'The temple of Ushara was attacked and all its hierodules and kalos murdered.' She straightened, setting the knife back to hold
down a curling corner. 'The many hieros across the land have never let any hierodule or kalos forget it, either. Didn't you ever hear the rest of the story, Reeve Joss? They found a young hierodule — barely fourteen — chained to a death willow and raped and abused, as if to spit on the generosity of the Devouring One. She was dead, a knife to the heart.'
'I was one of those who found her corpse,' said Joss so quietly that everyone looked at him. 'Which is a moment I will never forget as long as I live. As you say, a knife to the heart.'
The words had an odd effect on Anji, whose gaze had drifted past Joss toward a movement in camp beyond the awning. His expression tightened in a puzzled frown, then opened to a look of sheer violent falling helplessness as he recognized what he was looking at. He leaped to his feet, his stool tipping and falling behind him. He fisted a hand and for one breath Joss could have sworn Anji swayed as though he had taken a knife to the heart. Sengel caught his arm. Stepping sideways, shaking off Sengel, he strode around the table and out from under the awning. Joss twisted to see.
Out of the dusk settling its wings over the encampment limped Chief Tuvi carrying a bundle in his arms. Neh, no bundle but a living, squirming baby. Tuvi was carrying Anji's son.
Joss stood, intending to follow, but Chief Esigu blocked him. Sengel and Deze trotted up on either side of Anji as Anji halted in front of Tuvi and engulfed the baby in his arms. Tuvi's lips moved, speaking words Joss was too far away to hear.
Sengel and Deze grabbed Anji under the elbows, and Tuvi swept the child back. The two chiefs held their captain as his legs gave way.
Had the wind failed? For it seemed the entire camp was holding its breath, taking in the news with the captain, still supported by his senior officers.
Kesta and Peddonon jogged out of the dusk, circling wide around the knot of Qin, who stopped Peddonon at a distance but allowed Kesta to hurry up to the awning.
She grasped Joss's arm, pulling him aside. 'Siras flew Chief Tuvi in from the Barrens. The captain's wife was murdered up the Spires, that place they call Merciful Valley.'
'Murdered?' As well say the sky was green, or that folk preferred bread to rice given the choice. 'Who would murder Mai?' Beautiful, clever Mai. The Ox walks with feet of clay,
but its heart leaps to the heavens where it seeks the soul which fulfills it.
'One of her slaves stabbed her. Siras says she fell into the pool, and her body was lost in the depths beneath the falls. Maybe that makes sense to you.' She caught him as he sat heavily, almost tipping over the stool.
Siras came running, but Qin soldiers halted him beside Peddonon as the chiefs steered Anji in under the awning and sat him down on his stool beside the camp table.
'How did she outflank me?' Anji asked, the question all the more wrenching for his even tone, like he was asking for a report on the weather.
'She had an agent in your midst all along, that slave named Sheyshi,' said Tuvi. 'None of us suspected. The girl played her part, and none of us suspected all that time.'
'Commander Beje must have known.'
'That Sheyshi was your mother's agent? It's likely. That your mother would strike through the slave? How could any Qin man guess? There was nothing you could have done, Anjihosh. The princess was caged in the women's palace for many years. She is far more skilled on this battlefield than you or I. She defeated you with a superior flanking movement.'
'I should have known,' said Anji as he reached for a knife that Chief Deze snatched up before Anji could touch it. Anji went on as if he had not noticed, hands splayed open on the careful detailed lines of the map. 'I should have suspected. Mai is the sharpest knife a man could hope to possess. The biggest threat to my mother's power. I should have brought Mai with me, never let her leave my side-' His hands fisted. He bent as in a gust of wind, and his eyes lost focus. A sound more gasp than moan strangled in his throat.
The baby had begun to noisily fuss, wanting his father, and Tuvi thrust the angry child onto Anji's lap, anything to take that stunned blank expression off the captain's face.
Joss had known these feelings once. Nothing would make the killing blow easier to absorb; nothing could ease the searing pain. Only the baby, who demanded his father's attention by beginning to cry.
'What have you been feeding him?' asked Anji in a harsh, hoarse voice.
'Goat's milk and nai porridge,' said Tuvi. Revealed in lantern
light, his face and hands were netted with scars, as though he had plunged into a burning spider's web. He stood awkwardly, and when a soldier brought a stool, sat gingerly as if every movement was agony. Yet his his gaze was bent on his captain as Chief Deze sent soldiers to find goat's milk and nai porridge. Anji soothed the child by speaking in another language, the words flowing like a chant. His expression was scoured raw; his eyes flared white, like a spooked horse, and yet, every time he ceased speaking even for a moment, his jaw clenched as tight as if he were choking down a scream.
Kesta patted Joss's shoulder and jerked her chin toward the spot where Siras was confined between a pair of watchful soldiers. Joss stepped away from the table. Sengel glanced at him, nodding to acknowledge his leave-taking, but Anji did not look up nor did Tuvi register their departure. He hadn't looked at Joss once.
Siras was bouncing on his toes as Joss walked up with Kesta. 'The hells, Commander! What happened to you? You look gods-rotted younger, or something.'
The Qin soldiers delicately stepped away, one lifting a hand to show they were moving off now, no trouble.
'Keep walking,' muttered Joss.
Soldiers approached the awning with bowls and bottles and by lamplight Anji bent over his son to coax food into the squalling visage as his chiefs gave orders for the night's sentries. The four reeves strode away, Kesta leading them toward the river's shore where they might hope to find some privacy.
'What in the hells happened?'
'The captain sent Mistress Mai and a few attendants and guards to Merciful Valley. To keep her safe while he went on campaign.'
'From the red hounds? Those Sirniakan spies?'
Siras shrugged. 'The rumor runs that the captain's mother had Mai killed.'
'The hells! That's what Chief Tuvi implied. Why would his mother kill his wife?'
'She brought a Sirniakan princess from the empire. She wanted him to marry the outlander, but he refused.'
'So she killed Mai? How in the hells would that serve to persuade her son to marry the woman she'd chosen for him? Aui! How can anyone understand outlanders? Is this what we have to hope for?'
'To hope for what?' asked Kesta.
'Not here,' said Joss, lowering his voice. They walked awhile until they reached the low bluffs that ran along the western channel. It was impossible to penetrate the river's layers, the surface glitter, the streaming deeps, the muddied eddies where sticks washed up. This conflict was like the river. They thought they were fighting a single war, when in fact multiple wars were raging around and above and beneath their feet, unseen but nevertheless permeating the land until the Hundred overflowed with hostilities.
'Lord Radas is dead.'
'Thanks to you,' said Kesta.
He shrugged, shaking off the compliment. 'Anji and his army have defeated major contingents of Lord Radas's army.'