ready in case of emergency.
She saw Joss standing beside the smaller fire pit, which was ringed with white stones like drippings of wax. The fire burned merrily and he already had meat roasting on a spit. The young reeve had his back to the setting sun and was looking east up at the ridge of hill whose familiar profile they called Ammadit's Tit, which despite the name was held by the hierarchs to be sacred to the Lady of Beasts.
Showing off, Flirt made a smooth landing on the height. Joss raised a hand in greeting as Marit slipped out of her harness and walked down to the fire.
'Mmm,' she said, kissing him. 'Eat first, or after?'
He grinned, ducking his head in that way that was so fetching; he was still a little shy.
She tousled his black hair. 'Shame you have to keep it cut.'
They kissed a while longer. He was young and tall and slender and a good fit, the best fit she'd ever found in her ten years as a reeve. He wasn't boastful or cocky. Some reeves, puffed up with the gloat of having been chosen by an eagle and granted the authority to patrol, thought that also meant they could lord it over the populace. He wasn't a stiff-chinned and tight-rumped bore, either, stuck on trivial niceties of the law. It was true he had a sharp eye and a sharp tongue and a streak of unexpected recklessness, but he was a competent reeve all the same, with a good instinct for people. Like the one he had now, knowing what she wanted.
Grease sizzled as it fell into the flames. The sun's rim touched the western hills.
'Best see to Flirt,' he said, pulling back. 'I sent Scar out to hunt and there's no telling when he'll get back. You know Flirt's temper.'
She laughed softly. 'Yes, she'll not like him moving in where she's roosting. I'll make sure she's settled.'
Flirt was cleaning herself. With a resignation born of exhaustion, she accepted her demotion to the hollow where Candle Rock dipped to the southwest to make a natural bowl with some protection from the wind. Marit chained her to one of the rings hammered into the rock, hooded and jessed her. Then she skinned her out of her harness, greased the spot it chafed, and, with an old straw broom she found stuck in a crevice, swept droppings out of the bowl.
'You'll eat tomorrow, girl,' she said, but Flirt had already settled into her resting stupor, head dipped under one wing. It was getting dark. Wind died as the sun set.
She hoisted the harness, her pack, her hood, and her rolled-up cloak over her shoulders and trudged up a path cut into the rock, back to the fire. Off to her left the rock face plunged down to where the road cut up toward the summit, seen as a darkening saddle off to the south. Joss was sitting on the white stones, carving up meat onto a wooden platter. She admired the cut of his shoulders and the curve of his neck. The touch of the Devourer teased her, right down to her core. He looked up and grinned again, eyes crinkling tight. She tossed down harness and weapons, pulled the platter out of his hands, set it down, and tumbled him.
'Cloaks,' he muttered when he could get in a word.
'Oh. Yes.'
He'd already spread out his traveling cloak and tossed his blanket down on top of it. It was a warm night without clouds and they really only needed a little padding to protect flesh from stone.
'Mmm,' she said later, when they lay tangled together. He was stroking her breasts and belly absently as he stared up at the brilliant spray of stars. She dragged the platter of meat close up and fed him bits and pieces.
'Do you ever think-?' he started.
'Not when I see you.'
He chuckled, but he wasn't as much in thrall to the Devourer as she was. Sated, he had a tendency to spin out dreams and idle thoughts, which she never minded because she liked the feel of him lying beside her. He had a good smell, clean sweat but also the bracing perfume of juniper from the soaps his mother sent once a year to Copper Hall. 'Just thinking about what I did today. There was a knife fight at a woodsmen's camp east of summit ridge, out into wild country. Both men stabbed, one like to die.'
'Sorry,' she said, wincing. 'Murders are the worst.'
'I wish it were so,' he said, wisely for one so young.
'What do you mean?' She speared a chunk of meat with his knife, spun it consideringly, then ate. The meat was almost bitter; a coney, maybe, something stringy and rodent-like. 'I've got bread and cheese for the morning. Better than this. Got you no provisions for your pains today?'
'Not a swallow. They were happy to be rid of me. I was wondering if you'd come back with me. A few of them had the debt scar-' He touched the ridge of his brow just to the left of his left eye, where folk who sold their labor into debt servitude were tattooed with a curving line.'-and hair grown out raggedly to cover it.'
'You think some were runaway slaves.'
'Maybe so. It's likely. And then what manner of law-abiding persons would take such men in, I wonder? They made me nervous, like they had knives hidden behind their backs.' He shuddered under her hands.
'I'll come. No use courting trouble. They'll not kick with two eagles staring them down.'
Abruptly he sat up, tilting his head back. 'Ah. There he is.'
A shadow covered them briefly. The big eagle had a deer in his claws. He released it, and the corpse fell hard to the ground at the eastern edge of the rock, landing with a meaty thunk. Scar landed with a soft scrape and after a silence tore into his prey. Bones cracked. From across the height Flirt screamed a challenge, but Scar kept at his meat, ignoring her. Flirt yelped twice more, irritated, but she wouldn't be particularly hungry yet. She'd settle and sleep. Marit yawned.
Joss wasn't done worrying over the problem. 'I have to go back in two days to see if the man died, and then what's to do? I'm to conduct a hearing? They've no captain, and the arkhon at the nearest village-Sandy Falls-told me he'll have nothing to do with the matter. Maybe the lord of Iliyat will agree to sit in judgment.'
'That's a long way for Lord Radas's arm to reach. He's young in his position, too. His uncle died just two years ago, and he's still testing his wings. I don't expect this will fall under his authority. We should be able to handle it. Honestly, sweetheart, no matter how ugly a murder is, it won't be the first time two drunk men settled their argument with a knife.'
'I know,' he said a little more desperately than the situation seemed to call for, 'but reeves aren't meant to judge. It's the place of the Guardians to hold assizes to settle such grievances and disputes, those that can't be resolved by local councils.'
'True enough,' she agreed. 'I had to mediate in a boundary dispute this morning. I've shifted a hundred stone markers in the last ten years, and I don't like it any better now than I did the first time. Half of them don't like that I'm a woman, but they'll say nothing with Flirt at my back. Still. No Guardian's been seen for-oh-since my grandfather was a boy. Maybe longer.'
'The Guardians don't exist. They're just a story.'
She gave him a light shove, because his words disturbed her. 'Great Lady! That's nineteen years' bad luck for saying such a thing! Anyway, my grandfather remembered the assizes from back when they were held properly. He saw a Guardian once, who came to preside over the court. Do you think he was lying to me?'
'He was a boy then, you said so yourself. He listened to, and danced, the tales, as we all do. Stories blend with fragmented memories to make new memories. He came to believe as truth what never really happened. No shame in that.'
'Joss! Sheh! For shame! The hierophants preserve in the Lantern's libraries the old scrolls that record the judgments made in those days. Judgments made by Guardians. How do you answer that evidence?'
'What is a name? I could call myself a 'Guardian' and my attendance at an assizes court would show in the records that a 'Guardian' oversaw that day's proceedings.'
She squeezed him until he grunted, air forced out of his lungs. 'Say so if you must! But my grandfather had the best memory of anyone I have ever known. He could remember the time when he was a lad when the first Silver merchant came through the village, with two roan cart horses and a hitch in his stride as if he'd broken a hip and it had healed wrong. He could remember the names of all his clan cousins, even the ones who had died when he was a lad, and the folk they married and which temple their children were apprenticed to. If we see no Guardians now, that doesn't mean there were never any.'
He sighed as sharply as if he'd gotten a fist in the belly. Twisting, he looked eastward, although it was by now too dark to see anything but stars and the dark shadow of the towering spire that gave Candle Rock its name. 'Ammadit's Tit is a Guardian's altar, it's said. What's to stop us flying up there and looking around?'
'Joss!' Startled and shocked, she sat up. She went cold, all goose-bumped, although the wind hadn't gotten
