He croaked a gasp, or perhaps it was meant to be a word, but like the first man he tumbled forward onto his face. Dead.
Nekkar shut his eyes as the corpse was dragged away.
'This man turned himself in to spare his clan,' the sergeant said. 'He confessed to hoarding nai-'
'Look at me,' said the cloak. 'Sergeant, lift his chin-'
Nekkar opened his eyes just as the sergeant wrenched the man's chin up. The prisoner was young, hale, and with the thick arms and powerful legs of a laborer. He struggled, keeping his head down, but his eyes flicked up anyway, as though gauging his distance.
She took a step back. 'Kill him.'
As soldiers drew their swords, the young man fought free and tugged a knife from his boot; he leaped toward the cloak, but spears pinned him before he reached her.
'He concealed no nai.' Her tone remained even as she watched him thrashing, still fighting forward despite flesh pierced and his blood flowing. 'He came to attack me. That is why he hid his gaze.'
'No heart can be hidden from you, Holy One,' murmured the sergeant. 'Cut his throat.'
The young man screamed; his failure was worse than the pain, no doubt. At least this one had fought back instead of waiting passively, too fearful or too shamed to stand up.
'Enough,' Nekkar said aloud.
What a gods-rotted fool he was, knowing he was responsible for the temple and yet staggering to his feet because he could not bear to watch this perverse assizes any longer. He straightened, grimacing at the stabbing pains in his abused body.
'Heya!' barked the sergeant. 'Stop, or you'll be cut down likewise.'
Nekkar faced the woman in the cloak. 'Enough! Why do you do this? Are you not a Guardian? For by your look, and your power, you seem to be one of those who wear Taru's cloak and wield the second heart and the third eye to judge those who have broken the law. The orphaned girl prayed to the gods to bring peace to the land, not cleansing.'
'Does cleansing not bring about peace?'
'As well argue that fear and terror bring about peace. Guardians are meant to establish justice. Is that what you call this? Justice?'
'Stay your hand,' said the cloaked woman before the soldiers could rain blows down upon him. She captured his gaze.
Aui! There it all tumbled as she spun the threads out of his heart: the mistakes he had made, the harsh words he had spoken, his youthful temper and rashness and the fights he'd gotten into, breaking one man's nose and another's arm, the girl he'd impregnated the month before he had entered the temple for his apprenticeship1 year. He had afterward lied outright, saying it wasn't his seed, to avoid marrying her, and afterward taken seven years of temple service to make sure they couldn't force him, although many years later after being humbled and honed by the discipline of envoyship, he had made restitution to her clan. And what of his twenty years bedding Vassa? Yet what had he and Vassa to be ashamed of, he an ostiary forbidden to marry and she a young widow who had preferred her widowhood to a second marriage arranged by her clan? They did nothing wrong by sharing a pallet; he served the temple as he had done for thirty years and she cooked in her family's neighboring compound as she had done her entire life.
Enough! The cloak's gaze pierced him, but it did not cripple him. He had made peace with his mistakes and his faults.
She regarded him with a sharp frown. 'The gods enjoined the Guardians to seek justice. People suffer or die through a recognition of their own crimes, in their own hearts.'
'It looks to me like you kill them. Or hand them over to your lackeys to be cleansed. If you believe that to be justice, then you are no Guardian!'
The sergeant snarled. The soldiers hissed with fear.
'You are bold in your honesty, Ostiary Nekkar,' she said, having gleaned his name from his thoughts. 'You provided a census of your temple to the authorities, I see. Know you of outlanders in
this city? Know you of any man or woman, outlander or Hundred folk, who can see ghosts, as the gods- touched are said to do?'
He did not want to tell her, but his thoughts spilled their secrets and she lapped them up however he struggled to conceal what he knew of Stone Quarter's clans and compounds. He wept furiously, hating how he betrayed them: He knew of eight outlanders who were slaves in Stone Quarter, and he'd glimpsed others in Flag, Bell, Wolf, and Fifth Quarters as well. They came from foreign lands and usually served out their days with the clan who had purchased them. There was a young envoy stationed in Flag Quarter known to be gods-touched. Some years ago he'd met another at the Ilu temple up on the Ili Cutoff, an older man. A pair of gods-touched mendicants were said to wander the tracks and back roads of lower Haldia, aiding troubled ghosts in crossing away under Spirit Gate. Shouldn't such holy ones be left in peace to do what the gods commanded?
She released him by looking away to pinion the sergeant. 'Sergeant Tomash, you will accompany me to Flag Quarter. I must search out this young gods-touched envoy. After that, I have a new assignment for you. Collect all the census records. I want a hostage taken from every compound and handed over to the army.'
'But my work in Stone Quarter, Holy One?'
'Is no longer your concern. There are two cohorts marching down from High Haldia to take over administrative duties here once the army marches on Nessumara. You will report directly to the main command as my personal adjutant, with your rank raised to that of captain. I'll call on you and your company as I have need of them.'
'You honor me, Holy One. Shall we cleanse the ostiary, Holy One?'
'No. The gods will dispose of an honest ostiary as they see fit. Come. My errand is urgent. The gods-touched are our enemies. All must be brought before me.'
The soldiers shrank back as she skirted the bodies of the fallen to reach a gate that led into the alley separating this compound from an adjoining emporium. She opened the gate and walked through.
The new captain paused under the lintel, a malicious smile slashing his face as he contemplated his enhanced authority. 'Dump that one in Scavengers' Alley like the rubbish he is. Then we'll see how the gods choose to dispose of an honest ostiary.'
The blow took Nekkar from behind. A second smashed into his shoulders as laughter hammered in his ears. Distantly, a man sobbed. He toppled dazedly to the dirt, wondering why there was a salty taste in his mouth. What had Vassa cooked tonight for supper?
With the third blow came oblivion.
How to describe what you grew up never having words for? Nallo had been born and raised in the rugged Soha Hills, where a person might stand on a ridge path and survey higher slopes where rock broke the surface of the soil like old bones, and deeper gullies where streams ran white. But to fly! To hang in the harness below an eagle, as the land unrolled beneath you like so many bolts of multicolored cloth!
That was something.
She had never seen a river so wide that a shout might not carry across it. To the north, forest tangled the earth. To the south, on the far side of the river, neat rectangles marked densely packed fields, and every village boasted a flagpole and one or two small temples, each one easily identifiable from the air. There lay a quartered square, a temple built for Kotaru the Thunderer, the god she had served for one year as an apprentice. Here rose the three-tiered gates holy to Ilu the Herald. Roofs thatched with fanned leaves from the thatch-oil tree covered altars raised to Taru the Witherer, their bright green color withering as the rains faded. She spotted a walled garden sacred to Ushara the Merciless One, a few people loitering in the forecourt, too tiny to distinguish male from female; in the Devourer's garden, such distinctions did not matter as long as you brought clean desire to the act of worship.
She glanced toward her companion reeves. Kesta led while Pil flew the west flank. Ahead lay the ocean, a seething expanse of water that fell into the sky far to the east.
Tumna chirped, jerking Nallo's attention to a discoloration lying athwart land and ocean dead ahead. It was hard to fathom until the eyes began to identify the multitudinous strands of water plaiting the land and the rank upon rank of wood and stone buildings rising on islands within the delta as though they were a crop of stone being raised out of the earth. Was that Nessumara, the jewel of the sea, the city of bridges, the largest city in the
