'Only if despair is corruption.'
'I lived once in despair,' Kirit said softly. 'When I lived there, I was not a person and not a demon. I was a ghost. Maybe she is a ghost, too.'
'Eiya!' He smiled gently. 'Maybe. Yet she speaks of people she has built a haven for. She may reject us, but she still acts as a Guardian.'
'What if she's right about the Guardians? Why should any of us, you and me, look into the hearts of others? Isn't it like violating them?' She spoke the words so calmly that he winced, thinking of what she had endured in the long months she had been a slave.
'Not if we act for justice.'
Her gaze pinned him because she had no guile, nothing but the memory of the pain whose hot grasp she had escaped. 'If they do not give' permission, then does it matter for what reason it is done?'
The light of the gleaming stars looked angry tonight, or maybe it was only the prickle of his own heart, stabbed by doubts.
'Uncle, for a long time, I could not fight and I didn't know how to die. That was worse than dying. So I don't fear death. If we are truly Guardians, then we must risk our lives to help those who are fighting the demons. You already said so! To do nothing when you see people being killed, when you could act to stop it, is the same as if you are killing them yourself.'
He did not answer. He had no answer.
'So you see,' she went on inexorably, 'Marit is the one who is right. If the cloak of Earth will not help us, we have to use the other plan.'
19
North of the Liya Hills lay the plain of Herelia, its fertile fields fed by the River Vessi and its tributaries. Marit didn't know Herelia well; it hadn't been in her patrol territory. Its two major towns were Malinna and Laripa; its port city Dast Elia. At the base of the Liya Pass Road, the messenger turned in the direction of
Laripa, riding through well-tended countryside as Marit kept pace above.
Two days later, on a bright and pleasant morning, they approached a town still under construction on the banks of the River Vessi. She raced ahead; at his lagging pace, he would not reach Wedrewe until midday. She flew a circuit over the town's layers: outermost, a swath of woodland clearly off-limits to felling where a hunting party crashed in pursuit of game, horns blatting; deep within the forest cover pits had been dug and filled over with loose soil, although from the height it was difficult to figure what they were for. At the woodland edge stood a perimeter fence and guard towers enclosing fields and orchards and corrals and gardens and tanning yards and smithies. On a backwater shore, rafts of logs lashed together were being beached and hauled up to lumberyards. A second wall ringed districts of humble row houses, its access funneled through guard gates. The third wall marked out open ground where company upon company of men drilled. Barracks and storehouses ran in ranks along the outside of the fourth and innermost wall, within which lay spacious grounds and gardens that resembled the temples of the gods and yet showed no allegiance to any. This vast inner compound was square, like Kotaru's forts, approached through triple-linteled gates as were Ilu's temples. It was roofed with green slate to reflect the Witherer's fecundity, and boasted handsome private gardens as in Ushara's realm. The symmetry of the buildings reflected Sapanasu's orderliness, and a young Ladytree, Atiratu's refuge, had been planted beside each of the four gates. In the center of all lay a walled garden surrounded by covered porch on all sides whose open ground was neatly raked around a flat-topped boulder — like those sacred to Hasibal, the Formless One — half buried in the ground.
She saw not a single temple or even a humble roofed altar. There was no Sorrowing Tower to lay the dead, and no Assizes Tower for justice, but there were watchtowers in plenty.
The inner compound hummed with the buzz of steady work being carried on beneath tiled roofs: the brush of scribes writing, the clacking of beads on counting racks, the beat of a stamp pressing metal for coins or medallions. Now and again a person garbed in a fine silk jacket or taloos made his or her way from one building to another, or passed a token to the guards at a gate in order to descend into the outer rings of the city. Wagons moved goods
into storehouses whose roofs were still being tiled. In one of the private gardens, straddling a bench, a man and a woman were engaged in strenuous sex. In another, a pair of men moved stones on a checkerboard, at their ease under an awning while out in the sun slaves made sticks of incense.
In the deserted central garden, she brought Warning down. The mare's hooves stirred up the neatly raked lines in the gravel. She dismounted and led the horse over to and up onto one of the four long porches that faced the courtyard, Standing at the mare's head, she embraced the beauty of the humble garden as she inhaled the scent of late-blooming sweet-gold.
A whiff of fetid air brushed her nose. A whisper hissed and faded. She was not alone.
On three sides the porches were lined with barred doors built with hinges like smaller models of the hinged double gate in the northeast corner. Mark paced the length of the porch. Behind every hinged door was confined one, sometimes two, people: sleeping, weeping, moaning, muttering disjointed words, some mute with a despair that stung like poison on her skin. This was no meditative court, remarkable for its exquisite tranquillity. It was a prison.
At the end of porch lay a storeroom with racks of shelves. She grabbed a rake and erased hoof- and footprints until Warning gave a snort that cut through her crazed fit. What in the hells was she doing? Best just to get out of here. She raked her way back to the porch anyway. As she was hanging the rake back up on its pegs she heard voices and the thump of a door. The storeroom was large enough to accommodate Warning, and the mare ducked into the space willingly, as into a stall. Windows cut under the eaves allowed light and air to enter; she could count the shelves and the gardening tools and the other implements; there were many knives, lovingly polished and cradled on silk, and bundles of short staffs. Reeve batons. Ten bundles, at least. How in the hells did they have a hundred or more reeve batons?
'Who are you?' A man's muffled voice came from the adjoining cell. 'You're not one of the guards.'
Aui! 'I'm — eh — a gardener.'
'You aren't. There's a horse with you, yet the gates didn't open.'
'Are you a prisoner?'
'I am. There are forty-three prisoners being held here, maybe
more. The cells opposite are for criminals. To the left are rebels. This wing is meant for those accused of being gods-touched, which they call cursed, but they killed two some days ago and there's been none brought in since. Now they've an overflow of other folk stuck on this side.'
'And what are you? A criminal, a rebel, or gods-touched? You've an odd way of speaking, ver.'
'I'm an outlander. Who are you, with your horse who can enter a courtyard through closed gates? Who hides her horse in a storeroom, and rakes away the tracks she's left on the gravel?'
The big gates ground open. The prisoner ceased speaking as feet tramped in, marching in unison, and ceased their march with the clap of a command.
'Bring out the condemned,' said a woman.
Warning nipped at Marit's sleeve. She, too, knew that voice: it was the cloak of Night.
Bolts clicked; bars scraped; doors bumped open. Gibbering and weeping and begging rose to a tumult as folk were dragged into the courtyard. Then, as the last door was shut, a fearful silence fell. Through a gap under the eaves behind her, she heard the huffing and puffing of that cursed man and woman having at the Devourer in the adjoining garden, in mocking counter-rhythm to the ragged breathing of the prisoners.
'You are brought before me, who are condemned,' said Night. More fool Marit for venturing into the center of the pit. 'The punishment for your crime is cleansing.'