I had to say this for the Forked Tong: They were d.a.m.ned efficient.

I had only one mishap on my way to the West Gate. Considering that I had been... not exactly lying, but let us say overly confident in stating I could find my way to the West Gate, it was miraculous I did not encounter more problems than I did.

I actually found my way out of the twisting, turning darkened section of Taikyo and was heading over toward the West Gate... after asking directions merely four times from pa.s.sersby and still managing to get myself lost repeatedly.

I was pa.s.sing through a busy marketplace in which vendors were selling various wares, many of them a.s.sorted trinkets. For no particular reason, little Kit Chinette sprang to mind, and I thought of her face lighting up if I brought her something. I saw a small, black-and-white stuffed bear, identical to the one I'd last seen chewing happily away on bamboo. I envisioned Kit cuddling it. I picked it up. It was weighted nicely, filled as near as I could tell with small hardened beans. I purchased it from the grateful merchant, who apparently had had a slow day and was already preparing to close up as night was falling.

"Halt!"

I turned and saw a Hamunri soldier standing about ten feet away. His eyes narrowed. He was looking right at me. Even though my hood was up, obscuring my features, and my cloak was concealing my weapons. But it was possible he recognized the cloak itself, or the walking staff I was holding.

It wasn't immediately evident to others that I was the focus of his attention. I froze, trying to determine what to do. Talk to him? Run? Fight him? None of them seemed attractive options.

Suddenly I heard the distinctive high-pitched buzz of an arrow slicing the air, followed by a thud as it struck its target. The soldier looked confused for a moment, took a step forward on a shaking leg, and then went down like a felled tree.

A torrent of confused cries erupted from all around me. As for me, I didn't hesitate to haul myself out of there. If he had any a.s.sociates, they'd be showing up in response to the tumult, and I wanted to distance myself from it as quickly as I could.

I wasn't puzzled over the arrow's origin. Obviously Veruh w.a.n.g Ho had made sure that I was watched by one of her people, to make certain I got on my way safely. I was genuinely touched. I'd never had a lover considerate enough to have arrows fired into my enemies. A special woman indeed. I encountered no further problems as I headed out the West Gate. I did exactly as Veruh had told me and, sure enough, the horse was where she said it would be. It was not the impressive black-coated animal I'd ridden to Taikyo, nor did I expect it to have the same level of intelligence. But as long as it got me where I needed to go, we were going to get along just fine.

I mounted up, snapped the reins, and we moved out.

Never have I been more cautious in traveling.

As sharp as my senses usually were, I depended upon them now as never before. I had to be aware of everyone I might encounter upon the road, for there was every chance I might run into more Hamunri warriors. And if I did, I wasn't going to be able to count on some friendly archer watching my back.

I used every technique I had ever learned to hide my movements from any who might be searching for me. After all, I knew that supposedly there were Hamunri searching the area for me. And it wasn't as if I was going to be able to blend with the local populace.

At night I traveled upon the main road. It was the only time I considered it relatively safe. My features were more easily obscured, and there were fewer people about. Still, to play it safe, every so often I would stop, dismount, and put my ear to the ground. In that way, I was able to hear whether other riders were approaching from either direction. If I detected the slightest vibration, I would hie myself to hiding and wait for them to pa.s.s by. This happened a number of times during my journey, and I was never certain if any of the groups of travelers I allowed to pa.s.s in one direction or the other were pursuing me.

That's the problem with being on the run: You begin to suspect that everything is about you. A pa.s.sing glance from the most humble of peddlers, and you instantly think he's a spy who will report you to the nearest authorities.

On the other hand, it was far easier to become severely dead from being not cautious enough rather than too cautious. I opted for the latter.

I kept wondering what I would do once I returned to the village. How would they react to me?

Would they accept me? What was I going to accomplish once I was there? None of these were questions to which I had any ready answers. If nothing else, returning to Hosbiyu would give me the opportunity to sit, think, meditate. And if my full plans came to fruition--if I was indeed able to activate the demon sword, master it, control it--then the people of Hosbiyu would never have to fear anything again.

I pondered what I would tell them about Ali. They had revered the old man in life. I just couldn't find it within myself to tell them that he was a fraud, presuming of course that was true. There was nothing to be served by it. Let them have Ali as they remembered him. Me, I would be striving to find the secret within the sword and benefit from it.

Naturally, Veruh w.a.n.g Ho was never far from my thoughts. The speed with which we had connected was well outside of my range of experience. And G.o.ds knew some of the things she had done with me, and to me, during that incredible endless time of pa.s.sion, had also been outside my range of experience.

Could I really leave my soul mate behind? If I remained in the village, that's what would happen.

The even more pertinent question was whether she would truly allow me to. I knew what she had said, and I had her word. But there was this little problem of her being evil. Because of that, it wasn't as if I could trust what she said. It all sounded nice to utter pretty words about letting go of that which youlove. But a week or two might pa.s.s, at which point Veruh could say, "All right, then, that's enough of that," and send her people out searching for me. Between the Hamunri wandering the countryside and the combined forces of the Anais Ninjas, the Forked Tong, and the Skang Kei family, someone was going to find me. At that point, I was starting to wonder whether it wouldn't make more sense to just throw myself into the sea and try to swim back to Port Debras. I'd probably have about as much luck accomplis.h.i.+ng that as I had virtually anything else these days.

Thanks to all my caution, my trip back took considerably longer. However, better to prolong the journey than to make a mistake that either lengthened my time indefinitely in jail, or worse, cut it short with the blade of the executioner.

At the point where it felt as if I would never get there, I saw familiar landmarks along the road that alerted me the village was nigh.

I also noticed something else, however. Something that I couldn't help but consider very, very odd.

Crows.

I had not seen many of the black-feathered creatures since I'd arrived, which was probably why I was noticing them at that point. It was broad daylight and thus I was staying off the main road when I spotted crows in flight. First it was singly. Then time pa.s.sed and a group of five flew past. Then ten, then later twenty. It was almost eerie, watching them hurtle past. And what was even eerier was that they were heading in the same direction I was.

I took a chance and moved out onto the main road, reasoning that I might have a better view of what lay ahead.

What I saw bewildered me at first. Crows were coming in not just from behind me, but from other directions as well. And they were converging. Like a great, feathered funnel of ill wind, they swirled around one particular area some miles ahead of me.

My horse whinnied and bucked slightly, clearly unhappy with my wanting it to head toward the area where the crows were gathering.

That was when I realized.

The area the crows was gathering roughly corresponded to where I thought the village of Hosbiyu was situated.

And still I didn't fully comprehend.

Then it hit me. A horrifying, nauseating realization struck me in the gut with the force of a mallet blow.

Suddenly I didn't give a d.a.m.n whether I encountered the Imperior's own b.l.o.o.d.y army on the road. The only thing that concerned me was getting back to Hosbiyu as quickly as possible.

Ignoring the horse's protests, I snapped the reins and bellowed as loudly as I could to show the animal who precisely was in charge. To the horse's credit, he could have tried to buck me off. But he didn't. Instead, deferring to the wishes of his human rider, he thundered down the main road, his hooves chewing up dirt. I held on as tightly as I could. "Yah! Come on! Yah!" I kept shouting, having no idea whether my urging was serving to speed up the horse's gallop and not caring one way or the other. It was a beautiful day, the sun bright and cheery, not a single white cloud blocking the pure blue sky. How could anything possibly be wrong on a day like this?

The answer lay ahead of me.

As I drew within a mile or two of the village, I could see that the skies above were black with crows.

They were cawing and summoning to more of their kind, a huge indigo whirlpool, and I didn't think they could hear my shouts. So I shouted louder. I shouted and screamed and bellowed and howled, and the closer I drew, the more the crows took notice of me. I could see a number of them were down upon the ground already, but as I approached riding h.e.l.l-bent for leather, they turned from their activities and sought sanctuary in the air where I could not reach them. There was no incentive for them to behave in any other fas.h.i.+on. If creatures such as they had brains to reason, they would have thought, What's the rush? We have all the time in the world. In fact, the longer we wait, the tastier our pickings.

It was at that point that the wind s.h.i.+fted, and the smell was wafted to me. A smell I knew all too well.

I charged down from the small range of hills that stood between me and the village, and that was when I saw the first of the bodies.

It was Cleft Chin, of course. I could just imagine him standing there, fists on his hips, shouting defiance, demanding that they--whoever they were--leave this place at once.

They had cut him down right where he stood.

Then they had moved on.

There were more bodies. Bodies everywhere. Bodies of every shape, every size. Every age, every gender.

No one had made any effort to bury them or hide them. They'd left them there as a warning. As a boast.

It was at that point I heard screaming, which made my heart jump, because I thought that it might mean there were some people alive. I realized belatedly that it was my own screaming I was hearing. I wasn't aware when I had started it. I did know, however, when I stopped.

It was when I stumbled over Kit Chinette's body.

Oh, there had been others. Over there was Double Chin. Half in and out of her hut was his wife, Lun.

And the others, so many others. Cut up. Lacerated. Some had had their throats slit. Others were beheaded. Still more were stabbed to the heart.

All of them.

Every d.a.m.ned one.

Even as another name, another villager would occur to me, I would discover him within his hut, or behind a bush, or in a stable.

I was screaming that entire time. Screaming until my throat was raw, screaming because despite all my conviction that I was some harbinger of doom, there had been a piece of me--the tiniest piece--thathadn't really believed it. That had thought, Oh, you, Apropos, always the pessimist, always the cynic, you have to believe that all is gloom and doom when it need not be that way.

But when I came upon Kit Chinette, the screaming stopped.

My mind stopped.

Everything stopped.

The sweet child who had been my salvation when I first arrived was lying flat on her back upon the ground. A crow had just lit upon her forehead and was about to pluck out one of her eyes. Other crows were approaching, apparently considering Kit Chinette to be a particular delicacy.

Without thinking, I pulled out one of the sai from my belt and hurled it as hard and as fast as I could. I doubt I could ever have repeated the throw. The sai lanced straight through the crow, knocking him off Kit's head and pinning the thras.h.i.+ng bird to the ground. It managed a squawk in protest and then shuddered and died. The object lesson was not lost upon the other crows, which immediately took wing.

I didn't care about them. I wasn't even noticing they were gone. The crows above continued to circle, but wisely did not approach me.

I staggered toward Kit, and when I got within a few feet of her, my legs gave out completely. That didn't stop me. I tossed aside my walking staff and crawled the rest of the way to her. Right up until the moment I got to her, even though I'd seen that d.a.m.ned bird perched upon her forehead, I nurtured the idea that maybe, just maybe, she had survived.

But no. I could see the deadness in her eyes. I reached over, felt the cold skin. I noticed her mother lying ten feet away, her throat cut. That was when I realized there wasn't a mark upon the little girl. There were, however, tearstains. Her face was covered with them. So was the front of her clothes.

As Chinpan Ali had died of heart failure, so, too, had Kit Chinette. But it was a different sort. The child had seen death, carnage, dismemberment, saw the end of innocence, the end of her family and friends and childhood, and she had cried until she could cry no more, and then her spirit had simply departed her body. She had died of a broken heart.

Carefully I laid my pack down, reached into it, and withdrew the small stuffed bear that I had purchased for Kit. I laid it upon her lifeless chest. In my imaginings, it cuddled against her, waiting for a girlish hug that would never come.

Through all the s.h.i.+te I had experienced in my life, all the difficulties I had endured, I had always wondered... was it possible to discover a low point? To experience something so horrifying, so fraught with hopelessness, that one could simply go no lower?

In the village of Hosbiyu, filled with slaughtered farmers who were waiting to be food for crows, I found my answer.

I hit bottom.

My world blew apart.

I began to sob in total and abject despair. Despair in its purest form. The end of hope. The end ofaspiration. The end of everything. I sat in that one spot, clutching the child's body to me, and I rocked gently back and forth and cried as I never had. Not when my mother died, not when I had suffered loss after loss.

There was no trace of manhood or manliness in me. Like an abjectly miserable woman did I cry. My body shook and heaved, and tighter still did I hold Kit to me. I tried to will her back to life, to infuse my soul into her. It was, of course, no use. She lay in my arms, body limp and cold and as dead as anyone else there, and I could not remember a time when I had not been crying.

In the plains of Wuin, I had reached a point where I did not care if I died. Here, in the remains of a farming village, I transcended that. Not only did I not care if I died... I didn't care if I lived.

I cried until I was exhausted, until I thought I could shed not another tear, and then new waves would come and it would start again.

How long I sobbed, I could not tell you. But then, very slowly, I became aware of something.

I turned my head and looked up at a far ridge.

Seven men on horseback were there. Even from that distance, I could see they were Hamunri.

They had come for me. They had found me.

I didn't give a d.a.m.n.

Instead... I began to sing.

Many was the time I had heard the villagers in the wheat field, singing some light tune that would make the hours of grueling work pa.s.s in a bit more entertaining manner. I had even memorized some of the songs. Bouncy, airy songs about cloud shapes, or pa.s.sing zephyrs, or great triumphs of past warriors.

That sort of thing.

And Kit Chinette had been the most enthusiastic singer of all. Enthusiastic not as in "talented," but as in "loud." On any given day, I was able to hear her voice above the others, chorusing as if she thought the G.o.ds themselves were listening in on her and appreciating her talent (or, truthfully, lack thereof).

I sang to her now, that sweet music that had belonged to a nowextinct village. Continuing to rock her gently, as if she were an infant I was trying to lull to sleep, I sang one of her favorite songs. Something about a dancing cow or some such. I wasn't even familiar with all the words, but I knew enough of them to make her happy.

Make her happy.

I hadn't even accepted she was dead yet. I was in shock, unable to wrap myself around the concept.

So I ignored it. My eyes red from tears, I held her so close, and I sang gentle songs to her.

The Hamunri thundered toward me, perhaps feeling that the way to prevent me from running once more was to be as screamingly loud as possible. I think they thought I was going to bolt. They were probably looking forward to the chase, and were just a tad disappointed that I was doing nothing except staying exactly where I was while rocking back and forth. Their approach did have one benefit: The racket scared away the crows. The d.a.m.ned scavengers liked relative privacy in which to conduct their grisly work, and so distanced themselves from the scene in favor of a time when there would be fewer people around to disrupt the proceedings.

The Hamunri slowed a distance away and came to a halt about twenty feet shy of me. I continued to sing and ignore them. I must have looked quite the sight to them, seated on the ground, cradling a dead girl, cooing a tune to her. I didn't even look up at them, probably because they were of no relevance to me. At that point, even I was of no relevance to me.

They dismounted, thumping heavily to the ground, little bits of dust puffing up under their feet. I finally afforded them a glance. They were certainly fierce-looking, these seven Hamunri. Their scowls were like thunderheads, their wide shoulders swaying, their swords slapping against their thighs as they walked.

Any one of them could have cut me in half with one sword thrust. Against the seven of them, I had no chance. That was all right, though. I wasn't seeking one.

They stopped several feet away. It was as if they didn't want to get too close to me, lest they catch the odd illness that had reduced me to a simpering, useless sack of meat and bone. The foremost one, whom I took to be the leader, growled, "You are Po?"

I nodded. No point in denying it. His asking me was just a formality. Who the h.e.l.l else looked like me. I had stopped singing, and I asked, sounding like the haunting cry of a ghost, "Did you do this?"

"We questioned them," said the Hamunri soldier. "We demanded to know your whereabouts. They would not cooperate."

"What made you think they would know?"

"That one," and he pointed at the body of Cleft Chin, "spoke to others of the strange-faced one named Po. We traced him here."

That fool. That gossiping fool. Couldn't keep his mouth shut when he'd gone to market. Had to blab about what he knew. And look at what the result had been. Just look.

"And you... you just came here... and killed them all? For no reason?"

"They would not cooperate." He spoke gruffly, his back stiff.

"We questioned them and they did not cooperate. They would not tell us where you were."