He unfolded his hand to reveal a ring. It was silver, shaped to resemble a running wolf with its mouth biting into its tail. A rare and perfect black pearl was inlaid as the wolf's eye.
Grandmother bolted upright in her chair. Her hands gripped the arms like a hawk's talons. "Girish, bring it to me!" she said querulously.
The wives whispered, horrified. The uncles coughed and hemmed. Ti giggled nervously. Father Mei's big hands closed, opened, and with his right thumb and middle finger he made the warding sign, but because he did not speak, no one spoke. No one dared correct Grandmother.
Captain Anji raised an eyebrow, puzzled by the exchange.
She seemed to collect herself, and her memory. "Shai!" she snapped. "Nothing-good boy! Hu! I don't know why Grandfather thought you so clever! Come quickly. Get it and bring it here."
He padded forward from behind the hedge. The uncles and wives and children seemed surprised to see him. Father Mei grunted, a sign that he was holding his legendary temper in check. It always exploded afterward. But as soon as Shai got between the captain and his eldest brother, blocking Father Mei's view, Captain Anji winked at Shai as if in sympathy before dropping the ring into his hand.
"Hari," breathed Shai, not meaning to talk, but the touch of the ring actually hit so hard that he rocked back on his heels and struggled against a wave of dizziness.
It was Hari's ring. No doubt of that.
He took in a breath to steady himself, then walked back to his mother and placed it gently in her right hand. She slapped him hard with her left, the crack stinging and bitter.
He choked back his surge of anger. He'd gotten so good at doing it that it had become reflexive. The bitch would be dead soon, and he wouldn't miss her. Anyway, her slap-her dislike of him-didn't hurt nearly as much as contact with the ring had.
Hari was dead.
He'd known it as soon as the ring had touched his skin, just as he knew that no one else would feel it. Hari was dead. He'd been wearing the ring when he died; he'd been angry in an amused kind of way-the anger lingered in the ring. But surely Hari's spirit had already fled earth through Spirit Gate. There was nothing to hold him here, after all. Anger and bitterness hadn't chained him in Kartu Town. He'd not waste time lingering on earth as a ghost when there were adventures to face in the afterlife. Not Hari, the boldest and handsomest and most delightful of brothers.
"Fool boy," muttered his mother sharply. Her hands shook as she struggled to hide her tears, and Father Mei finally took the ring and examined it. As soon as it was out of her hands, she hid her face behind a sleeve.
"This belonged to my younger brother," Father Mei said. "Hari marched east as a mercenary with one of your regiments six years ago. We have never heard from him. Where did this come from?"
Shai shuffled to the side, turning, to see Captain Anji shrug.
"Certain peddlers have a license to travel from fort to fort selling small wares, curiosities, such things. I found this yesterday among the goods offered for sale by a man who had come from the east along the Golden Road. He said it came from a place called 'the Hundred,' which lies north of the Sirniakan Empire. He bought it from a Hundred merchant, traveling in Mariha, who said it was found near a town he called 'Horn.' There'd been a battle there. Internal matters, lord fighting lord or some such. I'm not sure of the details. The Hundred folk are barbarians, it seems. They've never had a var-a king-to lead them. Scavengers will always pick clean the fields of battle, and it seems it was no different with this ring. I don't know how many hands it passed through to get this far from the place it was found. But I recognized the ring at once. Mai has a ring like it."
As did every blood member of the Mei clan.
"Does it bring joy or grief to your house?" the captain asked.
"I cannot know," said Father Mei. "Is Hari dead, or alive? He cannot rest if his bones do not rest with those of his ancestors. We can never rest, not knowing what became of him." His lips were thin, a sure sign of anger.
Lots of anger in this house. Shai waited for the blow. It came quickly.
"When my beloved and precious daughter goes with you, she must have servants, familiar ones who have served her for many years."
"Of course." Captain Anji nodded.
"She will be alone, who has never been alone. I ask you, Captain Anji, let my young brother Shai accompany her."
The words struck, shivering like lightning through him. He stood, stunned, as his brother droned on.
"He is still unmarried, so he leaves no obligations behind, and he is almost twenty, old enough to be considered a man. We'll send a slave with him and provisions and traveling gear, so he'll be no burden on you. Once he reaches the eastern border, he can make his way north to this place called the Hundred and look for this battlefield near a town called Horn. If he can find our brother's remains, he can bring them home."
"A long journey," mused Captain Anji, "and far beyond the boundaries of the lands the Qin claim."
"Merchants go there. Peddlers go there."
Anji grinned as at a private joke. From this new angle, Shai could now see Mai's face. She was pretending to look down quiescently at her folded hands but in fact she was studying the captain. Her eyes widened slightly; her lips twitched. Although she and Shai had grown up together, lived in the same compound all their lives-she as the cherished, pampered daughter, and he as the unwanted and despised youngest brother-Shai did not understand her. What did this flash of emotion portend? Impossible to say. Mai was as sweet to him as she was to anyone. She had no hidden depths, no reserves of deep feeling. Most likely she was frightened out of her wits.
But Shai wasn't, not as the first shock faded.
"Merchants travel where soldiers fear to ride," said the officer. "Shai is welcome to come, but I cannot guarantee his safety after he leaves my protection."
"If you set him on the right path, that is all that I ask," said Father Mei, pompous and condescending as always. "Then we will be square, our debts equal and canceled. Do we have an agreement?"
"We have an agreement."
With those simple words, Shai was released. Unchained. He was free.
8
Leave-taking turned out to be a troublesome business. In the last three generations the only person in the Mei clan who had left Kartu Town by any road other than Spirit Gate was Hari. Everyone knew what trouble he had caused.
Ti had left off clinging to Mai indoors and come outdoors, where she was now yanking on Shai's left arm and crying while trying to speak. Her sobs gusted up straight from her belly. Shai admired her capacity; she'd be a natural for one of the touring acting companies that plied the Golden Road.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! You didn't even try to talk him out of it! You just hid! What will become of me, all alone? Hu! Hu! Hu! I can't bear it!"
Captain Anji had arrived at dawn with the same pair of soldiers who had accompanied him last time; his officer's escort were gathered outside the gate. He waited with apparent patience in the shadow of the arbor although it was by now almost noon. The wives had been in an uproar all morning and had repacked Mai's trunk twice even though Mai had packed it herself yesterday with only the aid of her slave Priya. That linen shift isn't nice enough; the yellow of that silk doesn't go well with her complexion; she'll need thread and her embroidery frame; she'll need a prayer silk; she can buy thread at any town market; cooking spices. No! Hairpins! Shai and Younger Mei had retreated to their alcove and huddled there while the storm raged. In the end, a rare vase was thrown and broken, and Father Mei had intervened with slaps and shouting.
Now they stood in the courtyard waiting for Mai to be escorted out by Grandmother. Captain Anji was seated on a stool. He was smoking terig leaf, dried leaves rolled up in paper to make a burning stick whose smoke you sucked into your lungs. Periodically, he handed a stub back to his attendants, who were standing behind him, and they finished it off. Shai had never tried terig leaf because it was one of many things forbidden to those who weren't Qin. The smoke stung in his nostrils, laced with a faintly sweet afterburn. The wisps drifting over to the entrance gate made Girish's ghost even more irritable than usual, and his wraith-like form danced and gibbered by the hanging tree to the right of the gate, so furious that for once Shai couldn't understand what he was saying.