of mature pipe-brush. As she washed her hands, she noticed a small structure off to one side that almost blended into the foliage. She walked over, Priya and Sheyshi trailing after, but thought better of mounting the steps when she saw it was a shrine. She had been raised in the path taught by the Merciful One. In the empire, she knew, the priests served Beltak, calling him the Shining One Who Rules Alone even though he was only a harsher aspect of the holy one all folk worshiped.
This altar had no walls, only green poles with the shapes of leaves carved into them, a tile roof painted green, and a green rug laid over a plank floor. The rug was woven of thick, stiff grass-like blades as long as her arm, and it had begun to wear away where folk had trodden on it. A walking staff stood within, propped at an angle, so tall that it fit inside the peaked roof. A stubby log sat on its end in one corner, with a bouquet of withered flowers discarded on top.
'I'm surprised the flowers haven't blown away, or been replaced with something fresh,' she murmured to Priya. 'Is there no bell or lamp?'
'This is no altar for the Merciful One,' said Priya.
'I don't think it's a Beltak temple, either,' said Mai.
'I see no god,' whispered Sheyshi. With head bent, she eyed the shrine as she might a twisting snake whose dance can cause women to fall into a charmed and deadly sleep.
Folk were looking their way, faces obscured by twilight.
'Perhaps we're not meant to stand here,' said Mai. 'Let's go back.'
Anji had staked out the central fire pit, and he stood near its flickering light speaking to the reeve as Mai walked up behind them. They were laughing, and did not see her.
'You are a lucky man, did you know that?' Joss was saying.
'It would be impolite to reply to such a question. If I knew, and said so, then it would seem I am boasting. If I did not, it would seem I am foolish.'
The reeve laughed. 'I am answered!' He turned, alert even before Anji was, and Anji turned, and saw Mai. Sheyshi scuttled away to help O'eki, who was wrestling with a steaming haunch of venison. Priya paused just outside the circle of firelight.
'Surely you are a fortunate man as well,' said Mai, coming forward.
His smile remained easy, but his gaze retreated into itself, as though he were staring down a long straight track into a twilit distance whose landscape was forever veiled from mortal sight. 'I am not married.'
Day seemed to shift into night with the swiftness of a child whose mood can swing from joy to tears in an instant. She halted beside Anji, but she could not look away from the reeve.
'You have a shadow in your eyes,' she said to the reeve.
He looked at Anji, and she looked at Anji, and the captain nodded, and the reeve spoke in a low voice as around them the camp settled into its evening routine of drinking, eating, song, and sleep.
'I gave up telling the tale years ago. It came at the beginning, when the shadows first began to reach into the land, in the north. She was the first one-the first reeve-slaughtered. That was on the Liya Pass. Twenty years ago. Where it all began, when outlaws and cursed greedy lords began hunting down the eagle clans. I still dream about her. I shouldn't have let her go alone. If I'd gone with her…' But he shook his head.
'What then?' she asked.
Anji remained silent, watching.
He shrugged, and offered her a wry smile that made her want to cry for his pain. 'Most likely we'd both be dead. Her eagle was found. Not just dead, but mutilated.'
She had a nasty, prickling feeling along her back, as if someone drew cold fingers laced with slivers of glass up and down her skin. 'What of her?'
He shifted his gaze to the leaping flames, his head canted and jaw tight, and continued speaking. 'Her body was never found, but we found her clothes, her boots, a belt buckle, her knife, items she carried in her pack…'The fire sparked as a soldier shoved a pair of branches into the flames. The reeve winced back from the flare, then caught himself and went on, although his voice seemed flatter and more distant. He might have been reciting from a scroll. 'Her boot knife was found on a girl, one of the Devourer's hierodules. The girl had been stabbed in the heart. That girl's corpse lay there with the rest of the discarded gear. It was only her body we did not find, nor them who did it, as they had all abandoned the camp.'
'She might not have been taken away with those who killed the other one?' Anji asked.
'We searched, but there was never any sign of her. No, she's dead. I knew it as soon as I saw what remained of Flirt-that was her eagle. A reeve doesn't survive her eagle's death. An eagle can survive through the lives of four or five reeves if it's particularly long-lived, like my good Scar, but for the other way, no. Better dead than no longer a reeve, so we say.' His smile was a ghost's smile, without life, but he struggled with it and shook his head and said, 'It still hurts. A few years later, bones were found in an unmarked grave up beyond that abandoned camp. Perhaps that was her, hidden because they feared our revenge. I try to leave it behind.' He blew breath out through his lips and shook himself in the manner of a duck shedding water. 'I keep thinking I have.'
'I'm so sorry,' said Mai, wiping away a tear. 'What was her name?'
'Reeve Joss!' A voice hailed him from the darkness. 'Best come see this!'
'Excuse me.' Joss left.
'Every young man loses his first love,' remarked Anji to Mai, 'but most get back in the saddle and keep riding. He's tethered to one post.'
'Is it fair to say so? You don't know what he's done in the years since, only that speaking the tale makes him sad. The storytellers in the marketplace would make a song out of it, like in the tale of the Rose Princess and the Fourteen Silk Ribbons. She ran off with her lover, and he left her by the riverside while he went into town to buy her silk ribbons, and she was eaten by a lion that had been sent to earth by a demon jealous of her beauty. Afterward he wore her bloodstained rags and went on pilgrimage to the fourteen holy temples, one for each ribbon he had bought for her, but he could not calm his heart and after all he turned back to seek revenge, but the demon seduced him and made him steal back the ribbons from each temple and.. It's a terribly sad tale!' she finished indignantly, seeing that he was trying not to laugh. 'He dishonored himself! What could be worse? There is a song, but it always makes me cry.'
'I would gladly hear the song. You sing with sincerity and a true voice.'
'Maybe not such a strong one,' she muttered. 'But the tone is good, so I am told.'
'You are still angry. I do not laugh at you, dearest Mai. I just have no taste for such tales. To me, they seem ridiculous.'
'How are the tales ridiculous?'
He laughed. 'Any man knows better than to leave a beautiful woman alone by the riverside in the middle of wilderness! Wild beasts and demons stalk everywhere, and not least among them the sort of bandits we drove away in Dast Korumbos. No, I have no patience for those stories.'
'Mistress.' Sheyshi came out of the dark carrying a copper basin filled with water. 'Here is warmed water, if you want to wash your hair and face.'
'Captain!' The reeve reappeared, barely visible in the gloom, and waved a hand. 'If you will. There's something I would like you to see.'
Anji nodded at her and went after Joss. Mai watched them fade into the twilight. She scanned the clearing and the trees but could see nothing exceptional, only merchants fussing at their wagons, soldiers grooming horses, and a dog slinking under the wheels of a cart. Guards ringed the prisoner's wagon, but they showed no sign of alarm as they maintained their vigil.
Movement beside one wagon attracted her gaze. Canvas had been stretched by means of an internal scaffolding to make a cabin over the bed, and two young women knelt beside a small fire, feeding sticks into it and stirring in a pot that hung on an iron tripod over the flames.
'Look there,' said Mai to Priya. 'I've noticed them before. They look a little like Sheyshi, don't they?'
'Slaves,' said Priya. 'See the bracelets and anklets, hung with bells so they cannot run away without alerting their master. Someone means to sell them here in the north. So it happened to me.'
Mai took the other woman's arm, looking for the mark of shackles. 'You have never worn such bracelets, Priya!'
'It is not the custom in Kartu. They were taken off me before I came to your father's house.'
'Still.' Mai scratched a forearm carelessly. 'There's something about those two-or that wagon, anyway-that
