'The reeves of Horn Hall were slaughtered, in the far north, at a place called the Eagle's Claws.'
'The Eagle's Claws!' Poro bent to whisper in Seyon's ear, and he shook his head, a dour look darkening his face like a cloud
over the sun. 'It's spoken of in the tales. It's said that on some days in the season of Shiver Sky, the rain turns white. Does such a place truly exist?'
'One reeve survived the slaughter, and he can testify to the truth of what happened. I've more besides to tell you.'
Seyon's long black hair was pulled back in a trifold braid. He fingered a braid in a thoughtful motion. 'I say we let her speak.'
Poro's face bore the irritable expression of a woman who hasn't been brought her expected cup of tea in the morning. 'Whose idea was it to send you, verea?'
'The outlander captain of Olo'osson's militia.'
'Perhaps he's wise enough to win a war that is clearly un-winnable. Enter, verea. The council will hear you.'
Mai gestured toward her escort of soldiers, one of whom was Anji wearing an ordinary soldier's helmet.
'Let them wait here,' added Poro. 'To show you trust us.'
Calon wheezed out a breath, his face sheened with sweat. Jodoni said nothing. Mai smiled, even if it got a little hard to swallow. 'Let the trust we offer you be the trust you offer us, verea.'
'So be it. Come.'
Anji gave no order to stop her, nor did she look back.
The city of Horn was built against a spur of the Ossu Range. It had evidently begun as a citadel higher up and spread downward in walled layers, so the city descended in levels, each one separated from the next by gates. In midmorning, few folk walked the streets, but the hammer and beat of their labors rang everywhere as the party toiled upward on a wide stone staircase cut directly up the slope toward towers rising at the highest point. A few kites circled above Sorrowing Tower. Here in the Hundred they did not bury their dead but left their corpses out in the open air until their flesh was devoured by beasts great and tiny. It seemed barbaric to her, a last insult.
She had to set aside her revulsion. This was their land, and if she wanted to make it hers, she must accept what she could and ignore the rest.
Seyon walked nimbly despite his seeming frailty. He chatted flirtatiously about silk and, once she mentioned her own dealings in oils, about the many varieties of oils used for cooking, cosmetics, light, perfume, healing, leatherwork, and wrestling.
'Naya oil of course is most difficult to come by, and thereby
very expensive,' he added. 'Yet it's well known it can heal certain skin conditions. We heard a story that the army that attacked Olossi was driven off by pots of naya thrown on them and set alight. That they burned to death.'
She stumbled on the next step, clipping the stone rim, and he caught her under an elbow and kept his hand there as she kept climbing, angry at her lapse. 'The militia and the reeves working in concert used naya to break the enemy,' she said.
'I'd like a supply of naya, to be held in reserve to defend our walls.'
She carefully let her arm slip out of his grasp. 'I believe, ver, that you are opening negotiations. Should that not wait until I stand before the entire council?'
He laughed, paused in his climbing although he was not at all out of breath, not as she was. A tree cast a modicum of shade on the sun-drenched steps. He plucked out of its dusty leaves a lush sunfruit.
'The last of the year,' he said, presenting the yellow globe to Mai with a flourish.
Poro laughed. 'Ever the flatterer,' she said.
Master Calon raised an eyebrow. Jodoni shifted his writing box to the other arm and said, in his scrape of a voice, 'Is it much further?'
Was Seyon only humoring her? Yet she had risen to face challenges more daunting than talking sense into the intransigent and fearful council of Horn. She only hoped they were not secretly in league with Lord Radas.
She tested the weight of the sunfruit in her hand. 'Let us share both the sweet and the bitter, ver.'
As the others laughed, she peeled the fruit and handed out its slices, which they ate as they climbed the last and steepest stairs, licking the juice from their fingers.
The council hall sat between Watch Tower and Assizes Tower. The squat stone Sorrowing Tower stood isolated up a lone path through a field of uncleared boulders, on a spur of ridge behind. A message pole stood on open space sufficient for a pair of eagles to land, but no red eagle banners were folded at its base; it looked abandoned. Overhead, about ten eagles seemed to hang in the air, and although she shaded her eyes and squinted, she could not make out if any were carrying passengers, soldiers primed to drop in fast if there was trouble.
The council hall had a tile roof and many pillars to carry the load, but no walls. From any spot within the spacious covered area, the view was so tremendous that Mai stared. She saw the distant peak of Mount Aua and the rolling gap of land between which flattened into the golden Lend to the southwest and fell away in hazy hill country to the east, dropping down toward the Istrian plain. Any movement on the roads that met below the city's gates was visible from the height. The inhabitants of Horn had closed their gates and watched the army out of the north march past, heading to Olossi. They'd done nothing.
How often did folk do nothing because they believed no action of theirs could deflect the inevitable? Had she not done so herself in Kartu Town? All her life she had grown up as the favored daughter of the Mei clan. She might observe untouched while others toiled and suffered; not that she had not worked hard, but even when her father had agreed to the Qin captain's marriage offer — one he naturally could not have refused in any case — she had been fortunate in the husband who had chosen her. Yet she had learned on their long journey and in the Hundred that she had the means and opportunity to aid those who stood 'outside the gate.' She could have done nothing. Instead, she had acted.
'Verea?'
She faced an assembly of forty-eight men and women, all considerably older than herself.
'The view is magnificent,' she said with a smile that caused half of them to smile and the others to snort or frown with the impatience of people who, like certain customers in the market, have already decided before negotiating begins that you are out to cheat them. 'Horn is well situated.'
Half nodded, as if they were determined to be pleased by every word she spoke. The others sighed, tapped toes on the stone paving, nudged their companions; one old woman even rolled her eyes.
Mai gestured to Jodoni, and he opened his writing box. It was a capacious box, because clerks of Sapanasu carried all the tools of their trade with them. Instead of a brush or inkpot, he handed her a slender stick.
She stepped forward and offered the humble stick to the eye-rolling woman, who accepted it with an expression of skeptical bemusement. 'If you will, verea, could you snap that stick in half?'
The old woman had a bit of Grandmother Mei's look to her, a complainer, but she also had a much cannier gaze. Grandmother Mei had never looked past her own desires, as if always gazing into her mirror rather than at the world beyond. With a grimace of satisfaction, she popped the stick in half.
Mai extended a hand, and Jodoni handed her a bundle of slender sticks tied together. Many chuckled as Mai raised the bundle.
'Can you break this so easily? It is only made up of flimsy sticks, just like that one.'
'You've made your point,' said the old woman, brandishing the two halves of the stick she had broken. 'But haven't we already lost this war?'
Mai looked at each of them, forcing them to meet her gaze so they had to acknowledge her. 'No. We haven't already lost. Listen! My nose is itching. Many whispers have tickled my ears. This is my tale.'