A weaver bird flitted within the thorns, its wings a faint stutter. Branches ticked against each other as the breeze stirred them. A bud breathed into a trembling petal as it struggled to unfurl with the same slow majesty as wings.
She walked up beside him, leading the horses. He slid back into himself.
She had saddled them, tied on his few possessions. She said nothing; she didn't even look at him but kept staring at the break in the thorn fence where the short man had cut his way out. She was ready to go.
He took Telling's reins and swung into the saddle. He didn't trust the bay mare, and because the girl tolerated her easily, he let her ride the bay.
He turned Telling's head toward the sea, and the girl, on Seeing, followed his lead. He urged the gray to a trot, to a canter, to a run, and as they reached the shore, they unfurled their wings and skimmed over the water, rising on slow wing beats. The sea fell away beneath. As the shelter shrank with distance, the thorn trees could from the height be seen quite obviously to be planted by hand, while the scrub grown beyond them had a wilder scumble.
He was accustomed by now to riding almost everywhere, but he still preferred to walk. You saw things when walking — the blade of grass, the bee's feet tickling a flower petal, the last tear of a wronged woman who has resolved to seek revenge — that the height and power of a horse might hide from your senses. She was at home in
the saddle. Aloft, her aspect changed. Her eyes opened wide, watching everywhere as they winged over the sea. Even after all this time, each least bobble or hole of turbulence in the air made him gulp and grip and hope he did not tumble. She simply rode.
Eiya! What to do? Where to go? He dared not take her to one of the altars, because there they would easily be spied out. And once she touched her staff, she would likely be out of his control. Yet it wasn't safe to give the staff into her hands until she understood what she was. It wasn't safe to give it into her hands until he was sure she would walk the path he had chosen and not the easier path, the path that begins in light but soon enough crosses under the gate of shadows into corruption.
'We tell stories to make the time pass between birth and death,' Bai was saying.
'I thought the gods gave us stories to help us understand the world,' Joss replied.
'So we are taught in the temples,' she agreed. 'But think about it. What is a story?'
She would chatter on so, flirting with that cursed reeve. Even huffing and puffing up the switchback trail that, incredibly, they'd had to climb back up, those two had talked and talked in the way of people showing off for each other. Kesh wished they would shut up.
'It's not the truth, and yet there's truth in it. It's a way of ordering the truth, just as we order days and weeks and years, as we order guilds and colors and the Hundred itself. Did the gods create the tales? No. People like you and me made the tales and told them to others. Even so, the ten Tales of Founding are not like other stories. We made them because the gods commanded us to. Because they help us order the world, just as worship does. And what is the world except that time between when we enter this place and when we leave it?'
They reached the ruins where he and Bai had sheltered last night. Here, Kesh thought, they might decently pause to rest, but the other two would keep talking.
The reeve answered her. 'As it says in the Tale of Discovery, 'Where did we come from, and where do we go?''
'That's right,' she said with such a flattering smile that Keshad actually gave a disgusted grunt. She glanced at Kesh and for an instant resembled the child she had once been, his little sister, as she rolled her eyes at him to say, Don't ruin this for me.
The reeve didn't notice. He walked to the ruins of a stone wall and jumped up atop it, right at the edge of the drop-off where most men wouldn't dare to stand. Shading his eyes, he gazed across the basin now turning a hazy purple-blue as daylight faded. He was breathing hard, as was Kesh, face suffused with blood. Bai watched the reeve when he wasn't looking at her. This was a side of his sister Kesh had never seen. Sisters weren't supposed to have such feelings, nor to flirt with men so much older. The hells! Bad enough they should flirt at all.
He took a few steps, closing the distance between them.
'Bai, he's old enough to have fathered you. What can you see in a man like that?'
'The horses need water, Kesh. Make sure they don't drink too much.'
Stung, he grabbed the reins and led the exhausted horses to the trough while, naturally, she sauntered over toward the reeve.
'Not many men would stand right there at the edge of the cliff,' she called to the reeve.
'I've no fear of falling,' he said without looking at her. 'Or did you think I was afraid of taking the plunge-'
Halfway across the open space, she paused beside a scatter of faced stones long since tumbled from their place. She turned. She raised a hand and, seeing the gesture, Kesh stepped back from the horses. The reeve turned, alerted by her stillness, and when she waved a hand, he started talking again.
'I never feared climbing trees when I was a child, or standing at the very top of the watch tower in Haya, but even so, after years with an eagle, you get used to surveying the land from very high up.'
Bai prowled past Kesh, circling the horses and the cistern, and vanished behind the remains of a round building. The reeve nattered on, but as he spoke he drew his short sword and shifted sideways on the wall, ready to move.
'Some people can't abide heights. That's a strange thing about the eagles. They never choose a person who fears heights so much
he can't bear to go aloft.' He gestured meaningfully at Kesh. Your turn.
'Eh, emm, how do reeves get chosen?' Now that he thought about it, he wondered. 'I always thought it was other reeves who picked out likely candidates.'
'Not at all,' said the reeve in a lively voice, although he wasn't smiling. As he spoke, he scanned the ruins. 'Eagles choose, not reeves nor any other person. Some do try to put forward certain young men or women. We've been offered bribes. But it makes no difference to the eagles. They will choose at their own-'
A man shrieked. An object slammed against stone, and metal clattered. The reeve leaped from the wall, dashed across the open space, and ran out of sight around the building. Kesh grabbed the horses and pulled them away from the trough.
The reeve backed into view, retreating against the attack of two desperate men. One slapped at him with a staff, while the other cut wildly with an axe. They were not well-trained fighters; the reeve punched away their strokes easily, but he could make no leeway because they were crowding him.
Kesh drew his own sword, but before he could step into the fray, Bai slipped around the other side of the building, climbed over the trough, and raised an arm. She flicked her hand. A blade winked. The man with the axe staggered, fell forward onto his face with a knife lodged in his back. The other man yelped, and the reeve broke inside his guard and twisted the staff out of his hands.
'Down! Put your hands out to the side!'
The man dropped to his knees, ripping at one sleeve, clapping a hand over his mouth as if stifling a scream.
The reeve slapped his shoulder with the flat of his blade. 'On your face! Hands out where I can see them!'
Bai nudged the axeman with a foot, yanked out the knife, and rolled him over. 'He's dead.' She turned back to the reeve, who stood over the prisoner. 'Kill that one, too.'
'He's surrendered to my authority. We are not judges, or Guardians, to render a verdict. He must be taken to trial at the assizes.'
She shrugged. 'Do you mean us to escort him and feed him the entire way? He'll eat our food, and try to kill us. It's a cursed long
walk back to Olossi, I'll have you know. I haven't the luxury of eagle's wings to take me in two days what a earth-bound person must walk in ten.'
'It's the law,' the reeve said.
'I agree with Bai,' said Kesh. 'Bad enough we have to keep watch for these bandits, but to have to nurse one along who just tried to kill us… The hells! How many were hiding here?'
