone in a way that made a smile tic up on his face every time he bit it down, because if he let that smile hit his face in full he would laugh, or he would cry, and he wasn't sure which.
She padded up beside him. The ginnies were draped over her shoulders like an expensive bit of ornament. She didn't look at him. She said nothing. For a long while-at least a mey-they walked east on the road in a silence that was both at odds and in harmony.
How could anyone be so stupid and pious as to give away coin that recklessly? To rack up debts the way she had?
And yet, did it matter? After all these years of toil, of being separated, they had actually succeeded. They were free, and together, able to walk where they willed and disagree as they wished, and no one to tell them otherwise!
Even the road welcomed them, although it could be said that the road welcomed all travelers. It was the coolest part of the day, and the sweetest. But at last the sun rose above the trees and chased away the shadows that protected them.
"The ginnies smell something that's making them restless," said Bai. The lizards were raising their crests and kneading their feet into her shoulders, tongues flicking as they tasted the air. "I didn't like the looks of those men. That looked like an army to me. Three hundred and twelve. Enough to cause serious trouble."
"Three hundred and twelve?"
"I probably missed a few. Three cadres should have three hundred and twenty-four, plus their sergeants and captain."
He whistled softly, wondering if she were joking, or if she had really been able to count them all.
Her stride caught a hitch; she skipped a step to catch up with him, grabbed his elbow, tugged him to a staggering halt. "Look! Crows and vultures."
North, above the trees, the dark wings circled.
33
On the morning of the third day, the day set for the council meeting, Captain Waras came to their island camp with an invitation to the long-promised baths for Mai, her attendants, and the captain and a pair of men, all that would be allowed to enter the city.
In the inner city, on the low ground near the docks, stood a baths complex fit for a rich man, with one wing for men and another for women. Midmorning, Mai found herself here, seated on a stool in a tiled room while attendants soaped her and scrubbed her and rinsed her with bucket after bucket of lukewarm water, just the right temperature for the hot day. After that, she refused the outdoor soaking pool where, it appeared, men and women sat naked together without the least interest in modesty. Instead, there was a smaller pool hidden in a shaded courtyard with little brightly colored lizards scrambling along the latticework walls, pots of orange and yellow flowers, and a dwarf fruit tree whose ripening bulbs were mottled in greens and pale yellows.
The water was very hot. There were several fires tended and tested by the older woman in charge of this wing which kept the temperature stable and a constant supply of steaming hot water at the ready. Mai was the only customer on the women's side except for Sheyshi and Priya. Sheyshi refused to undress in front of people she did not know, while Priya, after washing, proclaimed the pool water to be too hot to be healthy.
Mai sank onto the submerged bench gratefully. Ah! It had been so long since she had really been clean.
Through the lattice she saw a plain courtyard lined with stone benches and wooden racks on which her laundered clothing had been spread out to dry in the blistering sun. It was already a hot day. There also lay Anji's tunic and leggings, now clean. She leaned back and closed her eyes, imagined him joining her in the pool, the two of them, alone and uninterrupted. This was the lowest tower of heaven, where the song of the Merciful One lulled you and you were always clean and well fed.
"Mai?"
She jolted awake, up to her nose in water. Her unbound hair had made a veil around her, floating on the surface of the water.
"No men on this side! No men on this side!" The attendant had a stick, which she brandished with a well-muscled arm.
Anji, dressed, held Mai's clean and dry clothing draped over an arm. He dropped the clothing on a bench and, grinning as he retreated, slipped out through a gap in the lattice.
"We must leave to walk up to the council chambers, plum blossom," he called over his shoulder.
She was blushing.
The old woman cackled. "Good-looking boy, that one! What a smile! Cocky, though, coming right in here."
"We're strangers here," said Mai, trying out this bid for sympathy. "We don't know your customs."
The old woman spat on the dirt. "Outlanders! I never trust them."
Startled, Mai said, "Why not?"
The old woman sat on the other bench and launched into a complicated tale, only partially understandable, about a southern merchant she had taken a fancy to back in the days when she was young, and how he had treated her badly and broken her heart…
When Mai realized that the story was going to go on for some time, she got out of the pool, dried herself, and dressed, punctuating her actions with a murmured "That can't be!" and "Then what happened?" By the time Sheyshi and Priya were waiting anxiously for her to go, Mai and the old woman-"call me Tannadit, dear heart"-were best of friends.
"I mean nothing by it, what I said before. It's only the southern men, you see. I've never seen a woman before you who came up from the south who wasn't a slave."
"All the men are like that one, who come up from the south?"
"Oh, yes, all of them. I'm sure your man is a good one, though."
"He is. But I'm anxious."
"What about, dear heart? Pregnant already?"
She felt herself flush. "Oh! I don't know. I don't think so. We've been traveling a long way, and…"
Tannadit's wrinkled hand clasped hers. She had a milky gaze. She was blind in one eye and the other was clouding, but her hearing was sharp and her attention fixed on Mai. "How can I help?"
"I just wonder if there's anything we need to know of your customs, so as not to offend you folk. Did you know that in the empire, the priests burn any person who worships another god besides their god? That anyone who speaks out of turn to a priest is put to death?"
"Aui! What monsters!"
"That doesn't happen here?"
"Well! Naturally everyone here worships the seven gods. But if a person wanted to speak her prayers to some other god, that would be on her head, wouldn't it? No one here would take any mind of it. Although why anyone would want to worship that cruel Beltak god, I certainly don't know. Not very kind to women, he is."
"I'm sorry to be so ignorant. Who are the seven gods? How are we to recognize and respect their holy priests?"