Mai's eyes stung with tears. She gripped the pommel to keep herself steady, although in truth the Qin saddles were built to keep the rider stable, able to stay on the horse while handling bow or spear or sword. They rode at a draining pace through a countryside whose lands were in fields out to every available cranny and corner. Compounds plastered to a gleaming white stood in the midst of grain fields.
Soon it grew too dark to observe the surrounding landscape. Torches were lit, and tailmen took them up, riding at stages within the troop, lighting their way. Naturally, their pace slowed, but the road was smooth and level, nothing like the haphazard tracks whose intertwining threads made up the Golden Road, the route along which trade flowed east and west along the northern shore of the vast desert.
The stars made a brilliant ornament above them. The moon rose, adding its handsome light as they pushed on into the night. Very late, they stopped where an irrigation canal cut close to the road. Here Anji allowed the horses to be watered while the soldiers switched mounts, saddling up those horses that hadn't borne weight on this first leg. They worked in a disciplined silence. Now and again a murmured comment surfaced and was tersely answered.
"This strap has broken."
"Here's a cord to replace it."
"This mare is blown."
"Cut her loose. She'll follow if she can."
"Let me use your knife."
"Lost yours?"
"Stuck in bone. Didn't have time to get it out."
"Huh. Clumsy of you. Chief 'll send you back to be a tailman!"
The horses were tough, and the men showed no sign of strain, but she was weary and her thighs hurt and her hands ached. O'eki brought fresh horses. Sheyshi crouched on the ground, rocking obsessively. Priya stood beside Mai, saying nothing, watchful and alert, although the darkness around her eyes betrayed her exhaustion and fear.
"Where are the bearers?" Mai asked. "Where is Shai?"
"I don't know," Priya whispered. "There were fires. Fighting in the rear guard."
"I heard it too," Mai said, recalling now the rhythm of the clattering sounds she had thought were sticks.
A short distance away, Chief Tuvi was conferring with Anji. Horses stamped. A soldier jerked a gelding away from the water, where it had been drinking too long. Mai wanted to go looking for Shai, but the urgency of their flight pinned her to this one place, even though she had to pee. If she wasn't ready to go, they would leave without her. Shaking, she reached under the long silk jacket, undid her loose trousers, and squatted right there while Priya swiftly unwound the shawl that covered her head and torso and held it up to shield her.
"This is so hard," Mai whispered when she was done, and standing again. "What happened?"
"Some kind of agents from the palace," said Priya. "I have seen many strange things in these few days, Mistress. Everything in this land is done one way only. The gates are locked at night and unlocked in the morning. Women live in one place and men in another. Each town has fields laid out in the same pattern, allowing for differences in the lay of the land. Each town looks alike. There is a temple in the center of each town, but the women told me that women are not allowed to go there. They were shocked I should think so. I! Who served the Merciful One as an honored acolyte! That's not all. There are spies everywhere, that is what Captain Anji said. He told us to keep watch for them, and for their scat. He calls them the red hounds. I think they must be like the demon dogs who chased the Merciful One across the bone desert. Their eyes are red with blood and their bodies are feathered with dust and iron shavings."
"It was men who tried to kill me."
"They can appear in any guise. They are not earthly creatures like you and me. They are born out of sparks of anger and despair. The whirlwind twists them into a material form." Priya shuddered. "You were very brave, Mistress. You stood up to them."
The memory of that moment did not disturb Mai. It was sealed as in glass, separate from her. But she was still shaking from the rush of the ride, and the stench of smoke in her nostrils. Had those women crouching in the courtyard, with their hidden faces, gotten out of the burning courtyard in time?
"I didn't see," said Priya. "We left too quickly. But it would be better for them if they did die."
"How can you say that?"
"The red hounds will question anyone who survives the fire. It would be better to be dead than to suffer their questions."
"What about Shai?" she asked Priya. "I don't see him. What of the bearers?" Where were the nine slaves who had borne her so faithfully for so long?
Priya cupped her hands in emulation of the Merciful One's offering bowl, and dipped her face toward her hands, to show the spilling of sorrow, tears unwept. "They guarded the entrance to your suite of rooms. The red hounds slaughtered them. That's how we first knew something was wrong."
Tears unwept, Mai heard the call to mount. She touched Priya's hand, to give comfort, to get comfort. O'eki returned, leading four horses, and without further speech-for what was there left to say?-they rode on.
18
"With me," said Tohon, jerking Shai's attention away from the open shopfronts where carpenters worked. The street was lined with workshops. The smell of wood shavings brought a sense of peace, the memory of honest industry on the slopes of Dezara Mountain, but Tohon was already riding off and Shai had to follow.
Tohon balanced two sealed jars on his thighs. A pair of tailmen-Jagi and Tam-came with them, Tam leading a packhorse with six or eight jars bound in netting and slung over the beast and Jagi with a bundle of greasy sticks clutched under his left arm and a slow-burning torch held in his right. Down the main avenue they rode. Men paused to watch them pass, curious or suspicious, then turned away with a passivity in the face of the unusual that made Shai feel both safe and queasy. In Kartu Town, folk treated the Qin that way, too, looking away because to question brought punishment. Now he was one of them. Not above the law, but holding the law with the sword in his hand.
This town like all towns in the empire was laid out in an orderly octagon. Fields and orchards gave way to stockyards, tanning yards, construction yards, threshing yards, smithing yards, any kind of activity whose stench or fire danger or need to sprawl made it inappropriate to the orderly and narrow lanes. Next came compounds of humble dwellings with plastered walls surrounding each one and a single gate for entry. Then they came into the market, where they always halted for the night at a compound flying the orange banner stamped with an unreadable blot of lines and circles that, Shai had worked out, denoted an inn. They were not allowed to ride farther in, to the larger residential compounds with their higher walls, the military garrison, and the spires marking the precincts of the holy temple.
Turning right and right again on the narrowing streets, Tohon cupped a hand under one of the jars and flung it into the air. It fell in a long arc and broke, smashing on the roof of a carpenter's compound. Potsherds skittered into pipewood gutters. Oil glided down over the plank roof.