"Well! That could be a disaster. Or a triumph."
Mai blushed.
"Just like the Tale of Patience! Love's hopes fulfilled!" Hearing her own voice ring out so clearly, Miravia pressed a hand over her lips and said, through her fingers, "Don't tell Grandmother I said so. I'm not supposed to know such stories. But I do."
"I don't know the Tale of Patience," said Mai. "Will you tell it to me?"
"You don't know it? Everyone knows it!"
"Not where I come from."
"If I tell you the Tale of Patience, you must tell me your story, your life in the faraway land, your marriage, your travels. Your adventures." Like her brother, she had a way of grinning that lit her as with fire from within. "How I want to hear it all!"
"I'll tell you, gladly. Will you have some khaif? I can get a cup."
"Oh, I must not." Seeing Mai's confusion, she added, "I'm not allowed, of course. Only adults can drink khaif."
"Surely you're as old as I am. I'm an Ox. When were you born?"
Miravia bent close, lips almost touching Mai's ear. The intimate gesture made Mai shudder with pleasure. "I was born in the Year of the Deer. But we're not supposed to know about that. The elders call it an ungodly custom, a superstitious way of naming the years instead of numbering them properly. Don't tell anyone. Please."
Mai grasped her hand between hers. "Of course I won't! But I still don't understand. If you're two years older than I am, then how am I allowed to drink khaif, while you are not? Is it because I'm a guest?"
"No, because you're an adult."
Mai shook her head. "I don't understand."
"You're married. And pregnant."
"He-ya! Tay ah en sai!"
The children's voices thundered out in a unison chant, echoed by three unison claps. A woman's powerful voice called a singsong phrase, and the children replied in a penetrating chorus, punctuating each phrase with unison claps. This call and response went on while Mai stared at Miravia and felt as though she had just been overtaken by a sandstorm.
From the veranda, Priya opened her eyes and turned to look toward Mai, a smile blooming on her round, dark face. Sheyshi's head remained bent over her sewing. At length, Mai discovered she still possessed a voice, although it had little enough strength to pierce the roar of the schoolroom chorus beyond the wall.
"What did you say?"
"You didn't know?"
Without warning, a deep clanging resonated out of the earth, so full and heavy that the whole world seemed to vibrate to its call. Mai pressed her hands to the bench. The sound throbbed up through the earth and the stone and into her body. Into her belly. Into her womb.
Could it be true?
Of course it could be true! It was even likely. Probable. Expected.
Yet she could not catch her breath. She could not even think, not with all that noise.
The children's chorus stammered into silence. A little voice began to wail in counterpoint to the shuddering bass roll of the bell.
Miravia rose, face flushed with something other than steam rising off a boiling cauldron. "There cries the Voice of the Walls. May the Hidden One protect us!"
The bell ceased ringing. The sudden, shocked silence lasted long enough for a breath to be drawn in. Then, on those wings, rose a clamor from all around, within the walls and without, as if every person in Olossi cried out at the same time. That roar was its own storm, battering the heavens.
"What does it mean?" Mai stammered.
"The Voice of the Wall is Olossi's alarm bell. When he sings, any person outside the walls knows to retreat to the safety of the walls. Once a year on Festival First Day, we hear him. Today he cries in truth. There must have come news. Bad news."
She looked down into Mai's face, and such a look of pity transformed Miravia's features that Mai began to weep. To think of Anji was to gasp in terror, so she must not think of him. She rose to grasp Miravia's hands.
"How can we find out what happened? Will the council meet? I have to go there."
"We can't. It's forbidden."
"Look!" cried Priya, pointing at the sky.
Eagles.
There were too many to count in one glance, circling above Olossi and then, on unseen winds, soaring away.
Mai had never possessed a reckless temperament. Always she had said to Ti: "The price is not worth what you hope to gain." But Anji had ridden out against impossible odds, because she had counseled the bold choice rather than the cautious one. He might be dead. He might never come back, and she would be alone, pregnant, abandoned in a foreign land, the very thing she had feared most when she left Kartu.
The sound of jangling chimes broke over them. The deep bell took up its tolling cry once again, a reverberation that seemed to crack out of the very roots of the earth. Its voice hammered Mai. Her hands were cold, and her chest had tightened until small shallow breaths were all she could manage.
After all those years tending her sanctuary so she might live with inner peace and no outward trouble, she could not accept waiting any longer.
"I must go to where the council meets. I will walk out those gates and make my way alone if I must, but I will go."
Miravia stared at her. Tears rolled as if jostled loose by the clangor of the bell. "I wish I could say so, and do so," she said in a voice so low Mai could scarcely hear it. "How I admire you! How I envy you!"
"If you can go to the prison, then why not to the council house?"
"To bring food to the prison and the healers' house is all they allow me, and only because the laws of the Hidden One cannot be twisted to forbid it."
"Well, then, dear one, I am sorry for it, if it makes you unhappy."
Miravia was not one to cry. Mai saw by the way she clenched her jaw and sucked in a ragged breath that she was used to swallowing her griefs and troubles, as she did now, but the pain still sat deep in her heart.
"It is nothing, compared to what you face. Wait here. I'll go find Eliar as quickly as I can. He'll know what to do."
"Does he know the law of the marketplace, in the Hundred?"
"Eliar? Surely he does, for you know, he must know it well in order to flout it. Yet I know it well, too. All the women of my people know it. It is one of our chief studies. Why?"
"I am a merchant, just as your people are."
The grin brightened her face. She laughed. "Well, then, my dear friend, let me help you. For there is so little else I am allowed to do."
Mai took her hands. "I'll accept your aid gladly. I swear to you I will repay it one day."
47
At dawn Joss rose with a light heart despite the rough ground he'd slept on and the terrible sights he had seen yesterday afternoon while flying Hornward along West Track. He was exhausted, aching, and still weak, but Scar's presence heartened him as nothing else could. Women might come and go, please themselves and him while they were at it, and that was truly a fine thing, but as long as he lived, he knew that Scar would be his most faithful companion.
Indeed, the eagle had fretted, kept close, brought him a deer. This they had shared in the evening, Joss slicing off a portion to roast over a campfire, while the rest Scar dragged to one side.
In the morning, casting done, Scar bowed to him in greeting and came eagerly to the harness. They had not been aloft for long when the eagle cried a warning. Soon after, Joss saw the first distant eagle, and at once spotted another three, then five more. An entire flight approached out of the east, in a staggered formation with flanks spread wide. It was exceptional to see thirty eagles flying together. They were temperamental and territorial beasts, and on the whole disliked their compatriots. But under the control of their reeves, they would endure most anything. It was part of the magic bred into them in ancient days.