Spirit Gate by Kate Elliott

Author:Kate Elliott [Elliott, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Epic
ISBN: 0765310554
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2006-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

“WHERE WE GO?” Tebedir asked as they rolled out into the plaza. The heat made the beasts slow, and Kesh’s throat was already parched. “Here, we roast, like fowl in the oven.”

One slave trudged across the plaza, wearing sandals to protect his feet against the hot stones. He wasn’t carrying anything visible, but his shoulders were bowed nonetheless. Gates were closed and awnings furled along the long porches of the clearinghouses. Beyond the flat plain of Merchants’ Walk rose the inner city on its rocky bed, buildings pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Tile roofs and white walls baked; heat shimmered off them. The sun made the air a furnace. Only a wisp of pale cloud floated off above the eastern high plains, where, in the Lending, the grassland herders might have hope of a spatter of cooling rain.

Kesh was sweating, and dizzy. I’m free. But she isn’t.

“We’ll go now to Crow’s Gate Field. I’ll pay off the remainder of your contract.”

“As agreed, the remainder, it is one hundred, eighty, and seven of leya. As agreed, in addition, my costs to stable at the hiring ground, for five days. There I seek hire for journey back to empire.”

“That’s right,” said Kesh absently, because his thoughts were already plunging ahead. “I’ll ask around and see who is hiring to go south before the end of the year and the rains. There’ll be a caravan south within the week, I would wager. There’s a particular chit I can see you get, so merchants know you’re an honest and loyal hire. I can never thank you enough for standing beside me at Dast Korumbos . . .”

Tebedir nodded. “The Shining One rewards his faithful worshipers. Do not despair unless your heart is dishonest. Do not despair unless you have broken the vows you make in the name of the King of King and Lord of Lords.”

Kesh barely heard him. Whatever calm had sustained him in Feden’s house evaporated out here under the sun. His ears roared with the tumult inside him; sweat dripped from his fingers as his heart raced. Do not despair. He had stumbled onto the two Mariha girls in a frontier town and purchased them for a desperately cheap price, and for a while he had played the numbers in his head: Should he hire a drover and two donkeys to convey them with the other, smaller goods? Should he let them walk the entire months-long road to the Hundred, carrying the chests themselves, knowing that the journey might kill them but that he would save coin? Alone, they could not gain him what he wished, and indeed, they had brought him a greater profit than he had expected, enough to more than cover the expense of hiring a driver and wagon for the long haul once he had stumbled upon the treasure. They had enabled him to travel in what was, for him, relative comfort with his chests of carefully chosen luxury goods.

He had made his choices. He had bought his own freedom.

That

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