"This way." Tohon led them across the pasture and through a second gate, guarded by stone dragons.
Inside lay a stableyard, dirt raked in neat lines. Captain Anji dismounted and gave his reins to Sengel.
"Come," he said to Mai. "Bring Priya."
No one else-not even Sengel and Toughid, who shadowed Anji everywhere he went-was invited to accompany them. There were guards on the walls and a score of soldiers lounging in the stableyard, all armed. The captain's troop dismounted but did not otherwise disperse, as if they expected to have to leave at a moment's notice.
"Are we safe?" she whispered to Anji as Tohon led them into the shade of a long porch. "Who do you think is following us?"
He paused before entering. The terrace was floored with sandstone, recently swept, but the pillars, eaves, and roof of the porch were all of well-polished wood. A youth knelt at the far end of the porch, not even looking up as their footsteps tapped on stone; he rubbed at one of the pillars with a linen cloth.
"We are safe with Commander Beje," Anji said. "Look. There are faces in the pillars."
The subtle faces of guardian animals peered out from the wood. They leered or snarled or smiled, each according to its nature, and as they crossed the porch and entered the interior, Mai had a fancy that one of the guardian beasts winked at her. Inside they crossed an empty room to a wall of screens that, when slid aside, revealed a quiet courtyard. Their shoes crackled on gravel. Like the first room, the courtyard lay empty except for a quartet of low benches surrounding a dry fountain shaped like a tree with bells hanging from the branches. No wind disturbed the bells. It was utterly silent. A sliding door led them into the dim interior of another immaculate room with wood floors and no furniture whatsoever. All the windows were shuttered, filtering the light through white rice paper. The air smelled faintly of cloves.
Tohon slid a screen to one side, and they emerged under an arbor roofed by vines and surrounded by a net of trees, some flowering and some boasting the small green bulbs of early fruit. A multicolored carpet had been thrown down over flagstones, and in the shade a stout man sat on a camp stool, his back to them, whittling. He set knife and carving on the carpet before rising to face Captain Anji.
He was a good ten years older than Father Mei, a robust man with a face red from too much drinking, and the typical Qin smile, generous and quick. "Anjihosh!" He wore slippers of gold silk embroidered with red poppies. On these he padded forward to slap the captain on either shoulder. Anji placed his right hand atop his left and bowed respectfully.
"Good you came." The commander's arkinga was a little different from Anji's. He voiced some of the words in a new way and sometimes used a phrase Mai had never heard before. "Who is this lovely orchid?"
"My wife, Mai'ili."
"Not concubine? She's not Qin."
"No. She is my wife."
Beje studied Mai for what seemed an interminable time. He had black eyes, and laugh lines that betrayed humor, but he looked her over in the same way a discriminating buyer handles peaches and melons, knowing which are ripe and which not ready for sale. She did not flinch, although she was desperately uncomfortable.
The father of Anji's first wife, of whom she knew nothing except that the woman was dead. Some of the aunts had speculated the Anji had beaten his first wife to death because the Qin were known for their violent temper as well as their hearty laugh, but if that were the case she couldn't understand how the father of that woman could greet Anji so affectionately.
"She can stay, then. If she's your wife, I'll treat her as if she were my daughter." He pointed to Priya. "No wife, this one. Why is she here?"
"She is educated. She can read and write."
"A woman of value! Bring khaif for everyone, Sheyshi."
The young woman stood so still within the curtain made by drooping vines that Mai actually didn't notice her until Beje said her name and she padded away through the trees on a white gravel path.
"Is she your concubine?" asked Anji, looking amused.
Beje looked confused. "Concubine? Sheyshi? No, just a slave. I don't like these Marihan girls. They smell funny, but Cherfa likes to be surrounded by pretty things, birds and kits and so on, and she likes pretty slave girls, too. She may sleep with them. I don't!"
"Who is Cherfa?" asked Mai.
"My chief wife. A good woman. She takes care of me. You take care of Anjihosh here, and he'll make you a good husband for all your days."
"Yes, sir," she said automatically, because he was the kind of man you addressed with respect. Then she flushed, thinking of lovemaking.
He chuckled, but turned somber as Tohon brought stools, unfolded them, and they all sat down. There was still no wind, and the air was warm but not unpleasantly sticky. It was so quiet that Mai could not even hear the noise of Anji's troop.
Beje sighed as he settled his bulk on the stool. "I'm sorry, Son. I'm still ashamed. You could have shamed my whole clan and harmed our position in the var's eyes, but you did not."
"It was not your fault," said Anji. "There was nothing you could have done."
"Maybe so. Maybe not. She was a headstrong girl."
Anji's smile ghosted, and vanished. "Precisely her charm." He glanced at Mai but said nothing more.
Beje looked at Mai, too, and nodded as if in answer to an unspoken question. "Truly, this one is a beautiful woman. I have seen many handsome women in my time, but this one I can see has been kissed by the Merciful One with grace of spirit. Still, no need to have married her as she is not Qin."
"A man may keep a knife hidden in his boot in case he falls onto hard times and needs to defend himself when attack is least expected. She is my knife."
Mai flushed again as Beje examined her, frowning.
"Is she? Hmm." They sat in silence.
How odd that it should be so very quiet, as if a spell veiled them. Mai kept her hands folded in her lap and examined first her husband and then the old commander, who after a bit picked up his knife and began to whittle. The whit whit of the knife strokes sounded like a bird's cry, heard from a distance. She couldn't tell what shape was emerging from the wood. Anji sat so still that she would have thought him asleep except his eyes were open, though he didn't precisely seem to be looking at anything. Lost in memory, perhaps. Surely he was thinking of his first wife, whoever or whatever she had been.
Headstrong. She had shamed her family.
That didn't sound promising.
I will never shame him or the Mei clan.
A bug tick tick ed. Leaves rustled. Beje set down his carving just as Sheyshi reappeared, bearing a tray with four painted bowls on it. Now Mai got a better look at her. Her complexion had a richer brown color than that of Kartu people, whom the creator of all had admixed with the clay and sandstone of the desert, and she had a more prominent nose, in some manner resembling Anji's. She had pretty eyes and pretty ways and a pretty smile as she offered Mai a pretty little bowl filled with steaming khaif, a real luxury, which Mai had only ever tasted once in her life at Grandmother's double-double anniversary four years ago, when she had counted four rounds of twelve years. Even Priya was handed a bowl, out of respect for her learning.
They sipped as the servant girl waited, kneeling, by the sliding door. Priya nodded appreciatively, but said nothing.
When they had each emptied their bowl and the heady aroma and flavor had quite gone to Mai's head, making the world seem large and pleasant indeed, Sheyshi collected the bowls and departed through the trees.