Spirit Gate

3

JOSS WAS DRINKING hard and had sitting on his lap a comely girl who served wine, cordial, and, if you were generous enough and to her liking, certain of her favors. A tremendous shout had risen up from the nearby playing ground, and the boy had just run in from the back to announce the current score on the game-dammit if his team wasn't losing again-when the door of the Pig's Bladder banged open. Light assaulted him. He shut his eyes, but opened them when the girl leaped to her feet. She grabbed her tray as a pair of swarthy men in reeve's leathers charged up to confront him.

"Commander wants you right now," said the first, a slender, nimble fellow as mean as a crate of starving snakes. He grinned mockingly at the young woman, who gave him a scowl in reply. "Not as handsome as him, am I?" he asked her. "Even though he is old enough to be your dad."

She flushed. "There are Devouring girls at the temple who make it a special holy duty to service men made ugly by the gods' mercy. Or like you, by spite." She tipped back her pretty chin and sashayed back to the bar.

Joss watched her hips sway as she walked away. The hells! He'd just spent the better part of the afternoon coaxing her away from the attentions of a much younger suitor. He downed the rest of his cup and slammed it down. "The Commander can stick it up-"

The barmaid glanced back at him, winked with a further, suggestive twitch of her ass, and turned to set her empty tray on the bar. There came the younger suitor, gods curse him, sidling up to her with a smile on his callow face.

Joss glared at the two reeves. "I agreed to work the entire festival in exchange for the first four days of the new year off. Ghost Festival ended three days ago. That means I'm still off duty for two more days. Free and clear. That was the agreement."

"She won't be free, a merchant like her, doing it for coin," said the Snake, nodding toward the bar. "But I hear Sadit has a thing for you and will give you a roll for nothing whenever her husband's not around."

"Shut up," said Joss, coming up off the bench with an arm cocked.

"You're drunk," said Peddo mildly as he pushed the other two men apart. He was by many years the youngest, broadest across the chest, and as placid as a well-fed lion. "Begging your pardon, Legate Joss. Commander's noticed that you've been drinking more lately. So have some of us others."

"I hear he has nightmares," said the Snake. "Most likely it's some lilu haunting him, for I swear to you that man cannot keep his cock from wandering into every henhouse. I hear he calls out a woman's name in his dreams-"

Joss shook off Peddo's hand and slugged the Snake. The backward stumble, the smash against the bench, the crash: those were good sounds. Peddo sighed, the barmaid laughed, and the Snake spat blood to the floor. Joss tossed a handful of coins on the table to cover the damage and staggered outside into the glare of the awful sun, which had it in for him today. From the direction of the playing field, the crowd roared appreciatively.

There was a neighborhood well in the middle of the humble square. He got his bearings, made it halfway before he realized he was veering off course, corrected three more times to avoid men bent under yoked baskets, and finally closed the gap and grabbed the lip of the well to stop himself falling over.

"Can I help you, ver?" The speaker was a remarkably handsome woman of middle years who had come with three children and eight sturdy wooden buckets slung two by two over stout poles. She had a hierodule's amorous eye and no doubt had served the Devourer in her youth. You could tell it by the way she looked him over with his reeve leathers and whatever else she saw, including the tattoos that circled his wrists and marked him as a child of the Fire Mother.

"Just water," he said hoarsely, noting the line of scalloped waves tattooed down the length of her right arm, marking her as a child of the Water Mother. With his best smile he added, "I thank you, verea."

"Oh, it sure is nothing," she said with amusement as she winched up a full bucket for him.

He upended it over his head. The cold water was better than a slap. She jumped back laughing as the children shrieked with delight and began to ask, clamoring, if they could do the same.

Peddo strode out of the tavern, rubbing his forehead as though to wipe away a headache, and stopped short when he saw Joss dripping. "Does it help any?"

"The hells! Does that sun have to be so bright?"

"Do you come here often?" the matron asked.

She had a pleasing figure, ample in all the right places and suggested to good effect in the worn but carefully mended taloos wrapped around her curves. The fabric was a soothing sea-green silk that did not hurt his eyes.

"Often enough," he said.

Peddo caught him by the elbow, made his courtesies, and dragged him off. Because he was still drunk, there was no point in resisting.

"Can you never stop flirting?" demanded Peddo.

It was a stupid question, which Joss did not bother to answer. Anyway, a khaif seller had set up his cart where the afternoon shadows gave the man some respite against the cruel sun. The fellow had a brisk business going, despite the heat. Joss made Peddo stop, and he downed two mugfuls before the buzz hit and he could begin to shake off the wine.

"It's healthier for a man to visit the temple when the Devouring urge takes him," said Peddo.

"Won't."

Peddo coughed, looking uncomfortable for the first time. "Yeh. Er. So I had heard. Sorry."

Nothing to do with those dreams, thought Joss sourly as the mud cleared and his sight and thoughts clarified. Neh, it's everything to do with them. Nineteen years of bad luck, and dreams to remind him of how one rash act in youth could destroy what you cherished most and scar your life forever.

They started off again through the tidy streets of Flag Quarter.

"What in the hells does the Commander want from me, if you don't mind my asking? Considering the Commander was the one who made the agreement that I would get these days off."

"Don't know," admitted Peddo cheerfully.

Despite the heat and the hour and the crowd gathered at the playing ground, the streets of Toskala were not at all quiet, not as they had been a few days ago during the festival, the ghost days that separated the ashes-end of the dead year from the moonrise that marked the beginning of the new. Everyone was out, eager to get on with their business after the restrictions of the ghost days. There were, indeed, more people than usual in the streets because over the last many months a steady trickle of refugees had filtered in from neighboring regions: mostly northeastern Haldia, the Haya Gap, north and west Farhal, and these days a handful from the Aua Gap and regions around the town of Horn. Come to think of it, that handsome matron at the well had spoken with a western lilt. Maybe she, too, was a refugee, fled from the plague of lawlessness that had engulfed the north.

And yet she had smiled and laughed. How could anyone smile and laugh who had seen the terrible things he had himself seen, or heard about? How could anyone smile and laugh who knew what was coming, everything his nightmares warned him of? Getting drunk gave him a moment's peace, but that was all.

Aui! The hells! Why shouldn't she laugh, if she wanted to? If it made her day easier? Folk would go about their lives once they had a measure of peace, even if they guessed that peace might only be temporary.

"Busy today," remarked Peddo, surveying the scene as they walked.

People stepped up onto the covered porches of shops, took off their sandals, and brushed past the hanging banners whose ideograms and painted representations advertised the nature of the shop within: bakery; sandals; bed nets; savory pies; candies; apothecary; milled and unmilled grains. A pair of peddlers trundled past pushing handcarts piled high with dried fish. The pungent smell hit Joss hard between the eyes like a kick to the head, but they were already gone beyond, turning down an alley. A young woman sauntered past. Over her right shoulder she balanced a pole from which hung unpainted round fans. Her twilight-blue silk taloos was wrapped tightly around exceedingly shapely breasts.

"Are you still that drunk," asked Peddo, "or do you just never stop?"

"What?" Joss demanded.

Peddo shook his head as they negotiated a path around the clot of servants and slaves that had gathered around an oil seller set up at the corner. Squeezing past, the two reeves swung out onto the main thoroughfare and headed toward the distant towers that marked Justice Square. Banner Street was lined with prosperous shops that wove, painted, and sold banners and flags of all kinds. Various side streets advertised dye merchants, paint merchants, ink merchants, paper makers, and fan makers and painters. Business was brisk. Walkways were crowded with customers ducking in and out of shops. Carts rolled past laden with bags of rice being brought in from the wholesale markets in outlying Fifth Quarter. Ideograms were stamped on the burlap: first-quality white; new-milled; on the stalk; ordinary yellow; first-quality yellow; old rice. A pair of surly chairmen pushed through, their customer concealed by strips of tinkling bells whose muted chiming alerted the people ahead to make way.

A pack of children wearing the undyed tabards common to youngsters attending one of the Lantern's schools sang in unison one of those tiresome learning songs as they padded down the avenue under the supervision of three elderly matrons. These are the seven treasures! Virtue! Conviction! Listening! Compassion! The silver-haired woman in the lead had a face to die for, much lived in, lined, and weathered; she possessed an astonishing grace and dignity. She must have stopped traffic in her youth and was doing a pretty good job of it today, too.

Generosity! Discernment! Conscience!

She caught him staring-women who had lived that long didn't miss much-and smiled with reciprocal admiration. She knew how to flatter a man with a look alone.

"By the Lantern!" swore Peddo. "That's my grandmother!"

Hearing Peddo's voice, she shifted her gaze. "Peddo!" she called with cheerful surprise, raising a hand to mark that she had seen him, but she did not leave the head of the line. The children's piercing voices-they were very young-cut off any other greeting she might have thrown their way. These are the eight children: the dragonlings, the firelings, the delvings, the wildings, the lendings…

"That was my grandmother you were ogling!" said Peddo, elbowing him to get his attention back as the children marched away down the avenue toward wherever the hells they were going.

Joss laughed. The headache was wavering; perhaps it wouldn't hammer home after all. Banner Street gave onto Battle Square, where about fifty refugees stood in line at one of the city's rice warehouses for their weekly allotment. Youths wearing the badge of the street sweepers' guild worked the margins with their brooms. There were a fair number of militia standing at guard. Joss gave the square a brief and comprehensive sweep with his gaze.

"Pretty calm," said Peddo, who had done the same thing. It was reflexive to do so. No reeve survived long who couldn't size up a situation fast.

Not unless the situation was a perfect ambush, impossible to predict or protect against, especially if you had gone in alone, without anyone to back you up.

"You okay?" Peddo asked. "Got a headache?"

"Just the sun," said Joss, blinking back the resurgent pain as they headed up Silk Street.

They passed weavers' workshops and drapers and a dozen side streets advertising fine netting, coarse netting, kites, festival streamers, ribbons and tassels, and there a pair of competing bathhouses on opposite corners. A lad was selling hot savory pies from a deep tray steadied by a strap slung around his neck. Next to him a man peddled still-slithering eels out of a pair of wooden buckets.

A line of firefighters tramped out from a side street on their rounds, their commander riding at the rear on a street-smart bay gelding. The men had their fire hooks and pikes resting on their left shoulders. They were sweating in fitted leather coats and brimmed leather helmets.

Now, after all, Peddo gave a couple of the younger, good-looking ones the once-over. "Whoop," he muttered under his breath.

"Can't you ever stop?" Joss asked.

Peddo had a sweet grin that gave him a mischievous look at odds with his normally sober expression. "You're the one with the reputation."

Silk Street dead-ended into Canal Street, the widest avenue in the city. The canal side of the street was cluttered with quays and modest piers, and there was more traffic on the water than on the paved avenues to either side. At the Silk Street gate, the two reeves cut across to the brick-paved walkway reserved for official business. Here they were able to stride along briskly. Joss had nothing to say; the headache had slaughtered his words. Peddo pulled the brim of his cap down to shade his eyes against the sun. Across the canal lay Bell Quarter. Orchid Square was visible, swollen with folk decked out in bright silks and cottons. There was some kind of singsong festival going on there, most likely prayers for rain. It was impossible to make out words over the noise of rumbling carts, tramping feet, shouting vendors, arguing shopkeepers, barking dogs, and the nerve-shattering whine of knives being sharpened on a spinning whetstone at the nearest corner.

Nausea engulfed Joss's stomach and throat, suddenly and overwhelmingly. He lurched off the brick path, ducked under the separation rail, shoved rudely through the traffic, and made it to the sewage channel before he was sick.

After he was finished, Peddo handed him a scrap of cloth to wipe his mouth. Folk had paused to point and stare, seeing him in his reeve's leathers, but Peddo had a pleasant way of smiling that caused them to disperse rapidly. Joss eased to his feet, tested his balance, and groaned.

"Better?" asked Peddo.

"I suppose."

"There are those among us who just never do seem to learn that wine and khaif do not mix."

"We're always hopeful," said Joss with a faint smile, "that this time will be different."

There was, after all, a water seller just a few paces away. Joss pulled a pair of vey off his string of cash and got two dipperfuls of water to cleanse his mouth.

"Come on," said Peddo. "The Commander didn't just ask for you. The Commander's waiting on you."

That didn't sound good. It didn't look any better when they reached Guardian Bridge at the base of the rocky promontory that marked the confluence of the Istri and its tributary. The approach to the bridge lay in the open space where Bell Quarter, Flag Quarter, and the canal running between them ended at the locks. Guardian Bridge spanned the central spillway pool and the deeply cut locks. As usual, there was a crowd waiting to get on the bridge, but reeves had free passage along a separate narrow corridor roped off over the high arch of the bridge. They could move quickly while everyone else waited.

Out on the spur, they climbed steps carved into the rock to the north-northwest corner entrance onto the wide-open ground of Justice Square, the largest open space within the five official quarters of Toskala. From here you couldn't see the river to either side because the view was blocked by four built-up complexes. Past Assizes Tower and the militia barracks to the southeast could be glimpsed the high prow of the promontory with its bright banners and the humble thatched-roof shelter that shielded Law Rock from the elements. When you were standing out there on that prow of high rock, ready to lift, it was like sailing, with the two rivers joining in a swirl of currents below.

Peddo turned left and entered through the gate into Clan Hall with its skeletal watchtowers, two vast lofts, and parade ground within. The reeve standing watch had a broken arm dressed up in a sling. Seeing the pair, he grinned, displaying a missing tooth.

"Commander is waiting for you, Legate Joss. I'm thinking you're in up to your neck."

"What's changed, then?" asked Joss, getting a chuckle from the other man.

Peddo shook his head with a frown.

These days Clan Hall stood mostly empty, with the overburdened and thin-stretched forces of reeves out on constant patrol of the beleaguered countryside. There was only one reeve and his eagle on watch up in White Tower, but when Joss shaded his eyes and stared up he saw an eagle spiraling in the updraft far above the promontory.

A young and quite attractive reeve was having trouble with her bating eagle out in the parade ground. Joss would have paused to help, but the hall loft master, standing back to advise with arms crossed and an amused expression, seemed to have the situation in hand. The young one wore long leather gloves wrapped up past her elbows, but she was wearing her sleeveless leather vest with no shirt beneath, laced up tightly over a slender but muscular frame. She glanced their way, tracking their movement until the squawk of her flustered eagle yanked her attention back.

"They do it on purpose to get you to look at them," said Peddo as they hurried past. "I don't mean 'you' as in men in general. I mean you in particular."

"Upset their eagles?"

"No, no! Dress like that."

"How do you know?"

"I'm the one they talk to," he said innocently. "You should hear the things they say."

"You won't get me to fall for that one."

The garden court was quiet except for the chatter of the fountain. The doors to the commander's cote stood open. An old reeve, retired from flying duty, sat at his ease cross-legged on the porch studying a half-finished game of kot. He looked up, saw them, and shook his head in wry warning.

They stepped up to the porch, tugged off their boots, and stepped up and over the threshold onto the polished wood floor of the audience chamber.

The Snake had gotten there before them. He was lounging on a padded bench, slouched back with legs stretched out and ankles crossed and resting on a single heel, arms folded over his chest, and a sneering grin on his ugly face. His lip was bruised, and swelling. Joss opened his mouth to comment, but when he saw the commander's grim look, he thought better of it.

The commander nodded at them from behind her low table. Her crutch had been set on the floor parallel to the pillow she sat on, which meant she expected not to get up any time soon. Definitely, yes, she was annoyed at someone, and when she indicated that Peddo was to sit, Joss guessed that Peddo was not the target.

"So nice of you to join us, Legate Joss," she said so kindly that he winced. "I've had a complaint."

Peddo hesitated, then went to sit on the bench beside the Snake. Joss was left standing, an awkward position now that the other four people in the room were seated.

"This is Master Tanesh."

"I remember your case, ver," he said politely to the merchant seated cross-legged on a brocade pillow to the right of the commander's desk.

"Considering the trouble you caused me out at my estate in Allauk, I should think you would." The man wore an overtunic of a florid purple brocade silk, embroidered with silver- and gold-thread flowers in case you were wondering how rich he really was. And if there was still then any doubt, it could be put to rest by admiring the strings of pearls adorning the loops of his threefold braid.

"I simply followed the law, ver.'When a person sells their body into servitude in payment for a debt, that person will serve eight years and in the ninth go free.' "

"In the ninth to go free," agreed the man, raising his forefinger as though he were lecturing an ignorant apprentice, "but there's nothing said in the law about additional debt run up in the meantime, which must be repaid in coin or in service, which all agree is fair. I was genuinely shocked by the decision. I don't mind saying that I was offended by it as well, bullying my factor as this reeve did, and humiliating him in front of the witnesses just because he could."

"The law is clear," said Joss, who was beginning to get irritated all over again although he could not show it. The merchant's factor had possessed just this same manner of self-importance. "Indeed, we can walk up to Law Rock and see that the law is carved in stone."

"Legate Joss!" The commander rapped the table with her baton.

"You'd think he was wed to a Silver the way he goes on," added the merchant. "If it were allowed, that is. And I don't mind saying I am not the only one who has gotten tired of those people putting in their petition every year at the Flowering Festival, although what right such outlanders think they have to change our holy laws I can't imagine."

"The Ri Amarah clans are not the issue under discussion," said the commander.

He backed down unctuously. "No, no, not at all. That's right. Let's stick to the business at hand. It's just one of my grievances that I'm sometimes on about."

No doubt he had a dozen wagonloads of grievances.

"The matter will go before the Legate's Council next week," continued the commander, "and I assure you that you will not be disappointed in the ruling."

"The law is clear," objected Joss. "I found according to the law that the man in question had served his eight years' servitude in payment for his debt and was unlawfully retained against his wishes past the ninth year."

"In truth, Legate Joss," said the commander, "the law doesn't say anything about debt compounding through actions of the slave which accrue further debt during the period of servitude. Master Tanesh, if you will, we'll send you a messenger when the case comes up next week."

The merchant rose and fussed and bowed. The commander, naturally, did not get up, and so he went on his way expeditiously. When the doors had slid shut behind him and a decent interval had passed in which the old reeve could escort him at least as far as out of the garden court beyond the possibility of overhearing any further conversation, she addressed Joss.

"We're already fighting what appears to be a losing battle, one that is spreading day by day, that might as well be a wildfire burning out of our control. You know that better than any person here, by the names of all the gods."

"You know he's wrong! These people pad out debts and assign frivolous fines and make arrangements with corrupt clerks to work debt in their favor. That's the beauty of the law. It's simple, and it understands how to get around some people's desire to take more than they ought just because they are greedy-"

"Joss!"

"Is it any wonder there's been a rash of reports of slaves running out on their debts? Why shouldn't they, if they believe the law is being twisted to work against them? Indenture was meant to be a temporary measure, not a permanent one."

"Legate Joss! You have to fight these battles when there is peace to fight them in."

"How can there be peace when the shadows have corrupted even the law? Hells, it isn't the shadows that corrupted the law. It's us, who have allowed it to happen by making an exception here, and another there."

"Certainly it would be easier to abide by the law of the Guardians if there were Guardians left to preside at the assizes. But there aren't. As you know best of any of us."

In training, you learned how to absorb the force of a blow from a staff by bending to absorb the impact or melting out from under it, but this hit him straight on.

"That's silenced him, thank the gods," muttered the Snake.

He could not speak, not even to cut that damned snake to pieces. That Peddo was hiding his eyes behind a hand did not blunt the shock.

The commander studied him. There was not a hint of softening, not in her, not even though she had let him into her bed off and on for over a year about twelve years back, before he became a legate and she the commander. Before her injury. She was not a woman swayed by fond memories. She was not sentimental, not as he was. If nightmares haunted her, she gave no sign of it. She was cold and hard and in charge of an impossible situation.

The Guardians are dead and gone.

And the young Joss, that utterly stupid and bullheaded youth who had thought far too much of himself back in those days, was the one who had brought that knowledge back to the reeve halls while abandoning his lover and her eagle to be murdered at the hands of a band of criminals who had never been caught and bound to justice for the deed. Maybe, somehow, by breaking the boundaries, he was the one who had brought it down on their heads.

As if the commander knew the way his thoughts were tending, and because she would not have said those words if she hadn't meant to hurt him, she went on.

"So. That leaves us with a hundred towns, a hundred villages, a hundred arkhons, a hundred captains, a hundred lords and landowners, a hundred local guild masters, a hundred times over, according to the holy tales recorded by Sapanasu's clerks and chanted by the Lady's mendicants. Any of these towns and villages and lords and guilds may be governed by a wise or by a foolish council, according to what fortune or misfortune has befallen their leading clans. Any of these councils may support an indifferent or a useful militia, according to their custom and that of the surrounding clans. That leaves the holy temples, whose authority is unquestioned but diffuse. And that leaves us, the six reeve halls, over whom I stand as Commander. Which position, as you know, gives me no authority except that of suggestion and coordination. Not in the halls, and not in the temples, and not in the Hundred. This is the strength we possess against an enemy who may not even be an enemy, one who cannot be found or grasped."

"It's part of what's happened in Herelia," said Peddo suddenly. "Every village and town asking reeves to depart and never come back. No reeve patrols in Herelia now. The folk there came to hate us because they didn't trust us. Because they feared someone or something else even more. There's a power at work in Herelia, everywhere north of Iliyat and the Haya Gap. Yet we can't track it down."

Her gaze, bent on Peddo, caused him to sit back and grin nervously, as does a boy called out for whispering to his neighbor during recitation drill.

"This is the strength we possess," she repeated. "And it is failing us." She turned that gaze on Joss. He stood his ground, even under her harsh stare. "I need Master Tanesh. He has supported the city by providing triple rations of grain and meat, although he's under no obligation to increase his tithing, and a doubled complement of young folk to serve their rotation in Toskala's militia."

"All of which serve to protect his estates and investments."

"Nevertheless, it ends up protecting all of us as well. I need Master Tanesh's support. And I need you concentrating on the matter at hand."

"I thought a reeve's work to rule fairly and uncover abuses and bring criminals to justice at the assizes was the matter at hand."

"You are so damned naive. You know what they call you?"

Joss glanced at Peddo, but the young reeve shrugged to show he hadn't a clue what the commander was going on about.

"The incorruptible," she said with disgust.

"I take that as a compliment."

"I suppose it is one given your predilection," she said.

The Snake snickered. He was enjoying the free show.

"What I do when I am off duty has nothing to do with-"

She lifted a hand. He shut his mouth.

"I'm stripping you of your position as legate."

"Stripping me-!"

She lifted her baton; she knew how to menace with it, although he wasn't actually within reach. "I have already sent a messenger to Copper Hall asking Marshal Masar to appoint a new legate to Clan Hall. One who will replace you."

He cursed under his breath. Had the wall been close enough, he would have slammed his fist through it-

"Never heard of a legate being stripped of his position like that before," said the Snake. "That must hurt."

– Or into the Snake's face for the second time that day. But, thank the gods, the distance between them saved him from that folly. "This is Master Tanesh's doing, isn't it? You're doing this to placate that bullying, lying, greed-ridden bastard."

"No," continued the commander in the manner of the flood tide, unstoppable, "it's your own doing. You've forgotten that although the law is carved in stone, people are not. People are water, or earth, or fire, or air. They are not fixed and immutable. There must be room to maneuver, especially in an emergency. And this is an emergency."

"But it's just that kind of thinking that's caused us to lose so much ground-"

She thwacked her baton against her desk, cutting him off. "Also, bluntly: You drink too much. You're becoming unreliable."

He indicated the Snake, whose stare challenged him. "Reeves are often unreliable. In many different ways."

The Snake flicked up a little finger. Peddo, seeing the rude gesture, winced.

The commander either ignored the exchange or did not notice it. "Neither I nor the six marshals can unmake a reeve. However, I can ask for a legate to be withdrawn and replaced. As I have done. Because legates cannot be unreliable. Now. Do you want to know why I called you in today?"

"This hasn't been enough?"

"I'm hoping for much worse," muttered the Snake.

"Volias," said the commander in a tone so genial it seemed threatening. "Do not tempt me to start in on you and your manifold faults."

Peddo sucked in a breath, as if in pain. Then, amazingly, he laughed, and somehow his laughter released a bit of the tension in the chamber. Joss wiped his brow, chuckling. Even the Snake cracked a smile.

The commander nodded. "I have a mission of particular importance. It is customary for the merchants' guild to hold its grand conclave in Toskala at the advent of every Year of the Fox. The fox being a cunning animal beloved of those who take to the merchant's craft. And so the merchants and folk associated with the guild convened at the Guild Hall at the end of this last ibex year. Their meeting is now over. The first topic among them, I am reliably informed, was the safety of the roads. Roads are their lifeblood. Without safe passage, a merchant cannot arrange for the transfer of goods."

Joss's attention began to wander during this schoolroom speech. He noted how sparsely furnished the chamber was. Only last week a low couch had stood in the far corner, but now that space was empty except for a thin mat rolled up and tied with red string. The cupboard with its multitude of cubbyholes and small drawers remained, on the other side, but the fine glazed vase, normally filled with flowers and set atop the cupboard to give the room some color, was missing. A large gold-plated hairpin weighed down papers on the desk. The commander had served the Lantern in her youth; her ability to write and read was one of the reasons she had been elevated to the post. Her pen-and-ink case, lid firmly closed, sat by her right hand. A painted chest sat on the matting behind her, so she need only turn to get into it. An enameled tray had been shoved back, to the left; it held an orangeware ceramic pot suitable for brewing khaif, as well as two thin wooden drinking bowls small enough to cup in the hands. No doubt Master Tanesh had been offered the hospitality of the hall. Where had the couch and vase gone?

"According to the delegation who met with me this morning, the guild council in association with the guild of carters and transport compiled a list of roads along which caravans and wagons have been attacked in the last three years. These are attacks, mind you, in which both the attack and its aftermath were at no time witnessed by or in contact with reeves. The list is extensive, the danger widespread, and moving steadily into the southern regions of the Hundred. More importantly, of these attacks fewer than half were then reported to the local reeve halls, and of those reports, only a hand's count were traced to their origin and the criminals brought to the assizes to face trial. The guild, need I say, is not pleased with the reeves. They feel we are not doing our duty. They want reeves assigned to caravans as permanent escorts."

The Snake grunted. "Begging your pardon, Commander, but we're spread so thin patrolling the hinterlands and making sweeps along the roads and tracks that we can't assign reeves to act as guards for the merchants. Aren't the local militias responsible for the safety of the roads within five mey of every town? Can't the guild hire guards, like they do in the south when they travel over the pass into the empire? Or are they just too cheap for that?"

"As for hiring guards, I cannot answer for their quality, cost, or availability. But it seems the worst of the raids are carried out precisely to avoid the local militia, either by means of their speed or via misdirection."

"Ospreys," said Peddo. "That's what they call such outlaws in the south. Dive, and snatch."

Joss shook his head, raising a hand to ask for clarification. "Are you saying that the merchants suspect that some of these raids are carried out in coordination with local militia?"

She shrugged. "That remains to be seen. As a gesture of good faith-for I assure you that we must retain the good faith of the guilds or else the halls will not be able to provision and maintain themselves-I have agreed to assign you as an escort for those merchants departing the conclave who are traveling the main routes out of Toskala."

The Snake chortled. "Aui! That's a pup's chore, first-year reeve duty, escort along the roads. You've had your wing feathers plucked, haven't you?"

"You, and you, and you. All three of you on this escort duty." The commander did smile now, and the Snake choked on his laughter. Her smile was not a pleasant thing, after all. The Snake began to splutter a protest, but the commander's gaze cut him off. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled.

Joss's head was pounding so badly that he could not taste even a grain of pleasure from the Snake's discomfort.

"How does it happen," asked Peddo mildly, "that even the three of us can be spared just now? Given that we've lost fifteen reeves and four eagles to ambush and fighting in the last two years alone. Not counting the twelve reeves who asked to be transferred out of Clan Hall, and the twenty or thirty who have been recalled to their home clans by their marshals. Or all those lost in all the halls since it became clear many years ago that someone was targeting reeves and their eagles specifically. If you don't mind my asking, Commander?"

Even Peddo was taken aback by the intensity of her cold, frightening smile.

"I don't mind you asking, since we all know how serious the situation is. Or at least, how serious the situation is here in the north. Yet we must concern ourselves with the south, too. We must concern ourselves with this report from the merchants' guild's council, and from the carters' guild. We must work in concert, or we will not survive on our own."

"You're pandering to them," said Joss through his headache. "There are remote villages who rely on us to run their assizes. We provide the only justice they can count on. These guilds can afford to pay for their own protection. We have better things to do. More crucial ones."

"I'm doing this to placate the merchants' guild and the transport guild, it's true. I've told them you'll patrol as escort for five days out of Toskala, after which you're to return to Clan Hall with your report. I also want you three to range wide, keep your eyes open, and return each night to camp with the company you're assigned to. I want you to listen to what the guild masters are saying among themselves."

"You don't trust them?" asked Peddo.

Her smile vanished, and she bent her head, eyes narrowing in an expression that did, at last, soften her. The gods knew everyone liked Peddo, and for good reason. He had never stabbed anyone in the back, or gossiped in order to cause harm, or told tales out of turn to get a man in trouble, or intimidated witnesses and pushed around locals just for the kick of feeling his power.

"Oh, Peddo. My dear boy. You're a good lad, and a competent reeve."

The commander's instinct for trouble was legendary. Indeed, it was the other reason she had risen to her post: She had never gotten caught flat-footed. That instinct had allowed her to escape the hammer, the perfect ambush designed to slaughter her and her eagle which she and the raptor had instead survived. Not like Marit and Flirt. She touched the crutch beside her, without which she no longer could walk. She had survived, but not unscathed.

"No, I'm not feeling very trusting in these days. Nor should you."