'What is happening to me?' she cried, slapping a hand repeatedly against the ground, but her tantrum accomplished nothing except to make her hand hurt.
She rested her head against the bole of a tree, trying to get her breathing under control. The rain cleared off, and as night fell, a cold and bitter wind blew down off the unseen mountains to the southwest.
The season changes. Only late in the year do you feel the chill all the way down to your bones.
Marshal Alard used to say, 'If you have to choose between what seems the most reasonable explanation, and what the cold, hard evidence reveals, go with the evidence.'
The reasonable explanation was that she had slept through a day and a night recovering from the shock of what she had seen and from the eagle's attack.
When she thought it through, she had to believe that the eagle had killed her in its fury. The evidence of the corpses and the weather bore out the unlikely supposition that months had passed.
Guardians can't die.
They can kill, but they can't be killed.
Now, there was a recipe for corruption.
She rose to shake out her clothing. Why, in the tales, were the Guardians always honorable and upright, the upholders of a justice that is never disturbed by their own petty jealousies or grand descents into lust and greed? How honest were the tales, really?
What had Sediya sung? The cloaks rule all, even death.
Who would believe her, if she walked in off the street into Clan Hall and claimed to be a woman murdered nineteen years ago? Who would even remember her?
One man might.
PART TWO
Cups
In the Year of the Red Goat
6
Joss woke up in his private chamber in Argent Hall to find a woman lying beside him on the sleeping mat, naked, tousled, and barely covered by the thin cotton coverlet. He sat up cautiously, rubbing his aching head. He had no idea how she had gotten there.
With a sigh, she rolled over, exposing a face he recognized and eyes that, opening, were clearly alert. She'd been awake for some time.
'The hells!' he muttered, staring at her in shock.
She sat up, exposing a pleasing, muscular figure ripped by healed scars. The worst ran from her left shoulder across the mauled remains of a breast and down past her ribs to pucker to a finish by her belly button.
'Regrets already?' she asked with a smile half of amusement and half of a woman thinking of giving an idiot man a slap to the face.
'Verena,' he said, glad that at least he remembered her name and feeling ten parts stupid and ten parts hungover. Last night's activities surfaced in his memory as he woke up fully. Oh, yes, he remembered it all now.
She chuckled.
'No regrets at all,' he said feelingly. 'It was well worth the doing. I just suddenly realized that I am marshal of this hall now and you are a fawkner here, working under my authority. I'm not sure I should have — I'm accustomed to being a simple reeve — what I'm trying to say is-'
'That you don't want it said you took advantage of your position to get a woman into your bed?' she asked with a laugh. 'Rest easy. You took a lot of coaxing, and an entire pitcher of cheap rice wine before I managed to talk you into it.'
The chamber was strewn with clothing. This scene and its musky aftermath were nothing new, but with the weight of his new authority it didn't seem as carefree as it once had.
'Heya, Joss! Listen. We're of an age. I have living a twenty-year-old son and fifteen-year-old twin daughters, may the gods give me
patience. My husband has been dead these ten years. It was a marriage arranged by the clan. He and I were never close. I have no wish to remarry, and since the clan got what it wanted from the match — my son has followed his grandfather into the guild — they have no further claim on me. My work and my life are here at Argent Hall. Still, I'm not dead. Yet. You're an attractive man. If you've a wish for this to end here, then say so. I'll swallow my aging pride and say nothing more of it.'
It was true she wasn't a young woman with the breathtaking lithe charm granted by youth and worn by youth so carelessly. But women who had experienced the world possessed confidence and humor and wisdom, a sense of perspective that very young women lacked, so on the whole he preferred older women. She wasn't pretty, but she was attractive in every way that mattered: clear eyes, a good face, a love for her own body and its pleasures, and the strength of mind to match the rest. She knew what she wanted and she wasn't afraid to try for it. She reached out to find the dregs of the wine, poured him a tumbler, and handed it over. She'd been raked across the back, too, the wound treated so well the scars had remained supple.
'Where's that one from?' he asked.
'Which?' she asked, twisting to display first her back and then the horrible disfiguring gash across her front. 'These are the two worst. The others-' She had a nick on her chin, another nick on her right shoulder, and a single white line running down one forearm. 'These are like kisses. Sometimes those cursed eagles try to be affectionate and don't know their own strength. Even this one, the back, that's when U'ushu was trying to play and missed his aim. He's dead now, poor thing. He was a good bird. They all are, mostly, as long as you know how to handle them.'
He gently traced what remained of her left breast. 'What about this one?'
She said nothing for a moment, face pensive. She took the tumbler out of his hand and drained it. 'Sheh! You need a new stock of wine. This is bitter even for being so cheap. Anyway, that's a gift from an eagle named Tumna. She's the worst-tempered raptor I've encountered, although I will tell you I put a lot of the blame on her reeve. He was an altogether foul character and he didn't care for her
as she needed. He was one of those who transferred in during the bad years leading up to the days when Marshal Yordenas held sway here.'
'Tumna?'
'Her reeve's name was Horas.'
'Was?'
'She killed him. That same day you and Clan Hall and the out-landers rid us of Yordenas and his allies.'
'Eiya! I remember now. That's a serious charge, when an eagle kills its reeve. When did she do this to you?'
She shook her head. 'A few years back, when Horas first arrived here. She came to trust me later. We fawkners don't dwell on such things or we'd not be able to do our work.'
He saw the warning look in her eyes, the set of her mouth and the way she had a breath half held in, but he couldn't quite let go. Maybe only because he wasn't sure if he'd betrayed her trust by allowing himself to sleep with her. 'We all know the dangers of working with the eagles. But I'm only close to Scar, and he'd never hurt me. I don't know how you fawkners do it, training the young ones, treating the ones who are injured and in pain and most likely to lash out… teaching an eagle who's mauled you to trust you. Where do you find the courage?'
She slid a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer.
'It makes me feel alive,' she murmured, and kissed him.
