Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

'In the grasslands. Just one place. A big tower. No one lives there, only demons. A road like this one, I see there.'

'Who built it?'

Kirit shrugged. 'Demons.'

They passed a second barrier, set at the outskirts of a village overrun with soldiers sitting at their ease on porches, but chatter died as the three cloaks passed. In the fields beyond the village, the army had set up its main bivouac, rank upon rank of traveling tents amid hundreds of campfires. As the long quiet spilled down to dusk, they rode into the camp, their cloaks billowing as the wind caught the edge of coming night. Twilight, mist, and death, they approached the heart of the enemy, identified by a trio of huge tents. Evidently Lord Radas liked his comforts.

Aui! Her chest felt tight, and her throat constricted. Hari was breathing raggedly, maybe not aware he was doing so. As for the girl, she likely was a demon, because as small and helpless as she looked, she acted no differently than if she'd been riding into her home village, not that Marit could begin to imagine a village filled with people with such ghastly pale faces and hair.

And for that matter, she thought, mind skittering at random as she shied away from the confrontation looming before her, did demons live in villages? Did they have kinfolk and lovers, or only prey?

The walls of the tents rippled as the wind sighed, like a beast breathing as it waited to consume them. Soldiers gathered at a distance. Marit and Hari dismounted, but Kirit remained on her mare, strung bow resting over her legs and three arrows caught in her left hand.

The entrance to the tent was swept back. Marit inhaled sharply, but the people who scurried out wore the badges common to prosperous merchants and householders, the kind of folk you met in the council hall. They kept eyes averted, and yet a stench of fear and greed rose off them as they hurried away under escort, soon vanishing into the crowded camp beyond. A second group strode out in their wake, captains outfitted in soldiers' gear and with the posture and authority of men accustomed to getting their way through physical prowess. She knew their type: Kotaru's ordinands, local militia commanders, any man who has built a fence around a territory and considers it his own and the gods help you if you think to challenge him. Yet they, too, kept their gazes lowered like children showing submission to a bullying parent.

Hari went inside, the pale cloth swallowing him. One gulp, and he was gone.

In the rightmost tent, cloth twitched. If someone had been peeking out, she had missed them. She looked at Kirit as the young woman surveyed the assembly with her cold blue gaze. Gawking soldiers hurried away, leaving the guards and the captains. Their fear pricked her.

Inside the tent, a man shouted, voice breaking into a ragged sobbing keen stabbed by grunts of pain.

'The hells!' Her lips were dry, and her hands cold. She gripped her staff and used its tip to flip the heavy entrance flap aside, then followed it into the interior.

Lamps burned in open space. A man writhed on a fine wool carpet, blood leaking over the green and gold pattern.

'Hari!'

Two men stood beside Hari, one holding a sword laced with blood and the other holding an arrow loosely woven between the fingers of his right hand. The swordsman looked up, revealing the face of a young man, grin twisted with cruel pleasure.

'Clean it, and sheath it,' said the other man, and the soldier obeyed mutely.

Lord Radas faced her, looking no older than the day he had ordered her killed. He blinked, not startled but considering. His was a pleasant face, but something dwelt deep there that she could not call human. 'The cloak of death. I glimpsed it many years ago, and thought it lost, but now you are come. I welcome you.'

Hari twitched, hands clutching his stomach. From the stench, the soldier had done a serviceable job of gutting him, because his guts were leaking out. His gaze fixed on her, his soft 'uh uh uh' enough to make your skin crawl, but he did not beg her for aid. Aui! She cursed herself for not having drawn her sword beforehand. Could she take them?

By his grip on the sword, the soldier was ready to strike again.

'Why did you do it?' she asked.

Radas's voice was as soft as his shadowed eyes. 'He has to learn not to displease me. In this way, he comes to understand that for his carelessness there are consequences. He brought it on himself.'

'What carelessness?'

'It's shameful, how carelessly he commanded the army we sent to support our allies in Olossi. Our task is made more difficult by his failure. It brings more harm and trouble to those who desire order. All the many people who suffer from these disturbed times want order, and they shall have it. Only now it will take longer and be more messy.'

Perhaps he was insane. Perhaps he was simply the land's most selfish liar. Hard to say, since he was veiled to her sight, and she was cursed sure he could see nothing in her likewise. He did not even seem to recognize her as the reeve he had ordered killed twenty years ago. Maybe because of that, he did not frighten her.

'What is your name?' he asked, his tone an imitation of kindly concern.

'I'm called Ramit.'

'That's right. Yet you fled from me. That was over a year ago.'

'I was unaccountably detained. Otherwise I would have come sooner.'

Perhaps he believed this bland pap. She found herself oddly irritated that she could not know, when all other people lay open to her third eye. Great Lady! Was she becoming accustomed to holding that axe over their heads?

'I'm satisfied. You are here now.'

She gestured toward Hari, whose grunts faded as blood leaked out between his fingers. 'May I assist him?'

'No. I would prefer you did not. He'll recover.'

'So you can punish him again in like manner?'

Wise uncles might smile so, sadly shaking their head at youth's foibles. 'He must suffer the agonies he has earned. Those who do harm must be punished.'

'Who are you to judge and execute him?'

'I am lord here, master of this army, which serves at my will.' He indicated the silent soldier.

'You're neither lord nor master to me! If he displeases you, why not release him? Why make him suffer?'

'We can't know how long it will take for the cloak to find a new master.'

'Does the cloak find a master, or make a slave?'

His smile twisted, flattening to a thinner line. 'That depends on you, doesn't it?'

The words struck deep, as they were intended to do. Disgusted with her cowardice, she threw herself to her knees beside the dying man. 'Had,' she murmured, 'I'm here. I'll bind your wounds-'

'Leave me be,' he whispered hoarsely. '… knew it was coming… just leave me, it will heal…'

The inner walls stirred, and a young man wearing a cloak as red as Hari's blood hurried into the tent from a side chamber. He wore his hair in the same fashion as Lord Radas, the rich man's three loops, but his were lopsided. Seeing Marit, he stopped.

'What is it, Yordenas?' asked Lord Radas, voice clipped with impatience.

'That's death's cloak! The one you were looking for last year.'

'So we had determined long since.'

'I sniffed her out, that one time. Remember I told you? I told you this cursed outlander was hiding something from you, but you wouldn't listen to me.' His tone grated.

Marit despised him at once, the feeling so strong it left a taste.

Lord Radas sighed. 'What is it, Yordenas?'

'Cursed if there isn't another one out there, lord.'

'Another what?'

'The cloak of mist you spoke of, lord. The lost one.'

Lord Radas's expression changed, a tic by his eye jerking twice before it stilled.

Hari moaned, eyes rolling back in his head as his body sagged and his hands opened in a gesture of acquiescence; he had stopped breathing. His cloak fluttered, rippling as in wind, and slithered over his body like a lilu embracing her chosen one.