"You know the law," he said at last. "I've come, as the gods of the Hundred give me the right to do. You must accept my payment if the hierodule agrees."
Her voice hissed out of the shadows. "Spare yourself this humiliation. She won't leave the temple."
"Then she can live here freely, after I've spoken with her. She must tell me herself with her own voice. Unless you've cut out her tongue! But your hierodules need their tongues, don't they?"
"Impious scrat! The Devourer will eat your testicles!"
"I'll take my chances."
Branches rattled as if a rat scrambled away through the undergrowth. As he waited, he became convinced someone was staring at him. Scanning the under-growth, he saw nothing at first, but then, as his gaze picked out shapes, he distinguished the snout of a ginny lizard, shadowed under drooping striped-firecanth leaves. The creature stared intently down at him, from a branch higher than his own head. It bobbed its head at him but did not otherwise move; it watched him as if it were a sentry. A second head joined the first, an arm's length away, and this one bent first one eye at him and then the other, head turning almost flirtatiously.
Footsteps scraped on earth. He turned. A woman walked into view from underneath a tunnel woven of interlaced leaves. Of middle years, she had a bountiful figure wrapped in a patterned taloos covered by an undyed work shirt. But she only looked Keshad up and down with a measuring smile in a manner very like that of the second ginny lizard, and stood at the edge of the clearing to wait. Others appeared, exactly like loitering shoppers who canvass the market with no intention of buying. About twenty people filtered into the courtyard, strung around the clearing like so many jewels about an old granite-skinned widow's neck. He sensed a few standing concealed within the drowsy growth. A young pair sauntered up to lean on the sun-warmed stone rim of the fountain. Arms crossed, the lanky girl with luxurious hair and a lazy smile looked him over in a way that made him shiver. The youth, wearing only a kilted wrap around his hips, settled beside her; he nudged her foot with his and whispered into her ear. She narrowed one eye almost to a wink as if promising Keshad his heart's desire. When she shifted her buttocks on the rim, her long tunic, cut high, slipped to reveal a sleek flank. He flushed, and her companion snickered, but after so long in the south he had almost forgotten that Hundred women were the most beautiful of all, dark and lovely, although this one could have used a little extra flesh to round her curves.
Hundred women were the most beautiful of all-except perhaps for the captain's wife-and he looked down to hide his face so none of these, vultures all, could feed on any scrap of truth his expression might reveal. A steady step crunched on rock. When he looked up, there was Zubaidit striding barefoot around the curve of the fountain. She had grown since he last saw her, and even then she had been tall. She wore a tight, sleeveless, short jacket and a knee-length wrap of plain linen kilted low around her hips, leaving her brown belly bare. A jewel gleamed in her navel. She was well muscled, like an acrobat, and her skin glistened with oil and sweat, just as if she had come from exercise.
She saw him, and halted. Her eyes flared with surprise, while her left hand curled into a fist. A purpled bruise mottled her left cheek. Aui! Had they been beating her?
When she did not acknowledge him, he said nothing, and when he said nothing, she shrugged a shoulder and twisted to look behind her. Everyone swiveled heads as the tiny silver-haired woman who had let him into the inner court glided into view. She walked with a pitter-pat step that made her seem dainty, but her shoulders had the square stubborn cant of a swordsman's.
The lanky girl coughed, and her friend smirked.
"Are you the Hieros?" Kesh asked without preamble.
"I am," said the old woman.
"I am here to pay off the debt of Zubaidit."
Bai looked at him, gaze dark and intense, and her eyelids flickered as if she were sending him a message.
"By what right do you claim the right to act in her favor?" demanded the Hieros.
"Blood right."
The statement was a formality, so she dismissed it and went on. "Show the tally bundle." A young woman in an orange taloos unrolled a bundle of sewn-together sheets. Holding each end of the scroll, oldest to newest, forced her to open her arms wide.
"A tremendous debt," remarked the Hieros with a caustic smile. "Her purchase price, and the usual debits for lodging, drink and food, clothing, training as a hierodule." She ran a finger from top to bottom of each flat tally stick as she traced the account of Zubaidit's service at the temple. "Set against these debits, and in addition to the favor she accrued through her regular duties, she earned favor by comforting the gods-favored worshipers. Against this, additional training costs to the temple."
" 'When a person sells their body into servitude in payment for a debt, that person will serve eight years and in the ninth go free.' That's what it says on Law Rock."
She raised an eyebrow. "No assizes will rule in your favor, not when legitimate debt has accrued on an account."
He had known she would say it, but the distraction had allowed him a moment to calm himself, to ask the necessary question. "What is the tally?"
The Hieros grinned exultantly. Indeed, her smile was almost ecstatic, and he supposed she had long years of practice, as old as she was. "Thirty cheyt, seventy-one leya, and nineteen vey."
One thousand eight hundred and seventy-one leya.
The number dizzied Kesh. He stumbled to the fountain, sat down on the rim, and rested his head on a hand. When had he gotten so tired?
The lanky girl whistled appreciatively.
Her friend chortled, nudging her foot again. "I heard that one of the merchants of the Greater Council bought her only son the best stallion from the best herd off the grasslands and fitted it out with bridle and saddle trimmed with silver and gold-that was the price! Thirty cheyt! For a horse and gear! Can you imagine? And then it threw the fool, and broke his neck!"
"You've cheated me!" said Bai with a kind of parched hoarseness, as though her throat had been rubbed raw. Kesh looked up. She'd fisted her hands, as if ready to punch back.
He was genuinely shocked by the debt-he'd expected a similar price to his own, maybe a little more-but he'd known something like this might be coming. But what matter if the temple was cheating Bai? He raised a hand, thumb and three fingers curled and touching his little finger to his lips. Obedient to their childhood code, Bai subsided, turning her back on the Hieros.
"That's a staggering amount," he said to the Hieros. "Is that the full measure? Are there any other costs you aren't telling me, or that you mean to add on afterward?"
As her face relaxed, he glimpsed how she might look in the moments after satiation: a true devotee of the Merciless One, content only with the complete surrender of her victim.
"That is the measure in full, as of this meeting between us, now," she said graciously. "We'll set whatever coin you can offer today against her account. Next year, you can pay another installment." And another and another, she meant, an endless procession of hopeless payments that would never catch up to the galloping pace of debits.
"No, Kesh," said Bai urgently. "Keep whatever you have as seed coin. Come back when you have the whole thing. Don't waste it out like this. I know what it means, that you've come today. You must use it as we spoke of before."
At her words, he bent, splashed water on his face, and stood. The dizziness had fled. It was a relief, in a way, knowing that the sale of the Mariha girls would not have come close to covering the whole no matter what. The temple was cheating Bai, that was obvious, but it was also true she had no legal recourse given her circumstances, and neither did he, no matter what that reeve, Joss, had said. Knowing it had come to this, knowing he had made the right choices all along, made it easier to give up the treasure to free Bai.