Traitors Gate

The captain stabbed a slice of spiced meat and popped it into his mouth. Keshad copied him, gaining a respite while he chewed and swallowed. The meat was moist and peppery.

'Have you some reason not to trust him that I should know of?'

The captain was sleek in all aspects; dressed and shod well, he carried a fine sword and rode a string of beautiful horses with roan coats like enough in texture and color that Kesh supposed them bred out of the same stable. 'He might be a spy.'

'So might I, then, as we are business partners.'

'One partner may not always know what the other plots in the shadows.'

'True enough. Eliar is decent enough, for a Silver.'

'A Silver?'

'That's what we call them in the Hundred, Captain. For the silver bracelets they wear on their arms. It seems your chroniclers called them the same.'

'He's like a creature out of a story walking into your father's palace. Does he have horns?'

The captain looked very young, and Kesh realized they were of an age but separated not by their lives as men of different countries but rather by the circumstances of their birth. Kesh was born to a humble clan whose kin had seen fit to sell him and his sister into slavery when their parents died; Jushahosh was born into a palace, son of a noble lord with many wives and slave women and therefore many such lesser sons.

T don't know,' Kesh said confidingly, leaning closer, 'for he clings to his privacy, as his people do. I've never seen him without the turban covering his head.'

They shared a complicit smile.

A prisoner who is a foreigner pretending to be a legitimate merchant only while being in truth secretly a spy and who fears he is being taken south to be burned as a spy must yet attempt to gather information, in case he gets out of his current situation alive.

'Strange to see the Qin soldiers here,' he added, nodding to-

ward the circle of fires where the Qin had set up their own encampment. 'Are they under your command? Do they take your orders? Don't they speak a different language?'

'Their chief can talk the trade language, just as I can. What they jabber about otherwise I don't know, but I suppose they mostly talk about sheep and horses.' He flashed a grin, and Kesh laughed. 'You're familiar with the Qin, eh? Seen them up in the Hundred?'

Sheh! Caught at his own game.

'I've heard of them, all right. Did I tell you the story of the journey I made into the Mariha princedoms? Two years ago, it was. I never saw so many strange creatures as out on the desert's borderlands. Didn't think I'd make it home. The Qin were the least of it!'

'What did you see?'

Kesh could embellish a story as well as anyone, for tales were the breath of the Hundred, exhaled with the beat of the heart and a lift of the hand. 'Demons, for one thing. Maybe you call them something else here.'

'No.' His gaze flicked, side to side, as he twisted his cup in his hands. 'What did they look like?'

'Ah. One was a woman-'

'Of course!'

'Her skin was as pale as that of a ghost. And her hair was the color of straw.'

'Truly a demon, then!'

'Her eyes were blue.'

The captain had just taken a mouthful of poocha. He spat it out, coughing and choking, as Kesh sat rigid. But the man waved away his slaves and laughed through his coughing. 'Horrible to look upon! Go on.'

Kesh dropped his voice to a murmur as the captain bent closer yet. 'She was enveloped in an enchanted cloak of demon weave, like cloth woven out of spider's silk. And beneath that cloak… she was unclothed. That was the other way I knew she was a demon.'

The captain's eyes flared with shame and heat; a flush stained his cheeks. 'What did she looked like, underneath?'

'Exalted Captain!' A junior officer, wearing his watch duty sash over his green jacket, came running up, his face slicked with a sheen of sweat although the evening was only moderately humid

and warm. 'There's a company of men upon the road. Imperial guards.'

A blast from a horn brought the captain to his feet. He strode off toward the lines, where lamps bobbed along the length of the road. In his wake, slaves gathered up tray and stool with the same swift grace they'd shown in setting it up. Kesh speared meat off the platter before they could whisk it out of his reach, and a slave waited impassively until he'd gulped down the strips before taking the eating knife away from him and following the others to the captain's tent. The junior officers set down their cups and charged off, chattering excitedly. Kesh hurried over to the fire and plopped down beside Eliar.

'Is there anything left to eat or drink here?'

Eliar rose, stepping away from him as if he bore a stench. He stared toward the lights half seen along the distant road. 'Do you think there might be a skirmish? How can you possibly think of eating when-?'

'You eat when there's food. No telling when you'll get more.' He hooked a triangle of flat bread off the common platter and crammed it in his mouth. He managed to down more bread and a crispy slice of a white vegetable, still moist and a little peppery, before servants descended to collect the trays and cups. Eliar was bouncing on his toes as if movement would help him see over the ranks of soldiers gathering amid the tents. Out by the road, men shouted, so much tension in their tone that Kesh rose likewise to stand beside Eliar.

'If they start fighting, make for our tent. We might have to run for it…'

Eliar grabbed Kesh's forearm, the touch so unexpected that Kesh flinched. 'I know you don't like me, but promise me this. If we die here, you'll tell the truth of it to my family.' He released him.

'If I'm dead, I can't tell anyone the truth, can I?'

'You seem like the kind of person who can get out of anything,' said Eliar, his voice as hoarse as if he'd been running. 'Even if it means abandoning others to do so.'

'At least I know what you truly think of me. You think I've got no cursed honor, don't you?'

Eliar shook his head stubbornly. 'If I die, Kesh, don't let them sell my sister into marriage with the Haf Ke Pir house in Nessumara. Promise me.'

From the road, the voices continued. The Qin soldiers had melted away to their horse lines.

'Don't you think it's too late? By the time we get back, won't they already have delivered her to Nessumara?'

'How could they? The roads aren't safe.'

'Reeves could fly her there! Or did that never occur to you?'

Eliar groaned. 'Aui! But no. Reeves aren't carters.'

'Is there one single thing in this world that isn't for sale if enough coin is offered? And if you get back safely and she's still at your home? Will you escort her yourself to Nessumara, to her new husband? The one she doesn't want to go to? It'll be all right then, knowing you've had your adventure?' Kesh knew how the words must sound, greasy with sarcasm, but cursed if Eliar was too caught up in his own writhing discontent to notice.

'If I die, I'll have cast her into misery for nothing. She in her cage, I to be burned. What have I done-'

What charged the air Kesh did not know, but before Eliar could draw another breath everything changed, as if lightning had struck. A trio of Qin soldiers, swords drawn, trotted out of the ilarkness masking the horse lines. Screams and shouts broke from the road. A flame — one of the lamps — arced high into the night sky as if flung heavenward, and then an arrow shattered it. The horn stuttered, answered by a call from down the road, a triple blat blat blat, and cursing and shouting and swords clattering like hooves in their staccato rhythm.