'How can this be?' demanded the Hieros. 'Guardians can't die.'
The outlander tugged on his ear, saying nothing.
'The cloak leaves a person when his tenure on this earth comes to an end, and awakens a new vessel. Any who inherit the cloak were ones who died fighting for justice, and are therefore granted a chance to restore peace.'
'Then you are demons!' said Tohon.
'Neh, I think not. Maybe we are ghosts, of a kind. Solid enough. Able to laugh and to cry, to eat, to piss if we drink too much.'
'But if Guardians can't die,' the Hieros said, 'then how can the cloak pass from one vessel to another?'
'Within the Guardian council, there has always have been a mechanism to guard against the shadow of corruption. Five cloaks, acting in unanimity, can execute one.'
The Hieros laughed curtly, quick to see the flaw.
'Indeed,' Jothinin said with a wry smile, 'if a Guardian is canny enough and persuasive enough, she may corrupt enough of the council to make it party to her will. As the cloak of Night has done.'
The Hieros snorted, her mood darkening with skepticism. 'So this is your Guardians' war? You seek a majority of five, to destroy the others. What is to stop you, then, from becoming corrupt in your turn? From taking over this army that is ravaging the north?'
The question startled him. 'Nothing but my own heart, Holy One.'
'Why come to us? There seems little we can do that we have not already done: raise an army to safeguard ourselves, send out scouts, build up stocks of oil of naya, expand the safe zone so folk may plant crops when the rains come. You can be sure we do not wish to fall under the northern army's brutal yoke. You need only look at me, Guardian, to know I speak the truth. So what else can we possibly do?'
For once he stumbled, at a loss for words. He could not force words past a leaden tongue.
Kirit rode forward. 'In my tribe,' she said in her hoarse out-lander's voice, 'every person works. All work together, each at her own tasks. So must we work together, to bring peace.' She frowned at Jothinin, as if scolding him.
The Hieros and the Qin solder waited as the lamps hissed and the river flowed.
The night wind's weary sigh spurred Jothinin on, despite his
misgivings. 'We come to offer you a weapon. I will tell you how to kill a Guardian and release its cloak to a new awakening.'
22
Although it wasn't quite dark, a fire burned at Candle Rock as Marit approached from the north. The hells! She had expected the rock to be deserted, and yet hadn't she also prepared the way by shifting the message stones? It was two days off the full moon. She might have known some reeve would be waiting, as reeves did, loyal comrades who would risk their lives to aid one of their own. Her eyes watered, maybe only because of the stinging wind.
She'd left Badinen and his eagle riding a high current while she dropped down to scout out a safe landing place; they'd been traveling for many, many days, and every evening she and Warning landed first as a precaution. They pulled up sharply as the man sitting beside the fire leaped to his feet.
'Marit!'
Why did it have to be him?
Careful not to meet his astonished gaze, she dismounted and slapped Warning on the flank to send her off to the altar at Ammadit's Tit for sustenance.
'Are you a ghost or a lilu?' he demanded.
'I'm a Guardian, Joss.'
He sat down hard on the ring of stones as if all the breath had been slugged out of him. 'You can't be Marit. Not truly.'
'Truly I am,' she snapped.
'Marit died!' His head rose, and for a horrible moment she looked into him, all his shame and fury and reckless rule-breaking to make the gods say they were sorry, only of course he had caused her death by violating the altar on Ammadit's Tit just because he was too young and stupid to think something so awful could come of breaking the boundaries. And all the drinking and sex in all the twenty-one years after her death had not made his shame and fury go away; only the years themselves had muted his grief and anger, as years will do. By then, of course, he'd gotten into the habit of drinking and devouring-
She looked away before he did. 'It wasn't your gods-rotted fault! You're being cursed absorbed in yourself to think it was!'
'Ouch.' He chuckled weakly. 'I suppose I deserved that.'
She strode over to the ring of stones and sat down opposite, the fire between them. 'You really don't believe I'm Marit, do you?'
'You look cursed like her and sound cursed like,' he replied, careful not to look directly at her. 'The way the message rocks were left reminded me of you. Maybe that's why I've come out here for the last three Lamp Moons, because I kept thinking of you and- Eihi!'
Impossible not to think of the last time they had met on Candle Rock. He was startlingly older, but the cut of his shoulders and the curve of his neck hadn't changed. He still had a good smell, clean sweat washed with the bracing perfume of the juniper soap he must still receive from kinfolk at his home village.
'It's difficult for me to imagine how you could be her,' he went on in a lower voice. 'Maybe you're a Guardian. Maybe you're a gods-cursed ghost who stole a Guardian's cloak, like those ones who lead that cursed army. Some even call them demons. But I think it's most likely you're a lilu sent to tempt me.'
The comment sucked the breath right out of her. 'Do I tempt you still?'
He laughed harshly as he turned his head to look into the night. The hells! He was a cursed good-looking man with a strong profile, a lean, fit body, his arms bare in a sleeveless leather vest. The angular tattoos marking him as a child of the Fire mother hadn't changed, covering his right arm and ringing both wrists. His hair was no longer cropped quite so close against his skull; if it was going to silver, she saw no trace of fine pale lines in the changing light.
The moment was broken as Badinen and Sisit thumped down in the open space away from the fire, a graceful pair despite their lack of training. She jumped up as Joss rose, a hand on his baton as he gestured a 'well-come-in- peace.'
To Marit's surprise, the lad answered the gesture with the formal reply. He unhooked from the harness and, as Sisit looked around the outcrop, ventured forward.
'Ye Guardian sath she will dun brang meh teh ye Clan Hall. Ya one reeve?'
Joss blinked, then glanced toward Marit and wiggled his left hand, and she realized he was having trouble understanding the youth's thick dialect.
'I found this young man in the north, on the Eagle's Claws,' she
said. 'I'm bringing him to Clan Hall for training. There's no soft way to say this, so I'll say it hard: Horn Hall has been slaughtered.'
He didn't react, as if her own speech had become impenetrable. 'Horn Hall has been missing for the last year. The hall abandoned, every reeve and eagle gone.'
'For whatever the hells reason, they fled to the Eagle's Claws and set up outposts there. Someone poisoned the eagles and thereby the reeves and killed everyone else. It's one rocky Sorrowing Tower, bones strewn everywhere. It happened a year ago, maybe.'
He reeled, swaying on his feet. 'Give me a moment. Here, lad-' He spoke each word deliberately, shock scraping through his tone. 'What is your name? I am called Joss.'
'Badinen. An thas ya, I call ya Sisit.'
'Slow down. She will need to be jessed and set for the night. My eagle Scar bides here also. Two eagles who are strangers may fight over territory. Do you understand?'
