Kate Elliott - Traitors Gate

'Oh. Eh. Some of them.'

'Whew!' The captain grinned. 'I wish I had your cool. Having seen such sights as you have, and survived such dangers! My thanks to you, truly, for being generous enough to dine and drink with me. You being such an important man in your part of the world.'

'Yes. Eh. And my thanks to you, Captain, for sharing your food and drink. You've shown me hospitality. I won't forget it.'

The awkward parting accomplished, Kesh took his leave.

In the morning, he rose to find Captain Sharahosh in command with a new troop of Sirniakan cavalry. Captain Jushahosh and his troop were gone. The Qin company remained.

Captain Sharahosh was an older man uninterested in conversation, and he held his soldiers aloof from prisoners and Qin alike. They rode for another day, following a.road so wide that four wagons might roll abreast. Fields, vineyards, and orchards crowded the landscape, no scrap of land unmarked by human industry. The next morning a vast wall rose out of the earth. They entered a city through gates sheeted with brass and rode down an avenue bounded by high walls. At intervals, bridges crossed over the avenue, but Kesh never ascertained any traffic above, although he heard and smelled the sounds of men out and about in the streets beyond the walls. The rounded dome of the city's temple grew larger as' they rode into the heart of the city.

The sun rose to its zenith before they reached a second gate, which opened into a courtyard lined with a colonnade, pillars hewn out of rose granite. The structure resembled in every detail the palace court in Sarida where he and Eliar had first been taken into custody. There was even a farther gate into a farther courtyard, spanned by an archway carved with reliefs celebrating the reign of the emperor: the officers of the court approaching an empty throne, the sun and moon and stars in attendance on the crown of glory that represented the suzerainty of Beltak. The temple dome could be glimpsed to the right, the sun glinting off its bronze skin. Maybe it was the same in every cursed Sirniakan city, the palace supported by the temple and the temple supported by the palace, one unable to exist without the architecture of the other.

'Sit here,' said Captain Sharahosh, perhaps the tenth and eleventh words he had spoken to them in their days together. He dismissed his soldiers but left the Qin riders waiting in the hot sun in the dusty courtyard as he vanished beyond a more humble gate.

In the Hundred, of course, the temples of the seven gods were the pillars that supported the land, and the tales wove the land into a single cloth. Or so the priests of the seven gods would say. And they had to say so. They had to believe, just as the priests of Beltak had to believe. What were they, after all, if the gods meant nothing?

Kesh had all along prayed at dawn and at night with the empire men while Eliar and the Qin soldiers had stood aside in silence. But he did not believe, and Beltak did not strike him down, and the priest accompanying the soldiers did not see into his heart and know he was lying.

'Do you think they will kill us now?' Eliar muttered.

'They could have killed us before, if they meant to kill us. Anyway, we are simply merchants, traveled to Sarida to turn a profit.'

Eliar wiped sweat from his forehead. 'You're right.'

'Right about what?'

'Don't you recall what you said when we were waiting in the courtyard in Sarida? It looked exactly like this one, didn't it?'

Would the cursed man never stop chattering about his own gods-rotted fears?

'You said people will renounce the truth if it will give them an advantage to do so. And then they convince themselves that what they wish to be true is the truth.' He twisted his silver bracelets as though twisting his thoughts around and around. 'Folk tell themselves what they want to hear. I traded my sister's happiness for my own — or what I thought would be my own happiness. Now I'm ashamed.'

The tone of his voice seared Keshad. If they could join together and find some way to free her from the unwanted marriage, then surely they would be allies, not enemies. 'Eliar,' he began, but faltered, not knowing what to say or how to say it.

Eliar brushed at his eyes with a hand.

In the shadows off to the right, tucked away in an alcove unnoticed until now, a door opened. Captain Sharahosh beckoned, his face impassive. Kesh cast a glance toward the Qin soldiers. He had a crazy idea of calling to them for help. Surely if he invoked Captain Anji's name and lineage — the nephew of your var! — they would sweep him and Eliar up and gallop away to safety.

But these were not Anji's men. These men belonged to someone else, perhaps to the var, who had according to Captain Anji's account tried to have his nephew murdered over a year ago. That very plot had precipitated Anji's journey to the Hundred.

Over a year ago, the Sirniakan civil war had not quite yet begun, although surely it was then brewing. The Qin var, it seemed, had chosen to back Farazadihosh. But that being so, then why

was a Qin company riding like allies beside troops loyal to Farujarihosh, the prince who had rebelled against and killed his cousin, wresting from him the imperial throne?

'At once,' said the captain.

They crossed under the lintel into darkness. A lamp flared. By its light, they descended a long flight of stone steps and, reaching the limit of the lamp's illumination, halted. The lamp sputtered and died, and a second lamp bloomed ahead. They walked down a corridor, lamps flaring and dying at intervals. Blackness unrelieved by daylight dogged them before and behind. The walls were painted in an elaborate hunting scene, but Kesh glimpsed only snatches of color, of a white hare, a gold lion, a red deer, and a green bird, each transfixed by an arrow. They walked thus a full ten lamps of distance. Captain Sharahosh uttered no words, nor did he deem it necessary to defend himself against them or even once look back to make sure they were following. After all, what could they do? If they drew their swords and cut him down, they were still trapped in the midst of — or underneath! — a building so vast Kesh could not visualize its proportions. Anyway, there might be traps. He tried to observe what he could see of the long scene, perhaps a representation of a tale unfolding along the walls, yet his thoughts turned and turned Eliar's words. How deep ran Eliar's regret? Could Keshad suggest to Eliar that his precious sister might be released from the marriage into which she had been forced? That they could work together to save her?

Or was Eliar one of those who spoke words of regret but didn't really mean them if it meant he had to give up the privilege that came from another's sacrifice?

A line of light appeared ahead like a beacon. They crossed under a lintel and into a round chamber faced with marble. Kesh looked up into a dome whose height made him dizzy. A balcony rimmed the transition from chamber to dome; red-jacketed soldiers stood at guard beneath lamps hung from iron brackets. The amount of oil hissing as it burned made it seem as if a hundred traitorous voices were whispering in the heavens.

A person dressed in a plain white-silk jacket and the loose helled trousers common to wealthy empire men sat in a chair carved of ebony. He was a man, but odd in his lineaments, his face looking not so much clean-shaven as soft like a woman's, unable to bear the youthful burden of a beard. Yet his posture was

strong, not weak, and his hands had a wiry strength, as if he'd throttled his enemies without aid of a garrote.

He said, in the trade talk, to the soldier in the red jacket, 'These are the two?'

'Yes, Your Excellency.'

His voice was a strangely weightless tenor, but his words rang with the expectation of authority. 'I've interrogated four others already this morning, and they were not the ones I am seeking.'