Shadow Gate

5

'Here's your pay,' said the stable master, holding out a string of vey. He cleared his throat, shifted his feet, scratched an earlobe. 'You're a good worker, no complaints there. You don't make any trouble. But I have to ask you not to come back tomorrow.'

'I see,' said Mark to her feet. She knew what was coming. She had been through this conversation six times in the weeks she had been in Olossi.

He spoke quickly, to get through the distasteful job. 'Custom is off, and that's besides it being the Flood Rains and fewer folk walking about this time of year due to the weather. Someone is causing trouble on the roads for carters and stablekeepers, for all us honest guilds folk, so we can't keep our hirelings as we might otherwise want in a better year.'

'Custom does seem low. What do you think is causing the trouble?'

He cleared his throat. She glanced up, meeting his gaze.

Images and words churned: she's got that northern way of speaking; what if she's a spy for one of the Greater Houses; I don't trust 'em; they're trying to corral all the trade for themselves and their favored clients; anyway, there's something about her that creeps everyone and no surprise…

She dropped her gaze. He took a step away, as from someone who stank.

'Might be anyone,' he said, backed up against the closed door, 'ospreys diving for a quick snatch, criminals wandering down from the north, folk wanting to drive a wedge into the carters' guild and make trouble for them.' His tone picked up confidence. 'So there it is. Someone has to go. The other hirelings are, eh, well, it's your -ah – northern way of speaking. Makes them uncomfortable. I've had them on hire for years now, so that makes you lowest roll.'

'First to go,' she agreed with a twisted smile. She had replaced the old sandals she'd taken from the shepherd's hut with better ones, but after weeks in the city keeping her gaze down she had

memorized every stain and nick in the worn leather. Her feet were dirty again, toenails black with grime from stable work. 'My thanks. You were a fair employer, I'll give you that.' She took the vey from his hand, trying not to notice how quickly he pulled his hand back, hoping not to touch her. As if she was a demon walking abroad in human skin.

Who was to say she wasn't?

Keeping her head down, she walked through the lower city of Olossi toward the baths she favored. Mud slopped over her feet. At the trailing end of the season of Flood Rains, every surface was layered in muck. The clouds hung low and dark, threatening to spill again.

She paused at the edge of Crow's Gate Field. In the dry season, commerce through the gate would be brisk, and the guards and clerks busy. Today, Sapanasu's clerks lounged under the shelter of a colonnade, seated in sling-back chairs, sipping at musty bitter-fern tea. They laughed and talked, teeth flashing, voices bright. One slapped another on the arm teasingly. A trio had their heads bent close, sharing secrets. One dozed, head back and mouth open, and the others were careful not to jostle her. Their easy camaraderie reminded her of her days at Copper Hall among her fellow reeves. Those had been good days. She'd been happy there. She'd had friends, colleagues, a lover.

Some things, once lost, can never be restored.

Bear this grief, and move on.

She walked toward the river along the wide avenue that paralleled the lower city's wall, such as it was, more a livestock fence than a wall to halt the advance of an army. Her sandals shed dribs and drabs with each step. Aui! Everything stank. Everything dripped. Rich folk hurrying home before dusk made their way through town in palanquins carried by laborers whose brown legs were spattered with mud. The streets in the upper city were paved with stone, so presumably there was less Flood Rains filth there, but the one time she'd ventured past the inner gates she had felt too conspicuous. The lower city hosted all kinds: laborers, criminals, touts and peddlers, country lads and lasses come to make their fortunes in a trade, outlander merchants come to sell and buy, slaves and hirelings and shopkeepers and craftsmen and folk who would sell

anything, even their own bodies, as long as they could grab a few vey from the doing. She might make folk uncomfortable, but in the lower city the watch would not drive her out unless she actually broke the law. x

On a street on the river side of Harrier's Gate stood two ranks of bright green pipe-brush, ruthlessly cut back, which flanked an ordinary pedestrian gate set into a compound wall. A bell hung from a hook on the wall. She rang it, keeping her gaze on her dirty feet.

The door was opened from inside. 'You again. It's extra for a bucket and stool carried to your tub.'

'I know.'

He held out a hand, and she pressed vey worth a week's labor into his very clean palm. He led her along a covered walkway raised above muddy ground and lined with troughs of red and pink good-fortune trimmed into mushroom caps. Water flowed smoothly alongside them through split pipewood. The attendant gave her a sour look when she bypassed the usual changing rooms and common scrub hall.

The private rooms were a series of partitions separating filled tubs heated by hot stones and stoked braziers. In the dry season, awnings could be tied across the scaffolding of the tall partitions for shade. The smallest and cheapest private room lay closest to the entrance and the common baths, where everyone must tramp back and forth; the more expensive were larger and sited at the end of the walkway. The truly wealthy could purchase relaxation at one of five tiny cottages situated within the pleasant garden with its manicured jabi bushes, slumbering paradom, and flowering herboria.

He showed her into the smallest of the private chambers, and watched to make sure she removed her filthy sandals before she stepped up on the raised paving stones alongside the slatted tub. He left the door open until he brought back a bucket of water and a stool.

'You pay extra for pouring bowl, scrub brush, and changing cloth,' he said.

She showed him the ones she had purchased from a peddler, items not too worn to keep in use but certainly nothing a prosperous clansman would carry. The attendant inspected the items, touching the cloth only at the corner, pinched between thumb and forefinger.

'You want the lamp lit?' he asked.

'No. I've light to make my own way out.'

He tested the water with an elbow, sniffed to show it was satisfactory, and finally cut off a sliver of soap. When he shut the door, she had, at last, a measure of peace.

She stripped of everything except her cloak, scrubbed, rinsed, scrubbed, and rinsed, and climbed into the tub. The heated water was not hot enough to redden her skin, as she would have liked, but it was satisfactory. She draped the cloak over the rim, and sank in up to her chin.

The heat melted her. She tilted her head back to rest against the slats and let her senses open.

Someone lit lamps in other chambers, oil hissing as it caught flame. Folk passed clip-clop on the walkway, treading heavily or lightly according to their nature. Business increased at dusk, as the shadows gave cover to men and women who didn't want to be recognized.

She tasted the powerful scent of night-blooming paradom like cinnamon kisses on her lips.

A pair of lovers whispered in one of the cottages, words of longing and promise poured into willing ears. How fiercely they yearned! She sank into memories of Joss, made more bitter and more sweet because she knew he might well yet be alive, older than her now although he had once been younger. She had to let go of her affection for him. He had lived for twenty years without her, grown his own life without her. And anyway, was it even possible to love where there are no real secrets, where no part of your lover is thankfully hidden away from you?

She accepted the grief, and set it aside, because there was work to be done and she had never once in her life turned away from any task laid before her.

In these baths met merchants and guildsmen who desired privacy for certain delicate negotiations. She had come to these baths the first time because she'd heard she could pay coin for a private bathing room, an astounding luxury. Now she ate and drank sparingly of the cheapest gruel and watered rice wine, and slept in a boardinghouse little better than a rathole, so she could keep coming back for the conversation that her unnaturally keen hearing picked up.

She had learned a great deal about the city of Olossi: trade secrets and outside-the-temple dealings; petty rivalries pursued by narrow-minded competitors; militia men deep in schemes for the upcoming Whisper Rains games. Olossi's Lesser Houses and guildsmen were discontented, being ruled by the greed of the Greater Houses, and certain people in their ranks plotted an uprising. A group of reckless young men was engaged in smuggling, more for sport than for profit. A lad and a lass from competing clans who would never ever consider letting them marry made their assignation here, even though – as Marit knew – they were long since being followed by various agents from their own families.

She picked out voices like threads from a multicolored shawl.

'… No one can know we are negotiating. I'll lose the contract if the Greater Houses suspect I'm going outside the official channels. I tell you, we in the Silk Slippers clan have been providing reliable river transport for generations, and what do the Greater Houses do now? They try to force us to lower our rates, greedy bastards…'

'… If you take the cargo across the river after moonset, Jaco's boys will meet you just downstream of Onari's Landing with the knives…'

'If the militia continues to refuse to send out long-range patrols, then the carters' guild has agreed to cooperate with us. We'll send a joint mission to Toskala to appeal to Clan Hall directly, and ask them to intervene to improve the safety of the roads…'

'Eh. Eh. Yes, like that. Ah. Ah.'

'I want you to kill a man.'

Her breath caught in her throat as she strained to hear.

'That would be murder. Against the law.' The other man's voice had a slight hoarse timbre, as though he had once inhaled too much smoke.

'Do as I ask, and no charges will ever be brought against you.'

'How can you possibly guarantee that?'

'We control the council. It will never get past a vote.'

'The council does not control the assizes if the reeves bring me in to stand trial.'

'Argent Hall will not charge you. They have a new marshal, hadn't you heard? He'll not interfere.'

'The hells. You sound certain, Feden. Considering what manner of crime you're asking me to commit.'

'You haven't asked the name of the target. Or why he needs killing.'

'I want to know first why Argent Hall won't interfere if it gets wind of the killing. Surely the dead man's clan will seek justice.'

'Argent Hall is too busy looking for some manner of treasure that my allies in the North seek. Something valuable taken out of the Hundred years ago that they have reason to believe has been found and brought back.'

The smoky-voiced man's laugh was sarcastic. 'Silk? Gems? A rare cutting from one of the Beltak temples' Celestial Golds? A stallion for stud?'

'I don't know.' This said brusquely. 'It's not my responsibility, but if you want to keep your eyes open at the border crossing it wouldn't hurt to get word of such a thing before anyone else did. I don't mind telling you, I don't trust that new marshal, Yordenas.'

The other man hrhmed thoughtfully under his breath. He seemed distracted, perhaps spinning out fantasies of treasure and wealth as the other man – Feden – went on impatiently.

'I don't mind telling you I think the entire cursed mob of them are hatching a plan to overthrow the Greater Houses.'

'The reeves of Argent Hall?'

'Neh, neh, the Lesser Houses and those ungrateful guildsmen. After everything we've done to make Olossi prosperous and safe! If we kill just one man, one of the ringleaders, it may make the rest hesitate.'

'Because they'll see you can get away with it?' asked Smoky Voice with sharp amusement. 'Don't they already know that you in the Greater Houses can do what you cursed well please?'

Water splashed on rock and poured away as hands emptied a bucket over stone. A door slid closed with a slap.

'What if we ran away?' the youth demanded in a husky whisper. 'We could go to Toskala, make a new life there for ourselves.'

'Dearest,' she replied breathlessly, still recovering from her drawn-out pleasure, 'the roads aren't safe. Anyway, they'd send agents after us. How can we hide from them?'

That piece of practicality silenced the idiot, thank the gods. Marit

wound a path past his unsteady breathing, past the chuckling of the young fools planning their latest smuggling venture for no better reason than the lark of evading the militia, pinched out the low-voiced argument of a man sure sure sure that the gift he had proffered to the Incomparable Eridit had been rejected because she thought herself unworthy of his attentions while his friends, lounging with him in the baths, assured him rumor had it she wicked anyone who was to her taste, so gifts were meaningless because she had rejected him merely because he was one ugly Goat.

There.

'I'll do it, then. But if you get any word about what the treasure is, you'll let me know.'

'Don't tangle with the Northerners, Captain. Don't try to take what they want. You'll regret it.'

'Only if they know I have it. If the Argent Hall reeves are so busy patrolling the Barrens and the Spires, who's to say they might miss what passes right under their talons, eh?'

'Do you envy the reeves, Captain? Is that resentment I hear?'

'I have a sword, and you have your coin and your clan's power. Don't think we're friends to share confidences. Just allies of convenience, that's all.'

'You'll be glad enough I approached you, come the end of this Fox year. Mark my words. Come Goat year, you'll value this alliance. You'll thank me.'

She hauled herself out of the tub and toweled dry with the changing cloth. She dressed quickly, and slung her bag across one shoulder; it was everything she owned and needed, the essentials of her life – or her death – pruned back to almost nothing. She waited, listening for the smoky rasp of his breathing, and followed. She did not need to stay close to keep track of him. She had been a good reeve in her day, able to sniff out trouble without knowing precisely where the rot grew, but she could now follow the odor of dishonesty and cheating and corruption and depravity straight to its putrid source in a venal heart.

The compound had half a dozen gates set at discreet intervals. He left by the one closest to Harrier's Gate, and by his gait and posture – and the rank his associate had given him – she placed him as a militia man, dedicated to Kotaru the Warrior and still in service

to the Thunderer. He wasn't a fool. He felt an itch in the center of his back where her gaze had fixed, and once out on the street he paused to sweep his gaze along the passersby, most of them hurrying home with lamps to light their way. She halted some ways back, a nondescript traveler among many, but lifted her eyes to meet his.

As corrupt as they come, and willing to sell out his duty in exchange for wealth, yet even so, his were the shadows of a small heart ruled by the banal greed of a man pinched by jealousies and resentments.

He staggered, rubbing his head as if he'd been struck a blow. She stepped into the shadows. After a puzzled glance at the street, he strode to the closed gates and gave an order to the guards on duty. They let him out the postern gate and barred it back up tight, and she had no means by which to force an exit. She was not ready to draw attention to herself in a city whose masters had apparently allied themselves with the shadow out of the north. If they discovered her, she would find herself with wolves hard on her heels and a cloaked man called Yordenas ruling Argent Hall, not so far away.

As long as the others did not find her, she could continue her investigation. So she kept her head down, and worked gathering information in the same slow, circuitous way.

Master Feden she tracked to the merchant house marked with a quartered flower, just as the shopkeeper had described. But she could not reach him; he guarded his privacy too well and she never encountered him again at the baths. It was days before she identified the captain as a man called Beron, commander of the contingent stationed at the border crossing on the Kandaran Pass, which led southwest into the Sirniakan Empire. By then, a well-known merchant had vanished from town, and while gossip whispered that he'd been murdered, or decamped after a string of humiliating gambling losses, nothing could be proven.

She rode west on the trail of Captain Beron.

Caravans did not travel in the season of the Flood Rains; folk tended their fields and stuck close to home. She traveled through the West Country, mey upon mey of empty road and sprawling vistas of uninhabited high plateau and stretches of shoreline. The majestic Spires thrust heavenward in the far distance. In an isolation that

magnified one's daunting insignificance, it was easy to forget how difficult it had become to converse with ordinary folk in an ordinary manner because you did come to desire the simple everyday contact of one person chatting with another about the consequential and trivial matters of life.

Yet on every stop she made on West Spur to buy a bag of grain or a bladderful of ale, she was reminded all over again that people did not feel comfortable around her. To minimize these contacts, she spent more time foraging for food. Twice, Warning insisted on flying free, stranding her for a day each time in the wilderness but then returning. Mark had a very good idea that the horse was visiting Guardian altars. When she thought of the fountains that lay at the heart of every altar, her throat burned with a physical longing. Yet she dared not enter a Guardian altar, where the others could find her.

So the journey passed.

One evening, riding through a series of isolated valleys, she spotted a campfire in the trees. After dismounting, she led Warning under the cover of pine and tollyrake. Alone, she walked forward alongside the road. Night wrens queried, cicadas buzzed, evening chats chivered. Her hearing had sharpened so much that it seemed she could hear every mouse creeping and night cat padding through the undergrowth.

Ahead, the forest was cut back into a clearing rigged out as a caravan rest point with troughs, hitching posts, fire pits, and a pair of corrals. She surveyed the open space. Aui! Two eagles slumbered upright on opposite sides of the clearing, talons fixed around logs mounted as perches. One wore a hood; the other did not, but its head was tucked against a wing.

The campfire burned well back in the trees. She approached cautiously. Because of her newly acute vision, she was able to step around clumps of thorn-fern and whispering thistle and avoid roots grown out from the earth or branches torn free in the recent storms.

A man and a woman sat on either side of a briskly burning fire, their faces in light and their backs in shadow. Short cloaks hung from their shoulders to keep off the rain, should it come. By the cut of their leathers and the tight trim of their hair, they were reeves.

The man gesticulated as he spoke, hands cutting circles in the air.

'I say we abandon Argent Hall. There's nothing we can do, Dov. Nothing. Garrard is dead. We get out while we still can.'

'We can't just abandon people. The fawkners will never go. They won't leave eagles with no one to tend to them. There must be something to salvage. Something left we can do.'

He laughed bitterly. 'We lost. Argent Hall is the playing ground for bullies, cowards, thieves, and murderers now. You would think that every crooked reeve has flown in and made himself a cozy nest in our lovely hall.' He choked down a sob.

She reached out to touch his hand. 'Garrard's death isn't your fault.'

'If I'd called out sooner-' he whispered.

She slapped him under the chin. He reared back, and she jumped to her feet. 'There's nothing you could have done! How many times do I have to tell you?'

He rubbed his jaw. 'We could fly to Clan Hall, give them our report. Surely they ought to have sent someone to investigate. They should want to know why Yordenas swings the marshal's staff yet we've never seen feather or talon of his eagle.'

The woman slumped down on the log. 'Clan Hall! Didn't they authorize half the transfers of those criminals into Argent Hall? Maybe they're up to their beaks in the whole corrupt enterprise.' She shoved a stick into the fire, then cursed when the edifice of burning scaffolding cracked and tumbled, spilling sparks and spits of red-hot wood everywhere.

They both leaped up, stamping and laughing in the way of old comrades who can down a mug of ale and enjoy a bowl of porridge after exhuming a rotting corpse from the pit where the murderer buried it.

'Eridit's Tit! That's burned my arm.' The man brushed himself down. His face, turned into the light, had a grim pallor. 'Eiya! Dov, what will we do?'

She sat back down, kicked a charred stick into the fire pit, and picked up a new branch to poke around until she rousted fresh flames. 'See if it's true that this Captain Beron is in league with Argent Hall in some murky doings. I just don't get it.'

'What's to understand? There's a larger conspiracy boiling under our noses. Yordenas is taking orders from the north. He's got his

cronies hunting into the Barrens for this "treasure" everyone is whispering of. Gold. Gems. Silk.'

The woman shook her head. Like the man, she had the look of an experienced reeve not much older than Marit had been, in the prime of her reeve service. Tall and lean, she had a firm grip as she grabbed his wrist.

'Teren. Listen. Maybe it isn't an object. Maybe this "treasure" everyone whispers of is a goal. Why take over Argent Hall with their thugs and their squirks if they didn't want the power to twist the hall and the eagles and the reeves to their own purposes? To rule the Hundred?'

'Neh. I think it's an object, all right. I think they're the greediest scum that ever mucked a pond, looking to make themselves rich. I think-'

'Hush.'

She rose and drew her short sword. He eased back and picked up his baton from the ground behind him, held it under his cloak. They were not looking toward the place Marit had hidden herself.

The faint sounds of animals at their nightly rounds had ceased. Nothing moved. At first, Marit saw only the blink of late-season fireflies twinkling in the trees opposite her, but it was actually a woman stepping out of the shadows and blinking as her eyes adjusted to the firelight.

'I saw your fire,' she said. 'You're reeves out of Argent Hall.'

'We are-' began the man.

The other reeve cut in. 'How do you know?' She did not lower the point of her sword. 'You don't mind my wondering why you're wandering out here in the wilderness alone, I am sure.'

'Teren, son of Filava. Dovit, daughter of Zasso.' She had a mild voice and a mild face, round like the moon and pleasingly dark.

Teren choked out a word and stepped back, stumbling over the root he'd been sitting on.

Dovit said, in a quavering voice, 'Who are you?'

The woman wore an undyed linen tunic with leggings beneath, humble clothing that was also practical for a traveler. The cloak she wore was so black it seemed it might dissolve to become the shadows. Oddly, she carried a writing brush and a scrap of rice paper.

Without answering, she bent her gaze to the paper and scratched a few efficient lines.

Like rag dolls let go by a careless child, they dropped: first Teren, and a breath later Dovit, her sword clanging on a rock as it fell from slack fingers. The pen ceased scratching. From the clearing, two angry squalls erupted. Wings beating, an eagle chuffed in distress. Afterward, everything settled back into an uncanny stillness.

The reeves lay with limbs asplay, Dovit's face pressed into the ground and Teren's hidden by the hump of root over which he had collapsed. Branches snapped on the fire. Flames hissed.

'Who is out there?' asked the woman in a sharper voice. It wasn't fear that edged her tone but a complex pressure of emotion rather like a cook who surveys her well-ordered kitchens with the sudden suspicion that a mouse is hiding behind one of the pots and means to nibble at the feast she has so perfectly prepared and laid out for her guests.

Mark sure as the hells did not reply, or move, or even breathe more than a shallow breath held, leaked out, and held again. She thought of how bright her cloak was, white as death, and she willed it to be as still and silent as the death that creeps unawares, never seen before it enfolds its unsuspecting victim.

How long that woman stood there Mark could not guess, but it might have been half the night. Cursed if Mark was going to reveal herself no matter how badly her legs ached from standing in one place. She could be more stubborn than anyone, and in the end she was.

Finally, the woman moved away into the trees, and Mark allowed herself to lean against a tree trunk, not a single step, until the world grayed toward dawn. She heard a crackling beyond the trees, and an eagle passed low over the forest. With a grimace, she popped the worst kinks out of her stiff limbs, then ventured cautiously to the dead fire.

The two reeves had no pulse and no breath, their spirits utterly vanished. They had flown beyond the Spirit Gate. She searched their bodies but could find no dart or needle that might have pricked poison in them. They had packs set on the ground and now crawling with bugs; inside she found a blanket, reeve's gear for tending harness, a set of clean and mended laborer's clothing for off-duty

wear, and travel food: rice balls wrapped in se leaves, nai paste, a pair of sprouting yams, and a pouch full of nuts.

'May your spirits go gently under the gate,' she whispered. 'My thanks for this gift. I'll seek justice for you, comrades.'

She hoisted the packs and backtracked cautiously until she saw Warning trotting toward her along the road. Well enough. She took the mare's lack of concern as a good omen. She scrambled up to the road and caught the reins. 'Dead,' she said to the mare. 'I hope you don't mind the extra weight.'

She could not get out of her mind the way they had both simply fallen, as though that woman was a demon in truth, a lilu who had sucked their spirits right out of their bodies even though she hadn't been touching them. Gods, that was a frightening thing!

Aui! And what of their eagles?

The hooded eagle lingered in the clearing, unable to fly because it was blind, but the other eagle had vanished. No doubt it was the raptor who had flown at first light. Eagles were not sentimental beasts. Reeves often joked that eagles jessed their reeves, not the other way around, since everyone knew that an eagle chose its reeve. Once a reeve had died, her eagle did not maunder or grieve. They departed for Heaven's Ridge, and in time – weeks or months or years – they might return to jess a new reeve.

The hooded eagle could not fly. It was in distress, calling out, wings extended, hackling, and feathers flushed. Marit had lost her own eagle. She was not aboutjio let this raptor starve or be slaughtered.

She balanced her staff in a firm grip in her left hand and fixed her knife in her right.

'Here, now, sweetheart,' she said in her most soothing voice, but an unjessed eagle is a wild eagle. The raptor struck at the sound of her voice or perhaps a tremor felt in the earth. Marit danced aside. She lunged for and grabbed the slip. No time to strike the hood properly. She slashed with the knife, and cursed if the eagle didn't hook the plume with a talon and cast the loosened hood straight to the dirt.

They stared at each other, Marit standing stock-still and the eagle glaring with utter fury from under her ridged brows.

The raptor struck so fast Marit didn't even have time to scream.

Rain poured into her mouth, pounding the earth on all sides, hammering her flesh. She cursed and rolled over, spitting out a throatful of water. A big body appeared out of the storm, and suddenly the rain lessened because she lay in a rain shadow under the shelter of pale wings.

She sat up, opening and closing her hands. She sat in a puddle of slop. Her butt was cold, and her feet were bare. Several horrific rents had been opened in her clothing, and her skin beneath the ripped fabric was scarred. But she was whole. She was breathing. She was alive.

If she could call herself alive.

The eagle had flown.

The rain slackened, quieted, ceased. Wincing, she got to her feet. The eagle's hood lay on the ground about five strides away, covered with mud and scraps of vegetation but a good cleaning and oiling and a new slip would fix it. Her sandals were gone. She wiped water out of her eyes. Warning folded her wings and flicked her ears as though to say, 'Can we go yet?' The two reeve packs remained fixed to the saddle where Mark had tied them to the feed bag. In the clearing, all the flowers were gone.

'Lady's Tits,' she swore under her breath. She walked back into the forest, marking a forked tollyrake here and a tall pine there as landmarks to make her way back to the campfire.

'The hells!'

Animals and rain and wind had reached them first, but not even animals and the Four Mothers worked this quickly. Two greasy skeletons lay tumbled in the undergrowth, bits of soft tissue and fibrous muscle still attached but most of the flesh gone. One was headless, but she located the skull about five strides away. It was missing teeth, and she backtracked and found them beneath the neck of the remains. Their leather vests and trousers were in remarkably good shape, smeared with dirt and layered with foliage but otherwise intact. The woman's sturdy reeve boots still had foot bones – and scraps of desiccated flesh – inside them. Cursing, she emptied them and measured the boots against her own bare feet, and when she saw they would be a fair fit, she stumbled off to one side and vomited. The good ale in her drinking gourd had soured. The rice balls in the nai leaves had turned to mold.

'What is happening to me?' she cried, slapping a hand repeatedly against the ground, but her tantrum accomplished nothing except to make her hand hurt.

She rested her head against the bole of a tree, trying to get her breathing under control. The rain cleared off, and as night fell, a cold and bitter wind blew down off the unseen mountains to the southwest.

The season changes. Only late in the year do you feel the chill all the way down to your bones.

Marshal Alard used to say, 'If you have to choose between what seems the most reasonable explanation, and what the cold, hard evidence reveals, go with the evidence.'

The reasonable explanation was that she had slept through a day and a night recovering from the shock of what she had seen and from the eagle's attack.

When she thought it through, she had to believe that the eagle had killed her in its fury. The evidence of the corpses and the weather bore out the unlikely supposition that months had passed.

Guardians can't die.

They can kill, but they can't be killed.

Now, there was a recipe for corruption.

She rose to shake out her clothing. Why, in the tales, were the Guardians always honorable and upright, the upholders of a justice that is never disturbed by their own petty jealousies or grand descents into lust and greed? How honest were the tales, really?

What had Sediya sung? The cloaks rule all, even death.

Who would believe her, if she walked in off the street into Clan Hall and claimed to be a woman murdered nineteen years ago? Who would even remember her?

One man might.