Mai took a deep breath. 'If you were to marry Tuvi-'
Miravia pushed a sandal into the dirt, digging a hole.
'Not now, I mean! No hurry!'
'It's too early,' Miravia muttered, cheeks scalded red although it wasn't hot.
'Of course!' Mai took her hand, tucked it into the crook of her own elbow, and indicated the market. 'Best I go back to nurse Atani. Do you want to stay in the market?'
As easily as Miravia had taken to walking in public with her face exposed after so many years locked behind walls and veils, she was not ready to brave the market alone. Her smile was wan as her flush faded. 'I'll go back with you.' She clutched Mai more tightly. 'Without you, I would be in Nessumara now. That you gave me shelter… I can never repay you.'
Tears slipped down Mai's cheeks, but she never minded these swells of pure emotion, which like the wind off the mountains came as if from the heavens, a blessing from the Merciful One. 'This is not a matter of exchange. We are sisters. I would no more be here without you than I would be without my husband.'
'Mai!'
'You don't need to thank me any more than I thank you for welcoming me into your heart when I first came to Olossi, when I was alone and without a sister.'
Miravia choked down her sniffles under broken laughter. 'Now we will fall upon each other wailing and moaning.'
Then they laughed so hard Chief Tuvi looked puzzled as he climbed down the ladder. But he did not react as a love-lorn man would; he neither sighed nor smiled to see their laughter. If she meant to coax this match into existence, she would have to work carefully.
'Let's go up,' he said instead, brow wrinkled. 'The captain will be wondering what became of you.'
At the base of Liya Pass lay the town of Stragglewood, so called for the way the woodland was cut in strips and spurs into the hills where folk had taken the easy routes to collect and transport wood. The town was a way station for trade over the Liya Pass, which connected the region of Herelia to the main road leading southeast to Toskala along the Ili Cutoff.
Approaching on the road at dawn, Marit surveyed markedly tidier surroundings than those she recalled from the last time she had come through, twenty-one years ago. Every field boasted recently erected boundary stones. Young orchards were laid out in ranks spaced so evenly she guessed they had been paced out by the same person. She passed ruined foundations marking where poor clans' hovels had been demolished. A livestock fence ringed the garden plots, and compounds like a tannery, lumberyard, and byres whose stench and noise were kept outside the town. An imposing inner palisade circled the actual town buildings; at its gate a pair of middle-aged men stood on a platform that allowed them a view of both fields and forecourt.
Their gazes, briefly met, betrayed minds dismayed to see a cloak riding up to their town in a month in which an assizes court was not scheduled. A very bad omen. They shielded their faces behind hands.
'Holy One.' The shaven-headed elder spoke through his hands. 'Forgive us. We had no word or expectation of your coming. The assizes is not readied for your pleasure.'
For my pleasure?
Warning snorted, tossing her head.
'What awaits me at the assizes?' she asked, cautious in her choice of words but sure she must speak boldly if she meant to continue the ruse.
Beyond the gate, people gathered in the forecourt, the squeak of leather rubbing, a rattling cough, a capacious yawn.
A man called out. 'Heya, Tarbi! It's past time to open the gates and let us out to our labors, eh?'
The shaven-headed man climbed out of sight. Hands fumbled at chains; bars scraped; the gates were pulled open. In the forecourt stood at least fifty folk carrying hoes, spades, axes, and other implements. More were walking up. Seeing her, half the folk dropped to their knees as if they'd been felled by a sledgehammer. All raised hands to shield their faces. It was a practiced response the obeisance of which chilled her more than the cursed dawn wind. She turned Warning in a sweep that sent folk scuttling away from her.
'Finish with your duties,' she said to Tarbi. 'Then escort me to the assizes.'
'You are gracious, Holy One.' He unhooked a basket from under the eaves. Every farmer and woodsman, carter and tanner, elder and child filed past to hand him a pair of discs strung on leather straps. He examined them, tossed one in the basket, and returned the other to its bearer, who then slung it around the neck and hurried out the gate, careful never to look Marit's way.
When the first rush was past, Tarbi called down the other guard to take charge. He walked ahead; she led the mare.
Children fled into their houses. Women flinched away, shielding their faces in the gesture Marit was beginning to loathe.
'Are there bandits hereabouts, that you lock your town gates at night?'
'Of course not, Holy One. The land is at peace.'
Stragglewood had a central square fronted on two sides by capacious clan compounds ostentatiously renovated. Along the northern front of the square ran a long, low building that she remembered as the council hall. She was shown into its courtyard. The traditional elders' benches had been removed. A colonnade opened into an open hall whose elders' benches had been removed in favor of a chair built to outsize proportions and raised on a dais with a pair of smaller chairs set below to either side as obsequious attendants.
'Where are the assizes?'
'They are here, Holy One. We captured a gods-cursed demon. She's confined in a cell along with unclean ones awaiting judgment. She and two of the unclean ones will be sent to Wedrewe for cleansing when the chain comes through at the Lamp Moon.'
'You've confined a gods-touched person?'
'According to the statutes.'
'The law? Aui! And what in the hells are "unclean ones"?'
'The criminals, Holy One.'
She clamped lips closed over a furious reply and took a few deep breaths. The rafters of the hall seemed ominous; she did not want to walk under a roof where shadows spilled over the floor like the pooling of blood. 'Where are the elders' benches?'
'Removed, according to the statutes, Holy One.'
'Who judges the cases, then?'
His head remained stolidly, stubbornly, bowed. 'You'll want to discuss these matters with the clerk, Holy One. I am only in charge of the gate passage.' His fear trembled on the air, as delicate and complex as a spider's web. 'We are always posted in pairs at the gate, Holy One. Hodard may come under suspicion if he remains there too long alone.'
'Under suspicion of what? Allowing someone out without taking their token?'
As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. For that was precisely what was going on: no one could enter or leave town without the act being marked. The tokens and palisade had nothing to do with protecting the town from bandits.
Tarbi's gaze skipped over her face so quickly she caught only a glance of a memory: a sobbing woman being flogged in the town square as prosperous-looking clans-folk shouted questions at her, 'Where has he fled to?' 'Where has he gone?'
Yet his thoughts were as clear as speech: How is it she does not know this? It is exactly as we were warned! An impostor will come.
He wrenched his gaze to the dirt.
She'd betrayed her ignorance. 'Fetch the clerk.'
With a haste that betrayed his eagerness to flee, he scrambled onto the porch and kicked off his sandals, calling out as he slid open a door. 'Osya! Come quickly!'
Marit dropped Warning's reins and walked after him, pausing with one foot on the ground and the other braced on the lower of the two steps. A body appeared in the gate. She turned, but it was only a little child come to stare at the winged horse. Its open mouth and wide eyes, all wonder and excitement, made her smile. Then it caught sight of her, and it dropped so quickly to its knees, head bowed and hands raised in an obscene imitation of the adults' gestures, that she felt mocked. It bolted away into the square without a word.