"How do you know?"

Wind rustled in the dry stalks. Insects chirruped. He smelled a trace of hearth fire, drifting from an unseen farmhouse. A line of mulberry trees rimmed the sea break of the field. It grew suddenly cool, as though the weather had turned back several months to the season of Shiver Sky, but maybe that was just his instinct for trouble shivering to life.

The young man cleared his throat. "Once I speak, I cannot return to Argent Hall. They'll kill me."

"They'll kill you anyway, if it has come to that. They'll never trust you, knowing you came after me. Tell me what you know. Afterward it's best you fly to Clan Hall to report to the Commander. Do you know the way?"

"I was there one time, my first year."

So were they all. It was part of their training.

"I think I can find it," he added, but he didn't sound sure of himself. He lowered his staff to "resting," as a measure of trust, but Joss only spotted the tip of his own against the earth, ready to strike if this proved to be an ambush.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Pari. That's Killer."

"Killer?" He peered through the curtain of night, but the eagle seemed smaller than average and already asleep, head tucked.

"She's very calm," said the young man with a hoarse laugh. "Kind of lethargic, actually. I think her first reeve gave it to her as a hope name."

"Well, then, Pari, I'm Legate Joss, out of Clan Hall. That's Scar. Why did you come after me?"

The other man was breathing harshly, and he caught back what sounded like a sob. "Ai, where to start? You know, they tell you that the reeves are incorruptible. It's what they teach you the day you step into the circle. Reeves are incorruptible because the eagles can't be corrupted. The hells! What a stupid thing to believe!"

"Don't take it too hard," said Joss softly. "It's true about the eagles, anyway."

"Oh. Sure!" He was aggrieved as only the young can be, when the still waters in which they have gazed all this time are shattered by a tossed stone. "But a dog can no more cleanse his master's shadowed heart than a child can stop its father from drinking away the wages his family needs for food, or drag its den-crawling mother from clouds of sweet-smoke where she drowns while her children bawl outside."

"A sight seen too often," Joss agreed. "What happened at Argent Hall?"

"I'm three years in, and I never knew that reeves did come and go so much. Folk transferred out, and transferred in. Why, I think a hundred reeves come in just in these last three years, and there was already a big turnover before that, so the old ones tell me. And no new reeves chosen for over two years now. That's even though there's more than forty eagles who've lost their reeves and flown off in the last few years, and never returned."

Joss shook his head. "I've never heard of that happening before. No new reeves chosen at all?"

"Only one who came after me. She's dead, now, and her eagle flown."

A nasty feeling was gnawing at his gut, like a lilu turned from tempting woman to its natural form right in the middle of its grazing. "Clan Hall is aware of the transfers, but in truth there's nothing can be done by the Commander. She has only a supervisory position. But everyone knows it's disruptive to the eagles to transfer them. It's done only if necessary."

"Yeah, it was plenty disruptive here, or so they say, as I've never known anything but trouble in Argent Hall. All the ones who had a bad temper, or weren't getting along in their other hall. Reeves who had hit someone too hard, or drank too much, and one woman who's addicted to the sweet-smoke, even, though she still flies! One reeve-that would be Horas-they said he murdered a man but nothing came of it when the family tried to get justice. And the reeves at Argent Hall who complained most about the disruption, they were asked to leave and go elsewhere. Or they just left, and weren't seen again."

"All this done at the order of Master Alyon?"

Once started, Pari spoke so quickly that Joss had a hard time following him. "I admit Master Alyon was ill, and infirm, there at the end. There were a foursome of veterans who had the running of things. I heard whispers that he was being poisoned. He did get better right toward the end when he brought in that Devouring girl to do his cooking for him and who knows what else besides. That was around the time when he recalled Garrard. Talk was that Marshal Alyon had Garrard in mind for succeeding him. But then comes this man who calls himself Yordenas-not much older than me, mind you!-and first he tells Dovit that he's out of Iron Hall and then he tells Teren that he's out of Copper Hall, so there's some confusion, as you can guess."

"The eagle would have a band to mark its territory."

"That's just it. None of us have ever seen Yordenas's eagle."

"How can that be?"

"He says it's nesting up in the Barrens. But I've never heard tell of an eagle gone on its nesting season for that long."

"It could be. I've heard tell of a nesting pair gone most of a year's time. But it is odd, that he comes to you as a reeve, and yet has no eagle. So what happened then?"

"Master Alyon just up and died one night, and it all changed. We blink, and overnight this Yordenas is sitting in the marshal's cote and there are more reeves supporting him than opposing him. When Garrard protests, next thing you know Marshal is calling it out as a mutiny and thirty or more are dead and their eagles flown back to the mountains, just like that."

"Those are the eagles that never came back to choose new reeves?"

"That's right, most of them. Thirty or forty others left then, reeves and eagles both, although I don't know where they went. It just gets worse. Patrol routes changed. Marshal closed the gates to outsiders, any outsiders, even folk come to report on trouble in their village or to ask for help. We got word anyway of ospreys on the Kandaran Pass and along the West Spur, and there come some Olossi merchants to beg for our help one night, so Dovit and Teren went out on patrol without permission, but they never came back. That was a two-month back, I think. Most of them I knew from three years back when I first got chosen are gone, except the ones I never liked at all. The others are dead with Garrard. Or they left."

At last, he took a breath. He was trembling. The sliver of moon called Embers Moon was rising in the east, heralding dawn.

"Why did you stay?" asked Joss.

His chin tilted back. The faint moonlight seemed to catch and gleam on the white scar of his chin. He was Toskala-chinned, like Joss, recently shaven. He looked very young.

"Someone had to."

Joss grinned sadly. "You've courage to have stuck it out."

Pari shrugged, as if embarrassed or ashamed. "Didn't do anyone any good."

"You did what you could. You'll have to go north. Follow the course of the River Hayi. It runs east-west until the Sohayil Gap; a little past that, the river bends northeast. Once to the Aua Gap, continue north. You can't miss the River Istri. Any land-holder there can tell you in which direction-seaward or ridgeward-Toskala lies, if you don't recognize the lay of the ground."

"Where are you going?" asked Pari.

Joss considered. This might be some kind of complicated ploy, and he daren't risk trusting him, although his heart told him that the young man was being honest. It was hard to playact that kind of righteous, helpless pain.

"I've heard tell of this trouble along the West Spur, as I told the marshal. I'm investigating it. What do you know about it?"

"No one confides in me," he said with a tone very like a child's whine. "Just that caravans were being attacked. Women kidnapped, although that was before my time. I suppose the merchants in Olossi would know about it. It's their trade that would be hurt."

"What do you know about the merchants in Olossi? Anything that could help me? Any names? Anything?"

He shrugged. "I've went to the Devouring temple a few times, but not recently. Marshal likes to hold us close against him these days, those of us he doesn't trust. I see reeves flying out solo, so I suppose they're carrying messages. Maybe to Olossi. I think they have some kind of understanding with the council there, but I don't know. Anyway, I come from Sund. That's the territory I know best. I'm not allowed to patrol out on my old rounds anymore. I suppose no one is patrolling there at all."

"So Yordenas is the name of this new marshal?"

Pari laughed as at a cruel joke. "He calls himself Yordenas."

"When you get to Clan Hall, be sure to tell all of this to the Commander just as you've told it to me. They can check the records, see if such a reeve is recorded."

"It won't matter," said Pari.

"Why not?"

"This is the thing. Garrard stabbed him, when they got in that fight. It was ugly, the things they said, and afterward it was worse. But he didn't die. He should have died, but he didn't. A day later he was up and walking like nothing had happened. I think he's a demon, not a person at all."

"A stab wound can call out a lot of blood, but do little real damage."

"So you might think. It was a killing blow, I'm telling you."

Joss whistled softly, under his breath. He could not make sense of this young man and his passion and his anger and his tendency to slip into a child's manner of grievance.

"You don't believe me."

"I'm not sure what there is to believe."

Pari cursed in a low voice, then gave a breathy, cackling laugh like that of a man driven past endurance. "No, you couldn't know, not unless you'd been there. I'm just saying this: Wolves and ospreys stalk the land. And they're winning the battle."

"I can't argue with that."

Night turned. The eastern horizon sparked, limned in fire.

"Best be going, friend," Joss went on. "Argent Hall will be looking for us. Best if we're well away."

"They'll find us." Pari looked back toward Killer, who was shaking herself awake and looking none too eager to face the day given her interrupted night. "I'm not brave. Mostly, I was afraid to run for fear they'd catch me and do something awful to me. I don't even know what. Marshal Yordenas has something wrong with him, but I don't know what it is. And the rest pant after him like they're dogs and he's the one holding their dinner."

"So it may be. Best we be going."

Pari looked him in the eye, a stare both belligerent and frightened, but he shook himself, nodded, and flattened his mouth into a determined grimace. "Don't trust anyone."

Joss strode back to Scar, who had the ability to come awake fast and ready to go. They launched first, and he circled twice until Pari finally got up off the ground and headed east-southeast, making for the river, just as he should. Joss pulled south toward the faint glimmer of watch lights still burning on Olossi's watchtower several mey distant. His gaze tracked the distance reflexively. It caught on an anomaly. A pale spot rose in the southeast, like another creature flying, except no eagle had that ghostly color. He blinked, and the spot vanished. It was only a trick of the predawn light.

With the dawn, he closed in on Olossi Town. He had to get Olossi's council to talk. He had to ferret out the ones who had sent that doomed delegation into the north. Where had that Devouring girl come from, and why had she tried to kill him?

Not that there was any proof, only his word against hers beyond the evidence of the knife and Pari's garbled history. No proof, no clues, no evidence, not even an explanation for why things seemed so very wrong at Argent Hall. Marshal Yordenas could always claim that the youth was disaffected, that the woman-the assassin-acted on her own. Nothing to do with me, he would say, how could I know I harbored these vipers in my hall?

Joss circled the town, swinging wide to get a good look at the avenues and surrounding fields. Early-morning traffic was brisk, folk going about their business in the cool hours of the day before the heat really slammed them. Despite the custom that every city must maintain a wide square or court so that reeves could fly in and out of the city's heart, Olossi's inner town lacked any such space. It had long since been built into such a warren of walled gardens, crowded temple grounds, family compounds, and housing blocks raised by merchants, artisans, and other guild families that the only open spaces remaining surrounded the five wells, the three noble towers, and the ancient timber council hall that was popularly supposed to be the oldest extant building in Olossi. There was a large courtyard, with the customary perch, in front of the Assizes Tower, but the angle of the roofs and the awkward slant of the street and walls along the approach made him chary of risking a landing there. He took a long look at the elongated peak of the council hall and finally decided that it was also too risky, although such a landing would certainly impress the locals. Instead, he banked low over Olossi's skirts, that part of the city that had grown up and out, beyond the inner city walls, into a lively patchwork of slums, warehouses, stockyards, tanning yards, and guild yards along the southern bank of the river.

The shine of the river drew his gaze toward the sea. Far off, he saw the white walls of a Devourer's temple sited on a rocky island in the midst of delta channels. It was possible that the woman who had tried to murder him had come from there, and no doubt he would have to go speak to their Hieros. That would be an interview he did not relish.

A shout rang up from the ground. Below, folk gathered at a gate marked by a temple to Sapanasu were pointing up at him. He turned a last time and swung in low as Scar raised his wings and fanned out pin and tail feathers for the landing. They hit in a dusty field a short walk from the gate.

He tested the jesses on Scar's legs, and stepped back while giving the hand signal for flight and return. Scar thrust and beat upward, circling once to mark Joss's position before flying toward the distant bluff that marked the upland and its potential hunting ground. The reeve slung pack and hood across his shoulders. He walked across the field, kicking up dust, and reached a path that met up with a lane that struck into the roadway. He paid a vey as toll to pass through Crow's Gate and passed the colonnade where the clerks of Sapanasu had already begun their day's accounting. The caravan with Captain Anji had not yet come through; they were likely two or three days out. He had a few days to work before he would have to meet them and the prisoner.

Business moved early in Olossi, especially in the season of Furnace Sky. A woman and her daughter had set up a stall selling fried palm bread and green mango. He bought one of each-the palm bread still hot from the griddle and the mango peeled, sliced to make petals of its flesh, and impaled on a stick-and ate as he walked along the road that led to the inner gate. Wagons lurched and rumbled along the stone. Women walked with baskets balanced atop their heads. A pair of children bent beneath a yoke from which hung buckets stinking of night soil.

Olossi's council guard manned the wide gates that allowed traffic to enter and leave the inner city. The pair on duty saw his reeve's leathers and his dusty boots and immediately called a captain, who delegated a young man to escort him up the winding avenues to the council hall. They crossed the Assizes Court where a line had already formed in front of the timber hall, whose double doors were still closed. Behind the hall, the square Assizes Tower rose.

From here they climbed the hill. Blocks of houses rose around them as they strode up the steady slope of the avenue that spiraled its way to the top. They passed a tricolored, three-layered gateway that marked the entrance to a tiny garden sanctuary dedicated to Ilu the Herald. A slave carried a pair of covered buckets in through the entrance to a large family compound where smoke threaded up from cook fires within. A pair of stone lanterns holy to Sapanasu flanked the narrow opening to one of the Lantern's holy temples. At one corner, he smelled the sweet flavor of pastry-baking. A pair of very young ordinands lounged, yawning, at the open doors of one of Kotaru's forts; the snap and crack of arms training drifted out from the interior. A "hatched eye" sacred to Taru the Witherer had been painted on a circular door set into high, whitewashed walls; fruit trees flourished in the hidden garden behind, their scent a fleeting perfume in the air, and flowering vines spilled over the top of the wall. A lane branched off the main avenue, flying the gold and silver pennants of gold- and silversmiths. Beyond this, seen floating away over rooftops, lay Olossi's Sorrowing Tower. Kites spun their slow circles above its pale stone crenellation.

Despite the early hour, Joss was sweating by the time they reached the highest point in Olossi, with its Fortune Square, the rectangular council hall, and the smooth curve of the dark stone watchtower with its open roof and fire cage.

At this hour of the day, a line of supplicants had formed on the steps of the council hall. The guardsman led him past these up onto the sheltered porch where a line of benches sat empty, and through the sliding doors into an entry chamber. This chamber, which stretched the width of the hall, was paneled with screens charmingly painted with the story of the Silk Slippers. Its only inhabitant was a woman with pleasant features who was no longer in the first blush of youth. She wore a loose tunic with a scoop neck that draped low enough for him to see the blue-purple tattoos running up either side of her neck-the wave-scallops marking her as kin of the Water Mother. Safe to flirt with. Like the woman who had tried to kill him. The image of that one, so sensual, so strong, flashed so powerfully in his mind that he was for a moment disoriented.

"Can I help you?"

"Sorry. Change in light made me lose my footing. I'm a reeve sent from Clan Hall in Toskala. Legate Joss. I need urgently to discuss with the council this matter of the recent border disturbances up on the Kandaran Pass, and along West Spur."

"Yes, we've had a lot of complaints about safety on the roads this year. But I didn't know it was serious enough to call a reeve out of Toskala." She was some manner of clerk, seated at a table with a sheaf of documents placed at her left elbow, and a quill and ink stand to her right. She wore Sapanasu's lantern on a necklace as a mark of her service. "The thing is, the council only meets in the evenings. Even so, there's no meeting until Wakened Crane."

Four days from now.

"A few council members might come by after Shade Hour to take tea," she added, with a faint flicker of eyelids, not quite flirting but surely interested.

"Can I wait and talk to them? If not the council, what of Olossi's militia?"

"No. Every able-bodied man, and any woman who qualifies, must serve a turn, but the captains are hired and fired by the council. You could go to Argent Hall."

He considered, and decided to be bold. "I've been there, but they're not interested. Can you tell me where the carters' guild is located?"

"I can, but it's all the way down and beyond the gates. You're in luck, though, given the day. Usually the guildsmen take a drink up here at sunset, nothing formal, but it's traditional on Wolf days, kind of a thanksgiving for trips survived without incident. Do you want to go all the way down, or do you fancy a rest up here? I can show you to the garden. Or you can sit on one of the benches outside."

He rested fisted hands on the table and leaned there, with a smile that made her blush. "Now that I think of that long walk, and my restless night, I guess I fancy a rest in the garden."

She blushed brighter. Shrugged. Tongue-tied. He was pushing too hard with this one. Possibly she was married, but no red bracelets circled her wrists. He straightened, and she relaxed.

"I do fancy a rest," he added, "but in truth I should go down right away, if you're willing to give me the direction."

At the door, a man stuck his head in, saw them talking, and withdrew.

"My name is Jonit," she said suddenly, and he guessed, by the shy tremor of a new smile and by the way her eyelids flickered and her lashes dipped to shadow her eyes, that she was definitely not married or allianced. "I don't have to open until the hour bell. If you want to, you can wash your hands and face and sit down a moment before you take that long walk back down the hill. If you want."

"That is tempting."

She licked her lips, seemed by the way she bit at her lower lip to make a decision, and let out a breath. Rising and moving out from behind the table, she revealed a petite figure, winsome and nicely rounded, wrapped in gold and pearl-white layers of silk tunic and shawl with deep blue pantaloons. Her feet were bare except for three gold anklet rings. A woman with prosperous connections. It seemed surprising she wasn't married.

She saw him assessing her. She had a teasing smile that made her prettier. "It's a nice garden. There's even a fountain, but you might miss the entrance if someone doesn't show you where it is."

She began to walk away. Heavy footfalls pounded on the steps outside. She shifted to look back at him, beckoning, but her eyes widened and mouth dropped open. He turned as five guardsmen pushed into the chamber led by a captain in a stiff leather tunic.

"Yes, that's him," said the young guardsman, the very same one who had escorted him up. The youth stepped away, disassociating himself from trouble.

"What's this?" asked Jonit.

Their captain stepped forward, hand on his sword. "I'm Captain Waras, of the Olossi militia, under the authority of the Olossi council. You're under arrest, by order of the council."

"I am?" asked Jonit, looking bewildered.

"No, this reeve here. You're the one who calls yourself Legate Joss? Who claims to be here under the authority of the Commander of Clan Hall in Toskala?"

"I am," he said.

"If you will come with us. . . . "The polite phrase was meant to intimidate.

"Where do you mean to take me?" He did not move but felt keenly the cool touch of the whistle against his chest, hidden beneath his clothing. Scar could land on the peaked roof, but it would be a difficult climb to get up to him.