"Do the Sirniakans think of the Qin as enemies, or as friends?"
"Best hope the official who rules the lands out here got the news that the Qin are allies now. Maybe he didn't. Anyway, even if they treat us as friends, they'll have orders to kill Captain Anji. If they can catch him. If they figure out who he is. Go on. Send Jagi up to finish the butchering."
The hooves of Shai's horse kicked up dust as he rode back the way they had come. Captain Anji deployed many layers of scouts. Soon enough Shai hailed the second rank forward, and sent Jagi ahead to join Tohon while Pil headed off the path to signal the two men riding singleton as rangers, one to either side. As he rode up to the main company, he saw Chief Tuvi call a halt. It was an impressive group that made a lot of dust with a big herd of horses and over two hundred mounted men, Mai, and the slaves: Mai's two female attendants, Mountain, the nine bearers, and a youth who had seen them at Beje's villa and been given a choice between death or exile.
"What news?" asked Anji as Shai came in.
Mai bent close to listen. Her cheeks and forehead were powdered with dust, and she had wound a cloth tight around her hair to keep it as clean as anything could be in these conditions.
Shai repeated Tohon's words. There came after this a silence as the captain considered.
"Avoid, or confront?" asked Chief Tuvi.
Anji shaded his eyes. He was scanning the heavens. His gaze had caught on the same pair of hawks that had gotten Tohon's attention. Shai could see them now. "No choice, I think. The highlands will pinch off these high trails and leave us stranded. We have to dip into the lower lands to reach the road that leads north into the Hundred. There will be some smaller towns, but we aim for the market town of Sarida. That's where we'll find our caravan."
"How do you know this?" All looked at Shai, who had rudely interrupted the considerations of the captain.
"You talk too much," remarked Chief Tuvi.
Anji replied with no change in expression, watchful as he examined the raptors. "A boy in the palace is trained in an exacting manner. The palace priests command a map room with every temple and way station marked on a vast table sculpted in the manner of a model of the land itself. Every mother of a royal son would whip her boy if he answered a question wrong."
"Were you whipped?" asked Mai with a laugh. She was the only person bold enough to ask, and not be scolded for asking.
Anji did not smile. He did not frown. The hawks interested him more than the question. "Never," he said, absently. "Never would I have given my mother any reason to be disappointed in me. Tuvi. Pull in the scouts. Mai. You must play a part."
"Yes." She agreed without asking what part she must play.
Shai envied the trust and loyalty she granted her husband. Yet what choice had any of them? They were riding into the enemy's country now, and Anji was the only one among them who knew the lay, and the law, of the land.
17
In the Sirniakan Empire, women of rank did not appear in public.
For weeks now Mai had ridden in the open air, and she had come to feel comfortable on horseback, breathing the wind. The palanquin had been carefully broken down into pieces and loaded onto packhorses. The bearers, now accustomed to riding rather than bearing, must regain the strength to carry the palanquin all day without faltering.
As soon as they entered the empire, Mai became blind and soft. Off came the sturdy trousers and calf-length felt coat worn by the Qin. In silks and pillows, she became a royal concubine being sent to the north for unspecified reasons and escorted by a band of slave mercenaries from the palace guard who carried a palace warrant. All this she heard secondhand, or strained to hear through beaded curtains at the many toll stations where Anji's credentials were challenged and, inevitably, accepted.
She listened to the empire and heard many things: the bark of military commands at each checkpoint; the rattle of wheels on stone as they passed carts and wagons; the pounding of hooves and the slap of feet on dirt; the lowing of cows and the bleat of sheep. Water wheels slurped and spat; hammers beat in passing rhythms; laboring men sang working songs in gangs whose melodies rose and fell in volume as she came closer and then was carried away. Towns, she recognized for the clatter of stone beneath them, and because of the incessant clamor of male voices. It was loud even in the market district where an inn could be bespoke for a midday rest or a night's sleep. According to Priya, they never went in through the inner gates of any town they passed. The royal warrant bought all, yet Mai saw nothing except the inside of the women's quarters. These consisted most often of a courtyard surrounded by whitewashed walls and paved with polished white pebbles. Here the palanquin would be set down, and a simple room prepared, stripped of all furniture and its rice-paper-covered windows nailed shut.
"You must not be seen," Anji had said to her before they left the ridge trails and rode down into inhabited country to set foot on the imperial roads. "Not even by the Sirniakan women who will serve you. They must deal only with your slaves. You must use only your own utensils and bedding. No royal concubine would touch any item handled by commoners."
White rooms and white courtyards, and herbs whose perfume leavened the stark gardens; scent was all that relieved the monotony of her days. The food was simple, tinted red and green and yellow with spices she had no name for and whose aroma made her queasy. Usually they had for their drink only a hard wine that left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth and a sour feeling in her stomach, but sometimes there was also a sweet juice, the best thing she had ever tasted and which she could never get enough of. More rarely, she was offered a comforting cup of khaif.
Anji did not come to her. He was merely a captain assigned to escort her, and they could not chance that someone might suspect that the truth was different than the tale he spun. Spies were everywhere: children giggling behind unseen peepholes; female voices murmuring on the other side of closed doors; more distantly the shouting and arguments of men and often the boisterous song of drunken men out on the streets just after sunset, following by the ringing of bells and the profound silence of night's rest. Priya and Sheyshi went about with heads and necks and mouths and noses covered, only their eyes left to them. Otherwise they were hidden in vast shawls that covered them to the ankles.
"The most beautiful silks," Priya reported. "Inside the home, the women are most beautiful and dressed as richly as queens. Loose silk trousers and long silk jackets that reach almost to the floor and are clasped with braid across the torso. I wish you could admire the fashion here."
"No one will ever believe I am a royal concubine if I am not dressed in the proper manner. These jackets and robes from Kartu are well enough for a woman of the Mei clan. Yet I wonder if they would seem poor to a royal concubine. You must say we met with some manner of trouble on the way, my wagons lost in a ford when we crossed. When we come to a town with a proper marketplace, it will be necessary for me to replenish my wardrobe."
Through Priya she sent this message to Anji, and soon thereafter, at each stop, silks arrived, gifts from local lords and magistrates hoping to curry favor.
Here were colors to delight her-marigold yellows as intense as sunlight, coral reds and blood reds and rust reds, joyous oranges and plangent blue-greens-and patterns to astonish, blossoms and vines and bulbs and leaves, every manner of floral gaudery both woven and embroidered in the style proper to a woman of rank.
"I will die of boredom in this seclusion," she said one evening to Sheyshi as they sat in a narrow room whose white walls and papered windows oppressed her. "How soon will we come free of the empire?"
"I do not know, Mistress." The Mariha girl was combing Mai's hair in long strokes. She seemed content enough. Mai thought it possible the girl was a little stupid. No fault of the girl's, of course. Sometimes things just worked out that way.