Gingerly, he lay flat on his back and stretched out with arms over his head. In this position, he easily touched opposite walls. He was no better than a rat trapped in a hole. His foot nudged the rim of an object: It was the food tray with a lump of cold rice and the bowl half full of warmish water that smelled as if it had not been fouled. There weren't too many bugs. He didn't mind the bugs.
He drank, and he ate, and this time he kept it all down.
37
Captain Waras led them on a long, hot, and sweaty walk up through Olossi Town to a place he called "Fortune Square." Certainly their fortunes would rise or fall depending on the outcome of this council meeting.
At the council hall, she and Anji were allowed to sit on benches in the outer room while Sengel and Toughid took their usual places a few paces to either side of Anji, watching the occasional entrance and exit, and indeed every movement that flickered into being however brief its life, and marking each least scrape, rattle, and word that flew into the air. Priya was watchful, but Sheyshi had her eyes shut fast as she mumbled a singsong prayer in the voice of a woman near to tears with fear. There was no one else there except Captain Waras's guards, and Mai expected that Sengel and Toughid could make short work of these six callow youths who hadn't the posture of men who have been tested.
Anji listened carefully to her account of her conversation with Tannadit. He made no comment until she was done.
"Sixteen 'Greater Houses'? And an untold number of dissatisfied Lesser Houses? 'Silvers'? I wonder what they are. Useful, anyway. You learned more than I did. I mostly heard tales of merchants and traders and peddlers who could not bring their goods into the north, past a town called Horn. If goods come up from the south, and cannot be moved elsewhere, it will hurt the merchants in this city."
"You think you could offer your company as caravan guards on the roads here."
"It seems possible."
"Isn't 'Horn' the name of the town where my uncle's ring was found?"
"Yes."
They suffered an interminable and dreary wait through the afternoon while the air grew more turgid and the heat more stifling. She whispered thanks to the Merciful One that here there was no need to cover her face, as there had been in Sirniaka. She whispered thanks that she was allowed to whisper thanks without fear of being burned alive. At last, the doors slid open, and a steadily increasing stream of women and men flowed into the building through the entry chamber and on into the high-raftered hall where the council met.
She studied them as they passed, marking the most curious faces. A man obsessively fingered a fresh scar on his clean-shaven chin; it looked like someone had clawed him with a nail. An old, bent woman needed assistance to walk, closely tended by a pair of younger relatives, who resembled her about the eyes and jaw. A stout woman of middle years swaggered with the assurance of a Qin officer, a servant skulking like a beaten dog at her heels. Most of these folk had gleaming black and brown-black hair caught up in looped braids. Some of the women wore their hair pinned high, with a horse's-tail fall down their back or a cluster of heavily beaded braids that clacked softly as they walked, like gossips. A pair of men came in with their hair entirely wrapped in cloth whose ends were tucked away to make a turban. The younger was a remarkably handsome young man, despite his pale complexion and strange headdress, and he was dressed in a rich marigold-yellow silk knee-length overcoat. His gaze roamed, as if he were looking for someone, and when he saw her, he smiled winningly, but was pulled on his way immediately by the scowling older man who probably was his father if one judged by looks and dress. No other men wore their hair wrapped away in a turban.
The shutters were taken down in the hall to let air move through, although there wasn't much wind. The afternoon shadows had lengthened, and if there wasn't precisely a breeze rising up off the river and delta, there was a softening of the heat. The hall was lined with benches. It was a vast space bridged by huge crossbeams of wood. Trees never grew so large in Kartu, not even on Dezara Mountain where the sacred grove was tended. Already, these Olossi people were bickering, seating themselves in clots and clusters that suggested factions and alliances.
The murmur of their voices was like the whisper of wind in leaves -just like in the poem! Although that tale had a bad ending.
She shifted, feeling anxious. Priya and Sheyshi knelt on the floor. Anji sat utterly still, hands resting on his knees, back straight, expression smooth and pleasing in the manner of silk. She could not guess what he was thinking.
In Kartu, of course, the overlords ran everything, even back in the days of the Mariha princes. The council met only when the rulers of Kartu called in the leading men of the town to inform them of new regulations to be implemented.
The din of competing voices from the council chamber was rising. A young woman hurried past clutching pens and several scrolls; ink stained her fingers. She glanced at Mai and Anji, and her eyes widened in surprise. She dropped a pen. Bending to pick it up, she lost two more. A grand gentleman swept up the steps behind her. He was attended by a surly-looking man with a crooked nose who was wearing a leather vest and leather trousers almost exactly like those worn by Reeve Joss. Reeve leathers, Joss had called them. The clerk cast a frightened glance back as he approached, and scrambled to gather her things and get into the hall.
"Shut the doors," said the grand gentleman, pausing in the entry chamber with a gaggle of attendants bringing up the rear. He wore a magnificent overrobe of iridescent green silk, embroidered with orange feathers and gold starbursts along the hem and sleeves and neckline. His long hair was braided in three loops, decorated with ribands and beads. If he saw Anji and Mai, he did not deign to notice them, but the man with the broken nose stared rudely at them, gaze dropping down to examine Mai's chest.
A grating and quite high woman's voice shouted for silence in the hall. When it was quiet, the gentleman strode into the chamber with his gaggle trailing him in the manner of nervous goslings. Attendants shoved the doors shut, screens colliding with other screens in a series of sharp reports like staffs whacking wooden targets.
That nasal soprano rose again, calling the council to order in rapid-fire words Mai had trouble following; at speed, and muffled by the closed doors, the differences in pronunciation and phrasing made it difficult to understand. The long wait and the stifling heat had turned her thoughts to mud. She found it hard to concentrate as words and comments emerged from the council hall.
"… never allow outlanders to settle… bad luck… goes against the gods…"
"… fools not to hire out a guard for caravans going north.. ."
"… we must get the trade going again!"
"… no need, the road is still safe…"
A burst of furious and disorderly disagreement, shouted down.
"… no news from the five-flags caravan that left after the rains…"
"… no trade out of…"
"… desperate!… need that wood in order to…"
"… you have stuck your heads in the sand… the threat.. ."
"… perfectly safe… this other is exaggeration… heavy rains have washed out the roads…"
A loud voice penetrated clearly. "Rains! Last year's rains, perhaps! How long must we wait while our commerce dies?"
Others took up the call. "We have lost patience…" And were called to order.
"Strange," said Anji in a soft voice. "Any merchant of Sirniaka speaks the arkinga, but the holy language of the empire is nothing like the same, although bits of it show up in the trade tongue. We among the Qin have our own speech, but most of the Qin who ride the Golden Road also learn the arkinga. So do the folk in Kartu Town. Yet haven't you an older speech there?"