Traitors' Gate by Kate Elliott Read Free Book Online Page B

contradicted him. “I do not ‘say so.’ I am repeating the truth.”
    â€œWhy on earth,” demanded Kesh, “would it be against the will of God for women to keep accounts? Women keep accounts as well, or as badly, as men do. How can anyone imagine otherwise?”
    The prince clucked softly, still deigning to look amused. “No wonder the Hundred is in chaos. Can it be otherwise, with the rightful order turned on its head, and what should be forward facing backward?” He turned his gaze back to Eliar. “Unwrap your turban.”
    â€œI will not!”
    The prince gestured, and the other eight guardsmen raised their bows, targeting Eliar. “Unwrap your turban so I may satisfy my curiosity, or I will have you killed.”
    Keshad wanted to take a step away, but he feared exposing himself as a coward.
    â€œNo.” Eliar lifted his chin, jaw clenched. “Kill me if you must. When I am dead you can assuage your curiosity, if the Hidden One allows it.”
    The prince laughed, and the guardsmen lowered their bows. “You are the ones I seek. You are Keshad, without patronymic to identify your lineage, and you are Eliar, a son of the Ri Amarah, son of Isar, son of Bethen, son of Gever. Sent as spies into the empire, which is ruled by the rightful heir, my elder brother, Farujarihosh, may his reign be blessed by the glory of the King of Kings who rules over us.”
    There followed a moment of complete silence, punctuated once by a drifting lilt of some kind of stringed music, cut off asquickly as if a door had closed. The prince studied them. Eliar wiped his brow. Kesh was panting. How could it be he had come so far and risked so much, only to have it all snatched out of his hands?
    Aui! Captain Anji had warned him. He’d understood the empire better than anyone, because he had spent his boyhood in the palace. He’d been willing to gamble with the lives of Keshad and Eliar, and the drovers and guardsmen, because it cost him nothing personally to make the attempt should it fail, and offered him benefit if they succeeded.
    Fair enough. Kesh had accepted the bargain. No use blaming anyone now that disaster sat in a serviceable chair and stared him in the face, mulling over how best to use him.
    To use him, not to kill him.
    The prince nodded. “I am not the enemy of my cousin Anjihosh. His mother made plain her intent to remove him from the battles over the throne when she smuggled him out of the palace and sent him west to his uncle, the Qin var, the year Anjihosh gained twelve years of age. But that does not mean my brother and I can pretend he does not live and breathe. He remains the son of an emperor. You may see that this presents a problem for us. Yet we are peaceable men, seeking order, not war. Our father taught us that it is better to be prosperous than to quarrel. Thus, when my brother sired a son, I accepted the place foreordained for me, so that we could work together rather than sunder what would otherwise be strong.”
    â€œYou’ve been cut,” said Eliar, going pale about the mouth. “I’ve read such stories, but I didn’t think—”
    Cut?
What on earth did that mean?
    The prince whitened about the mouth but spoke mildly enough that Kesh wondered if he were a man trained never to show overt anger. “We do not use such a crude term.”
    â€œI beg your pardon, Your Excellency,” said Eliar. “I know no other. There is no word in the Hundred that describes . . .” He blushed.
    â€œIn the trade talk they might say gelded, but we have a more honorable term in our own language, which is more sophisticated than the crude jabber used in the marketplace.”
    Gelded! Kesh had to actually stop his own hand from reaching down to pat his own privates, to reassure himself they were intact. “Captain Anji isn’t the kind of man to accept a knife cut so as to live.”
    â€œWe have something