Shadow Gate (37 page)

“I have to pee.” Jerad's body was jiggling as he tried to hold it in. Tears dribbled down his face. “I don't want to wet myself out here in front of everyone.”

If only Nallo were here!

But Nallo had been marched off to the reeve hall. They'd probably never see her again.

A shout from the gate startled her. A troop of grim Qin soldiers dressed in black rode into the courtyard from the street. She'd seen them during the long march from the Soha Hills to Olossi with the other refugees, but except for the day she and Nallo had encountered them on the trail, she'd not spoken to one. Every gaze shifted to stare with fear or apprehension at the newcomers.

If Nallo were here, Avisha knew what she would do.

“The hells!” She grabbed the boy by the wrist. “Come on.” She jiggered the latch and found the door unlocked. They slipped through while every eye in the courtyard was fixed on the Qin soldiers.

She closed the door behind them and sank against it, breathing hard. A stand of hatmaker's pipewood screened the door. Jerad fumbled at his trousers—she'd made him put on his only pair so he would look respectable—and with a snivel of relief let go of his water. The spray rattled so loudly Avisha thought the whole city must hear, but the clamor of horses in the courtyard drowned him out. Her arms ached, and she looked around to see if there was anywhere she might put down Zi.

They stood in the shadowed corner of a walled garden. A larger garden lay beyond a second wall, green with fruit and nut trees, but this modest garden was laid out in a square with beds and troughs for medicinal plants, now overgrown and neglected, and stands of pipewood or shrubs of rice-grain-flower and purple-thorn and other such useful plants set against the walls. In the corner opposite her hiding place, a second door stood ajar. Just a few steps from it, a young woman sat on a bench. With her shoulders bowed, she was weeping too softly to be heard, but weeping nonetheless, wiping her face with the back of a hand as she lifted her head.

She was an outlander! She didn't look like the Qin, with their flat faces and broad cheeks. She was some other breed of outlander. She wore sumptuous silks, the kind of cloth only a rich woman could afford or that, if the stories were true, a rich man would lavish on a valuable bed slave. A broom lying slantwise across the walkway and a hem of dust on her silks betrayed that she'd been sweeping.

Avisha gaped. How could she risk dirtying such magnificent silks by wearing them to sweep in? What manner of person was she? Had she tried her luck at a marriage contract only to be rejected? Or did she live in this grand compound?

Jerad coughed as the river slacked to a trickle, and ceased.

“Who's there?” said the girl in a cool, firm voice. You'd never have guessed she'd been crying.

Avisha stepped out from the pipewood, trying to keep her voice calm and her hands from shaking. “I'm sorry, verea. I was just waiting out in the courtyard with the others when my little brother had to pee. He's just nine, you know how it is, and tired from all the waiting.”

The girl examined Avisha and the sleeping Zianna critically. “Where is he?” she asked with a pretty smile but a searching gaze.

“Here, Jer, come out,” said Avisha.

The boy stumbled out to the open square, still tying up his trousers. He saw the other woman, and his mouth dropped open. “Her eyes are pulled all funny. Is something wrong with her?”

“Hush! Don't be rude! I'm so sorry, verea. He's just a sprout. We've never been to the city before. We don't see outlanders where we come from.”

“No offense taken,” said the girl as her shoulders relaxed. She squeezed back the last of her tears and sniffed hard, then wiped her nose with the back of a hand. The more she spoke, the more you could hear the funny way she had of speaking, the sounds squished tight so it was hard to understand her. “What is your name?”

“I'm called Avisha, verea. This is my brother Jerad, and my little sister Zianna.”

“You are here for the interview?”

“Surely I am. There's quite a few out there, truly.”

“That's a surprise. In the first five days after the announcement in the markets, only fourteen women came to the gate. I do not know why so many crowded in today.”

“Do you live here?” Avisha gestured to the peaked roofs that marked the buildings of the greater compound.

“I do.”

“Sheh! Whoever is gardener of this place should be hauled out and whipped. No one is taking care of these valuable plants!”

“It has been neglected, that is true.” The girl examined the garden as if she was really getting a good look at it for the first time. “Why are they valuable?”

“To start with, that's a nice stand of hatmaker's pipewood, although it needs thinning. My mam would crush the seeds of purple-thorn—there—to kill insects in the storeroom. You can perfume clothes with the rice-grain-flower . . .” Now that the girl's flush of tears had faded and her face was more at ease, Avisha saw that she was lovely despite her odd features. She had lustrous
black hair bound into a long tail with a ribbon; the tail hung to her hips. “Or you can put a spray of the flowers in your hair, like an ornament.”

All at once, she felt sorry for the other girl. No one rich enough to wear silks of such quality would also wield a broom. She knew the tales as well as anyone. A rich merchant house could afford foreign slaves, and of course a life slave had no rights at all. Nothing about them belonged to themselves, not like a debt slave, who might hope to pay off the debt and walk free of all claim. No wonder the poor girl had been crying. “You're from the south, aren't you?”

The girl had been scrutinizing the rice-grain-flower, brushing at her hair where an ornamental flower might adorn her, but she turned back to Avisha. “I am, that's true.”

“You have a funny way of pronouncing things.” The idiotic words sounded worse now that they hung in the air, awaiting an answer, so Avisha stumbled on. “I'm sorry for your trouble. I saw you were crying. We didn't mean to interrupt. It's just the boy had to pee so badly and didn't want to wet himself.”

“Vish!” hissed Jerad indignantly.

“No, I'm glad you came.” The girl patted the bench. “Sit beside me. I am glad of a girl my own age to talk to.” As Avisha approached, the girl indicated a shady spot in one corner of the paved square.

“Ooof!” Jerad stopped short with a squeal of outrage followed by a childish giggle. “Did you see what she did?”

“What did I do?” asked the girl, alarmed.

Avisha wanted to slap the runt, but he didn't know any better. “Nothing, verea. It's just rude to point with your finger like that.”

“Ah.” The girl stared at her for a moment with her mouth open in a smile that wasn't quite sincere and wasn't quite false; anxious, maybe, or embarrassed. She had all of her teeth, and they were as white as the landlady's
string of precious pearls, so perfect that Avisha felt a stab of ugly jealousy for the careless beauty she would herself never ever possess. Then the smile faded, and the girl rose, with dignity, revealing a shawl that she had draped over the bench and on which she had been sitting. This she spread in the shade. “The little one can rest here.”

“My thanks!”

It was such a relief to have Zi's weight off her arms and back that Avisha almost wept, but instead she sank down on the bench beside the outlander and rested her head wearily in her hands. Still suspicious, Jerad sat down cross-legged beside Zi. His head drooped, his eyes closed, and he dozed off.

“Why do you want to marry one of the outlanders?” the girl asked. “Most Hundred folk don't seem eager.”

“There's a good group waiting out there today.”

“Good, or numerous?”

Avisha laughed. “There are a lot of them. There were two women there, dressed as fine as ever I did see, in city fashion, nothing like we'd ever see in my village. All they could talk about was how much coin they mean to demand in exchange for marrying. I didn't think that was nice. But there was a nice father, telling his daughters they'd best be polite, and that they could look things over and make their own choice if they wished to wed an outlander. That was kind of him, for usually the clan gives you no choice. You know how it is.”

Only what a stupid thing to say to a slave who was no longer her own person!

The girl smiled softly. It was hard to tell if she was happy or sad. “Truly, sometimes a person isn't given a choice.”

Impulsively, Avisha reached toward her, but drew back before she touched the other girl's arm because the gesture seemed so intrusive, so bold, so intimate. “Eiya! I shouldn't chatter so much. That's what Nallo says.”

“I don't mind your chatter. I like it. You remind me a little of my sister. Maybe it's only that we're of an age.”

“I was born in the Year of the Ox.”

“Why, so was I! Who is Nallo?”

“My father's wife.”

“She's not your mother?”

Avisha looked at Zi, sprawled on the shawl and snoring with toddler snuffles in the blessed shade. “My mother is dead. My father remarried soon after. That's Nallo.”

“A second wife! Is she kind to you, or awful?”

“She's got a murderous temper, and she slapped me once! But then Father got angry at her, and he never loses his temper, so she apologized and she never did it again. How I wish she was here. She's very tough-minded. Nothing scares her.”

“Where is she?”

“They took her to the reeve hall. They said she was chosen by an eagle and she has to be a reeve even though she doesn't want to be one.”

“Is that how it goes? You get chosen by an eagle? Even women?”

“Of course even women,” said Avisha. Really, out-landers were so ignorant! “If an eagle chooses you, then you have to be a reeve. Isn't it that way where you come from?”

“We don't have reeves where I come from. Although I suppose that's not true anymore. I come from here, now.” The girl's expression brightened momentarily, then darkened as she recalled a bitter thought. She sighed heavily. “Hu! Enough of feeling sorry for myself. What of your father, then? Where is he?”

It was like being slapped in the face.

“My father's dead, isn't he?” Avisha snapped.

The girl flinched, and the echo of the words—not the sound but the ugly anger in her own voice—made Avisha cringe with the vivid memory of the ruined village, the
swarming flies, the sweet stink of rotting flesh, and the acrid stench of burned houses. Of the way the mellow green cloth of her father's jacket and trousers had rucked up around his corpse. She mustn't bring that anger with her now, or she'd never save herself and the children. She heaved in breaths, shaking.

The outlander draped an arm around her shoulders. “You're safe here.”

“How can we be safe?” Avisha sobbed into her hands. She'd hammered it in for so many days. “We've no close kin. We owe rent to the landlady, so she wants to sell our labor, so we'd have to become slaves. All I can hope for is that some outlander I don't know might want to marry me because people say I'm pretty, and that counts for something, although you must wonder what I'm frothing on about thinking too well of myself since I must look like a field hen with my feathers all everyway for I haven't had a bath in days and our clothes must be stinking, and all torn besides. And I have the little ones and I can't just let them go. I wouldn't anyway, and it would be a terrible dishonor to my father's memory to sell their labor just to save myself. Now what will we do? Who will want us all? Why would anyone agree to take us in?”

Her voice became brisk and competent. “Priya, bring me a cup of sweet ginger cordial.”

Avisha gulped down sobs and raised her head, but there was no one else in the garden. The little ones still slept. They were so very tired. She was all they had, now that Nallo had been dragged from them. She hadn't leisure for weeping. She was an artisan's daughter, accustomed to working hard, not some city-bred girl lounging in elegant fashions and thinking she could get forty cheyt—whoever had forty cheyt altogether except maybe the temples!—from some outlander to marry him.

With a fierce scowl, she rubbed the tears from her cheeks and swallowed her fear and her anger. “Eiya! I
don't know what came over me. Best I leave you, verea. I'm sure you have your duties to be about. I wouldn't want you to get beaten for shirking.”

“No, I wouldn't want that either. Here is Priya and she's brought some ginger cordial. Won't you taste it? It's very good. It's my favorite right now, for it settles the stomach. Priya, maybe some juice for the two little ones, although I don't think we should wake them yet.”

A woman with amazingly dark skin and round out-lander features offered her a cup with a kindly smile. Dazed, she took it and sipped the most glorious sweet ginger concoction, sharp but light on the tongue. Its bite rose to her eyeballs, making them water.

“Eihi! That's good!”

The girl stood, her expression transforming as she smiled. The older woman took several steps back. Belatedly, Avisha turned to look behind her.

“Here you are, Mai.”

A man walked into the garden, wiping wet hands. He wore black, like the Qin, and he was accompanied by a middle-aged Qin soldier with the typical round face and merry eyes of the foreigners and by a huge man with a slight slump and a complexion rather like the pretty girl's. Outlanders, all. The man was not handsome but not ordinary. He halted with his hands out in front of him, registered Avisha's presence, and looked around the garden as if expecting a tiger to leap out and devour him. Of course he noticed the sleeping children. He looked back at her. Really, he was a fearsome man with a commanding stare, a sword swinging casually at his hip, and a way of looking at you that made Avisha feel she had done something very wrong.