"Have you ever seen so many soldiers?" cried the women around her.
"Yes," Mai said. "When the Qin armies marched through Kartu. One was on its way east, and the other, months later, was marching west. Those were much bigger armies than this one. The one marching east took all day to pass the town, and its rear guard camped within sight of the walls. We saw their watch fires burning all night."
"Would that such an army marched now, to save us," said the women.
Mai said, quietly, "They will."
Scouts probed the locked gates and crude walls of the outer city. Late in the afternoon, they determined they would meet no resistance. Like a crawling mass of black spiders, the army swarmed into the lower town. She could not bear to watch. She crossed back to the view of the north, but even there rode outriders as well. Olossi was encircled. Trapped. Except for the two eagles, the town might as well be alone.
Yet two eagles had come, and both had departed. She only wished she knew what message they had brought, and what message they had taken away with them. Although she asked several of the women, none would answer her question, and she deemed it unwise to push. The prayer bell rang again. They left her. Later, Miravia came alone and begged her to descend for the evening meal. Twilight crept into the sky. Below, the army was looting the lower city. Fires had begun to burn.
"You have to eat," said Miravia.
Mai touched her own belly, barely rounded. If the women of the Ri Amarah had not told her she was pregnant, she would not yet have guessed. She hadn't dared tell Anji, in case they were mistaken. "I know," she said. "Let me go to the others, so they'll know I'm well."
Miravia took her back to the guesthouse. In the company of Priya and Sheyshi, she ate what she could of spicy cabbage and spicy meat and a bland, dry bread that had to be dipped in broth to be edible.
Miravia brought a lamp.
"Is there any news?" Mai asked her.
"I'm told nothing," said Miravia angrily. "Nor will I be, until I am an adult. It seems so unfair, for there are girls younger than I who are married. And you, who have come into our house, you are also left in the dark. Isn't that how the saying goes?"
There was nothing to do but sleep.
DAY ROSE AGAIN, after a restless night. Again, Mai was summoned and taken to the rooftop garden for the women's morning convocation of khaif and sticky buns. The ritual did not alter. The old grandmother would have poured the cups in the proper ritual manner, Mai thought, even with marauders pounding up the stairs and threatening to lop off her head. Afterward, the women cleaned up and departed to their tasks.
Standing at the lattice railing, she surveyed the streets and avenues. Wagons and carts rolled in a steady stream down toward Assizes Square, piled with twists of rag or bundles of freshly cut arrows. Along the battlements, guardsmen assembled, and she thought that women stood among them. At least half of those on the wall held bows or crossbows.
The army out of the north spread like a blight around Olossi, dark and cankerous. Flags and banners fluttered as a wind belled up out of the east. Six catapults had been drawn close during the night, and men bent busily around them. At the rear of the army, several large tents stood in a row, like the early arrivals at the quarterly market fair held in Kartu Town when folk walked many days from hill villages and isolated hamlets to purchase what they could not grow or make themselves. Around these central tents the fence of guards made a triple layer. Lines of men marched to reinforce those troops gathering within the outer town.
Out of the army came a crack, and a fine, high whir, and then the splintering thud of impact as a heavy object hit inside the town. Dust wafted up from a house a couple of streets inside the inner walls. Shouts rang out, and folk ran down what streets she could see toward the stricken compound. Looking back at the army, she saw that the great arm of one of the catapults had swung over. Another was being winched back.
By the main gate, a flag was drawn up on the pole.
"Now they will negotiate."
Mai yelped, because she was so frightened, but it was only Miravia speaking.
Mai grasped her elbow and pulled tight against her. "I thought we meant to fight them."
"The council must purchase time," said Miravia. "I heard my mother speaking of it to my aunt. Master Feden disgraced himself. Now it is up to him to purchase time. He must delay the assault at any cost. It's said he will sacrifice himself to save the city."
Mai did not need to ask what Miravia meant. She knew how the story would go. An official is allowed out of the walls to negotiate with the enemy, knowing he may be first to be killed. He is led to the tent of the general, or the prince, and taken inside, where he stands at their mercy. He talks at length, and speaks of the honor due to his ancestors and to the gods or spirits who watch over his town. He may sing a song relating to the founding of the first trading post at the oasis, how a mare led her sand-blinded master to the spring in the midst of a howling storm. For these acts we must be grateful, for there are those whom we cannot see who watch over us. When the ambush, or the counterassault, comes, he will be trapped behind enemy lines, but his act of sacrifice will save the day-or else it will be in vain, if the city is already doomed, since that is as likely an outcome as any other. She knew the tales by heart. In truth, her own father had related to her the actual story of the coming of the Qin army to Kartu Town, and how the Mariha administrator had met an abrupt death while trying to stall for time in the hope of receiving help from the next staging post to the east, where a substantial Mariha garrison was stationed. He had not known, of course, that the next staging post, and its garrison, had already been overrun.
"You're weeping." Miravia touched soft lips to Mai's damp cheek.
"There's no shame in weeping," whispered Mai.
"No. Our tears water the garden of life. Or so the poets say. Look. Now there he goes. I think it must be Master Feden, but I can't be sure. He's too far away."
The Olossians were distrustful. Rather than opening a gate or extending a ladder, they lowered their negotiator down by basket from the inner walls. For a long time after this Mai could make out nothing of what was transpiring, but at length a procession emerged from the outer walls and struck straight for the central, and largest, of the tents. Most of those in the procession were soldiers dressed in the drab leathers of fighting gear. One was a merchant whose bright silks advertised his wealth because of their splendid colors.
"That's a saffron yellow," said Miravia with the sure tones of one who knows her wares. "It's said Feden is a man well filled with himself, but I must say it takes courage to march to your likely death dressed in your most expensive cloth. He might have left it for his widow, although everyone says they hate each other. And his heirs, no less. Oh dear. Have I shocked you?"
An attendant pulled aside the curtain that blocked the entrance to the largest tent. Mai shuddered as the merchant vanished within, to whatever fate awaited him. Who would meet him there, inside the tent? What questions would be asked? And how would Master Feden answer?
They watched the distant tent. Miravia's fingers dug into her forearm, but the pressure seemed too distant to be bothered about. Mai caught her breath in, held it. What was going on inside? Was Feden spinning a tale to protect Olossi, or spilling the truth and thus betraying his new allies for the sake of mercy from his old ones? It seemed that the wind died abruptly, that a dead calm enveloped them as a shrouding cloth is thrown over the face of one who has crossed under Spirit Gate and left this world behind. It seemed that the skin along her neck tingled as if kissed by a demon. She felt that a hidden gaze sought to pinion hers, and dig deep into her, but she rejected it, she shoved away that sense that her heart was being probed. She had nothing she was ashamed of! Yet, troubled by that pressure, she stepped back from the lattice barrier, shaking off Miravia's hand, and reflexively rubbed her arm until she realized that the other woman had held her so tightly that her nails had left marks in the skin. Miravia swayed, as if hammered, and Mai caught her under the arms and helped her sit on a nearby bench.