Spirit Gate

30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Come on."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do you think so?"

"You have the look of it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I hear Marshal Alyon is dead."

"So he is."

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

"How did he die?" Joss asked.

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

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

The marshal blinked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I have proof of it."

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

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

"Is he with you here?"

"No."

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

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

"Who told you of this?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hew! The forester, strong and stern,

Swings with the axe the blacksmith forged.

Soon comes carter to haul the logs

To the shop where woodwright plies his turn.

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

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

The poem droned on and on.

Even bramble, healer uses

To give to dyer for handsome blues

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

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

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

"It is," agreed Joss pleasantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The door opened.

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

It hurts to look at her.

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

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

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

"Marit!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're really from Clan Hall?"

"So I am."

"Legate Garrard is dead."

"How do you know?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's your name?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How can that be?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why did you stay?" asked Joss.

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

"Someone had to."

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

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

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

"Where are you going?" asked Pari.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It won't matter," said Pari.

"Why not?"

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

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

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

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

"You don't believe me."

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

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

"I can't argue with that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Can I help you?"

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

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

Four days from now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That is tempting."

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

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

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

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

"What's this?" asked Jonit.

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

"I am?" asked Jonit, looking bewildered.

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

"I am," he said.

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

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

"Assizes Tower."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He blacked out.