Her hair was already pulled back in a mare's tail swishing down her back to her hips. She twisted it up deftly, and Priya thrust the tortoise comb through the mass of gathered hair to keep it in place. Mai walked over to the men.
"A good morning," said Joss appreciatively. He was the kind of man who smiles his admiration but shows restraint in the way he doesn't draw too close. She liked him. He was good-looking in the northern way, but pretty old. As old as her father, probably, although his coloring was so different that it was hard to tell. Father Mei walked old and talked old and frowned old and sighed old, but the reeve had the lively aura of a man who plunges through life because he wants to be happy.
It hit her all at once.
"You're an Ox," she said.
"Mai?" said Anji in a tone that almost crossed into a warning.
Joss laughed. "How did you know?"
"So am I. The Ox is hardworking and pragmatic, with a dreamer hidden inside."
"What gave me away?" He was still smiling, his eyes handsomely crinkled with amusement, and she gave in to the temptation to flirt, even though she knew she should not.
" 'The Ox walks with its feet in the clay, but its heart leaps to the heavens where it seeks the soul which fulfills it. The Ox desires happiness, which is a heavenly gift, but it accepts its burden of service on earth even if it knows that happiness has flown out of its grasp.' And anyway, the Ox is always beautiful."
She was aware at once of Anji's boots shifting on the dirt as a complicated expression altered the reeve's face before he found a harmless smile again. "Does it say somewhere that the Ox is a shrewd judge of character? Or did you serve your apprenticeship to Ilu as I did?"
"I don't know what 'Ilu' is."
He glanced at Anji and made his own judgment. "We'd best begin our trek. It's still five or six days' journey from here to Olossi. I won't rest easily until these two caravans are delivered to the safety of the market there."
Anji nodded, and the reeve left.
"He's been called handsome before," said Anji once the other man was out of earshot. "He's accustomed to the admiration of women. It was the talk of happiness that made him uncomfortable."
She looked at him closely. "You're a little mad at me."
"This is not the marketplace, Mai, and you are not selling peaches and almonds to unsuspecting men who will be stunned into paying full price by one glance from your beautiful eyes."
She raised a hand to her cheek, where Father Mei would have slapped her. "Forgive me," she said in a low voice, but she kept her gaze fixed to his.
He did not smile to soften his words. His voice was low and even. "Do not dishonor me."
"I will never dishonor you! Because I will never dishonor myself!"
Now he smiled. "I am rebuked."
Her cheeks were hot, and her heart was hotter. She was still not quite sure what threat she faced because in most ways Anji was still a mystery. Father Mei would have hit her, and her mother and aunt would have pinched her arms and ears until she cried. It had been easier to fit herself into the walls they shaped than to endure slaps and pinches, but she had passed through the gate and survived the ghost lands. She was not the same person any longer. She refused to go back.
"I want to be trusted," she said softly, "because it dishonors me if I am not trusted."
His gaze remained level. He was no longer angry, but rather measuring and perhaps a little curious, intrigued yet not at all amused. "Honor is all we have. You are right, Mai. I must trust you."
She nodded in reply. That was as far as she could go. She could not trust her voice, and turned aside gratefully as O'eki brought the horses forward.
LATE IN THE afternoon, the wagons rolled into a meadow already fitted for encampments. A covered cistern opened through a series of cunning traps into a trough suitable for watering stock. A spacious corral built out of logs allowed them to turn out many of the beasts. Posts offered traction for lead lines where horses could be tethered. Pits rimmed with stones marked off six fire circles, all of which had iron stakes set in place to hang kettles or cauldrons over flames. Hired men and slaves set to work to raise camp and get food ready.
She made her way on a dirt path that cut through a thick stand of pipe-brush and under an airy grove of swallow trees to the crude pits set back against a ravine. Some kind soul had woven screens out of young pipe-brush stalks and pounded and nailed arm braces against the steep slope for ease of use. There was a great deal of coming and going and, remarkably, a stone basin cooled by trickling water flowing down through an old, halved stalk of mature pipe-brush. As she washed her hands, she noticed a small structure off to one side that almost blended into the foliage. She walked over, Priya and Sheyshi trailing after, but thought better of mounting the steps when she saw it was a shrine. She had been raised in the path taught by the Merciful One. In the empire, she knew, the priests served Beltak, calling him the Shining One Who Rules Alone even though he was only a harsher aspect of the holy one all folk worshiped.
This altar had no walls, only green poles with the shapes of leaves carved into them, a tile roof painted green, and a green rug laid over a plank floor. The rug was woven of thick, stiff grass-like blades as long as her arm, and it had begun to wear away where folk had trodden on it. A walking staff stood within, propped at an angle, so tall that it fit inside the peaked roof. A stubby log sat on its end in one corner, with a bouquet of withered flowers discarded on top.
"I'm surprised the flowers haven't blown away, or been replaced with something fresh," she murmured to Priya. "Is there no bell or lamp?"
"This is no altar for the Merciful One," said Priya.
"I don't think it's a Beltak temple, either," said Mai.
"I see no god," whispered Sheyshi. With head bent, she eyed the shrine as she might a twisting snake whose dance can cause women to fall into a charmed and deadly sleep.
Folk were looking their way, faces obscured by twilight.
"Perhaps we're not meant to stand here," said Mai. "Let's go back."
Anji had staked out the central fire pit, and he stood near its flickering light speaking to the reeve as Mai walked up behind them. They were laughing, and did not see her.
"You are a lucky man, did you know that?" Joss was saying.
"It would be impolite to reply to such a question. If I knew, and said so, then it would seem I am boasting. If I did not, it would seem I am foolish."
The reeve laughed. "I am answered!" He turned, alert even before Anji was, and Anji turned, and saw Mai. Sheyshi scuttled away to help O'eki, who was wrestling with a steaming haunch of venison. Priya paused just outside the circle of firelight.
"Surely you are a fortunate man as well," said Mai, coming forward.
His smile remained easy, but his gaze retreated into itself, as though he were staring down a long straight track into a twilit distance whose landscape was forever veiled from mortal sight. "I am not married."
Day seemed to shift into night with the swiftness of a child whose mood can swing from joy to tears in an instant. She halted beside Anji, but she could not look away from the reeve.
"You have a shadow in your eyes," she said to the reeve.
He looked at Anji, and she looked at Anji, and the captain nodded, and the reeve spoke in a low voice as around them the camp settled into its evening routine of drinking, eating, song, and sleep.
"I gave up telling the tale years ago. It came at the beginning, when the shadows first began to reach into the land, in the north. She was the first one-the first reeve-slaughtered. That was on the Liya Pass. Twenty years ago. Where it all began, when outlaws and cursed greedy lords began hunting down the eagle clans. I still dream about her. I shouldn't have let her go alone. If I'd gone with her…" But he shook his head.