Kesh backed out so fast through the curtained entrance that he stumbled as soon as he was outside and fell on his backside hard enough to jostle the ginnies. They hissed at him, and Magic nipped at his wrist as if to warn him to be more careful next time, an "I told you so."
He had forgotten about the ginnies! They had lain so still in the sling that the lord had not noticed them at all. Usually they made their feelings known. Not this time. They had chosen to avoid the man's notice.
The sergeant glanced at him, unamused by his pratfall. "Go back to your post."
He scrambled up, soothed the ginnies, and hobbled back to the sentry post. Best stick to the routine and do nothing, absolutely nothing, that would bring him to the attention of that man and his horrible stare.
He knows all and everything, all my secrets, all my crimes, all my hopes and all my fears. But he let me go anyway.
"Heh," said Rabbit, seeing him return.
"Passed muster," said Twist with a sly, cruel grin.
Kesh grunted a noncommittal reply. Above, the stars shone bright and cold, while the night was warm and the tender breeze a balmy presence. The trees whispered in a mild conversation. A nighthawk kurred. All was quiet.
No, it was only an illusion brought on by the tension of his situation, caught in the midst of an invading force whose soldiers would as easily kill him as spare him. There had been nothing strange about that man, nothing at all. Any clever man might spout truisms like "you are not what you claim to be" and "you're not telling the truth" to the kind of twisted, rabbity men willing to join this manner of army, and know he was hitting the mark.
He had certainly imagined the wings on that horse. It was only the play of shadow in the night.
There, now. That was better. The sergeant was a bigger threat. Did he suspect, or had Kesh truly passed muster? He had to glean any useful information before he made his eventual escape. He couldn't think any other way. Never give in to fear.
"What is the lord's name?" he asked, treading softly on this new ground. Each word was like the snap of a finger being pinned back and broken. "Where does he come from?"
Rabbit shuddered and turned away as the smell of urine spread sharply off him. He had wet himself. He began to weep with small, animal noises. "They scare me," he whimpered. "They scare me. Stop it. Stop asking."
Twist snarled, and the ginnies hissed in answer, crests rising as they stirred along Kesh's arm.
"Best keep your mouth shut." Twist's voice rose in pitch until he fought himself and controlled it with a grimace of dismay. "Best keep it shut and ask no more questions. If you want to stay alive. The lords don't like those who question. That one-he's the kindliest. He only burns you."
"What do you mean? Like he, uh-" Now that he had set out to say it, he realized the words might make them suspicious again, but it would be worse to break off as though he had something to hide."-uh, sets people on fire, bound in a cage, like they do in the empire to execute criminals?"
Twist shrugged. "Eh, I don't know anything about the empire, but that seems a nasty way to go for a poor criminal, nothing quick about it. No. You faced him. You know what I mean."
So he did. All his doubts roared up as he recalled that deadly gaze. He had been cleaned out, every crevice of him burned down to bedrock. Rid us of demons. He needed a plan, any plan, to escape.
"What comes next?" he asked. He could never escape if that "lord" was always watching over them.
"What comes next?" mused Twist philosophically.
"Heh." Rabbit looked back toward the village. When Kesh and Bai had walked through that village, it had lived and breathed; now it was dead. "Heh. Maybe we get a chance ourselves, at some loot. Doesn't seem fair the strike force cleaned this out and left us nothing but their leavings. I'd like to try-heh. Heh."
"Olossi's pretty big," continued Twist, who like the rest of them mostly ignored Rabbit. "Plenty of loot for everyone."
"Oh, yeh, sure," stammered Kesh. "And after that? Then what?"
"How should I know? One campaign at a time, until we're done."
"Of course. Until we're done."
"Yeh. Yeh." Twist scratched the stubble at his chin. "The armies are on the move. High Haldia first. Olossi set to fall in the next few days. Toskala will go down soon after. Or maybe it's Nessumara next, all the cities and big towns, yeh. It won't be long until all the Hundred is ours, just as the lord commander promised us."
39
After Anji and his party returned from town with the bad news, the soldiers accepted it with their usual stoic pragmatism. As twilight turned to evening, they settled down to sleep. Why not? No matter what came, it was best to be well rested.
Anji did not sleep, so Mai sat up by the fire watching him as evening turned into night. He did not pace or curse or appear in any way restless, but for the longest time he did sit on a mat with a fist pressed against his mouth, staring at the flames.
After a while, he gathered his advisors: Chief Tuvi; Scout Tohon for his experience; Mai because it was the custom of Qin commanders to consult their wives; Shai because he could hear the words of ghosts; and-curiously-Priya, whom Anji respected because she could read and write the script used in the holy books sacred to the Merciful One. Sengel and Toughid stood a few paces away, at guard as always, but they were never consulted.
"I am not sure we have been betrayed, because I doubt these Great Houses have much interest in us except that we might bite them at an inconvenient time. We are too few in number to truly frighten them. But I am sure that Reeve Joss has been betrayed in some manner. The question is: What are we to do about it?"
At night it was almost cool, with a lazy breeze teasing the dregs of heat. Mai slapped at the midges swarming her face and shifted to get into the draft of smoke off the fire they sat around. She would stink of smoke, but it was better than being bitten raw. That sweet bath seemed ages in the past. It was hard to believe she had luxuriated in those waters only this past morning.
"If we go back to the empire, we will be killed," said Chief Tuvi.
"If we go back to the Qin, we will be killed," said Tohon. "It would be death without honor, like a starving cur who slinks back to the fire though it knows it will be cut down."
By the light of the fire, Shai was whittling at a scrap of driftwood, shaping it into a spoon whose handle was fashioned as the forelegs and head of a springing antelope. She could see the form come into being under his hands in the same manner she could see thoughts and solutions coming into being and being dismissed as unworkable by the way Anji's expression shifted. But she didn't know what her husband was thinking.
"I have considered every piece of information we know." Anji sat cross-legged on a square mat woven of reeds, just like the one on which she sat. His hands were now folded in his lap. "I have turned it, and turned it, but I have no answers. Some manner of conflict boils among the reeves. Guardsmen resort to banditry to prey on the caravans they are meant to safeguard. Discontent simmers within the Lesser Houses of the council in Olossi because their voices go unheard. Rumors of trouble in the north frighten the merchants, who wonder if outright war or some demon's spawn has poisoned the trade routes between these parts and those farther north. The reeve's bone whistle is worn around the neck of a city guardsman. Where is the reeve, then? Living, or dead? If dead, who killed him? If living, why did he lose his eagle's whistle, and why did the council master claim he knew nothing of the reeve?"