"Leave it!"

She rocked back at his tone. Both ginnies hissed at him. They had fierce-looking teeth, and their bite was said to be infectious.

"Heya!" he yelped, taken aback.

"Hush." She stroked Mischief under the jaw, and the female lifted her chin a little and "smiled" warmly. Magic got a spot on his forehead rubbed. While they were looking at her, she gestured. "Go on, then. Brother's just jumpy, that's all."

Mischief moved off, but Magic looked right at Kesh and bobbed his head decisively, as if to remind him who was in charge.

"Heya," said Bai with a little more force. Magic moved after Mischief.

"Listen," said Kesh, surprised at how powerfully his anger had erupted. "Let's not argue. I'm sorry."

"No. You're right. Let it all be gone. Leave the aunts and uncle and ghosts and bitches and masters to the dying moon where they belong. Our old life is dead twice over, once on the block, and once in inner court three days back." She rose from a crouch to the balls of her feet, swaying like a woman drunk on fumes. "Gone gone gone. Gone altogether."

Branches rustled. Both ginnies stopped, and looked in that direction, but neither seemed alarmed when an apparition draped in rags stumbled into the clearing.

"Gone. Gone. Gone altogether beyond," it echoed, spinning entirely around, arms pinwheeling. Its voice was a crazed whisper.

Kesh jumped to his feet and drew his sword, but Bai stepped inside his guard and pressed a palm against his chest.

It faced them, rheumy eyes blinking. It was a very old person, as thin as if built of sticks, with skin weathered from sun and wind and hair turned entirely to silver, not even one strand of black to be seen. Kesh could not tell if it was male or female.

"Walking north," it said in a voice all raspy, neither high nor low. "Best not go that way. It's all run to blood."

"Where's your string?" Bai whispered into Kesh's ear. He had closed the string of coins into his weaponless fist, and she pried his fingers open, slipped off ten half leya, and strode across the grass to the creature. She sank gracefully to both knees-kneeling, she was still almost as tall as that shrunken, wasted body-and held out an open hand.

"An offering, holy one. Go in peace."

The crabbed hand moved so fast that it was too late for Kesh to protest. It grabbed the silver, and scuttled away. "A blessing on you, child! Do not kiss ghosts. The twice dead cannot love. Also, a fire gnat has just bitten your left ankle. Don't scratch! It only spreads the poison."

It staggered out onto the road as Bai reached down and-as if bespelled-scratched at her left ankle, then barked a curse, jumped up, and repeatedly slapped the skin where she had just scratched, as though she could batter the stinging bite into submission.

"Five leya!" cried Kesh. "No wonder you ran up debts!"

"Are you blind? That was a gods-touched vessel!"

"Some old beggar, you mean. Anyone can wear rags and stumble along the road mumbling well worn phrases. 'The twice dead cannot love!' Burn it! Now what do we do?"

"I have a hankering to get ourselves into the trees and hide for the night. Scout ahead at dawn."

"You don't believe in all that ranting?"

But she did believe. She had been raised in the temple, at the heart of the goddess, if the Merciless One could be said to have a heart.

He touched the blessing bowl at his belt, thought about his evening prayers, and shrugged. "The woods it is. Must we take turns at watch?"

"No need. The ginnies will warn us if any come close."

HE SLEPT HARD, curled on his side, but an animal pushing up against his back made him snort awake.

"Hush," murmured Bai. He saw her form sitting upright beside him. Her hand touched his hair. "Don't move."

To sleep, they had crawled into a thicket situated on a rise that allowed them to see the road with little risk of being seen themselves. One of the ginnies was pressed against his upper back and neck as if trying to hide behind his body. He found himself staring through the patternwork of branches, toward the road. Torches flickered a dull red. Banners tied in fours drooped from poles. People tramped along, too many to count, strung out in a line and jangling with the ring and clatter of armed men. They had many horses, all on leads, but only one man was mounted. He rode in the middle, surrounded by the shield made by the rest. The hood of his long cloak shielded his face and fell in massive, lumpy folds over the body of the horse. Except for the sound of their steps and the occasional soft whuffle of a horse, the group moved without talk, striding briskly as they moved west-Olossiward-along the road.

The light faded away. A night-hatch chirped, answered by a second.

Bai leaned so close against him that her hair tickled his cheek. Her breath was hot on his ear. "We'll go just before dawn. Follow after them. See what they're doing."

"We won't! We'll head east and then north!"

She shifted away, but remained silent. The ginny-he still didn't know which one it was-stuck its head up to look over his neck, then ducked down again, pressed right up against him most uncomfortably. He didn't want to shoo it away because he didn't know if it would bite. It was as uncomfortable as a branch sticking into his back. The dreary hours passed in an agony of slowness, but at length he discovered that the mass of shadow off to the right was dissolving into the discrete twigs and leaves of the vast tranceberry bush that had helped shelter them. It was the wrong time of year for berries, which would, he noted with that part of his mind that never stopped toting things up for their market value, have brought thirty vey for a bucketload.

"Come on!" Bai rose. She slung the rolled-up cloak and jacket over her back. "Let's go. It's light enough to walk the road."

"Who do you think they were?"

She was already moving through the brush, pausing at the sloped verge to listen and look. Then she scrambled up, the ginnies surprisingly agile, racing in front of her up the slope. She was already fifty paces ahead before he got on the road, and she glanced back, slowed, and waited, tapping a foot. Birds sang their dawn songs in anticipation of day.

"Come on, come on."

"What's the hurry? The sun isn't even up."

"Just a feeling in my bones."

From Olossi to a short way past the East Riding, West Track ran on an almost due west to east axis, parallel to the River Hayi. Past the East Riding, the river curved to the northeast and the road with it, the river dwindling as it moved upstream toward its source and the road reaching for its terminus at Horn.

Standing on the road, Kesh faced Hornward. Bai faced Olossiward. He began to walk east, not looking back. The idiocy of throwing away coin on a useless old beggar still made him burn. His stomach gnawed at nothing. He was hollow and he was angry. But at least he was free. Even free to walk away from Bai, if need be. From everything and everyone, alone in a way that made a smile tic up on his face every time he bit it down, because if he let that smile hit his face in full he would laugh, or he would cry, and he wasn't sure which.

She padded up beside him. The ginnies were draped over her shoulders like an expensive bit of ornament. She didn't look at him. She said nothing. For a long while-at least a mey-they walked east on the road in a silence that was both at odds and in harmony.

How could anyone be so stupid and pious as to give away coin that recklessly? To rack up debts the way she had?

And yet, did it matter? After all these years of toil, of being separated, they had actually succeeded. They were free, and together, able to walk where they willed and disagree as they wished, and no one to tell them otherwise!

Even the road welcomed them, although it could be said that the road welcomed all travelers. It was the coolest part of the day, and the sweetest. But at last the sun rose above the trees and chased away the shadows that protected them.

"The ginnies smell something that's making them restless," said Bai. The lizards were raising their crests and kneading their feet into her shoulders, tongues flicking as they tasted the air. "I didn't like the looks of those men. That looked like an army to me. Three hundred and twelve. Enough to cause serious trouble."

"Three hundred and twelve?"

"I probably missed a few. Three cadres should have three hundred and twenty-four, plus their sergeants and captain."

He whistled softly, wondering if she were joking, or if she had really been able to count them all.

Her stride caught a hitch; she skipped a step to catch up with him, grabbed his elbow, tugged him to a staggering halt. "Look! Crows and vultures."

North, above the trees, the dark wings circled.

33.

On the morning of the third day, the day set for the council meeting, Captain Waras came to their island camp with an invitation to the long-promised baths for Mai, her attendants, and the captain and a pair of men, all that would be allowed to enter the city.

In the inner city, on the low ground near the docks, stood a baths complex fit for a rich man, with one wing for men and another for women. Midmorning, Mai found herself here, seated on a stool in a tiled room while attendants soaped her and scrubbed her and rinsed her with bucket after bucket of lukewarm water, just the right temperature for the hot day. After that, she refused the outdoor soaking pool where, it appeared, men and women sat naked together without the least interest in modesty. Instead, there was a smaller pool hidden in a shaded courtyard with little brightly colored lizards scrambling along the latticework walls, pots of orange and yellow flowers, and a dwarf fruit tree whose ripening bulbs were mottled in greens and pale yellows.

The water was very hot. There were several fires tended and tested by the older woman in charge of this wing which kept the temperature stable and a constant supply of steaming hot water at the ready. Mai was the only customer on the women's side except for Sheyshi and Priya. Sheyshi refused to undress in front of people she did not know, while Priya, after washing, proclaimed the pool water to be too hot to be healthy.

Mai sank onto the submerged bench gratefully. Ah! It had been so long since she had really been clean.

Through the lattice she saw a plain courtyard lined with stone benches and wooden racks on which her laundered clothing had been spread out to dry in the blistering sun. It was already a hot day. There also lay Anji's tunic and leggings, now clean. She leaned back and closed her eyes, imagined him joining her in the pool, the two of them, alone and uninterrupted. This was the lowest tower of heaven, where the song of the Merciful One lulled you and you were always clean and well fed.

"Mai?"

She jolted awake, up to her nose in water. Her unbound hair had made a veil around her, floating on the surface of the water.

"No men on this side! No men on this side!" The attendant had a stick, which she brandished with a well-muscled arm.

Anji, dressed, held Mai's clean and dry clothing draped over an arm. He dropped the clothing on a bench and, grinning as he retreated, slipped out through a gap in the lattice.

"We must leave to walk up to the council chambers, plum blossom," he called over his shoulder.

She was blushing.

The old woman cackled. "Good-looking boy, that one! What a smile! Cocky, though, coming right in here."

"We're strangers here," said Mai, trying out this bid for sympathy. "We don't know your customs."

The old woman spat on the dirt. "Outlanders! I never trust them."

Startled, Mai said, "Why not?"

The old woman sat on the other bench and launched into a complicated tale, only partially understandable, about a southern merchant she had taken a fancy to back in the days when she was young, and how he had treated her badly and broken her heart. . . .

When Mai realized that the story was going to go on for some time, she got out of the pool, dried herself, and dressed, punctuating her actions with a murmured "That can't be!" and "Then what happened?" By the time Sheyshi and Priya were waiting anxiously for her to go, Mai and the old woman-"call me Tannadit, dear heart"-were best of friends.

"I mean nothing by it, what I said before. It's only the southern men, you see. I've never seen a woman before you who came up from the south who wasn't a slave."

"All the men are like that one, who come up from the south?"

"Oh, yes, all of them. I'm sure your man is a good one, though."

"He is. But I'm anxious."

"What about, dear heart? Pregnant already?"

She felt herself flush. "Oh! I don't know. I don't think so. We've been traveling a long way, and . . ."

Tannadit's wrinkled hand clasped hers. She had a milky gaze. She was blind in one eye and the other was clouding, but her hearing was sharp and her attention fixed on Mai. "How can I help?"

"I just wonder if there's anything we need to know of your customs, so as not to offend you folk. Did you know that in the empire, the priests burn any person who worships another god besides their god? That anyone who speaks out of turn to a priest is put to death?"

"Aui! What monsters!"

"That doesn't happen here?"

"Well! Naturally everyone here worships the seven gods. But if a person wanted to speak her prayers to some other god, that would be on her head, wouldn't it? No one here would take any mind of it. Although why anyone would want to worship that cruel Beltak god, I certainly don't know. Not very kind to women, he is."

"I'm sorry to be so ignorant. Who are the seven gods? How are we to recognize and respect their holy priests?"

The old woman laughed heartily. "Why, every soul you meet in the Hundred has apprenticed to one of the seven gods. You might as well respect them all, even those who aren't worth your respect! We all serve a year at one of the temples when we're young. Some serve longer, eight years or more, binding over their labor to the temples. Some serve their entire lives because they are poor or because it is their calling to remain in servitude to the temple." She flexed her arms; she still had strength in her muscles. "I served a year as one of the Thunderer's ordinands, for I did enjoy cracking lads over the head with my staff. You, I think . . ."

She considered Mai with her good eye, a look of such seriousness that Mai was taken aback. Yet the measuring quality of that gaze had an odd element of respect in it, as if this woman meant to see Mai for what she actually was rather than what people thought she ought to be. "Some might mistake your beauty for your calling, and send you off to be a hierodule to the Merciless One, but I don't. The mendicant's life in service of the Lady of Beasts is not for you, I am thinking. Nor would you feel comfortable as one of Ilu's envoys. You are one who observes more than she talks, yet I do not see you as one of the Lantern's hierophants. A diakonos of Taru, the Witherer, perhaps? Patron of increase and decrease."

"Fitting for a merchant!" said Mai with a laugh. "But that's only six."

She frowned. The brief shadow in her expression made Mai shiver. "That leaves only the Formless One. A pilgrim of Hasibal? Perhaps. A difficult path to follow, but the deepest. Few walk that road."

Mai judged her new friend's mood to a nicety, and plunged in. "Do any outlanders ever come here to settle? Is that allowed? I mean, besides those brought here as slaves."

"Well they should want to settle here, if everything I've heard is true of that awful place down south of the pass! There's a merchant house whose grandfather came up out of the empire and never went back. Now I know why! Put to death, indeed! Just for speaking out of turn to a priest! I'd have something to say about that!"

"Who would that be? Who came as an outlander and settled here?"

"Master Calon's house, of course. His grandfather-the one who was born in the empire-had a foreign name, but we all called him Beyar."

"I wonder if he was a third son," mused Mai.

"He established the house of Three Rings. They mostly deal in flesh."

"In flesh?"

"Slaves. You might look to Master Calon for advice. He pays his bills promptly. That's how I measure a decent man. He's on the council this year, although he's not among those whose dogs bring back a bird in the hunt, if you take my meaning."

"I'm afraid I don't. What do you mean?"

"Dear heart, how young and sweet you are, with that disarming smile. I hope your man appreciates you, and treats you well. There's sixteen houses who call the dance in this town. They don't call themselves the Greater Houses for nothing. But these days the Lesser Houses and the guilds are making a lot of noise. Now, I admit, the Silvers keep quiet because no one trusts them. The others know they don't have enough official votes to change things, yet they also know that if you counted each household's vote, they could take power. You can be sure the Greater Houses like things the way they've always been, because that means they get to keep what they have. They won't give up their power on the council easily."

"I know how that goes," said Mai, because she did know. This did not sound promising. She'd heard stories in Kartu's market about disputes in other towns getting murderous. "What about the land beyond Olossi? How is it there?"

"Beyond Olossi? What would you be wanting to go there for? Farmers. Fishers. They stink. I hear village folk out in the Barrens take a bath only once a month. Whew!" She waved a hand in front of her nose. "No wonder everyone leaves them alone."

"Aren't there other towns in the Hundred?"