'The army's elite. We're trained to hunt demons.'
'You hunt demons?' She looked at Kesh, but he shrugged.
'See that Mount Aua? There's a demon cradle there, a place demons might try to shelter for a night, sip their demon nectar. And that ridge there — see how it glitters? That one, too. So we're posted here to keep an eye on them. There are other outposts like this one. Chief Chartai commands the entire black wolf cohort here in Istria. We're the second such cohort, you know. Just commissioned two months ago. See our banner?'
It flapped from a pole, two wolf's heads grinning in the breeze.
'We figured you maybe had a brother or husband who died in the service of the wolves, verea, seeing as you wear the ring.'
She looked down at the wolf's-head ring, sigil of the Mei clan. The necklace had slipped out from the neck of her vest and Shai's ring dangled at the curve of her breasts, which they were staring at, as men would. It was the same head, the very same. They held up their hands to show they, too, wore wolf's-head rings.
Her throat tightened on words she did not want to say. She slipped the errant chain and its ring back beneath her vest and was at once sorry she'd done so, because they followed the movement of the ring as if with their own hands.
'What kind of demons are you hunting?'
'Any demons, really, traitors or bandits or murderers. But particularly cloaks, verea. Those ones who say they're Guardians but
are really gods-rotted lilus waiting to corrupt us and lead the Hundred back into war.' They preened, just like sunning eagles. 'Only the black wolves are told the secret of how to kill demons. It's a dangerous job. We're not afraid.'
But now she was. Fear snapped, a wolf who had just decided to eat her up.
The fourth day they ought to have made it all the way to Toskala, but Miyara was stricken as by a shuddering sickness, and then she wept while still aloft, and afterward they sailed down and came to rest in a pasture as sheep scattered. The buildings of a substantial town rose ahead. Farmers and herdsmen came running.
'Miyara, what is it? Are you ill?' Mai was dangling with her feet off the ground, kicking a little, wanting to stand on solid earth instead of being helpless.
'I'm scared, Mai, I don't mind saying. There's a thing I've never told you. About Joss. They say Scar went after Commander Anji. They say Joss was jealous that Commander Anji was doing a better job than Joss was commanding the reeves, so he tried to kill him.'
'Joss? Reeve Joss? Are we talking about the same man?'
'The cursed handsome one.'
'That's right. He's an Ox, just like me. I admit he was vain, but very charming! Yet I never met a man less ambitious to puff about his own importance and authority than Reeve Joss. I mean, he seemed like a man who'd been dragged into authority and didn't like it much.'
'That's how I saw him, I admit. But others didn't. It's not what folk said afterward. I wasn't there. But let me tell you something and I beg you never to say I mentioned it. There's a contingent of reeves — not many, but people who were close to him — who flew to Bronze Hall down in Mar. You wouldn't know them, they'd just be names to you. They've never truly confided in me, but I've been thinking as each month passes that once I've discharged the obligation I made to ferry supplies up to Merciful Valley for the one year — a promise I made to Commander Anji on behalf of the boy, who is my nephew, if you'll recall-'
'I do recall it. I know what I owe you.'
'Never mind that. It's nothing any Hundred woman wouldn't have done.'
'What have you been thinking?'
'That I'd leave Argent Hall and fly to Bronze Hall. Siras is thinking of coming with me — and I suppose Ildiya will tag along with him. Anyhow, we just want to hear what they have to say. Bronze Hall's not a member of the reeve council. They never sent a representative to the council in which Commander Anji was elected as commander over the reeve halls. They're not subject to him.'
'And what does Commander Anji think of that?' Mai asked tartly. 'That one hall doesn't acknowledgehis authority?'
'How could I know? I'm just a reeve in Argent Hall, far away from Law Rock. I know there's been plenty of fighting up in Herelia and Teriayne and the north. The war's not over yet. I'm sure Commander Anji is too busy to bother himself with sleepy Mar, way down on the southeastern coast.'
'Let me down, I beg you, I have to pee.'
Miyara unhooked them both, and they both went to pee in the woods. When they reemerged, the farmers were gawking from a distance at the eagle while the herdsmen and their barking dogs chivvied the sheep through a gap in the woods toward a safer clearing.
Mai was struggling with the trousers. 'I hate these things. A taloos is so much easier to wear, much less pee in.'
Miyara hauled out a flag and signaled Siras and Ildiya, who headed down.
'Tell you what, Mai,' said Miyara. 'Let's shelter here for the night. Then we'll reach Law Rock in the morning. Better in the morning than late in the afternoon, eh?'
'Why?'
She jerked the flags down and rolled them up tightly, hands tense. Her eyes had a faraway look, as a caravaner in the desert might eye a distant haze wondering if it is a killing sandstorm. 'Better to have plenty of time to leave, don't you think? If things aren't so hospitable.'
'Reeve! Verea!'
A man and a woman came jogging toward them along the road. 'We saw you come down. And here are more of you! Surely you'll honor us by staying over. We're a humble town, but we've a garrison station newly built and still empty. You're welcome to stay there for the night. We'll feed you gladly.'
It was impossible to say no to such an enthusiastic offer. The reeves shucked the harness from their eagles, seeing it was earlier
in the day than they normally halted, and they accompanied the townsfolk along the road as the farmers gestured friendly greetings and went back to their resplendent fields, half grown in stagnant rectangles of water.
'Look at that growth! That's our second crop this season! I don't mind telling you, it was cursed lean pickings until the first crop was brought in. We all struggled to survive, and some of the children and elders and invalids did not, for all our stores were stolen by the demon army and some of our lads and lasses besides.' The ancient road was an astonishing landmark, smoothly paved and massively built, raised up from the surrounding countryside and flanked on either side by tracks worn into the earth by generations of trudging feet. The town lay ahead, a half built palisade now abandoned; plenty of people were out in the fields and among the orchards. 'But that's all settled now. Why, just three months ago a girl who'd gone missing fully ten months ago — given up for dead! — came riding home behind a Qin soldier. Very finely set up she was, too, for he'd taken it into his mind to eat her rice, and she'd been minded to finish the bowl he started. Her clan were nothing more than day laborers, and now they're the third richest in town. What do you think of that!'
The abandoned palisade had been fitted with gates, set open with iron bracings. Four posts had been erected to the left of the open gate.
Four posts, from which dangled the remains of men, strands of hair fluttering where flesh hadn't yet rotted away from the skulls, the tattered remnants of their clothing frayed and faded. So had the Qin hung out executed criminals in the sun-blasted citadel square in Kartu Town after their armies had conquered the area.
Maybe she fainted. Maybe she just tripped on uneven pavement. Maybe she just forgot to breathe.
Then she was on her knees, shaking, hands over her face.
'Mai!' Miravia steadied her.
'Why are corpses hanging from posts?' She'd never forgotten Widow Lae. On the day of the widow's execution for treason and spying, every man, woman, and child of Kartu Town had been required to assemble in citadel square to watch. That had been the day Anji had first spoken to Mai's father. That had been the day he'd made it clear to a man who could not refuse him that he intended to have her for himself. Of course he'd never asked her. It would have been surprising if he had!
How could she ever have thought it was romantic?
