'How do I look? You're my mirror, Miravia.'
Miravia's frown deepened. 'Are you meaning to confront him, or seduce him?'
'Should I make my entrance in all my dust, in those unattractive trousers and vest? Looking like a — a — sheepherder?'
A hand patted one of the doors. 'Mai?' Miyara was whispering as if she dared not let anyone know who was concealed within. 'Can you come out? Now?'
A decisive step thumped on the porch and the door was slammed open to reveal a Qin soldier with sword drawn.
'Tuvi!' She grasped Miravia's arm, seeing the sword's ugly curve, the tip as deadly as an eagle's beak.
His other arm flashed out and he caught himself against the wall. He stared at her as at a monster. The sword wavered, drooped. He took a step back, and Miyara had to jump back down the step to avoid being shoved off by his movement.
'How can this be?' he said hoarsely.
'Chief Tuvi.'
'What are you, that comes here wearing Mai's face and form?'
'I'm Mai, Tuvi-lo.'
'You can't be Mai. She is dead. I saw her die. She vanished into the pool.' He found his balance and held out a hand to display the ropy white scars across the skin. T tried to pull her out, but the demons had already claimed her.'
'No. That pool is the womb of the firelings. They healed me.'
'Of course that is impossible,' he said, 'and it is foolish of you
to claim it could be true. For then why do you only appear now? No person can breathe water. Only demons can. Therefore, you are a demon. Now you have come here with anger and a demon's mischief in your heart. What do you want?'
He shifted back one more step, enough to gesture toward people outside she could not see. 'Sergeant! Hold the three reeves and that man Keshad under guard.' He stepped into the chamber, raising his sword. 'Miravia. Go outside.'
She stepped in front of Mai. 'No. This is truly Mai, Chief Tuvi. I know it.'
'She is a demon, what the people here call a lilu. She has seduced you, Miravia. Even you.'
'I want my son!' cried Mai.
'So after all it has come to this. The child was born in the midst of demons, and now they seek to claim him. Miravia, step aside. I don't want to harm you.'
'No,' said Miravia, but Mai shouldered her aside and placed herself in front, staring him down as she drowned in the death of her hopes.
'Kill me then, Tuvi-lo. I do not fear death. Not much, anyway. But tell me, if you please, if it is true these stories I hear. That Sheyshi was his mother's agent. That when he discovered who had me killed, he allowed his mother to take over the running of my household anyway! That he married the Sirniakan princess his mother brought for him. That his army is spread across the Hundred guarding every gate and road, just like the Qin army across the towns of the Golden Road? Paying taxes they call tithes. Hanging executed criminals from posts as a warning, just like you Qin did in Kartu Town in our citadel square after making us watch the executions. Is that all true?' The tears began to flood, but she had to speak. 'Is Atani well? Is he thriving and healthy? Do they take good care of him? Did Priya and O'eki stay with him, or were they dismissed? And did Anji's mother or his new wife find you a good wife, Tuvi? Someone special only, as I would have?'
Mai had never set out to deliberately cause another person pain. She had never cut anyone, much less killed a man, but she saw the blow connect in the way he gasped as his eyes lost track of her briefly as the words stabbed home.
No. The women in charge of Anji's household had not found him someone special. Why should they? They didn't care about Tuvi personally. He was just another weapon at Anji's disposal.
He sheathed his sword. 'Miravia, go with the others. You — what must I call you?'
'You know my name.'
His mouth pinched closed as he refused to say it. 'You will come with me. For after all, I find I cannot kill you, even knowing what you are. Let the captain decide.'
Let the captain decide.
'Mai?'
'Do as he says.' She kissed Miravia on each cheek, and they embraced tightly, for it might be the last time. 'Be happy with Keshad.'
She must go quickly lest she lose her composure. For it was composure she needed more than anything. She walked through the garden with Tuvi at her back, close enough to kill her swiftly should it come to that. Reeve Odash leaned on his broom, his face seamed with confusion, but he did not protest. Tuvi's escort of twelve men stared openly, as much delighted as startled to find Tuvi marshaling a beautiful young woman out of a garden shed. Two of the soldiers were Qin soldiers she knew, young men she'd traveled with. They gaped like fishes, but Tuvi's fist nudged her in the small of the back so she kept moving without a word even as he ordered them to run ahead and clear a path.
So it was that folk were ducking out of the way, hurrying into barracks, closing shutters, as Tuvi marched her through the alleys and training yards of the reeve hall. They passed under a gate guarded by two soldiers and along the verge of a cliff on a narrow trail paved with flagstones, past pools scratched into the stone, and thence to the very prow of Law Rock where the wind sang over the rushing waters. A humble thatched roof surrounded by a simple wood railing sheltered a dull stele, squat and wide, set in the earth, nothing much to look at except for the flower necklaces draped over its upright end. One had slipped off, the white flowers a blaze of brightness against the raked dirt.
Then they came around the point and walked up a flagstone path on the eastern rim that ended in a wall and a gate guarded, once again, by soldiers. She did not know these men, and they were definitely outlanders with smooth cheeks and eyes as hard as pebbles as they looked her over without lust but with a glint that warned her, too late, that they had recognized her.
'What is this, Chief Tuvi?' they asked. 'Isn't this-?'
'Let me through,' he said in the tone of a man who does not
expect to be refused. They hesitated just long enough for his expression to kindle, and in that battle Mai saw the war within the household. Who ruled? Anji, or his mother?
They rapped a signal on the gate. It was opened, and Tuvi guided her along a narrow whitewashed corridor and past several slits behind which she heard voices speaking in a language she did not know. Twice, Tuvi paused to answer a question posed from an unseen interlocutor, and twice another gate was opened and they passed through into an identical blank corridor. The third gate opened onto a porch that overlooked a garden, its ornamental bushes severely pruned and its flowering shrubs exceptionally elegant in a sparse aesthetic she recognized as Anji's.
The blow took her like the knife up under the ribs. There he was, seated on a simple camp stool under a simple awning beside a low table, bent over what was almost certainly a set of maps while he talked with a pair of local men she did not know. One was a militia captain and the other an ostiary of Ilu, if one judged by the stripe on his blue cloak. He smiled in that familiar, beloved way in response to a comment by the ostiary, but perhaps the wind alerted him to the scuff of their feet as Tuvi touched her elbow to bring her to a halt under the shade of the porch. Perhaps the birds — for there were birds, a pair of red caps and several bright yellow bellies with their green banded wings — called a warning. He stiffened. He lifted his chin, as though scenting the air. He rose and slowly, almost hesitantly, turned.
Of course he knew her instantly. The air sang with his shock. The wind smothered its cry in the leaves. A petal spun lazily, drifting to earth.