He met Bai's gaze. She lifted her chin defiantly as he crossed his forearms at his chest, wanting to crow in triumph.
All done now! Finished. He had won that which he had sworn to do years back.
He nodded at the Hieros. For the first time, doubt flickered across her proud face. "By the gate you'll find a litter," he said. "Have it brought here."
"Rudely spoken, to command me as though I am your slave," she said, but she believed herself safe and so she remained amused. At her command, four young bodies hurtled away. Another dozen people pushed to the edge of the clearing, come to watch. Probably the news was all over the temple by now.
Bai looked down at the ground for all the world like a shy bride, yet her stance betrayed a body honed and strengthened by hard exercise. It disturbed him. She had changed utterly since the day she'd been sold away from him, little sister and older brother on the auction block of Flesh Alley with aunts and uncle looking on dispassionately as they mouthed each rising tally, as the bidding went higher. Bai had been a thin stick of a thing, first clinging to him, then sobbing and wailing as the servants of the Hieros dragged her away. Twelve years ago.
He had lost the desire to revenge himself on his aunts and uncle. They were meaningless; like the old ruins to be found along every road, they mattered nothing to the caravan of life that must proceed on its way to its next destination. He was so close to success that he felt tears, and gulped them down, and shook as with a palsy. He knew suddenly and with complete conviction that the litter would be gone or the treasure vanished. How could he have left it alone? Had he really been that stupid?
But after all here it came, swaying raggedly with four bearers off-step and ungainly as they crunched over the gravel to set the litter down in the midst of the open space, about halfway between the edge of greenery and the centerpiece fountain. As Kesh approached, everyone except Bai and the Hieros backed away.
"The payment." He hooked back the curtain, reached in, and grasped the first thing his hand came to, which was a braid. He tugged.
She came unresisting, as she had all along, and stepped out into full sun. She raised no hand to shade her eyes. Her body was hidden beneath her only piece of clothing, a voluminous cloak woven of a silverine cloth. She blinked several times as the light struck; that was all.
Breaths were caught short, or taken in hard. Several people skipped back, and one voice whimpered in fear.
"A ghost!" whispered the Hieros, crossing her forearms away from her chest to ward off the ill omen.
"Touch her. She is no ghost."
He pulled the cloak back, each wing over one of her shoulders, and heard their moans of fear and gasps of surprise-and their sighs-as her body was revealed, as pallid as marble, as smooth as goat's milk and as creamy. Her hair both above and below was as pale as a field of harvest-ripe grain. Her eyes were not natural eyes. They were cornflower-blue. Demon-blue.
"What I offer, you must accept," he finished.
Bai grinned in a way that terrified him suddenly. She leaped across the clearing like a cat, halting in front of the Hieros. With a laugh, she slapped her, a crack across that old face.
"Bitch! I've been waiting to do that for twelve years!"
No one moved.
Without lashing out in her turn or even losing her temper, the Hieros spoke. "Do what impulse tells you, Zubaidit, but it will make no difference in the end. You are meant for the Devourer. You will see."
Bai spat onto the pebbles. Grinning with a vicious glee, she tugged her slave bracelets from her wrists and dropped them on the ground.
"I'll meet you at Leave-taking Pier," she said to Kesh. She dashed away into the greenery under an arched lacework of flowering vines. In her wake, the two ginny lizards rattled away into the undergrowth.
No one spoke, and no one moved, all in thrall to the vision standing among them, no stunning beauty, not like Captain Anji's wife-nothing so pallid could truly be deemed beautiful-but a thing of horrible and irresistible fascination. A whirlpool into which all are dragged and can never fight their way out. She was an evil thing, and Keshad knew it, but he did not care. He was rid of her, and by this means had gained everything he cared about in the wide world: his freedom, and his sister's freedom. The temple could take care of itself.
The Hieros shook out of her stupor. She glided up to them and circled the slave as she would circle a poisonous snake. She hitched the cloak up and looked over the slave's backside, and after a long moment she reached a hand and, after the merest hesitation, brushed her fingers over a forearm. The slave did not even flinch, only stared unseeing toward the green tangle of a witch hedge.
"Where did you get her?" the Hieros asked.
"At the edge of a desert so vast you cannot imagine it."
"I can imagine a lot of things," said the lanky girl, giving a lazy and lustful hum.
"Shut up!" hissed her companion. He was not laughing, but staring at the slave as if a hammer had hit him.
"A desert of stone and red sand. She was wandering, lost, as mute and blank as you see her now."
"Insane!" The Hieros ventured to pinch the lean curve of that hip. If the girl felt the pull of those fingers, she showed no sign.
"But compliant!" he said hastily. That she might be insane had often occurred to him over the course of the journey. It was the only reasonable explanation.
"How do you know she is compliant? Did you go into her yourself?"
As Bai had, he spat on the pebbles, and the Hieros flinched away from him with a look of such anger that he shivered. She will seek revenge.
So he smiled, to taunt her. "You know what they say. It's bad luck to spit in your own trading goods. Men-and women-will come to see if they can bestir her. And even if they can't stir her, if she remains as limp as a puppet in their arms, they'll still come."
"Oh, yes. I can see it." She rubbed her hands, but he couldn't tell if it was the thought of caressing that white flesh that bestirred her, or the thought of so many worshipers waiting at the gates for the chance to gaze on-or touch-this living ghost with her demon-blue eyes. "Better than any aphrodisiac, indeed. I acknowledge that this covers her debts."
"I want Bai's accounts bundle, properly sealed and marked off."
The Hieros stepped back to face Keshad. She was truly a devotee of the Merciless One. He could see it in the set of her face, cold and cruel and passionate, devoured by the goddess until not even her soul was her own.
"You have earned an enemy today," she said as if these were the kindest words she had ever spoken, "and you will come to regret it, but you are correct that this payment cannot be refused. Take what you have paid for. All will be sealed legally." She smiled gently, but her eyes were like stones in that handsome old face. "Be sure that if I ever have a chance to repay you for taking from me my most valuable hierodule, I will do so swiftly and with pleasure."
"Do what you must." Kesh's limbs were loose, his jaw relaxed, and his heart calm, now that it was over. "As I did."
PART SIX: WOLVES
28
THEY HAD LEFT Kartu Town and the desert far behind. They had escaped the Sirniakan Empire. Now, after many days traveling over the high Kandaran Pass, the caravan halted at a wall and border crossing guarding the road into the Hundred. In the Hundred, they would find good fortune, or disaster. Shai just didn't expect things to happen so quickly.