go, too, Neffi. You're getting cursed old. You need your sleep, neh? I'll keep the light until she's down safely.'
'Eh, yes, Peddo. Right away'
They went, Kesta down the corridor with the other four reeves while Odash and Neffi climbed the ladder.
'I've got to take a piss,' added Peddonon, setting the lamp on the floor. 'Be right back.' He scrambled up the ladder.
Joss hadn't known that stone breathed, but he swore he could hear its exhalations in the silence that followed, or maybe it was his own breathing gotten cursed irregular as he became exceedingly aware of how very alone they were, caught within the glow of light and with folk busying themselves nearby but out of sight.
'Are these soldiers really our enemy, or only the worst reflec-tion of our own selves?' she asked in a low voice. 'We made them. We have to unmake them, not just defeat or kill them.'
'What do you mean?'
She shrugged, looking angry. 'It seems to me that when an army can recruit so many discontented men and convince so many of them to act in ways they would once have considered criminal, then it is only building with bricks already formed and
baked by others. Why do so many men march with the army? Spit on the gods? Steal what they could earn by their own labor? Rape when they can walk into Ushara's temples and worship? Why didn't they just stay home in their villages and towns, marry, tithe, and sire children? The Hundred has let itself rot from within. Now the contagion of discontent and anger is spread by those greedy enough to encourage the worst in those too weak to resist.'
'Harsh words,' he said.
'True words. We must all take responsibility for the troubles that engulf us.'
He did not know what to say because every word seemed meaningless compared with her presence as she stood there with wet cloth stuck to her skin and her body balanced with deadly grace. Her glare forced him a step back, and he bumped against unyielding stone. He was trembling with the effort of staying where he was, as his pulse throbbed and his breath caught in his throat.
She shook her head, no smile, no frown. 'A woman can look a long time before she finds a man who can really take his time.'
'A woman can look a long time if she never pauses long enough to try this man.'
She laughed.
'Aui!' He pushed away from the wall.
She met him, and for a glorious moment he held her as they kissed, and kissed.
And kissed.
Just when he thought they might have to do something very reckless despite knowing how close all those other reeves were in the covering darkness, a discreet cough interrupted them.
She broke away. Riven of contact, he swayed, and as Peddonon caught his arm to steady him, she vanished down the corridor toward the ledge.
'You've got it bad, my friend,' murmured Peddonon.
Joss brought a palm to his face. 'Am I crazy?'
Peddonon snorted.
'She's leaving!' He pulled out of Peddonon's grasp and stumbled after her.
'Don't go over the edge, Joss.'
Too late. She was sworn to the goddess, a trained assassin, fixed on her mission. She'd already been lowered over the cliff,
the reeves letting out the rope hand over hand. He stayed out there in the night and the wind until they received the three tugs that indicated she'd gotten down safely. Until they hauled up the empty basket and stowed it under the overhang where it couldn't be spotted in daylight by an enemy patrolling the far shore. Until they'd all gone away, leaving Peddonon and Kesta waiting for him in a patient silence that hurt more than the hollow feeling in his gut.
The cooling breeze off the water reminded him that the dry season lay ahead. He rubbed his arms, but the ache did not go away.
'Heya,' said Kesta softly. 'Come on, Joss. Let's go have a drink, eh? We've missed you these past months. It's not the same without you here at Clan Hall.'
'I might never see her again.'
Peddonon whistled under his breath. Kesta sighed. The river rushed toward the distant sea, just as the army would, marching south through fertile and heavily populated Istria toward Nessumara, said in the tales to be the second-oldest inhabited place in the Hundred and certainly its largest city now. He must do what was required of him, just as she would.
'The first thing we must do,' he said, 'is warn Nessumara's council and Copper Hall to seek traitors in their midst. And get Tohon and his group out of there.'
Only then, as he turned to go with his companions, did he realize she had never said what had happened to the outlander, Shai.
6
'You're not the boy I remember, Shai.'
Hari lounged on a silk-covered couch, the kind of furniture found in the houses of the rich in Kartu Town. The florid couch looked out of place inside a campaign tent otherwise furnished with only two rugs, a folding table holding a pair of cups and a ceramic bottle with an unbroken seal, and a single lit lamp. Two objects rested on the table: the Mei clan wolf ring and wolf belt buckle Hari had been wearing the day he'd been marched out of Kartu Town as a prisoner of their Qin overlords.
Shai pointed to them. 'I went through terrible things to get that ring and buckle back. Will you put on your ring?'
'No. I'm no longer a son of the Mei clan.'
Shai displayed the wolf ring he wore as a child of the Mei clan, although his ring wasn't anything like as fine a quality as the one that had been given to Hari by Grandmother when Hari had reached manhood. After all, Hari was the favored third son, while Shai was merely the excess seventh. 'Who are you, if not a son of the Mei clan? Father Mei sent me to bring your bones back to the clan for proper burial.'
As a boy, Hari had perfected the ability to raise a single eyebrow; he could mock you while looking so exceedingly clever that you found yourself smiling in sympathy, wanting him to approve of you. 'Here I am.'
Today, Shai wasn't smiling. 'You're dead.'
'Harsh words, little brother. Yet you would know, you who can see ghosts.'
Shai flushed. 'Have you forgotten that in Kartu Town, they burn people who see ghosts?'
T never told anyone you could see ghosts. I would never have betrayed you.'
'Yet here I am, your prisoner.' He walked to the tent flap and twitched the entrance curtain aside to stare over the camp, where soldiers worked into the dusk breaking down tents and loading gear into wagons in preparation for a dawn departure. Guards surrounded the tent.
Behind him, Hari sighed. 'You're not my prisoner. I'm sheltering you. Don't you trust me? You used to.'
Shai let the cloth fall as he turned. 'You were the best of my brothers, it's true.'
'As if that's saying much!'
'It's why I came all this way to find a dead man. Yet you're no ghost. You live and breathe.'
'Maybe it just seems to you that I live and I breathe. Maybe I am a ghost. The soldiers call us cloaks. A few whisper that we're lilu. Some name us as Guardians, the ones who bring justice.' His crooked smile made his expression bitter.
'This army brings no justice.'
'I never said it did.'
'Yet you ride with murderers and rapists and thieves. You command them.'
