Stay here with your chair and lamp.

Past these gates live ghosts only;

Stay here where there are friends and drinking and song.

There is no song out there but that of the demons, shrieking.

There is no drink out there but the drink of one's own tears.

There is no friend out there but the arms of oblivion.

Past these gates live ghosts only.

Do not go, my child, my parent, my lover.

She flipped her long sleeves back up past her elbows, put a hand over her mouth, and let the tears flow.

She didn't fight them, but she did lean forward from the hips far enough that no moisture would stain the expensive blue silk of her bridal gown. The mattress was a wool batting covered with a dark red linen cover, well-made and practical traveling equipment since the wool wouldn't mildew easily and the color of the linen spread would disguise dust and other stains.

She wept silently, not even shaking. After a long while the tears slowed and ceased of their own accord. By not fighting sorrow she allowed it unimpeded passage through her body.

"Of course we all suffer," Priya often told her. "But if you cling to suffering or fight it then it will hold on like a rat. If you accept its existence and the pain it causes you, then you can release it."

When her tears dried, she fished a linen handkerchief out of her sleeve and carefully wiped her cheeks and blew her nose. Scooting forward, she placed her hands on the front wall of the palanquin. The front and back walls were wood from top to bottom; a breeze managed to sneak through the side curtains, cut cleverly to conceal her while not stifling her. A narrow sliding panel was set into the front wall a little below her eye level. She released the lock, pushed it aside, and looked out. Outside seemed much brighter now that her eyes had become accustomed to the interior's dim light. She blinked until her eyes adjusted.

She counted thirty-two riders visible; there were many more out of sight to either side, but she couldn't be sure how many by the amount of dust they kicked up. All were outfitted in similar fashion-the Qin mostly looked alike-but she recognized her husband's back immediately: the set of his head; the blue, white, and gold of the captain's ribbons braided into his topknot; the brilliant gold silk of his tabard.

Husband.

She considered the word. She had observed husbands. Father Mei and two of her uncles were husbands. Husbands like Master Vin often came by the fruit stall. Although it was slightly shameful for Father Mei to put his own daughter out in the stall now that he was a bigger man in town than Grandfather Mei had been, it was still perfectly normal for an unmarried daughter to spend the long hours from dawn to dusk sitting in the shade of a parasol or awning while selling peaches and almonds and melons and other produce. She made better money at the little stall than anyone else in the family could. Men rarely bargained with her, and women were always kind, although shrewder-but why shouldn't they want their money's worth and get in a good gossip at the same time? Mai herself did not gossip, but she asked harmless questions, so folk liked to talk to her and, she had discovered, told her many things they never told anyone else.

People were generally pleasant, and often good and well meaning, but they certainly did a lot of trivially cruel things while meanwhile fretting and gnawing at their troubles and their envies and their annoyances until, in the end, it killed them or turned them sour. Like Girish, who had gone bad before he died. She pitied Girish a tiny bit, because he'd been so bitterly unhappy, but he'd done worse to others than to himself, so in the end she was sorry to think that he might actually have deserved such an ugly death.

Girish would have made a bad husband, and Father Mei had known it, which is why he hadn't let Girish marry when he'd turned twenty, the usual age for men to claim a first wife. He'd bought a slave for Girish instead, so he wouldn't keep going to the brothels. Look where that had led!

To Father Mei, honor mattered above all things. He wanted no dishonor brought down on Clan Mei's head. She fingered the ring on her left middle finger, the running wolf that was the sigil of their clan. She, too, had to uphold that honor. So she would. She'd do nothing to shame the Mei clan, not like her uncles Hari and Girish had done. She would be a good wife to the Qin officer with whom she had not exchanged more than twenty words beyond the meaningless pleasantries that were the hallmark of trade in the marketplace.

How much for these peaches? A big storm yesterday out of the desert, wasn't it? That's quite a distinctive amaranth pattern on your parasol. Does it come from the Sirniakan Empire?

She had never been alone with him, but she would be tonight.

Tears came again. They flowed like a spring stream swollen with snowmelt, just kept coming and coming as she watched the men ride. As she watched her husband ride. He did not once look back toward the palanquin. He didn't need to. He had acquired her as he might a bolt of handsome silk, all signed and sealed with a contract so he couldn't be accused of stealing. At least he had been kind enough to take her as a wife, thereby allowing her certain legal protections not available to slaves or concubines.

Who would have thought there were so many tears? Soon she'd be like Ti, flooding at every word. At last, when the tears had dried, she wiped and blew just like before and felt at peace enough to twitch aside one of the side curtains and stare out at the landscape. She had never been more than an hour's walk out of Kartu Town, up into the hills where the Mei clan had their wet-season pastures. In the interval while she had cried, the familiar silhouette of Dezara Mountain and its companion hills had fallen behind. She wasn't sure she could see them at all. The hills were a mix of shadow and sunlight, almost golden in the westering light, but their jagged slopes had no recognizable peaks or saddles, not from this angle.

Panic swept her. It raced through her skin; she broke out in a sweat and yet her neck felt clammy and cold.

She didn't know where they were going, or what they would find when they got there.

Anything might come next.

Fear rose, like the tempest. She imagined every worst possible thing that could happen: her husband would be cruel to her in the bed and laugh while he hurt her; bandits would sweep out of the hills and kill them all; she would be abandoned and sold into slavery and raped repeatedly; a sandstorm would hurl itself out of the desert and swallow them alive; a ghost would pinch her; rats would eat her toes and fingers and nose; she would eat spoiled meat and throw up until her insides burst, like Girish had, only he had been poisoned; someone would say something hateful and mean to her; she would die and pass through Spirit Gate.

That wasn't so bad, as the rush poured out of her. All those terrible things ended in death, so eventually she would find peace. Only angry ghosts were restless.

She had another handkerchief. As she mopped the sweat from her skin, reached up her sleeves and under her robe and patted herself dry, she wished she had some perfumed talcum powder to sweeten herself. She had packed some, but Aunt Sada had taken it out because, she said, good talcum was expensive and if the Qin officer had so much cash, then he could supply luxuries for his new wife because it could be bought anywhere.

Anywhere but in the middle of the road after you've been sweating and have started to stink! What a way to come to your wedding bed! She let the curtain fall and, carefully, so as not to upset the rhythm of the slave bearers, who surely must be exhausted by now, sidled back to the front panel and stared out at her husband's back.

Was he a good-looking man? Ti thought all the Qin were ugly ugly ugly, but Mai didn't think so. They looked like people, some better-looking than others, some with pleasant faces and some with closed-up, cranky ones. Anyway, Captain Anji didn't quite look exactly like the other Qin. He was a little bit taller and a little bit less stocky, and his hair was wavy, not coarse and straight. He had that interesting nose, which none of the other Qin had; they had blunter, shorter noses, more like those of Kartu people. He was rather old. The one thing she'd learned about him was that he was born in the Year of the Deer, which would make him thirteen years older than she was. Still, he had a graceful way of moving even though he was bow-legged like all the Qin soldiers. He had clear, honest eyes, good teeth, and humor in the way his lips would twitch, maybe suppressing a smile, and he had shown her that astounding glimpse of kindness when he'd allowed her to turn back and give a final good-bye kiss to Ti. Was he a kind man? A cruel one? Honest or false? Grasping or open? Brave or a coward?

Suddenly he looked back over his shoulder. That glance struck as might an arrow. He knew she was watching him. She recoiled and fell onto her back, and then felt the slave carrying the right back corner of the palanquin stagger and swiftly right himself.

She couldn't breathe. It hit like a sandstorm, smothering her. He was just like those sloe-eyed princes in the old stories, who rode out of the desert and kidnapped pining dark maidens and took them to palaces built of rosy-colored stone in the midst of a beautiful oasis. Sometimes those stories ended happily and sometimes sadly, but the middle part was always so good and exciting and gratifying.

I am afraid. I am afraid that I want to be able to love him but that he will never love me, not like in the old stories. I'm just a glittering jewel, a prize carried off by a bandit. I've been ripped from my garden. I can never go back.

This time, despite everything, despite all her efforts, she sobbed helplessly and awkwardly until she was hoarse, heedless of her fine silk gown and her running nose. The noise of the cavalcade drowned the betraying sound of her weeping. Only the slaves in attendance-the four who carried the palanquin, the five bearers to alternate places as they tired, and the three slaves who had come from Kartu Town and walked alongside-could hear her. They would never tell.

10.

Because of their late start they had to halt just before sundown at an old ruin that had once been a village. It was a quiet place, so long abandoned there were no ghosts left. Captain Anji argued with his chief of staff, won, then beckoned to Shai, who handed his mount over to the soldier who had helped him dismount.

"We won't make the posting house tonight so we'll camp here. If you will, dine with me. You may prepare, wash, whatever you wish."

"Of course, Captain. The honor is mine."

Shai tracked down Mountain among the men already bustling to their tasks, lighting fires, preparing food, digging a trench for waste, and drawing water from the abandoned well.

"Mountain!"

The slave was talking with one of the soldiers, a lowly tailman by the look of him, but he excused himself and hurried over to Shai.

"Set up my tent in whatever place the master of this caravan deems appropriate."

"Yes, Master Shai."

"Can you demand help from these other slaves?"

Mountain cleared his throat suggestively. "Master. Except for the bearers, and we three from Kartu Town, there are no other slaves. These are camp men or grooms. They are part of the army. Most are Qin. Some are respectable free men, hired for the work and well paid, so they tell me. No Qin military company travels with slaves. They say it slows them down."

Shai studied the movements within the camp. Now, he saw that the soldiers took care of their own horses and tack, and that the grooms and "camp men" were either youths not quite old enough to be regular army men, men with a minor disability that might prevent them from fighting effectively, or foreign men who tended to their work with the brisk efficiency of those who are proud of what they do. No idling slaves here. No one lounging while others waited on them.

"Oh. Can you do everything yourself, then?"

Mountain gestured toward Cornflower, who waited about twenty paces away, hands clasped and head lowered in perfect submissiveness. "That one will help me."

Shai shut his eyes, making a face. "Hu! What am I supposed to do with her?"

"She is commonly used by Father Mei and the uncles, Master Shai."

"I know. But I am not my brothers. I have not forgotten what happened to Girish." He spat on the ground for the offense of saying the dead man's name. "Even if they pretend they have forgotten."

"Forgive me, Master."

"Just set up the tent, if you will. I want a blanket. She can start by massaging me. After that, she can sleep outside."

Mountain unrolled a blanket on the ground and Shai sat down, wincing. No wonder the Qin soldiers were tough, if they had to endure this every day!

"Cornflower, work on my legs. They hurt."

She came over, slung her pack onto the ground, and pulled a flask of oil out of the pack. He slipped off his trousers and, in only his loincloth, let her massage some of the ache out of his muscles. Her hands were strong and sure. If they only strayed a little farther up . . .

"Enough!" He grabbed for his trousers. With no change of expression, she scooted backward and bowed her head. Mountain scratched his bald head, then fanned himself with his cap.

"If you do not want her, Master Shai, then perhaps I can sell her services to the soldiers. She and Priya are the only females out of a hundred or more men. It would be a way for you to make a few extra zastras on the journey. It never hurts to have a little extra coin. Just in case."

Shai looked at Cornflower. Like his brothers, Shai found her sexually attractive and utterly fascinating, and it annoyed him. He was stirred by her touch, and it didn't help with her kneeling so submissively a few strides away, with pale skin and ripe breasts concealed beneath her slave's shift, knowing she could not say no if he took her. Indeed, he could do anything to her at all, but he hated to be like his brothers. Mountain's suggestion had merit. It was wise to plan ahead, cultivate a nest egg. Mountain would take a cut, and the rest would fill Shai's sleeves. Just in case.

"Find an out-of-the-way place, then. Charge a reasonable rate, and not too many men any one night."

Mountain nodded. He was a big, big man, a little stout with middle age, and missing his left eye and two fingers on his left hand. "Not more than five a day. I hear from Tailman Chaji that it's twenty-five days' or so ride to the border, if we run into no delays. If every man in the company wants a piece of her, they'll each have one try. That'll keep the price high, if any wish to outbid the others for a second chance."

Shai nodded. After a glance toward the silent Cornflower, he put on trousers and his best silk knee-length jacket and walked over to the awning where Captain Anji sat on a three-legged stool, on a rug, studying a scroll. A low camp table inlaid with alternating strips of ebony wood and ash-blond wood sat before the officer; a narrow, cushioned divan about an arm's length long stood to his right, with two stools folded up and leaning against it. A black flag trimmed with gold streamers fluttered from each corner of the awning. Two soldiers stood to either side, arms folded, surveying the camp. They tracked Shai's arrival with flat gazes as the captain looked up.

"Sit down," he said. "My men will bring food."

One of the men opened up a stool, so Shai sat down. "Where is Mai?" he asked.

The old village had about a dozen structures remaining, all built out of mud brick and mostly intact except for the roofs. Captain Anji's escort numbered over one hundred soldiers and two dozen grooms and hired men, together with the slaves who accompanied Mai. The soldiers had set up an outer perimeter, with their precious horses clustered in the innermost protected area of the village and the captain's awning and rug beyond that. The old well and two crumbling houses stood directly to his west. Listening, Shai heard Mai speaking to Priya from within the sheltering walls of one of the those houses, where his niece had sought privacy.

Maybe the Qin didn't allow women to eat with men. Better not to ask. He hoped his question hadn't been taken as an insult. The Qin were notoriously easy to insult.

Captain Anji's chief of staff arrived and opened a stool for himself. He was ten or fifteen years older than Anji-well into middle age-and the two men had an easy relationship; even their arguments gave them pleasure.

"I still don't like it, Anjihosh. The road is flat enough and there'll be moonlight late. We could have made it the entire way. Out here-ghosts, bandits, sandstorms, scorpions, demons, witches. Leopards. There could be anything."

Anji scanned the darkening village with narrowed eyes. "No ghosts, anyway, Tuvi-lo," he said so casually that Shai's heart stuttered and seemed to skip a beat. No ghosts? "If we got in late, the horses and bearers wouldn't get a full night's rest. They'll need it at this stage, to get accustomed to the travel. I want them well rested. They'll need strength to manage the worst part of the journey."

"So you say." Chief Tuvi rose from his stool abruptly as Mai halted at the edge of the rug. She looked calm and composed. Priya waited behind her.

Anji stood, took Mai's hand in his, and led her to the divan, a queenly seat, certainly, and far more comfortable than the men's utilitarian stools. He released her; she sat; Chief Tuvi whistled, and four young Qin soldiers-tailmen, all-came forward with platters of dried fruit, yoghurt, and strips of sizzling meat just now roasted over a campfire.

Shai waited for the captain to begin the conversation, but they ate in silence until the platters were empty. Only when hot da was handed round in painted bowls did the captain speak.

"You have traveled well, Mai'ili?" he asked.

She nodded, glanced at Shai, and after a sip at the sharp da ventured a few words. "My heart is the only part of me that is bruised, Captain. It is difficult to leave your family behind."

"So it is," he agreed. "Is it well that your uncle Shai accompanies you?"

"It is well." She bit her lower lip, took in a breath as she glanced at Chief Tuvi, and tried again. "Will we always camp like this? What can be expected?"

He had a steady gaze, kept on her but not intrusive and greedy, more watchful. "Mostly we will stay at posting houses, which have corrals for livestock and some fortification. We should have traveled farther today, but I don't want to push the horses and bearers at this stage. We'll have to take some night journeys once we reach the borderlands."

Mai laughed suddenly. Her laugh could charm water out of sand. "I had my chest packed, but my mother and aunts insisted on repacking it. There was nothing I could do. I'm sorry we left so late. I know you came at dawn. Would we have reached a posting station if we'd left earlier?"

Anji exchanged a glance with Chief Tuvi. "We would have. No matter, Mai. The Qin have a saying: When the river changes its course, get out of the way or drown. This is not the first time my plans did not go exactly as expected."

Mai blushed abruptly, responding to a certain passionate tremor in his voice, to his ardent gaze, and she looked away from him. No doubt she was afraid.