Traitors Gate

'Did you ever look in the pool, Keshad? Did you ever see the chains?'

'What chains?'

'Never mind. Did Shai truly say nothing to you, that time he came up with Anji a month after-' She rubbed a hand over her vest, feeling the scar tissue along her ribs. 'After Sheyshi stabbed me?'

'He never talked to me at all, arid I admit I didn't talk to him. I was too cursed worried that Ravia would take it into her head to tell Chief Tuvi she would marry him, out of loyalty to you. So I didn't pay much attention to his troubles.'

She rested a hand on his forearm, and he was so startled he jerked it away, then flushed again, and settled his arm back beside hers on the railing as if within the reach of a particularly fearsome snake, and endured her fingers resting lightly on his hand.

'You do love Miravia, don't you?' she asked.

He looked irritated. Then he flung back his head as the sun winked hard on that distant ledge. 'I just remembered. The captain and his men brought three small jeweler's chests bound with chains. But they left without them. I thought they were offerings for the altar. He sent up flowers every month, plum blossoms if he could get them. But that doesn't explain why he left those good quality chests behind, does it? Indeed, they emptied a clothes chest from the barracks shelter and took it away with them, although I never knew — nor asked — what was in it, I was that glad to see them go without taking Ravia with them.'

She changed the subject, stumbling over a momentary awkwardness by falling back on the one subject she never tired of. 'Tell me

again, how was the baby that last time you saw him, when Anji came to take him away?'

He had the same smile any Hundred man would have, thinking of a plump, healthy child. 'An exceptionally beautiful child. He has such a chortling laugh, like everything amuses him! Very good natured.'

Four soldiers tramped up behind them, laughing in a quite different way, shoving each other and showing off, making themselves big and noticeable as they crowded against the railing two on each side.

'Heya, verea! Like the view, eh?'

'It's a very fine view of the road. I suppose you keep an eye on travelers and caravans. Make sure no one comes to harm.'

'We do oversee the roads, of course.' They were young men, desperate to boast. 'But that's not the chief reason we're here. We're black wolves, you know.'

'Black wolves?'

'The army's elite. We're trained to hunt demons.'

'You hunt demons?' She looked at Kesh, but he shrugged.

'See that Mount Aua? There's a demon cradle there, a place demons might try to shelter for a night, sip their demon nectar. And that ridge there — see how it glitters? That one, too. So we're posted here to keep an eye on them. There are other outposts like this one. Chief Chartai commands the entire black wolf cohort here in Istria. We're the second such cohort, you know. Just commissioned two months ago. See our banner?'

It flapped from a pole, two wolf's heads grinning in the breeze.

'We figured you maybe had a brother or husband who died in the service of the wolves, verea, seeing as you wear the ring.'

She looked down at the wolf's-head ring, sigil of the Mei clan. The necklace had slipped out from the neck of her vest and Shai's ring dangled at the curve of her breasts, which they were staring at, as men would. It was the same head, the very same. They held up their hands to show they, too, wore wolf's-head rings.

Her throat tightened on words she did not want to say. She slipped the errant chain and its ring back beneath her vest and was at once sorry she'd done so, because they followed the movement of the ring as if with their own hands.

'What kind of demons are you hunting?'

'Any demons, really, traitors or bandits or murderers. But particularly cloaks, verea. Those ones who say they're Guardians but

are really gods-rotted lilus waiting to corrupt us and lead the Hundred back into war.' They preened, just like sunning eagles. 'Only the black wolves are told the secret of how to kill demons. It's a dangerous job. We're not afraid.'

But now she was. Fear snapped, a wolf who had just decided to eat her up.

The fourth day they ought to have made it all the way to Toskala, but Miyara was stricken as by a shuddering sickness, and then she wept while still aloft, and afterward they sailed down and came to rest in a pasture as sheep scattered. The buildings of a substantial town rose ahead. Farmers and herdsmen came running.

'Miyara, what is it? Are you ill?' Mai was dangling with her feet off the ground, kicking a little, wanting to stand on solid earth instead of being helpless.

'I'm scared, Mai, I don't mind saying. There's a thing I've never told you. About Joss. They say Scar went after Commander Anji. They say Joss was jealous that Commander Anji was doing a better job than Joss was commanding the reeves, so he tried to kill him.'

'Joss? Reeve Joss? Are we talking about the same man?'

'The cursed handsome one.'

'That's right. He's an Ox, just like me. I admit he was vain, but very charming! Yet I never met a man less ambitious to puff about his own importance and authority than Reeve Joss. I mean, he seemed like a man who'd been dragged into authority and didn't like it much.'

'That's how I saw him, I admit. But others didn't. It's not what folk said afterward. I wasn't there. But let me tell you something and I beg you never to say I mentioned it. There's a contingent of reeves — not many, but people who were close to him — who flew to Bronze Hall down in Mar. You wouldn't know them, they'd just be names to you. They've never truly confided in me, but I've been thinking as each month passes that once I've discharged the obligation I made to ferry supplies up to Merciful Valley for the one year — a promise I made to Commander Anji on behalf of the boy, who is my nephew, if you'll recall-'

'I do recall it. I know what I owe you.'

'Never mind that. It's nothing any Hundred woman wouldn't have done.'

'What have you been thinking?'

'That I'd leave Argent Hall and fly to Bronze Hall. Siras is thinking of coming with me — and I suppose Ildiya will tag along with him. Anyhow, we just want to hear what they have to say. Bronze Hall's not a member of the reeve council. They never sent a representative to the council in which Commander Anji was elected as commander over the reeve halls. They're not subject to him.'

'And what does Commander Anji think of that?' Mai asked tartly. 'That one hall doesn't acknowledgehis authority?'

'How could I know? I'm just a reeve in Argent Hall, far away from Law Rock. I know there's been plenty of fighting up in Herelia and Teriayne and the north. The war's not over yet. I'm sure Commander Anji is too busy to bother himself with sleepy Mar, way down on the southeastern coast.'

'Let me down, I beg you, I have to pee.'

Miyara unhooked them both, and they both went to pee in the woods. When they reemerged, the farmers were gawking from a distance at the eagle while the herdsmen and their barking dogs chivvied the sheep through a gap in the woods toward a safer clearing.

Mai was struggling with the trousers. 'I hate these things. A taloos is so much easier to wear, much less pee in.'

Miyara hauled out a flag and signaled Siras and Ildiya, who headed down.

'Tell you what, Mai,' said Miyara. 'Let's shelter here for the night. Then we'll reach Law Rock in the morning. Better in the morning than late in the afternoon, eh?'

'Why?'

She jerked the flags down and rolled them up tightly, hands tense. Her eyes had a faraway look, as a caravaner in the desert might eye a distant haze wondering if it is a killing sandstorm. 'Better to have plenty of time to leave, don't you think? If things aren't so hospitable.'

'Reeve! Verea!'

A man and a woman came jogging toward them along the road. 'We saw you come down. And here are more of you! Surely you'll honor us by staying over. We're a humble town, but we've a garrison station newly built and still empty. You're welcome to stay there for the night. We'll feed you gladly.'