So much for her cunning ruse. "I am. And I shall catch something, here or elsewhere, but I have no intention of returning home hungry."

"Well, never let it be said the Immaculate waters are barren," said Jun-hwan. "Perhaps your bait is lacking, sister. What if you tried another lure?"

"Forgive me, King Jun-hwan, but I am no more a courtier than I am a fisher. Talk in riddles if you must, but don't expect a humble nun to decipher them." Portoles drained her bowl and stood, hoping she had aroused the man's curiosity enough that he'd try to talk her back down. During the card games Heretic had taught her around their campfires, he had chided her for following up one bad bluff with another, but Portoles didn't have any other strategies here. "I was sent here to ask a question. You've given me one answer, and I expect to receive a different one from the Empress of the Immaculate Isles when I meet with her two days hence. Both shall be returned to the queen, unfiltered by the simple mind of the messenger."

Jun-hwan stood as well, not nearly as ruffled as Portoles would have liked. "May you find better luck casting your line in Othean. The Autumn Palace has many pools for you to plumb."

"If you or your husband do happen to run into a dead woman who goes by the name of Zosia, let her know that I'm looking for her," said Portoles. "It's important. Tell her..."

Tell her what? That Queen Indsorith had nothing to do with the slaughter at Kypck, that this was an obvious plot to set Zosia against the Crimson Empire? That Queen Indsorith suspected the Burnished Chain had found out about Zosia and sent Colonel Hjortt to kill her people to create this very situation, where Stricken Queen sought vengeance against Crimson, and the church could rule absolutely after they had destroyed each other? That the Crimson Queen had sent Portoles to alert Zosia to all this, so that another needless war could be avoided? The only thing more insane than the truth was the notion that Portoles say anything more to Jun-hwan on the subject; already she had given too much away. "Just tell her Sister Portoles needs to parley."

"I say again, I believe you are confused, Sister Portoles-I do not know this woman you speak of."

"Thanks for the kaldi." Portoles looked back to the distant fogbank, and Jun-hwan stepped around the table. In a low voice, so low Portoles barely heard him, King Jun-hwan said: "There are others you could ask, sister."

"I told you, I'm no good at riddles," said Portoles, holding his gaze. Now, at last, there was something more than an impenetrable mirror meeting her eyes-eagerness.

"The schools of harpyfish swim farther and deeper than any creature in the Isles," Jun-hwan said as he leaned down, popping open a hidden recess in the center of the table and retrieving a tiny, pink-lidded cream pitcher. "As deep as the Sunken Kingdom, some say. Those who drink of their essence are granted a deep communion with friend and foe alike, and stranger folk still. There is no deception in the realm of the harpies-we could share everything with one another, and know that our exchange was equal."

Portoles took the miniature carafe and opened the hinged lid with her thumb. The oil within shimmered as black as the Gate in Diadem, into which all anathemas had to cast any devilish scraps the Papal barbers had removed from their malformed bodies before first being admitted to the Dens. It smelled of kelp turned up on desolate spits of rock, and the draught sang to Portoles's scarred tongue, setting her blunted teeth on edge...

"But would I remember a damn thing afterward?" Portoles smiled as she poured the harpy toxin over the balcony, into the sea far below. It hurt so good to refuse the temptation. "I've heard of your devil milk, King Jun-hwan, and politely decline the invitation."

Jun-hwan hissed through his teeth; even for a highborn gentleman of the Isles that stuff must be worth a fortune. "I had hoped one of your descent would have a more enlightened view."

"Hope isn't really a dependable purview," said Portoles, shaking out the last few drops before gingerly returning the ceramic vessel to the table. "Faith, well, that's something you can fall back on, when hope doesn't pan out."

"There is war coming, sister, but not the one you're expecting," said Jun-hwan, his smile just a hair too wild for Portoles's liking. "Your superiors in the Chain are busy as wastewasps with their preparations, even if they keep their plotting far from the ears of the wildborn they convert through mutilation. Or the queen, for that matter. You could have learned much, if you hadn't stopped your ears with divine mud."

"Divine mud, huh?" she said, already aching inside at her decision to dump out the drug-she always regretted the sins she had passed up more than those she had indulged. But she couldn't risk revealing the weapon Queen Indsorith had entrusted her with, even for something as tempting as a taste of the black brine that flowed through the Sunken Kingdom. "Mud's dependable, too. I put stock in the ground beneath my feet, even when it's soft, rather than jumping over yon railing and hoping the sea air is more to my liking."

"Good afternoon, Sister Portoles," said King Jun-hwan, and two servants sprang out of the door like wooden dolls on a Cascadian cuckoo clock. "See that our guest and her, ah, prisoner are escorted directly back to their ship. They are in a haste to be away on other business."

"Thanks again," said Portoles, following the servants.

"And do give my regards to Empress Ryuki," Jun-hwan called after her, which put Portoles in half a mind to actually sail straight to the capital-with her paperwork, she might actually be able to finagle an audience. But that wouldn't do her any good, and would show the queen's hand more than Portoles already had. Ah well, if nothing else she'd finally gotten to try kaldi, though as far as sins went that one hardly ranked.

CHAPTER.

7.

Plotting and executing a coup isn't the sort of thing you can rush into willy-nilly, but Zosia thought she'd done an impressive job given her tight time frame. Better still, she got to spend some time catching up with Singh and properly meeting her children. The reunion almost made her happy to ride a week in the wrong bloody direction to get the revolution started in Thantifax, the targeted Dominion even farther out on the Souwest Arm than Zygnema. Almost.

Now, though, it was time to escape the city and let the Dull Kriss revolutionaries do all the heavy lifting. Past time, if she wanted to be pedantic.

Outside, in the narrow warrens of Thantifax's streets, the fighting was well under way, the wattle walls of the temple shaking as another explosion tore through the city. Inside, Zosia took one more hard pull on the familiar pipe Singh had scared up for her, a poker-shaped briar piece she'd meticulously rusticated and stained to resemble a piece of Flintland frost coral. That had been a quarter century back, and it'd apparently been gathering dust on Singh's pipe rack for the better part of a decade.

It hurt to know Maroto had pawned the pipe she had spent so many hours carving for him, but she was relieved he'd had the decency to sell it to another Villain. Knocking the bowl out against her thigh to make sure she didn't set her purse on fire, she stowed it and shouldered her pack. Choplicker whined and scratched at the hollow altar in the back of the temple, no doubt peeved he wasn't permitted more than a taste of all the desperation wafting off of the hidden orphans Zosia and Singh had led here just before the rebellion began in earnest.

"I'm going to stay and help," said Singh, cinching her breastplate tight. "I understand if you'd prefer not to, and we can reconvene in-"

"I'm not hearing this, Chevaleresse," said Zosia, expecting this bullshit but nevertheless perturbed at the aroma. "A deal is a deal is a deal, here as anywhere on the Star, or beyond, as far as I know. Don't tell me Raniputri knights started reneging on their oaths while I was away."

The barricaded doors shuddered, and not from another bomb. Idols teetered on their shelves, and the priestesses prayed all the louder as they lifted their writhing snakes toward the graven rafters. Singh tried to stare Zosia down. As fucking if.

"My oath was to help you only after you helped me, and until we can be sure Thantifax falls you haven't fulfilled your end of the bargain." Singh tucked the ends of her mustache under the chinstrap of her spiked helm. "My children-"

"Will win this war with their own blades," said Zosia. "Or lose it, I don't really care. I spent weeks planning the attacks with Masood, and wheedling your daughters' allegiances to boot, which wasn't part of the original agreement. Nor was laying the explosives myself, nor was herding up all those brats and shepherding them to this safehouse. Don't think I'm too thick to realize we're in the worst loyalist quarter of the damn city, either. Just getting out on the road to the Empire is going to involve a whole lot of killing. I haven't bellyached once, Singh, so don't you dare try this shit on me now, just so you can gloat over the success of your brood."

"It's not gloating," said Singh sternly, then softened. "Well, maybe a little. It's just so good to see the family come together for once. Give me this boon, Zosia, and I'll see that a hundred riders accompany us to the Crimson Empire-surely that's worth dallying another day, to do what you do best?"

"If you'd asked me outright..." said Zosia, looking to Keun-ju. The Virtue Guard shrugged, and with shaking fingers cupped one of Singh's wasps to his neck, shivering as it administered its dreamy kiss. He still looked peaked from the bloodbath of the morning. Apparently for all his fighting of cantaloupe devils or whatever back home, shedding human blood wasn't something he was used to. Give him time. "Curse me for a sentimental old fool. Two hundred Raniputri dragoons, Singh, and not a hump in the bunch-we'll need real riders where we're going, not loafers or greenies still figuring out their straw foot from their right."

"You didn't even make me say please," said Singh as the doors began to buckle. "Soft as a kitten's belly, as I've always said."

"Softer than that, but only for you, sister," said Zosia, whistling to Choplicker. The dog looked up at her but made no move to leave the shrine. "Hey there, old buddy! Hey! You ready to be a good doggie? Maybe not just sit there and watch me get knocked the fuck out for the third time in a row?"

Choplicker beat his tail on the floor in time with the wailing of the snake-handling priestesses, his thin canine lips pulled back to show his full array of slimy yellow teeth.

"Yeah yeah, what's in it for you?" Zosia brandished her war hammer and strutted to the rattling door. "Come on, then, might as well feed the dog if we're not leaving right away."

"Thank you, sister," said Singh. "We'll be on the road in two days, at the farthest."

"You hear that, Keun-ju?" said Zosia. "You want to see your Princess Pumpkin again, you'll get off your bee-stung ass and use that two-tiger of yours."

"Four-tiger," said Keun-ju, all energy now that the wasp was in him. "Let them bring their sharpest steel and their fiercest devils. Nothing, not even their pagan gods, will stop me from meeting my bride."

"Yeah, well, pagan gods have their ways of reuniting lovers that aren't reliant on all parties being alive," muttered Zosia. "First things first: we fight until the fighting's done, have a victory feast with the chevaleresse's family, ride out with our new cavalry, and deliver you to your girlie. That order."

The doors splintered wide, an arm wriggled through and shoved the bar open, and then raging loyalists poured into the temple even faster than the sunlight at their backs. Time for Zosia to do what Zosia did best.

If the Thantifax loyalists had been sensible and led their attack on the temple with a volley of arrows or simply rolled in a bomb, things might have turned out very differently. To be fair, they only expected to find a gaggle of priestesses and refugees, so Zosia could forgive them their rash tactics. Most of the charging loyalists wielded short katars, but a few had khandas much like the heavy serrated sword flashing in Singh's hand.

None wielded their blades as well as the chevaleresse, however, as was made intensely clear when the first man was deftly deflected by Singh, her sword bouncing off his and cleaving neatly through his finely ornamented helmet. When one of his fellows tried to seize the moment and hack into Singh's exposed armpit he discovered that Keun-ju's thin four-tiger sword might not pierce a bronze helm but could certainly glide through an eye-slit and skewer a skull. Zosia covered the chevaleresse's other flank, the insatiable pick on the back of her hammer punching through a breastplate and sending the woman who wore it tumbling back into her fellows. Despite their superior numbers, the flood of raging loyalists broke upon the three defenders and then fell back like a retreating wave rebuked by a seawall.

They were well armed and armored, these warriors, most wearing the deep purple and violent green of minor Thantifax nobility, and not as foolhardy as they'd initially seemed-with Zosia and company pressing their advantage, the bulk of the loyalists quickly pulled back to the street. Their fallen and falling comrades slowed Zosia, Keun-ju, and Singh just long enough for the loyalists to pass around a stack of chakram, and as the three rebels burst out of the temple doors they were greeted by half a dozen grinning bastards brandishing the wide, razor-edged rings. An especially cocky fucker was twirling one on her finger.

Keun-ju and Singh ducked back around the ruined doors as the loyalists launched their missiles, but with Choplicker at her side Zosia stood proud, raising her arms in a shameless display of bravado. Well, what was the point of putting up with a devil if you couldn't show off? The chakram aimed at Singh and Keun-ju embedded in the doorframe or flew into the temple, but even as Zosia heard them bouncing through the building the ones thrown at her continued to float slowly toward her, their speed undone by Choplicker. All but one abruptly dropped to the street, but the final chakram drifted into Zosia's reach. Jaws dropped, as well they fucking might. Passing her hammer to her off hand, she plucked the deadly, lazily spinning circular blade out of the air with her right... yet as she closed her hand on it, Choplicker released it from his wiles, and it sped up enough to cut her palm before she'd held it fast. Dirty fucking devil.

"That's right, children," Zosia said, hefting the familiar weight. "You've gone and fucked the pooch but good this time."

Zosia pitched it back into the crowd, and Choplicker must have put some extra spin on it, as it took off the forearm of the girl who raised a hand to shield herself and carried past her, bisecting the face of a man behind her. Then Singh and Keun-ju were following Zosia as she led the charge, a pair of sensible girls in the back turning tail before the trio even reached the front-runners. Steel met steel, and steel met flesh, and pretty soon all parties were sliding around on the bloody cobblestones. The bravest of the bunch came at Zosia with a whip-sword, and would have made short work of her light armor if Choplicker hadn't repelled the weapon back on its wielder, the three lithe blades winding around his throat and digging in. An obstinate chunk of his spine kept him from being decapitated, but just barely.

"Damn," said Zosia, as they cleaned their weapons on the corpses after. "I'd almost forgotten how much fun this could be."

"Almost?" asked Singh.

"Almost." Zosia smiled.

"Blurgh," said Keun-ju, hunching over and vomiting onto the street.

"Come on," said Zosia, patting Choplicker's head with her wounded palm. "There's plenty more where these came from."

They'd dragged in tables from all over the palace, setting them up in the courtyard so there'd be enough room for everyone, from Singh's family all the way down to the formerly untouchable weirdborn who had planted the bombs under the barracks and guardhouses. It was just like the long march on Diadem, royalty and ragamuffins sharing food and drink beneath the stars. Except they were eating a hell of a lot better this time around, with hundreds of piping-hot dishes set out on the scuffed boards. Apparently the revolution was popular in the royal kitchens.

"I take back everything I said about Raniputri cooking," said Keun-ju, piling his third plate of coconut rice with nothing but pickles. "Everything, except I wish there was some fish, squid, something."

"Yeah, well, nobody's pickier than a beggar," said Zosia, sipping on her mahua. The flower wine reminded her of the early days with Singh, nothing to their names but the swords at their sides and a small bottle to share along the dusty road. Beside her, Singh's elder son, Masood, drained a Flintlander horn of Samothan red and clapped her on the back.

"No beggars tonight, madam, only mahrjns and mahrjas of a new Raniputri dynasty!"

"Uh-huh," said Zosia, eyeing his mother across the table. "And what about tomorrow?"

"We're all beggars when the sun rises," said Masood, punctuating his wisdom with a burp. "It's what we are when night falls that counts."

Thank you, Singh mouthed, and, watching her old comrade mend fences with her family, Zosia was glad she'd agreed to stay and help carry the day instead of holding Singh to her word that they'd head out as soon as the fighting started. The chevaleresse threw an arm around one of her twins, Zosia had already forgotten which one. "You remind your brother of his sagacity when next his luck changes, and he goes to bed in an alley with only his fat tongue for a pillow."

"I'll remind him now that the city never would have fallen if not for my soldiers," said the girl, squirming away from her mother's embrace, but not earnestly enough to fool Zosia. "What, dear Masood, do you have to say on that matter?"

"Dearest Urbar," Masood said, sloshing wine onto the table and his dhoti as he gestured roughly in her direction, "I say I would rather fight a dozen Thantifax armies by myself than get on your bad side by pointing out what a peacock you are, wearing diamonds to a war!"

They bickered on, though good-naturedly, and when a warm jug of bhang replaced Zosia's liquor, she drank deeply of the draught, and soon floated above the table. The stuff used to provide escape, but now it imprisoned her in her own heart, the droning laughter of the Raniputri and Keun-ju drowned out by the chiding in her mind. Why hadn't she and Leib taken this road, hiding in the open where friends could watch their backs, instead of fleeing to the mountains and pretending they were different people?

They had come to believe the lie as much as those they told it to, a small-town boy returning to the tranquil hamlet of his birth and bringing a foreign bride with him. Working the modest fields of their neighbors, tending their animals, harvesting roots for the pot-stills. Becoming joint mayors when the old mayoress passed away and insisted they take on her duties. Passing the years with songs and mundane sorrows and the annual pilgrimage down to the jade-tinged foothills to offer alms to the Empire, instead of actually living the lives they were born to-lives tinged not green but red, bloodshed in the ruddy dawn, and dark wine spilling everywhere by the evening...

Perhaps there was a table like this in some hell or another, where she would rejoin her husband and all the others whose lives had ended violently on her behalf. Perhaps she would someday fill Leib's cup with congealed blood, and they would eat ashes among the tombs. Perhaps many things, in the grave, to go on Choplicker's knowing glance from the shadows at her ankle. He was fatter than he'd been that morning, his coat lustrous, his teeth again white as the ivory stud in Singh's nose.

The courtyard echoed with songs and boasts and jests and even a dance or three until dawn finally intruded over the palace walls, but Zosia neither sang nor bragged, nor laughed again that night, and kept counsel only with the sated devil at her feet, silently staring back into his dark eyes until her head hit the table.

They traversed twilit deserts and beside bright rivers, through cool forests and over blazing hills where the red-tipped grass waved like a sea of burning silk. Once they spied the ruins of a tower atop a spire of white rock in the midst of a black jungle; based on Choplicker's keening insistence they investigate it, Zosia presumed it was devil haunted, but wasn't about to go close enough to confirm it. They rode on, over creaking bridges built when the Empire was young and through passes in the mountains hewed by the very gods, to believe Singh... or strong winds, to believe her children. Her daughter Udbala and her son Sriram accompanied them, with a hundred and one riders each, and their passage from the tip of the Raniputri Dominions to the Heart of the Star was as easy a ride as Zosia could remember. Stampeding through the pickets at the understaffed garrison of the Imperial border outside Azgaroth, she dared hope it could all be as easy as this: a whoop and a cry and a pell-mell race past slack-mouthed young fools, to victory!

As if life were ever so easy. Half a day later they discovered why the border station was so lightly patrolled; an Imperial regiment, recently bulked up from the garrison, sat camped in the middle of the road. Judging by the prodigious dustcloud that chased them when they cut across the foothills to ride up and over the northern Pass of Blodtrst, the regiment had a sizable cavalry to boot. No Azgarothian stallion could match the Thantifax mares, but even without risk of immediate engagement Zosia's jaw set and her eyes narrowed: the Crimson Empire was already mustering for something, and she could imagine what. Or, rather, whom. Cobalt Company indeed, as if any army had a right to that name without her leadership-this Princess Ji-hyeon had some bloody nerve, if Singh's account of the girl's plan was remotely accurate.

The village of Blodtrst lay on the edges of a mirror-still pond three days' ride up the treacherous trails of the western Kutumbans. It was a pilgrimage site for both the Burnished Chain and Ugrakari worshippers, and each summer the town of several hundred swelled to the thousands. Stupas lined the western banks, inverted wooden crosses the east. The Raniputri cavalry arrived at nightfall and were given a hero's welcome, as Blodtrstians, being sensible people, welcomed all marching armies, regardless of their pennants.

"Girl, get over here," Singh said, beckoning Zosia to the shrine wall in the common room of the headwoman's hostel, once they were all settled into their shanty rooms for the night. "There's something you don't see as much down in the Dominions."

The hostel was as simple as everything else in Blodtrst, its neatly stacked stone walls unadorned by windows or even tapestries, but early winter being a full season out from any major Chainite pilgrimages, the proprietor had the curtains pulled back from her shrine. It consisted of several plain wooden shelves cluttered with idols, the Ugrakari having almost as many gods and devils as the Flintland tribes had legendary ancestors. Singh was meaningfully eyeballing one of the small statues.

The feminine figure sat on the upper shelf, beside the ferocious wargod of the Ugrakari and an ursine fellow Zosia almost remembered the name of, but not quite. Unlike her neighbors, she was decidedly human in shape, with neither extra limbs nor animal features. In fact, with that hammer and sword she looked almost like...

"No fucking way," whispered Zosia, a funny feeling spreading through her chest as she picked up the idol. It was crafted of heavy wood, briar or she was no pipe-carver, and the hair... the hair was painted robin's egg blue. "You're having me on. This is..."

"Cold Cobalt," said the headwoman, setting her tea tray down on a table and bustling over. "Please, respectfully, put her back. She is wroth to be touched."

"Oh is she ever," said Singh, putting her palms in the air and stepping back to further implicate Zosia for the crime. "Better be careful, friend, or you'll get a curse, disrespecting the Blue Queen that way."

"I don't believe it," said Zosia, looking down at the statue before remembering her manners and putting the figurine back in its place. "I mean, sorry, I meant no disrespect to your shrine."

"Doesn't bother me," said the headwoman, pushing a few errant grey hairs back under her head scarf. "The queen, though, can be testy, especially to foreigners."

"Really?" asked Zosia, relieved that Choplicker had obeyed her order to stay in their room. She never would've lived it down, if he'd been here for this. Keun-ju, too, for that matter-good that he was already sleeping off the day's ride. "You don't... I mean, you pray to her?"

"Pray?" The headwoman barked a laugh, rubbing her gnarled wrists as she stared at the statue. "She doesn't listen. But that's all the more reason to stay on her good side, eh?"

"She's..." Zosia tried not to smile. "Do you... she's not a god of your village, your people?"

"Bah," said the headwoman, probably a little freer with her tongue since they'd all drunk chaang together during the communal dinner. "Of course not! Just a woman, like all of us. Only a fool would bow to her... and only a damn fool would call her a devil, like the Imperials do. They say she's back, you know, and the Cobalt Company is big as it ever was, but I don't believe it's her. Can't be. That's the one truth of this world, the dead stay dead, praise the mercy of gods and weakness of devils."

"Well, I say she-" But whatever Singh was going to say was cut off by Zosia's glare.

"I knew her," said the old woman sadly, and Zosia felt a stab of shame at still having no bloody idea who this woman was, until she said, "Well, not to speak to, as we are. But I was with her, as a girl. The Cobalts came through, quick quick quick, but not quick enough for my mother to keep me from running away with them. Ah, what an adventure!"

As a girl? Zosia chided herself for thinking this woman old-she must be a few years her junior, so what did that make Zosia? Singh was giving her a look, prodding her with her eyes to take a bow, but fuck that. Instead, Zosia said, "How many folk died on that adventure, do you think? I've heard thousands starved or got weatherbit into the grave, not counting the actual fighting."

"Thousands?" said the headwoman, sitting down on a bench at the low table and pouring herself yak butter tea. She nudged the cast-iron pot in the direction of her still-standing guests. She wasn't smiling anymore. "More like tens of thousands. Maybe as many as half our number. I don't know. People I'd known from the cribhouse dropping all around me. I was lucky to only lose a few toes. And we who weren't stout enough for war with the Imperials were charged with foraging supplies. You know what that meant? Robbing farms that wouldn't donate everything they had. Storming towns not too different from this one, hoping the locals wouldn't join up so we could steal enough to feed ourselves. We fought as hard as any soldier, I tell you true, with rocks and sticks! Not even her Villains were fierce as us, farmgirls, village boys, and plenty of others, all drunk on a dream..."

"Some adventure," said Zosia, sitting down on the opposite bench with a groan. Her ass and thighs certainly hadn't missed the saddle, even if the rest of her had.

"Ah, but it was!" said the headwoman, blowing on her tea. "I met my wife on the Long March, made friends who still pilgrimage here from year to year. Maybe Cobalt was a devil, as the Imperials say, and it was a ruthless business, no mistake. But she fought for us. Me, you, and most of all the Imperials themselves, though many were too blind to see it. She wanted to remake the world, to liberate the poor, to-"

"Bullshit," said Zosia with more venom than she thought she had in her. "She was a killer and a coward, same as every king or queen before her, and same as every one since."

"You're wrong," said the headwoman. "She was a killer, true, but she tried, she did-if you'd but heard her speak to us, you would believe it was more than lust for power or wealth that spurred her. She would have brought change, too, if not for the assassins of Samoth. Things would be different."

"I noticed you didn't have a statue of Queen Indsorith on your wall." Singh smirked as she sat down beside Zosia and poured herself a cup of the rich tea.

"Do not mistake one thing for another," said the headwoman, as though they were contrary children. "I keep the Crimson Queen in my heart, and her idol above my bed. Less... ambitious than Queen Zosia? Yes, yes, yes. But her soldiers are well behaved when they pass through, and it was she who designated Lake Blodtrst a holy site, not those... clerics of the Burnished Chain. Things are not so good as they would be had Zosia lived, but are not as bad as they could be."

"I think I'd better lie down," said Zosia, rising from her seat. "I feel like I'm already dreaming. Thank you for your hospitality, madam, and for sharing your tales with us."

"We're riding early, of course," said Singh. "I'll give the knock when it's time."

"May your time with the devils pass swiftly," the headwoman called after her, and Zosia walked stiffly to her room. Glancing back down the dark corridor, to where only a tea candle lit the room where Singh and the headwoman still sat, she let out a long, sad sigh. They would be gone before the sun rose, but if the Imperial cavalry still pursued them they would arrive in this village ere the moon next rose. When that happened, would they be as respectful as the headwoman supposed, or would they punish the helpless populace for aiding and abetting a crew of border-jumpers? Would they all be wiped out as an example, the way Kypck had? Had she damned another village just by setting foot in it? And how many more villages would she pass through on her ride to Diadem? How many more poor fools who bought into her myth would die with idiot grins on their faces, in war or crueler deaths, believing they martyred themselves for something other than a selfish woman's ambition, her conviction that she alone knew what the world deserved?

Choplicker nosed the door open and snuffled her hand in the dark hallway. She pushed him back into the black room and shut the door behind them.