Anji unleashed his riding whip and began drawing it through his fingers. 'Perhaps they may be telling the truth,' he said, although the admission sounded grudging. 'Can you find Marit again? If I can speak to her we might learn more about Lord Radas, the cloak of Night, and the other cloaks who obey him. We can account for eight Guardians among these two factions, five opposed to three. That means one remains missing. Where is that one?'
'I don't know how to find Marit. She always found me.'
Anji raised an eyebrow. 'Can it be she still loves you, even though she is dead?'
The words made the air seem hot and the ground unsteady. Joss passed a hand over his eyes, and the world settled back into place. 'She is a Guardian now. None of that matters. She and her allies offered us this weapon so we can fight, because they are Guardians who serve justice and the land.'
Anji tapped his whip against a thigh. 'If we sever the cloaks from Lord Radas and the other corrupted Guardians they command, it's likely we will cripple Lord Radas's army. Yet if we can sever these individuals from that which binds them to the land, then it seems their cloaks will be released to seek new
Guardians. And then what? Will their greed for power not rise all over again? Don't you see the danger in that, Joss?'
'There's always danger. So can we all become corrupt. If that were an argument, then none of us would ever act. The gods raised the Guardians. That some have become corrupted doesn't mean all will be. Justice can be restored. We're obligated to serve justice and restore peace to the land.'
'Of course.' Anji's smile was rueful, his sigh deeply felt. 'We speak of terrible things. You and I know how difficult the struggle to restore peace will be. What have we decided, Commander?'
'If only we'd known this before Zubaidit walked into the enemy's camp!' Aui! Now he must recall kissing Zubaidit! Would these gods-rotted memories of passionate women never cease troubling him? His groin stirred, and he unhooked his drinking pouch, unsealed it, and took a long swig of sweet cordial. 'Captain?'
Anji accepted the offering, drinking deeply as well. Shadows drew a haze over the high slopes of Mount Aua; a streamer of wispy cloud trailed off the icy crown.
'If the corrupted Guardians discover what we know, they'll be put on their guard,' added Joss. 'So any person given this knowledge who confronts a Guardian must act immediately and succeed on their first attempt to sever them from the cloak. How likely is it that they can?'
'Only a person trained in the most exacting manner can be trusted. Can any of your reeves act no matter what the circumstance, even if they are themselves wounded or dying, and press forward to complete a task with no expectation of surviving the attempt?'
'Of course they can! They do all the time. You forget, Anji, we know full well that we die if our eagle dies. But as for killing a Guardian… it's hard to say if any would be willing to undertake an act that would seem blasphemous, as if striking at the gods. I'm not even sure I could bring myself to do it. What of your men?'
'Those of my soldiers I do not trust completely to be able to accomplish what I ask of them, do not still ride with me. Nevertheless, we must be cautious. If we could reach Zubaidit with this intelligence, she would act. Yet to attempt to reach her, if she's truly placed herself within Lord Radas's army, puts all at
risk of discovery if the messenger is captured and interrogated by one of the cloaks.'
'We are caught between too few knowing to manage the task, and so many knowing that we give away our plan.'
'We walk a precarious path,' agreed the captain. 'Tell only those you trust to carry out the act. Let them be ready.'
Joss laughed. 'That's what I admire about you. When you decide to act, you don't hesitate.'
Anji smiled briefly, as at a jest only he had heard. He gestured toward Scar. 'Every day you hook yourself into the harness of a creature that could as easily eat you for its meal as tolerate your weight, for it would soar more easily without you. Is that not admirable?'
'No, for I'm doing my duty, as the gods decreed. Anyhow, Scar doesn't frighten me. The eagles know their duty better than we know ours. They can't be corrupted. They are as you see them. No mask; Nothing concealed. In that way they are more honest than we can ever be.'
'More honest than we should be, maybe. Few people would truly be pleased, I think, to know what thoughts fly through the minds of their lovers and kinsmen and comrades.'
'Maybe it would be like being flayed,' Joss said, staring out over the vista and thinking of Marit: what she had become and how it isolated her. The woman he had loved still lived within her cloaked body; he knew that, because he had kissed her. But his touch had scorched her; it had told her too much, things she did not want to know. Maybe no one should know that much about another person. 'Our masks protect us, don't they?' he said at last.
'So we must hope,' said Anji.
PART SIX
Choices
26
Nekkar woke before dawn and stretched to discover that, as always, Vassa had left his pallet without waking him. She returned to her clan's compound to take care of their needs first, as she must, but her presence lingered. As always, he smiled because their love was, even after all these years, a wellspring of unexpected joy.
Often enough, it was also his only smile of the day.
His stomach growled as he stowed the pallet and blanket in the cupboard. He dressed quickly, careful not to strain threadbare cloth. He kneeled on the pillow in front of his ostiary's desk, bent his head, and in the silence that held Toskala before first bell rang across the city, he prayed to Ilu the Herald, asking for strength to get through just this one day. As long as he had enough strength for this day, he could keep going.
And he had to keep going. So many people depended on him.
Two envoys, Seyra and Doni, waited for him on the porch. How they used to tease Doni for his plumpness! Now the young man's cheeks were hollow and his loose tunic and trousers accentuated how thin he'd gotten.
Seyra looked as frail as a wisp of straw. 'Holy One. The night passed peacefully.'
He nodded. 'Thanks be to blessed Ilu for watching over us. Any disturbances?'
'Not that we heard or saw, Holy One.'
The best he could now say of a new day was that no catastrophe had troubled the night. Two eagles spiraled aloft, so although many reeves and passengers had flown off Law Rock some days ago in a mass exodus, not all had abandoned them. That was something.
At the trough, an elderly envoy winched up a bucket of water from the well and poured it into the stone basin. The splash hit loudly in the hazy half-light. They washed, murmuring the cleansing prayer as the retiring night watch and the dawn-rising envoys joined them. Afterward, they walked as a group past rows of struggling vegetables being grown in the courtyard.
On the porch of the sanctuary they slipped out of their sandals.
They sang the dawn prayers quietly so as not to waken the novices in the barracks next door. It was better to let the young ones sleep through the morning prayers than wake too early into the claws of hunger.
As his hands folded to close the last prayer, he bent his head to inhale a final breath of fragile peace. The matted floor cushioned his knees. His right shoulder ached. His left ankle twinged. His stomach gurgled. He raised his eyes to the dais, trying to quiet his mind. On the altar, in a latticed iron frame, sat a large nodule of polished turquoise veined with a spider's web pattern like a fireling's lost thread. Ilu's Eye was always watchful. He was surprised the occupiers had not stolen the precious stone along with everything else, but some at least still feared to rob the gods' altars.