Instantly, the irritation disappeared, and both merchants cheered as loudly as everyone else who'd been pushed to the side of the road.

Sunburst pennants snapped in the wind over the heads of those members of the First Army riding escort. Richly dressed in the muted colors thought appropriate for the hunt, a group of n.o.bles preened under the attention. The Emperor, a huge hawk balanced hooded and jessed on his left fist, acknowledged the crowds, and managed to make everyone feel that they, personally, had been noticed.

As the pair of merchants yelled themselves hoa.r.s.e, he turned to go. He had no interest in a living Emperor, who would, after all, end up as dead and wormeaten as any of his subjects. Then one of the riders directly behind his Imperial Majesty caught his eye.

Laughing, the young man pushed shoulder-length black curls back from his face with a slender hand. His mouth was wide; his teeth very white. Broad shoulders filled out a cream silk shirt and burgundy vest over a narrow-hipped, long-legged body. But his eyes-dark and thickly lashed and almost too large for his face. Intense eyes. Beautiful eyes.

He remembered what it was he'd been looking for. Years ago, he'd lost his heart.

Jabbing the k.n.o.b of bone on the head of his staff at the closest merchant, he pointed a trembling finger at the young man and whispered, "Who?"

"Prince Otavas," the merchant snapped, rubbing her side. "And watch where you're poking that thing, old man."

He ignored her and stood staring in the direction the prince had gone long after traffic on the road returned to normal. Memories fought their way through the confusion the years had wrapped around his mind. He remembered a dark-eyed young man. He remembered joy. He remembered pain.

"I know you," he murmured at last, tears streaming down withered cheeks. "I know you."

"It's in the Capital, whatever it is." Karlene tossed her pack to the floor, then gently lowered her instrument case down beside it. "A day's walk out in any direction and the kigh are fine-but none of them would carry a message into the city."

"Did they give you any more information?" Gabris asked without much hope.

"No. Give me a chance to clean up and I'll do a full recall. Not," she added, moving through their workroom toward her own chambers, "that there's much more than what I just told you."

"Karlene..."

She froze, took a moment to wonder what had taken him so long, and turned to face the door. "Highness."

Still dressed in his hunting clothes, Prince Otavas bounded into the room. "I came up as soon as I heard you were back. How was your trip? Is there any news? News that I should pa.s.s on to His Majesty, my father, that is. You know how he hates to wait for official reports."

Karlene glanced at the senior bard-who nodded- before answering. "Whatever it is that's frightening the kigh, Highness, it's centered in the Capital."

Dark brows sketched a frown. "That's not good." A pause while he looked from one bard to the other. "Is it? I mean, nothing's happened. Perhaps whatever it is only affects the spirit world?"

"Perhaps." The bards had discussed the possibility, but neither believed it. Anything that so affected three of the four kigh-and quite probably the fourth as well-had to involve something at least potentially disastrous. But there was no point, Karlene decided, in mentioning that to the prince. She gestured at his clothing. "I see you've been out hawking."

"An afternoon's amus.e.m.e.nt." He smiled wistfully at her. "My heart was elsewhere."

"And now it's back," Gabris murmured.

The prince's smile broadened; Karlene pretended she hadn't heard. "You'll want to clean up, Highness. I know I do."

Otavas sighed dramatically. "Such a pity that the palace cisterns are full and we've no need to conserve water."

Karlene, who'd been expecting a less oblique suggestion, burst out laughing. "Yes, Highness," she agreed, "a pity."

Ghoti secured, a temporary tribunal in place until the Emperor could appoint a new governor, the Sixth Army began the march back to their garrison. Marshal Chela, riding up front out of the dust with her commanders-in spite of the roads there was always dust-glanced over at the officer riding to her right and shook her head.

"Slaughter it, Neegan. Are you still brooding?"

Commander Neegan turned a dark gaze on his superior. "They shouldn't have died. They were too good."

Wishing she had a crescent for every time she'd heard that over the last ten days, the marshal sighed. "Then their luck ran out. It happens."

"Then why," Neegan continued, "did the Ghotians deny it happened?"

"For fear of reprisals," the marshal answered as she'd answered a hundred times before.

"And what happened to the bodies?"

"The bodies could've been anywhere, Neegan."

"Maybe they chopped them up and fed them to the pigs," suggested Commander Leesh archly, from her place on the marshal's left.

Marshal Chela frowned. Her youngest commander hadn't yet learned to tread warily around the a.s.sa.s.sin- Chela couldn't decide whether that kind of bravado came out of ego or stupidity. As Neegan would endure either for only a limited time, sooner or later there'd be an accident.

"You're only put out," Leesh went on, clearly relishing the opportunity, "because the governor poisoned himself before your precious a.s.sa.s.sins could get to him. They died for nothing."

"They shouldn't have died at all." Neegan's hoa.r.s.e whisper had an uncanny way of covering the distance when he wanted it to.

The marshal hid a shiver as it pa.s.sed her and noted with approval that it had wiped the smile off Leesh's face. "I think," she said, her tone turning the thought to an order, "that we've heard quite enough..." A slight, black-clad figure following a small herd of goats down a scrub-covered hill to the east of the North Road caught her eye, and the thought she'd been about to voice marched on without her. "Neegan. Your eyes are younger than mine; what is that child wearing?"

Neegan rose in his stirrups, shading his eyes with a palm. A moment later, he spurred his horse off the road. The goats scattered. The goatherd screamed and tried to run.

"What's going on?" Leesh demanded.

"A very good question." The marshal raised her hand; behind her, officers shouted the orders that would stop the column. "And one Commander Neegan is attempting to find an answer to. Unless I'm very much mistaken, which I am not, that child is wearing the remains of an a.s.sa.s.sin's uniform."

"Aye, two of them. First a young man and then a young woman." The goatherd's mother stared at Neegan suspiciously. She didn't like soldiers and she didn't like this husky-voiced soldier in particular. "Governor Aralt told us the young man'd be coming and he had the signet like he was s'posed to. Didn't mention the woman, though."

"They came alone?"

"Just said that. First him. Then her. Left together."

"Were they injured in any way?"

She shrugged. "Can't say. Didn't look it the way they rode out."

"Rode?"

"Aye. On horses. Not the best in the stable, mind, but good ones." Her eyes

narrowed. "You gonna want them uniforms back? 'Cause I didn't take 'em. Those two left 'em behind. Got all new stuff out of the governor's stores. Hers was ripped up, that's why Use is wearing it with the goats, but his is still in good shape. Person could get a lot of wear out of it."

"Who else spoke to them?"

"Can't say. Steward probably."

Hands clenching and unclenching, a muscle jumping in his jaw, Neegan strode

toward the villa.

"Hey, Captain! What about them uniforms? You want them back?"

Neegan half turned, somehow managing to keep a fingernail grip on his temper.

"Keep them," he growled.Well, sod you, too, she thought and went back to mucking out the stables.

"I want to go after them myself."

Marshal Chela watched tension twist the muscles under the surface of Commander Neegan's face and kept her own carefully expressionless. "I need you with me."

"No." He shook his head. "With Ghoti settled, the whole sector is quiet. You don't need me."

The marshal ignored the direct contradiction. She allowed Neegan much more leeway than she allowed the rest of her staff. "And what if there's an uprising while you're gone? The sixth Army will be a commander short."

"Then promote Captain Lyhit. She's ready."

"You'd resign your commission?" Chela frowned slightly and locked her gaze on the commander's eyes. "These two mean so much to you?"

"They were mine." Neegan's voice had picked up the sound of a wire brush rasping against flesh. "Mine. When they deserted, they betrayed me."

"They betrayed the army."

For a moment he looked as though he'd argue the correction, then he nodded once, very slightly. "They have to be hunted down. You know the law."

"There are other a.s.sa.s.sins, less essential to the smooth running of the Sixth Army, that I could send," the marshal pointed out.

Neegan dismissed them with a barely controlled wave of his hand. "No. Vree and Bannon are too good. I have the best chance. Perhaps the only chance."

Chela remembered the cold touch of a blade against her throat and granted Neegan the point. "Very well." she said after a moment, her tone indicating this was the final word on the matter. "Go. Your commission stands unless we go back into the field. At such time, I'll promote Captain Lyhit to a temporary position and we'll discuss your reinstatement when you return. I want frequent dispatches. Do you know where to start?"

"Aralt's steward said they were traveling to the Capital."

"The Capital," Chela repeated musingly. "I wonder when they learned to ride."

"Does it matter?"

"It may." She waved his dismissal at him, then stopped him with his name as he reached the tent flap. "Out of the thousands under my command, those two should have been low on the list of possible deserters. Before you kill them..." She stared down into the smooth cut ruby set in the ring that marked her as a priestess of Jiir. No answers rose out of the b.l.o.o.d.y depths. "... ask them why."

"Three days..."

"Three days for what?" Gyhard asked as the inn's servants carried away the remains of their meal. He wondered how blunt she'd be in front of witnesses. Three days to kill you. Three days to get my brother's body back.

Vree leaned uncomfortably back in her chair-they were now too far north to request southern furnishings- and stared at him as if he were an idiot. "Three days to the Capital."

They sat in silence until they were alone again; Gyhard twisting the metal stem of an embossed goblet between thumb and forefinger, but Vree merely sitting, predator patient. Waiting.

"Our a.s.sociation will not end the moment we ride into the Capital," Gyhard said at last. "It will, after all, take time to gain access to the prince."

"Time," Vree repeated. "How much time?"

"That, for the most part, will be up to you. As we will, essentially, be a.s.sa.s.sinating him, I'll depend upon your expertise to get us into the palace and past his guards."

"Do it tonight,Vree!"

She watched Gyhard lift a cl.u.s.ter of grapes from an alabaster bowl and cautiously caught the plump, burgundy sphere he tossed at her. A well-known myth told how Kel, the G.o.d of Storm, had seduced a nymph by laying a trail of purple grapes from her tree to his bed.

"You are no nymph," Bannon snorted, lifting the thought off the surface of her mind. "But if it's an invitation, take him up on it."

Vree caught a second grape, and stood.

Gyhard stood with her and smiled. His eyes crinkled at the corners the way Bannon's had.

That's because they are Bannon's eyes, you fool. After a long moment, she took a step away from the table, toward the smaller of the two bedchambers. "If you're depending on my expertise, I'd best begin making plans."

"What was all that about?"

Head pounding, feeling as though she'd just missed understanding the heart of an unexpected threat, Vree walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. "All what?" she snarled.

"All what went on while you ate. The laughing at his slaughteringly stupid jokes, the hanging on his every word like he's the oracle of the G.o.ddess, that last, long lingering look."

Vree lay back and closed her eyes. "Don't be an a.s.s. I was just doing what you told me to. I was just trying to get him interested."

"He's interested. But you didn't do anything about it."

"I want him to do something about it."

"Why? You don't know how to make the first move?"

"Sod off." She rubbed her temples and wished Bannon would shut up so she could think things through. "If it's his idea he'll be less likely to suspect a trap."

"So kick his feet out from under him, beat him to the floor, and keep him too busy to suspect anything. You're not supposed to have a good time, Vree, you're supposed to get me back into my own body."

A good time. She ground her teeth together. "Do you think this is fun for me? Do you think I'm enjoying myself?"

"I know when you're enjoying yourself."

"You know what I let you know."