Traitors' Gate Read Free Page A

the gate, flinging oil out as far away as he could. Men cursed athim, wiping away the oil that splashed on their faces. Spreading it. A second flaming rag fluttered down, and a third—
    Fire touched oil on skin.
    Shrieking, the man staggered, slamming into the men around him, half of whom had been splashed by oil of naya. The conflagration spread. The mob disintegrated as men fled in terror. The stench was horrible, and the screams were worse. But the street was clearing fast.
    Keshad ran back to the platform, swung his legs over, and paid out the rope to let himself down to the forecourt. When he touched earth, his legs gave out. He pitched forward as the merchants babbled and cried.
    Eliar bent over him. “Keshad? Are you hurt?”
    â€œNeh.” His speech was gone. His limbs were weak. He still heard screams.
    â€œThat saved us,” added Eliar.
    â€œFor now.”
    â€œClever of you to think of it. Just like at Olossi.”
    The door to the guard house scraped open and the sergeant stumbled out, blood splashed all over him. Seen past the sergeant, a whitewashed room looked like a slaughterhouse, with tumbled corpses, the hazy smoke of torches, and a guardsman kneeling beside a fallen comrade.
    â€œWhat do you? What do you?” The sergeant loomed over him, swiping smears of blood from his beard with his left hand while he extended the right. “Good, good.”
    Hesitantly, Keshad reached out, and the man clasped elbows in the grasp of kinship seen in the market among believers but never extended to foreigners.
    Â 
    S OON AFTER DAWN , a squad of mounted soldiers resplendent in green sashes and helmets trimmed with gold ribbons clattered up to the closed gates. Smoke drifted over the rooftops. The merchants who had sat the rest of the night on watch on the roofs hastily clambered down as the gates were opened.
    The sergeant genuflected before the squad’s captain. As thesergeant kept his head bowed, they exchanged a running jabber in their own language. An older merchant murmured a translation.
    â€œThere was trouble all across the market district last night. There is to be an inquiry anywhere local men were killed.”
    â€œAgainst the mob, or against us?” Kesh muttered.
    Worry creased the sergeant’s face as he surveyed the merchants. The captain snapped a command that made the sergeant wince. With an apologetic grimace he pointed—quite rudely, as outlanders always did, using the fingers—at Keshad.
    â€œBring him.” The captain’s gaze paused on Eliar, with his butter-yellow turban. “You come, also.”
    Eliar took an obedient step toward the squad, but Keshad held his ground.
    â€œWhat about our trade goods? What surety do we have they’ll not be stolen while we’re not here to guard them ourselves?”
    The captain raised a hand, and soldiers drew their swords. “You come. Or I kill you.”
    Keshad wiped sweat from his eyes as his throat closed over a pointless protest. He shrugged, pretending calm. Eliar looked as if he’d been struck.
    They walked under the market district gate and into the main city, a place no foreign merchant was ever allowed to enter. The empty streets were broad and clean-swept, walled on both sides, with gates opening at intervals into compounds. The hooves of the horses echoed in an eerie silence. Once Kesh saw a face peeping over a wall, dropping out of sight when their gazes met. Their procession wound inward and upward as the sun rose, and just when it was beginning to get really hot they arrived at a vast gate that opened into a grand courtyard lined with pillared colonnades carved of finest white marble.
    The captain indicated a bench in the shade. “Sit there.”
    They sat. Four soldiers settled into guard positions while the captain rode into a farther courtyard glimpsed through a magnificently carved archway.
    â€œLook at the figures carved on the arch,” whispered Eliar.