Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

Uncomfortable, he shifted to ease the pressure on his seat.

'If you truly believe in the southern god, Kesh, then you should pray to him. If you don't, you shouldn't carry that bowl.'

She strolled back to the fire, poured a sludgy mix of khaif and rice porridge into their cup, and held it out to coax him out of the darkness. 'Aren't you hungry?'

He slouched into the light. She waited until he took the cup, then spooned gruel for herself straight out of the pot. They ate in silence. The khaif went straight to his head. As always, the buzz made him feel reckless and irritable.

'Why should I pray to any gods? What have the gods ever done for me?'

'Sheh! For shame! How could we be here, without the gods? How could anything have come into existence? The gods ordered the world. But it is our prayers that hold it together.'

'You have to believe that because you served in the temple.'

She lifted the spoon to her lips, sucked in the gruel, then licked clean the spoon. All the while she stared at him. He didn't like that look.

'What are you accusing me of?' he demanded.

She gestured, and he handed her the cup. She measured out another portion and returned the cup to him. Then she removed the pot from the tripod and scraped out the leavings.

'Well? Say something!'

She finished eating and set the spoon into the pot with a gesture of closing. 'We'll ford the river at first light.'

Before dawn, they led the horses down the path into Candra Crossing. The ginnies, riding on Bai's shoulders, were drowsy and irritable. In the heavens, the boldest stars still shone, while a blush lightened the east. Birds twittered. No wind stirred. It was already hot.

They approached along a dirt path that raft parallel to West Track behind the riverside row of buildings. Trampled fields marked where a large host had camped, and animals had grazed. The army had left shallow ditches stinking with refuse and offal, still swarming with bugs many days later.

A few buildings had burned down. The doors of the temple dedicated to Sapanasu had been smashed, and the counting house was singed. The compound dedicated to Kotaru, the Thunderer, was stripped of weapons and stores. Bai paused outside the gates of the temple to the Merciless One, carved with Her sigil: the bloom of the lotus pierced by a dagger. Like the rest of the town, the Devourer's temple was abandoned. When Keshad peeked through the half-open gates, he saw only dust and dead plants, and a solitary stone bench where a single passionflower had fallen, its color withered to a pale pink.

Was that a noise? The scuff of a foot? A voice, speaking soft words?

Magic lifted his crest and hissed.

'Keep moving,' whispered Bai.

Kesh kept glancing back over his shoulder as they walked away. Surely those noises had only been rats scrabbling through the leavings or birds fluttering in the abandoned buildings. There was no one here. No one at all. The army had poured past Candra Crossing, and the town's population had drained away after them, dead or fled or taken captive.

'Careful, now,' said Bai as they approached the River Hayi. 'Listen.'

A shallow river sings with a different voice from one at flood: water babbles over smoothed rocks along the bank, purls above barely submerged sandbars, shushes through a backwater of reeds. Through the gaps between houses he saw the ford. Where the water rippled and lightened, poles had been hammered into sandbars that almost breached the surface. Where the current dug deep, the water

ran dark and swift, and from this bank that gap looked wide and dangerous.

'I wonder where they came from,' said Bai as the ginnies bobbed their heads.

Four people stood on the bank, two adults and two children.

Kesh choked down a yelp. 'You said no one was here.'

'Those are refugees. I'm surprised they're not running. Here, now, fetch those skiffs pulled up on the bank. I'll take your leads.'

'What do we need a skiff for?'

'Those children can't swim the ford.'

'We're not going to slow ourselves down by helping them?'

Bai called. 'Do you need our help getting over the water?'

She strode away. With a curse he trudged over to the skiffs. Most were dragged well up onto the shore, but two had been shifted down to the waterline and left there, sterns rocking. He checked around nervously but saw no sign of a struggle, of any poor townsman struck down while attempting to escape, of goods and possessions abandoned midflight. He grabbed the towline of the smaller skiff and shoved it around until the water lifted it; here in the shallows the current wasn't overwhelming and he could haul it upstream toward Bai.

What was she about? She had halted a prudent distance from the ragged group: two young women not much more than girls with dusty clothes and hair matted with leaf and twig, and a pair of grubby children. The littlest, likely a girl, was very young, old enough to walk but small enough to need carrying most of the time.

The young boy's piping voice raised as Kesh splashed within hearing. 'They can't be thieves,' he was saying indignantly to his ciders, 'for no person can steal the holy ones. She must be a holy one, too. Maybe she ran away from a temple to get away from the bad people.'

Bai laughed, rubbing the jowls of the ginnies. 'The offer is sincerely meant, but I can see you've had trouble, so if you've a wish for us to move on without bothering you, we'll just ford the river and leave you be.'

'Where are you going?' demanded the elder of the young women.

Magic lifted his crest and opened his mouth to show teeth, a mild

warning. Bai's smile sharpened, just like the ginny's. 'We're going away from the place we came from. Where are you going?'

'Our village was burned down. We'll take your help. I'm called Nallo. These are my children: Avisha, Jerad, and Zianna.'

'We'll take your help with thanks,'' said the pretty one, Avisha, as she flashed a hesitant smile.

'Can I touch them?' asked the boy.

Mischief tilted her head and gave the boy a keen and almost flirtatious look. There was no accounting for the taste of those animals.

'These two are Magic and Mischief, and yes, if you move slowly, and follow my directions, you can greet them. I'm Zubaidit. This is my brother Keshad. Kesh, get the boat in and load it. Put our gear in as well. The horses will do better without the burden.'

'Those can't be your children,' said Kesh to the elder girl. 'You're far too young.'

'I'm the second wife. Their mother's dead three years past. Died bearing Zianna, or how else do you suppose the poor little girl got such a name?'

She was the kind who bit first!

'Where's your husband, then?' he retorted.

As soon as he uttered the words, he felt shame. Avisha looked at the ground, a spasm of grief twisting her expression. The cursed gin-nies eyed him, as if saying Kesh, you stupid idiot! Change the subject, already!

The boy said, 'I want to touch the holy ones!'

'Keep your mouth shut!' snapped Nallo. She flicked a glance at Bai and then, oddly, flushed. 'Here, now, Jer,' she added in a voice meant to be kindlier but which only sounded curt, 'just get in the boat.'

Cursing the wasted time and his own stupid mouth and the pointless bother of stopping to assist useless refugees who were no doubt doomed despite whatever help they might receive, Kesh untied the others' gear and settled it in the skiff. Their possessions seemed to consist of an impressive coil of heavy-duty rope and a single large bronze washtub carefully packed with scraps and oddments: cloth tied around a scant tey of rice; a few scraggly bundles of herbs; a stand for making cord; a pot of sesame oil; an iron knife with a

charred wood handle; an iron cooking pot; and two whole leather bottles grimy with ash. He peeked inside a singed leather case to find, within, a dozen untouched first-quality silk braids, colorful work suitable for fancy cloaks, festival jackets, or temple banners.