Except when he heard the girl by him say, meekly, "Master Shoka?"
He did not look at her. It hurt too much.
"M'lord? —What am I supposed to call you? Nothing feels right."
"Anything you like," he said, too harshly. His hoarseness tried to come back. He wondered, cooly, distantly, if he wept in front of Reidi and his men, if that would shake their confidence. But that coldness took hold, and would not let him go. Not now, it told him, not with lives at stake.
(Die in this, dammit, and they'll say how a demon led us—)
Taizu said nothing for a long, long time. Men came around them. There was no privacy for talking.
But when they changed horses again she came up beside him and touched his arm. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Sorry?" He was bewildered. "For what, for the gods' sake?"
He confused her too. He saw that.
We may be dead in the next hour. She's a kid. A girl. What in hell is she doing in this? Why didn't I stop her?
"Have I done anything you said not?" Men were mounting up all around them. "Have I?"
Straight to the heart. "You ought to be out of here," he said. And remembered that there was no safety for Saukendar's wife. Anywhere. Ever. "Damn."
"What did I do wrong?"
"It's my fault."
"It's not your fault." She was trying to whisper and her voice kept cracking up a notch. "Dammit, I'm not your fault, I'm nobody's fault but mine, don't you tell me anything different! What did I do?"
He looked at her, sorting through that step by step. They might have been back on their own front porch. The cabin. A year ago. For some reason he felt his balance settle, dead center.
"Nothing," he said, taking Jiro's reins from her. "Not a damn thing. I've seen far worse." Damn, why can't I say it straight? "Few better. I just like your neck that length. Take care of it for me. Listen. If this goes wrong—if I'm killed—"
"Don't say—"
"Go to the country. Get Gitu. Pay the bastards for this. Does that appeal to you?"
A dark fire came into Taizu's eyes. Her head came up a bit. She nodded, very faintly, very surely.
Not crazy. No. It was as if a wall had come down that had been there for days, and they were looking each other in the eye again, without needing to dissemble or look away.
A horse snorted. Men were waiting all around them. They were standing there like fools.
"We've got to move," he said gruffly, and turned and climbed up to Jiro's back, while Taizu swung up onto the mare.
Saukendar and his demon wife, they would say. She has him enspelled. She came to him on the mountain, she bewitched him, she agreed to help him against his enemies, so long as he would keep her for his wife and make her a lady of Chiyaden; and she would never, ever take her real shape, except, perhaps, if he was unfaithful, if something broke the spell—
He saw how the men looked at her. He saw how they cleared Taizu's path, and some of them stared at her behind her back. Taizu had that to bear with—not malice, gods knew. No one had had experience dealing with a demon, but then—if a foxwife or a demon favored them, and was clearly bespelled to Saukendar and on her good behavior—then . . . there were good demons as well as bad, and a well-disposed one was an ally as valuable as Saukendar. She might take her demon-shape toward their enemies, gnash her teeth, turn their knees to water with the glance of her eyes, strike with twin swords of lightning and twin spears of fire, calling up wind and storm—
They expected things like that, the way they expected unicorns and gods in little-trafficked places; and burned their incense-sticks for the happiness of their dead; and wore their charms for luck and to keep their souls safe in crises. So why would their demon turn on them, how could things go amiss if there was Saukendar to wear like a talisman, no different than the luck-charms about their necks and ankles.
Damn them for too much faith, and for putting it on him.
And most of all for putting it on Taizu.
The fields around Choedri were tilled: the land showed order, the work of farmer folk not one of whom was in view. There was not an ox or a cow in sight—everything away from the highroad, Shoka figured, everything back in the hills, in the folds of the land, or shut away inside the walls of Choedri castle.
"Pray the message got through," Reidi said when he remarked on that eerie vacancy. "Lord Kegi is one we can rely on, if they haven't come down on him—"
"I'd think he'd have sent south," Shoka muttered, more and more uneasy. "Feiyan had time to get to us, for the gods' sake."
They had a couple of men riding point, about half an hour ahead, in the guise of ordinary travelers, unarmored and with nothing martial about themselves or their horses. Be respectful to whoever you meet, Shoka had advised them, mercenaries or Kegi's men. You're townsmen from Ygotai. You're on your way to ask help from the regional authorities.
He hoped the men could carry it off. He hoped the men were still alive up there, concealed in the folds of the land, the small woods. Now and again they would find a blot of flour in the road, which was the scouts' way of telling them it was clear as far as they could see.
But there were too damn many little hedges and hills.
"Another mark," Shoka said, more and more anxious; and almost wished, at the start of a wooded stretch, that the white blotch had not turned up in the road. If you hit a bad stretch, one of you lay back for safety and wait till your partner has it clear. Don't make a mark you're not sure of.
Damn, I don't like it.
"Split the column," he said to Reidi. "Lay back. We'll go through. Damn, doesn't Kegi believe in clearing back his right-of-ways?"
"We planned these overgrowths," Reidi said. "To use."
"So can the enemy," he said curtly; and waved Reidi back. He thought about sending Taizu back, and reckoned, if something went wrong, she was better with him than with a confused and desperate remnant.
The column split, half hanging back.
He put Jiro to a quicker pace. His half of the company kept moving, a brisk pace under the forest shadow, a clean, well-kept road. Another flour splotch.
Then a bending of the road, and a hedge of sharpened stakes dead in their path.
Horses shied up, steel came out. "Dismount!" Shoka yelled, pulling Jiro close against the trees beside the road. He was out of his saddle when a handful of men in Taiyi colors appeared at the barricade.
"Stop!" lord Reidi's lieutenant yelled, still on his horse in the middle of the road. "Stop! This is lord Saukendar—"
It was about time, Shoka thought, to disentangle himself from the thicket and hope Reidi's man was not about to get an arrow through the gut. "Careful!" Taizu said, her voice shaking. She had slid off and ducked down beside him, bow strung and arrow ready. But Saukendar could hardly look the fool, hiding against a bush, so he acted one, and gave her Jiro's reins—no sense getting the old lad shot—and walked out to the middle of the road with the other fool.