Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

'Who asked you?' she demanded furiously, half crying as she stormed past Shai and hopped over the widening gap onto the raft. She grabbed a rope and yanked the raft's railings shut, latched them, and shouted to the laborers. 'We're ready!'

Gears ratcheted. Rope trembled.

Shai gripped the outer railing. 'Behave!' he called to the children. 'Don't be stupid.'

'You're not going with them,' said the envoy.

'Neither are you!'

The envoy met his gaze for a long careful while and then, abruptly, smiled with great sweetness. 'I remember you.'

'Eh?'

'You see ghosts.'

The winch clanked, and footsteps trod the boards on the platform behind.

'Shai! Shai!' cried the children as the raft lurched a hand's span out from the landing stage. The rope tautened.

'Aui!' continued the envoy. 'So you are Shai, the one I've been searching for, eh? There's a young woman looking for you. I fear she means to do you ill.'

'How do you know me?'

'You were with the Qin soldiers riding out of the empire. I saw your eyes follow the Beltak priest. A terrible thing to imprison their

spirits in the bowl, isn't it? You're rare, you folk who see ghosts. You're veiled to our sight. I don't know why.'

Words croaked up, made hoarse by everything happening at once. 'Who are you?'

'Beware,' said the envoy. 'But be honest. Honesty might save you.'

'Shai!' As the raft slid away from the river, rocking in the current, Yudit pressed to the railing, the others crowding behind, their faces fading into the night. Then he heard their voices as they began to chant.

I sing to the mountain,

Mount Aua, who is sentinel

who guards the traveler

who watches over us.

He carries us on his shoulders

because he is strong, kissed by the heavens.

We survive in his shelter.

The river's voice drowned theirs. His face was wet with river mist and tears.

He ran to the winch and found a place to slide in with the other laborers, pushing pushing pushing until his shoulders ached and his legs strained, until the mechanism caught and the rope, sighing, slackened. They were safely across. The men grunted and, straightening, rubbed their lower backs.

'Thanks for that,' they said. 'Eihi! You've got good shoulders on you. Want our job?'

'Good fortune to you,' he said, and stepped out from under the platform, remembering suddenly the envoy of Ilu who had known he could see ghosts. He scanned the docks, the road, but all he saw were the slouching guards and, strangely, a pair of lights weaving up and down in the heavens like candles carried aloft by drunken soldiers.

The envoy was gone.

Far away, horns blatted, and drums beat an angry rhythm. He stared toward the far bank, but of course he could not see it, nor bear the creak of wheels and the patter of feet as they headed

downriver along the road. Not out of danger, never that, but away from the worst if their gods chose to be merciful.

The envoy had told him, You're veiled to our sight.

You're the only one protected against the demons, Bai had said.

Veiled against demons, Shai thought. They can't eat out my heart the way they eat out the hearts of others. He brought the wolf ring to his lips as he thought of his clan, of Mai, of Tohon, of the children. Even of Eridit. He thought of Hari, whose spirit was still not at rest.

Even at a distance of several mey, he heard a steady rumbling rising from the city: treachery on the wind.

I can fight them.

He headed back toward the city.

'Brought your shadow along, eh, Nallo?' said the vendor, scooping fried eel into her bowl.

She had walked down from Clan Hall into Toskala to haggle over a bed net, since no such item had been issued by the hall. With her purchase draped over her shoulders, she had stopped at her favorite stall for her favorite snack. Pil hung at her back.

'Sure you don't want some?' she asked him.

His shrug meant no.

'You can't just eat mutton and yoghurt,' she said, but he looked at her in that way he had that made her feel bad for teasing him. Then he scanned the street. It was dusk, when villagers settled after a hard day's labor. In Toskala, market stalls were still selling food, folk chattering and haggling, on their way with lamps lit. Olossi had seemed unimaginably complicated to a country girl. Toskala overwhelmed, so huge, so busy, so crowded, so packed with shops and squares and streets selling grains and pies and oil and kites and banners and cord and dried fish and cloth and fans until it made her dizzy. So much! And with a hostile army camped outside their gates and the population swollen with refugees, folk lived as on a knife's edge. She always felt someone was about to

jump out of the crowd and slug her. She liked having Pil at her back.

She chewed eel, sighing with pleasure. 'Good today,' she said to the vendor. 'Even if you raised your prices.'

The vendor was middle-aged and comfortably portly, wearing a mended tunic and broad-brimmed hat in case it rained. A small umbrella covered the pan and fire. 'My thanks. Spice and fuel sellers raised their price, eh? What am I to do?' She laughed too brightly. 'I hear tell they've sent reeves to Olo'osson, asking for help. You know anything about that?'

'I don't, and I couldn't say if I did.'

'That's fair enough.'

The neighboring vendor, selling noodles, broke in. 'Our defenses are strong enough to hold off that cursed army'

Under cover of this conversation, Pil tugged at her sleeve. 'I think we should go back,' he muttered.

'My thanks to you,' said Nallo, 'greetings of the dusk.'

She slurped down the last bits and set off, Pil striding alongside. 'What is it?' she asked.

Then she heard shouts rising over the twilight clamor.

Pil edged into a trot as folk looked up from their shopping and eating and chatting; foreheads wrinkled; a man harrumphed irritably; a child whined, 'Come on, Ma, come on.' The knife sharpener's whetstone creaked to a halt as he forgot to pump. A noodle vendor's ladle tipped sideways as she strained to hear, and the steaming noodles slithered out to plop on the ground.

'Move.' Pil broke into a run, pulling out his reeve's baton.

She fumbled as she slipped hers out of its loop. A tumult of shouting lifted as in a wave to wash over them. Dogs began barking and howling, the cry taken up throughout the city. Something had gone horribly wrong.

As they reached the Silk Street gate, Pil used his baton to shove folk aside as they cut across to the brick-paved walkway reserved for official business and hopped over the dividing rail. At first, the lane ran clear of traffic as far as they could see alongside Canal Street, and Pil ran full out with Nallo pounding along behind.

She glanced back. A surge like a rains-swollen flood roiled in their wake, people rushing toward Guardian Bridge. Was that a

person crumpling to the earth, trampled by the press of those stampeding behind? The hells! They'd be crushed.

The approach to the bridge lay in the open space where Bell Quarter and Flag Quarter ended at the locks. A crowd was always waiting for passage over the bridge. Pil ruthlessly drove through the people clogging the walkways, using the baton as leverage to prod people out of the way.

'Heya! Watch that-'

'Cursed reeves-'

One side of the bridge was roped off for official traffic, but the press of people trying to get over the bridge had spilled over. Pil tucked up beside the railing and smacked bodies to move them out of the way so he and Nallo could squeeze past. The bed net caught on something, or someone, and was dragged off her shoulders. She let it go.

It took forever to get over the span, and as they pushed down to the spur where the stairs that led up to Justice Square began, panic hit the square in front of the bridge. Screaming drowned all other sounds. Flailing bodies plunged into the spillway pool and the empty locks.