'Who are you to judge and execute him?'
'I am lord here, master of this army, which serves at my will.' He indicated the silent soldier.
'You're neither lord nor master to me! If he displeases you, why not release him? Why make him suffer?'
'We can't know how long it will take for the cloak to find a new master.'
'Does the cloak find a master, or make a slave?'
His smile twisted, flattening to a thinner line. 'That depends on you, doesn't it?'
The words struck deep, as they were intended to do. Disgusted with her cowardice, she threw herself to her knees beside the dying man. 'Had,' she murmured, 'I'm here. I'll bind your wounds-'
'Leave me be,' he whispered hoarsely. '… knew it was coming… just leave me, it will heal…'
The inner walls stirred, and a young man wearing a cloak as red as Hari's blood hurried into the tent from a side chamber. He wore his hair in the same fashion as Lord Radas, the rich man's three loops, but his were lopsided. Seeing Marit, he stopped.
'What is it, Yordenas?' asked Lord Radas, voice clipped with impatience.
'That's death's cloak! The one you were looking for last year.'
'So we had determined long since.'
'I sniffed her out, that one time. Remember I told you? I told you this cursed outlander was hiding something from you, but you wouldn't listen to me.' His tone grated.
Marit despised him at once, the feeling so strong it left a taste.
Lord Radas sighed. 'What is it, Yordenas?'
'Cursed if there isn't another one out there, lord.'
'Another what?'
'The cloak of mist you spoke of, lord. The lost one.'
Lord Radas's expression changed, a tic by his eye jerking twice before it stilled.
Hari moaned, eyes rolling back in his head as his body sagged and his hands opened in a gesture of acquiescence; he had stopped breathing. His cloak fluttered, rippling as in wind, and slithered over his body like a lilu embracing her chosen one.
From deeper within the tent a calm voice spoke. 'Death is come, as expected. Mist returned, a puzzle to tease us.'
The brawny soldier dropped to both knees, cowering.
There is a kind of fear that begins formless, deep in the pit of the belly, and wells up with such speed that it catches you and blinds you before you know you've been taken. Marit pushed to her feet, not even sure what monster clawed at her heart, only that she was ready to run.
She had heard that voice before.
A woman pushed aside cloth to enter. She had a round, dark face, ordinary in its lineaments, no one who would stand out in a crowd. She wore a cloak, black as night. Under that she wore humble laborer's clothing, a linen tunic and wide trousers. Lord Radas and Yordenas wore best-quality silk tabards, embroidered with goldthread trim, under-tunics dyed in subtle colors rarely seen outside wealthy homes and temple precincts. They looked like peacocks, like the scions of Nessumara's richest houses who strutted about the streets and canals in their finest to make sure folk did know they had the coin to be extravagant. Even their cloaks dazzled, while hers had no color at all.
'Radas,' she said in a pleasant, ordinary voice, 'go forth. Ask the young woman to enter. Treat her gently. Smile.'
She looked Mark up and down, while Mark reined in her breath and her composure. This was the woman who had murdered two reeves in the forest beside West Spur without touching them.
'Death ever challenges, but in the end even death can be defeated. You are not so different than the one who came before you, although he was grandson to an outlander.'
'Who is the one who came before me?' Images spun in Mark's memory of a handsome man with long black hair, a brown face, and demon-blue eyes.
The woman turned to Radas. 'Yet a warning, Radas, before you go out to greet the new one. She is small and young, and quite ugly, as pale as a worm. Easy to discount. But she carries her staff.'
He lifted his chin, as a man might who has just been slapped. 'She carries her staff? Aui!'
'It is leashed to her belt.' She did not bother to glance at Yordenas, who had not, evidently, noticed this crucial item. Nor for that matter had Hari mentioned it to Marit.
'An annoying development,' murmured Lord Radas.
Marit thought of the envoy of Ilu, the one Kirit had left, the one who had refused Marit shelter and friendship. He had asked Marit if she carried her staff, but she had not known what he meant.
'Not at all,' said the woman. 'We must welcome her all the more kindly, and teach her to be wise.'
He frowned. 'If you say so.' He went outside.
'Yordenas, move Hari. Drag out the entire carpet.' She clucked at the mess, then beckoned. 'If you will, Ramit, retire with me.'
Marit followed cautiously past the inner wall and into another chamber, this one with dirt for floor except for a single humble carpet spread in the middle of the dim chamber. A low writing desk and a traveling chest sat on the carpet, squared off to match the corners. Pillows rested on the other end, one in each corner.
'Sit.' She stepped over a spear lying behind the desk and sat. She touched the objects lying on the desk, shifting those that had moved out of line with the table's edge. 'Come closer, Ramit. You are disturbed by what you have seen.'
Marit pulled a pillow closer, settled down cross-legged with her short sword laid across her thighs, and said nothing.
'Radas has a cruel streak. Hari is reckless and does not understand the responsibilities that have fallen to him. I remain surprised that the cloak fell to an outlander, but the gods make these decisions, not us.'
Her indignation got the better of her. 'Surely Lord Radas could be commanded not to punish a man by torturing him.'
'Yes, I came too late to stop that piece of petty brutality, for which I am sorry. Matters have long since gotten out of hand. The criminals should have been culled from our ranks, not formed into their own army and sent to Olossi. So be it. I had other things on my mind and let it pass. Now I do what I can to mitigate the worst.'
'What do you mean?'
She raised a hand, palm up, in the gesture of receiving and questioning. 'What respect do we owe the gods? When respect is no longer shown, is it not true that people wander into the shadows? That they ignore those laws which displease them personally? That they scorn the helpless and needy? That offerings are scanted, and tithes not properly paid? That a few who believe they know what is right for others begin to call for change? Yet change is all too often only a word to signify chaos.'
The words seemed reasonable enough. 'Yes.'
'The weak should not suffer injustice simply because they are weak.'
'No.'
'Nor should the powerful twist justice to serve their own ends.'
'Of course not.'
'If those in power will not shift, what then is to be done? Have you a question, Ramit?'
Marit rubbed her jaw with the back of a hand. This unstable ground might collapse beneath her feet. Best to change the subject entirely. 'What am I?'
'Ah.' A keen look took her in from top to toe, with her thread-worn, mismatched clothing, and her short sword, which naturally the woman could not know Marit had stolen from a sergeant in High Haldia. 'You hold your sword close.'
'I trust it, that's true.'
'You are a soldier? One of the Thunderer's ordinands?'
'That's right,' Marit lied. 'I've had training. But I meant, what am I now?'
'You are a Guardian.' She touched, again, the odd assemblage of objects on the desk: a serviceable dagger; a sharpened green stick cut from hollow pipe brush; a narrow wooden box that likely contained writing brushes.
Remembering how this woman had written on paper, and two reeves had fallen dead, Marit found her resolve strengthened. 'Then why am I not presiding over assizes? Why are Guardians traveling with an army that invaded
