'Where did those come from?' asked Kesh. 'Were they patrolling? I've never seen such a company of guardsmen in Olossi.'
'No. They're the hired guard for another caravan. It was running about half a day behind yours. I saw them coming down the pass. As a reeve, I have the power to deputize folk when I need their aid.'
'They're not Sirniakan.'
'Are they not?' The reeve sat back on his heels with a look of pleased interest. 'What are they, then?'
'I'm not sure, but I think they're Kin. Qin. I can't say it right. Grass eaters. That's what they're called in Mariha.'
'Mariha?'
'That's a princedom west of the empire. They were ruled by five princes for a long time, so I was told, and none were happy except those who ruled. Then these Qin people came out of the west and killed the ruling princes. Now the Qin rule in Mariha.'
He was about to say more, but he faltered, seeing too late that the reeve's pleasant interrogation had been meant to draw him out.
'Beyond the western edge of the Sirniakan Empire?' mused the reeve. 'Well, I've seen no maps nor have I patrolled those lands, so I can't say I understand it. These men and their captain claim to be mercenaries. They hired themselves to the caravan as guards.'
For a while that seemed drawn out far too long, the reeve smiled at Kesh as Kesh squirmed, shifting his feet and berating himself in his thoughts. This reeve was a truly dangerous man, for all his cordiality. He must start to wonder why the ospreys had attacked in such numbers and into the village rather than waiting and raiding along the road. He must start to wonder what it was they were after so urgently.
'I'd like to talk to you further,' said the reeve.
'I have to leave at dawn.'
'As must I. Come see me in the inn later, when you've a chance. Don't forget your accounts book and tallies.' He said the words with such a benevolent smile that Keshad knew he absolutely would be rounded up by those grim-faced guardsmen and marched before the reeve as before the assizes if he did not present himself before the man this very night. When a reeve said such words, in that tone of voice, a man had to obey.
'It's getting dark,' he said, to escape.
He fled to the Ladytree to find Tebedir arguing with the lads from the inn. The driver had already poured a dram of his potent brew onto the cut and bound it with a strip of linen, and he refused any other aid.
'Best see to the boy,' he said.
'He must be carried,' said Kesh to the lads, who bent to grab the youth by ankles and wrists. 'Nay, not like that, you fools. His guts will fall out.'
'What matter?' asked the shorter lad. 'He's dead, this one. Just not yet.'
'Wish he'd stop squealing,' said the taller one. 'Makes a lot of noise for a dying man, don't you think?'
'No one can survive a plug to the guts. Gah! He smells!'
'Go get something to carry him on!' shouted Kesh.
They fled as Kesh cursed after them.
The lad was whimpering and keening, and the sound did grate the ears, but Kesh felt pity for him, and anyway the lad had probably saved Kesh's cargo with his stalwart defense of his master's wagon. He crouched and smoothed the lad's forehead and talked to him as he would talk to an injured dog, letting the sound of his voice act as a focus as the lad's breathing caught, ceased… and gasped again as he fought back to life.
Tebedir offered a bowl of water and a cloth to Kesh, who wiped the lad's brow as he mewled and cried for his mother. Flies gathered on the dead ospreys, and flies buzzed around the lad's ghastly wound, all pink and gray with oozing blood draining his life as it dribbled onto the ground. Wind whispered in the Ladytree, and between one breath and the next the lad escaped into the air, slipped away on the breeze, his breath following the shadow path toward home. A sprawled hand lay open; the mark of the Ox decorated his wrist.
Tebedir murmured a prayer. Kesh sank back on his heels as the pair of lads trotted up empty-handed. A stout man wearing a stained merchant's coat labored along behind them. When he saw the dead boy, he slapped a hand to his forehead.
'Not under the Ladytree! Now I'll have to pay the death offering to the Lady, too!'
Tebedir raised an eyebrow and looked at Kesh.
'This boy saved your cargo,' said Kesh sharply. 'He defended your wagon with selfless courage. I can't say the same for you.'
'This is none of your business! Move aside! Oh, by the Witherer's Kiss, you fools!' he shouted at the lads. 'You should have dragged him out from under the tree! Now I'm stuck with the cursed Lady tithe.'
Kesh rose and turned to Tebedir. 'Watch the cart, if you will. If I have to stand and listen to this any longer, I'll hit him.'
'Please hit,' said Tebedir. 'That boy fought like brave man.'
'Pissing foreigners!' snarled the merchant. 'Get out of my way!'
Kesh lifted a fist, and such a tide of loathing swept him that he hauled back-the merchant shrieked-and from the cart a female voice said words in a language Kesh had never heard before. It was like a bucketful of icy spring water splashed over him. He recovered; he remembered: Hit a man beneath a Ladytree, violating the Lady's law, and you paid a fine to her mendicants. They always knew; you could never get around it. Pay a fine, and it was that much coin thrown away. He could afford to lose none of his profit, not now, not this time. Not because he was disgusted by a self-important, selfish jackal of a man who paid his lackwit servant in sticky buns since the poor boy was too ignorant and too stupid and now too dead to demand better pay.
Shaking, he lowered his hand, gave the bowl and cloth to Tebedir, grabbed his ledger and pouch, and strode away. The merchant began yapping after him, but Kesh walked fast and didn't listen.
Dusk lay heavily over the commons. A cheerful fire burned in the outdoor hearth of the inn's courtyard, and men gathered there, drinking, but no songs warmed the twilight and the talk looked intense but muted. No one laughed. Other merchants hunkered down beside their carts. A half-dozen hirelings prowled around the ranks of corpses, but a quartet of black-clad mercenaries guarded the dead men, and Kesh guessed that no one would strip those bodies, not tonight, not without permission from the mercenary captain or the reeve. He paused by the gate to look over the mercenaries from a safe distance, not so close that they might feel he was challenging them. A few were setting up crude tents, canvas stretched out as a lean-to over bare ground to provide shelter against rain and wind. A pair rode off toward the south gate. Others moved among the horses, unsaddling some and stringing their spare mounts along a line for the night. They watched the movement of merchants and hirelings and slaves in the commons in the same way that wolves study the behavior of deer in a clearing. They ignored the corpses, though Kesh could not. The souls of dead folk begged for release, and the longer they lingered here, the more likely they would get up to some mischief.
He touched fingers to forehead and lips, and patted his chest twice, remembering the words of the Shining One Who Rules Alone: Death is liberation.
'There are no ghosts,' he said, as if saying it would make it true.
Too late he noticed a young man coming up to the gate carrying a full kettle of steaming barsh. He halted and stared at Kesh strangely, as if he'd heard the comment. Kesh opened the gate for him, and the young man nodded in thanks and hurried toward the mercenaries, looking back once. He was dressed differently, in loose trousers and a short kirtle bound at the waist with a sash. His red-clay coloring and pleasant features reminded Keshad more of his two Mariha slave girls than of the stocky riders with their flat, broad cheekbones, sparse mustaches, and predator's gaze.
Inside the inn, the reeve had set up court. He had drawn up a table parallel to one end of the long room. Here he sat, stripped out of cloak and sleeveless vest and down to shirtsleeves, on a bench between table and wall, and seated beside him the man who must be the mercenary captain. The contrast between the two men made Kesh pause beside the door as he tried to decide whether to get in line with the other merchants being interviewed by the reeve, or grab a drink first to fortify himself against the coming interrogation.
The reeve had an easy way of talking to the merchants who laid out their ledgers and tallied their chits in response to his smiling questions. His manner suggested this was merely an inconvenience between friends. The other man was a stranger, reserved, removed, but aware of every action within the smoky interior. He glanced at Kesh, noting his scrutiny, and marked him with a nod before looking elsewhere. That he understood the words flying
