Traitors Gate

baked by others. Why do so many men march with the army? Spit on the gods? Steal what they could earn by their own labor? Rape when they can walk into Ushara's temples and worship? Why didn't they just stay home in their villages and towns, marry, tithe, and sire children? The Hundred has let itself rot from within. Now the contagion of discontent and anger is spread by those greedy enough to encourage the worst in those too weak to resist.'

'Harsh words,' he said.

'True words. We must all take responsibility for the troubles that engulf us.'

He did not know what to say because every word seemed meaningless compared with her presence as she stood there with wet cloth stuck to her skin and her body balanced with deadly grace. Her glare forced him a step back, and he bumped against unyielding stone. He was trembling with the effort of staying where he was, as his pulse throbbed and his breath caught in his throat.

She shook her head, no smile, no frown. 'A woman can look a long time before she finds a man who can really take his time.'

'A woman can look a long time if she never pauses long enough to try this man.'

She laughed.

'Aui!' He pushed away from the wall.

She met him, and for a glorious moment he held her as they kissed, and kissed.

And kissed.

Just when he thought they might have to do something very reckless despite knowing how close all those other reeves were in the covering darkness, a discreet cough interrupted them.

She broke away. Riven of contact, he swayed, and as Peddonon caught his arm to steady him, she vanished down the corridor toward the ledge.

'You've got it bad, my friend,' murmured Peddonon.

Joss brought a palm to his face. 'Am I crazy?'

Peddonon snorted.

'She's leaving!' He pulled out of Peddonon's grasp and stumbled after her.

'Don't go over the edge, Joss.'

Too late. She was sworn to the goddess, a trained assassin, fixed on her mission. She'd already been lowered over the cliff,

the reeves letting out the rope hand over hand. He stayed out there in the night and the wind until they received the three tugs that indicated she'd gotten down safely. Until they hauled up the empty basket and stowed it under the overhang where it couldn't be spotted in daylight by an enemy patrolling the far shore. Until they'd all gone away, leaving Peddonon and Kesta waiting for him in a patient silence that hurt more than the hollow feeling in his gut.

The cooling breeze off the water reminded him that the dry season lay ahead. He rubbed his arms, but the ache did not go away.

'Heya,' said Kesta softly. 'Come on, Joss. Let's go have a drink, eh? We've missed you these past months. It's not the same without you here at Clan Hall.'

'I might never see her again.'

Peddonon whistled under his breath. Kesta sighed. The river rushed toward the distant sea, just as the army would, marching south through fertile and heavily populated Istria toward Nessumara, said in the tales to be the second-oldest inhabited place in the Hundred and certainly its largest city now. He must do what was required of him, just as she would.

'The first thing we must do,' he said, 'is warn Nessumara's council and Copper Hall to seek traitors in their midst. And get Tohon and his group out of there.'

Only then, as he turned to go with his companions, did he realize she had never said what had happened to the outlander, Shai.

6

'You're not the boy I remember, Shai.'

Hari lounged on a silk-covered couch, the kind of furniture found in the houses of the rich in Kartu Town. The florid couch looked out of place inside a campaign tent otherwise furnished with only two rugs, a folding table holding a pair of cups and a ceramic bottle with an unbroken seal, and a single lit lamp. Two objects rested on the table: the Mei clan wolf ring and wolf belt buckle Hari had been wearing the day he'd been marched out of Kartu Town as a prisoner of their Qin overlords.

Shai pointed to them. 'I went through terrible things to get that ring and buckle back. Will you put on your ring?'

'No. I'm no longer a son of the Mei clan.'

Shai displayed the wolf ring he wore as a child of the Mei clan, although his ring wasn't anything like as fine a quality as the one that had been given to Hari by Grandmother when Hari had reached manhood. After all, Hari was the favored third son, while Shai was merely the excess seventh. 'Who are you, if not a son of the Mei clan? Father Mei sent me to bring your bones back to the clan for proper burial.'

As a boy, Hari had perfected the ability to raise a single eyebrow; he could mock you while looking so exceedingly clever that you found yourself smiling in sympathy, wanting him to approve of you. 'Here I am.'

Today, Shai wasn't smiling. 'You're dead.'

'Harsh words, little brother. Yet you would know, you who can see ghosts.'

Shai flushed. 'Have you forgotten that in Kartu Town, they burn people who see ghosts?'

T never told anyone you could see ghosts. I would never have betrayed you.'

'Yet here I am, your prisoner.' He walked to the tent flap and twitched the entrance curtain aside to stare over the camp, where soldiers worked into the dusk breaking down tents and loading gear into wagons in preparation for a dawn departure. Guards surrounded the tent.

Behind him, Hari sighed. 'You're not my prisoner. I'm sheltering you. Don't you trust me? You used to.'

Shai let the cloth fall as he turned. 'You were the best of my brothers, it's true.'

'As if that's saying much!'

'It's why I came all this way to find a dead man. Yet you're no ghost. You live and breathe.'

'Maybe it just seems to you that I live and I breathe. Maybe I am a ghost. The soldiers call us cloaks. A few whisper that we're lilu. Some name us as Guardians, the ones who bring justice.' His crooked smile made his expression bitter.

'This army brings no justice.'

'I never said it did.'

'Yet you ride with murderers and rapists and thieves. You command them.'

'I am a prisoner of those who command me.'

Furious, Shai walked over to the couch. 'You don't look like a prisoner! You look like a lord, who with a gesture of his hand marks who will live and who will die. You sent a man to be hanged from the pole. How can you do it, knowing what he will suffer?'

Hari shrugged, his expression masked. 'I'm not the brother you think you remember.'

'You can't have changed that much! You were the bold one, the bright one, the one who always spoke his mind!'

'Maybe you didn't know me that well. You were young. You saw what you wanted to see. Maybe I was the drunk one, the stupid one, the dissatisfied one. Maybe I pushed our Qin overlords too hard not out of a sense of righteous anger, but as a prank. Or on a dare. Or because I was bored. Or wanted to impress my reckless idiot friends.'

'I don't believe it!'

'You want to believe I am something I never was. Now listen, little brother. We've got to get you out of here before Night or Lord Radas discover you-'

Shai grabbed one of his brother's wrists and squeezed it; it was shocking to feel he might overpower the older brother who had once been able to sling him over a shoulder, run down to the pond, and toss him into the water howling and laughing. He tightened his grip until Hari winced. 'How did you get to the Hundred?'

Hari lifted his chin defiantly but in the end looked away. He addressed words to the sloped end of the couch, the fabric a saturated dark purple similar to the hue of the cloak he wore carelessly flung over his shoulders. 'Will you let go?'

Shai let go.

Hari rubbed the wrist. His forehead was beaded with sweat. I'm done speaking of it. What use is there in me speaking? All my words are tainted, because I'm a demon.'

The tone of self-loathing hit Shai hardest. The Hari he knew had never hated himself. 'You aren't a demon.'