40

He was dreaming, walking along the shore near Haya that he knew from his childhood. The strand ran for mey ahead in a curve that faded at length into distant hills whose heads were shrouded in rain clouds, although here where he walked the sun shone, its light winking on smooth waters. His feet crunched on coarse sand. The rhythmic shush and suck of waves along the shore and the shrill cries of seabirds overhead kept him company.

A mist rose off the surface of the wide bay. It boiled into a silver fog that rolled toward the land like a watery beast shouldering up out of the depths. On the crest of this fog, as on a wave, lifted a rider mounted on a winged horse, and it surely was Marit riding that horse because even at this distance he would know her anywhere. He ran toward the water, to meet her. The foam of the cresting wave broke over the form of rider and horse, obliterating it; he was left behind with wavelets lapping his toes and his hands grasping air.

"Reeve! Reeve Joss!"

The low voice woke him, or possibly he woke himself, moaning aloud. He stirred and sat, and found that he could sit. The bit of rice and water taken earlier had strengthened him. His head ached, but he could blink without wanting to pass out.

After all, he was only hearing things. He could see nothing in the blackness. The air smelled of rotting things and sickness and worse, a foul smell lightened only because it was rather dry, not at all fresh. Thank the gods.

"Reeve Joss!"

The hatch scraped open to reveal a light lowered through to dangle, swaying back and forth on a line. A hand appeared, fingers slender and strong. It fastened the lantern's looped handle to a hook set in the ceiling off to one side, too high for him to reach. He blinked back tears as his eyes adjusted, and when he was able to look up past the light, he saw a face looking down at him through the hatch as hands lowered a rope until its end curled on the floor.

"Hurry up," she said. "Are you strong enough to climb?"

The rope had been knotted at intervals to provide footholds and handholds.

"Very thoughtful," he said, for it took him a moment—he was thinking slowly— to recognize her. "But I'll take my chances with someone who hasn't already tried to kill me."

"As usual, you men always jump to conclusions about what we women intend. It's quite tiresome."

"When I met you last, you tried to kill me."

"Are you sure?"

"Hmm. Let me think. A naked knife. A mostly naked woman. I admit that part was appealing."

"Why in the hells would I come to kill you stripped to the waist?"

He chuckled, although it sounded exceedingly like rolling pebbles in his mouth, a trick he had tried when a lad with predictable results. He felt now, too, as though he had swallowed something small and hard that wedged in his throat. There was still a little water left in the cup, and he sipped at it and recovered and could speak.

"I thought it was a clever ploy to distract my attention."

She laughed as she grinned down at him. The flame of the light gave her complexion a glowing cast, bathing it in gold. Her eyes were very dark, heavily lidded. Her mouth was lush and very red. Delectable.

"Aui! The hells," he muttered. "I'm delirious."

"No doubt. All the better reason to climb that rope and escape your prison."

"With your help?"

"I'm the one with the rope."

He lifted a hand and was pleased he had strength enough to gesture in a casual way, reflecting a degree of unconcern he did not, in fact, feel, not with her hanging over him in such a position that he got a look right down her vest to the rounded shadows beneath. He remembered—very well—the curves she had on her.

"I'll pass."

"You'll wait for the justice of this corrupt council? I think you'd do best to be well shed of them, for they've been colluding with all manner of folk who will be happy to kill you once they have conquered Olossi. Which they are like to do if you can't get a message to the northern reeve halls, which I wish you would do by climbing this rope, calling your eagle, and leaving this place as soon as ever you can."

"Oh. Slow. I beg you. That was too much and too fast, my sweet."

"I've not given you permission to call me your 'sweet.' "

"Maybe not, but you ask me to trust you. That should give me a few privileges, don't you think?"

"Why shouldn't you trust me? You're such an easy target now that had I wished to kill you, you'd be dead already."

"It is a great comfort, knowing that. Why did you try to kill me before?"

"As I said, you misread the signals."

"A knife thrust at my guts is a strange way to signal something other than murderous intent."

"I had to protect myself. I wasn't sure who had sent you. You might have been on the side of our enemies."

"Who did you think had sent me? Who are your enemies? And who are you?"

She looked away, over her shoulder, then back down at him. "Best we get you out of here before we're interrupted, then I'll tell the tale."

"So, again, you're saying I must trust you."

"Or stay here. Your choice."

"How did you get here? Where are the guards?"

"Aui!" She had a very attractive way of setting her jaw when she was exasperated. "You talk too much, after all. Just like other men. Here I hoped you were different."

"Oh! Eh!" He laughed, although it hurt his head and his ribs to do so. "Now you've appealed to my vanity. I can't bear to be 'just like other men.' "

He tried to stand but found he was too weak to do it easily. Setting a hand against the wall and one on the ground, he managed to lever himself up, but he had to lean against the wall lest he collapse. He was cold, and then hot, and then cold again, in waves that made him sweat and shiver. "Whew. I'm sorry to say, it'll be hard for me to climb that rope."

She withdrew. A second rope slithered over the lip and its end dropped to the floor. Two bare feet appeared, gripped the rope as she eased her body over the lip. She shinnied down hand over hand at a speed that should have burned her thighs, landed softly, and paused with a hand still on the rope to fetch a tiny globe from her cleavage. It was glass, of a kind. With it balanced in one palm, she blew into it, and it lit with a pretty flame that cast an aura of light before her.

"I'll help you up," she said.

He stared at her tight sleeveless vest and short kilted wrap. The rig showed her figure to advantage, and she knew it. She smiled, amused by his stare.

From above, a snap like the sound of a door slid hard shut cut the quiet.

Her smile vanished as quickly as it had come. She stepped forward to examine him, and the floor of the cell, under the glow of the globe light. He became aware of what he must look like and how he must reek. For the first time, he got a good look at the coating of dried grime that had slicked the floor, every possible thing he could disgorge from his body: blood, vomit, diarrhea, urine, the worst sort of spume.

She lifted the globe to the level of his eyes. "Did they try to poison you?"

"I don't know. I ate a little rice earlier. It—stayed down."

"Follow the light." She moved it slowly from side to side, but she watched his eyes. "Did you take a hard blow to the head?"

"That I did."

"Ah. Sometimes that will make you cast out your stomach. Yes, you've quite a few signs of that illness. You'll want a bath and your clothes washed. We best hurry, for this is taking longer than I had planned for. Can you walk?"

"I don't know."

By the way she tilted her head just a little to the right and then back a little to the left it seemed she was considering options and discarding them.

She touched the globe to those rich lips. Its light extinguished immediately.

"I'll put it back in its warm setting, my sweet," he said hopefully.

She looked at him sidelong in a way that would have set him aflame if he wasn't feeling and smelling and looking like a dead rat well run over and left in the dank to get really ripe. Then she tucked away the globe, slung a strong arm around his waist, and helped him over to the rope. There was nothing seductive in the action. She tied him up in the rope to make it a seat around his hips. He was so dizzy from moving that he couldn't even say what he would like to say about where her hands were working because the words went awhirl and he had enough to do to stay on his feet as she rigged him up and left him standing there. She climbed swiftly up the knotted rope and eased herself gracefully out of the hatch. A moment later, the rope drew tight, strained, and he grasped with all his strength to avoid pitching backward as she hauled him up. He rocked. He shut his eyes, but decided that was worse. His knee rapped the hot surface of the lantern, but not hard enough to shatter anything, by Ilu's mercy.

The room above, which he did not remember, was a holding cell with rings along the far wall where folk could be chained up until ready to be moved. She had used one of these rings as her lever, with the rope pulling over it, and when his head came up past the opening she tied it securely, crossed back to him, and used main force with her arms hooked under his armpits to drag him up and onto the floor. There he sprawled. While he panted, trying not to sway although he wasn't moving, she cut him loose from the rope now tangled around his legs.

"You'll have to walk the next part." She stepped back and pulled up the lantern.

"Where are the guards?"

She knelt beside him. There was a pleasant smell to her, like jasmine, but under that a scent he recognized with a kind of delayed shock: She smelled of eagles.

"You'll need this."

Her hands were cool as she lifted his head enough to slip a leather thong over it, settling it at his neck. He groped at his chest, found the bone whistle. He groaned, would have wept had he retained water enough for tears. "What bell is it?"

"Middle night."

"I can't use this until daybreak. Once they discover I'm gone, they'll search for me."

"Which is why we must hurry." She got an arm under him, and with her help he stood. The whistle gave him strength.

"I can walk on my own." That he was so helpless, and she so competent, irritated him enough that he nudged her away. "Where do we go?"

After all, she was not immune. A smile chased across her lips. Her eyelids drooped, and for a moment she had the sleepy look of a woman woken after a night of passion, smug and certain and well pleased. "Does this mean you trust me now?"

He'd be a fool to try to walk unaided, this close to freedom. He grasped her arm just above the elbow. She had satiny skin, and taut muscle under it.

"I'm Joss, but you already know that. What's your name?"

"Zubaidit."

"Ah! Such poetry! 'Where the axe hewed, the man was stricken.' "

Now she was amused. "Not everyone knows the story of the woodsman's daughter."

He would have leaned in to speak intimately close beside her ear, had he been clean and sweet-smelling, but he was not, and although she had as yet made no slightest sign of finding him foul in his current state, he didn't care to chance seeing a grimace of disgust cross her face. After all, if he survived this, he would recover his strength, and take a bath, and then she would see what it meant to meet her match.

So he smiled at her, as well as he was able. "It's one of my favorite stories from the Tale of Fortune. Especially the ending."

She laughed, a clear sound that she made no effort to muffle or disguise. What in the hells had happened to the guards? But he didn't ask again. It was time to take his chances, and see where this tale of fortune led him.

"You would say so," she said with a smirk. "Come, now. We have to go see someone."

She doused the lantern, led him down the corridor, helped him up a set of stairs and through an open door into a spacious hall swallowed in night but which he recognized by the carved railings at one end as Assizes Hall. She moved smoothly, graceful despite the darkness, and he, leaning on her, was able to stumble alongside creditably. No one was about. It was weird how very quiet it was, all the guards lost. Murdered, maybe. And who in the hells were they going to see?

"It's a strange way to murder me," he muttered, unable to help himself. "Or have you some other more convoluted plot in hand?"

"I do, but you'll need all your powers of persuasion to help me. Now, hush."

They came to the wall of screen doors, all closed. A faint, wavering light could be seen through the papered screens. Nimbly, she slid a door halfway open and eased him onto the wide front porch that ran the length of Assizes Hall. A stocky man carrying a small lantern was waiting at the foot of the steps. Beyond him, Assizes Court was empty, all in shadow, no lamps at all.

"What of the eagle?" she whispered, dropping her voice now that she was outside.

"Without me, he won't fly until it's day. I can't call him until dawn."

She helped him down the steps. The man who waited was master of a handcart, which was empty except for a cloak bundled in the bottom.

"This is my friend Autad," she said. "He owns the Demon's Whip, a tavern in Merchants' Walk. He's agreed to cart you, since I wasn't sure how far you'd be able to walk on your own."

"You've thought of everything. Where are we going?"

She tilted her head back as if she'd heard something, and sprang up the steps to vanish into the hall, sliding shut the door behind her. She was gone as quickly as if he had only dreamed her.

"Get in, ver," said the man in a genial voice, pitched low. "Hurry. I'll cover you with the blanket." He moved up beside Joss, and even in the night Joss could sense that terrible grimace. "Whew! Begging your pardon!"

"Where did she go? Where are we going?"

"Where she tells me, ver."

"Do you trust her that much?"

"She's a true servant of the gods, that one. Very pious." The man hesitated. "If you wouldn't mind, ver." He indicated the cart, coughed, gagged a little. "Geh. Well. Best if we do this quick. If you don't mind."

Once in Haya, one summer when he was a lad, he'd been out swimming with his friends and been grabbed by a rip current that had dragged him out into the sea. But you learned growing up on those shores to let go instead of fighting what you could not resist, because fighting would kill you. Eventually, of course, the rip current had slackened, and he had worked free of it and swum back to land.

"Thanks, ver," he said to Autad. With the man's help, he clambered into the belly of the cart. Autad flipped the cloak over him. The cloth smelled of hay, but it was a good, honest, clean smell, one he appreciated. The cart rocked beneath him as Autad lifted and pushed and began walking. The wheel rumbled over stone. The movement jostled him.

For a long way Joss just lay there, thinking of nothing, really, too drained to fret or scheme. The streets were quiet around them. Evidently in Olossi people did not commonly walk out at night, while he was accustomed to the streets of central Toskala, which were more or less awake at all hours. Sometimes it seemed they rattled up a hill, and sometimes it seemed they rolled down one, and only once in that journey did Autad speak, in the manner of a man who has been mulling deep thoughts in his mind and finally found words to express them.

"I'd do anything for that girl. I do owe her, for saving the life of my sister. She had that rash that eats the skin. Poor thing, suffering so. Zubaidit spent her own coin to buy the oil of naya, which is the only unguent that cures it. I couldn't afford such a luxury."

"But—"

"Hush! Now we're coming to where folk are about. I don't want anyone suspecting. I'd lose my license, and be subject to exile. Or worse."

They moved into a neighborhood where there were, indeed, a few folk out even at this late hour, judging by the sounds of footfalls and soft conversation and the occasional clink or clatter of unseen objects changing position. Joss's hip was bruising where it pressed against the bottom of the cart, and every time they lurched forward his right shoulder knocked against wood. Autad hadn't brought any padding, more's the pity.

Abruptly, the cart rocked to a halt and Autad pulled the blanket off. "Can you get out?" He stood back, not offering a hand.

Joss got first to his hands and knees, and then awkwardly clambered out by levering his legs out first and following with his body. He was weak, but damned if he would inconvenience the man with his stink, when it was so obvious how appalling it was. They stood in an alley of towering white walls, both ends lost in shadow. A lit lantern hung from a hook protruding from one of the walls above doubled doors. These were broad and high enough to admit wagons, and a smaller "walking" door for foot traffic was set into the larger door. All around, the cobblestone pavement had been swept clean; there was no trace of litter or noisome debris. Indeed, it was pretty obvious that the only nasty thing in this tidy alley was Joss himself.

"Wait here," said Autad. He probed in his sleeve, withdrew a ball of rice rolled up in a se leaf, and without quite touching Joss gave it into his hands. Joss was so hungry that he ate it at once, trying not to choke on big bites, forcing himself to chew. Autad moved off with the cart while Joss had his mouth full, but when Joss tried to speak, the other man paused, hoisted the cloak, took a whiff, and tossed it at Joss, then with the cart trundled off down the alley until he vanished into the night.

Joss finished the rice, then chewed up the se leaf—beggar's food, as they called it, but despite being stringy and tough, it was edible and it settled lightly in his stomach.

Neither bell nor device adorned the door, by which a man could signal that he stood outside. Any night noises were here muted by the walls and the isolation. He could not even tell how long the alley was, or how far it reached on either side, but he guessed that he stood between two large compounds that were likely either temple establishments or the households of rich men.

For a few breaths he simply stood there to quiet his heart, calm his mind, and consider his options, alone in the dark city with a chance to escape. Definitely his best bet at this point would be to turn and walk away and hope to make it out of the city without being stopped, although it would be tricky to get past the gates of the inner wall.

Without warning, the "walking" door opened and there stood Zubaidit.

"The hells! Come inside quickly! Anyone might see you out there!"

Since he could think of no clever rejoinder, he followed her into a wide court with trough, cistern, hitching posts, stable, and a small warehouse. Here tradesmen could bring their provender without sullying the main entrance of the rich man's home, for certainly a rich clan's compound was what this was.

"Over here," she said, indicating the trough. "Best hurry. There's a change of clothes. He'll never speak with you if you're not cleaned up a bit."

"Where are the guards?" he asked.

"Right there." She indicated the opening of the stable, where a trio of men were trussed and gagged, but still alive by the way they twitched their shoulders and waggled their feet to get his attention.

"What game are you playing?"

"There is only one," she said with a smile, pressing a bag of rice bran into his hand. "The game of life, death, and desire. We haven't much time." She turned her back and folded her arms.

Though he was shaking with weakness, and could not trust her, the entire night's adventure had taken on such an air of unreality that he let himself be dragged onward and outward, as into the sea. He stripped, with some difficulty prying himself out of the tight leather trousers, and tossed trousers, jacket, shirt, and cloak to one side. All were unbelievably foul, soaked through, matted, dried, and stiff in spots. A bucket stood beside the trough. He filled it and dumped it over his head, filled and dumped, filled and dumped, until he was soaking. Using handfuls of the bran, he scrubbed himself, working quickly, finding all the worst layers of grime. After, caught by a sense of impending doom, he dressed in the simple shirt and knee-length jacket provided, draped and tied into place with a sash. She did not once turn to look, although he had wondered if she would. He crossed to the cistern, took down the drinking ladle from its hook, dipped, sipped, and hung it back.

"Ready," he murmured.

"This way."

He followed her into the warehouse, whose walls in this darkness he could not perceive. If folk slept here, he did not hear or see them.

"This way."

Behind her, he groped his way up the rungs of a ladder into the attic. Here she lit her tiny globe to reveal a long chamber with a steeply pitched roof on both sides. The low walls were lined with shelves on which rested various boxes and bags neatly filed away according to a system he could not quickly comprehend. She moved to a cabinet, opened it, and gestured. Ducking through after her, he was at once choked with a sense of closeness, weight pressing on him, dust a congestion in his lungs, walls falling at him on either side. But after all he fixed his gaze on her backside, very shapely, as she climbed stairs in what was little more than a narrow tunnel, the ceiling so low that he kept thinking he would slam his head against it and the walls so close that if he leaned any little bit left or right his shoulders brushed the paneling. It was quite dark, although the glow of her light outlined her figure most pleasingly. Hers was an easy target to aim for. He mounted the steps behind her, but she got farther away and he fell behind because the climb exhausted him and she was swift.

She opened a door and passed the threshold. At length, puffing and panting, he got to the top and stepped into a fine chamber ornamented with all manner of luxurious furnishings. Beside an open coin chest rested a reclining couch imported from the south. A set of paintings depicted a crane seen through the six seasons, edges embossed with gold foil to frame each hanging silk scroll. Two greenware ceramic ewers flanked a brass basin worked into the shape of a very rotund peacock with feathers spread high and small mirrors adorning each "eye," so a person could catch a glimpse of himself as he washed his face.

It was the kind of chamber where a merchant entertained guests he wanted to impress with his wealth, or where he reclined on his couch in order to entertain himself by counting out his strings of money. It appeared that Zubaidit had arranged a different sort of entertainment for the other person in the room. This grand gentleman wore only an ankle-length night jacket cut from such a fine grade of southern silk that even Joss could appreciate its quality. The precise shade of blue was hard to distinguish because there were only two lamps burning, both set on tripods, one on each side of the chair to which the man was tied. Zubaidit finished untying the gag she had secured around the man's mouth, and with a glance at Joss, she seated herself cross-legged on the couch next to her prisoner and folded her hands in her lap.

"I've met you!" said Joss, staring at the merchant. "I met you in the north."

"He stinks!" croaked the man. "Don't let him sit on my best pillows! Or on my Dayo'e carpet! Aui!"

"You have an overly sensitive nose. Best you be thinking of your life and livelihood and that of this city, rather than your pillows and expensive carpet. Oh, just sit down, Joss."

He had to. His legs were about to give out. He tried to stay away from the doubled rank of eight pillows with their embroidered scenes depicting that day in ancient times when an orphaned, homeless girl knelt at the shore of the lake sacred to the gods and prayed for peace to return to the land. This set of scenes portrayed the gods'answer: the calling of the Guardians, and the gifts given by each of the gods to those Guardians, to aid them in the burdensome task of restoring peace and establishing justice.

The merchant whimpered as Joss sat, but Zubaidit cut him off. "Master Feden, I thought perhaps you might be more likely to believe me if I let you speak to Reeve Joss, who hails from Clan Hall."

"You're lying," said the man. "This is some story you've woven to confuse and befuddle me. You came here with Reeve Horas earlier today. You stood beside him as his ally, and swore to him that you would deal with this prisoner. Yet here this man sits, contaminating my good carpet! What have you done to my guards?"

"Nothing as lasting as the death that will greet them if you do not believe me when I tell you the truth. There is a strike force not a day's march from these walls, and an army two or three days' march behind that, many thousand strong, who mean to burn, rape, and plunder this town and set their own governor over what remains. You were a fool to ally with Argent Hall and whatever folk out of the north you have made alliance with. But it is not too late to act, and save yourself and this town."

"An army?" said Joss. "On West Track? I saw none when I flew down . . . and yet—"

"Go on," she said encouragingly. She had yet to move her hands, clasped so easily there between her thighs, as if she were waiting for a cup of tea to be brought so they could sip in cool collusion.

"On our way down here, we came across groups of men, armed bands. But I never thought . . . Could small groups be brought together that quickly, to form an army?"

"If they are well led, certainly. Who is your ally, Master Feden?"

"None of your business. None of the temple's business."

"Surely it is. If the temple is to be attacked, the temple must be prepared to withstand the assault."

"Who would attack a temple?" cried Master Feden.

"You have not been listening to the stories that have walked south, have you? Those who serve the Merciless One have become targets, just as reeves have. In the north. Only in the south and in the east have the temples remained immune."

"Impossible. No one would hurt those in service to the temples."

"On the Ili Cutoff, you were talking to Lord Radas of Iliyat," said Joss to Feden. "It just doesn't make sense. Does Lord Radas know about this army? Who leads it? Where it comes from?"

Feden did not answer.

"I'll tell you this," said Zubaidit. "I have seen a thing I thought I would never see, a thing spoken of only in stories."

She moved smoothly, uncoiling more than rising. Stepping away from the couch, she bent, picked up one of the pillows, and displayed the fine needlework in the spill of lamplight. Folk no doubt lost their eyesight stitching those tiny details. It made Joss's eyes water to look, or perhaps that was the cloying scent steaming off a heated bowl of perfumed water strewn with petals that had been placed on the low side table next to Master Feden's chair. It had the sticky aroma of diluted sweet-smoke. Joss wondered if the man was an addict. Master Feden was twisting his hands, testing the bonds that trussed them, but he was caught fast.

"Look at me!" She shook the pillow. "You see? Here, the gods offer their gifts."

Every child knew the Tale of the Guardians by heart, how the orphan had come to Indiyabu to plead with the gods to intervene, to save them.

Joss chanted.

Taru the Witherer wove nine cloaks out of the fabric of the land and the water and the sky, and out of all living things, which granted the wearer protection against the second death although not against weariness of soul;

Ilu the Opener of Ways built the altars, so that they might speak across the vast distances each to the other;

Atiratu the Lady of Beasts formed the winged horses out of the elements so that they could travel swiftly and across the rivers and mountains without obstacle;

Sapanasu the Lantern gave them light to banish the shadows;

Kotaru the Thunderer gave them the staff of judgment as their symbol of authority, with power over life and death;

Ushara the Merciless One gave them a third eye and a second heart with which to see into and understand the hearts of all;

Hasibal gave an offering bowl.

"I saw two of them," said Zubaidit.

"Two Guardians?" said Joss, with a thrill of fear and excitement.

"Two orphans?" said Feden with a sneer.

"Two horses, winged." She threw down the pillow. "Two horses. Winged. And an army of thousands, too many to count. Although based on the number and formation of their cohorts I would say there were four or five cohorts of about six hundred soldiers in each. Let us estimate three thousand men, three hundred and twelve in the strike force, and more ranging up and down the line as foragers and scouts. That, Master Feden, is the army that marches on Olossi. What did they promise you?"

"There is no such army," he said, "and all agree the Guardians have long since vanished from the land, and were anyway only a tale told by our grandparents to school the young ones. You are insane."

"I'm tempted to agree," said Joss, but by the look she gave him in response, brows drawn down and mouth scowling, he saw he had truly angered her.

"So be it," she said. "I wash my hands of both of you." She crossed to the coin chest and helped herself to two fat strings of silver leya and one of humble copper vey.

"Thief!"

"Payment for services rendered. Yet the information is true enough. I'll return to the temple to warn them, as is my duty. After that, you are all on your own."

"You give no proof," said Master Feden. "You have no proof. How did you release this reeve? Why didn't you kill him, as you said you meant to do?"

"Marshal Yordenas commanded me to kill him—"

"You were trying to kill me!" Joss cried indignantly.

"No. The temple sold my labor to Marshal Alyon, when he requested protection. I stayed on after Marshal Alyon's death because the Hieros ordered me to. She saw that things weren't right at Argent Hall. She thought all the reeves had become corrupt. That's why I was armed when I approached you."

Joss could not help laughing. "Armed and naked. A deadly assault."

"The reeve is wanted for murder," said Master Feden. "Murderers deserve death."

"Murder? Whom is he supposed to have murdered?" she asked scornfully.

"A border captain named Beron, a holy ordinand in the service of the Thunderer."

"You and your council are fools five times over. I killed that man, on a commission given me from the temple."

Master Feden, surprisingly, remained silent.

"Captain Beron undertook a commission to assassinate a member of the Lesser Houses," she continued. "The Merciless One alone claims the privilege of such action. He crossed the boundaries, took a life in a way forbidden to the Thunderer's ordinands. Therefore, he was marked for death at our hands."

"The hells!" Joss glanced at Master Feden, but the merchant was now staring at his hands, all tied up tight, and not speaking. "How did you manage to kill Captain Beron? He was caged, concealed, and guarded by the Qin."

"I arranged for an axle to break. In the fuss, I meant to make my move. But as it happens, just before the breakdown a window opened, and I took the opportunity." She smiled, looking Joss up and down in a way that made him wipe his brow. She was laughing: at him, at herself. "I have many skills."

"We needed his testimony! He was willing to talk, to tell us who he was working for, who was paying him off."

"The Merciless One is a jealous mistress. He violated the boundaries. He had to die."

"Then we'll never know who hired Captain Beron to assassinate a man, and to hunt with ospreys."

"Master Feden might know."

"Me? Me!" Feden sucked in a lungful of smoke, and set to coughing. Belowstairs, heard either from down along that hidden stairway or through the closed door into the main part of the house, a clamor rose of many voices calling out the alarm.

"Master Feden! Master Feden!"

A high bell rang to wake the household.

"Heh! Heh! The guards come! You've been discovered! Now you can't escape justice."

She drew a knife from a sheath tucked up high on her thigh, hidden by the kilt. It was a thin, killing blade exactly like the one he had taken off her in Argent Hall. "It's all the same to me whether you die now, Master Feden, or die later at the hands of the allies who betrayed you. What did the leaders of this army that is marching on Olossi offer you? Gods! How gullible can a man be? Is it only greed that blinds you? Or are you just that stupid?" She waved the knife toward Joss. "Go on. Down in the warehouse, turn behind the ladder and find the fourth locker. Open it, and feel with your hands three bricks to the left. There is a stamp on the fourth brick. You can fit your fingers in and lift it, and find a hook beneath. Pull on that, and a door will open. Follow the tunnel out to the street, taking the third turn to the left and the second right. Go swiftly."

"What tunnel? I know nothing of a tunnel under my warehouse."

She ignored Feden's spluttering, and instead repeated the directions.

"How will you escape?" Joss asked. Feet pounded on stairs. Soon they would be at the door.

She clenched her jaw. "Why must men be so stubborn? Just go. Save yourself. I am not clumsy enough to be caught by this manner of men."

"Heya! Heya!" cried Master Feden. "Help me! Help me!"

Fists pounded on the far door. "Master Feden! Master Feden! We've news! Terrible news."

"He's busy!" she shouted. "Come back later, when I'm through devouring him."

But they were desperate. Her reply did not raise a single answering retort, not even a lewd joke. "Terrible news. You must open up. Villages are being attacked and all the folk in them murdered. A lad escaped. Hurry, Master Feden! We brought him, to tell his tale."

A new voice joined the chorus. "Master Feden! It's Captain Waras! Master Feden, open up, by the gods. You must convene the council. What will we do? What will we do? We've been betrayed!"

The merchant had been frightened before, then flushed with rage and doomed triumph as he contemplated being murdered in cold blood by the Devouring woman. Now his complexion faded to a ghastly gray. "Villages massacred? Can it be true?"

She said nothing. Joss found he could not move his limbs, as if he had fallen into sucking mud and gotten trapped.

Then she moved, too quickly for him to stop her. She unlatched and slid the door open, and behind it unlatched and slid open a second, secured door. Captain Waras strode in, looking first at her, then at Master Feden, and finally at Joss. He was so flustered and shaken that he did not act as a guardsman should, to assess and react to the threat. He waited, hands loose at his sides, sword in its sheath. A pair of guardsmen walked in, supporting a lad of some fourteen years, a slender boy with the wiry legs and arms of an experienced rider. He had the stone-shocked look of a person who has seen something he dares not believe but cannot deny.

Joss rose. "Give me your report," he said, finding his reeve's voice. "Quickly, while we still have time."

The lad lifted his chin, responding to the command.

"They marched in along West Track, from Hornward." He spoke in a flat tone, all emotion smothered. "I was at the Olossiward end of the village, stabling the horse for the night, and then. . . and then . . ."Almost he cracked, but he swallowed and blinked multiple times. He held on. "I rode away as fast as I could and though they rode after me they could not catch me and I rode all night and I changed horses at the villages and I warned them and some believed and some did not but I got torches and I kept riding through the night, oh the gods have set their hands down on this land, what will we do? Everyone. Everyone who could not run. They were all killed. All dead. Slaughtered like animals."

His eyes rolled up. He fainted.

The guards stared at the fallen youth, then at each other, waiting for someone to give them an order. Joss crossed to the lad and knelt beside him to be sure he'd not cracked his head; his breathing was even, and the reeve arranged his limbs more comfortably. Zubaidit sheathed her knife and went to the window, leaning out to stare into the darkness.

Feden wheezed out a breath. "Betrayed," he muttered, as if trying on the word as he would try on a new jacket, one as finely made as that which slipped around his bare legs now to reveal pudgy knees and ample thighs, a man with plenty to eat and plenty to boastfully display. With plenty to lose.

"We have been betrayed," said Captain Waras. "Everything these allies of yours promised the council, Master Feden. Lies. They said no one would be hurt, only that we would get our trade routes back and extra portions and a larger share of the market for those who cooperated with them and a lesser share for those who did not. That they would put down the revolt of the Lesser Houses."

Feden had long since ceased struggling against the bonds. He sagged, and his chin drooped, and trembled. "Betrayed," he said in a strangled voice.

"I must return to Clan Hall with these tidings," said Joss.

Zubaidit turned back to survey the chamber and the stricken men: merchant, captain, guards, and fallen boy. "No matter what you choose to do, you can be sure that the reeves of Argent Hall will see everything."

"What will we do? What will we do?" Feden broke down and wept.

She spun the knife through her fingers, an entertainer's trick that was not at all charming in her hands. When she smiled, Captain Waras took a step away from her.

"I have an idea," she said, "but you won't like it."

41

Shai envied Mai her ability to sleep when his every nerve jangled. She sat back-to-back with Priya near the fire, her head drooping gracefully and her fingers tucked under her belt. Shai had already bundled up his sack of carpentry tools and his meager possessions, leaving them with the neat pile of goods that would go with his niece at dawn, when the man with pulled eyes and turbaned head came to take her away.

Honestly, he was shocked that Captain Anji had let her go so easily. It was all very well for a man to claim that his people and his god abjured slavery. You could say anything, but that didn't make it true.

One of the soldiers appeared out of the night and placed driftwood on the fire, then faded back into the dark. In his wake, Anji came back from the main campsite and beckoned to Shai.

"Come. You'll attend me."

Together with Sengel and Toughid, Shai walked with Anji to the ford, and there the captain called across the channel to the men on guard.

"I have a request. Is there anyone I can speak with?"

There was a big bonfire illuminating the bank and much of the length of the channel, to make sure no one snuck across. By its light, a man walked through the multitude of sentries and halted at the edge of the water, not so far away, really. His feet were hidden in reeds. The creak of bowstrings sounded faintly from farther back, at the edge of the fire's light, covering him.

"I'm sergeant in command of this cadre. What do you want?"

"You know our situation," said Anji. "Since we have to return to the south, we'll have to hire ourselves out as guards again, if we're allowed. Do you think I can go over in the morning and arrange for a hire?"

"Not my decision," said the sergeant. "I was told you're to ride straight out."

"There'd be something in it for you if you could see to it that one or a pair of your men might run into town on my behalf. I saw the makings of another caravan—"

A fellow came up beside the sergeant and spoke to him, too low for Shai to hear.

The sergeant nodded and raised his voice to call to Anji. "That group rode out two days ago. There's no hire waiting for you. You'll just have to go."

"In that case, I've need of coin. Are there any merchants in town willing to buy flesh?"

"Buy flesh?"

"Yes. Much as it grieves me, I'll have to sell my concubine."

It seemed every guardsman on the far bank heard him, for there was a rush of sound that briefly drowned out the bass cry of the river. Their voices rose, and jokes came, laughter in plenty although the words themselves were washed together.

"You can imagine," said Anji into this so sternly that those men quieted and there was only one last laugh, choked off, "that I'm unwilling to part with such a valuable flower for anything less than top price. As I said, if you've a man willing to run into town, perhaps a few of your merchants might be willing to come out here at dawn to bargain with me."

The sergeant whistled. "You're a cool one. I thought you told the council she was your wife."

"Slaves can be wives. She lent respectability to my offer, but it wasn't enough. I can purchase ten more just like her in any market in the south. She's too much trouble to me at the moment. She takes two slaves to keep her, and they slow me down."

"Thought you didn't want to ride back south," said the sergeant. "Are you changing your story, eh?"

"It doesn't seem to me I have a choice. Now, are you willing, Sergeant? There'd be something in it for you, as well."

"How much could I get my hands on?" asked the sergeant with a coarse laugh.

"A bit of coin for your trouble. Anything else you'll have to arrange with the merchant who buys her."

"Whew! I doubt I can afford it. She'll go to the houses up on the hill, for certain. Well, I'll send a runner in to Flesh Alley, but I can't promise you any of them will be willing to creep out of their comfortable beds before the dawn bell. Best you and your company be ready to leave as soon as the sun is up."

"We'll do what we're told," said Anji, "having no choice in the matter."

As they walked back to their own campfire, Anji said to Shai, "Do you think that went too easily?"

"Do you think he was suspicious?" Shai asked.

"I don't know. In the Qin territories, no one would have believed that sorry tale. Not after I'd publicly proclaimed her as my wife. Concubines and slaves may be shed and taken at will, but not wives. Still, in the empire, unless she had powerful relatives I did not dare to offend, no one would remark on it."

"There was a man in Kartu Town who bought a slave. A year later he took her to the priests to have a scroll written to free her of all claim and to make a marriage contract, since he wished to marry her. And he did, and held a marriage feast, too. Three months later she stole his strongbox and fled from town with a passing caravan."

"The authorities did not catch her?"

"No. It was during the rule of the Mariha princes. The captain of the guard wanted a bribe to go after her, and the poor man had no coin. He tried to sell his land and his business to raise money to go after her, but my father talked all the merchants in town out of taking advantage of his weakness. It was obvious to everyone he had been possessed by a demon. Later, he recovered, and after that he came to our house and thanked my brother, for by then my father had died and my brother become Father Mei in his place. That was the difference between my father and my brother. My brother would have bought land and business at the bargain price, and been happy to do so."

Anji shook his head. "The Qin would have brought her back and executed her as a thief. A crime of that sort weakens all of society. It's no wonder the Mariha princes fell so swiftly. They were already like a wood post that is rotten and soft all the way through. Easy to topple."

"Do you trust this man? Master Calon? If his Lesser Houses have so many people who support them, then why haven't they already overturned the council?"

"They are frightened. They are shackled by habit. Or they are just now testing their strength, which they have only newly discovered. It may be these problems with the roads have only recently made them desperate enough to act. I can't tell."

At last, swallowing, Shai asked the question he dreaded asking but must ask. "Will Mai be safe with these 'Hidden Ones'?"

They had come to the fire, where Mai dozed, Sheyshi snored, and Priya watched. Father Mei would have yelled at Shai and struck him for his impertinence in asking such a question, since a younger brother must not question an elder, but Anji rubbed a midge out of his eye instead. His was a thoughtful expression.

"The priests of Beltak, in the empire, hold all men to be as slaves to the god. Those who do not believe are allowed to travel to only a few of the border towns, where they must remain in the markets. Within the empire, if you do not sacrifice to Beltak and pay his tithe, you are executed. Yet they wrote of the servants of the Hidden One with respect. They accounted, especially, any number of instances of their honest dealings. And they complained of their treatment of their womenfolk."

"How so?" asked Shai, looking at Mai. Fearing for her. She had endured this journey better than he had, if you really counted it all up, but no one could look at her and not think her fragile, even knowing better. "How do they treat their womenfolk?"

"It seems the servants of the Hidden One allow their women to keep their accounts books. In the empire, women are not allowed to handle money, so you can imagine that this offended and shocked the priests. But the servants of the Hidden One refused to alter their custom, saying it would go against the law of their god. So I am thinking, Shai, that if Mai will be safe anywhere, it will be in the hands of people who let women run their businesses, even if they are hiding away behind a veil. Perhaps especially, for Mai, in a strange land, where her beauty is hidden behind a veil."

"But how did they know?" asked Shai.

"What do you mean?"

"In the empire, men live separately from women. So you told us. So I saw for myself. How could the priests of Beltak know who kept the accounts?"

Anji laughed, but his laughter ended abruptly when Tohon came out of the brush and began speaking to him. Without answering Shai's question, the captain walked away with Tohon to oversee, Shai supposed, the breaking of camp.

Shai sat down next to the fire and tried to sleep, but he could not calm himself. They were true mercenaries now, taking up another man's fight for coin. If they survived the first test, they would ride into unknown lands, to that town where Hari's ring had been found. At the start of this journey, the idea of actually finding the place where Hari had died had seemed impossible, but now it seemed he might survey the field of battle where, it was supposed, Hari had died. But would this knowledge, his witnessing, bring peace to the Mei clan? These thoughts unsettled him. He sought out Tohon, in the main section of camp. Shelters were already taken down and bundled up. Men made themselves ready. There was nothing for him to do. He was not only extraneous—he was useless. He went back to the fire and watched the lick of flame as it ate up branches. Priya nodded to acknowledge his presence. Mai still slept, and none disturbed her.

The slender crescent moon, the herald of dawn, was rising in the east. A nightjar clicked. A bird whistled, and there came an answering bird song out of the bushes. Out on the water, a few boats appeared, being poled or rowed downstream toward the estuary. Lanterns swayed from their bowsprits, hung on poles out over the water to attract fish. The color of night was fading as the tones of daybreak shaded the world around them and brought life to all those creatures who hid and slept at night, fearing what they could not see.

No different from me. For the first time, he thought longingly of home, of the sere slope of Dezara Mountain, of the tidy orchards and narrow streets, the familiar scents and angles of the town where he had lived his entire life. His brother Hari had left willingly, even eagerly, boasting of lands far off that would welcome him better than he had been welcomed in his father's house all the years of his erratic rebellions and outraged criticisms. But at least Hari had been bold. Shai had been pulled along for the ride, a twig tossed into the flowing stream, nothing done of his own volition but only caught and taken by the current.

A splash sounded in the shallows where a fish leaped. A series of chirrups chased a path through a clump of bushes. A twig snapped under the foot of one of the sentries, who later would be ridiculed for the lapse. Wind gossiped in the leaves, a murmur that never seemed to stop, just as the whispering in Father Mei's house, among the wives and cousins, never seemed to stop. These were his chorus, and after all maybe it was better to be standing here awaiting word of their departure than to be standing in the courtyard once again awaiting whatever crumbs the family would throw him, the seventh and least of sons.

Grandmother Mei had wanted a daughter last of all. That was the traditional way: a daughter to keep at home to care for you in your waning years, since a daughter-in-law, while under your rule, could not be trusted to be as faithful and considerate as a daughter of your own blood and body. But she had gotten Shai instead, and a pair of miscarriages, so he was often reminded, and after that she had withered in the way women do when they grow too old to bear any longer. She had used up the last of her birthing blood on a useless boy.

No, definitely, he was well rid of them all. It was only that he missed the wide vistas and the soft colors, the stormy height of Dezara Mountain and its spacious grazing grounds, and his solitary shelter.

"Look, there!" said Tohon, startling Shai when he appeared suddenly out of the night.

Shai went over to the scout. From this angle, he could see the city walls. A single torch—the second one they had seen that night—reached the city walls and vanished inside. Closer at hand came another splash. Anji came into the light and bent down to gently wake Mai. She woke quickly and without fuss, and was on her feet in a moments, alert and ready.

"Here he comes," said Anji.

Escorted by Seren and Umar, Iad the caravan master skulked into view. The stocky man looked around nervously as if he hadn't expected to see people's faces, and he retreated to stand in the gloom with his face in shadow.

"I am surprised to see you here," said Anji, not with anger, simply speaking the truth.

"I'm surprised to be here," said the man. "I've been sent as an emissary by the council of Olossi to make a proposal."

"The council of Olossi?" Not by a hair or a shading of tone or a flickering of the eyes did Anji betray emotion or thought or any reaction at all. "The Greater Houses?"

"Yes. I'm here at the behest of the Greater Houses." Iad hesitated, swallowed a gulp of air for courage, and spoke. "They sent me because you and I have dealt honestly in our crossing out of the empire."

Anji looked at Mai. As if bothered by a bug, she scratched at her right ear with her left hand. "Go on," said Anji, looking back to Iad.

Well, now things were getting interesting. Shai moved closer, to hear better.

"They thought you would trust me where you might not trust another. They said to tell you first of all that a certain reeve, called Joss, has been discovered in the assizes prison where he was accidentally placed after a case of mistaken identity. He's now been released, and taken no harm from his sojourn in the prison."

"Released? Unharmed?"

In an undertone, Mai murmured a prayer of thanks to the Merciful One.

"Yes," said Iad.

"A bold if convenient move."

"They hope this will show you they are ready to deal—" Breaking off, he wiped his brow nervously. "The hells! You must know they did no such thing. I mean, the reeve is free, and has taken no lasting harm, but it wasn't the council who released him. Someone else rescued him—a hierodule, of all people—and brought him in to confront Master Feden about this news she had of an army approaching—"

"Hold. Hold." Anji raised a hand, looked at Mai, then back to the caravan master. "An army?"

Mai's eyes had gone very wide. An army? Had the empire sent soldiers after Anji? Shai saw movement in the shadows: the Qin soldiers, those not on watch, were stirring, coming in close to listen. Everyone was on edge.

Master Iad swallowed like a man wishing he could eat his words rather than speak them. "It's like this. This is the question the council sent me to ask. Can a company of two hundred defeat an army of three thousand?" Having gotten the words out, he wiped his mouth as against a foul taste.

"An army of three thousand?" said Chief Tuvi. "Are you sure of that number?"

"The hierodule saw the army earlier today, and got a decent count: about five companies, which would be three thousand men more or less. Several days' march east of here, Hornward, that is, on the West Track."

"How could she have seen that today, and then have rescued the reeve from Olossi's prison this night?" asked Anji. "If they're several days' march east of here?"

Iad clapped a hand to his forehead. "She got a ride to Olossi from one of Argent Hall's reeves, but she says the entire hall is corrupt . . . Aui! It's a complicated tale. Then a lad rode in after nightfall, saying his village had been attacked by a strike force and everyone laid to the sword, killing and burning."

"The torch we saw," said Anji to Chief Tuvi.

"That would explain it," agreed the chief.

"The reeve, Joss, confirmed that Argent Hall had been corrupted. And Master Feden confessed that he had made a deal with some villains out of the north who it seems meant to betray him all along, for they said nothing to him of sending an army!"

"So what, precisely, is it that you want?"

"An answer to the question! That's all I agreed to. Can a troop of two hundred defeat an army of three thousand?"

Anji laughed. "Not in a pitched battle, with mounted forces, such as I command. A company of two hundred would be foolish to attempt it."

Master Iad relaxed, shoulders sinking and lips going slack. "Eh. Ah. Exactly. I told them so, but they are so desperate, they insisted I come."

Mai raised a hand. "Master Iad. Before you step away from a sale you believe you cannot make, let us hear your entire proposition. You can't simply have been sent to ask a question."

"I told them it would be impossible," said Master Iad, "but they insisted."

"You treated us fairly, so it is only fair that, in return, we hear you out," said Anji, and the poor man started, so surprised was he. "Did you say the Lesser Houses are involved in this transaction? That they knew of it?"

"The Lesser Houses? No, not at all. They knew nothing of it. Even now, only a few know the truth, for it was just laid before Master Feden a short while ago. The Lesser Houses and the guilds may seem numerous to you, but they have no power in the council. I come at the behest of the Greater Houses. Aui! Now that I know what is upon us—an army of three thousand!—I'm cleaning out my warehouse and dependents and leaving at first light, as soon as I get back to the city, unless they've locked me out, which I wouldn't put past them. The Greater Houses have destroyed themselves with their own greed! They brought this calamity down on Olossi, and the rest of us will be ruined with them!"

"Well, Mai," said Anji, looking at her with an expression Shai could not begin to interpret. The captain raised a hand to his lips. When had he gotten Mai's wolf-sigil ring? He touched it to his lips, then nodded at her, waiting.

"Can you do it?" she asked.

Anji smiled, as Shai imagined a wolf might grin—in a manner of speaking—when it spots a helpless fawn caught in a mire. "Go on, Master Iad. Now I am interested."

As dawn rose, the caravan master began to talk.

42

A quartet of guardsmen accompanied Joss to Crow's Gate. Although he had bathed again in the court of Master Feden's compound, and had been given clean clothes in the style of those worn by Olossi's militiamen, he insisted on wearing his leather trousers instead of a clean linen pair. For the moment he regretted it, as they were damp from being rinsed and wiped down, so his legs chafed where they rubbed the saddle. The lingering stench of his captivity caught in his throat.

Crow's Gate was still barred for the night. In the half-light that presages dawn, he watched as another rider approached them. She was riding one horse and leading a packhorse and a spare on a lead.

"You can't have been to the temple and back by now," he said.

"No. As it happens, I ran into another hierodule in town, a kalos, in fact, a fellow I know and trust. He'll take the message to the temple in my place. That gives me more time to make some distance west. What did you decide?" She indicated the four guardsmen, who had looked her over and then away. She was subdued, and with her hair pulled tightly back and wrapped into a knot at the back of her head and her body concealed in a loose knee-length jacket, she was a woman you wouldn't give a second glance. Not unless you knew what she was.

She smiled, teasing him for staring at her so.

He wasn't usually taken so off guard. "Oh, eh, yes. These good men here will escort me south to the intersection with the Old Stone Road. I believe it will be safe to call Scar from there."

"Yes. You're less likely to be seen. I expect a certain reeve from Argent Hall to fly in soon after dawn. It's best he be given no chance to see your eagle."

"Why?"

"Why shouldn't he see your eagle?" There was something more than teasing in that pull of her lips. She had a way of raising her eyebrows and tilting her chin that was deeply sensual, even triumphant. She was a woman confident of her power and, in that, desperately attractive.

"Why do you think the same reeve will come back?"

"Marshal Yordenas will send someone back to make sure those mercenaries leave. I am pretty sure Horas will volunteer, say he knows the situation best, so best he be the one to supervise. I admit, a lot of the plan depends on it being him who returns. It's a gamble. But we've only got one throw before we're ruined, so we may as well be reckless."

"I still expect this is all a ploy to catch me off my guard, or capture my eagle."

"If you say so. Had I known you were so full of yourself, I'd have known I need only wait until you fill up with the poison of self-love and strangle on it."

Seeing that he had begun to lose her interest made him try harder by shifting ground. "What do you gain from this gamble?"

Her expression was closed to him. She drew her horses aside as Crow's Gate was opened and the first folk were allowed to pass. Riding away, she spoke a last comment over her shoulder. "Nothing so different from what's in it for you."

He was flushed, and bothered. He let all the other traffic go ahead until the early tide of traffic had flowed out. Their party was released to pass Crow's Gate, and they headed out on West Track, riding due south toward the escarpment while the sun rose east over the Olo Plain and the river's meander. For a while they rode in silence. Farmers had set out into their fields. Early-morning peddlers trundled their goods out toward distant villages. Joss wanted to tell them all to turn back, to hide within the safety of the walls, but he could not. The reeves of Argent Hall must not suspect that Olossi's council had learned the truth about their alliance. And so, in the service of their desperate gamble, they sent folk out unsuspecting into the lands where wolves were already on the prowl.

The four guardsmen were likable young men who could not, in fact, stay silent for long. They had the confident bearing of those granted youth and health and strength, but the least of Captain Anji's tailmen could, Joss supposed, take all four out without a great deal of effort. These were not hardened men. They were not honed. They were like a sword made for show, not for fighting, pretty in their dyed linen jackets and loose trousers and bright silk sashes of teal or crimson or sea-foam green.

"Did you see the incomparable Eridit last night?"

"No, she was engaged with another man. I went to the arena to see that new troupe."

"Were they at the Little or the Big?"

"Oh, at the Little. They came out of Mar. It wasn't much of an audience."

"It wasn't much of a talking line, I heard."

"That's true. But there was one girl . . . still, you know how they are, they will say they are sworn to purity until their tour is done."

"They say that if they aren't interested. What they say to a handsomer man is quite another thing."

"That's not what your sister said."

"Hey! That's not funny. You know she's getting married at Festival."

"Stop it, you two! Or I won't cycle you off duty on Festival First Night."

The chatter changed course into safer channels: the upcoming new year's festival; a jeweler who gave good deals on trinkets suitable for wooing jarya companions; a flower seller who had given good advice about a certain herbal that gave off an arousing perfume; the cockfights and horse races meant to take place on Festival Third Day; the demise of their favorite rice-wine seller in an unexpected fall from the upper story of his warehouse; the preparations of one of their party for his appearance in a talking line on the last night of the festival, which mostly had a great deal to do with properly gathering and sewing together stiff nai leaves to make the traditional bristling wrist guards.

These young men, like all the rest of the early-morning travelers and indeed most of Olossi's population, were ignorant of the magnitude of the threat that stride by stride marched nearer. It seemed Olossi's council really did like to hoard its secrets, even when knowledge might save lives. It did not, on the whole, make him trust them, neither the Greater Houses or the Lesser.

"Look! There!" said the fourth young man, who up until now had said the least.

They had gone a ways up the slope and could look back with enough command of the height that the wide plain and the curves of the river winding through it made a striking scene. Sunlight glittered on the river. The sea was a vast sheet of calm water, bluest beyond the delta's mouth. Over Olossi, a reeve circled, dipped, and descended for a landing.

Joss swung around to look up along the road. A fair stretch ahead of them, where the going got steepest, a rider moved at a leisurely pace. The rider was leading two spare horses, one of which had the bulky outline of an animal laden with supplies. As he watched, she reached the turn where the road bent sharply right to run east parallel below the escarpment.

To his companions he said, "Let's get moving."

43

Horas spent a dreary evening stuck in hall while Master Yordenas made him repeat his report twice like a simpleton who couldn't understand two words rubbed together, and while the party of four argued. At length it was agreed that someone really had to go back to Olossi to make sure the mercenaries got the hells out of town and well away from anyplace where they might have a hand in disrupting the larger plan.

"There aren't many of them," said Horas. "I don't see why they're such a threat."

"Ten would be too many," said Toban. "You were given strict instructions."

"We'll have to send a reeve to oversee their departure," said Weda. "You ought to go, Horas. You know the Olossi council master better than the rest of us do."

"You just don't want to stir your fat ass out of here," he retorted. But he thought of the Devouring girl, and stirred restlessly in his chair. Yet those thoughts drew up from the well of his memory the stark gaze of that woman under the awning, the clerk with her brush and blank scroll. Her gaze had left him raw and shriveled. "Let someone else go. I'm due a break from running messages."

He pushed back from the table and took his leave. He thought of checking in on Tumna, but there were loft masters, the hall's chief fawkner and his assistants, to tend to injured birds. Anyway, he was tired and cranky. Before the lamps could burn dry, he retired to his usual cot in the barracks. The musty smell of his mattress, the angle of the wedge propped under his neck, the feel of his beads wrapping his wrists: these brought sleep and chased away bad dreams.

In the morning, he woke with a clear head and a niggling sense of disgust with himself. What a fool he was to have let that Devouring girl get away without paying for her passage! Thinking of her got him stiff all over again. He was no better than a child, flinching at shadows. Indeed, he could not really identify what had gotten into him yesterday. Likely it was sour wine curdled in his stomach whose gassy effusions had made him believe that a gaze from a meek clerk had power beyond what was natural. Strange how a good night's rest and a comfortable meal could set things right.

He rose early and told Toban that it was best for he himself to go back and personally supervise Master Feden and the council. "I'll even follow the troop for a day, make sure they're really getting gone."

"No matter to me who goes," said Toban. "You might think about giving that eagle of yours some rest, though."

"Yah. Yah."

Toban was a withered stick who hadn't any juice left in him. He wouldn't understand about lusting after a woman, the kind you didn't get a chance to gorge on more than once or twice in your life. Tumna was ragged, surly, and slow from the oversized feeding the chief fawkner had stupidly insisted on last night, but she was strong enough for another day of flying.

Ragged the eagle was, and slow, and cranky at being roused early, but the pair took their distance easily and circled over Olossi soon after dawn. Every Assizes Tower was required to maintain a perch for eagles, and space enough for flight in and out, but Olossi's council had always begrudged Argent Hall their due. First he thought of landing outside the walls, but then he'd have to walk. He had made this turnaround and steep approach enough times that he knew how to bank the turn just right and give a last hop of height in the landing, just before the gap of Assizes Court opened below. They made it, even if the landing was hard. He left Tumna hooded on the perch and commandeered a pair of young guards to escort him to Master Feden's compound, always difficult to find in the twisting streets of Olossi.

After a bit of confusion at the compound gate, he was led to a spacious courtyard and seated at a low table shaded by a cloth awning. Platters of fruit and soup and porridge and dried sourfish were brought. A slender slave girl poured khaif and leavened it with a spicy tincture of moro milk. He gave her a good look-over, but she wasn't anything compared with the Devouring girl, hardly worth mentioning. He set to without waiting.

It was a reasonably good feast, not perfect. The sourfish had a proper bite, but the flat cake was bland. The nai porridge was sharp with kursi, but the soup hadn't any cut to it at all and only a pair of trifling leeks when any decent cook would have layered them on to give a morning kick. Still, the fruit was ripe, moist with juices.

"Good to see you enjoying the food, Reeve Horas," said Master Feden, entering.

"Couldn't eat last night," said Horas as he pulled the tough strings from a globe-fruit and gulped down its sweet pulp.

"I'll join you." Master Feden gave a command, and a small, wiry-haired dog whose coat was a mixture of gray, white, and black settled down, its gaze fixed on its master. Seating himself on the only other pillow, Feden took his khaif without milk or spice and dismissed the girl. "How can I aid you this morning? Is there a message from Argent Hall?" His hand trembled as he lifted the cup, but after he sipped at the hot khaif, the trembling eased and he set down the cup with a firm hand.

"Uh." Horas swallowed the last of the luscious globefruit and licked the sticky sap off his lips. "Just need to make sure the mercenary company departs for the south. Master Yordenas isn't wanting any trouble with them."

"I shouldn't think they're likely to give any trouble." Master Feden glanced across the courtyard as he said it, but there wasn't anyone over there except a pair of guardsmen loitering under the arcade, out of the sun. "Have more khaif?"

"Can't eat too much." Horas took a good long look at the abundance of food, and levered one more sourfish off the platter. Popping it in his mouth, he savored its bitterness, the sting it brought to the eye. That was good. "I'll have to catch them up. When did they leave?"

Feden looked startled. He snagged a round of flat cake, cut it in half, cut the halves into quarters, and tossed one of those eighth pieces to the dog, which caught the treat in its mouth and gulped it down without rising. He put a piece to his own lips, but lowered it again.

"The report's not come in yet." He beckoned, and one of the young guardsmen trotted over. "Find Captain Waras. I'll need his report."

"I'll go out myself and look."

"A strange thing," said Feden. "That Devouring girl asked about you, after you'd left."

That was something to make a man burn brighter, even better than the sourfish. "Did she, now? How was that?"

"She came back to report to me, rather later in the night, if you take my meaning."

Thinking of the imprisoned reeve from Clan Hall, Horas nodded.

"It was strange. She must have known you were going, but she asked again if you'd happened to stay the night. Said it was late enough when you left the council hall that maybe you'd had second thoughts about flying back to Argent Hall." Then the merchant smiled. "Seems you roped a bit of interest there. She's a little too—whew!—spicy for my taste."

Horas looked at the pieces of untouched flat cake placed on the master's platter, and made his own judgment about the merchant's tastes. Casually, he dabbled his fingers in the cleansing basin. "She still around?"

"Nay, she left at dawn with a packhorse and a spare, off to fetch some hired man she mislaid on West Track, so she said. I got to wondering if it was a lover she was going after, she was that eager to get out of town."

"Hierodules don't take lovers." But after all, she was out and about, and she had shown an unusual concern for the man she'd left behind on the road. Now he got to thinking about it, maybe she was hiding something from the temple.

"Lots of things we say we don't do, that we do do," agreed Master Feden with a hearty chuckle.

That got Horas to thinking about what she had promised, and why the hells hadn't he gotten what he wanted when it was offered? Was he crazy? Surely it must have been something he ate, to make him feel all woozy and beaten down yesterday when it was there for the taking, all the sweet juicy flesh, just like the globefruit, only better.

He patted his fingers dry on a cloth and tossed it back on the table, where its edge lapped over his platter and one corner dipped into the unfinished soup.

"That mercenary troop ought to be gone by now. Let me get out to see them."

"I've some fresh redberry juice. Are you sure you don't want to wait for Captain Waras? He'll know what's up." He called over the slave, sent her off with a slap on her hindquarters, a good clout that got Horas to biting his lip for it did make him think of what he might get up to with the Devouring girl if only he could catch up to her before she got lost one way or the other, or killed by accident, now that he thought about it, which was the likely outcome if she came across the strike force who would act first and say sorry for it later.

"I'll just head out," he said.

But after all, the guards who had escorted him to the compound had vanished, and there was some fuss over finding a guide to replace him since Horas was quite sure he would lose his way in the confusing labyrinth of streets. Master Feden jabbered, and there came Captain Waras with a snarl on his face and a surly attitude that would have gotten him whipped in Argent Hall.

"I've got my hands full rousting that mercenary troop," he informed Master Feden.

"What! What? They were meant to leave at dawn!"

"Seems they're negotiating with some merchants from town, who won't be budged. I don't want a fight on my hands, not if I can avoid one."

"Negotiating for what?" asked Horas. "I thought the council ruled they were to leave immediately and without hiring themselves out here."

"I was just about to send a troop of riders to set them on their way. Would you like to come? Is that redberry juice, Master Feden?"

"So it is. Just uncanted this morning. So sharp you'll cry."

"Might I—?"

Down the captain sat, right on the carpet, and the slave was sent to bring a third pillow and a third cup. It transpired that the captain was a devout follower of the game of hooks-and-ropes, as Horas had been back at Iron Hall when he had followed league play in Teriayne. Olossi had teams, as did many of the surrounding villages, and there had been a particularly good scandal last season having to do with a hookster and a very cunning bribe, which Waras explained in entertaining detail. They drained the pitcher of redberry juice, and as promised Horas had to wipe tears off his face. His tongue had gone numb.

"Best we go out," he said as he blinked away the last bitter tear.

AFTER ALL MASTER Feden would come, and then there must be a procession, because council masters did get all twisted up if they weren't given a chance to parade before the lesser, as Horas's old grandmother was used to say.

Out they went. Passing through the fields and waste country beyond the outer walls, they met a group of men and slaves returning with a palanquin carried in their midst. The curtains concealed the treasure within. Master Feden cursed roundly at a merchant he recognized in that group, and there was a nasty exchange, more of looks than of words.

When they reached the river's shore where the militia had posted its sentries, they found the mercenary company ready to move out.

Master Feden called the captain over. The fellow was an outlander, with a hooked nose and a closed face, the kind that never gives anything away. He'd been calm enough in the council meeting, even when the vote had gone against him. Horas knew this kind; they would speak softly to your face and knife you in the back when you turned to go.

"I'm sure you remember who I am!" said Master Feden in a stern voice. "You were told to be gone at dawn."

The captain had a cold expression. He wasn't a nice man. He was the kind people thought was nice, but Horas had learned in the mountains that a sunny day on the high slopes could turn deadly in the turn of a hat and never care who was left for dead behind the storm.

"Negotiations took longer than expected," said the captain with a glance at his men. They were a sleek bunch, tough as leather, sharp as a good blade. "We are leaving now." He spared a glance for the reeve, dismissed him in the most insulting way, and signaled to his soldiers.

"Negotiations for what?" Mester Feden cried.

The company moved, splashing across the shallows.

"I sold my wife," he said, over his shoulder.

The council master turned red. Captain Waras whistled beneath his breath.

"Damn him," said the council master, even redder. "I'd have thrown in a bid."

As the company passed, Horas tried to count them, but he gave up after forty. They were nothing, really. The strike force would overrun them, and even if a few scattered into the countryside, the main army would catch them, crush them, and eat them with supper as flavoring, as the saying went.

He was eager to get back to Tumna, but he must wait with Master Feden as the company crossed. A man threw a shoe, and there was some fuss, and a delay, and gods help them all if by the time he trudged back on weary feet into Assizes Court it wasn't noontide with the sun at its worst and the wind struggling to catch any breath in this furnace heat. He rested awhile and took a cooling drink, and in the end it was only the thought of that Devouring girl on the road and marching step by step farther away from him and his chance to get a piece of her that got him going. He shook Tumna out of her sunning stupor.

The mercenary company was moving at a slug's glide. It was easy to get a comprehensive view of their line of march and of the road stretching before and behind them. There was the usual traffic, slowing to a trickle as it moved into the heat of the day. Trust the stupid outlanders to march right into the worst. They trudged along in a torpor. They were pushing in the correct direction, anyway. Maybe the captain was sorry, now, that he'd sold off his pretty wife. That was something to laugh about.

He circled wide, catching an updraft off the escarpment and banking wide to get a view of West Track more or less parallel to the east-flowing length of the wide River Olo. The river looped and curved along the plain, but West Track ran straight as a spear. There were little villages and fields and swales and low ground and hills hidden by old trees too difficult to chop down. The heat had melted the locals. The villages were quiet; the householders seemed early to their afternoon Shade Hour. He saw no one on the road except a pair of peddlers with packs slung over their backs, a single man leading a horse, a trio of women with the jaunty swagger of entertainers, and—yes!—a woman mounted on one horse and leading two others.

He spotted open ground a distance ahead, circled her until he was sure she'd seen him, and flew ahead for an easy landing. Soon enough, she appeared along the empty road, the only creature abroad. He waited in the shade of a massive old oak tree, while Tumna perched in the sun with wings spread. As everyone did, the woman kept her distance from the eagle, but she tethered her horses across the road and sauntered over.

"I thought you had abandoned me yesterday," she said, raising her chin with a challenge. "You sure were cold. Out on patrol again?"

The sheen of sweat on her made her glisten. A man could go crazy looking on a woman who looked the way she did, with her vest bound so loose you might glimpse anything through those lacings but never quite did, with her linen kilt sliding along taut thighs. She considered the eagle.

"I wonder what she would do," she said, "if I were to tie you up. Would she attack me? I think she could rip my head right off."

In the Tale of Discovery, the shoemaker had been literally blinded with lust, and Horas suddenly wondered if he was about to undergo the same transformation. The sun was so bright, and the pale colors of the dry landscape filmed away into a haze. He was slick with sweat, and so tight he actually could not get a word up out of his throat. But he could move his arm, giving the hand signal for flight and return. Tumna shook herself and kekked irritably, but she took off with a massive thrust and a storm of wing, and vanished over the woodland to find a more peaceful place to sun.

"I suppose that's my answer," she said, watching the eagle go. "Wait here."

She walked back across the clearing and over the road to where she had tethered her horses, and just to watch that shapely rump sway was enough to make his throat dry and his gaze blur. Into the woods she disappeared, leading the horses, and reappeared a bit later without them. With a faint smile, she returned to him and grasped his wrist. He was choked with desire.

She led him deep into the woodland, close beside the river where there was lots of cover and plenty of twisted trees that made perfect hitching posts, to which she tied him.

After a long time, she asked him if he wanted her to stop, and he gasped, "No."

A while after that, she asked him again, and he whimpered, "No."

Not that he could have stopped her anyway. Not that he would have wanted to.

Even later, she said she had to go get more water, and he needed a break by that time, because it was hard work, as the Merciless One knew. The slow heat of the afternoon drowsed around him. His hands began to tingle and go numb, but he couldn't relieve the pressure of the rope. He began to lose feeling in his feet. He cooled, and withered.

The colors within the trees changed as shadows drew long under the branches. It was about the time he realized that he was too effectively trussed up to free himself, and too far from the road for his voice to carry the distance, that he also discovered he had lost his bone whistle. Even if it was concealed beneath the pile made by his clothes and gear, he could not reach it.

It was getting dark fast, for night always came quickly.

He heard male voices, laughter, in the trees, but when he called after them, no one answered.

That's when he understood that she wasn't coming back.

44

Keshad was tired of trudging. Mostly he thought about how he was going to get away from Rabbit, Twist, and the rest of his new comrades, all of whom were the kind of people you never ever did business with unless you were already on your way out of town. It was as if someone had swept up the worst criminals into one band, on purpose.

What was he even thinking? That was exactly what had happened.

It was almost dark when they caught up with the strike force, a group of several hundred soldiers. This was the group Bai had counted two nights ago. Three hundred and twelve, she had said, but as he walked into the rough encampment the soldiers were setting up alongside the road, he wondered if there weren't more. Canvas was rigged up along ropes to form shelters. Grooms walked the horse lines. Men piled hay along the rope line, feed filched from village storehouses. Although dusk was falling, no one had lit any fires. Wagons were driven across the road to form barriers before and behind the line of march.

"Heya! Second Company! Over here!" A captain called out their sergeant. "We'll reach Olossi tomorrow. The last village we came through was already abandoned, so it seems someone had news of our coming. We're covering three watches, not two, tonight. On high alert. Your men will take all the watches. Double your normal numbers."

"That's not fair!" Twist muttered. "They always give us the watches, like we're not worth any other duty. Aui! I liked it better when we were on our own."

Keshad forbore to remind Twist that he'd been complaining all day about not getting first pickings with the rest of the strike force.

How had his luck changed so fast? He had gambled, and won freedom for himself and for Bai, but now he was no better than a captive in enemy hands. They'd as happily cut his throat and rape his corpse as give him a handful of rice, and certainly no rice or even a hank of stale flatbread was forthcoming tonight. Nor dared he try to purchase anything, which would mean he'd reveal his coin. Stomach grumbling, he stuck close by Twist as they found a bit of ground to rest on. When Kesh rolled out his blanket, the others hooted and called him names.

"Very particular!"

"Quite the merchant's son. Southern silks never too good for you!"

"Nah, he's hoping for a bit of company."

"Rabbit here won't do it. You're too wiggly for his tastes."

One thing Keshad had learned in the marketplace was not to let your opponent smell blood or weakness. "I'm wanting a bit of sleep, if you don't mind!"

"Oooh. Isn't he particular!"

The ginnies opened their mouths to display their wicked teeth. The men looked away.

"Just shut up and leave the lad alone," added Twist. "And if you don't mind my saying so, I can't sleep with your chatter. So just shut it, all round."

They settled down, but Keshad could not sleep. As soon as he shut his eyes, he saw that hideous, distorted creature descending out of the night sky and onto the road. Yet when he opened his eyes to banish the vision, there were a dozen snoring men scattered around him, lying on the ground at all angles like a crazy fence, trapping him. There was no way he could escape.

And they all stank.

The air was clear, untainted by smoke or moonlight. He turned onto his back. The ginnies shoved into the gap between his arm and his body. With them pressed against him, he stared at the sky. Each star had a name and a classification in the lore of Beltak, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, but he did not know more than the two every believer must recognize or be subject to the lash. There: the Royal Road that spans the heavens. There, low and in the north: Iku, the Head of the King, around which the heavens spin.

Older tales whispered in his ears as if the trees were mocking him, reminding him of the Tale of Plenty and the Tale of Fortune. There came the Carter and his barking Dog, rolling slowly up out of the east. In the north, the Sacred Tree had fallen sideways. The Three Footsteps trod west. Tree cover hid the southern sky. But these were Hundred tales. They were all lies.

He dozed off, woke at the sound of hooves, but it was only a man walking a horse along the road. A normally shaped horse. The other vision had been a lie.

Next thing he knew, the butt of a spear slammed into his ribs.

"Eh! Aui!"

Magic clamped his jaws over the shaft.

"I wouldn't have to do it this way if those things didn't bite," said Twist.

"Let go."

The ginny let go, and Shai had to rub him to calm him down. Mischief "smiled," as if amused.

"Come on. Up! Our turn at watch."

Up he dragged himself, sticking close to Twist as they got their assignments.

"Smart of you to bring your bundle with you," said Twist. "Someone will steal it, and you'll never know where it's gone."

"Thanks."

It wasn't that he trusted Twist, precisely, only that he mistrusted him less than he did the others. They'd been assigned to the rear guard, and fortunately that meant the wagon barrier. He found a comfortable spot to sit, on the driving bench of one of the wagons, and wedged his bundle in beside him. The ginnies draped themselves over the bundle, snugged together, and closed their eyes. He amused himself by whistling under his breath to pass the time, every tune he could think of and then over again. Twist dozed, leaning against a wagon. A pair of other men paced, arguing in low tones about a bet one had lost and the other had won. After a while they fell silent and shared a smoke, off by the edge of the road, huddled close to hide the spark of its burning.

The night wind whispered its tale in the trees. The horses moved restlessly on the rope line. The stars remained silent.

A woman laughed.

He started up, but no one else seemed to have noticed. The pair sucked on their smoke. Its dizzy-sweet smell pricked his nostrils, and he shook himself. That laugh had sounded like Bai. He squirmed around, peering along the stretch of road. The shelters had been strung off the road, along the cleared ground and back under the woodland cover. The horses formed an irregular line of shadow along the river side of West Track, although the river lay too far away from the road in this spot for him to hear its running. He could not see the other barrier. The road had a strange quality in the darkness, the barest hint of a shine that made it possible to travel at night, even during the dark of the moon without lamp or candle or torch to light your way.

He yawned, sucking in a sudden cloud of sweet-smoke that had drifted his way. The flavor punched into his lungs and sent him soaring.

He is aloft. Alone. The wind is a high road under his feet, under the hooves of his mount, which gallops on air as easily as if it were on earth. Its great, slow wings are like bellows pumps, displacing air with each squeeze. The beast nickers, alerted to horses below, dark shapes moving in the night through the trees. "What's there?" a man's voice mutters. "Best we go check." They begin to turn. Shapes scatter along the ground below as the winged beast snorts.

The hells! The nightmare just would not leave him!

Then comes the kick of surprise as the man swears under his breath. "How can it be? How came Shai here?"

"Hei!" Twist shoved him hard in the ribs with the butt of his spear. "We'll get whipped if they catch you sleeping! Here they come. Thank the gods! I was ready to doze off myself."

Keshad looked up at the sky, but nothing disturbed the spread of stars. Nothing flew overhead. Reeves couldn't fly at night anyway. Nothing could, except owls and nighthawks and such creatures. He was just dreaming. Shaking, he clambered off the wagon as their relief walked up rank-smelling and yawning and belching to take their place. There was Rabbit, scratching himself.

"Heh. Heh," he said by way of greeting, when he saw Twist and Kesh. "I'm hungry. When we going to eat them lizards?"

Magic bobbed his head aggressively, but Rabbit never noticed. Kesh gathered up his gear, and the ginnies, and followed Twist.

"Did you hear a woman laughing?" Kesh asked as they walked back to their doss.

"Whew! You're dreaming! There's a couple of bitches marching with the strike force, but they'd as soon cut off your cock and cook it for their dinner as pay you any other kind of mind. Best get some rest. If we're lucky, we'll see action tomorrow. Earn some pickings."

Kesh picked a spot at the edge of the group, outside the sprawled bodies. With some difficulty he convinced the ginnies to curl up inside his cloak, with their heads peeking out one end and tails from the other. He lay on the ground with grass and twigs and stones poking into him. From this uncomfortable bed, he monitored Twist's breathing. After a long while, he rolled to one side and levered up onto a knee, testing the air and the silence. He rose to his feet, tucking his bedroll and pouches under his arm. The ginnies he slung over his back, already trussed up in the cloak. As if they knew what he was about, they remained quiet.

"Any problem?" said the sergeant in a low voice, off to his left.

"Got to piss." Kesh was surprised at how cool he sounded when for an instant all he could see was a flare of bright red anger, and the shadow of a twisted black fear.

"Need to take your gear with you to piss?"

"Twist says if I don't carry everything with me, it'll be stolen when I get back."

"Huh. That's true enough. I'll come with you." The sergeant was a stocky man, almost a head shorter than Kesh, the kind of man you never dared grapple with. The kind who could likely rip your arm from its socket, and would.

"Always a pleasure," added Kesh, "to piss in company."

A Sickle Moon was rising, its fattened curve lightening the eastern sky. A cloaked man walked along the road, leading a horse burdened by panniers. Or maybe those weren't panniers. Maybe those were folded wings. He shuddered. The horse line was still restless, as he was. He grunted in surprise as a hand slapped onto his shoulder.

"You coming?" muttered the sergeant, who paused to survey the road, then turned away in disinterest. For once, Kesh was glad to follow him, to turn his own back on that sight. The wind crackled in branches. The air smelled of the coming dawn, floating a memory of yesterday's heat. A bird whistled its morning tune, but there came no answer to that call. It was still too early for waking.

They pushed a little way into the woods and found a stand of young pipe-brush that rattled a friendly chorus as they peed onto them. The sergeant said nothing. He didn't need to. As they finished their business, Kesh wished that for once things could run in his favor. Had he heard Bai's laugh? He'd been separated from Zubaidit for so long that it was more likely he couldn't recognize her laugh at a distance, at night, in strange circumstances when he was wishing more than anything that she would return and get him out of this. Was she even coming back to get him? This means of escape obviously wasn't going to work, but if Bai was in camp searching for him, he had to go back and look for her.

The sergeant grunted. His knees sagged, and he folded over. Kesh blinked. The sergeant crumpled into the stand of pipe-brush, snapping stalks as he went down. Magic stuck his head out of the sling made of the cloak and closed his mouth over Kesh's elbow. The pressure was less than a bite but more than a kiss, enough pain that Kesh dropped to his knees as he hissed out a curse and reached for the lizard's crest to dislodge him.

An arrow passed over his head. He threw himself flat, arms out. The ginnies scrambled out of the cloak and onto his back. With his head twisted to one side, he saw with one eye as their crests flared and they opened their mouths wide to show threat. Mischief's claws poked into his butt. A stone dug into his cheek right below his eye, and Magic, that bastard, raised himself up with his forelegs on Kesh's head, pinching claw cutting hard right over his ear.

A foot slammed down a finger's breadth from his nose. It was a foot shod in leather trimmed and shaped unlike Hundred footware, which was mostly sandals. He'd seen such boots recently. Those Qin mercenaries had worn such boots, sturdy, strong, and indestructible. Too heavy and hot to market in the Hundred.

"If you keep quiet and don't move, Master Keshad," said a voice as soft as the breeze, "you'll live through this."

From this angle, he could see into the length of camp along the road. Fire flashed into life along the horse lines, eating out of the piles of hay. The horses screamed and bolted. They had all been cut loose. He could tell because they broke away from the ropes and stampeded in all directions, frantic to get away from the flames. Arrows whistled out of the night, some tipped with fire. Canvas shelters caught as men stumbled up to the alert. Burning hay spun in the wind. A man fell beneath the hooves of panicked horses. The captain hadn't cried out the "Beware!," but sergeants shouted at their men to "Come alive," "Get up!" "Rise! Rise!" "Get those beasts under control!"

His sergeant lay dead in the dirt beside him, lifeless fingers inert, just within reach of his left hand.

The boot was gone, the man wearing it vanished into the darkness. Kesh stirred. Magic shoved his head against Kesh's ear, took hold of it, and closed his mouth with the greatest delicacy around the lobe. He didn't bite. Not yet. Kesh didn't dare move.

A man who travels a great deal in troubled times knows himself wise if he has learned enough of the arts of war to defend himself, and enough of the arts of prudence to keep out of fights. Kesh had avoided many a fight in his years trading at Master Feden's behest, but he had also scored a few wins when forced to the wall.

Not today. Today, with the dawn scarce breathing its first light, he lay as flat and still as he could with the pressure of ginny claws on his tender skin. He smelled smoke on the air, tasted floating ash and scorched hay on his tongue as the camp went up in flames.

He listened.

Branches snapped. Arrows sighed. Swords sang a bright rhythm where men fought. Horses thundered past, escaping the tumult and the burning.

Men shouted; they grunted; they screamed. Men ran, heard in their stampeding footsteps. They fell. The blood of the sergeant crept close to his fingers before the earth drank down these scantling rivulets and that spring dried up once and forever.

The course of the battle ebbed and flowed along the road. Twice men sprinted past him into the trees. Once, no more than a stone's toss away, he heard a man gasp as death overtook him, as metal struck to the bone.

The Qin were Death's wolves, ghosting out of the night to devour their foes.

A soft footfall trod the ground behind him. The ginnies chirped in welcome. A slender, sandaled foot pressed down the undergrowth an arm's span from his staring eye.

"Up," said Zubaidit. "We're getting out of here."

The ginnies scrambled off him, but circled her warily, tongues tasting her savor. Rising to hands and knees, he realized belatedly there was light enough to see. Blood spotted her feet and legs. She had blood on her kilt, and a stripe of blood on her face, as though she had forgotten blood was on her hands and tried to wipe something else away.

"Follow close," she added. "You'll carry the ginnies. I have to be free to strike if anyone attacks us. They're not all dead, and even the least of them will kill us if they can. And there are other creatures abroad we must avoid."

"Like what?"

Like the ginnies, she tilted her head and licked. "Something that tastes very bad," she murmured, "and feels very old. We've fulfilled our obligations, yours to your old master, and mine to the temple. They can fight their own battles now. We're getting out of here. And we're never coming back."

From the road, the sounds of fighting were dying down, and what cries he heard were those of helpless men as their throats were cut. Bai did not flinch, not as he did. Gliding away, she seemed no different from the black wolves who had raced past him earlier.

As he got to his feet and grabbed his gear and chased the ginnies into the sling, he remembered that after all she was born in the Year of the Wolf. Generous to those they love. Loyal to clansmen. Sentimental, uninhibited, forthright, and courageous. Yet a wolf will tear apart any creature that falls into its clutches, even if it is not hungry.

She looked back at him. The blood slashed her skin like shadows. She half blended into the woodland cover.

"Kesh!" she hissed. "This is no game! Hurry!"

For the first time in his life, he was afraid of her.

45

Before the last march of the night, Chief Tuvi pulled Shai to the back of the line. "You're too inexperienced. You'll wait back here with the tailmen. Your job is to cut down any stragglers who run this way. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Best thing you could do is get in a kill or three, just to get blooded. You're little use to us otherwise." Chief Tuvi wasn't as encouraging as Tohon, but Shai hadn't seen Tohon since yesterday before dawn. About eight other men were also missing from the troop, but no one had bothered to tell him where they had gone.

They had left Olossi at about midday and marched as slowly as they possibly could out West Track to the intersection with West Spur. There, they had headed southwest, as if returning to the empire, moving as if led by hobbling ancients and delaying themselves with frequent stops. Late in the afternoon, when given the signal by the captain, they had simply pulled off the road as if to camp. As soon as dusk gave them cover, they had marched at speed through the night, past the crossroads that led down to Olossi and farther yet along the river bottomland east of the city. This was unknown country, but now the missing scouts appeared at intervals to give their reports. Late, as the waxing crescent moon sliced its way out of the house of the dead, the captain called a halt. Shai and a dozen tailmen took up stations along the road. Grooms led their horses into the trees. The rest of the company vanished into the night, hooves muffled by cloth.

For a long while they waited. There was no conversation.

Shai wanted to talk, but he dared not be first to break the silence, and he had a damned good idea that none of these tailmen would utter even one syllable. Every gaze was bent along the road. Shai had never seen such a road before. It shimmered, very faintly, as though a ghostly breath rose off it, like a cloud of breath steaming out of a warm mouth in bitterly cold weather. The other road they had traveled, West Spur, had exuded no such glamour.

A shadow passed overhead. He ducked. The others, those he could see, looked up, but there was nothing to see, only a cloak of stars and night thrown over the world. The wind died suddenly. An insect clik-clik-clikked. One branch scraped another. Strings creaked minutely as bows were readied. Swords whispered out of sheaths.

It caught them from behind, an explosion of wings and hooves and the crack of a staff as it met a hard leather helmet. One of the Qin went down, but the rest, these paltry tailmen, were already rolling, tumbling, jumping out of the way, finding a new position, a new angle. Shai stood there and gaped as a massive horse galloped out of the sky and right at him to trample him under.

Far away, in counterpoint, shouts and screams rent the silence. The noise of a distant battle breaking out jolted him into action. He ducked, stumbled, fell, scrambled out of the way just in time. The beast pounded past him as the tailmen whistled to each other, calls to mark position and choice of attack. The rider billowed like a cloud, only that was a voluminous cloak rising out behind his body as though caught in a gust of wind. The horse slowed to a canter, and it pulled in its vast wings and turned on a right rein, back around to face him.

The horse had wings.

The glamour on the road brightened where the horse's hooves touched it. That unnatural light rose as if with the dawn, but it was not yet dawn. Far away, the battle raged as Captain Anji and his men hit the strike force with their surprise attack. Close at hand, Shai saw clearly the face of the man who rode on the back of that impossible horse. He rose, trembling, and raised a hand to ward off what he knew must be an insubstantial ghost.

"Hari." His voice choked on the name.

A hiss of arrows answered. The tailmen were the least of the Qin company, but a Qin tailman would stand as an elite in most armies. Five arrows sprouted from the rider's body. A javelin, cast from the side, caught the man in the torso, just above the hip. He grunted in pain, and swayed in the saddle, but he kept his seat.

"Hari!"

The ghost spoke with Hari's voice, urgent and angry. "Shai! How can it be you've come here?"

"I came to find you."

"You shouldn't have. Go home before the shadows swallow you as they did me!"

The horse screamed a challenge, tossing its head, and it launched itself down the road as if to assault Shai. He was stupefied, bound, paralyzed. It leaped, and took to the air. One hoof shaved the top of his head, knocking him flat. The tailmen fixed arrows and loosed them after the animal. No arrow touched those gleaming flanks. But the rider was not so fortunate. Those dark slashes fixed in his body, yet he did not fall. His dark cloak billowed, a shadow entwining him.

Jagi whistled the alert. Shai grabbed his sword, which had somehow fallen out of his hand. A dozen or more horses bolted toward them on the road. None bore riders. Not far behind ran twenty or more men on foot, in a disorderly retreat.

"Get off the road," said Jagi in a calm voice that meant he was irritated.

Shai got off the road by stumbling backward down the ramped earth and falling hard onto his butt. There he sat, too stunned to act, as a trickle of blood, like a tear, slipped down his cheek from the scrape atop his head. Its salty heat caught in the corner of his mouth. The panicked horses swept past. The tailmen coolly picked off their enemies before those hapless men understood they were still under attack.

It wasn't the aftershock of the battle that immobilized him.

The tailmen had seen Hari. They had filled Hari full of arrows. Yet how could they see, much less kill, a man who was already a ghost?

46

Eliar took her from camp about midday, just before Anji and the others rode out. By the time he had escorted her and her slaves up through the city, a tedious and very hot walk, the shops along the streets had begun to close their shutters for their afternoon's slumber. Olossi's avenues twisted and turned; even the main streets shifted position with curves and doglegs and sudden sharp-angled corners. Down the narrow side streets and deeper within alleyways lay walls and gates, the walls washed white so they all looked alike and only the gates painted with symbols and colors to give a hint of what household bided within. They hurried at length down a street where gold- and silversmiths displayed their wares, but by this time scarcely anyone was about to remark on the sight of Eliar, his two male companions who carried their belongings, and the three women. They turned left at a corner where a fountain burbled, then right into a cobbled alleyway wide enough to admit a wagon and swept so clean Mai could distinguish no speck of dust. White walls flanked them. The alley dead-ended in a plain wooden gate, its double segments marked only by yellow trim, agreeting bell hung to one side in an alcove in the wall, and bronze door handles fashioned to resemble deer in full flight, slender legs thrust out before and behind. A small door reinforced with bands of iron was set into the right-hand gate, with a slit-like peephole cut just above the level of Mai's head. High up on the wall, on either side, were set small grated windows.

He rang the bell, and waited.

"Where are we?" Mai asked.

"This is the house of my clan," he said. The walls were the height of two men, but there was a single building within the compound that towered above the walls, fully three stories high with a balcony ringing the highest floor, its interior screened by latticework.

"Do you need permission to enter your own house?" Mai asked.

"This is the women's entrance. I can't go in and out through here, nor can you use the men's entrance on the other side."

"If you live separately, then do you keep secrets from each other?"

"Not secrets, no. But I don't know everything that goes on in the women's quarters."

Anji's mother, a Qin woman, had been sent to a country where women were not allowed to ride. Yet she had contrived to teach her son to ride, according to the custom of her people. The emperor sequestered his women, but clearly, he hadn't known everything that was going on with them.

"Look! Look there!" Eliar cried.

An eagle flew over, but with walls rising high around them, they quickly lost sight of it.

"Is that Reeve Joss?" she asked. "Or one of the eagles from Argent Hall?"

The metal strip blocking the slit rasped free, drawn away by an unseen hand. In the opening thus revealed appeared dark eyes, narrowed and tucked, rimmed by lovely black eyelashes and outlined with a black cosmetic.

"Enter," Eliar said to Mai with an expansive smile and a bold gesture of welcome, arm swept in a wide curve. "Be welcome to the house of the Haf Gi Ri."

"Sen Eliar!" The woman's voice brought him back to earth. "What means this?"

"I have sworn to take these women in as guests, under our protection."

The eyes blinked. The voice said, "Does anyone else in the family know what you've done, Sen Eliar? Did you ask permission, or warn anyone?"

She answered herself. "No, of course not. Very well. Get out of here."

The words were uttered so curtly that Mai could not help but flinch, despite that she had long since trained herself not to show displeasure or fear or anger.

Eliar cupped his hands over his eyes in a gesture very like obeisance, or prayer. The two companions dumped her gear on the ground, and all three men backed up to a safe distance, then turned and strode away down the alley. Shocked by the rejection, Mai shifted to follow them, but Priya grabbed her arm and caught her before she could take more than one step. Whispers teased her. Looking up, she saw movement behind the grating of the two high windows. A giggle floated on the air. On the other side of the gate, bolts were shot and a heavy weight shifted and moved. The inner door set within the doubled gate opened inward on well-oiled hinges.

"Come! Come! That boy! No need, we'll bring in your belongings."

Sheyshi started to snivel. Mai stood as straight as she could and, with Priya and Sheyshi, walked through into a small if pleasant courtyard the exact width of the alley. In the far right corner stood a dry but very clean fountain. Several planting troughs lined the walls, most of them fallow though one boasted the stalks and spiky leaves of fragrant paradom, not yet in its flowering season. One trellis supported grape vines; another bent under the weight of thickly twining rainflower. Benches offered respite from the sun. Behind her lay the gate through which she had come. Ahead rose the three-storied building, open to the air on its upper stories although she could see only the suggestion of movement behind latticework screens. To her right stood a doubled door, another gate, in a high wall; heavy wagon tracks suggested that, sometimes, wagons were driven in this way. To her left a spacious veranda welcomed her.

"Come in out of the sun," said the woman, who now appeared to be of middle years, with features similar to Eliar's but no pronounced resemblance. A pair of young women stared at Mai with wide-eyed interest, but at a gesture from the woman they hurried past to fetch the gear left out in the alley.

They must leave their footgear at the step, she showed them, and once they stepped up onto the veranda wear cloth slippers, although the ones available did not quite fit. Indoors lay a suite of rooms furnished with pillows, low couches, a writing desk, brushes and ink, and innumerable cupboards, all immaculate. Finest silk covered those pillows, embroidered with birds and flowers in pleasing designs.

"Rest," said the woman. "The girls will bring you something to drink. No one works at this hour. Dinner is eaten at dusk."

The girls brought their belongings up onto the veranda and then brought cool drinks, and pitchers of cool water so they could wash their hands and faces in a copper basin. After this, they were left alone. Exhausted, Mai dozed, and she was glad of it afterward, thinking that to endure an afternoon of fretting would have been too much. After all, she was the one who had convinced Anji to make the gamble.

Later, toward dusk, the same girls brought trays of food, but this time both of the girls arranged the platters on the low table and sat down to eat with them.

Sheyshi tried to serve, but the older of the girls, a young woman a year or two older than Mai, waited even for the slaves to sit before she would portion out the meal. This task she undertook with an exactitude that Mai, accustomed to measuring out a cupful of almonds in the marketplace, could appreciate. Then she and the other girl bent their heads, closed their eyes, and touched fingers to foreheads, with palms turned inward. What words they said, if they said any, Mai could not hear. Afterward, they ate together, but no one spoke.

When Sheyshi made an effort to stand in order to clear the platters, the other girl stopped her and took everything away. Cupboards, opened, revealed mattresses and bedding to spread in the back room. Once this was settled, the young woman took her leave with the regretful smile of a friendly conspirator whose cunning plot has been thwarted. She left through the far gate, the one that did not lead into the alley. The guesthouse itself, it seemed, had no entrance except the veranda. They were, in fact, shut in, betwixt and between: not on the street and yet not truly within the compound either.

The previous night had been a long, restless one, and this night transpired no differently because of the heat and the constant spark of images that flew into her mind's eye and took their time drifting away again. She had to believe Anji would succeed, that he could manage anything, but in the dark, in a strange room, that was sometimes difficult. She would doze, then start awake thinking she heard voices, or the clatter of hooves on stone, or anguished sobbing. The food sat uneasily in her stomach; often she woke burping, and this churning discomfort further disturbed her dreams.

Very late, Priya woke also and held her close. "Rest now, Mistress. Fretting will not change our course, nor will it alter what is to come."

Sheyshi snored.

"Let the peace of the Merciful One embrace you, Mistress."

"It is hard to find peace," said Mai in her smallest voice. "I am afraid."

Priya kissed her. Held tight in those arms, Mai was able to sleep.

NOT LONG AFTER dawn, the women of the family took their morning khaif in the shade of the veranda. A trio of girls came first, bearing trays, and after them a procession of stern women of various ages: young, mature, and aged. Mai looked in vain for the friendly young woman who had brought them dinner last night.

The aroma of paradom melded with the sharp spice of khaif and the scent of freshly baked buns. That combination of spicy khaif and sweetened bread with an even sweeter bean curd core made Mai's heart race uncomfortably, but it was evident by the casual demeanor of the women that this was their accustomed morning feast, the appetizer to their day.

At length, the long silence was broken.

"I trust you rested well?" demanded the wrinkled grandmother over the rim of a very fine, thin ceramic cup.

"Yes, verea. Thank you."

They had pulled around pillows and couches the better to examine her.

"And the meal brought last night was to your taste?"

"Yes, verea."

"You didn't eat all of it. You left half of the soup, all of the cabbage, and one dumpling."

The cabbage had been the nastiest thing Mai had ever tasted, and the sour sting of the soup had made her mouth go numb. She smiled her market smile, and said, "Concern for my husband left me with little appetite, Mistress. I beg your pardon."

"Few like the way we pickle our cabbage," said the old grandmother, "but you've turned a pretty phrase by way of thanking us for our hospitality." She had wispy hair, gone to silver and let loose to straggle over her shoulders. No horns peeped through, and there wasn't enough hair to cover horns had they been there, so after all the Ri Amarah were ordinary people, not the children of demons. In a way, Mai was both disappointed and relieved. "What do you think of these sweet buns? Our baker is the best in the city."

"I've never tasted anything like them before."

Several of the women chuckled.

"A truthful statement!" agreed the old grandmother. "None make them but our own people. Do you cook?"

The question surprised her. "Even my husband did not ask me that before we wed."

"He was obviously not looking for a cook," said the old grandmother tartly. "As any person can see, looking upon you, a pretty girl, with a pretty smile, and pretty manners. Do you cook?"

"I learned to cook the specialties of our house, as do all the girls raised in the Mei clan. I can embroider a sleeve, although none of my work was considered elegant enough to be worn outside the house on festival days. I can mend. I have some small skill at carving, taught to me by my uncle."

"Can you brew a cordial or bind a lotion?"

"I was not taught such things. But I know which herbs to blend as teas and simples for remedies for common complaints."

"Distill and mix perfumes?

"No."

"Prepare silk for dyeing?"

"I've scoured wool, and applied the mordant, and thereafter dyed those skeins. We did that commonly. Our clan raised sheep."

"Can you read?"

"No."

"Paint figures and images?"

"No."

"Can you sing?"

"I have been told I have a passable voice."

"Can you dance the lines?"

"I don't know what that is. The festival dances, certainly. Everyone learns those."

"Can you reel and spin?"

"I have spun thread, and carded wool."

"Silk?"

"Silk is not grown where we come from. We buy silk at the market, but only for bedroom clothes and festival garments."

The women smiled, and one coughed behind a raised hand.

Grandmother was not done. "Can you weave?"

"Not well. Others in my household showed greater skill, so I was sent to other pursuits. Anyway, most of the weaving was done by our—ah—" Recalling Eliar's impassioned speech against slavery, she chose another word. "By our hirelings."

"What did you do?"

"I sold produce in the market."

"With your face uncovered?"

"I beg your pardon?'

"With your face uncovered? It is not the custom of my people for women to walk about in the streets exposed to the world's staring eye."

"I beg your pardon, verea, but it was not the custom in my country for women to conceal their faces."

"No need," said the old grandmother with a pointed smile, "to bite me, young one. It seems to me that those who set you in the marketplace hoped to gain by displaying your pretty face, as much as their produce. Can you keep an accounts book?"

This was too much! "Of course I can!"

"I'm finished," said the grandmother. A woman rose from a bench and took the old woman's cup. Another rose from a padded couch and helped the old grandmother to rise, then led her across the courtyard. None here wore slave bracelets. Mai could not distinguish between servants and family members. They moved off, some gathering up trays and cups and a few moving among the troughs to inspect the dusty soil and the spiky paradom. A pair found brooms and began sweeping the veranda.

A woman of middling years, similar in age to Mai's own mother, knelt beside Mai.

"We've much to do, as you can imagine, verea," she said with a kind smile. "There's a great deal of serious business in these preparations, and all must work if we wish Olossi to be ready to withstand what will come. You'll have to remain here. However, now that Grandmother has approved you, my daughter can keep spoken company with you."

"I thank you," said Mai. "I am called Mai, of the Mei clan. I never had a chance to say so."

Mai saw a resemblance to Eliar in the way the woman narrowed her eyes as she smiled. "It's not our way to exchange names as one might trade goods or coin in the marketplace. I am the mother of Eliar, who brought you here. Ah! Here she is."

The young woman who had smiled so sweetly at Mai last night appeared at the inner gate. She hurried across the courtyard. Her nose was red and her cheeks blushed as from steam, and the skin of her arms was damp to the elbows, pink with heat. Like her brother, she had a handsome face, rather square, with heavy eyebrows, a small nose, and eyes as black as ink and sharp as a brushstroke. Her hair was pulled back away from her face and bound atop her head under a beaded net.

She offered a courtesy to her mother, a dip of the knees, a crossing of the arms before her breast. Then she slid out of the outdoor slippers she was wearing and found a pair of indoor slippers from those lined up along the edge of the veranda. Eliar's mother left together with the other women. They left a single tray with a ceramic pot of khaif and six sticky buns, together with saucers, cups, and serving utensils.

Sheyshi rifled through their belongings and, finding a hem to repair, set to work. Priya sat quietly on a pillow at the edge of the veranda, watching the shadows change as the sun rose above the eastern wall. She had her eyes half closed as she did when she fell into the trance through which one rises to the heart of the Merciful One. Mai did not want to disturb her, so she walked out into the courtyard and sat on a bench in the shade of the grape arbor.

Eliar's sister settled beside Mai and, in a bold show of complicity, tucked her hand into Mai's elbow and pulled her close. "That can't have been fun. Did Grandmother pluck you, one feather at a time?"

"Something like that."

"Grandmother is nothing but an accounts book, figuring up the worth of everyone and every thing she encounters. You mustn't think she has taken a dislike to you. You're our guest, and she will treat you as such."

"Your mother said she had approved me."

"Yes! So she did. It was the cabbage."

From over the walls Mai heard the shouts and laughter of children, as bright and constant as a waterfall. A faint clacking serenaded them, which she identified as folk working at looms. She heard horses, and smelled their ordure. It seemed the stables lay close by. There rose also a tangy scent as of a sharp brew or cordial, and a whiff of a metallic vapor, like skeins of wool being set in alum.

"You can call me Miravia, by the way."

"My name is Mai."

There followed an awkward silence, and tremulous smiles.

"I was up at dawn cooking up a cordial," said Miravia, by way of making conversation. She displayed her arms. That moist sheen of water was evaporating swiftly in the waxing heat. "Hot work, I'll tell you! Steam boiling up! But I've been released from my duties for the day to act as your host."

"I beg your pardon. I do not mean to offend. Am I to stay here?"

"With us? Yes, of course. Eliar offered you guest rights. We are beholden now to meet the obligation."

"I meant, here." She indicated the courtyard and the veranda, meaning as well the chambers beyond.

"In the guest court? Yes, certainly. This is where we entertain all of our friends and guests." Miravia looked around. "It's nicer after the rains come, when there are flowers. It's rather dusty now. Is there anything else you need? The one thing we can't offer you is a bath beyond washing out of a tub of heated water. But I might be able to ask if you can be given an escort down to one of the bathhouses. There are several that my friends have mentioned as being of special quality. You would be safe there, and your escort would remain close by until you are returned to us here."

At some command Mai could not hear, the children quieted. Their silence, compared with the raucous activity that had come before it, was unnerving.

She lowered her voice in deference to the hushed children beyond the wall. "This is a lovely house and courtyard. I am so appreciative. It's just that I'm so restless, wondering what has happened."

"With your husband and his company? Eliar told me. He's quite wild that he wasn't allowed to ride out with them. I'm sorry for it, that you must wait while the men ride out. I feel the same frustration, although I beg you never to tell anyone and especially Grandmother that I ever said so."

"I won't. But don't you—your brother said—" Again, she found herself hesitant to speak, not knowing what was permitted and what might, and might not, be known. "Your brother Eliar mentioned that you visit the prison."

Miravia laughed. "Yes, I have managed that much. Because of the obligation. I bring food to those who are so destitute their families cannot feed them." Her tone had a bittersweet edge. Her smile seemed touched with anger. "Eliar told me that you and I were meant to rescue that reeve, but now even that small task has been taken away."

This passionate speech put Mai at ease. She began to feel that she might say anything, and not fear a sharp rejoinder. "I was surprised, too. It seems the council freed him."

"Someone did, but I don't think it was the council," said Miravia with a frown. "I'm glad for his sake, poor man. It's just . . . I had hoped for my own adventure. I'll have none of those once I am married."

"Is it already arranged?"

"Oh, it was arranged long ago," she said dismissively.

"Do you know him?"

"His clan lives in the north, in Toskala. I've never met him, but we correspond." She sighed. "He's a scholar. Everyone speaks highly of him. I'm sure he's very nice."

"You've never met?"

"Why should we? Our families arranged everything. Anyway, the roads are very dangerous these days. No one dares risk the journey. I ought to have been married last year, but they had to put it off. I'm glad of it. Is that bad?"

Mai could not resist a gaze that shared in equal parts a glimpse of disillusionment and the presence of an ability to be amused at one's own selfish, lost hopes. Like her brother, Miravia had charm and also a core of passion that, it seemed, she had learned to disguise.

"I was meant to marry a youth from another clan," Mai said, "but it came to nothing after the Qin officer decided he wanted to marry me. Of course my father could not refuse him."

"Well! That could be a disaster. Or a triumph."

Mai blushed.

"Just like the Tale of Patience! Love's hopes fulfilled!" Hearing her own voice ring out so clearly, Miravia pressed a hand over her lips and said, through her fingers, "Don't tell Grandmother I said so. I'm not supposed to know such stories. But I do."

"I don't know the Tale of Patience," said Mai. "Will you tell it to me?"

"You don't know it? Everyone knows it!"

"Not where I come from."

"If I tell you the Tale of Patience, you must tell me your story, your life in the faraway land, your marriage, your travels. Your adventures." Like her brother, she had a way of grinning that lit her as with fire from within. "How I want to hear it all!"

"I'll tell you, gladly. Will you have some khaif? I can get a cup."

"Oh, I must not." Seeing Mai's confusion, she added, "I'm not allowed, of course. Only adults can drink khaif."

"Surely you're as old as I am. I'm an Ox. When were you born?"

Miravia bent close, lips almost touching Mai's ear. The intimate gesture made Mai shudder with pleasure. "I was born in the Year of the Deer. But we're not supposed to know about that. The elders call it an ungodly custom, a superstitious way of naming the years instead of numbering them properly. Don't tell anyone. Please."

Mai grasped her hand between hers. "Of course I won't! But I still don't understand. If you're two years older than I am, then how am I allowed to drink khaif, while you are not? Is it because I'm a guest?"

"No, because you're an adult."

Mai shook her head. "I don't understand."

"You're married. And pregnant."

"He-ya! Tay ah en sai!"

The children's voices thundered out in a unison chant, echoed by three unison claps. A woman's powerful voice called a singsong phrase, and the children replied in a penetrating chorus, punctuating each phrase with unison claps. This call and response went on while Mai stared at Miravia and felt as though she had just been overtaken by a sandstorm.

From the veranda, Priya opened her eyes and turned to look toward Mai, a smile blooming on her round, dark face. Sheyshi's head remained bent over her sewing. At length, Mai discovered she still possessed a voice, although it had little enough strength to pierce the roar of the schoolroom chorus beyond the wall.

"What did you say?"

"You didn't know?"

Without warning, a deep clanging resonated out of the earth, so full and heavy that the whole world seemed to vibrate to its call. Mai pressed her hands to the bench. The sound throbbed up through the earth and the stone and into her body. Into her belly. Into her womb.

Could it be true?

Of course it could be true! It was even likely. Probable. Expected.

Yet she could not catch her breath. She could not even think, not with all that noise.

The children's chorus stammered into silence. A little voice began to wail in counterpoint to the shuddering bass roll of the bell.

Miravia rose, face flushed with something other than steam rising off a boiling cauldron. "There cries the Voice of the Walls. May the Hidden One protect us!"

The bell ceased ringing. The sudden, shocked silence lasted long enough for a breath to be drawn in. Then, on those wings, rose a clamor from all around, within the walls and without, as if every person in Olossi cried out at the same time. That roar was its own storm, battering the heavens.

"What does it mean?" Mai stammered.

"The Voice of the Wall is Olossi's alarm bell. When he sings, any person outside the walls knows to retreat to the safety of the walls. Once a year on Festival First Day, we hear him. Today he cries in truth. There must have come news. Bad news."

She looked down into Mai's face, and such a look of pity transformed Miravia's features that Mai began to weep. To think of Anji was to gasp in terror, so she must not think of him. She rose to grasp Miravia's hands.

"How can we find out what happened? Will the council meet? I have to go there."

"We can't. It's forbidden."

"Look!" cried Priya, pointing at the sky.

Eagles.

There were too many to count in one glance, circling above Olossi and then, on unseen winds, soaring away.

Mai had never possessed a reckless temperament. Always she had said to Ti: "The price is not worth what you hope to gain." But Anji had ridden out against impossible odds, because she had counseled the bold choice rather than the cautious one. He might be dead. He might never come back, and she would be alone, pregnant, abandoned in a foreign land, the very thing she had feared most when she left Kartu.

The sound of jangling chimes broke over them. The deep bell took up its tolling cry once again, a reverberation that seemed to crack out of the very roots of the earth. Its voice hammered Mai. Her hands were cold, and her chest had tightened until small shallow breaths were all she could manage.

After all those years tending her sanctuary so she might live with inner peace and no outward trouble, she could not accept waiting any longer.

"I must go to where the council meets. I will walk out those gates and make my way alone if I must, but I will go."

Miravia stared at her. Tears rolled as if jostled loose by the clangor of the bell. "I wish I could say so, and do so," she said in a voice so low Mai could scarcely hear it. "How I admire you! How I envy you!"

"If you can go to the prison, then why not to the council house?"

"To bring food to the prison and the healers' house is all they allow me, and only because the laws of the Hidden One cannot be twisted to forbid it."

"Well, then, dear one, I am sorry for it, if it makes you unhappy."

Miravia was not one to cry. Mai saw by the way she clenched her jaw and sucked in a ragged breath that she was used to swallowing her griefs and troubles, as she did now, but the pain still sat deep in her heart.

"It is nothing, compared to what you face. Wait here. I'll go find Eliar as quickly as I can. He'll know what to do."

"Does he know the law of the marketplace, in the Hundred?"

"Eliar? Surely he does, for you know, he must know it well in order to flout it. Yet I know it well, too. All the women of my people know it. It is one of our chief studies. Why?"

"I am a merchant, just as your people are."

The grin brightened her face. She laughed. "Well, then, my dear friend, let me help you. For there is so little else I am allowed to do."

Mai took her hands. "I'll accept your aid gladly. I swear to you I will repay it one day."