Late one night the bar at his door was removed, and the door opened. An attractive woman entered, carrying a lamp and wearing a taloos of such sheer silk you could see the dark circles of her nipples through the wrapping. Four guards waited outside, making wagers on how quickly he'd succumb and how long he'd last.
'I just had to'see your body myself,' she said. 'Strip.'
'What are you going to do, beat me if I don't? You can't kill me, because the Guardian wants me alive.'
She shifted ground, baring the curve of a breast but not venturing too close. 'You must be terribly lonely here.'
'Neh. There's plenty of prisoners more miserable than I am whose moans and cries I hear every day.'
'You might hear me moan and cry, if you wished. I can see you're aroused.'
'Sheh!' For shame. 'You're like a demon, feeding on suffering.'
She slapped him, and he caught her wrist and held it motionless, despite her twisting, to show her how strong he was. Panicking, she screamed, and the guards ran in with spears. Before they hit him, he shoved her away, into their advance.
'Perhaps the body is aroused, but the mind is disgusted. Beat me for refusing, if you must, but then I'll tell the Guardian. Do you want the cloak's scrutiny?'
'Maybe the cloak doesn't care what's done with the condemned before they die,' said the woman as she recovered her composure, surrounded by the guards.
'Maybe not. I'm willing to find out. Are you?'
After that, they left him alone and no longer made jokes when he was allowed his nightly freedom in the courtyard. Something had happened to him that he didn't entirely understand. It was as
if seeing the demon wearing the shell of Hari had strangled the last vestiges of the young man Shai had once been, the seventh of seven sons, least and superfluous, who had spent his youth remaining silent, keeping out of the way, and doing what he was told. The only one of his brothers he'd loved was lost to him; he'd likely never see his beloved niece Mai again; Zubaidit had walked alone into the army without him. Even Tohon and the children he'd helped save — presumably now safe — were as far away as if death had severed them one from the other.
So be it. He had a task to accomplish.
He was not a clerk or priest to know how to mark the passing of days, but the rains fell less frequently, and the pots of blue and white flowers withered and were replaced with pots of a mellow golden bloom. Occasionally new prisoners were brought in, some weeping, some protesting, some silent; he heard their voices but he never saw them nor could they communicate. The cell to Shai's right remained empty; the chamber to his left was the gardener's storeroom with all its tools. If he could only get in there he might acquire a weapon, but they'd stripped him when they'd first captured him, taken everything — his clothes and boots and knife and even Hari's wolf's-head belt buckle. They'd given him a flimsy kilt and vest to wear and, strangely, left him both wolf's-head rings. Besides that reminder of the Mei clan, all he possessed was mind and muscle.
He knew when Night came because of the way the voices of the guards changed. Many of the prisoners were taken away and never returned. At dusk, his door was opened. They herded him onto the porch. Out in the courtyard, a carpet had been laid over the gravel and a low table placed on it. A person was seated at that table, hard to see in the gloom.
'Strip,' said the sergeant in charge.
After he stripped out of the kilt and vest, they gave him new clothing, exactly the same, and led him to the table. A pillow waited; he settled cross-legged on its plush opulence opposite the woman wearing the cloak of Night. Her hands were clasped and resting on the table beside a sheet of rice paper, a writing brush, and an inkstone. A lantern had been hooked to a post driven in the ground to her right, its light illuminating her pleasant expression and a lacquered tray with a wooden cup and a ceramic pot.
'Will you drink?' she asked. 'It's a late harvest tea, sweetened with rice-flower-grain.'
'Do you intend to poison me?'
'You're too valuable to poison. You're my hostage for Harishil's compliance.'
The tea had a remarkable aroma that made his mouth water after so long on an unvaried diet. 'I'll drink,' he said, wondering if he could move fast enough to grab the lantern and bash in her head before the archers standing at a remove could kill him.
She smiled, as if guessing his thoughts, then poured. She, too, was sitting on a pillow, and beneath the pillow, sticking out on either side, lay a spear. His breathing quickened. She pushed the filled cup to his side of the table.
He lunged over the table, slamming her back and rolling to one side as he grabbed the spear's haft and yanked it free-
If thunder had shock rather than sound, it might lay a man flat.
Evidently, he blacked out.
When he came to, he was lying flat on his back with three spears — not the one he'd grabbed for — pressing into his chest. His right hand was in a hot flame of agony, and his mouth was as dry as if he'd not tasted liquid for days. His head throbbed.
'Let him up,' she said kindly.
The spears withdrew. He winced as he sat up. Grainy spots of light spun and flickered in his vision, and yet there sat the cloak on her pillow with the table arranged in exactly the same tidy way as if nothing had happened. Only a spot of moisture on the gravel betrayed where the cup had spilled. How long had he been out? The moon had not yet risen for him to mark time's passage by its height in the sky.
'As you have just discovered, not even one who is veiled to my sight can hold a Guardian's staff,' she said in her mild voice, lifting the pot. 'Tea?'
He drank three cups in quick succession, and the spots faded and the pain ebbed, although his hand still hurt.
'What do you want? If I am meant as a hostage to force Hari's obedience, why talk to me at all?'
'" One who is an outlander may save them." Do you know the phrase?'
'It's from the tale of the Guardians. As a terrible war ravages the Hundred, an orphaned girl begs the gods for peace. The gods raise the Guardians out of a sacred pool and give them gifts and command them to establish justice in the land. But then after all that there is a prophecy that one among the Guardians will betray
the others. And one of the gods tells the orphaned girl that an out-lander will save them.'
She gestured, and a servant crept forward, gaze averted, and took away the tray. The soldiers, at their remove, remained watchful, every gaze fixed on Shai.
'Over the generations,' she said, 'it has become commonly understood that this phrase refers to the land and its people, but in truth, it refers to the Guardians themselves. One who is an outlander may save the Guardians. That is why I need Harishil's cooperation to eliminate those who threaten the rest of us.'
'Threaten you? Your army is the one that abuses and rapes children. That strings people up on poles. Attacks cities, burns villages — shall I go on?'
He meant to make her angry, but her calm was unshakable. 'Certainly you are a young man who speaks boldly. What you are actually thinking, of course, I cannot know, because you are veiled to my sight. By any chance, are you a seventh son?'
The question startled him, not least because of its accuracy. 'Why?'
'Not all the gods-cursed demons are seventh sons or seventh daughters, but many are.'
'I'm not a demon!'
She went on as if he had not spoken. 'Born from the same woman's womb, such a child will see and hear ghosts. Sired by the same father on different women, such a child will only hear or only see. So it is written in temple archives, and so I have ascertained in my time. I was just wondering if it might be true among outlanders as well.'
Was Anji a seventh son, Shai wondered? It was not a question he'd likely ever get a chance to ask. Nor was he inclined to answer any question she asked about him, or Anji. Yet he must keep her talking, to see what he could learn.