Freedom's Gate Read online

  It was just noon, I noted with satisfaction.

  “Let me go,” Alibek whispered hoarsely. “Please.”

  I locked his wrists with the manacles before he could do something foolish. Kyros wanted him back in one piece. Alibek’s delicate cheeks were flushed from the heat; the waterskin he’d stolen hung limp and empty from his belt. He’d been unable to fill it since morning—possibly even since he’d taken shelter behind the rockfall in the night. Even though he was chained, I thought for a moment that he might try to attack me, but instead he put his bound hands to his face and wept. He was my age, I thought; there was a faint stubble on his cheeks. He was older than most of the boys in the harem.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked, speaking the Danibeki tongue. “You are one of us.”

  “I am nothing like you,” I said, speaking Greek. I took his arm and began to lead him back to where I’d left Zhade.

  “I am a slave, and you are free—free to do as Kyros tells you, but free to quit his service, too. You don’t have to do this. Come with me to the steppe. We’ll tell the Alashi that you were a slave, too.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “You are a child of the river, the steppe, and the djinni,” Alibek insisted. “We both are.”

  “The river’s dead,” I said. “The steppe is a desert, and the aerika” —I used the Greek word, not the Danibeki— “are the slaves of the Penelopeians. Even the bandits worship Prometheus and Arachne now instead of the spirits. I am a child of Athena.”

  Alibek turned. He might be chained, he might be cooperating, but his eyes were definitely not those of someone who felt himself beaten. “You have never seen Prometheus,” he said. “And you have certainly never seen Athena. I’ve seen a djinn, and so have you.”

  “I’ve seen djinni, all right,” I muttered. “I’ve seen them do Kyros’s bidding.”

  Getting back up to the top of the riverbank with Alibek was difficult. When Alibek realized that our position gave him a modicum of power, he went limp, meaning I’d have to drag him up the steep, rocky bank. Instead, I left him at the bottom—he could run, but he wouldn’t get far—and scrambled up to get the length of rope I’d left on Zhade’s saddle. I tied it to a dead tree at the top of the bank, testing to make sure it was still securely rooted, and tossed it down to the bottom. Then I scrambled back down to talk to Alibek, who was sitting in the mud watching me.

  “I’m not going to drag you to the top,” I said. “Either I can take your manacles off and you can climb up yourself, with the rope, or we can sit here and wait for Myron to come back looking for us and he can help me haul you up. If you climb up willingly, I’ll let you finish off the water I’ve got with me—there’s a full waterskin tied to Zhade’s saddle—and you can ride back with me. If we have to wait, I’ll let you drink some of the water from the Arys, but it’s pretty muddy and brackish where it flows through here; the water I brought is well water. And Myron will want to make you stumble behind the horses back into the city.” I met his eyes and shrugged. “You’re going back either way. How we do it is up to you.”

  Alibek considered for a moment. Then he held out his hands and I unlocked the manacles. I climbed up first, so that he couldn’t mount Zhade and flee. He climbed quickly to the top of the embankment, holding on to the rope, then took the waterskin I gave him and drained it. He mounted Zhade smoothly; I swung up behind him and urged Zhade to a fast walk.

  “Don’t take me back there,” he whispered as the city walls rose up before us, black against the golden hills. “Don’t give me back to Kyros.”

  “Your life can’t be that hard. I saw your hands; they’re as soft as a baby’s. You spend most of the day lying around on cushions.”

  “Have you ever visited a harem, Lauria?”

  I laughed a little. “I am Kyros’s servant, not one of his guests. He’s never offered me the pleasure. And even if he did, I wouldn’t be interested.”

  Alibek breathed out a sharp, quick laugh and twisted around in the saddle to look at me. “Take me into the desert and I’ll show you why Kyros wants me back so badly.”

  Now I laughed for real. Alibek was a pretty boy, undoubtedly a half-caste Danibeki with Greek blood, like me. His eyes were green, and his glossy black hair had a little bit of a curl, but I had no interest in having sex with a slave. “Sorry, Alibek, I’m not tempted.”

  “You don’t know Kyros,” Alibek said, turning away from me again. “You don’t know what he’s like.”

  “I think I know Kyros pretty well,” I said.

  “You see what he wants you to see.” Alibek’s hands clenched against his thighs. “He made me a slave in his harem to punish my sister for running away. She’s with the Alashi now, free, but he took me to rape and sent one of his djinn slaves to tell my sister what he’d done. Is that the act of an honorable man?”

  “She shouldn’t have run,” I said.

  “You’re Kyros’s slave, as much as I am,” Alibek said, carefully unclenching his hands and smoothing out the frayed and dirty edges of his tunic. “Even if you don’t realize it.”

  We were approaching the city gates. “You should be glad I found you,” I said. “The water from the Arys gives out well before the desert. You’d have died of thirst before you ever reached the bandits.”

  “Next time I’ll bring more water,” he said. “Thank you for your advice. I’ll remember it.”

  “If you listen to my advice, you won’t run again. The Alashi welcome slaves with open arms because they sacrifice humans to their gods—burning them alive on Prometheus’s fire. Of course they’d rather sacrifice strangers than their own people.”

  “Now you’re repeating Greek lies. But I’m sure you mean your concern kindly, so I thank you for it.”

  I helped Alibek down from the horse as we returned to Kyros’s compound. Relieved guardsmen took him off my hands; he shot me a look over his shoulder as they led him away. I met his eyes but felt a queer tremor go through me, as if I’d been shot with an arrow. I tried to shrug it off as I led Zhade to the stables. I had brought slaves back for Kyros before; I had no doubt that I would do so again. I told myself that I felt no kinship with Alibek. Perhaps I looked Danibeki, but I had far more in common with my unknown Greek father. I was free, I chose who I served, and Kyros had proved himself worthy of my loyalty time and time again. I left Zhade for the stable boys to groom and headed for Kyros’s office.

  Kyros’s wife maintained a small garden in the courtyard just outside his office, and as I came around the trellis, I saw something I had not been expecting: an aeriko-borne palanquin, the green silk that enclosed it flapping out the open door in the desert wind. It was a sorceress’s conveyance—no one else dared use aerika for transportation so casually. I had planned to head straight into Kyros’s office, but I hesitated when I realized he already had a visitor—an important visitor, at that. But out of the corner of my eye I saw the sparkle of an aeriko, and a moment later I heard Kyros call for me to come in.

  “I hear you’ve returned with my little straying bird already,” Kyros said as I came in. “And not a mark on him! You never fail to amaze me, Lauria. Make yourself comfortable while I send a message to Myron.” He gestured for me to pull out a chair and sit down.

  The sorceress sat in the corner of the room—facing the door, not in a spot that a visitor would normally sit. I had met a few members of the Sisterhood of Weavers while working for Kyros; I’d carried a message to a sorceress in Daphnia just a few weeks earlier. But I’d never met this woman before. She was clearly senior to the woman I’d carried a message to, though she was still quite young. Over her green silk dress, she wore scores of spell-chains, looped around her neck, around her wrists, even a few fastened around her slim waist like a glittering belt. It was a dizzying display of casual power, and for a moment I could do nothing but try to count just how many aerika she carried at her command.

  “What about her?” the sorceress asked.

  Kyros gave her a guarded g
lance and shook his head slightly. “Sit,” he said to me again, and I pulled out a chair and sat down.

  The sorceress’s eyes were very dark and were fixed on me. I met her gaze for a few moments, trying to guess a reason for this interest. Her eyes glittered like the faceted stones on her spell-chains; their darkness made me think of night on the steppe, and the dangers that lurked beyond the Elpisia walls. I murmured some courteous phrase and looked away.

  Kyros carried two spell-chains, on loan from the Sisterhood; most military officers of his rank had only one, or none at all. He wore one around his neck and the other looped around his right wrist. The aeriko he used as a messenger most often was prisoned in a necklace of blue stones and red glass, linked with gold wire. Kyros held the largest stone in the palm of his hand, muttering something under his breath, and with a sound like the echo of a large bell, the aeriko was in the room. I could see it, barely, like drifting smoke—a shimmer in the air.

  “Find Myron and tell him this: Return; Alibek has been found. If he has a message for me, bring it back. Otherwise simply return. Now go.”

  I blinked, and the aeriko was gone, off to find Myron. It might take awhile. Prisoned aerika obeyed their orders, but they didn’t always look in the most obvious places first unless you told them to, and Kyros hadn’t bothered. I smothered my smile as Kyros poured me a glass of tea.

  “It’s an honor to serve you, Kyros,” I said.

  Kyros added a dollop of honey to the tea, and passed it to me across his desk. “So where was Alibek hiding?”

  “Along the dead river.” Kyros was ignoring the sorceress, so I did as well. I recounted the steps I’d taken to track Alibek; Kyros poured me more tea and offered me a small honey cake. “He didn’t resist, once I found him. I told him he was lucky he didn’t get away; he’d have died of thirst before ever reaching the bandits.”

  Kyros laughed and took another cake. I thought he was getting ready to dismiss me, to finish his meeting with the sorceress, when the sorceress leaned forward in her chair. “If you were a slave, Lauria, how would you reach the bandits?”

  “I wouldn’t run,” I said.

  “No, of course not.” Her lips curved into a smile. “But suppose you did. How would you go about finding the bandits?”

  I glanced at Kyros. His eyes were fixed on his desk, but he looked up and gave me a slight nod.

  I sat back in my chair, thinking it over. “Well, I wouldn’t take the riverbed—that’s much too long if you can navigate. The key would be to bring as much water as I could carry, I think, and to know how to find more, since I couldn’t possibly carry enough to get me all the way to the Alashi.” I sipped my tea. “At minimum, a person needs to drink two waterskins of water a day, and even then they’ll be pretty thirsty. If I carried nothing but waterskins, I could probably carry eight of them. Four days wouldn’t get me to the bandits, but I’d probably be able to find water before I ran out. So I’d carry water, I guess, and no food. I won’t starve in a week or two, and if I can’t find the bandits in two weeks I’m probably going to die anyway.” I set down my glass. “Alibek did do one thing right—he didn’t take the most obvious route. If I were going to run, I’d leave the city and then head in the wrong direction. I’d hide in the hills for two days; by then, if the searchers hadn’t found me, I’d expect them to give up. Then I’d strike out into the desert; travel at night when it’s cool and hide during the day, both from the sun and any searchers. Watch for signs of water and pray to Athena I’d find the bandits fast. Although I suppose if I were an escaping slave, I’d be praying to the aerika, or maybe to Prometheus and Arachne.”

  “An admirable plan,” the sorceress said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  The sorceress fingered one of the spell-chains around her wrist. “You haven’t ever seen a raid from one of the bandit tribes, have you?”

  “No.”

  “I have,” Kyros said. At a nod from the sorceress, he went on: “It was years ago, when I was a young officer at one of the garrisons right on the edge of our territory. It was terrifying, to realize how defenseless we were. The bandits have no mercy. They don’t accept surrender; they just keep shooting arrows at you until everyone they can see is dead or running. I’ll freely admit that they are more skilled on horseback than we are, but also, they fight dishonorably: they poison their arrows, so that even a scratch can kill a strong man. After watching twenty of my men cut down in a matter of minutes, I ordered the rest to run. The bandits looted and fired the garrison, cut the throats of the wounded, then rode back out to wherever it is they come from.”

  I laced my fingers around my teacup, thinking bitterly of Nikon. I had never seen a bandit raid with my own eyes, but it wasn’t hard to imagine—Nikon on horseback, the bandits appearing on the horizon like a swarm of scorpions, the rain of arrows. The man who’d brought the news of Nikon’s death had said that he died from an arrow in the side. He might well have died from that regardless, but with poisoned arrows, he’d had no chance at all.

  “When you take the larger view, for years the bandits have been mostly just an annoyance,” Kyros said. He glanced at the sorceress. “We’ve really had more headaches recently from the bands of our own deserters. There are a few groups that settled just north of Helladia, and they come down to steal supplies.”

  “Things are changing,” the sorceress said.

  “So you said,” Kyros muttered.

  “The Arch-Magia has reason to believe that the bandits are planning a larger offensive against us. And she’s sent word that the officers on the border—” she nodded toward Kyros “—should find out more.” The sorceress sat back and waited.

  Kyros sighed. “Lauria, you are my most trusted aide,” he said. “And, you are half Danibeki. I want you to infiltrate the bandits.”

  I sat back, stunned. “Infiltrate the bandits?” I repeated, just to be certain he was serious.

  “That’s right.”

  My first question was why one of the sorceresses couldn’t just send an aeriko. But there were things an aeriko was useless for. Aerika could not be ordered to kill a human being; for reasons that were not well understood, the act of murder broke the binding spell. Sometimes even just an accidental death allowed the aeriko to escape its bonds, so having an aeriko seize and move an unwilling person was very risky. No one knew why this was, because escaped aerika always returned to kill the person who’d summoned and imprisoned them, and often the holder of the spell-chain as well, before vanishing to wherever it was that aerika came from. This tended to discourage experimental research.

  Even on lesser matters, aerika were not reliable for anything as complicated as surveillance. They were not willing servants and couldn’t be trusted.

  I could be trusted, but I had never done anything like this. “You’re thinking I’d just walk up there and pretend to be an escaped slave?”

  There was a rustle from the sorceress. “We had discussed a slightly more elaborate plan,” she said.

  Her eyes still made me uncomfortable. Contact with the aerika was known to sometimes make people mercurial; even mad. Kyros’s wife had once apprenticed in the Sisterhood of Weavers, and I’d heard servants mutter that her bouts of melancholy were the result of that. This sorceress didn’t look at all melancholy, though. Quite the opposite; her eyes shone as if fevered.

  Kyros cleared his throat. “One of the other officers, Sophos, lives up in Helladia, at the last garrison before you reach the steppe. Well, there are a few small military outposts, but Helladia is a town, and I think it would be easier to arrange your escape from a town. I was thinking that you could enter Sophos’s household, posing as a new slave. After a week or two, at a prearranged time, you will escape and head northwest from there.”

  “Why have me pose as a slave?” I asked. “I could claim to have escaped from him, whether I had or not. Or I could claim to have escaped from you.”

  “A short stay with Sophos will lend your story credibility. You won’t hav
e to make up details that might get confused later.”

  “I suppose.” I fingered the fringe of the cushion on my chair. I felt uneasy about this whole idea. “Just how far would this pretense go? Sophos wouldn’t beat me if I got caught escaping, would he?”

  “No, of course not. You’re a free woman, Lauria, and you work for me. This would just be to establish your story.”

  “And who . . .” I glanced Kyros, then the sorceress. “Would I be reporting back to you, or to someone else?”

  “Me, of course,” Kyros said. “Once you’re in the desert, I’ll give you some time before I contact you. You’ll need some time to win their trust, to become one of them. Then I’ll send an aeriko messenger. We’ll communicate through the aeriko and decide what to do next. It may be best just to have you monitor their movements, but if you’re really trusted, maybe you could lead them into a trap. But we’ll take that step when we reach it.” The sorceress nodded agreement.

  “I haven’t spied before,” I said. “Sir, I’m not sure I will succeed in this.”

  “You should have more confidence in yourself, Lauria.” Kyros smiled broadly and offered me another cake. “You spend most of your time ‘spying’—visiting garrisons on my behalf and reporting back on what you find. You’ve never failed me yet.”

  “That’s different.” When I visited a garrison, I came in with borrowed authority; the soldiers might not be happy that I was there, but I didn’t really have to worry about winning their trust. My scroll and my ring from Kyros bought me whatever access I needed. If they refused, there would be hell to pay, and they knew it. On one occasion, someone had tried to poison me, so obviously there were dangers, but . . .

  “You will be an excellent spy, Lauria,” Kyros said. He glanced at the sorceress. “Ligeia will send for Sophos, but it will take him a few days to get here. Take four days off to do as you like, then report back here and we’ll get you ready.” He leaned across his desk and took my glass, setting it down and shooting me a look, a slight smile on his face. “Go visit your mother.”