PART SIX: WOLVES

28

THEY HAD LEFT Kartu Town and the desert far behind. They had escaped the Sirniakan Empire. Now, after many days traveling over the high Kandaran Pass, the caravan halted at a wall and border crossing guarding the road into the Hundred. In the Hundred, they would find good fortune, or disaster. Shai just didn't expect things to happen so quickly.

At the border crossing, a huge eagle carrying a man landed in their midst, frightening the horses and astonishing even the Qin soldiers who could not, Shai thought, be astonished by anything. After consulting with the eagle rider, Captain Anji commanded his troop to take control of the border crossing. The fight that ensued blew over quickly when the border guards realized it was their own captain who was corrupt. They surrendered to the authority of the eagle rider and handed over their captain at spearpoint. After this, in accordance with an agreement reached between Anji and the eagle rider, half the Qin company galloped north along the road to a tiny way-station village where, so they were told, a smaller caravan had come under assault by bandits. Shai rode with them, under Tohon's supervision.

The Qin slaughtered the bandits with the efficiency of a wolf pack cutting out and bringing down the weakest deer. Two men suffered slight wounds, and were roundly ridiculed for their lack of skill.

"They'll ride as tailmen tomorrow!" said Chief Tuvi, laughing.

The soldiers dragged the dead bodies into rows, clearing the commons so the big caravan coming up behind would have space to settle in for the night.

None of this amused the new-made ghosts of the slaughtered bandits. They were angry, all right; no one liked suffering violent death. At dawn they were still angry, milling around the commons shaking their fists and cursing and weeping, and pissing on the living, not that ghosts could actually piss, but the gesture both comforted and infuriated them—an impotent defiance. They clustered in great numbers around the wagon where the prisoner—their co-conspirator who once called himself a captain—was kept under guard, but since ghosts are fixed to the earth, they had no way to reach him, who was concealed within the bed of a covered wagon, raised up on wheels.

As Shai went to get a drink of water at the rain barrel, well away from stacked bodies, he pretended not to see the commotion the ghosts made. Thwarted of their prey, the ghosts churned through the open ground and wandered among the merchants, servants, and slaves they had so recently terrorized, but this unworthy audience was oblivious of the wisps haunting them. Captain Anji prowled the caravan as the two caravan masters argued over who should take precedence and in what order wagons and carts should be shifted into a new line of march. Now and again Anji sidestepped to avoid a misty stream of ghostly rancor. Crude men, these Hundred folk. Civilized ghosts had better manners, although their language was just as bad. The corpse of a youth lay beneath the huge tree growing on one side of the open ground, but his spirit had fled, leaving the husk. At least someone was at peace today.

On a cleared space of ground, the eagle rider set a bone whistle to his lips and blew a shrill blast. Shai slurped from the ladle, saw Mai watching the reeve. Seeing Shai, she came over. North of the border, she walked openly as a woman.

"What do they say?" She took the ladle from his hand, dipped, and drank neatly.

"What do who say?"

She hung up the ladle from its hook. A pair of drops stretched off the curve of the cup, parted, and fell onto the glassy surface. Drip. Drop. "The ghosts."

"What are you talking about?"

"These bandits. Are their ghosts saying anything?"

"How would I know?"

She looked at him. He hated that look. She had changed since they departed Kartu Town and she became a married woman. He had always been her trusted older uncle—even if only by a few years—yet now he felt he was the younger one. "I know you see ghosts, Shai. Anji knows it, too. You admitted as much to him out in the desert. Anyway, you're a seventh son."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"Seventh sons see ghosts."

"What about seventh daughters?"

"Who ever has seven daughters? Just tell me! We're not in Kartu Town anymore. You aren't a witch here."

"How do you know? Maybe they'll burn me alive like they do in the empire. Or hang me, or tie me to a post and shoot me full of arrows, or poke me with spears until I'm all full of holes. You don't know anything about this place!"

"You shouldn't be afraid. Anji isn't."

"Then why don't you ask him what the ghosts are saying?" he snapped.

This revelation did not disturb her. Of course she already knew Anji saw ghosts! She considered him with a placid expression, but he guessed from the tilt of her chin that she was annoyed. "He doesn't hear ghosts. He only sees them. What you hear might help us."

When he only looked at her, she continued as she would to a particularly slow slave child who needed each least task explained at length several times over. "Help us. From the ghosts you can learn of any danger that might be ahead . . . learn the customs of the Hundred . . . Shai! The ghosts can teach us, warn us, even if they don't mean to. If we know more, we'll do better in our new life, don't you think?"

"You don't understand ghosts, Mai. They only talk about the past. What lies in the future no longer exists. That's why they're ghosts."

Which was why ghosts were often boring, as these were, bawling and bleating like so many discontented sheep:

Captain Beron! You betrayed us, you sheep-tupping son of a bitch!

I didn't mean to eat that rabbit. It isn't fair I was exiled for such a little thing! Forced to live the osprey life. I never wanted it! Why won't you forgive me? Why can't I go home?

I hate you! I hate all of you! Piss on you all!

"One thing, though," he said, because he found it so curious that he had to share with Mai. "You know how the arkinga here sounds so strange."

"They speak it wrong," she agreed. "Sometimes I can't understand them."

"I don't notice it so much with the ghosts."

"Maybe ghosts only speak the language of the dead. What are they saying?"

The only way to be rid of her questions was for the company to start moving, and the caravan wasn't ready. He'd never seen people slower to get moving in his life! The Qin stood beside their horses, not by a whisker betraying they might be impatient to go.

"Some person named Captain Beron betrayed them. Don't eat rabbit meat—it'll get you exiled. Now I don't want to talk about it anymore. How can I know it's safe here? In the empire, they burn those who believe in the Merciful One. What would they do with me?" When he spoke of the empire, he remembered how that Beltak priest had imprisoned the essence of a ghost, trapping it forever within a simple wooden bowl.

She touched his arm. "Are you all right, Shai? You're pale."

He looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. Mai's slave women were busying themselves by the cart Mai had obtained south of the pass through some clever trading of silks and woolens given to her as a wedding gift by Commander Beje.

"Can't you see? I've seen so many ghosts. I don't want to become one myself by speaking when I should have remained silent!"

Her expression softened. "I'm sorry. Of course you've had to keep it secret all your life in Kartu. I can see why you would still be anxious."

It was almost worse when she gazed at him with sincere concern. "How do we really know it's safe here?" he demanded. "Captain Anji made common cause with that eagle rider awfully quickly."

She shrugged. "Sometimes you have to know when to leap. Anyway, he liked him."

Abruptly, many of the horses whinnied and startled and shied. The big eagle landed with a whomp in the clear zone. The reeve fastened himself into his harness, and the eagle launched itself skyward with a mighty thrust of legs and wings whose strength and majesty brought tears of admiration to Shai's eyes. Mai touched fingers to heart, her gaze open with awe. They both followed the raptor's flight until it vanished away over the trees.

Chief Tuvi called out and, when he had their attention, waved merrily at them and signaled toward the horses.

"We're leaving!" Shai said with relief. He wiped his eyes and went to join the ranks.

The angry ghosts did not follow as the caravan trundled out the northern gate. But they hadn't ridden more than a few lengths when Shai saw an almost transparent wisp trudging along the road, a whipcord man-shape who had such an antique look about him—as though he had lingered in this spot for a hundred years—that Shai actually stared, wondering who this ghost was and where it came from. He had a strange idea that he had seen that face recently, but he couldn't place it. The ghost did not even look at him. As he turned in the saddle to watch it fall behind, it reached a broad stone placed beside the road like a marker, and vanished.

29

For the first three days after leaving Dast Korumbos, they traveled through heavily wooded hills, and although the road bent here to the left and there to the right and at intervals hit steep upward inclines as they climbed out of a valley, on the whole they headed northeast and downslope until Mai thought her tailbone would never stop aching. The Qin never tired or ached, so she refused to complain and had Priya massage her in the evening.

"Sheyshi should massage you, and you should massage Sheyshi." She lay on her stomach, with her head turned sideways so she could see with one eye. Her hair was caught up against her head, tendrils fallen free along her neck. "You must ache, too."

Priya smiled as she rubbed Mai's buttocks. "This is an easy life, compared to what came before."

"I wish I was a horse," Sheyshi whispered. She only ever whispered.

"Why do you wish you were a horse?" Mai asked. "Oh. Ah! Yes, right there!"

Sheyshi did not answer. She was the most reserved person Mai had ever met, closemouthed, not at all confiding.

"Horses are free," said Priya.

"Sheyshi, do you wish you were free?" Mai asked. "When we have found a place to live, I'll make sure you can earn extra zastras—or whatever they use here—to earn money toward your manumission. That's perfectly fair. Commander Beje gave me your bill of sale. That amount is what you must earn to buy your freedom."

The girl colored, stared at her hands, then lifted her gaze to look at Mai as daringly as she ever had. "I would like to be free," she whispered. "But that isn't what I meant. I dream sometimes about things. I dreamed I was a horse, running over the grass. It felt—it felt—" But after all, that was too much confiding! Sheyshi squeezed shut her mouth, twisted her hands and, to make herself busy, offered Priya more oil for the massage even though Priya's hands were moist and Mai's flanks smoothly coated.

Priya chuckled. "Were you a mare, or a stallion? I've wondered, sometimes, how it might feel to be a stallion—man or horse—and have such a—"

"Oh, stop teasing her!" Mai scolded, because the girl looked miserable. Or maybe not. Commander Beje had implied that the girl slept in the bed with his chief wife and that there was play between them. "Are you lonely, Sheyshi?"

Sheyshi wore a green silk cap from which hung shoulder-length streamers, some of green silk, some of gold and white beads, and one woven out of supple wire. Normally the arrangement left her face exposed, but with her head bowed the streamers concealed her expression.

"Hard to come by right now," said Priya as she rubbed, "but I can make sheaths out of sheep gut if you're wanting comfort with a man without catching a child in your sack."

Mai chuckled. "You made me no such offer, Priya! A sheep-gut sheath for a man's sword!"

"You are freeborn, and now a wife. You must get a child as soon as you can." She paused with a hand resting on the gentle curve of Mai's lower back. "Perhaps . . ."

"It's too early," said Mai, suddenly frightened. "Don't say anything."

Priya began kneading again as if nothing had been said. "I will pray to the Merciful One that you are blessed with seven sons, and three daughters."

It was good to change the subject. "How can it be, if there are always seven sons but only three daughters, that all the sons can get married? In Kartu, the clan banner goes only to the eldest son. But all my uncles got wives—well, except for Uncle Shai, and Uncle Hari, and Uncle Girish." She shuddered, remembering Girish. He'd paved his own path to the deepest hell.

"Priests and soldiers need not marry," said Priya. "This way we always have plenty of them."

"Ow! Ow! No, don't stop! Right there!" She groaned in blissful pain. "Yes, right there! It hurts!" Priya worked in silence while Mai kept her eyes shut and breathed into the knot of pain to try to loosen it.

Sheyshi shuffled around; there came footsteps, an opening and closing of the flap of the tent. Feet shushed along the carpet, and just before Mai opened her eyes to see what was going on, hands began massaging her again. These hands were firm and strong and callused, and no less knowing.

"Anji." She smiled as she opened her eyes.

He kept kneading with one hand and with the other slipped free the tortoiseshell comb that bound up her hair, uncoiling it and raking it out over her back. "I am the most fortunate of men," he murmured.

"I am the most flattered of women."

He laughed. "It is not flattery if it is true. Not one man among this company does not honor your beauty and good nature, Mai."

She rolled out from his hand, onto her side, and propped her head up on a bent elbow. "Is that what you seek? The envy of other men?"

He considered the comment, but his gaze roamed along her body and his hands twitched, although he did not—yet—touch her. "It is easy to be gratified by the envy of others, directed at what you yourself possess. But it weakens you. Half the secret of your beauty, plum blossom, is that you do not covet it or use it." Then he smiled. "Except in the marketplace, to drive a harder bargain."

"You will never let me forget that."

"I must know the measure of those I hold closest. Any commander must measure his troops in this manner."

"I am no different than your troops?"

He said nothing, and she understood abruptly that it would be foolish to press the conversation any further in this direction.

She groped for and found the scraper Priya would have used to clean the oil off her body. "When do I get my bath?"

He relaxed. "Soon." He took the scraper and worked methodically, but somehow by the time he had finished he was also undressed and she was warm and almost delirious with pleasure.

"Soon," he repeated, kissing her.

She wrapped her limbs around him and took what she wanted.

DO NOT FEAR happiness.

Is it dangerous to become too happy? To get what you want, and be blessed with good fortune? A kind husband. A missed bleeding. As Grandmother Mei used to say, in her querulous way, "Why do you think you'll get a drink from my cup just because I gave you one yesterday?"

She pondered this question at dawn as she rolled up the blankets and the sleeping carpets while, outside, Priya and O'eki released the tent ropes. She crawled out as the walls collapsed. Sheyshi collected the bedding and secured it to one of the packhorses. Anji stood beside the sentry fire talking with the man who rode that huge and intimidating eagle. Anji had an easy way of conversing with other men. He had a natural precision of movement, and he took up space in a way that made him noticeable without diminishing those in his company. He glanced her way, saw her, and without smiling—just a certain way of narrowing his eyes and the barest curve to his lips—made her flush.

Grandmother had not approved of happiness. She said it led to carelessness and trouble, or perhaps she had meant that happiness led you to carelessness, which in turn took your hand and walked you into trouble. Good fortune was fickle. You must never count on it.

Her hair was already pulled back in a mare's tail swishing down her back to her hips. She twisted it up deftly, and Priya thrust the tortoise comb through the mass of gathered hair to keep it in place. Mai walked over to the men.

"A good morning," said Joss appreciatively. He was the kind of man who smiles his admiration but shows restraint in the way he doesn't draw too close. She liked him. He was good-looking in the northern way, but pretty old. As old as her father, probably, although his coloring was so different that it was hard to tell. Father Mei walked old and talked old and frowned old and sighed old, but the reeve had the lively aura of a man who plunges through life because he wants to be happy.

It hit her all at once.

"You're an Ox," she said.

"Mai?" said Anji in a tone that almost crossed into a warning.

Joss laughed. "How did you know?"

"So am I. The Ox is hardworking and pragmatic, with a dreamer hidden inside."

"What gave me away?" He was still smiling, his eyes handsomely crinkled with amusement, and she gave in to the temptation to flirt, even though she knew she should not.

" 'The Ox walks with its feet in the clay, but its heart leaps to the heavens where it seeks the soul which fulfills it. The Ox desires happiness, which is a heavenly gift, but it accepts its burden of service on earth even if it knows that happiness has flown out of its grasp.' And anyway, the Ox is always beautiful."

She was aware at once of Anji's boots shifting on the dirt as a complicated expression altered the reeve's face before he found a harmless smile again. "Does it say somewhere that the Ox is a shrewd judge of character? Or did you serve your apprenticeship to Ilu as I did?"

"I don't know what 'Ilu' is."

He glanced at Anji and made his own judgment. "We'd best begin our trek. It's still five or six days' journey from here to Olossi. I won't rest easily until these two caravans are delivered to the safety of the market there."

Anji nodded, and the reeve left.

"He's been called handsome before," said Anji once the other man was out of earshot. "He's accustomed to the admiration of women. It was the talk of happiness that made him uncomfortable."

She looked at him closely. "You're a little mad at me."

"This is not the marketplace, Mai, and you are not selling peaches and almonds to unsuspecting men who will be stunned into paying full price by one glance from your beautiful eyes."

She raised a hand to her cheek, where Father Mei would have slapped her. "Forgive me," she said in a low voice, but she kept her gaze fixed to his.

He did not smile to soften his words. His voice was low and even. "Do not dishonor me."

"I will never dishonor you! Because I will never dishonor myself!"

Now he smiled. "I am rebuked."

Her cheeks were hot, and her heart was hotter. She was still not quite sure what threat she faced because in most ways Anji was still a mystery. Father Mei would have hit her, and her mother and aunt would have pinched her arms and ears until she cried. It had been easier to fit herself into the walls they shaped than to endure slaps and pinches, but she had passed through the gate and survived the ghost lands. She was not the same person any longer. She refused to go back.

"I want to be trusted," she said softly, "because it dishonors me if I am not trusted."

His gaze remained level. He was no longer angry, but rather measuring and perhaps a little curious, intrigued yet not at all amused. "Honor is all we have. You are right, Mai. I must trust you."

She nodded in reply. That was as far as she could go. She could not trust her voice, and turned aside gratefully as O'eki brought the horses forward.

LATE IN THE afternoon, the wagons rolled into a meadow already fitted for encampments. A covered cistern opened through a series of cunning traps into a trough suitable for watering stock. A spacious corral built out of logs allowed them to turn out many of the beasts. Posts offered traction for lead lines where horses could be tethered. Pits rimmed with stones marked off six fire circles, all of which had iron stakes set in place to hang kettles or cauldrons over flames. Hired men and slaves set to work to raise camp and get food ready.

She made her way on a dirt path that cut through a thick stand of pipe-brush and under an airy grove of swallow trees to the crude pits set back against a ravine. Some kind soul had woven screens out of young pipe-brush stalks and pounded and nailed arm braces against the steep slope for ease of use. There was a great deal of coming and going and, remarkably, a stone basin cooled by trickling water flowing down through an old, halved stalk of mature pipe-brush. As she washed her hands, she noticed a small structure off to one side that almost blended into the foliage. She walked over, Priya and Sheyshi trailing after, but thought better of mounting the steps when she saw it was a shrine. She had been raised in the path taught by the Merciful One. In the empire, she knew, the priests served Beltak, calling him the Shining One Who Rules Alone even though he was only a harsher aspect of the holy one all folk worshiped.

This altar had no walls, only green poles with the shapes of leaves carved into them, a tile roof painted green, and a green rug laid over a plank floor. The rug was woven of thick, stiff grass-like blades as long as her arm, and it had begun to wear away where folk had trodden on it. A walking staff stood within, propped at an angle, so tall that it fit inside the peaked roof. A stubby log sat on its end in one corner, with a bouquet of withered flowers discarded on top.

"I'm surprised the flowers haven't blown away, or been replaced with something fresh," she murmured to Priya. "Is there no bell or lamp?"

"This is no altar for the Merciful One," said Priya.

"I don't think it's a Beltak temple, either," said Mai.

"I see no god," whispered Sheyshi. With head bent, she eyed the shrine as she might a twisting snake whose dance can cause women to fall into a charmed and deadly sleep.

Folk were looking their way, faces obscured by twilight.

"Perhaps we're not meant to stand here," said Mai. "Let's go back."

Anji had staked out the central fire pit, and he stood near its flickering light speaking to the reeve as Mai walked up behind them. They were laughing, and did not see her.

"You are a lucky man, did you know that?" Joss was saying.

"It would be impolite to reply to such a question. If I knew, and said so, then it would seem I am boasting. If I did not, it would seem I am foolish."

The reeve laughed. "I am answered!" He turned, alert even before Anji was, and Anji turned, and saw Mai. Sheyshi scuttled away to help O'eki, who was wrestling with a steaming haunch of venison. Priya paused just outside the circle of firelight.

"Surely you are a fortunate man as well," said Mai, coming forward.

His smile remained easy, but his gaze retreated into itself, as though he were staring down a long straight track into a twilit distance whose landscape was forever veiled from mortal sight. "I am not married."

Day seemed to shift into night with the swiftness of a child whose mood can swing from joy to tears in an instant. She halted beside Anji, but she could not look away from the reeve.

"You have a shadow in your eyes," she said to the reeve.

He looked at Anji, and she looked at Anji, and the captain nodded, and the reeve spoke in a low voice as around them the camp settled into its evening routine of drinking, eating, song, and sleep.

"I gave up telling the tale years ago. It came at the beginning, when the shadows first began to reach into the land, in the north. She was the first one—the first reeve—slaughtered. That was on the Liya Pass. Twenty years ago. Where it all began, when outlaws and cursed greedy lords began hunting down the eagle clans. I still dream about her. I shouldn't have let her go alone. If I'd gone with her . . ." But he shook his head.

"What then?" she asked.

Anji remained silent, watching.

He shrugged, and offered her a wry smile that made her want to cry for his pain. "Most likely we'd both be dead. Her eagle was found. Not just dead, but mutilated."

She had a nasty, prickling feeling along her back, as if someone drew cold fingers laced with slivers of glass up and down her skin. "What of her?"

He shifted his gaze to the leaping flames, his head canted and jaw tight, and continued speaking. "Her body was never found, but we found her clothes, her boots, a belt buckle, her knife, items she carried in her pack . . ."The fire sparked as a soldier shoved a pair of branches into the flames. The reeve winced back from the flare, then caught himself and went on, although his voice seemed flatter and more distant. He might have been reciting from a scroll. "Her boot knife was found on a girl, one of the Devourer's hierodules. The girl had been stabbed in the heart. That girl's corpse lay there with the rest of the discarded gear. It was only her body we did not find, nor them who did it, as they had all abandoned the camp."

"She might not have been taken away with those who killed the other one?" Anji asked.

"We searched, but there was never any sign of her. No, she's dead. I knew it as soon as I saw what remained of Flirt—that was her eagle. A reeve doesn't survive her eagle's death. An eagle can survive through the lives of four or five reeves if it's particularly long-lived, like my good Scar, but for the other way, no. Better dead than no longer a reeve, so we say." His smile was a ghost's smile, without life, but he struggled with it and shook his head and said, "It still hurts. A few years later, bones were found in an unmarked grave up beyond that abandoned camp. Perhaps that was her, hidden because they feared our revenge. I try to leave it behind." He blew breath out through his lips and shook himself in the manner of a duck shedding water. "I keep thinking I have."

"I'm so sorry," said Mai, wiping away a tear. "What was her name?"

"Reeve Joss!" A voice hailed him from the darkness. "Best come see this!"

"Excuse me." Joss left.

"Every young man loses his first love," remarked Anji to Mai, "but most get back in the saddle and keep riding. He's tethered to one post."

"Is it fair to say so? You don't know what he's done in the years since, only that speaking the tale makes him sad. The storytellers in the marketplace would make a song out of it, like in the tale of the Rose Princess and the Fourteen Silk Ribbons. She ran off with her lover, and he left her by the riverside while he went into town to buy her silk ribbons, and she was eaten by a lion that had been sent to earth by a demon jealous of her beauty. Afterward he wore her bloodstained rags and went on pilgrimage to the fourteen holy temples, one for each ribbon he had bought for her, but he could not calm his heart and after all he turned back to seek revenge, but the demon seduced him and made him steal back the ribbons from each temple and . . .It's a terribly sad tale!" she finished indignantly, seeing that he was trying not to laugh. "He dishonored himself! What could be worse? There is a song, but it always makes me cry."

"I would gladly hear the song. You sing with sincerity and a true voice."

"Maybe not such a strong one," she muttered. "But the tone is good, so I am told."

"You are still angry. I do not laugh at you, dearest Mai. I just have no taste for such tales. To me, they seem ridiculous."

"How are the tales ridiculous?"

He laughed. "Any man knows better than to leave a beautiful woman alone by the riverside in the middle of wilderness! Wild beasts and demons stalk everywhere, and not least among them the sort of bandits we drove away in Dast Korumbos. No, I have no patience for those stories."

"Mistress." Sheyshi came out of the dark carrying a copper basin filled with water. "Here is warmed water, if you want to wash your hair and face."

"Captain!" The reeve reappeared, barely visible in the gloom, and waved a hand. "If you will. There's something I would like you to see."

Anji nodded at her and went after Joss. Mai watched them fade into the twilight. She scanned the clearing and the trees but could see nothing exceptional, only merchants fussing at their wagons, soldiers grooming horses, and a dog slinking under the wheels of a cart. Guards ringed the prisoner's wagon, but they showed no sign of alarm as they maintained their vigil.

Movement beside one wagon attracted her gaze. Canvas had been stretched by means of an internal scaffolding to make a cabin over the bed, and two young women knelt beside a small fire, feeding sticks into it and stirring in a pot that hung on an iron tripod over the flames.

"Look there," said Mai to Priya. "I've noticed them before. They look a little like Sheyshi, don't they?"

"Slaves," said Priya. "See the bracelets and anklets, hung with bells so they cannot run away without alerting their master. Someone means to sell them here in the north. So it happened to me."

Mai took the other woman's arm, looking for the mark of shackles. "You have never worn such bracelets, Priya!"

"It is not the custom in Kartu. They were taken off me before I came to your father's house."

"Still." Mai scratched a forearm carelessly. "There's something about those two—or that wagon, anyway—that makes me itch. I don't know what. Like that time keder oil spilled on Ti's hand and made it blister. There's something hidden, but I don't know what."

A young man appeared by the fire, speaking to the girls, and he looked up as if he felt Mai's gaze. She had seen him before, among the merchants. He was young, with thick, curly black hair, and vivid with a kind of hunger of the spirit, a thing which gnaws at the underbelly and never lets up. He noted her, as men always did, but looked away quickly as if to say, "You cannot feed me, so I have no interest in you!"

"Find out his name," said Mai to Priya.

Priya brushed her fingers across Mai's knuckles. "You shouldn't stare at young men. Best we go on. Your water is ready."

She followed Sheyshi behind a canvas screen set up for privacy and, with the aid of her two slaves, stripped and had them pour the water over her just for the feel of it. It wasn't a true bath, with a scrub and afterward a hot soak, but she rubbed and soaped and afterward Sheyshi brought two more basins and rinsed her, and anyway it was better than the constant smear of dirt on her skin. She had dried and dressed and was sitting on a stool, sipping at this nasty drink called cordial while Priya combed out her hair, when Anji returned, accepted a cup from Sheyshi, and drained it without even a grimace at the sour taste.

"What was it?" she asked him.

"Just in the trees, a man found two skulls, bones scattered. Wild beasts got into them, but it isn't clear if the dead men were murdered or just died from some other cause—starvation, illness. Or where they came from or why, nothing but the bones, not even scraps of clothing, pieces of gear, nothing."

"It doesn't seem likely that naked people would go wandering in the forest. Unless these Hundred folk have strange customs."

He smiled, but sobered immediately. "The reeve tells me they have no holy followers of the Merciful One at all."

"No followers of the Merciful One? How can that be? We saw a shrine to the god, but it contained no statue, nothing but withered flowers."

"He kept thinking I was saying the Merciless One. It took us a while to sort it out. He had never heard of the Merciful One."

"You might as well say you have never heard of the color blue, or the sun and the moon!" she protested. "Surely all creatures know the Merciful One."

He smiled. "Not in Sirniaka, where Beltak, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Shining One, rules alone."

"Everyone knows that this Shining One is only one aspect of the Merciful One."

"You would be burned alive for saying so."

"Then I am glad we did not have to stay in Sirniaka!"

He touched her hand, and cradled it between his. "Not even for another amaranth parasol?"

"I only needed one!" She laid her other hand atop his, thinking of the flash of jealousy he had displayed. Of course it was gratifying, but it scared her, too. "I only need one," she added, and his hand tightened on hers and he looked at her intently in a way that made her both bold and nervous, as though she stood in the court of judgment knowing she had done nothing to dishonor herself.

"Well," he said, releasing her hand and rising, breaking the gaze. Her shoulders relaxed. "They'll be given a proper funeral, however they do that kind of thing here. Still, it makes a man wonder."

"How they came to die?"

"How much trouble the Hundred folk are having in their lands, to find border guards working in league with bandits and bones abandoned in the forest. Another thing I wonder at." He paused, and she watched him as he regarded the starry heavens with a thoughtful gaze. His profile was a noble one, given a patina of unworldliness by night and stars and the fitful illumination of firelight. So might a man out of legend appear as he considers his destiny, because it is the duty of night to mask his thoughts and lend glamour to his fortitude.

She waited—she had always been good at waiting—and at length he continued.

"Their ghosts were still there. Where men die violently, there remains a whirlpool of rage and fear where the spirit was cut from the body. I had Shai come over. Do you know what he told me?"

"Poor Shai. He's so afraid of being burned for seeing ghosts."

He frowned. "It's true you Kartu folk have odd ideas, which we Qin often remarked on. Among the Qin, the few men and women who can see ghosts are honored. It's a rare gift. In the empire, a boy who sees ghosts is given to the priests and becomes a powerful man. It's also true, though, that a woman in the empire who saw ghosts would be executed. So, after all, on all counts, you're better off with me, Mai."

"Did I ever suggest otherwise?"

"You did not. But, hear this and wonder, as I do. Those ghosts claim to have been reeves, so Shai tells me. They were murdered, although they cannot say who killed them. Yet where are the bones of their eagles? How comes it that our good ally Reeve Joss had no inkling of these deaths? Are these reeves not soldiers together in one unit? Does a crime that assaults one not lash the rest into action? Why is he here alone? Where are those who must stand at his shoulder?"

"What are you saying? That he is a rogue? Or a liar?"

"I think he is an honorable man. But what of other reeves? Are they as honorable as he is?"

"Did you ask him? Maybe he had heard of the deaths but not thought to tell you."

"He said there is a fort—a hall, he called it—of reeves a few days' journey from here. He'll leave us tomorrow at a place he calls Old Fort, and fly to that place to meet with these other reeves, to see what they have heard of this situation. I am thinking he wonders why they have not acted, when all these crimes take place within the lands they are responsible to patrol."

"He can ask them if they are missing two reeves."

Anji shook his head. "I did not tell him what the ghosts told us. I am mindful of the laws of Kartu. Before we let these Hundred folk know that both Shai and I have ghost-touched sight, best we know whether they'll wish to burn us alive."

She put her hands to her cheeks, wishing that fear did not make her skin burn so.

"We must keep our eyes open," he went on. "Reeve Joss promises to meet us in Olossi, to help us in our request for settlement privileges. Mai, there is a part for you to play as well. You are my negotiator. When we reach this city, Olossi, you must speak innocently, and listen well."

"You want me to be a spy."

"A merchant, darling Mai. Merchants make the best scouts of all. Anyway, men speak freely with you in a way they will not with other men. Your beauty and clarity are like wine, loosening their tongues. We have ridden into a strange land. If we are to survive here, we must know what we are up against."

30

From Old Fort, Joss and Scar flew east-northeast along the ridge that separated the narrow coastal fringe from the upland plateau. They glided from updraft to up-draft, making good time. The southern mountains were marked with icy tips. South lay the golden brown grasslands, blurring into the horizon. Just to the north, the Olo'o Sea was fringed with white frills where salt encrusted the shoreline. Seen from above, the sea had the silky luster of a rare gem, and the intense blue of its waters matched the color of the sky.

For two days they paused to feed and rest at one of the abandoned bastions that guarded West Spur, but although Scar could have used another day or two to really recover his full vigor, Joss pushed on. On the day that they passed the last of the bastions, a circular ruin of stone sitting on a bluff and overlooking road and sea, Joss turned Scar north over the sea itself, cutting across the estuarine bay which he had been told was known locally as Fisherman's Delight.

Below, a swirl of currents and contrasting colors marked the outflow from the River Olo, a cooler layer of water borne down from frigid springs and northern hills that had not yet mixed into the warmer sea. Joss no longer hoped that the hidden currents ripping through the reeve halls would be so easy to discern.

Late in the day he glimpsed an eagle off to the north, a speck seen flying above the dark border of the distant shore. Soon he could see the broad Olo Plain with its stripes and squares of fields measured by the straight lines of ditches and orchard rows. From this height, the rocky escarpment of the city was a mere smudge in the east, many mey distant, with the ribbon of the river no more than a wink as the light of the lowering sun caught in its majestic curves. Best to tackle the reeves first, before they had news of his coming. He had a few days before the caravan would reach Olossi.

Argent Hall had built its headquarters right at the coastline, in the midst of rice fields and sheep pasture, making it impossible to sneak up from any side. The huge rectangular compound was elevated on a massive earth platform and lapped by the sea on one side and by a murky moat on the other three. The steep banks of the earthen platform were reinforced along the base with stone, and grown green with mown grass. Sturdy stone corner towers offered a vantage to survey the surrounding fields and the open sea. Skeletal watchtowers suitable for eyries rose at intervals along the long walls. As he came in, two eagles rose on a coastal updraft and circled to fall in behind him.

So he would do, placing an escort on an approaching visitor, if he thought trouble was coming. Apparently Marshal Alyon thought trouble was coming, even in the person of another reeve. Joss considered this bleakly as Scar took the turn in toward the chalk-lightened parade ground and the cart-sized perches, painted white, where they could land. Before the shadows, the reeves from different clans had trusted each other, but that trust had eroded. Sometimes he felt he was himself to blame, since in the first years after the murders of Marit and Flirt he had broken the boundaries multiple times, had invaded the Guardian altars even knowing they were forbidden.

Yet this was not the fault of one young, foolish, reckless reeve.

He had to shake it off, but the dreams kept coming.

Scar pulled vertical, wing and tail feathers fanning out and his false wings standing up as he slowed, and landed. Then he spread his wings to show his size before settling. A kind of flurry of wings and fluffed-up feathers flowed around those few eagles visible from the parade ground and up on the watchtowers. Heads swiveled to stare.

Joss slipped out of his harness and dropped to the net, then swung down to the ground. He bound up his harness out of the way and tied the leash onto the perch's swivel ring.

Folk gathered, most in reeve leathers but a few in loose tunics or in the kilted skirts commonly worn for exercise. He strolled out into the center of the vast parade ground, where he could be seen and examined from all sides.

"I've come to see Marshal Alyon," he said, and added, unnecessarily, "I hail from Clan Hall."

A younger reeve with a scar on his chin and a beady, suspicious gaze answered him without stepping forward to take charge. "Marshal Alyon's corpse was laid on Sorrowing Tower months ago. We've had a new marshal since the Whisper Rains."

He let the shock of that bald statement rake through his body without betraying by frown or blink that it stunned him. "I'm sorry to hear it. We had no word of it at Clan Hall." He took a breath and let it out. "We were wondering, too, what became of Legate Garrard and the duty reeves who were called back and never replaced. That was almost a full year ago. Clan Hall sent a reeve called Evo down here as well, some months ago, but he never returned. I've come to see if there's any news of his whereabouts."

The younger man stared but said nothing. They all stared, a dozen reeves and, by now, twice that many stewards and artificers, and even a few slaves ghosting in the shadow of the lofts as they craned necks to watch the showdown, although Joss wasn't sure who his opponent was. He had faced sullen silences before, only not from his fellow reeves. They were supposed to be allies.

Clan Hall should have had word of Marshal Alyon's death if the marshal had died during the Whisper Rains. That was months ago. These folk knew it as well as he did. And if they knew what happened to Evo, they should have sent word. But no one here was talking.

Shadows stretched over the dusty parade ground. A pair of eagles braked in to land on open watchtowers. Scar fluffed up his feathers. A spike of nerves thrilled up along Joss's spine, but the old eagle held his position, and fixed his amber gaze on his reeve.

Two reeves, the ones who had just landed, clambered down the watchtower ladders. But the attention of the gathering shifted when a young woman strode out of the open door of the west loft. A frown creased her dark face. Her hair was pulled tightly back along the high curve of her skull and braided in a single rope. Folk gave way to let her through, keeping their distance. She wore an exercise kilt, tied up very short, while not much more than a band of linen wrapped her breasts. The rest of her was exposed, and there was a lot of her to see, because she was tall for a woman: smooth brown legs, taut abdomen, muscular shoulders, arms glistening with sweat and oil. She wore sandals, and her feet were clean. She stopped a body's length from him, looked him up and down in the way she might measure a horse, and smiled with a soft whistle of approval that made his ears burn. Turning, she cast a pair of words over her shoulder at him, not in the least flirtatious.

"Come on."

He appreciated her curves and her brisk walk and the scalloped wave of tattoos running up the back of her shapely legs, and let her get a little ahead of him before he followed, just to get the all of her in his view. Her braid didn't reach much farther than the middle of her back. Those gathered took her departure as a signal to move away in silence, all but the man with the scarred chin whose gaze looked ready to sear both hen and rooster.

As Joss passed close by him, the man hissed between his teeth and said, in a murmur that could not have reached beyond the two of them, "The shadow of lust and greed rules here. Watch your back." Then he, too, turned away and, with a noticeable hitch in his stride, favoring his right leg, headed for the east loft.

The woman paused in the alley between the braceworks and the high wall of the west loft, in the shadowed cleft midway between light and light, right where a double-wide door, slid back, opened onto a storehouse built into the outer wall. Ranks of ceramic vessels filled the long chamber: the tall amphorae for groundnut oil; smaller pots marked with the ideograms for sesame and chili oils; the elaborately decorated and stoppered vessels containing the most expensive cosmetic oils; an especially plentiful supply of the distinctive round, sealed pots holding precious oil of naya. Argent Hall had a remarkably well stocked storehouse, any merchant's dream.

"Are you always this slow?" she asked as he halted beside her and gave her his full attention.

He grinned. "Only when I want to be."

She snorted. "Men say so, but they have no stamina."

"Spoken like one of the Devourer's hierodules."

"Do you think so?"

"You have the look of it."

Her fingers, brushing his wrist, were like a wasp's tickling walk along skin. "Do you want to find out?"

He bent toward her, lips to her ear, not quite touching. "You'll find me far more at ease once my business here is concluded."

As she started forward, she said something under her breath that he couldn't quite catch, or maybe it was something he had heard before, lying in the arms of the Merciless One. She devoured the ground with her stride. An impatient woman. She sizzled with a pent-up anger, but he didn't know enough to figure it out.

The alley gave way to the garden court with a narrow reflection pool flanked by fruit and nut trees, a pair of hexagonal fountains spilling water over blue tile, and wide corner terraces heavily planted with a variety of herbs, veil of mercy, and hundred-petaled butter-bright, so yellow that the petals seemed smeared with grease. The marshal's cote was a humble-seeming pavilion built at the far end of the pool. The intricate woodwork in the overhanging eaves and around the closed doors and white-papered windows, and the lacing vines of veil of mercy and climbing stars twining the poles and lattices of the wraparound porch, betrayed that skilled workmanship had gone into both its construction and its ornamentation.

Their footfalls on gravel surely warned the man waiting within. She indicated the steps. As Joss mounted the first one, the door slid open and a retired reeve shuffled out onto the covered porch and stood aside. Joss unlaced his boots, stepped out of them, and crossed up and over the threshold onto the raised floor.

The cote was not a large building. The front room stretched its length, while a single door, currently shut, suggested that a private chamber waited in back. The marshal sat on a pillow at a writing desk, at his ease with a quill in one hand and an ink knife in the other. Such a slender thing, that knife. Joss watched carefully as the marshal toyed with this knife, gaze fixed on the blank paper lying on the desk. He must have been cold, for he was wearing a cloak indoors, although it seemed plenty warm to Joss.

Finally, the marshal set down the knife next to a silver handbell, and looked up. He was young enough that his youth came as a surprise: a man with an unpretentious face and a diffident manner. He was no one Joss had ever seen before, that he recalled, and he had seen plenty of reeves in his time.

"I'm Legate Joss out of Clan Hall."

"I know who you are. Why are you come here?" The man had a child's plain way of speaking.

"I hear Marshal Alyon is dead."

"So he is."

As the pause drew out, Joss understood that no further information was forthcoming. The outer door slid shut behind them, and the woman sashayed in, crossed to the inner door, opened it, stepped through into a narrow chamber made dim with shadows because all its shutters were shut, and closed the door behind her. Outside, someone began sweeping the porch.

"How did he die?" Joss asked.

"In the manner of all creatures. His time on this earth ended, and the gods plucked his soul from the husk to give it a new life in another being."

Joss had always found these sorts of platitudes irritating, and that fueled his rash streak. "We'd heard no news at Clan Hall of his passing."

The marshal blinked.

"We'd wondered about Legate Garrard, and the dozen duty reeves who were withdrawn from Clan Hall at the beginning of the year. No news, and no legate to replace him, and no roster of duty reeves. Clan Hall also sent a reeve this way at the beginning of the Flood Rains. Evo, his name is. Do you have news of him?"

The marshal moved his quill to a different spot on the work table.

It seemed to be all the answer Joss was going to get. He had dealt with uncooperative witnesses many times, but there was something about the hushed room, the lack of pillows on which a visitor might settle to make friendly conversation, the rhythmic stroke of the broom outside, and the memory of that darkened inner chamber that unsettled him as few things did. Even dealing with the ospreys and their corrupt ally had not made his skin creep, not like this.

At last, the marshal replied in that innocuous voice. "You're come into Argent Hall's territories. Why?"

"I was sent here at the order of the Commander at Clan Hall to find out why Legate Garrard was never replaced, and why we've had no word from Reeve Evo. Nor received any news from Argent Hall in almost a year." When the marshal made no effort to reply, Joss went on. "As it happens, I've also heard complaints from merchants that there is trouble both on West Track and on the Kandaran Pass. They claimed that border guards on the Kandaran Pass were in league with ospreys."

The marshal smiled as does a child who is told a ridiculous story. "Do you believe that?"

"I have proof of it."

Such a guileless face. "Proof? How can I believe that?"

"I have a man in custody, an ordinand who was in league with the ospreys. Who admits to the crime."

"Is he with you here?"

"No."

"Where, then? It's a serious charge. The Thunderer's ordinands are the gods' holy soldiers, famous for their devotion to duty and the straight path. It's a hard thing to imagine one of them casting aside his oath to hunt with ospreys."

"He'll come before the Olossi town assizes. Had Argent Hall no word of these attacks?"

"Who told you of this?"

"Some among Olossi's merchants tried—" He broke off, and reconsidered. "Word reached Clan Hall of the council's concerns."

The marshal touched the quill, but picked up the bell instead and rang it. As in answer, a deeper bell rang twice, breathed twice, rang twice, breathed twice, and rang twice again.

"We'll speak tomorrow," said the marshal. "At the parting of day, we take our supper."

Joss considered gain and loss, and decided he had no choice but to stay. He took leave to tend to Scar, to get the eagle settled for a night in the guesting loft. Scar was the only eagle present in the space. For the first time in his life as a reeve quartering in a reeve hall, Joss did not properly leash the eagle. He wasn't sure how quickly he would need to leave.

A fawkner's assistant wearing a slave's bracelets came by to offer a huge haunch of mutton, but Joss fed Scar lightly and sent the rest away. He remained in the semidarkness talking to the eagle about nothing in particular, just that soothing, mellow chatter necessary to allow the old eagle to adjust to the new surroundings, although all guest lofts were built exactly the same in every hall. But Scar had the patience and calm of a veteran and, when the second bell came, took the hood without fuss.

The same slave who had brought the mutton waited outside the door. They crossed the parade ground, skirted the west loft by an alley running along the sea side of the compound, and moved directly into the hall where the reeves and their community ate together every night under the eye of their marshal. He did not see the young man with scarred chin whose strange warning had raised so many alarms. A place on a bench awaited Joss, but not at the marshal's table. The marshal ate alone, still in his outdoor clothing. He was served by the old reeve, who had a habit, Joss noted, of tasting each dish before ladling out a portion onto his master's trencher.

Joss sat at the second-rank table among a flight of experienced reeves, stolid, laconic men and one woman who said nothing, apparently because it was now the custom at Argent Hall to listen to a reading while the meal was taken. A middle-aged woman read in a clear alto from a book of children's poetry about the origins and functions of the fourteen guilds, known to Joss from his schooling days when he'd been set the whole to memorize. It was as nourishing as straw.

Hew! The forester, strong and stern,
Swings with the axe the blacksmith forged.
Soon comes carter to haul the logs
To the shop where woodwright plies his turn.

Gods, how had he endured it then? Well, he had not, and had been caned on the hands more than once for his tricks when he got bored.

The mention of the carters got him thinking again about his dreams. Strange that he had folded the dying Silver's words into a dream and given them Marit's voice, as if to give himself an excuse to fly south straight into the fray rather than return with the wounded Peddo. For twenty years, hers was the only death he had never been able to leave behind.

The poem droned on and on.

Even bramble, healer uses
To give to dyer for handsome blues

Ghastly! He kept himself busy by sampling every dish, although he was careful to eat lightly, to avoid getting too full and thus too heavy. Argent Hall ate well: boiled fish covered with a spicy red chili sauce, rice cake, fried vegetables, nai porridge smothered in butter. Steamed spine-flower petals, heated just until their edges began to curl, were strewn over lamb basted in sharp ginger. The ubiquitous flat-bread and mounds of rice rounded out the meal.

Trenchers were cleared away and cups of wine brought. A cluster of giggling youths dressed in short, sleeveless tunics scurried into the hall. In the pause while this unprepossessing entertainment readied itself, his companions ventured a few comments.

"Clan Hall, is it?" asked the youngest of these veterans. He had a nose once broken but long since healed with a bump and a twist.

"It is," agreed Joss pleasantly.

They stared at him as though he had grown a second head. The man with the broken nose scratched an elbow.

"Toskala is besieged," said the woman. "How goes it there if foodstuffs can't come in or out?"

"Tss! What are you thinking?" demanded Broken Nose as two of the grizzled elders hissed through tight lips. She paled, shaking her head.

"Besieged?" Joss asked, startled and troubled by the comment. "Beleaguered, truly, but Toskala is not under siege. A strange turn that would be!"

"Beleaguered," said Broken Nose, elbowing the woman.

"That's right. That's what I heard." She wasn't a good liar.

Broken Nose continued. "That's what we heard. Refugees. Food shortages. Fighting in the hills. Fields laid waste in the night. What news have you heard, there in the north? What of the regions north of you? Heard you anything?"

Joss wanted to ask them why no one from Argent Hall had sent any manner of communication to Clan Hall this entire year, but the prickling along the back of his neck kept him quiet on this subject. He shrugged instead. "The north is lost to us. Few reeves dare patrol there now. The reeves of Gold Hall and Copper Hall say the same, of their territories that touch anywhere along the borders of Herelia and Vess. No news at all from the high vales, so I've heard. But that's only hearsay. The worst news—this I saw myself—is that High Haldia has come under attack. Under siege. Perhaps that's what you were thinking of."

Six of the seven youths fell into the familiar "talking line," and the seventh raised a stick and mirror-drum and commenced to beat out the pulse. As the storytellers fluttered their hands and stamped their feet, it took him a bit to start picking out the phrases from their gestures, because they were not accomplished: "bird flies to mountain" "the wind of ice weights its wings" "falling! falling!" "a cave" "the spring fountains, an overflowing wine cup carved into the stone" "caught in the current!" "the tumbling water spills into the hidden valley" . . .

This was the familiar Tale of Indiyabu, but he had never seen it performed so crudely. And at such length! Every hamlet and village had a girl or boy who had been trained in the Lady's garden and could entertain visiting dignitaries with a more graceful rendition; any member of the guild of entertainers would be shocked by this display. He yawned, caught himself, and forced a cough. Two of the older reeves were snoring softly. The woman watched her hands; her fingers twitched, as though they knew the gestures and wished to speak. Broken Nose stared at the marshal as if awaiting a signal, but if expressions were anything to go by, there was no love lost between him and the hall's master. Joss scanned the tables again, but the young man with the scarred chin remained absent. No one made a move to leave. Indeed, the audience seemed lulled into a stupor. By the Herald's Gate! Now they meant to repeat the entire thing for a third time!

It was a relief when the drumbeat ended, the marshal rose, and the company was allowed to depart. A row of tiny cells lined the southern exterior of the guest loft. Each cell had a sliding window built into the wall above the pallet to let the reeve check on his eagle at any time during the night. A slave indicated the cell he was meant to inhabit. The rest were obviously empty, doors ajar, pallets bare of mattresses, even. It appeared no visitors had stayed here in many months.

He made his last check of Scar for the night, finished his own ablutions, and paced out the cell to get his bearings in the wavering light of a small oil lamp. Four strides from door to pallet; four strides diagonal to the corner to the right of the door where a square chest, hip-high, could hold baggage and, with its lid closed, might also serve as a writing table; side to side the cell was three strides wide. There was a double shelf at the base of the pallet and some hooks set into the wall on which to hang clothing and gear. He slid the window open. The loft was dark and silent. Scar would alert him if anyone came through that way. Still wearing his leathers, he took off his boots, placed his quiver and staff on the floor just to the left of the pallet, and tucked his short sword between him and the wall. He hung the lamp from a hook and blew out the flame. Then he lay down, resting his head on his rolled-up cloak.

Maybe the food had been contaminated with sleeping herbs. Once he closed his eyes, he dropped so fast into slumber that he had a moment of disorientation before he was inexorably dragged under.

The dream unveiled itself in the gray unwinding of mist he has come to dread. He is walking within a forest of skeletal trees, and by this knows he is dead, awaiting rebirth. He is a ghost, hoping to wake up from the nightmare twenty years ago, but the dream has swallowed him and he walks in a world both sleeping and waking that has no Marit in it.

Foolish. Foolish. Let her pass through Spirit Gate so she can rest. But he cannot let her go any more than he can unbind the harness that ties him to Scar. The Ox's heart seeks in the heavens that soul which fulfills it. He has romanced, enjoyed, liked, and parted with many women—probably too many—in the second half of his life, but he has never loved any of them.

The mist boils as though churned by a vast intelligence. Here the dream twists into nightmare. As the mist parts, he will see her in the unattainable distance, walking along a slope of grass or climbing a rocky escarpment, a place he can and must never reach because he has a duty to those on earth whom he has sworn to serve.

The door opened.

Out of the darkness a woman's figure emerges into what is not light but a supernatural glamour. Marit pauses on the threshold. She is so close to him! She is dressed in an undyed linen wide-sleeved jacket whose front panels overlap and are tied off along one side seam. Her trousers are of the kind that herdsmen wear, loose and comfortable, stained at the knees. Her hands and feet are bare, yet as if it is cold, she wears a death-white cape flung back from her broad shoulders. Her gorgeous black hair is braided into a single widow's spine almost as thick as his arm.

It hurts to look at her.

She does not move forward. She cannot. She cannot speak or act, because she is only a spirit that he dreams as part of his torment. She is not even a ghost, only a shadow to mark his desire.

"Be warned, sweetheart," she says. "You are in danger. Beware the third blow."

His heart lurches. It is her voice, her very own, never forgotten! He tries to sit up, but he is paralyzed in truth, sleeping and awake at the same time, unable to shift his limbs.

"Marit!"

"I have broken my oath once already to warn you. Wake now!"

He jolted awake, jarringly alert even though only his eyes opened as the barest sound scuffed the matted floor. He grabbed his sword and sat up so fast that the shadow froze.

"Who's there?" he said in a low voice.

A cough gave him distance and placement, two strides forward from the door and one to the side.

"I had to come see." She was taller than Marit. "If it was true what you said."

"What did I say?" He eased the sword onto his thighs, hilt toward the room and point toward the wall, holding it underhanded in his left hand.

"That you were slow only when you wanted to be. A woman can look a long time before she finds a man who can really take his time."

Her voice had that drawling tone that teases a man and causes him all manner of comfortable distress. She changed position, and he saw suddenly that she was naked from the waist up, wearing only that short kilted wrap around her hips. She was all suggestive curves. He felt a stirring through skin and flesh, and in that instant of distraction, because men can be so easily distracted, she struck.

She was fast, but he was wide awake and ready. He ducked under her lunge and extended his arm in one stroke, catching her under the arm with a sharp blow from the hilt. That was enough to stagger her, and he looped his lower arm around and over and slapped her hard on the side of the head, catching her cheek with the flat of the blade.

She collapsed onto the floor with a grunt. Her weapon rattled against the pallet and rolled onto her body. He scooped it up by the handle, rolled it in his fingers, tried its weight. It was light, slender, deadly, an assassin's knife. He knew it as surely as he breathed.

He fished for the chain at his neck and drew up the two treasures that hung there. His fingers brushed the whistle, and for an instant he considered blowing it, to alert Scar, but the pitch would wake other eagles as well. Now was not the time.

Instead, he untied the tiny bag in which he carried his flint. Striking and nursing a spark with the flint, he lit the lamp. Her body was sweetly formed, enticing him. Her braid was wrapped tight and pinned atop her head. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing shallowly, full breasts rising and falling. . . . He forced himself to look away, to examine the knife. A sigil was carved into the handle, the four-petaled mark of Ushara, the Merciless One, the Devourer, mistress of life, death, and desire. They had found a similar tattoo on the body of that Devouring girl, twenty years ago.

The Devourer eats women and men both, and both women and men serve her, but only women served in her innermost sanctum. There, it was rumored, assassins might be bought who had trained in Ushara's courtyards, equally adept at seduction or murder, but even a reeve of long standing like Joss had never been able to fix the blame for any mysterious killing on the Merciless One's secretive hierodules. He had never been able to prove anything.

He sawed off a length of her wrap, rolled up the knife in the cloth, and shoved it into his kit bag. Quickly, he pulled on his boots, strapped on his gear, and left Argent Hall's guest rooms behind. Scar was already awake and alert, strangely calm, as though he had been warned. Quickly, and in silence, Joss readied the eagle, then shoved open the great door and walked him outside into the empty courtyard. A single lantern burned at the night watch's tower, overlooking the land side of the compound.

Joss was shaking as he gestured Scar up on the launching post and fastened himself into the harness. A shout rang out from the tower. A second lamp flashed. Scar raised wings and tail and thrust with his legs. No male eagle had a more powerful downstroke than Scar, and he was lifting and moving forward with such strength that he was past the compound's wall before the sentry got his eagle off the watch-tower. Joss got a glimpse of him as they flew past, gaining altitude, seeking an up-draft. It was the young man with the scar. He set his eagle after anyway, rising into the night and stroking after Joss.

Sweat poured freely down Joss's neck and forehead, although the night's wind off the sea was cool. The heavens were clear, and the stars blazed. Far to the east, the Peacock rose. He turned Scar south-southeast toward Olossi.

As a youth, he had served his year's apprenticeship with Ilu the Herald. He had a seeking mind that did not veer away from the unknown or inexplicable. Now his heart hammered and his thoughts skipped. He could not think through the troubling things he had seen and experienced at Argent Hall. He could make no sense of the day at all, or even the impossible dream of Marit stepping out of the mist where she had long wandered in the unreachable distance. Of Marit speaking. He ought to think of her, but he could not because he kept seeing that dead Devouring girl from twenty years ago. Although pierced to the heart, she had lost little blood, and her face had worn a rictus grin that had disturbed him ever after. So might the Merciless One smile when she suffers death's consummatory kiss.

This night, such a knife had been meant for him.

Sweat stung his eyes, and he wiped his forehead and tilted his face to let the wind pour over eyes and nose and mouth. Scar found an updraft, and they rose and rose and rose as the land fell away below them, as dark and still as a sleeping beast. The sea gleamed, reflecting stars.

The reeve from Argent Hall was still pacing him, neither falling behind nor trying to catch up. Eagles were creatures of day, and flew at night only under duress. Scar was already angry, kekking and making his displeasure known with little stabbing motions of that huge beak. Joss didn't want to put down, but he had enough of a head start out of Argent Hall that he figured it was better to risk the stop rather than let the other man follow.

He and Scar circled down in an open field of rice stubble not yet turned under, a pale expanse where it was unlikely they'd stumble onto any unexpected holes or rills or ditches. It was a risk, but one that paid off as the other reeve landed at the far end of the field, a gap carefully judged to allow an approach without seeming threatening.

Scar flared and spread his wings, disturbed by the difficulty of the night landing, the lack of a roost, and the presence of the other eagle, but after a command from Joss, he tucked his head under his wing and settled in to wait.

Joss unhooked from his harness, hooked the unlit lantern to his belt, and kicked through the stubble. The other man met him halfway. He had kept his traveling cloak on, a signal that he didn't expect a fight. Both raised their staves out in front into "holding."

"Why did you come after me?" asked Joss.

"You're really from Clan Hall?"

"So I am."

"Legate Garrard is dead."

"How do you know?"

Wind rustled in the dry stalks. Insects chirruped. He smelled a trace of hearth fire, drifting from an unseen farmhouse. A line of mulberry trees rimmed the sea break of the field. It grew suddenly cool, as though the weather had turned back several months to the season of Shiver Sky, but maybe that was just his instinct for trouble shivering to life.

The young man cleared his throat. "Once I speak, I cannot return to Argent Hall. They'll kill me."

"They'll kill you anyway, if it has come to that. They'll never trust you, knowing you came after me. Tell me what you know. Afterward it's best you fly to Clan Hall to report to the Commander. Do you know the way?"

"I was there one time, my first year."

So were they all. It was part of their training.

"I think I can find it," he added, but he didn't sound sure of himself. He lowered his staff to "resting," as a measure of trust, but Joss only spotted the tip of his own against the earth, ready to strike if this proved to be an ambush.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Pari. That's Killer."

"Killer?" He peered through the curtain of night, but the eagle seemed smaller than average and already asleep, head tucked.

"She's very calm," said the young man with a hoarse laugh. "Kind of lethargic, actually. I think her first reeve gave it to her as a hope name."

"Well, then, Pari, I'm Legate Joss, out of Clan Hall. That's Scar. Why did you come after me?"

The other man was breathing harshly, and he caught back what sounded like a sob. "Ai, where to start? You know, they tell you that the reeves are incorruptible. It's what they teach you the day you step into the circle. Reeves are incorruptible because the eagles can't be corrupted. The hells! What a stupid thing to believe!"

"Don't take it too hard," said Joss softly. "It's true about the eagles, anyway."

"Oh. Sure!" He was aggrieved as only the young can be, when the still waters in which they have gazed all this time are shattered by a tossed stone. "But a dog can no more cleanse his master's shadowed heart than a child can stop its father from drinking away the wages his family needs for food, or drag its den-crawling mother from clouds of sweet-smoke where she drowns while her children bawl outside."

"A sight seen too often," Joss agreed. "What happened at Argent Hall?"

"I'm three years in, and I never knew that reeves did come and go so much. Folk transferred out, and transferred in. Why, I think a hundred reeves come in just in these last three years, and there was already a big turnover before that, so the old ones tell me. And no new reeves chosen for over two years now. That's even though there's more than forty eagles who've lost their reeves and flown off in the last few years, and never returned."

Joss shook his head. "I've never heard of that happening before. No new reeves chosen at all?"

"Only one who came after me. She's dead, now, and her eagle flown."

A nasty feeling was gnawing at his gut, like a lilu turned from tempting woman to its natural form right in the middle of its grazing. "Clan Hall is aware of the transfers, but in truth there's nothing can be done by the Commander. She has only a supervisory position. But everyone knows it's disruptive to the eagles to transfer them. It's done only if necessary."

"Yeah, it was plenty disruptive here, or so they say, as I've never known anything but trouble in Argent Hall. All the ones who had a bad temper, or weren't getting along in their other hall. Reeves who had hit someone too hard, or drank too much, and one woman who's addicted to the sweet-smoke, even, though she still flies! One reeve—that would be Horas—they said he murdered a man but nothing came of it when the family tried to get justice. And the reeves at Argent Hall who complained most about the disruption, they were asked to leave and go elsewhere. Or they just left, and weren't seen again."

"All this done at the order of Master Alyon?"

Once started, Pari spoke so quickly that Joss had a hard time following him. "I admit Master Alyon was ill, and infirm, there at the end. There were a foursome of veterans who had the running of things. I heard whispers that he was being poisoned. He did get better right toward the end when he brought in that Devouring girl to do his cooking for him and who knows what else besides. That was around the time when he recalled Garrard. Talk was that Marshal Alyon had Garrard in mind for succeeding him. But then comes this man who calls himself Yordenas—not much older than me, mind you!—and first he tells Dovit that he's out of Iron Hall and then he tells Teren that he's out of Copper Hall, so there's some confusion, as you can guess."

"The eagle would have a band to mark its territory."

"That's just it. None of us have ever seen Yordenas's eagle."

"How can that be?"

"He says it's nesting up in the Barrens. But I've never heard tell of an eagle gone on its nesting season for that long."

"It could be. I've heard tell of a nesting pair gone most of a year's time. But it is odd, that he comes to you as a reeve, and yet has no eagle. So what happened then?"

"Master Alyon just up and died one night, and it all changed. We blink, and overnight this Yordenas is sitting in the marshal's cote and there are more reeves supporting him than opposing him. When Garrard protests, next thing you know Marshal is calling it out as a mutiny and thirty or more are dead and their eagles flown back to the mountains, just like that."

"Those are the eagles that never came back to choose new reeves?"

"That's right, most of them. Thirty or forty others left then, reeves and eagles both, although I don't know where they went. It just gets worse. Patrol routes changed. Marshal closed the gates to outsiders, any outsiders, even folk come to report on trouble in their village or to ask for help. We got word anyway of ospreys on the Kandaran Pass and along the West Spur, and there come some Olossi merchants to beg for our help one night, so Dovit and Teren went out on patrol without permission, but they never came back. That was a two-month back, I think. Most of them I knew from three years back when I first got chosen are gone, except the ones I never liked at all. The others are dead with Garrard. Or they left."

At last, he took a breath. He was trembling. The sliver of moon called Embers Moon was rising in the east, heralding dawn.

"Why did you stay?" asked Joss.

His chin tilted back. The faint moonlight seemed to catch and gleam on the white scar of his chin. He was Toskala-chinned, like Joss, recently shaven. He looked very young.

"Someone had to."

Joss grinned sadly. "You've courage to have stuck it out."

Pari shrugged, as if embarrassed or ashamed. "Didn't do anyone any good."

"You did what you could. You'll have to go north. Follow the course of the River Hayi. It runs east-west until the Sohayil Gap; a little past that, the river bends northeast. Once to the Aua Gap, continue north. You can't miss the River Istri. Any land-holder there can tell you in which direction—seaward or ridgeward—Toskala lies, if you don't recognize the lay of the ground."

"Where are you going?" asked Pari.

Joss considered. This might be some kind of complicated ploy, and he daren't risk trusting him, although his heart told him that the young man was being honest. It was hard to playact that kind of righteous, helpless pain.

"I've heard tell of this trouble along the West Spur, as I told the marshal. I'm investigating it. What do you know about it?"

"No one confides in me," he said with a tone very like a child's whine. "Just that caravans were being attacked. Women kidnapped, although that was before my time. I suppose the merchants in Olossi would know about it. It's their trade that would be hurt."

"What do you know about the merchants in Olossi? Anything that could help me? Any names? Anything?"

He shrugged. "I've went to the Devouring temple a few times, but not recently. Marshal likes to hold us close against him these days, those of us he doesn't trust. I see reeves flying out solo, so I suppose they're carrying messages. Maybe to Olossi. I think they have some kind of understanding with the council there, but I don't know. Anyway, I come from Sund. That's the territory I know best. I'm not allowed to patrol out on my old rounds anymore. I suppose no one is patrolling there at all."

"So Yordenas is the name of this new marshal?"

Pari laughed as at a cruel joke. "He calls himself Yordenas."

"When you get to Clan Hall, be sure to tell all of this to the Commander just as you've told it to me. They can check the records, see if such a reeve is recorded."

"It won't matter," said Pari.

"Why not?"

"This is the thing. Garrard stabbed him, when they got in that fight. It was ugly, the things they said, and afterward it was worse. But he didn't die. He should have died, but he didn't. A day later he was up and walking like nothing had happened. I think he's a demon, not a person at all."

"A stab wound can call out a lot of blood, but do little real damage."

"So you might think. It was a killing blow, I'm telling you."

Joss whistled softly, under his breath. He could not make sense of this young man and his passion and his anger and his tendency to slip into a child's manner of grievance.

"You don't believe me."

"I'm not sure what there is to believe."

Pari cursed in a low voice, then gave a breathy, cackling laugh like that of a man driven past endurance. "No, you couldn't know, not unless you'd been there. I'm just saying this: Wolves and ospreys stalk the land. And they're winning the battle."

"I can't argue with that."

Night turned. The eastern horizon sparked, limned in fire.

"Best be going, friend," Joss went on. "Argent Hall will be looking for us. Best if we're well away."

"They'll find us." Pari looked back toward Killer, who was shaking herself awake and looking none too eager to face the day given her interrupted night. "I'm not brave. Mostly, I was afraid to run for fear they'd catch me and do something awful to me. I don't even know what. Marshal Yordenas has something wrong with him, but I don't know what it is. And the rest pant after him like they're dogs and he's the one holding their dinner."

"So it may be. Best we be going."

Pari looked him in the eye, a stare both belligerent and frightened, but he shook himself, nodded, and flattened his mouth into a determined grimace. "Don't trust anyone."

Joss strode back to Scar, who had the ability to come awake fast and ready to go. They launched first, and he circled twice until Pari finally got up off the ground and headed east-southeast, making for the river, just as he should. Joss pulled south toward the faint glimmer of watch lights still burning on Olossi's watchtower several mey distant. His gaze tracked the distance reflexively. It caught on an anomaly. A pale spot rose in the southeast, like another creature flying, except no eagle had that ghostly color. He blinked, and the spot vanished. It was only a trick of the predawn light.

With the dawn, he closed in on Olossi Town. He had to get Olossi's council to talk. He had to ferret out the ones who had sent that doomed delegation into the north. Where had that Devouring girl come from, and why had she tried to kill him?

Not that there was any proof, only his word against hers beyond the evidence of the knife and Pari's garbled history. No proof, no clues, no evidence, not even an explanation for why things seemed so very wrong at Argent Hall. Marshal Yordenas could always claim that the youth was disaffected, that the woman—the assassin—acted on her own. Nothing to do with me, he would say, how could I know I harbored these vipers in my hall?

Joss circled the town, swinging wide to get a good look at the avenues and surrounding fields. Early-morning traffic was brisk, folk going about their business in the cool hours of the day before the heat really slammed them. Despite the custom that every city must maintain a wide square or court so that reeves could fly in and out of the city's heart, Olossi's inner town lacked any such space. It had long since been built into such a warren of walled gardens, crowded temple grounds, family compounds, and housing blocks raised by merchants, artisans, and other guild families that the only open spaces remaining surrounded the five wells, the three noble towers, and the ancient timber council hall that was popularly supposed to be the oldest extant building in Olossi. There was a large courtyard, with the customary perch, in front of the Assizes Tower, but the angle of the roofs and the awkward slant of the street and walls along the approach made him chary of risking a landing there. He took a long look at the elongated peak of the council hall and finally decided that it was also too risky, although such a landing would certainly impress the locals. Instead, he banked low over Olossi's skirts, that part of the city that had grown up and out, beyond the inner city walls, into a lively patchwork of slums, warehouses, stockyards, tanning yards, and guild yards along the southern bank of the river.

The shine of the river drew his gaze toward the sea. Far off, he saw the white walls of a Devourer's temple sited on a rocky island in the midst of delta channels. It was possible that the woman who had tried to murder him had come from there, and no doubt he would have to go speak to their Hieros. That would be an interview he did not relish.

A shout rang up from the ground. Below, folk gathered at a gate marked by a temple to Sapanasu were pointing up at him. He turned a last time and swung in low as Scar raised his wings and fanned out pin and tail feathers for the landing. They hit in a dusty field a short walk from the gate.

He tested the jesses on Scar's legs, and stepped back while giving the hand signal for flight and return. Scar thrust and beat upward, circling once to mark Joss's position before flying toward the distant bluff that marked the upland and its potential hunting ground. The reeve slung pack and hood across his shoulders. He walked across the field, kicking up dust, and reached a path that met up with a lane that struck into the roadway. He paid a vey as toll to pass through Crow's Gate and passed the colonnade where the clerks of Sapanasu had already begun their day's accounting. The caravan with Captain Anji had not yet come through; they were likely two or three days out. He had a few days to work before he would have to meet them and the prisoner.

Business moved early in Olossi, especially in the season of Furnace Sky. A woman and her daughter had set up a stall selling fried palm bread and green mango. He bought one of each—the palm bread still hot from the griddle and the mango peeled, sliced to make petals of its flesh, and impaled on a stick—and ate as he walked along the road that led to the inner gate. Wagons lurched and rumbled along the stone. Women walked with baskets balanced atop their heads. A pair of children bent beneath a yoke from which hung buckets stinking of night soil.

Olossi's council guard manned the wide gates that allowed traffic to enter and leave the inner city. The pair on duty saw his reeve's leathers and his dusty boots and immediately called a captain, who delegated a young man to escort him up the winding avenues to the council hall. They crossed the Assizes Court where a line had already formed in front of the timber hall, whose double doors were still closed. Behind the hall, the square Assizes Tower rose.

From here they climbed the hill. Blocks of houses rose around them as they strode up the steady slope of the avenue that spiraled its way to the top. They passed a tricolored, three-layered gateway that marked the entrance to a tiny garden sanctuary dedicated to Ilu the Herald. A slave carried a pair of covered buckets in through the entrance to a large family compound where smoke threaded up from cook fires within. A pair of stone lanterns holy to Sapanasu flanked the narrow opening to one of the Lantern's holy temples. At one corner, he smelled the sweet flavor of pastry-baking. A pair of very young ordinands lounged, yawning, at the open doors of one of Kotaru's forts; the snap and crack of arms training drifted out from the interior. A "hatched eye" sacred to Taru the Witherer had been painted on a circular door set into high, whitewashed walls; fruit trees flourished in the hidden garden behind, their scent a fleeting perfume in the air, and flowering vines spilled over the top of the wall. A lane branched off the main avenue, flying the gold and silver pennants of gold- and silversmiths. Beyond this, seen floating away over rooftops, lay Olossi's Sorrowing Tower. Kites spun their slow circles above its pale stone crenellation.

Despite the early hour, Joss was sweating by the time they reached the highest point in Olossi, with its Fortune Square, the rectangular council hall, and the smooth curve of the dark stone watchtower with its open roof and fire cage.

At this hour of the day, a line of supplicants had formed on the steps of the council hall. The guardsman led him past these up onto the sheltered porch where a line of benches sat empty, and through the sliding doors into an entry chamber. This chamber, which stretched the width of the hall, was paneled with screens charmingly painted with the story of the Silk Slippers. Its only inhabitant was a woman with pleasant features who was no longer in the first blush of youth. She wore a loose tunic with a scoop neck that draped low enough for him to see the blue-purple tattoos running up either side of her neck—the wave-scallops marking her as kin of the Water Mother. Safe to flirt with. Like the woman who had tried to kill him. The image of that one, so sensual, so strong, flashed so powerfully in his mind that he was for a moment disoriented.

"Can I help you?"

"Sorry. Change in light made me lose my footing. I'm a reeve sent from Clan Hall in Toskala. Legate Joss. I need urgently to discuss with the council this matter of the recent border disturbances up on the Kandaran Pass, and along West Spur."

"Yes, we've had a lot of complaints about safety on the roads this year. But I didn't know it was serious enough to call a reeve out of Toskala." She was some manner of clerk, seated at a table with a sheaf of documents placed at her left elbow, and a quill and ink stand to her right. She wore Sapanasu's lantern on a necklace as a mark of her service. "The thing is, the council only meets in the evenings. Even so, there's no meeting until Wakened Crane."

Four days from now.

"A few council members might come by after Shade Hour to take tea," she added, with a faint flicker of eyelids, not quite flirting but surely interested.

"Can I wait and talk to them? If not the council, what of Olossi's militia?"

"No. Every able-bodied man, and any woman who qualifies, must serve a turn, but the captains are hired and fired by the council. You could go to Argent Hall."

He considered, and decided to be bold. "I've been there, but they're not interested. Can you tell me where the carters' guild is located?"

"I can, but it's all the way down and beyond the gates. You're in luck, though, given the day. Usually the guildsmen take a drink up here at sunset, nothing formal, but it's traditional on Wolf days, kind of a thanksgiving for trips survived without incident. Do you want to go all the way down, or do you fancy a rest up here? I can show you to the garden. Or you can sit on one of the benches outside."

He rested fisted hands on the table and leaned there, with a smile that made her blush. "Now that I think of that long walk, and my restless night, I guess I fancy a rest in the garden."

She blushed brighter. Shrugged. Tongue-tied. He was pushing too hard with this one. Possibly she was married, but no red bracelets circled her wrists. He straightened, and she relaxed.

"I do fancy a rest," he added, "but in truth I should go down right away, if you're willing to give me the direction."

At the door, a man stuck his head in, saw them talking, and withdrew.

"My name is Jonit," she said suddenly, and he guessed, by the shy tremor of a new smile and by the way her eyelids flickered and her lashes dipped to shadow her eyes, that she was definitely not married or allianced. "I don't have to open until the hour bell. If you want to, you can wash your hands and face and sit down a moment before you take that long walk back down the hill. If you want."

"That is tempting."

She licked her lips, seemed by the way she bit at her lower lip to make a decision, and let out a breath. Rising and moving out from behind the table, she revealed a petite figure, winsome and nicely rounded, wrapped in gold and pearl-white layers of silk tunic and shawl with deep blue pantaloons. Her feet were bare except for three gold anklet rings. A woman with prosperous connections. It seemed surprising she wasn't married.

She saw him assessing her. She had a teasing smile that made her prettier. "It's a nice garden. There's even a fountain, but you might miss the entrance if someone doesn't show you where it is."

She began to walk away. Heavy footfalls pounded on the steps outside. She shifted to look back at him, beckoning, but her eyes widened and mouth dropped open. He turned as five guardsmen pushed into the chamber led by a captain in a stiff leather tunic.

"Yes, that's him," said the young guardsman, the very same one who had escorted him up. The youth stepped away, disassociating himself from trouble.

"What's this?" asked Jonit.

Their captain stepped forward, hand on his sword. "I'm Captain Waras, of the Olossi militia, under the authority of the Olossi council. You're under arrest, by order of the council."

"I am?" asked Jonit, looking bewildered.

"No, this reeve here. You're the one who calls yourself Legate Joss? Who claims to be here under the authority of the Commander of Clan Hall in Toskala?"

"I am," he said.

"If you will come with us. . . . "The polite phrase was meant to intimidate.

"Where do you mean to take me?" He did not move but felt keenly the cool touch of the whistle against his chest, hidden beneath his clothing. Scar could land on the peaked roof, but it would be a difficult climb to get up to him.

"Assizes Tower."

"What is the charge? You cannot prosecute me until an advocate from Clan Hall is here to witness. This is very serious, accusing a reeve. You know the laws."

"Murder is a serious charge," said the captain.

That was the kick, but Joss was already drawn too tightly to flinch. Indeed, he was getting angry. "Certainly it is. Who am I supposed to have murdered, and where?"

Jonit backed away, staring at him as though he were welted with plague. Shadows lined the porch and moved along the rice paper walls of the sliding doors and windows as folk crowded up outside to listen.

"One of the Thunderer's ordinands. A captain stationed most recently at the border fort at the terminus of West Spur, on the Kandaran Pass. Name of Beron."

He almost staggered, hit so hard and quickly, but reeves learned to keep their feet under them. "I just arrested such a man," he said quietly, "for conspiring with a band of ospreys to rob caravans coming up from the south over the pass. But he's in transit here, with a caravan, under guard."

Captain Waras shrugged. "I hold the order. Nothing more. If you'll come with me, there'll be no trouble." One of his guards leaned in and whispered, and the captain had the grace to look embarrassed before he held out a hand. "If you please, give me the whistle they say you carry. The one that will call your eagle to you."

"I will not! None but a marshal has the right to take that from me."

"If you're innocent, you've nothing to fear."

Joss laughed. It was all he could do. He had no idea how far the rot had spread, even now, even here. "I'll come to Assizes Tower and wait for a witness from Clan Hall, as is my right. I'll agree to bide peacefully until the caravan arrives. They are witness to my operations. But I'll give up nothing, not my weapons, not my whistle, nothing. When the caravan arrives, you'll see this is a false charge."

He pushed past them and out the door, head held high, praying to the gods but especially to Ilu the Herald, that Captain Anji was an honest man and as clever as he looked. Wheels were spinning within wheels here, and even the Herald might not be able to guide him out of this labyrinth.

The folk gathered on the porch scattered back as he reached the stairs. He started down, and on the third step crossed from shade into the blast of the sun. Blinking, lifting a hand to shade his eyes. A gasp warned him, a woman's choked shriek. A whisper of air chased his ear. The haft of a spear smacked into the side of his head.

He dropped hard, spinning in and out of darkness as consciousness wavered. Images flashed: the assassin striking with her knife; the captain's stabbing accusation; beware the third blow.

He hit the ground, tried to raise himself on a hand, but hadn't the strength.

A man's stocky form loomed above him, blocking the sun. "Take him to the tower, and lower him into the dungeon. And take that damned whistle off his neck!"

He blacked out.

31

After the reeve left, Anji kept Mai close beside them as they rode. She learned to enjoy the constant movement up and down the line of march. As the days passed, she watched for what interested her, spent a great deal of time finding out what coin and other measures of barter the folk here used, and how much things cost. She also looked for and mentioned things she thought Anji might find of interest: a lame horse; an abandoned doll; a shuttered hut; a carter with sores around his mouth that could be the sign of a corrupting disease. Most of the time he or Chief Tuvi or one of the men had already noticed these things, but not always. Sometimes things troubled her that interested them not at all.

The morning they came into sight of their destination for the first time, they paused to survey the river plain, the distant fields, the delta, and the sprawling town with its inner heart and its outer skirts. Anji and Chief Tuvi pulled their horses off to one side and conferred about lines of entry and exit, visible roads and paths, and their options for escape should they receive a hostile greeting. The caravan rattled past. Mai's gaze drifted to watch the faces of the merchants as they recognized that today—at long last!—they would reach the market they longed for. Such a range of pleasure and enthusiasm, relief and laughter!

Yet one man's brows were wrinkled with anxiety. One man, walking past beside his wagon, was not lightened by the sight. As usual, his cargo remained hidden within the canvas tent that covered his small wagon. Mai knew a mystery when she saw one.

She waited for Anji to finish. When at last they rode forward again, passing the slower-moving wagons as they rode toward the vanguard, she watched for one merchant in particular. She marked him easily; he was almost stumbling, hanging on to the wagon as though he were sick and dizzy. As they came up from behind, she slowed her horse to keep pace with his wagon.

"Are you well, merchant?" she asked him.

Startled, he looked up at her. He paused, forced a smile that did not touch his eyes, and tried out formal words on his tongue. "A long, weary journey, Mistress." He let go of the pole and wiped his sweating brow.

She smiled, hoping to reassure him. "Close now, I see. Is Olossi your home?"

"No, Mistress. But it is my destination."

Or maybe he was getting sick; sickness was always dangerous. She glanced at the wagon, wondering if the girls were sick, too, but they ate so much she doubted it. This was more likely a sickness in his heart. Anji had gotten ahead of her, so she nodded at him and rode after her husband.

"That man is hiding something," she said when she caught him.

He smiled. "We are all hiding something."

"I am hiding nothing!"

"Your true price. Your father sold you cheaply."

She colored, not liking to think of herself as merchandise bought and sold, like almonds and peaches, but it was true, and anyway she was happy her father had neglected to drive a harder bargain. Not that she would tell Anji that. "That's not what I mean. You asked me to use my market eyes and my market ears, and now I am telling you that man—he's called Keshad—is hiding something."

He looked back over his shoulder at the cart, then back at her. "What makes you think he's hiding something? Besides the obvious fact that he is a merchant."

"The closer we come to Olossi the weaker and more nervous he becomes. The whiteness around his eyes betrays fear, and his eyes are inflamed by shed tears."

"Many men suffer the traveling sickness—exhaustion, loose bowels, sick stomach, sore feet."

"I thought so too. But in the days we've traveled from the border, his pace has remained steady, and he eats at night."

"You have been watching him?"

Was that a sharp note in his voice? She chose to ignore it. "I am curious about the two girls in his wagon. They eat enough for three or four. Maybe they're just very hungry. But a prickling between my shoulder blades alerts me."

He grunted thoughtfully, surveying their surroundings.

The carts and wagons of the caravan proceeded along the middle portion of the road, with its paving stones, but she and Anji rode on the margin paths, against the main flow of traffic, crushed stone crunching under their horses' hooves. Farther out a skein of footpaths paralleled the road, and along this walked various locals. Some carried burdens: a grandmother limped along with a baby in a sling at her hip; a girl balanced a bulging reed basket atop her head; a trio of women easily handled massive sheaves of grain that obscured their faces and torsos. A pair of sweating, half-naked men hauled a cart piled with rocks. Other men and women ambled or hurried toward distant fields and orchards with hoes and shovels and rakes in hand. A pair of boys ran, giggling, with what appeared to be a writhing snake in the hands of one.

They had such a different look here, a different shape of skull, a rich, golden-brown complexion in a variety of shades nothing like the folk she had grown up among in Kartu Town. Yet here and there among them walked an old woman with a brown-black complexion and round features like Priya's, or a young man with the bronze-red coloring of the eastern desert towns along the Golden Road. These foreigners always wore bronze bracelets. On the whole, the Hundred folk were taller and more robust than the outlanders who had washed up in their lands, although some among the Hundred kind wore slave marks, just like in Kartu Town: brands, belled anklets, iron collars.

"Good silk," she commented, indicating the bright clothing worn by women moving along the paths. Now and again someone passed by wearing a coarser weave of silk that made the quality of the other stand out in contrast.

"They're wearing a lot of Sirniakan silk," said Anji. "I would wager that the homespun is local silk. Nothing as good as the Sirni silk. It's no wonder they prefer silk out of the south. Yet it makes me wonder how far the sword of the emperor reaches."

Her heart beat faster as she thought of the burning town they had left behind together with three men and nine slaves. "Will we be safe here?"

"We will find out." He pointed. "Look there. A troop of acrobats."

Beyond the foot trails lay cleared ground where lithe athletes, some quite young and others remarkably old, juggled balls and balanced on rope, turned cartwheels and flips, and then did it all again. A woman of middle years strode among them, hectoring and gesturing. Mai tried but could not quite hear what she was saying. The troupers, male and female alike, were dressed in short kilts and tight sleeveless jerkins; some of the men wore no top at all. It was shocking to see so much smooth and handsome skin displayed right out in public. At the roped-off edge of the dirt field, a group of children had gathered to watch. There was even a quartet of small dogs who stood on their hind legs and turned in circles, like a dance.

She turned half around in the saddle as the field fell behind. "I wonder if they'll perform here. If we can attend a show."

When he didn't answer, she turned back. They rode up to the cluster of Qin soldiers who surrounded the wagon in which the prisoner was confined. Chief Tuvi nodded as his captain fell in beside him.

"All is quiet?" asked Anji.

The chief nodded. "It is."

Tuvi called to one of the men riding next to the wagon. The wagon had a scaffolding built over it on which planks had been nailed to form a crude shelter, with a canvas ceiling stretched over the top. The soldier leaned out to release the catch on a plank and lowered it, revealing a window into the inside. Through that gap, Mai saw a slice of the dim interior and a man's face. In that first moment, his gaze was direct, defiant, unashamed, but then he flinched and raised a hand against the light. Tuvi nodded, and the soldier raised the plank and latched it back into place.

"He eats," said Tuvi. "He wishes to keep up his strength."

"I wonder what manner of justice he expects from these assizes," said Anji. "I have spoken with the caravan masters. It seems a court is assembled of men or women from the town who have a certain respectable standing. They hear evidence, and then make a judgment by casting lots."

Tuvi tugged at an ear. "Women? Huh."

"Women listen and observe better than men do," said Mai.

"I dare not argue," said Anji in a way that irritated her.

Chief Tuvi gave her a long, careful look as he scratched at his chin and the straggle of beard growing there. "Maybe so. In the tribe, women rule on women's matters, which are a thing men cannot judge."

In Kartu Town, the bureaucrats of the law courts ruled on all matters brought to their attention, but these were public disputes. Within the family, of course, Father Mei was the arbiter of all decisions and the executor of all punishments. His word was the only law.

"I think I will like to see these assizes," said Mai, "where women sit together with men on the court. And cast lots. And pass judgment."

But she had lost them. The gazes of both men, and indeed those of all of the soldiers riding on this side of the road, had strayed to follow a thread unwinding through the foot traffic. It was almost funny to see men up and down the caravan become distracted at the sight of a tall young woman striding along one of the paths toward town, not more than fifteen paces out from the road. She had a man's casual confidence but a woman's eye-catching sway and shift. She wore white, a stark color compared with all the bright oranges, reds, yellows, spring greens, and jewel blues that ornamented the many women out and about their business. The hem of her white kilted skirt did not brush her knees; her white sleeveless jacket was so short that her belly button was exposed. Even the locals glanced at her with interest, the men with that lift of the chin, that pause of a gaze, that measures a woman's attributes. Her hair was pulled back into a single braid falling halfway down her back. One of her cheeks had a purple bruise high along the cheekbone, a smear that almost reached the fine perfect shell of an ear. She was barefoot, just as all those acrobats in the field had been. Oblivious of the world, intent on her own thoughts, she was holding a reed pipe to her mouth. Her fingers pressed patterns on that slim surface, but Mai heard no tune whistling from the pipe above the rumble and creak made by the caravan's passage.

A crack splintered the silence. A shout rose from the last third of the cavalcade. Anji turned around at once and pressed his mount forward with Mai following close behind. Men's voices rose in tones of anger, sharp and ugly. Staffs cracked against wood and steel as blows were traded.

"Chief!" called Anji.

Qin soldiers peeled off to follow their captain. Some lengths back, the steady current had broken into an eddy. A wagon listed to one side. Two barrels had tumbled off. One had caught in the wheels of a handcart. A man sat on the ground holding his foot. Men scuffled like wrestlers, arms to shoulders, straining and kicking, and a length of green silk was twisted in the dust.

The chief drove his horse into the middle of this, and the size and weight of the beast was enough to send men scrambling. A youth grabbed the arm of an older man just before he could punch a retreating merchant. Here were men only; as far as she had seen, no women traveled in the caravans that went down to Sirniaka.

"What! What!" cried Tuvi as Anji waited at an intimidating distance with ten soldiers fanned out to support their chief. "What trouble is this?"

They cursed at each other, shaking fists as they called out their grievances.

The first man was fat, energetic, and ready to throw blows again. "This man's wagon has rammed into my cart and damaged my goods and my cart. He should be fined for not keeping his wagon in good repair."

A lean man, puffing and panting, answered him in a breathless voice. "My axle pin—gone missing—you see how the other is double-looped so it won't slip free. I've been sabotaged!"

Both were overtaken by a merchant splendid in gold and brown robes who clutched a supple leather pouch the size of two fists and shook it furiously. "Look here! This is my pouch of saffron. The jewel of spices and most valuable! Where do I find it? In the cart of this thief! He's lifted it right out of my wagon, the criminal!"

The man accused of thievery was young. He gaped like a fish tossed out of the water, too dumbfounded to respond to this charge. But others were eager to voice their protests; and many more crowded forward to watch as Anji commanded a boy to run, run, and fetch the caravan master.

"My best bolt of silk, ruined by these blind oafs! Could you not watch where you are going?"

"Aui! The vessel is broken! That is finest oil of naya. Water-white. How am I to be repaid for my loss?"

"What about—my wheel—can't fix—here on the road."

"I want this thief taken before the assizes. This is an outrage! My saffron!"

The forward portion of the caravan rolled on, heading for Olossi. A gap opened between the forward wagons and this last third held up by the damaged wagon and the gathering crowd. Those stuck behind the breakdown were beginning to raise a clamor, and it seemed some of the merchants were ready to branch off the main road onto the secondary paths and tracks but were hesitant to move because of the presence of the dour Qin soldiers.

She felt cold, and then hot, and not only because of the cloudless sky and glaring sun. She pushed her mount through the soldiers, who reined aside to allow her to move up beside Anji. He had dismounted beside the man transporting the oil. Wiping his fingers along the crack in the sealed clay vessel, he sniffed at the oily liquid, then licked his fingers to taste it.

"Where does this come from?" he asked the merchant.

"The best seeps rise along the west shore of the Olo'o Sea, ver. Right up against the mountains, where the land cracks into fissures and ravines. In the empire, they call it 'king's oil.' "

"So they do." Seeing Mai, Anji walked to her horse. "What disturbs you?" he asked.

She bent, to speak softly. "There is something amiss here, but I can't explain it. It's only a feeling I have. I'm uneasy."

He nodded, and whistled to get Tuvi's attention. "Take Mai and these soldiers and return to the prisoner. Send Tam to bring up the rear guard to support me. I'll remain here until the caravan master arrives." He walked back to the merchant.

Mai knew an order when she heard it. She had long since learned when there is a crack and when the gate is firmly shut. She rode away with Chief Tuvi, but after all no further altercations disrupted the journey. They had almost reached the outer wall and a wide gate where all the traffic converged when Anji and the caravan master returned.

"Crow's Gate is for merchants and goods and laborers," the caravan master was saying. "Because you have a prisoner bound for the assizes, you'll have to enter at Harrier's Gate. They'll want to quarter your soldiers outside the town as well."

"I see," said Anji. "Do the council members fear we'll cause them trouble?"

Tuvi coughed.

The caravan master shrugged. "I'll speak in your favor, certainly. You've met your obligation, and been true to your promise. But you have to look at it from their way of seeing. You've a strong force, over two hundred armed men. That's always a threat. And you admit that you spun us a false tale, to get out of Sarida."

"After all this, I would hate to find my faithful men taken as enemies," said Anji.

"I'll escort you. My journeyman can shepherd the caravan through, and I'll meet him once you are settled."

"I thank you for the courtesy," said Anji gravely.

The caravan master nodded with equal solemnity.

This, Mai saw, would be the first test. They would soon learn whether foreigners like themselves had any hope of a future in the Hundred, or whether they would have to turn tail and run, knowing there was nowhere to run. But because Anji appeared collected and calm, she found her market manners and her market face, and gathered her wagon and her slaves and followed as the Qin company and their prisoner split off from the caravan now filtering wagon by wagon through Crow's Gate.

Shai turned his mount in beside hers, since Anji had ridden ahead. "Do you think after all we'll find no sanctuary here?" he asked nervously.

"We must wait and see."

"You've a cold heart, Mai, not to be sweating!"

"Anji will pull us through."

That made him fall silent, thank goodness!

A secondary road ran parallel to the outer walls, which were to Mai's eye an unimpressive collection of log palisades and barriers crudely stitched together. They rode in the direction of the sea and came at length to the river's shore. Here stood a closed gate, framed by stone and capped by a thick black beam. Two guard towers rose, one on either side, manned by archers who leaned on the rail and examined them with the intense and easygoing interest of men who have been bored beyond measure.

"What's this?" asked the younger.

"Call Captain Waras!" called the older to unseen men behind the wall.

"I'm Master Iad," called the caravan master. "Well known here, although my family home lies in Olo Crossing. I lodge at the Seven Chukars in town, here. Any of your merchants along Stone Field will vouch for me."

"You must speak to Captain Waras," said the older.

The younger nudged him and pointed at Mai, and the older pursed his lips as if to whistle, thought better of it, and looked away.

They waited.

"I don't like this," Shai muttered.

"Hush."

He gave her a bitter look, dismounted, and led his horse toward the river. She followed his progress with her gaze.

The field before Harrier's Gate had most recently been used, it appeared, as pasture, cropped short and still sprinkled here and there with sheep pellets although no sheep grazed within view. Reeds and tall grass marked the course of the river, now a broad gray-blue flow spreading and slowing as it frayed into the dozen estuarine channels of the delta. Huts stood on the far bank, and a woman in bright blue silk poled a skiff into those distant reeds. The sun baked them; in patches, where bare earth showed through heavily cropped grass, the soil showed fine cracks.

Mai twitched her shawl forward to give more shade for her face.

A man came to the rail up on the river-side tower. He waved a hand. "I know you, Master Iad," he said. "You are well come back to Olossi Town!"

"Captain Waras! Well met!"

"What are these wolves you've brought to my gate?"

Hearing conversation, Shai hurriedly turned back.

"This company of soldiers has guarded us along the Kandaran Pass most loyally," Master Iad continued cheerfully, although there was an edge of anxiety in his tone. "Led by this man, Captain Anji."

"A good number," said Captain Waras. "And foreigners, besides." The older guard was, laboriously and rather obviously, trying to count them all, although he had to start over several times. "Do they mean to camp outside the walls tonight and depart in the morning after they're paid? I hear there's a caravan pointed south, ready to depart in the morning, although it's hot to be out on the road."

"Not at all. They hope for a further hire here in the Hundred. I'll lay their proposal out in front of the council as soon as the council meets."

"It's a good number," repeated Captain Waras. "That's a lot of men, there."

"They've done us a service—every one of us, you and me and all Olossi—when we were attacked by ospreys up in Dast Korumbos. Killed them who meant to rob and kill us. The worst kind of knaves. The ringleader was taken prisoner, an ordinand by the rank of captain and the name of Beron. We've brought him to stand trial at the assizes."

Captain Waras was a considering man, the kind who wasted your time examining each and every peach before he decided that the one you had placed so carefully on top after all was the one he wanted. "We've had word of some trouble up West Spur. But we heard that the man in question—named Beron—was murdered."

"Murdered! Not so. We have him right here."

Waras gestured, and a guard tossed a rope ladder over the railing. Down this the militia captain descended. He wore a heavy leather jacket cut to hang to his knees, and its stiffness made his descent awkward. Otherwise he wore no armor except a leather cap with a pair of red ribbons laced around the rim and his hair tucked up underneath and, at his belt, a short sword. When he reached the ground, a guard, from above, tossed down a stout stick no longer than elbow to hand; it was painted in alternate stripes of red and black and weighted at one end with a shiny metal ball, like a club.

Anji dismounted. The two men surveyed each other, taking their measure.

"You've a strong force," said the militia captain. "Two hundred disciplined, armed soldiers, strangers to our land. You can see we are reluctant to allow you to enter town without some surety that you'll cause no trouble."

Anji nodded. "You're right to be cautious. It's what I would do in your place. Let my soldiers camp outside this gate tonight. It's no hardship for them, as long as they can water the horses and buy some manner of food—whatever is available—for their supper. I'll come into the town myself with the prisoner, by your leave. Then I can speak in front of the council as soon as it meets."

"The full council next meets in three days. Wakened Crane. You'll have to attend alone."

"Together with a small escort for my wife and her slaves. I would prefer it if she be found a decent place to stay. Some place with baths nearby, if you have such."

She blushed, but he wasn't looking at her although it seemed to her in that instant that he could hear her reaction, because of his slight smile, nothing too blatant. A promise, not forgotten even at this juncture. In response, she twitched the silk shawl back, and Waras got a good look at her face for the first time.

"Eh!" said the captain, forgetting words, and recovering himself with a tincture of grace. He nodded at the caravan master, as though the wordless exclamation had been meant for him, and turned back to Anji so deliberately it was evident he was having trouble not staring. She was pleased to see him shaken even in this small manner. When thrown into the wilderness, one must use every weapon at hand. "I can't allow any of you to bide within the walls. But a bath seems fair. I'll allow you two men for your own personal guard, ver, and four to escort you, verea." He nodded at Mai.

"We were to meet a reeve here," added Anji.

"That reeve was the one who alerted us when we reached the border crossing," put in Master Iad hastily. "He came in advance of us. You must have heard the entire story from him already."

Captain Waras had a certain measure of dignity; he had heft and seriousness. "Given the severity of the accusations, I'd like to take a look at the prisoner. Get a statement from him, his name and clan. If he's alive, that is. Or did you bring in a dead man?"

Master Iad bristled. "We brought him in alive, so he could testify. See for yourself!" He unlatched the door, opened it, whipped aside the canvas drape, and stepped away.

Mai had lost track of Shai, but now he stepped into view. He had a clear line of sight into the wagon's interior, and the look of consternation and shock on his face could not have been copied by any traveling performer as they acted out a tale. Within that gloom sat the prisoner, cross-legged on the wagon's bed, chin slumped to chest as if sleeping. There was a sudden cold silence, like an unexpected stirring of icy wind into a hot hot day.

"What is it, Shai?" asked Anji, who stood at an angle from the opening. He could not see inside.

Mai already knew. She knew that look on Shai's face. It was the look he always got when he unexpectedly saw a ghost. Always the same look. Always the same.

" 'A dart, a dart in my eye, how it stings!' " murmured Shai.

"He's dead," Mai whispered.

CAPTAIN WARAS AND his men collected more guards and escorted the Qin troop farther down along the river's shore until they reached a side channel in that area where the river became a delta. They forded a shallow channel and fetched up on a small island. Easy to guard and hard to escape from, Anji said, because easy to hear the sound of horses crossing the sluggish backwater.

In this camp, the men had up their tents and set to work with the single-minded concentration she most admired about them. They had leisure now for a hundred tasks. Horses could be groomed properly, weapons polished, knives sharpened, clothing mended, harnesses repaired, pots polished and scrubbed clean. They set to these tasks with a will, all the while seeming to ignore the guards set around them. Yet she knew they were ready to fight. None strayed farther than an arm's length from his favored sword or bow except when they went, in shifts, to wash themselves in a clear-flowing branch of the river; even then some stood guard while others dunked and splashed.

There was plenty of driftwood for campfires. She washed herself as well as she could, although it was not the same as a proper bath. She mended clothing because she had a neat hand with the needle, especially on the delicate lengths of silk. Anji worked alongside the other men, sharpening his sword and polishing his harness.

In truth, despite the threat hanging over them, she was glad for a pair of days where they weren't moving. At first, her worst problem was bugs. But as the first day passed, and a second came to its close, she found herself made restless by anxiety.

"What will happen?" she asked Anji. It was late in the afternoon of the second day. He was seated beside her, replacing one of the leather straps fixed to his saddle. Stripped of grime, and polished, the silver fittings on the saddle gleamed.

He paused to consider her question, then lifted his head and stared across the shallow channel, the fence that bound them to this islet. He marked the placement of the Olossi militia on the far shore and then looked beyond them toward the distant escarpment that marked the high country to the south. There, Mai could just make out the narrow ribbon of road crawling down the long slope down which they had come two days ago. She had felt so hopeful, then.

" 'A dart in my eye,' " he mused.

They had gone over the ghost's words again and again. It was the only phrase Shai had heard before the corpse and the wagon had been hauled off by Captain Waras's men; naturally, they had been given no chance to examine either.

"How did we miss the killing? Who wanted him dead?"

Anji had no answer.

32

Keshad sat on a mat under a Ladytree. Off in the distance he heard the river's lazy voice, and the haunting call of a dusk wren. Yesterday morning he and Zubaidit had walked free, out of Olossi. They had walked relentlessly, neither of them flagging. In two full days, they had trudged more than twenty mey on West Track. It would take a caravan three or four days to cover as much ground.

He stared at the string of coin draped over his palm. "How could you have had that many debts racked up in town? How often were you allowed to leave the temple? How could any slave spend that much money?"

Bai was sprawled in grass just beyond the farthest reach of the canopy, eyes closed and a smile on her face as a fat golden rumble bug looped lazy circles around her head. For reasons beyond his comprehension, two ginny lizards had accompanied her when she had left the temple. Big enough to be intimidating, they were, fortunately, small enough to be carried. Both had spiky frills along their backs; both, he'd discovered, shifted in color depending on their mood and other less obvious changes. They had disconcertingly alert gazes. At the moment, they basked beside Bai, watching the rumble bug with what appeared to be friendly interest. Neither the ginnies or Bai responded to his voice.

"Bai! We only have eighty-four leya left. Oh. And twenty vey. But we can buy a day's ration of rice with twenty vey. To be split between us!"

She sighed contentedly, without opening her eyes. "I can earn coin, or a night's lodging. Don't worry, Kesh. You worry too much."

"I'm not worrying! I'm being realistic! How are we going to establish ourselves in a new town with so little seed money? We can't afford to pay a leya here and another there for lodging and food as we travel. We can't afford a ride in a wagon. We'll have to walk the entire way. Not at the prices these villages charge. That man at Crow's Gate wanted two leya for us to ride in the back of his cart, only as far as Hayi Fork. That's robbery! And in that village we just passed through, they wanted a half leya apiece just to stay the night in their empty council house! Because their own Ladytree was so ill-cared-for that it had blown down in last year's storms. That's why we have to sleep out here under a wild-lands Ladytree like the paupers we're going to become."

She rolled up to sit. "I heard most of this same speech last night, didn't I? Anyway, I like 'out here.' "

She scritched Mischief under her chin and rubbed Magic on one puffy jowl, then rose lithely to her feet. She moved differently; the change was impossible to ignore. His strongest memories of her naturally involved the years they had been little children together, when she had followed him everywhere, cried when she skinned her knee, or asked him for help at any and every least obstacle, whether a barking dog or a splinter in her finger or a shadow that had to be circumnavigated. Now she strolled to the traveler's hearth with a feral glide and poked in the ashy remains with a stout walking stick she had cut for herself yesterday. It looked like she was stabbing a man to make sure he was dead. The ginnies ambled after.

The light deepened, made hazy by the heat. The wayside was quiet. They were the only travelers to stop here beside the road. Every one else was likely relaxing in a tub of hot water at an inn. Certainly they had seen no traffic in the hour since they had left the last village behind.

"Doesn't it seem strange to you?" he said, watching her prowl in ever-greater circles around the hearth, pacing out the roughly oval clearing as she searched for certain plants the ginnies liked to eat. Magic had paused, scanning the tree line as if for trouble. Kesh swatted away a swarm of gnats. A pair of dark shapes glided out of the trees and swooped over him, through the heart of the swarm. He threw himself flat, and Bai, turning, laughed.

"Just senny lizards," she said. "And a good thing. Sennies will keep the bugs off us tonight. What seems strange to me?"

"How little traffic is on the road."

She shrugged, then walked over to stand beside Magic, looking in the same direction as the ginny. "Everyone says the roads are no longer safe. That no one dares walk into the north, past Horn and the Aua Gap. Maybe we shouldn't have taken West Track at all. Maybe we should have walked into the northwest along the Rice Walk."

"We already talked this over. There aren't any real towns to the northwest where newcomers can set up in business. You know how villagers are. Close-minded, close-fisted, and they smell, too."

She looked at him. "I thought from the way you were talking that you'd been up West Track recently."

"No. Better profits to be made trading south into the empire."

She grunted. "Those empire men—drovers, mostly, and mercenaries guarding the caravans—they would come sometimes to the temple. It isn't the law of the Merciless One to turn any devoured man or woman away, but I tell you, those empire men were dogs. It was just a dirty hump to them, nothing sacred. They would say all kinds of prayers afterward, like they were ashamed of what they'd done! Anyway, they didn't smell good. I don't know how you could stand trading with them."

"My last drover was a good man. He kept silence for the whole trip, and he saved my life by sticking by me when he could have run."

"Maybe." With a shrug, she dismissed him.

"Why don't you believe me? Without Tebedir, you wouldn't be free!"

"Never mind. It doesn't matter, Kesh. What matters is that you're finally free, and I'm with you. For a few days at least."

"A few days? I don't have any intention of indenturing us out, not when we're free of debt."

"That's not what I meant." She paused to look down at the male ginny. Magic gave a slight head-shake, then bobbed his head, as if he were actually communicating with her. She walked back to the cold hearth and set the walking stick on the ground. Both ginnies followed her. The sun had set below the trees, and the entire clearing had turned soft and handsome, like an eager lover glimpsed in shadow. "Help me walk the boundaries. I want to pray."

"I won't."

"I can't do it alone!"

"How can you worship her? After what she did to you?"

"What she did to me? The Devourer has kept faith with me. It was that old bitch who runs the temple who cheated me and abused me!" She crossed her forearms out in front of her chest in the warding sign. "That's what you don't understand, Kesh. They'll try anything to get me back. We're not free of them."

He patted their packs. "We have our accounts bundles. It's legal. There's nothing they can do."

"Don't believe it!"

"Why do they want you back? You're a good-looking girl, Bai, I'm sure, but there were plenty of sexier women there."

"Like Walla?" she said with an annoying laugh. "I saw you sizing her up. She's a real devourer, though. You have to be careful of them, they like to chew men up."

"Why would they want you back, if you're not a 'real devourer' like Walla?"

"Because I'm the best."

"Been sucking up too much sap lately?"

"Don't give me that look. I'm not some vain hierodule who serves the goddess for a year in order to have men drunk on wine and fumes worship her as if she was the Merciless One herself. My redemption price would have been much higher—"

"It was robbery!"

"—would have been much higher. You don't know how hard I worked, the things I agreed to do. Gods, Kesh! You don't know the things I did just in the days right before you arrived. All that, just to pay off the debits that accrued from my training."

"How could your debt have cost more to pay off than it already did?"

That shrug was her way of casting him off, like slipping a cloak when you don't want to wear it anymore. "Let it go. The faster we walk away from Olossi, the better for us."

"If we don't starve along the way, or puke out our guts from drinking bad water because we can't afford decent wine."

She circled back to Kesh. Mischief scuttled alongside, and Magic hesitated only long enough to give one last intense stare toward the trees before hustling after the two females before they got too far away.

Crouching, Bai grabbed Kesh's wrist. Her grip was strong. "We did it, Kesh. Let that be enough for today. We did what we swore when the aunts and uncle shoved us up on the block and started counting their profit. They had enough, they could have kept us and raised us with their own. I'd like to spit in their faces."

"It wouldn't be worth it."

Her jaw was tight. She had braided back her hair so no curl or wisp strayed, and then coiled it up atop her head, out of her way. All of her was like that now, streamlined, efficient, sleek, and without ornament. Her expression was unreadable to him. His little sister's face stared at him, grown up and filled out, with that bruise she wouldn't discuss. Little whiny weepy sweet-hearted Zubaidit had gone through a transformation and he did not know the woman before him.

She released his wrist. "No, it would be foolish. We'll walk, and leave the old life behind." She cocked her head to one side. "About that ghost you brought out of the south . . . or is she a demon?"

"Don't speak of it. Let it go."

"Why not? She was so . . . so . . ."She raised a shoulder, shifted her hip, scratched her bare knee. "Seeing her, I just wondered what it would be like—"

"Leave it!"

She rocked back at his tone. Both ginnies hissed at him. They had fierce-looking teeth, and their bite was said to be infectious.

"Heya!" he yelped, taken aback.

"Hush." She stroked Mischief under the jaw, and the female lifted her chin a little and "smiled" warmly. Magic got a spot on his forehead rubbed. While they were looking at her, she gestured. "Go on, then. Brother's just jumpy, that's all."

Mischief moved off, but Magic looked right at Kesh and bobbed his head decisively, as if to remind him who was in charge.

"Heya," said Bai with a little more force. Magic moved after Mischief.

"Listen," said Kesh, surprised at how powerfully his anger had erupted. "Let's not argue. I'm sorry."

"No. You're right. Let it all be gone. Leave the aunts and uncle and ghosts and bitches and masters to the dying moon where they belong. Our old life is dead twice over, once on the block, and once in inner court three days back." She rose from a crouch to the balls of her feet, swaying like a woman drunk on fumes. "Gone gone gone. Gone altogether."

Branches rustled. Both ginnies stopped, and looked in that direction, but neither seemed alarmed when an apparition draped in rags stumbled into the clearing.

"Gone. Gone. Gone altogether beyond," it echoed, spinning entirely around, arms pinwheeling. Its voice was a crazed whisper.

Kesh jumped to his feet and drew his sword, but Bai stepped inside his guard and pressed a palm against his chest.

It faced them, rheumy eyes blinking. It was a very old person, as thin as if built of sticks, with skin weathered from sun and wind and hair turned entirely to silver, not even one strand of black to be seen. Kesh could not tell if it was male or female.

"Walking north," it said in a voice all raspy, neither high nor low. "Best not go that way. It's all run to blood."

"Where's your string?" Bai whispered into Kesh's ear. He had closed the string of coins into his weaponless fist, and she pried his fingers open, slipped off ten half leya, and strode across the grass to the creature. She sank gracefully to both knees—kneeling, she was still almost as tall as that shrunken, wasted body—and held out an open hand.

"An offering, holy one. Go in peace."

The crabbed hand moved so fast that it was too late for Kesh to protest. It grabbed the silver, and scuttled away. "A blessing on you, child! Do not kiss ghosts. The twice dead cannot love. Also, a fire gnat has just bitten your left ankle. Don't scratch! It only spreads the poison."

It staggered out onto the road as Bai reached down and—as if bespelled—scratched at her left ankle, then barked a curse, jumped up, and repeatedly slapped the skin where she had just scratched, as though she could batter the stinging bite into submission.

"Five leya!" cried Kesh. "No wonder you ran up debts!"

"Are you blind? That was a gods-touched vessel!"

"Some old beggar, you mean. Anyone can wear rags and stumble along the road mumbling well worn phrases. 'The twice dead cannot love!' Burn it! Now what do we do?"

"I have a hankering to get ourselves into the trees and hide for the night. Scout ahead at dawn."

"You don't believe in all that ranting?"

But she did believe. She had been raised in the temple, at the heart of the goddess, if the Merciless One could be said to have a heart.

He touched the blessing bowl at his belt, thought about his evening prayers, and shrugged. "The woods it is. Must we take turns at watch?"

"No need. The ginnies will warn us if any come close."

HE SLEPT HARD, curled on his side, but an animal pushing up against his back made him snort awake.

"Hush," murmured Bai. He saw her form sitting upright beside him. Her hand touched his hair. "Don't move."

To sleep, they had crawled into a thicket situated on a rise that allowed them to see the road with little risk of being seen themselves. One of the ginnies was pressed against his upper back and neck as if trying to hide behind his body. He found himself staring through the patternwork of branches, toward the road. Torches flickered a dull red. Banners tied in fours drooped from poles. People tramped along, too many to count, strung out in a line and jangling with the ring and clatter of armed men. They had many horses, all on leads, but only one man was mounted. He rode in the middle, surrounded by the shield made by the rest. The hood of his long cloak shielded his face and fell in massive, lumpy folds over the body of the horse. Except for the sound of their steps and the occasional soft whuffle of a horse, the group moved without talk, striding briskly as they moved west—Olossiward—along the road.

The light faded away. A night-hatch chirped, answered by a second.

Bai leaned so close against him that her hair tickled his cheek. Her breath was hot on his ear. "We'll go just before dawn. Follow after them. See what they're doing."

"We won't! We'll head east and then north!"

She shifted away, but remained silent. The ginny—he still didn't know which one it was—stuck its head up to look over his neck, then ducked down again, pressed right up against him most uncomfortably. He didn't want to shoo it away because he didn't know if it would bite. It was as uncomfortable as a branch sticking into his back. The dreary hours passed in an agony of slowness, but at length he discovered that the mass of shadow off to the right was dissolving into the discrete twigs and leaves of the vast tranceberry bush that had helped shelter them. It was the wrong time of year for berries, which would, he noted with that part of his mind that never stopped toting things up for their market value, have brought thirty vey for a bucketload.

"Come on!" Bai rose. She slung the rolled-up cloak and jacket over her back. "Let's go. It's light enough to walk the road."

"Who do you think they were?"

She was already moving through the brush, pausing at the sloped verge to listen and look. Then she scrambled up, the ginnies surprisingly agile, racing in front of her up the slope. She was already fifty paces ahead before he got on the road, and she glanced back, slowed, and waited, tapping a foot. Birds sang their dawn songs in anticipation of day.

"Come on, come on."

"What's the hurry? The sun isn't even up."

"Just a feeling in my bones."

From Olossi to a short way past the East Riding, West Track ran on an almost due west to east axis, parallel to the River Hayi. Past the East Riding, the river curved to the northeast and the road with it, the river dwindling as it moved upstream toward its source and the road reaching for its terminus at Horn.

Standing on the road, Kesh faced Hornward. Bai faced Olossiward. He began to walk east, not looking back. The idiocy of throwing away coin on a useless old beggar still made him burn. His stomach gnawed at nothing. He was hollow and he was angry. But at least he was free. Even free to walk away from Bai, if need be. From everything and everyone, alone in a way that made a smile tic up on his face every time he bit it down, because if he let that smile hit his face in full he would laugh, or he would cry, and he wasn't sure which.

She padded up beside him. The ginnies were draped over her shoulders like an expensive bit of ornament. She didn't look at him. She said nothing. For a long while—at least a mey—they walked east on the road in a silence that was both at odds and in harmony.

How could anyone be so stupid and pious as to give away coin that recklessly? To rack up debts the way she had?

And yet, did it matter? After all these years of toil, of being separated, they had actually succeeded. They were free, and together, able to walk where they willed and disagree as they wished, and no one to tell them otherwise!

Even the road welcomed them, although it could be said that the road welcomed all travelers. It was the coolest part of the day, and the sweetest. But at last the sun rose above the trees and chased away the shadows that protected them.

"The ginnies smell something that's making them restless," said Bai. The lizards were raising their crests and kneading their feet into her shoulders, tongues flicking as they tasted the air. "I didn't like the looks of those men. That looked like an army to me. Three hundred and twelve. Enough to cause serious trouble."

"Three hundred and twelve?"

"I probably missed a few. Three cadres should have three hundred and twenty-four, plus their sergeants and captain."

He whistled softly, wondering if she were joking, or if she had really been able to count them all.

Her stride caught a hitch; she skipped a step to catch up with him, grabbed his elbow, tugged him to a staggering halt. "Look! Crows and vultures."

North, above the trees, the dark wings circled.