'Tortoise up!' he shouted, angry at his lapse. The entire cohort could have been shot to pieces while he gaped like a lust-struck moonwit. 'March!'
He fell behind the front rank of shields, and although the soldier who had chased her queried him with a gesture, he waved him off. She did not drop back to walk with the other hostages, nor did he make her go. Hadn't he already decided?
'You'll plague me until you get what you want, won't you?'
'Yes.' She matched her stride to his.
'I won't have it said I enlisted any soldier in my cohort in exchange for sex.' He glanced at Sergeant Giyara, who had dropped into step on his other side. She'd no doubt have an opinion to share with him in private, later. 'That's not the kind of unit I run.'
Zubaidit flashed that handsome smile. 'That's why I respect you, Captain.'
They walked in silence except for the tread of feet. The causeway stretched to the horizon.
'Captain,' said Giyara at length, as if she'd been chewing for a while and had finally swallowed, 'does that mean Lord Radas thinks we did the right thing by giving up our forward position?'
'Surely he knows I couldn't refuse a direct order. He told me to present a plan at the war council on Wakened Horse. I've a few ideas. Spread into the countryside. Confiscate the harvest, all flocks and horses, take wagons and tools. We can cut off every land route into Nessumara. Field boats out of Ankeno and do damage to their shipping as well, cut off the flow of refugees fleeing the city. Trap them in the delta like rats. They have fields and storehouses, but surely not enough to feed all the refugees. And the dry season is coming. Maybe this cursed mire will dry out and we can advance across a longer front, off the causeway. Maybe we can set fire to the islands and drive forward under the cover of smoke, to hide from the reeves.'
Giyara whistled. 'Fire is a two-edged sword. It can't be controlled.'
'War is a fire, isn't it? If we burned the grand and glorious city of Nessumara to ruins, what a message we'd send to any other people who think to resist us, eh?'
Zubaidit sucked in a sharply audible breath. Then she laughed, tossing her head.
'You find that funny?' he asked.
She lifted both hands, palms up, the well-known gesture of the-
child-asking-an-obvious-question in any of the tales. 'If you burn Nessumara, Captain, then what do you possess afterward?' 'Victory. What else matters?'
This time of year, as the rains faded to a whisper, the winds drew cooler drier air out of the northwest. You could taste the change, the locals said, see the shift in the color of the vegetation, hear the altered voice of the river announcing the advent of the dry season.
Mai peeked out through a slit in the curtains she'd opened with her fingers. Where the River Olossi met the Olo'o Sea, a green sway of reeds carpeted the shallows while blue sky melded with blue-green sea out beyond the last channels. She licked her lips, but all she tasted was her own anxiety. She let the cloth close.
'You're out early, ver,' said the boatman, speaking to the hirelings as they set the curtained palanquin on the dock. 'Your mistress or master can't wait, eh?'
'Don't ask me,' said one of the hirelings brusquely. 'We were hired to carry the palanquin at Crow's Gate and were told to deliver it to the boat and wait to deliver it back to Crow's Gate. Can we get going? Cursed cold out here by the water. We want to go wait in an inn.'
Mai had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, but not for the cold; it was for a covering should she need to conceal her face. Miravia sat on the narrow bench opposite, clutching the baby beneath her long cloak. She had looked so fragile at the beginning of this journey, and therefore Mai had handed Atani over to her as soon as they were hidden inside the curtains of the palanquin. Holding a baby gave one a measure of stability.
The palanquin was heaved up, pitched right and then left, and settled into the boat. Coins changed hands with a clink of vey counted out in pairs. The boatman grunted as he poled away from the dock. He made no attempt to converse. The boat rolled as they hit choppy waters, and then they glided through a long calm stretch and at last bumped up against another pier. The tang of salt was now flavored with a brush of bitter incense. A whisper of bells chimed an ornament to the hiss of wind and water in reeds. She heard the slap of feet running down to meet the boat.
'Eh, this isn't our early day, ver. What were you thinking?' The voice was cheerful, followed by laughter from others on the shore.
Mai slipped a folded piece of paper through the curtains. 'Take this to the Hieros, I beg you. I assure you, she will want to read it.'
A person wrenched the message from her fingers.
After a moment, the first voice said, 'Go!' and footsteps raced away. 'Bring the palanquin onto the dock. Quickly, you clod-foots.'
With much pitching, the palanquin got hoisted out of the boat and set on mercifully firm ground. Mai rubbed legs and arms sore from the journey smuggled in the chest. Miravia shut her eyes.
'Eh, that was a good game, the last of the hooks-and-ropes tournament,' said the boatman, determined to make the time pass by visiting with the unseen loiterers. 'You see it?'
'You think we get a festival day off? Wasn't there a new team competing?'
'A militia team, yeh. I was impressed. They'd only been practicing together for four months, at the order of the commander, and yet they came in third at the stakes. They'll win next year.'
A new voice chimed in, older and female. 'You see all the checkpoints and such they're setting up? I'm not sure I like it!'
The boatman snorted. 'I don't mind! Better than fearing bandits and criminals, neh?'
Outside, the voices argued about the new road regulations. The curtains stirred, and a tooth-filled snout poked into the palanquin. A scaly shape shimmied in so fast Miravia shrieked, and Mai gasped, and the baby woke and began to cry.
Outside, the temple folk laughed.
Inside, a ginny lizard nudged Miravia's leg and tried to crawl up onto the bench beside her.
Mai snatched Atani from Miravia. as her friend smothered laughter and crying beneath a hand clapped over her own mouth. 'I–I — I never thought I would see one,' she whispered. 'I read about them in books.'
Mai was struggling with her taloos and at last got the crying baby latched on. He began sucking noisily. The ginny backed down from Miravia and spun so quickly it seemed it had levitated, turning with a whip of its long tail. It nosed at Mai's feet, showed the merest edge of teeth, and tried to climb up on Mai's lap.
'You will not!' she said indignantly.
Its crest lifted, and a spasm like faintly glimmering threads of blue traced its knobbly spine. Atani let go of the breast, milk squirting his round face as he turned his head. Almost as if he knew it was there.
A voice called. 'Heya! The Hieros says to bring up the palanquin right away!'
The ginny scrambled out, curtains swaying in its wake. The palanquin rose; they rocked. The baby burped and burbled and, like any newborn, complained as he rooted, seeking the breast. Their bearers were less experienced than the hirelings who had carried them smoothly from Crow's Gate to Dast Olo's docks; Mai could not get a moment of stillness to let the poor little one fasten on, and by the time they were dropped roughly to solid ground, he was wailing, inconsolable.
Miravia twitched aside a lip of curtain to peer outside. Her eyes widened. 'It's a lovely garden!'
If joy had a fragrance, it might be something like this: flowers exhaling, the sun shedding warmth, the earth sighing, the air braced by a light breeze off the salty inland sea. Atani got hold again and began suckling. Mai sighed as the milk flowed, and a tingle of well-being, the breath of the Merciful One that penetrates all living things, coursed through her.