that we might bite them at an inconvenient time. We are too few in number to truly frighten them. But I am sure that Reeve Joss has been betrayed in some manner. The question is: What are we to do about it?'
At night it was almost cool, with a lazy breeze teasing the dregs of heat. Mai slapped at the midges swarming her face and shifted to get into the draft of smoke off the fire they sat around. She would stink of smoke, but it was better than being bitten raw. That sweet bath seemed ages in the past. It was hard to believe she had luxuriated in those waters only this past morning.
'If we go back to the empire, we will be killed,' said Chief Tuvi.
'If we go back to the Qin, we will be killed,' said Tohon. 'It would be death without honor, like a starving cur who slinks back to the fire though it knows it will be cut down.'
By the light of the fire, Shai was whittling at a scrap of driftwood, shaping it into a spoon whose handle was fashioned as the forelegs and head of a springing antelope. She could see the form come into being under his hands in the same manner she could see thoughts and solutions coming into being and being dismissed as unworkable by the way Anji's expression shifted. But she didn't know what her husband was thinking.
'I have considered every piece of information we know.' Anji sat cross-legged on a square mat woven of reeds, just like the one on which she sat. His hands were now folded in his lap. 'I have turned it, and turned it, but I have no answers. Some manner of conflict boils among the reeves. Guardsmen resort to banditry to prey on the caravans they are meant to safeguard. Discontent simmers within the Lesser Houses of the council in Olossi because their voices go unheard. Rumors of trouble in the north frighten the merchants, who wonder if outright war or some demon's spawn has poisoned the trade routes between these parts and those farther north. The reeve's bone whistle is worn around the neck of a city guardsman. Where is the reeve, then? Living, or dead? If dead, who killed him? If living, why did he lose his eagle's whistle, and why did the council master claim he knew nothing of the reeve?'
'He didn't say he knew nothing of Reeve Joss,' said Mai. 'He said there was no reeve here for us to see, which could mean anything, quite the opposite. That woman suggested the reeve was some manner of villain falsely claiming to be a reeve. They know what's happened to him. There was a man dressed in similar fashion, another reeve, surely, who left before the meeting was over.'
Anji nodded. 'They are not dealing honestly with us.'
'No surprise there,' said Shai morosely.
Mai nudged him with her foot, bent close, and whispered in his ear. 'Say something useful, or keep quiet!'
'Well, then,' said Shai defiantly, 'what of my brother's ring? I've heard talk of this town called Horn. That's where the story said the ring was found.' He held up his own hand to display the family ring: the running wolf biting its own tail, with a black pearl inlaid into silver as its eye.
Her identical ring was hidden by her sleeve, although the quality of her pearl was finer than the one on Shai's ring, because she was Father Mei's eldest daughter rather than only a seventh, and excess, son. Everyone knew that six sons were plenty: two to marry, two to die, one for the priests, and one for spare. That's how it had been in their house: Father Mei and the second son, Terti, had married young and given birth so far to many healthy children. Third son Sendi had gone to the priests, while fourth son Hari, for spare, had been exiled and marched away by the Qin army, leaving fifth son Neni to marry unexpectedly in the wake of Grandmother's grief over Hari. Of course sixth son Girish had died a spectacular and well-deserved death, shame on her even to think so, except it was true because he was a nasty man. Shai, poor Shai, was left over, the unlucky seventh son with the curse of seeing ghosts that he must hide from his own family as well as every living soul in Kartu Town lest he be burned and hanged in the town square, like Widow Lae, although the widow hadn't actually seen ghosts but had done something just as bad when she had betrayed her Qin overlords.
'What was in Widow Lae's letter?' she asked. The men looked at her, Shai with his mouth popping open in a most ridiculous way, Tohon and Tuvi with puzzlement, but Anji with a faint smile.
'Widow Lae?' Chief Tuvi asked. 'Who is that?'
'She was burned and hanged in Kartu Town square,' said Mai, looking at Anji. 'I know you remember that day.'
'I saw her ghost,' Shai muttered. 'She said she was waiting for her reward.'
Mai nodded. 'What did she do? The order we heard read in the citadel square said she had insulted a Qin officer. But the whisper told us she'd asked a passing merchant to carry a letter to Tars Fort, in the east. When he wouldn't do it she sent a grandson instead. That merchant received a share of the proceeds of the sale of her estate and her kinsfolk, and then he left town by the Golden Road. What was she really executed for? I always wondered.'
The fire snapped, its bridge of brittle driftwood collapsing into sparks. Tuvi gestured, and Pil came in from the gloom with an armful of new branches. The soldier arranged them on the coals and blew on the lattice until fire caught and flared high, burning strongly on the dry wood but without enough smoke to smother the horrid midges.
Anji batted a swarm away from his face, scratched his neck, and nodded. 'Widow Lae,' he said, musing over the name. 'I think, Mai, that you have spotted the only blossom on the otherwise barren tree. I had forgotten about Widow Lae.'
A bird's whistle startled out of the brush at the shoreline. The men leaped to their feet. Mai rose and clutched Priya's hand. Sengel strode away toward the sound. But Anji kept talking, as if nothing strange had happened.
'You're right that Widow Lae was not executed for insulting a Qin officer, except in the most general way.'
She waited as he rubbed his chin. He lifted an arm to point. Every head turned to look toward the shore. Inland a tiny light-torchlight-advanced along what must be the main road, heading for Olossi. They watched in silence, because it was such a strange sight to see that pinprick of brightness aflame against the dark.
At length, Tohon muttered, 'A runner, or a rider. Too fast to be walking.'
Anji grunted. 'It's an urgent message,' he said evenly, 'that travels into the night.'
'The Sirniakans have night runners,' said Priya, and she shuddered, releasing Mai's hand. 'Agents of the red hounds.'
'Do you think it could be the red hounds?' whispered Mai.
Anji caught her wrist. 'Enough. We may never know, and it does no good to spin these thoughts when they have nowhere to go.'
'The agents of the red hounds never travel alone,' said Tohon.
Anji turned his head to look, in the most general way, toward the southwest, whence they had come. Out there lay the wide, flat delta, dark under the night sky. The river had a slow, deep voice here as it spilled away into a hundred channels and backwaters. Wind found a voice in the rushes and reeds and bushes growing everywhere. A nightjar clicked.
'I had forgotten until now,' he mused, and for a moment Mai could not remember what they had been speaking about because she had not yet banished the vision of giant slavering red dogs panting and growling as they closed in for the kill. 'She was executed for passing information to an agent of the Sirniakan Empire. To our enemy. To one of the red hounds, perhaps. Certainly a traitor must expect death. But now that I think on it, by the time Widow Lae was passing intelligence to an enemy agent, the var would already have sealed the secret treaty he made with my brother Azadihosh. Emperor Farazadihosh, I should say. Whose position as emperor is so weak that he must seek Qin aid in putting down his rivals. The orders for me to ride east came from my uncle, the var.'
'He was sending you into a trap,' said Tuvi.
'Just so.'
'Did the commander of Kartu Town know of the new treaty?' asked Mai. 'Did he send you east innocently, or did he know he was sending you to your death?'
'I don't know,' said Anji. 'But all the commanders in the eastern part of the Qin territories would have to be told of the treaty because of the major transfer of troops onto the eastern frontier. That means it's likely that the commander of Kartu knew of the treaty, and knew that the emperor was now our ally. If that's true, then I must ask myself, who was the enemy that Widow Lae was found to be passing intelligence to?'
'I never heard a whisper of rebellion in Kartu Town,' said Shai.
Anji smiled softly. 'Nor did I. The people of Kartu Town possess a pragmatic wisdom that has served them
