Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

He yelped, as if its touch stung. 'I could have cut them down! Murderers and traitors! I could have punished them, if you'd given me my staff before.'

'Bevard.' She gave the green-cloaked man a pointed green stick, like a poor farmer's implement for digging out offending weeds. All were objects that pass judgment, that can sever spirit from flesh and that which is healthy from that which is diseased: a writing brush, a dagger, an arrow, a weeding stick. Even a mirror.

'A majority pass judgment on a renegade,' the woman said. 'Five, to judge one, standing on an altar, which completes their judgment.' She touched her brush to paper.

Yordenas advanced cautiously toward Mark with dagger raised. Lord Radas stretched out his arrow. The green-cloaked man hesitated, but when the women gestured, he, too, approached.

All this the ghost girl watched, her pale figure overlooked, ignored, forgotten.

'Kirit,' said Lord Radas. 'Remember what I told you. She's not one of us. She must be killed, so we can remain safe. We need your strength added to ours.'

She turned the mirror to reveal her own white face and blue eyes.

'In their actions, we see the truth of what they have become,' said the girl. 'You are not Guardians, seeking justice. You are demons. I will not be one of you.'

She reined her horse around.

Mark tugged on Warning's mane, ducked as the mare opened a wing, and jumped up belly-down over the saddle. Yordenas grabbed at her, and she kicked hard, connecting with flesh, hearing him grunt and stumble backward. Lord Radas's arrow jabbed her shoulder, but Warning, once she knew she was going to get her way, nipped and kicked to force a way to the entrance. Kirit crossed the threshold and clattered down the ramp. Mark cleared the door as the other horse took wing, bearing west-southwest over the Lesser Istri.

What if it had been Hari, instead of Kirit? Eiya! Would he have resisted, or joined the others and betrayed her? Killed her?

Spreading her wings, Warning leaped into the sky while below the hundreds gathered in Justice Square shouted and wept, their voices rising as if it was their cries that lifted her.

in the settlement, men and women ringed the council square, weaving a song to accompany the bridal couples who walked a circuit of the seven altars to present offerings to the gods.

A garland of flowers.

A handful of rice.

Nai, wrapped in se leaves.

Silk as your banner.

Build a bouse! Build a bouse!

Walk this path into the next day.

Flowers were hard to come by in the Barrens, even during the rainy season, but the reeves on training sweeps had discovered the lush valley hidden deep in the foothills mentioned by the envoy. With so many marriages waiting on a proper feast day, and every person in the settlement dreaming of a festival to interrupt the steady grind of labor, Mai had asked the reeves to fetch the appropriate offerings and assigned a propitious day after consultation with holy priests from the temples in Olossi.

She stood on the porch of the house with Anji, fanning herself as they watched the procession wind away from the benches. Twenty-seven couples in turn offered spikes of purple twilight-stupor at the flat boulder sacred to Hasibal. Bright red blooms of blood-star and falling-shields woven into necklaces draped the stone walls of the Thunderer's enclosure. They strewed petals beneath the Herald's gate, a path from west to east. The procession, accompanied by the singers, continued down to the market square.

Mai folded up her fan and, taking Anji's arm for balance, indicated the steps. 'Now they'll go to the Lantern, the Witherer, the Lady, and the Merciless One. Then we'll gather here in front of our house for rice wine and a feast.'

The kitchen yard was bustling, but he scanned the settlement sprawling below, the brick wall, the embankment, the green fields and, beyond all, the pale countryside, dotted with herds of sheep and tendrils of smoke where shepherds had set camps. Above, eagles circled. 'Should you walk so far?'

'Would I be healthier if I lay in bed? Is that how Qin women spend their days when they are pregnant?'

His grin, like the day, was bright. 'No, it is not. But you are getting very big, close to your time. Naturally, I worry. I have spoken to the Ri Amarah women. Maybe, after all, I must return you by ship to Olossi, so you can give birth surrounded by their medicine and sorcery.'

'I wish you had thought of that before you exiled me here.'

'Maybe so, but I am impressed with what you have built.'

More people — the entire settlement, really, except for the women cooking in the kitchens — had fallen in behind the procession as the singers switched rhythms and began to chant a complicated and somewhat lewd tale that everyone seemed to know, about a blind woodcarver and the blacksmith who courted her by forging fine tools for her use. Voices were raised in answer to the singers, punctuating the long descriptive verses with quick refrains: 'Too sharp!' 'Too dull!' 'Just right!'

Mai surveyed the settlement. 'I have not built it. They are the ones who built it.'

'Yours is the overseeing hand that guides them.' He looked at Tuvi, and the chief nodded. They began walking down, guards ahead and behind, Priya and Sheyshi following. 'That girl who knew about herbs and plants — why did she refuse Tuvi?'

'They wouldn't have suited. I have someone else in mind for Chief Tuvi.'

'Do you? Does he know?'

'Of course not! These matters must be dealt with more subtly.'

'So it seems.'

She braced her hand on his elbow as they negotiated a rough

patch of ground. Taking a breath, she ventured onto new ground. 'I hear a rumor that you fought a battle.'

'Was that meant to be subtle?'

'No. But I worry, so if you tell me the details, then I'll worry less because I will not be weaving stories in my own mind to pass the days while I wait for you to return.'

'You are right to wish to know details.'

He sketched the scene: night on the river, the demon he had faced, the battle that came afterward, the old villager who had died. Anji had been very brave, and foolhardy, she supposed, but perhaps he would not measure it as foolishness but rather as prudence. Know your enemy if you want to defeat him. It had worked out this time. That was all you could really hope for.

The Lantern's one-room counting house was ringed by twenty-seven stone cups filled with oil, the last one taking fire as Avisha and Jagi touched the wick with a burning stick, an offering of Sapanasu's fire. A new song rose as the procession descended to the gate, everyone clapping.

' "Empty your basket! Don't carry stones! Heya! Heya! Today we celebrate."'

'Our children will know these songs well,' said Mai, 'even if we stumble through them.'

Beyond the gate, laborers from the fields and reeves and soldiers from the barracks joined them, the sung responses turning deep with so many male voices. They marched to the Witherer's altar and draped the thatched roof with curtains of green leaves strung on fishing line while Mai and Anji observed from a distance. Priya offered Mai juice. Sheyshi held an umbrella over her head to keep off the sun. Anji tilted his head back to watch the eagles overhead, marking, Mai supposed, the pattern of their sweeps. Chief Tuvi watched the crowd.

'I thought we made it clear that we wanted no temple raised to their Merciless One, not in our settlement,' said Anji as they walked behind the procession toward the irrigation ponds. The singers formed up on either side of a walled garden.

'It's only a garden, planted with useful medicinal herbs and other spices. And it's all the way out here by the irrigation ponds.'

'Near the training grounds and the laborers' camp.' He frowned. 'It's trouble, if you ask me.'