She gave him a long look, one he recognized, but he ignored it. If she meant to woo him, she would fail at it. That was one fight he did not want to have with Liaro.
This time, he threw her, so hard he heard her shoulder crack against the stone. She rolled away and came up clutching at her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you all right?”
She shook her head. “Give it a minute. Are
you
all right?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Just working some things out.”
“There are more productive ways to do that. Write an opera or something.”
“Do you want me to call a physician?”
“No, it’s fine.”
He picked up his tunic and went to the fountain to wash up. Who was he to tussle with a novice? What he really wanted was to pick up a sword and run Nasaka through with it, because she was only going to trade him the answers he wanted for some horrible thing she wanted.
Ahkio undressed and dumped a bucket of water over his head. His clothes, bunched about his feet, got soaked, but he didn’t care. They would need washing anyway. As he turned, he saw Ghrasia Madah standing a few paces away, staring at him.
Ghrasia came up into the council house from the rear entrance. The day was warm for high autumn, and the bad news she carried made it all seem that much worse. She had more dead bodies to bring to the Kai’s attention, and a recommendation she already knew he was going to resist.
She found Caisa flirting with Liaro near the hearth of the main room of the Osono council house. Caisa was bathed in sweat and laughing uproariously at something Liaro said. Ghrasia remembered how delightful it was the first few years she dressed in a red skirt and called herself a member of the militia. She recognized the girl’s easy confidence and open face. Chances were very good that Caisa had yet to kill anyone. She didn’t truly know what the sword meant yet. It was just an ornament, like a particularly fine pair of earrings.
“Have either of you seen the Kai?” Ghrasia asked.
Caisa sobered. “He’s out training in the courtyard.” She rolled her shoulder. “Nearly dislocated my arm. Tell him to take up poetry or something. He needs to relax.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Liaro said, standing.
“Don’t,” Ghrasia said. “I need to speak to him first.”
“He should be by the fountain,” Caisa said. “That’s where he was headed.”
Ghrasia stepped into the Osono square and walked purposely toward the fountain, where Ahkio was stripping off his tunic. Her steps faltered as he pulled off his trousers. She stopped there for half a breath as he leaned over and splashed his face with water. Ghrasia tried to work some sense into her head and some spit into her mouth. He’s just a young man, she told herself, but it had been a good long while since she saw a man with the proportions of some passionate sculpture dripping naked beside a fountain.
“Am I keeping you from the fountain?” Ahkio said.
She started. She hadn’t noticed him turn his head. Her gaze had been… elsewhere.
“Not at all,” she said. “I wanted to speak to you.”
“I’m just going up to change,” Ahkio said. “Come up.”
Ghrasia weighed her response. Her hesitation must have disgruntled him, because after a short while, he simply pulled on his wet trousers and threw the rest of his clothes over his shoulder. He began to walk into the council house.
She made her decision. She followed.
He opened the door to his room. Ghrasia expected to see a number of hangers-on there – she had seen him trailed by students and merchants and members of the clan leaders’ families since their arrival. There did not seem to be a moment where he wasn’t meeting with someone over a meal. But save for heavy furniture and riots of book-filled trunks and stacks of paper, the room was empty.
Ahkio went to the wardrobe. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”
“I’ve had small squads running patrols across the clans,” Ghrasia said, “in response to the recent murders and rumors about strangers.” She shut the door, turned back.
Ahkio had pulled off his wet trousers and begun to dress in the dry ones.
She realized her voice had trailed off. She cleared her throat. Heat bloomed up her face. Somewhere above them, captured within Sina’s soul, Javia was laughing. How old was he? Nineteen? Twenty? Even her husbands would laugh. She preferred experienced, quick-witted men, not pliable young ones.
“I apologize,” he said, and yanked on his tunic. “It didn’t occur to me–”
“Not at all,” she said. “I have just been… more tense than I anticipated.”
“I had a lover once who said desire is like–”
Ghrasia suspected he was about to quote
The Book of Oma
at her. That indignity would be too much. “The patrols,” Ghrasia said.
“Have they found something?”
“I had them map out where each of the murders occurred – such as the ones at Kalinda Lasa’s – and follow-up with the local militia and safety ministers,” Ghrasia said. She stood on the other side of the tea table from him.
“You found a pattern,” he said.
“They did, yes.” She pulled a square of paper from her tunic pocket and unfolded it onto the tea table. She had to push some of the other pages out of the way. They looked like temple maps, and she wondered why he’d have any interest in those. “I know your sister’s death was strange. Since then, we’ve seen more. I purposely sought a connection, thinking it may circle back to these invaders the Saiduan are fighting. Before you take a country, you send small groups of scouts to soften the way.”
He sat across from her and leaned over the map. Dhai was a narrow sliver of a country, bordered by the sea to the north, mountains to the east and south, and Mount Ahya and the woodlands to the west. The fifteen Dhai clans were demarcated by a series of dotted lines, some of which intersected. Clan territories weren’t about claiming land so much as organizing family groups. It helped reduce the chances of dangerous inbreeding, which had become an issue in the country’s early history. Clans Sorila, Saiz, Saobina, and Raona clung to the south. Progressing north from there were clans Badu, Garika, Daosina, Taosina, and Osono. Farther north still, the clans of Mutao to the west, then Alia, Adama, and Nako, and finally Daora and Sorai on the coast.
Ghrasia made a circle at the edge of Clan Garika territory. The spot was already marked with a red dot. “This is where Kalinda Lasa, the way house keeper, was killed along with three still unidentified men.” She circled another spot on the edge of Clan Osono. “And here’s where Clan Leader Saurika found the body of a young shepherd named Romey.”
“Romey?” Ahkio said. “Romey Sahina was one of my students in Osono.”
“Yes,” Ghrasia said. She pointed to another mark in Sorila, near the woodlands. “This was the woman found at the bottom of a mine,” she said. “I suspect you may also know her name. She was a member of the Kuallina militia. Fouria Orana Saiz. She and two of her squad members were found here, Alasu Carahin Sorila and Marhin Rasanu Badu.”
“Fouria,” Ahkio said. He touched the dot on the map. “I remember her, yes. She passed through Osono the day Nasaka called me to the temple. The others, too – Alasu and Marhin were there. They spent the night with Liaro and me before heading back to Kuallina.”
“They did not make it back to Kuallina,” Ghrasia said. “They’ve been missing for some weeks.”
“What were they doing in Sorila?”
“That’s an excellent question,” Ghrasia said. “I hoped you might know. Only Kalinda Lasa was found in a place one might expect – her place of business. Romey did not work as a shepherd. His family were weavers. And that squad… should not have been in Sorila.”
“Is there a connection between these people we’re not seeing?” Ahkio said.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to determine.”
Ahkio circled the Temple of Oma with his finger. “If you include Kirana, all these deaths occur around Clan Raona. Have there been any deaths there?”
“No,” Ghrasia said. “It may simply be coincidence. I just want to make sure I’m looking at every option. If we have agents inside our country and we’re invaded by a larger force, they could sabotage the harbor gates, poison water supplies, or simply continue to assassinate key citizens.”
Ahkio pulled the map closer. “I kept thinking Kirana was a singular case. But… all these unnatural deaths. If three were already killed at Kalinda Lasa’s…” He traced the rough circle the deaths made around Raona. “What’s in Raona?” he said. “They cultivate rice and wine.”
“And sparrows,” Ghrasia said. “They raise most of the sparrows used by the temples.”
“That doesn’t bring much commerce–”
“No, but it’s key here,” Ghrasia said, and took the map back. “If you have a diverse number of agents and needed access to sparrows to relay information, Raona would be a strong base.”
“If you worked with the local militia to identify strangers requesting sparrows–”
“We may get one or two of them in for questioning,” Ghrasia said. “It could help us track the others.”
“That’s a start,” Ahkio said.
“I’ll need the help of a half dozen Oras,” Ghrasia said. “By all counts, these people are gifted.”
“Nasaka can help you with that.”
“This brings up another issue,” Ghrasia said. “Right now, I have no authority in the clans. I oversee the militia posted at the Kuallina and Liona strongholds. But working with local militia in places like Raona is… challenging.”
“I’m sure they’ll be accommodating.”
“The clans don’t like centralized authority,” Ghrasia said. “But being so decentralized makes us vulnerable.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I think we should organize the country’s militia under a single hierarchical structure.”
“Out of the question,” Ahkio said.
“You have over a dozen clan leaders downstairs working on changing the government right now. Why not change this?”
“We are not a dictatorship.”
“This is nothing of the sort.” His implication offended her. She couldn’t keep the heat from her voice.
“I only hold this seat because the clan leaders haven’t thrown me out of it,” Ahkio said, “and they only hold theirs because the people haven’t thrown them out. But what citizen can overthrow an armed militia? You might as well tell me to train Oras in martial combat.”
“
The Book of Oma
was written five hundred years ago. It was a different time. They didn’t face what we do.”
“They had already faced it and lost,” Ahkio said. “In the face of that loss, they changed, and that’s the reason we’re still here.”
“That’s a very loose interpretation of the Book.”
“And in times of great strife–”
Ghrasia made a face. “Please don’t quote the Book,” she said, and began to roll up the map.
“Did Nasaka put you up to this?”
“Ora Nasaka? No. She is not the only person in this country speaking sense.” Sense of a sort, at least, Ghrasia thought.
“So, she did speak to you?”
“I know you and Ora Nasaka don’t often agree,” Ghrasia said carefully. “I wouldn’t trust her to care for my own child. But her shrewdness has preserved this country during terrible times.”
“I have confidence in your ability,” Ahkio said. “You held back the Dorinahs during the Pass War.”
“With volunteer militia sent from every clan, yes,” Ghrasia said. “There may come a time when we need more than volunteers.”
“When that time comes, we’ll have far larger problems than the size of our military,” Ahkio said. “When children are throwing roof tiles at invaders, there’s another conversation we’ll need to have. But not yet.”
“I’ve heard the reports from Saiduan,” Ghrasia said, standing. “I had an obligation to bring it up.”
“And I appreciate that.”
“We’ll have this conversation again.”
“Find the assassins first,” Ahkio said. “Nasaka has already put the harbor on alert. It’s our most vulnerable point. Clan Sorai is managing security there. We’re bound together by something far greater than empty titles, Ghrasia. That’s blood and tradition. We can overcome this without becoming like our neighbors.”
“You are very optimistic.” He sounded like something from a book of inspiring speeches.
“I have to be,” Ahkio said. He, too, stood. “I’ll see you out.”
“Do we want to capture one alive?” Ghrasia asked.
“If possible. Yes. I’d like to interrogate them and try to come to an understanding. We may be able to find out why they chose to kill who they did.”
Ghrasia made her way to the door, and Ahkio followed her. She paused with her hand on the knob.
“There’s something I wanted to be clear about,” Ghrasia said. “You know how the Pass War really started?”
“The Dorinahs attacked the Liona Stronghold,” Ahkio said. “Then they blocked our harbor. A campaign of aggression.”
“That’s what they teach,” Ghrasia said. “Those are the songs. It wasn’t like that.” It had been a long time since she told this story. But he was Kai, and young, and needed to hear it. “Eight hundred Dorinah-born Dhais from the slave camps came to the gates of Liona pleading for mercy. They said legionnaires were following. But we couldn’t let them in. That’s the policy. They tried to climb the wall, but that’s impossible.
“They called up to us in Dhai. Called their family names. Their clan names. But I knew the rules. We didn’t expect the legionnaires would follow. But there they came, two thousand women in chain mail, bristling like bone trees. They trapped the Dhais between them and the wall. They marched in and smashed them. Bled them at our feet.
“Somebody on the wall got upset. They fired on the Dorinahs. Then we all did. I don’t know how many we killed, but we must have killed someone important.
That’s
when they blocked our harbor. When we were too frightened to save our own people, we murdered others.”