The girl did not look nearly so much a child these days; it was hard to see the cowering Thane-girl of Brahvniki in her now. Her cloak was drawn about her and thrown back over her right shoulder, and the edge swayed about her boots; the tight-drawn fabric showed the outline of her brother's shortsword at her hip.

"I was taught," she said slowly, "that Cothumml and His wife and Son and the company of the Saints lived beyond the cloud. A Thane man who lived by the Book and the Laws would go there to dwell forever in glory with them; and a good woman could serve her men there as on earth. Bad Thanes and foreigners went below to Fehuund in his cave of ice, where worms gnawed them until their souls were consumed."

She considered. "I don't believe it, any more. If Gothumml made the world and sent down the Book and the Laws, in the Ves'landt where we Thanes came from, why doesn't everybody follow Him? The priests say that everyone else worships Fehuund, but that's just not true. I know that now." A frown. "I knew it before. I had a nurse, when I was young; a Yeoli woman, from Tingae. She didn't worship a devil; she said her people believed that everything returns to the spirit of life, and death is like sleep forever."

Another frown, deeper. "She told me a lot of things that I didn't think I remembered, until now. That you should never be just yourself, but try to be other people in your head, so that you could understand them. About how she'd been a teacher and a sort-of monk, before the pirates captured her... But what do you think, Captain?"Megan sighed. "We Zak think that there are two gods, two spirits that contend for us and the world. One is the Goddess, Who made the world. It's Her will that things have life, and bring forth more life in their turn, and return to Her when they die to give the life-stuff back to Her. That's why we give our dead back to the birds of the air; they're Her messengers. She gives without asking return, and receives beyond even Her giving. Her messengers take the dead back to them, and She takes their spirit to become part of Herself, so that our dead are alive in Her, and become part of all that lives."

Sova bit her lip. "Then... Captain, why did you say the Zak who... who killed Francosz and the others should be burned and buried in rock?"

Megan's mouth opened slightly, and her lips thinned.

"Because there's another god. The Dark Lord, the one who sent the Phoenix to burn and break the earth. The Goddess raises mountains; He wears them down. She gives life, and death in due season; He takes life untimely, the babe in the cradle, the corn before it ripens. He is the Un-Shaper. If your life is spent in leveling more than building, destroying more than creating, making ugliness out of beauty, you go to Him and become... nothing. You destroy yourself, become un-real because you deny Her who's the source of existence itself.

The Dark Lord is like that: a hole in the universe, a hole that hungers to unmake everything." She paused.

"There's an old story, I don't know if it's true, that by burning the body and locking the ashes in dead rock you can keep the soul away from Her."

Shkai'ra had turned back from the railing. Sova bent her head in the Kommanza's direction. "Khyd-hird?"

The tall woman pulled her hand from under her cloak; the orange wingcat was wrapped around it, her wings folded about the hand itself and her tail aroundthe wrist; she was sucking energetically on Shkai'ra's thumb, until the cold wind hit her. Ears went back and her mouth opened in a resentful hiss. Shkai'ra shook her hand tentatively.

"Off! Off!" she muttered, then; "Ahi-a, all right," and stuck her hand back under her cloak. A hump scuttled to her shoulder and began to purr loudly.

"After death?" She ran a hand along her jaw; the sword-callus that ringed thumb and forefinger rasped on her skin.

"Well, my people have many gods: we don't think our gods rule other people, who have their own weaker spirits. When you die, your body should be burned (Megan turned like snow when I told her that) or buried in soil; then, your ghost lingers for a while.

Especially if you're killed and lie unavenged; then you need hellwind to blow you into the afterworld, hellwind made by your comrades or relatives killing your slayers. Sacrifices help, too, and ancestor-shrines. Then you go over the Bridge of Judgment; if you've been a coward or a traitor, the weight of your sin pulls you off, demons eat you, and you get reborn as something low-a slave, a cow. If you fall but have enough in you to fight, you may get reborn as something better: a war-steed."

"Then, if you battle your way across the Bridge, you come before the gods; there all your deeds are judged.

Everything is recorded, nothing is forgiven; you chose your own next life as your punishment. In the end, if you've had enough worthy lives, the gods make you part of their war-host, and also part of themselves, somehow; ask a shaman for what that really means.

Then, when the world is broken and changed again, the way it was in the Godwar long ago, you fight at their side against the dark spirits of zoweitzum." She shrugged. "Rebirth seems sensible enough, I've met the belief often as I travelled. Don't know about the rest."Another shrug. "We're all going to find out someday, nia?"

The biers were brought up from below, and the volunteers from the crew of the Vetri took them up; the bodies were canvas-wrapped, and there was no smell after so little time in this cold. In the silence someone coughed, wood creaked beneath feet, an endless chill sighing of wind through acres of dead dry rushes in thin ice.

The east bank settlement was small, a few long houses and boat sheds for the shuttle ferries, mostly drawn up for the winter now. Churned dirt and snow coated the street, lay less soiled along the rough-made road that wound out through the frozen marsh. A single wagon waited, its two horses drooping their muzzles to the ground and snorting puffs of white breath.

The six bundles were laid out on the boards of the wagonbed, and Shkai'ra stepped up to add the smaller blanket-wrapped form of Ten-Knife-Foot.

The mourners were a dozen strong; some lit torches of wood and tar-soaked cord, others shouldered their spears or twofangs and fell in as the wagon creaked slowly into motion. The torches trailed streamers of orange flame and black smoke, the flicker cast shadows across hoods and caps. They trudged east, winding along sand-ridges or through low spots where ice and oozing black mud crackled up around the studded wheels of the wagon.

The Zak burial ground was visible over the snow long before they reached it, long poles topped with the platforms to hold the bodies. No burials had happened in a while and the older poles were canted in the wind; rags of cloth fluttered from them, but the snow hid the usual scattering of old bone about the bases. A fresh grave had been hacked into frozen ground nearby, with a marker in the Thanish style, plain but of cut stone.Megan watched as the bodies were brought out of the wagon, unwrapped and tied to the platforms.

Overhead, the birds were circling already, like black kites in the wind, calling. The five poles grated into the deep-dug holes, swaying with the weight on top until rocks were mounded around them to hold them steady.

The mourners who would not be speaking cut locks of their hair, let them fly away hair by hair in the wind.

Boryis the rower stepped forward and called Mara's name, a sob that stretched in the wind like the plumes of flames and smoke from the torches. Yuri spoke for Renar. Cerwyn, Vodolac's net-mate, called his name into the wind; their voices squeaked small and alone under the sky, answered by the birds hovering above.

Megan called Mateus's name, and Nikola's; calling the Goddess's attention to the dead, freeing their souls.

I feel as if some weight I've been carrying is gone.

The ravens circled, waiting. The living were tiny under the great leaden dome of the sky, but achingly visible.

Sova had stood back respectfully while the Zak bid farewell to their dead; the words the Captain had used for the ritual were beautiful, but she couldn't help a shudder at the sight of the circling birds. Four of the Zak helped her carry Francosz, lay him in the deep trench. She took the wooden shovel and cast the first load of earth; helped set the heavy granite marker with her own hands. The others stepped back when she knelt by the new-made grave mound and drew her sword that had been her brother's and laid it on the ground before her. She was conscious of Megan and the khyd-hird standing behind her, making their own good-byes in silence, but she felt alone with Francosz.

"Brother, " she said softly. "I thought of burying this sword with you, because you were so proud of it. But that would be silly, and I don't... feel so silly, anymore.

So I'll take it and use it, instead. I killed the one who killed you, and it was horrible, but I'm not sorry I did it."

She looked down at the metal: a plain tool of fine steel two feet long, with a simple crossguard and wooden hilt wrapped in hide. "I didn't have enough time to know you, Francosz. I loved you when we were little, and then they took you away to start making a man of you, and we were growing up strangers. Then it was us two together again, when we were so frightened and alone, and you did everything you could to help me.

"You were very brave, Francosz. I think you would have been a good man if you hadn't died, and I would have loved you always. I don't know if there's a heaven, or if we go back to the Goddess, or are reborn, or if it's only sleeping forever.

...I wouldn't want to serve you in Gothumml's house, like the priests said. I want to be your friend, Francosz, and I will. Always. Always."

The tears flowed, but her voice was steady, and her hands as she sheathed the sword and rose, dusting the gritty snow off her knees.

Ten-Knife had a small grave of his own. Megan and Shkai'ra paused by it.

"It's as if a little part of our lives was gone," the Zak murmured, leaning into Shkai'ra. "He was with us from our beginning together."

Shkai'ra nodded. "Killing everything small enough to catch, stealing anything he could eat, clawing the ratshit out of anything valuable or spraying it, making more kittens than any other ten toms. Never lost a catfight. Never lost any fight, until the last one." She took a pointed stick and thrust it into the half-frozen ground beside the little mound, and then a string of tufts of hair from beneath her cloak."Long time since I took a scalp," she muttered, tying it on firmly. There were five locks of dark hair.

"Good-bye," Shkai'ra said, and pricked her thumb to smear a drop of blood on the stick.

Somehow it's impossible to believe someone's dead until now, Megan thought. Not until you hear the wail of names and see the birds settle, or fill in the hole.

Even then it's not enough because what you're burying isn't really them but empty copies of them. Somehow it's as if they are alive somewhere and one day you'll walk around the corner and this person or that person will look up and say "Ah, there you are." As if it were you who had gone away. Or the cat will weave between your feet. As long as you can remember them.

"Heavy storm on its way," she said, turning away from the graves. She put her arm around Shkai'ra's waist. The cart was already trundling back to the river, followed by everyone else, on foot.

Sova snuggled under Megan's free arm and the three of them held to each other as they walked. Behind them a raven dropped out of its circle, swooping low, settling. Another followed.

AENIR'SFORD.

ELEVENTH IRON CYCLE, TWELFTH DAY.

The Aenir harbor engineer bent over the wetwell in the center of the wrecking barge, peering. The rectangular hole was walled to above water line and open below; four stout logs went up from the corners to meet over the center of it, and a block and tackle was suspended from the crown. A cable ran down into the water, straight with the strain from the grapple on the end, hooked into the bars of the sunken cage; it swayed slowly, cutting long, dark streaks through the grey slush-ice that formed and broke on the surface.

"I can't see anything wrong," the Aenir said in clumsytrade-Zak.

Megan winced; Aenir'sford was theoretically a free merchant city-state, like most towns of any size on the Brezhan. In practice the squires and cattlebarons of the east shore hinterland had a good deal to say in its internal affairs, a say that extended to finding well-paid posts for their relatives, including some who thought a ship was steered from the same end as a horse.

"Then let someone competent see to it," she snarled, ignoring the wounded look the Aenir threw at her. She turned and looked out over the town. Since the storm had ended just this morning, Aenir'sford was a mound of a white again, with only the second-story walkways shovelled free.

The repair slips were just off to Megan's left. The work on the Vetri was coming slowly. She hadn't pushed because the storm and the ice flows spinning down from further north were already too thick to sail in. The ice usually jammed the river just above the island, where the Vechaslaf and the Brezhan met, sending sheets of water flowing over ice that looked like crumpled lace, and froze north from there.

The Aenir had gotten the cable up again and recoiled.

At least they knew how to handle that. With much arm-waving and shouting in Aeniri, they apparently managed to get the hook set and the other end of the rope snugged in the windlass. They'd been that far twice already.

SLAF HIKARME WAREHOUSE.

The main warehouse of the Sleeping Dragon had been half-empty for a long time; when the original owner arrived to throw Habiku's hirelings out in the snow, there had been no objections. With the half-burnt Zingas Vetri still smoldering on the slipway, few were going to question the actions of the one whohad saved the city in the last war; they remembered the Siege well here, and Megan Thane'sdoom. Nobles and merchant princes might have shorter memories and more concern with their F'talezonian trade, but the voice of the n'rod, the freefolk's assembly-in-arms,.

spoke loud in any Aenir town, and even the most arrogant lordling did not cross it too openly.

Offices and clerk's apartments made quarters for Megan, Shkai'ra, and the deck officers of the two ships.

There were many among both crews who would keep to the feud, whether they travelled toward Habiku Smoothtongue by water, ice or over knives of fire; those who had their own reasons to hate, or others whose bond to the Captain was closer to a vassal's love of a good lord than that of a wage-servant for employer.

Aenir had come volunteering, too, more than were needed. A full hundred men and women were bunking in the warehouses and sheds, using them for weapons practice and preparation otherwise. Just now three-score were sitting about the walls of the timber hall, watching the blonde foreigner from west-over-sea spar with Shyll teRyadn.

By Zaik Victory-Begetter, he's good, Shkai'ra thought. She was in full Kommanz kit, armored from pate to boots, circular shield up under her eyes and a curved wooden sword in hand. The man facing her wore only soft plainsboots, a running kilt and jerkin, a steel cap and small buckler for protection, and an eight-foot spear with a painted wooden head. It had been twenty minutes now, with no killing hit for either; the crowd around the walls was watching in tense silence broken only by a collective hnnnuhh of breath as they met, clashed, parted.

They circled, their feet rutching on the rough sandstone flags. Shkai'ra's vision focussed to the narrow world framed by the sides and nasal-bar of her helmet; within it, her opponent moved like a leopard, like a wolf, like a dancer. They were both sweating, evenin the dry chill and dim light from the overhead shutters, but she was carrying half her body-weight again in war-harness... His spear darted out like the flickering tongue of an adder, eyes, neck, knee, waist, elbow, drawing sword and shield in a minimalist dance of response.

Enough. Shkai'ra attacked.

Great Dog, she's fast, the teRyadn thought.

His spear jarred on the shieldboss, glanced along the sword; the woman let another strike go through, moving a precise fraction of a centimeter so that it glanced from a flared shoulder-piece. Then she was moving forward again, moving like machined surfaces gliding in a bath of oil, the fanged mouth painted on the shield coming at him with relentless speed and the wooden point showing around the corner, held just so.

She's too good, ran through him. He was backpedalling almost as fast as she advanced, and then she was in sword reach. Point and edge, smashing shieldboss and steel-rimmed edge were everywhere.

For a second they were toe to toe, the violence between them a flicker of movement far too swift for an untrained eye to follow. Then he locked the spearhaft against the guard of her sword, buckler against shield, set his feet and strained.

Too good. You could tell a lot about a people by seeing their wargear and training style; there were clues in the decoration, the shapes, the movements.

Zak fought with cunning economy, the sneaky pragmatism of the small against the large; teRyadn fought with exuberance, a Thane tried to beat you down with smashing hammer blows. This woman had been trained in a school that aimed to produce living killing-machines... What had his Megan tied her life to?

They shifted, grunted, breast to breast in the momentary intimacy of combat. All that he could seebetween helmet and shieldrim was a glint of grey eye, but he could hear the controlled harshness of her breathing.

She isn't my Megan, he reminded himself, with a momentary flush of shame. She was a free woman, free to chose her own lifemate. She never was mine. All he had ever had were hopes that he scarcely dared admit to himself.

Her sword-arm was bending back; she was strong, but his bone and muscle were heavier, thicker. Not that it would win the bout; as soon as his hand went past the shieldrim it would be pinned for a punishing stroke with the metal edge. Anger flared in him against this rival who didn't even know she had beaten him. Against Sarngeld who had brutalized the child-Megan and left her too frozen for his gentle warmth to melt. Against Habiku, who had put her out of reach before time had its chance to heal. And against himself, wallowing in selfish misery when he should be wishing Megan joy in a lover who was strong, beautiful, loyal.

But only the rival was here. Anger fueled, fired, became something beyond itself. He leaned into her for a final surge, then used the solid springsteel pressure, leaped backward with all Shkai'ra's strength to boost; backflipped, landed on his hands and bounced into stance, ready. Shkai'ra was not; her own momentum and the burdening weight of her armor pushed her forward three fatal steps before her legs could absorb the force.

The spear flashed out; not to strike, she could still have guarded against that, but between the ankles to trip. He sprang to the side and levered; the woman's greave struck the ashwood spear with a crack and she went forward in a clattering crash of lacquered leather and iron on stone. Shyll ran on the balls of his feet as she landed and curled herself beneath the shield; giving no chance for recovery, moving recklessly close.The long weapon twirled like a baton in his hands, striking, battering, booming on the shield with a thunder that filled the room louder than the cheers of the spectators as they surged to their feet.

A thrust rang off the forehead of her helmet as she struggled to one knee, with a sound like hammer on chisel, rocking her head back with a wrenching impact that must have dazed at least. He felt a moment's fear as he realized the blow could have snapped her neck.

Then she was set again, weight resting on knee and shield, and sword ready with the point angled up to waist height.

"Peace!" she called hoarsely, the clicking guttural accent almost hidden under her panting. The sword flipped in her hand and she held it head-high by the "blade."

The glorious tide of anger died in Shyll, leaving a pool of soured resentment. Winning the practice bout would prove nothing, help nothing; it was even emptier than revenge. "Do you concede?" he said. The room was hushed again, with sharp interest; the little army was already as gossip-hungry as any small hamlet, and there were bets to consider.

"I concede we'd be absolute idiots to spend all morning battering each other into pulp when we've got real work to do," she said tartly, loud enough for the room to hear. A toss, and the sword was in her left hand, held against the outer grip of the shield in the tips of her fingers. Her right hand undid the chinstraps of her helmet and swung it free; sweat rivered down her face, flushed and calm. Nostrils flared as she controlled her breathing.

"I also concede," she continued, with a slight incline of the head, "that you've got the wind of me; I thought I was in good condition, but you could run that gods-abandoned dog of yours into the ground."There was laughter from the spectators. Shkai'ra was a martinet and a batteringly severe arms-master. Eyes turned to Inu. He had been sitting in a corner with his Moryavska; flattened to the ground, with a slight bristle in his ruff. Shyll had not smelled entirely as if he was just playing with the strange pack-leader-bitch. But, "Stay" was one of the Words, and now everything was all right. His tail thumped the stones.

Shkai'ra extended her right hand. "Let's go wash down; I need to go over those duty rosters with you again."

It was a reminder; they were commanders, with responsibilities. I have Megan's war to win before I can go, he thought bleakly. He forced a smile and grasped the gauntlet, hauling Shkai'ra erect and accepting the slap on the shoulder she delivered.

"I wouldn't care to face a line of you teRyadn coming to me across the plain with those dogs," she said as they handed weapons to the practice-masters and headed for the door. "Not without a fast horse."

Sova had been watching the bout, but not as an idle spectator. She leaned back against a grainsack and swung the weights, stone disks set on either end of short hardwood handles. Out to the side, hold it, in until they met over her chest, squeeze as hard as she could. All the repetitions, but no more; then over her head, then Tze braced his back in front of her so she could do the leg-pushed against it.

The dust from the barley inside the coarse burlap made her sneeze. The warehouse smelled of grain, of an ancient cargo of brown sugar once shipped up from the Mitvald, now overlaid strongly and pleasantly with the sweat of healthy, well-fed bodies. Sternly, she made herself divide attention between the exercises and the fight between the khyd-hird and the tall handsome friend of the Captain's. It was difficult; they were glorious, like dancers or that big spotted cat in the cageat the fair.

They were all special, Shkai'ra, and the Captain, and Rilla, and Shyll and the others, and it was incredibly special that she could be a part of it. Like a band of well, not knights, but heroes fighting a tyrant, in those old stories that Francosz had- She stopped, her eyes going wide and glassy; her body tensed and quivered. Instantly, Tze was up and kneeling by her, arms about her. Piatr was on her other side; hands and voices comforted, and others nearby looked away In respect that the two had enforced with words and fists. Sova came to herself, panting.

"Sorry, sorry," she murmured, ashamed, but relieved to feel them there.

Shkai'ra was the first thing she remembered after the barge, and Megan had been there. But they were often busy... Piatr had taken her to the Haian, Tze was there, but well enough to be up and helping with the other patients. The thick man had come to her, sat beside her, and Piatr had spoken for him. The gobbling sounds were strange to her, but his hands had shaped the air and given color to Piatr's words. How he had been the Captain's friend, second mate of her ship, and Habiku had had him kidnapped. Kidnapped, his tongue torn out, put in the quarry in Rand, and now he learned that his lifemate and two children had been turned out of their house and pension once Habiku took the House...

Tze had looked at Piatr then. Sova looked between them, dropped her eyes in sudden shame, would have fled if they had not held her with gently irresistable force. She knew Piatr's story; she remembered the sickly-sweet pleasure of tormenting him, when he was the only thing in her life weaker than she. His hand had forced her chin up. How can he look at me, how can he do anything but hit me? How can be sorry for me, I threw things at him, Francosz ... Francosz tried to drown him, we were bad to him like Habiku was, onlynot so much because we were smaller...

"Wrongs done in ignorance can be forgiven, little Thane," he said. "Your brother acted no worse than he'd been taught; and when he got an opportunity to learn differently, he did. Wrongs done in full knowledge of the wrong, they can't be forgotten." The one-footed man nodded to his tongueless friend. "We know, Sova. We understand. He's taken things that can't be put back. You can talk to us, and we understand."

The Thane girl had looked between them in gathering wonder before she spoke. "Let me tell you," she had said in a voice choked with the first of the tears. "Let me tell you about my brother. My brother was-"

She shook herself back to the present. It had only been a few seconds; she squeezed her friends on the arms. Friends, she thought. There was moisture on her lashes as she ran to the entranceway to collect Shkai'ra's armor and help with the unlacings. She worked quickly at the thongs and buckles and straps, wrapping the pieces reverently and tucking them in the armor bag; only since the burning of the ship had she been allowed to handle them, and the khyd-hird was still showing her how to clean and polish. It meant that she was somehow a relative of Shkai'ra's now.

Shyll and Shkai'ra had been talking until she came, in low tones. They stopped and were too quiet until she left; she deposited the bag at the feet of her friends with careful control, frowned and turned to Piatr.

"Piatr, there's something... something not friendly between Shkai'ra and the Captain's teRyadn friend. I... I don't think I should ask either of them or the Captain about it. What's wrong?"

Piatr sighed and rubbed his stump thoughtfully; the wooden leg was off, and Tze was going over it critically.

He looked up from the carving and made an elaborateover-to-you gesture to his friend. Piatr glanced around to make sure there was nobody within earshot, and lowered his voice.

"Ah, Sova, you know about loving? The way spouses- lifemates- do it?"

"Well, of course," she said, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, even with him. "I'm a woman now, and the Captain and Shkai'ra explained everything to me."

Sova colored at the memory of the horrible embarrassment of that night. I've got to learn to think about it, she thought doggedly. Everyone else does, and they don't get sick when they do. Sailors even do it, right where everyone can watch if they don't have a room. People will laugh at me if I get upset.

Piatr sighed again. "Well, the Captain and Shkai'ra are lovers. Have been for years, from what I've heard; I wouldn't be surprised if they did get married and become lifemates-" he stopped for a moment, looked down at her where she sat, arms around knees. "You do know that people of the same sex can be lovers?"

"Of course," she said, blinking innocently. "I mean, the Captain and Shkai'ra are the first lovers I've seen, so I thought so." A frown. "I don't know how the bit about making babies and fertilizing eggs comes into it, though."