'In the trade talk they might say gelded, but we have a more honorable term in our own language, which is more sophisticated than the crude jabber used in the marketplace.'
Gelded! Kesh had to actually stop his own hand from reaching down to pat his own privates, to reassure himself they were intact. 'Captain Anji isn't the kind of man to accept a knife cut so as to live.'
'We have something else in mind. And you, Keshad of no patronymic and Eliar son of Isar of the Ri Amarah, are the ones who will deliver our offer to our cousin. You will accept the assignment?'
Kesh looked at Eliar. Eliar lifted a shoulder in a half shrug.
'What choice do we have?' Kesh said.
The prince lifted both hands. 'You can be brought before the priests and accused and convicted of being spies. It is a choice. An honorable one in its own way, since an honorable man speaks truth at all times.'
'What punishment would we then face?' Kesh asked.
'A merciful one. A swift execution, rather than burning such as heretics and nonbelievers suffer. You, Keshad, in any case. I am not sure how the Ri Amarah would fare as those of his people who lived in these lands were banished from the empire one hundred and eighteen years ago because of their heretical beliefs. He might merit burning.'
'Yours is a cruel law,' said Eliar.
'Hsst!' Keshad kicked him.
'Men are cruel,' observed the prince without heat. 'The law binds them in order to mitigate their cruelty. Such is the wisdom of Beltak.' He folded his hands on his lap. He was as sleek and well groomed as any treasured gelding, a strong workhorse, and a
handsome person in his own way, better-looking than Anji if measured by symmetry alone. 'So. I have found you, and made my proposal. Do you accept? You two, to carry our offer of peace across the Kandaran Pass to our cousin in the Hundred.'
'This is no trick, no hidden poison or sorcery meant to kill him?'
'No trick, no poison or sorcery meant to kill him. It is an honest offer, the best one he will get.'
'What else can we do?' muttered Eliar.
Kesh had spent too much time as a debt slave to trust masters and merchants who, given a monopoly, did not exploit their advantage. But that didn't mean a clever man couldn't gain advantage for himself on the sidelines as the powerful wrestled. 'Very well, Your Excellency, we'll take your offer to the captain. What is it?'
The prince nodded at the captain, who gestured. The guardsmen on the balcony backed up out of sight. The captain crossed to a door set on the far side of the chamber. He opened it and went through, leaving the prince — apparently unarmed — with Kesh and Eliar and their swords.
'So do you have horns?' asked the prince in a pleasant voice. 'I've always wondered.'
Eliar flushed.
The door opened and a woman entered the room. She was veiled, perceived mostly as cloth obscuring both face and form, yet she walked with confidence and carried a short lacquered stick with a heavy iron knob weighting one end. She was short and, it seemed, a bit stout, but vital and energetic. As soon as the door was shut behind her by an unseen hand, she pulled off the veil that concealed her face and tucked it carelessly through her belt.
The hells!
She was an older woman, not yet elderly, and she had a face so distinctively Qin that Keshad at once felt he was back riding with Qin soldiers. She circled the two young men as a wolf circles a pair of trapped bucks as it decides whether it is hungry enough to go to the bother of killing them. Then she turned on the prince.
'These are fearsome spies?' The trade talk fell easily from her lips.
'An exaggeration, I admit,' the prince said with a careless smile that had something of a scorpion's sting at its tip. 'Do not trouble me with your contentious nature.'
'You will be glad to be rid of me.'
'I need have nothing to do with you. From what I hear, the women's quarter will be glad to be rid of you after all these years. My brother has thankfully decreed there are to be no more foreign brides, only civilized women, admitted to the palace quarter.'
'He says so now. But wait until your brother, or his heir, or that heir's son, sees benefit in contracting a foreign alliance. When the gold, or the land, or the horses, are too tempting to refuse. Then your words will change and your hearts will turn, and some poor young woman will be ripped from her family's hearth and thrust into a cage, as I was.'
Eliar gasped, as if the words had been aimed at him.
The prince rose, his eyes so tightened at the corners that Kesh supposed him to be very angry. But he spoke in the blandest of voices, addressing Kesh and Eliar. 'This woman carries our offer to Anjihosh. You will escort her and those attendants she brings with her. Be assured that agents of my choosing will ride with you over the Kandaran Pass. If you do not deliver her safely, they will kill you.'
Kesh looked at Eliar; the young Silver was his only ally. 'Yes, Your Excellency. Can you tell me who we have the honor of escorting?'
'And idiots, too, in the bargain,' she said. She walked to the door, rapped on it with the iron knob of the stick, and, as soon as it was opened, vanished within.
'You claim to be a believer,' said the prince, 'because of which I will offer you a piece of advice. That woman is a serpent, with a poisoned tongue and a barbarian's lack of honor. Do not trust her.'
'That's Captain Anji's mother, isn't it?' As soon as Eliar spoke the words, Keshad realized she could be no one else.
'The palace is rid of her at last,' said the prince. 'As for you two, should either of you set foot in the empire again, you'll find your lives swiftly forfeit.' He clapped his hands thrice.
The door opened, and the captain strode swiftly out, posture erect and shoulders squared, like a man about to take his place in the talking line and perform one of the tales, a martial story told with defiance and bold gestures. These people knew what they were doing, entirely unlike Kesh and Eliar, their expedition begun as a toss of the sticks and exposed so easily Kesh felt the shame of it. Now they were delegated to be mere escorts to a bellicose woman being returned in disgrace to her son.
The prince sat in his chair as the captain led them away. Yet as they walked the length of the underground corridor with its hunting stories faded in the dim light, Kesh considered the last time he had brought a woman north over the Kandaran Pass into the Hundred. He'd believed one thing about her, but he'd been entirely wrong; Cornflower had turned out to be quite different from what he originally thought she was, not a helpless mute slave at all but rather a terrible demon bent on vengeance. Aui! There was really no telling what would happen when Captain Anji's mother arrived in the Hundred, was there?
PART TWO
Encounters
In the Year of the Red Goat
3
Don't open the gate.
Those were the last words Nekkar had said to the apprentices before he had slipped out of the temple to get a look at the army that had occupied Toskala eight days ago. Reflecting back on their frightened faces and anxious tears, he knew that leaving them had been a gods-rotted foolish thing to do. He should have stayed in the temple grounds to keep some order in the place. Make sure none of the young ones panicked.
Aui! Too late now to fret over what he couldn't change.
He had reached the front of the line.
A sergeant caressing a long knife finished his interrogation of a thin man, a farmer by the look of his humble knee-length linen jacket and bare legs. 'So you admit you are a refugee, come to Toskala from the country in the last six months?'
'We had to flee our village because of the trouble-'
'No refugees allowed in Toskala. You'll be marched to the gates and released. Return to your village.'