Kate Elliott - Traitors Gate

'You've got it bad, my friend,' murmured Peddonon.

Joss brought a palm to his face. 'Am I crazy?'

Peddonon snorted.

'She's leaving!' He pulled out of Peddonon's grasp and stumbled after her.

'Don't go over the edge, Joss.'

Too late. She was sworn to the goddess, a trained assassin, fixed on her mission. She'd already been lowered over the cliff,

the reeves letting out the rope hand over hand. He stayed out there in the night and the wind until they received the three tugs that indicated she'd gotten down safely. Until they hauled up the empty basket and stowed it under the overhang where it couldn't be spotted in daylight by an enemy patrolling the far shore. Until they'd all gone away, leaving Peddonon and Kesta waiting for him in a patient silence that hurt more than the hollow feeling in his gut.

The cooling breeze off the water reminded him that the dry season lay ahead. He rubbed his arms, but the ache did not go away.

'Heya,' said Kesta softly. 'Come on, Joss. Let's go have a drink, eh? We've missed you these past months. It's not the same without you here at Clan Hall.'

'I might never see her again.'

Peddonon whistled under his breath. Kesta sighed. The river rushed toward the distant sea, just as the army would, marching south through fertile and heavily populated Istria toward Nessumara, said in the tales to be the second-oldest inhabited place in the Hundred and certainly its largest city now. He must do what was required of him, just as she would.

'The first thing we must do,' he said, 'is warn Nessumara's council and Copper Hall to seek traitors in their midst. And get Tohon and his group out of there.'

Only then, as he turned to go with his companions, did he realize she had never said what had happened to the outlander, Shai.

'You're not the boy I remember, Shai.'

Hari lounged on a silk-covered couch, the kind of furniture found in the houses of the rich in Kartu Town. The florid couch looked out of place inside a campaign tent otherwise furnished with only two rugs, a folding table holding a pair of cups and a ceramic bottle with an unbroken seal, and a single lit lamp. Two objects rested on the table: the Mei clan wolf ring and wolf belt buckle Hari had been wearing the day he'd been marched out of Kartu Town as a prisoner of their Qin overlords.

Shai pointed to them. 'I went through terrible things to get that ring and buckle back. Will you put on your ring?'

'No. I'm no longer a son of the Mei clan.'

Shai displayed the wolf ring he wore as a child of the Mei clan, although his ring wasn't anything like as fine a quality as the one that had been given to Hari by Grandmother when Hari had reached manhood. After all, Hari was the favored third son, while Shai was merely the excess seventh. 'Who are you, if not a son of the Mei clan? Father Mei sent me to bring your bones back to the clan for proper burial.'

As a boy, Hari had perfected the ability to raise a single eyebrow; he could mock you while looking so exceedingly clever that you found yourself smiling in sympathy, wanting him to approve of you. 'Here I am.'

Today, Shai wasn't smiling. 'You're dead.'

'Harsh words, little brother. Yet you would know, you who can see ghosts.'

Shai flushed. 'Have you forgotten that in Kartu Town, they burn people who see ghosts?'

T never told anyone you could see ghosts. I would never have betrayed you.'

'Yet here I am, your prisoner.' He walked to the tent flap and twitched the entrance curtain aside to stare over the camp, where soldiers worked into the dusk breaking down tents and loading gear into wagons in preparation for a dawn departure. Guards surrounded the tent.

Behind him, Hari sighed. 'You're not my prisoner. I'm sheltering you. Don't you trust me? You used to.'

Shai let the cloth fall as he turned. 'You were the best of my brothers, it's true.'

'As if that's saying much!'

'It's why I came all this way to find a dead man. Yet you're no ghost. You live and breathe.'

'Maybe it just seems to you that I live and I breathe. Maybe I am a ghost. The soldiers call us cloaks. A few whisper that we're lilu. Some name us as Guardians, the ones who bring justice.' His crooked smile made his expression bitter.

'This army brings no justice.'

'I never said it did.'

'Yet you ride with murderers and rapists and thieves. You command them.'

'I am a prisoner of those who command me.'

Furious, Shai walked over to the couch. 'You don't look like a prisoner! You look like a lord, who with a gesture of his hand marks who will live and who will die. You sent a man to be hanged from the pole. How can you do it, knowing what he will suffer?'

Hari shrugged, his expression masked. 'I'm not the brother you think you remember.'

'You can't have changed that much! You were the bold one, the bright one, the one who always spoke his mind!'

'Maybe you didn't know me that well. You were young. You saw what you wanted to see. Maybe I was the drunk one, the stupid one, the dissatisfied one. Maybe I pushed our Qin overlords too hard not out of a sense of righteous anger, but as a prank. Or on a dare. Or because I was bored. Or wanted to impress my reckless idiot friends.'

'I don't believe it!'

'You want to believe I am something I never was. Now listen, little brother. We've got to get you out of here before Night or Lord Radas discover you-'

Shai grabbed one of his brother's wrists and squeezed it; it was shocking to feel he might overpower the older brother who had once been able to sling him over a shoulder, run down to the pond, and toss him into the water howling and laughing. He tightened his grip until Hari winced. 'How did you get to the Hundred?'

Hari lifted his chin defiantly but in the end looked away. He addressed words to the sloped end of the couch, the fabric a saturated dark purple similar to the hue of the cloak he wore carelessly flung over his shoulders. 'Will you let go?'

Shai let go.

Hari rubbed the wrist. His forehead was beaded with sweat. I'm done speaking of it. What use is there in me speaking? All my words are tainted, because I'm a demon.'

The tone of self-loathing hit Shai hardest. The Hari he knew had never hated himself. 'You aren't a demon.'

Hari grasped Shai's shoulders. Years ago, Hari had grabbed him so, stared into his eyes, and scolded him: Stand up for yourself, Shai. Speak up, Shai!

Best of brothers!

But now he looked leached at the edges, as if sickness had drained his vitality.

'Aren't I? I can't see into your heart to know what you really think of me. What if you scorn me, and I would never know?'

'I would tell you what I think.'

'People say so, but they never do.' Hari laughed mockingly. 'People say what they think you want to hear. But now, their hearts and thoughts are laid bare to me, and I can see what's true. All their pain and greed and rage and selfish lust cuts me, just as it cuts them. I can't rest for thinking of all the horrible things I've seen in people's hearts. And yet I can't look away. I want their secrets and their shame. Then I don't have to think about my own.'

'Stop it!'

'Why are you hidden from me, Shai? No one else is, except the other cloaks. And you're not a cloak.'

Shai clasped his hands. 'I'm just your brother, Hari. We'll go home together. It's what we're meant to do.'

Hari broke free and leaped to his feet, pacing to the entrance and back again. 'I can't go home! Night will hunt me down, or Lord Radas will. If I don't obey them, they hurt me. And since I can't die, then I just suffer and it hurts so badly. We've got to get you out of here. If they know I have you, they'll force me to betray you. And I'll do it, because I'm a useless selfish coward. I've always been one. What do you think I've been running from all my life?'