And tent space being limited, if some mercenary squads put up in hostels, that had been winked at, so long as the town magistrate sent no complaints to the higher-ups.
He hoped, as he led the way into the dingy restaurant, that that was the way Ghita's officers ran the army.
Trail-cooking was better than the garlicky, oily mess the Peony dished up. They picked at it, picked out the edible bits, ate the rice, drank the cheap wine and took a collective breath.
Three rooms, stables, meals for the lot of them. "The innkeeper's going to be damn happy," Shoka said. "He was scared when I asked for rooms. I said we were real quiet, I didn't let my company get drunk, and I pointed out with all the soldiers in town he might be glad to have us laying claim to the room down here, we were a real asset—keep the place safe and all."
"What about the camp?" Taizu said.
"We'll take a walk about. I had a talk with the innkeeper—got a little sense where things are—being new in town. Ghita's here, all right, quartered in one of the big houses. The camp's where the line-troops stay, but there's a lot of billets about town, those that can afford it, mostly cavalrymen, a lot of damage—damn loose discipline. I asked him if he ever got soldiers in here, he said not usually, it used to be a lot of workers from the slaughterhouses and the tannery down the street, they were used to the smell and a lot of the other teahouses didn't like the air about them—"
The men had never understood his levity, all this ride long. This time they seemed to, slight, shy humor, down-glancing.
Only Taizu—by the line between her brows—was not smiling. She ate, pulling the bandages with the fingers of one hand to get food into her mouth, drinking and soaking the filthy cloth while she did.
Impatient. Worried. Eyes darting to every movement in the room. He reached out and nudged her leg. "Easy."
She drew an audible breath. "Time," she said in that guttural mutter that was her public voice.
"We're doing fine."
A dart of worried eyes. He imagined the rest of the expression, the thrust of the lip. You're lying, master Shoka.
He put a leg over the back side of the bench. "Come on, boy. Let's take a walk. —You fellows stay close here. Finish your lunch. Get some sleep."
"Where are we going?" Taizu asked as they walked the twisting stone street, past tea-shops and pepper-vendors and shops with hanging poultry and strings of garlic. People jostled past. War was in the offing, but business went on. Wives were stocking larders. Men were carrying past sacks of rice. The prices whitewashed on the boards outside shops were predictably outrageous.
"The camp—take a—" He saw her eyes dart to a passing cart. "For gods' sake, what's the matter with you? Stop jumping at everything!"
"I'm not jumping!"
"You're nervous as a—" Virgin in a whorehouse, the expression ran. "Calm down,dammit."
Another dart of the eyes, a man with a load of lumber. "I'm sorry."
"Just take it easy. You want questions? I don't."
"There's too damn many people!"
He looked her way, grabbed her by the shoulder and hurried her across the street, dodging the yellow streams that ran between the pavings. "That's what makes a city. Doesn't it?" The panic was infectious. It was a weakness in her he had never reckoned on. Damn, she had never been in a town larger than Ygotai; they had touched no more than the edge of Anogi, ahorse and bound out of it as fast as they dared. On the road she had watched the people with that kind of attention, eyes checking every movement. Crazy-dangerous, people would think.
It was everything he had taught her in the forest, tracking every move and every sound that came strange to her, but everything was strange here and there was too much of it, too fast, all at once.
"Shut your ears," he said. "Be blind. Trust my eyes. You're watching too much, too hard. Just wait for my cues, all right? Like in practice. Don't react."
"Yes," she'said quietly. Her stride changed, became easier.
"Just a lot of people. Civilized people. They don't jump at you. Not in broad daylight. Just a lot of racket on these damn cobbles, covers a lot of sound. Echoes off the walls, plays hell with your sense of where things are. New place, new senses. You'll get used to it."
You'd better, he thought. Damn fast.
Take her back to the tea-house, leave her with Chun and the rest—
She can't handle this. She's going to make a mistake. First man who startles her, she II jump—
Berserker. That's what she gives off.
Taizu in the dark, naked shape among the bandits, blade flashing—
Everyone's her enemy but me. All the way from Hua—hiding and running—and two years learning to hear a leaf drop—learning my footstep in the dark, on the dirt, on the porch—
Anyone else—anyone she can't identify—dead. She's that fast. And react is all I've taught her.
This is a mistake, her being here is a mistake, we ought to turn around now and go back—
Horsemen were coming down the street at their backs. She did not turn and look. She was settling, he thought. Of course she was settling, she had never failed, not in any move he had taught her.
Walk her around, let her see the bridge, get the feel of the town, ask a few questions, go back to the teahouse for a drink and have a talk with her in the room. That was the sensible thing to do.
The air smelled of the river before they got as far as the market, and the masts of river-craft, sparse as they were, stood against the pale gray of the water.
A girl from Hua had to stop and stare when she saw it. A boy from Yiungei had done the same thing, contemplating riding that great span on horseback.
Later the youth, learning the marvels of its building, how many workers had died, swept away in the current, how many attempts had failed, how often the footings had given way and wrecked the effort, and how the Imperial Engineers under the then-prince's direction had spanned the treacherous currents first with a pontoon bridge and then with stone carried by barge, to the one favor nature gave them, the subsurface island in the center, and across again, building the stone sections and filling them with rubble—until the great Hisei flowed docilely through stone arches, whole boats able to pass beneath.
"The old Emperor wanted to bridge all the rivers," Shoka said, "but in these times—gods know if it's wise."
"Two carts can pass on that thing!"
"That they can. With room between."
"What are we going to do?" There was an edge of panic in her voice.
"Don't worry about the bridge right now. It's not the important thing. It can't be, yet. Just stay calm." He walked her on, where the bridge street gave out on the old market, familiar enough ground ahead for a farmer-girl, he thought. The camp was on their left, towering walls of buff stone that closed off the esplanade as far as the river-edge. Not yet for that, he thought, looking down the aisles of tents, dislodged from those grounds, rilled the paved esplanade where jugglers and trinket-sellers and artists had made carnivals in peacetime, amid a host of sit-down drink-sellers and pastry-makers. Not nowadays. The whole bazaar had been displaced. Best just wander around a little, get the temperature of the place.
If there was anyone desperately worried these days, it was surely the merchants with bored, off-duty foreign mercenaries walking among their displays. He and Taizu got looks—rough-looking, the dust washed off while they had been up surveying the rooms, but even a washing-down had failed to get the cracks between the plates and weavings of the armor; and the armor-robes had gone to a kind of dim patina of dirt and grease.