Uncle Hari was dead. Someone had killed him.
Someone who knew he was here.
The pain was already flowering: Anji had betrayed her and Hari both.
How could she bear it?
How could she not?
Anji was not the whole of her life.
I will live, she said.
She held on as pain engulfed her.
Joss met Olo'osson's army a day's stage from Horn. The army had made remarkable time, marching eighty mey in eight days, and yet as they set up their night's encampment, the soldiers looked determined and eager, not exhausted. Anji sat under an awning on a cloth folding stool at a camp table on which a map was spread, its corners weighted by knives. Squares of rice paper and a clerk's writing paraphernalia had been pushed to one corner. He was receiving a delegation of local villagers who had brought in wagons loaded with supplies.
As Joss entered, Anji beckoned him over. 'Bring a stool for the commander,' he said, and another stool was unfolded.
Joss sat, looking around at the usual complement of Qin soldiers: Toughid was missing.
'We'll leave you with fifty lame and blown horses,' Anji was saying to the villagers, 'and we'll take the fifty you've gathered. With proper care, the animals we leave behind will recover, but you may lose a few. I can't guarantee you'll ever again see any of the horses we're taking.'
'Say nothing of it, Captain,' said their spokesman, an elderly fellow wearing a merchant's silk robe and sash. 'It's a fair trade considering what you've done for us. A year ago we were hiding in the forest. We've thirty men wanting to join up and fight that cursed Star army.'
Anji took a sip of steaming khaif and set down the cup next to a knife hilt. 'I can't take untrained men right now, although men who wish to fight with the militia can join up at the training camp in Candra Crossing. However, if you've any experienced carters or grooms or smiths or harness makers, they can fall in with the infantry, which is marching about a day behind us. They'll have to keep up. Any who fall behind will be left to make their own way home, even once we're in enemy territory. Especially once we're in enemy territory.'
35
It was understood that Anji was being not brutal but pragmatic. A baker presented him with a tray of sweet rice cakes and bean curd pastries, and there were other delicacies as welclass="underline" mutton steeped in spices, a savory fish soup, venison, pickled radish, and nai bread sweetened with juice to cover its bitter aftertaste.
No rice.
Rice was a problem, as the villagers explained. Because of the trouble early in the rainy season, fields had been planted late and not as extensively as usual. There hadn't been enough people to replant and weed and thin; losses had been higher and productivity lower than normal. There would be hunger later in the year; some households were already resorting to eating woodland roots and se leaves to fill their bellies. If the war did not end soon, the coming year's planting would be at risk also. If they lost two crops in a row, there would be famine.
Anji listened, and ate, and shared out the food to every person who had reason to come in under the awning. Eventually, as twilight fell, the villagers were herded out.
Anji rose and paced once around the awning's edge before returning to his seat. 'Joss. I Just joined the army today. I was flown up in two stages from Astafero, with a stop in Olossi. What news from Clan Hall? How are things going?'
'The stockpile of naya is safe. Copper Hall reeves are conveying vessels into Nessumara at Chief Sengel's order. As for the enemy's troop positions-'
A young reeve with a limp and a dusty face came in escorted by soldiers. Besides her reeve's baton, short sword, and quiver, she carried a very small jeweler's chest bound with chains and clipped to her harness.
'Captain Anji?' she asked. 'I'm Beiko, from Copper Hall. Chief Sengel sent me. He said to give this chest and this report into your keeping only.' She unhooked the chest and handed it to him together with a folded and sealed square of rice paper. He gave the chest to Chief Deze, who slung it over his shoulder, no great weight.
Joss's heart raced, and his fingers went cold. He could not keep his eyes from the tiny chest, no matter how innocuous it appeared to others. What in the hells had happened in Nessumara?
'Ah.' Anji rose, offered her his stool, and gestured for his soldiers to leave. Only Anji, Joss, and Chief Deze remained under the awning within earshot of the exhausted reeve. The reeve gulped
down two cups of kama juice as Anji cut the seal and scanned a scribble of looping marks Joss could not possibly decipher, nothing like the ancient runes or the Lantern's familiar syllabary.
The hells! Could Sengel write, too?
Anji said to Deze, 'Have Esigu tell the villagers that a cohort of five hundred Qin riders will be coming up after the infantry in a few days. I forgot to mention it before. I don't want them to be surprised.' He nodded at the reeve. 'My thanks, Reeve Beiko. You'll be shown to a pallet for the night. Take food and drink to refresh yourself. I'll have a message for you at daybreak.'
'Yes, Captain.' If she was curious about the contents of Sengel's message, she hid it well. A soldier led her off into the dusk.
Joss said, 'What's in that chest, Captain?'
Anji's smile was like a fine steel blade. 'To gain another cloak so soon is an unexpected advantage. They have no idea. Hu!' He handed the rice paper to Deze and pulled his whip from his belt, brandishing it with a flourish. 'Events are progressing more quickly than we had hoped. Lord Radas's army has massed at Saltow. Sengel sent a diversionary attack to trouble them, nothing big, but they shook it off and began advancing into the wetlands — dried up this time of year — last night. During the night a cloak rode into Nessumara's council square, where Sengel holds his headquarters. Sengel had already uncovered a plot to assassinate the council members and Marshal Masar, so I suppose the cloak came to oversee the night's work. And to discover our plans, figuring everyone would fear him too much to act. But Sengel knew what to do-' He broke off. 'Hu! No fears, Commander. Your face has gone gray! It was a man, wearing a cloak the color of spilt blood.'
The hells!
Joss sank down onto the stool and, without thinking, took Anji's unfinished cup of khaif and downed it.
'Would you like some cordial?' asked the captain. 'Rice wine?'
'No. Go on.' His hands were shaking.
'That's all. Lord Radas has no reeves so he won't know how quickly we're moving up. That being the case' — he indicated the map of the Hundred, using his riding whip to point first at Horn Hall and then at Toskala — 'I'll need you to deploy your Clan Hall reeves to lift a strike force to Toskala. Once the battle is joined in Nessumara, a signal will be given from Law Rock to attack the garrison in Toskala. Do you have any questions?'
Joss bent close, lowering his voice. 'I don't know who this cloak of Earth is. But if Blood is gone, then according to what Marit said, Lord Radas and Night no longer have the five they need to control the Guardians' council. It's enough, Anji. Let the Guardians sort out their own struggle, as the gods meant them to do. To go on with this is wrong. We've broken the boundaries.'
'If we have, then so have the Guardians,' said Anji, tapping the whip on the square that marked Nessumara and the tangle of lines that suggested the delta's web of water and land. 'In truth, we're fortunate.'
Joss sat back. 'How can you say so?'
'They are poor leaders, these Guardians.'
'They're not meant to be leaders! They're meant to be judges, to stand outside daily life, not to rule or command.'
'How does that statement negate my point? This one called Night, eldest and most frightening, seems to have an ability to build armies but no interest in using them. Lord Radas seems interested in ruling but has relied on fear and intimidation and on the complete disorganization and lack of preparedness of the local militias. The enemy army sent against Olossi lost to our much smaller force because they expected to meet no resistance at all. From what accounts I have heard of the earlier assault on Nessumara, the enemy pulled back at the first sign of resistance. Yet you and I were told that Nessumara's militia was stretched to its limits and ready to collapse.' He swept the whip to encompass the land, from north to south, east to west. 'If Lord Radas's troops had pushed on into the delta five months ago, they would have conquered Nessumara. Obviously, the Hundred does not know how to fight wars.'