'Captain Beron.' Anji nodded. 'Five days back, Reeve Joss was arrested, it seems. Three days ago, Captain Beron was still alive. Before the dart stung his eye. So tell me, Mai, how could Reeve Joss have been arrested for a murder that hadn't yet been committed?' He extended a hand, gestured, and Mai tossed him a gold coin, which he caught deftly. 'He was arrested for a crime someone else was planning to commit, someone who discovered that Captain Beron's operation was discovered, and that Beron himself had been arrested. Yet no man or woman left our caravan between the border and Olossi, none except Reeve Joss.'
'They betrayed him!' cried Eliar.
'So it seems, and another man besides,' said Anji. 'Captain Beron was alive yesterday morning, and was dead by the time we reached the gate. Who killed him, and why?'
Master Calon shook his head, like a weary ox trying to shake away a pestering swarm of flies. 'This grows deeper and darker,' he muttered.
'Truly,' agreed Anji, 'since this man called Captain Waras was wearing, around his neck, the very bone whistle which we had previously seen in the possession of Reeve Joss. Without it, I think, the reeve has no way to call his eagle. How can a man be freed from Assizes Tower?'
Calon shook his head. 'Assizes Tower was once the responsibility of the Guardians. After they were lost, the reeves came to sit in authority over the courts. Now even that measure of justice is lost. The Greater Council rules at its whim.'
'This reeve is not the only prisoner in Assizes Tower,' said Eliar with a frown. 'All the criminals are taken there. Yet I know-as do you-of a well-respected man who vanished after he claimed that the Greater Houses were involved in a conspiracy, that they'd allied with unnamed villains out of the north. He's not been seen since. He was murdered.'
'Hush, now, cub. That's gossip, nothing proven. He was known to be of an envious, restless nature, an Air- touched Rat, and worse besides, if you take my meaning.'
'You suspect he was murdered, too,' retorted Eliar. 'Who can measure his true crimes now that he has vanished with no chance to speak on his own behalf?'
Talk of prisoners made Mai uncomfortable. The Qin had been able to drag criminals and, indeed, any person at all off to their prison block in Kartu Town, where they held their own manner of court, and the law court of Kartu Town had no authority to stop them or even oversee the hapless prisoners. She began to replace the coins and bars in the bag. It gave her something to do with her hands.
'How can a man be freed from Assizes Tower?' Anji repeated.
'Impossible,' said Calon.
'Necessary,' said Anji. 'First, I have an obligation to him, and my honor to uphold. Second, he knows things we don't. We are grasping in the dark, and he holds a light insofar as he knows which people he talked to, and if he traveled to Argent Hall, and what he saw there.'
'I'll see it's done,' said Eliar.
Calon groaned, clapping a hand to his head in a gesture so very like Ti that Mai expected him to declaim in threes. 'Fool!' he growled. 'You can't get into Assizes Tower.'
'My sister can. My sister was there today. She said there was one man in the deepest pit, untended and filthy. It could have been this reeve.'
'Your sister goes to the Assizes Tower?' Calon asked. 'Whatever for?'
'She brings food to indigent prisoners.'
Calon laughed as though it hurt. 'The hells, yes, you Silvers do go on about your 'god rules' in a way that does get to annoying people. Begging your pardon, Eliar.'
The youth gave something like a wink with his right eye. Mai saw at once that he was angered by this comment but didn't want to show it. 'We will be judged at the gate according to the measure of how we walked in the world and showed justice and mercy to poor and rich, innocent and guilty, those with power and those who are helpless, according to the law.'
Calon coughed. 'That was the law in the land you came from. That's why folk will keep calling you outlanders.'
'No, it is the law in all lands, not just the land we came from.'
'Let's not have this argument, cub.'
Eliar turned his back and took several steps away, shoulders heaving, hands in fists up by his mouth.
Anji watched.
Mai said, 'Master Eliar, even if you could get into Assizes Tower, how would you know Reeve Joss if you saw him, and why would he trust you, even if you could speak to him?'
From Eliar came silence.
Master Calon rubbed at his chin with a knuckle, looking thoughtful, and turned to Mai. 'Perhaps you could go with that sister of his, verea.'
'How could I do that?'
'Because the Silver women only appear in public with veils covering their faces. No one need know it was you.'
Maybe this could work after all. Heart pounding, Mai turned to Anji. 'I can't fight. At best I can defend myself at close quarters with my knife, but any competent soldier would overwhelm me. This is something I could do.'
'No,' said Anji. 'What do you trade in, Master Calon?'
'Flesh. In slaves.'
'So. This entire complicated scheme might be nothing more than a plot to rid yourself of my company, which seems dangerous to you, and steal my wife without any risk to yourself. You and I both know she would be worth a great deal of coin on the slave market.'
'I could sell her for twenty cheyt, at the least,' agreed Master Calon with a genial smile.
'I won't have this talk!' cried Eliar, lurching back to the circle. 'Never tell a man of my people that he has stirred his hand in the pot of slavery! Do you mean to insult me?'
'Cub, hold your tongue!' Calon grabbed hold of his arm, but Eliar shook him off.
'Enough.' Anji stepped between the two men, and they both backed off. 'Answer me a few questions, if you will, Eliar sen Haf Gi Ri.' He grabbed a stick out of the fire and held it up. Flames licked down the wood. 'On what fuel does the flame sup?'
'The wood,' said Eliar, looking irritated. 'What is the point of this?'
'And on what food did this wood grow?'
'On water and earth and sun. As any fool knows!'
'And water and earth and sun, where are they grown? What is their origin? Is it not the case that 'all things blossom out of the heart of the Hidden One'?'
'I beg you, accept my apologies,' said Eliar in a stricken tone.
Anji tossed the stick on the fire. 'No need. I studied the archives as part of my education at the palace school. Now I know who you are. Your people lived in the empire.'
'Not my clan, but distant cousins out of other clans, yes. After our people crossed the ocean, some of the clans fetched up on the shores of the Sirni Empire. They were driven out because they would not make sacrifices at the temple of the false god.'
'That's not quite how it is written in the histories of the palace.'
Eliar had the grace to blush. 'I suppose it would not be. I intend no offense.'
'You can be sure I take none, as I am not a believer. But you're right. It was a long time ago, four generations. As it happens, the priests of Beltak had a lot to say about your people, as they have a lot to say in all their writings. But I never thought I would meet one of you. They called your people 'the servants of the Hidden One, an avatar of the Lord of Lords, King of Kings.' They claimed you lived half in light and half in shadow, and in the end the priests insisted that any of you who refused to perform the sacrifice at the temple depart from the empire or be put to death. It is written there were no executions, so I am minded to believe that the priests were merciful in your case.'
Eliar nodded. 'It is said in our lore that some among the clans betrayed our people and sacrificed to the false god in order to stay in the empire. But the rest came north into the Hundred to join their kinsmen. A few sailed farther north even than that, to the lands beyond.'
'Many things were written,' added Anji, 'but I recall in particular that the priests of Beltak were outraged that
