He slid his gaze sideways so as to avoid hers, but he knew that if she demanded he look at her again, he would have to.

"I believe that Wakened Crane is council day in Olossi," she continued, without making him look. "Which is today. Go to Olossi immediately. Speak in private to their leader and tell him that these mercenaries must under no circumstances stay in the Hundred. After this, attend the council as a silent observer. That will be message enough to the council members who may think to disagree with those who rule them. Watch and mark who speaks and what they say. Set the hierodule on her road, to eliminate the imprisoned reeve. Then return afterward to Argent Hall and tell Marshal Yordenas that I am displeased with him." Her fingers brushed the hilt of the dagger. "Just that. Nothing more. He'll know what I speak of. As for you, Horas, know that I will know. I am watching you now. I do not like disrespect toward those who are holy in the sight of the gods."

She picked up the dagger and turned it in her hands as though it had a message for her. This was his dismissal.

He staggered outside and stood there panting until the world stopped spinning. When no one offered him so much as a drink to cool his parched throat, he cursed the lot of them for selfish bastards, but not out loud.

"Come on," he said to the Devouring girl.

She looked surprised but followed without asking questions. His thrill in the day, in the catch, in the promise, was ruined. On West Track, the army was being drummed to its feet. Tumna waited in the open ground beyond. He hooked into the harness and hitched her in before him, and she was puzzled but cautious, trying to read his mood.

"We'll go quickly," he said. "Get there as fast as we can."

That was all. They flew to Olossi and though he thought once or twice of the things the Devouring girl had promised to do to him and let him do to her, fear doused his rod. He showed her no disrespect, and without his charm to loosen her tongue, she made no offer.

36.

The dream unveiled itself in the gray unwinding of mist, but this time the mist did not end, nor did it part. There was offered both drink and food on a tray lowered down through a hatch in the ceiling. In a haze he gobbled down what was there, but it all came right back up again. Much later, he drank, coughed up some but kept down a little, and after dozed fitfully. He could not remember where he was, only that he was so terribly thirsty.

There it was again, the bowl, and he drank, but the liquid churned in his stomach and he retched it all up. The effort exhausted him. His head was shattered with pain. Through these choppy waves he sank into the depths.

Later, he discovered he had emerged out of deep waters into a kind of waking delirium.

Woozy-headed, he tried to make sense of his surroundings. There was an awful stink, and when he managed to hold up a hand he was after all holding up two hands; both blurred even while he felt he had another arm braced under him. Had he grown a third hand? The effort of thinking and moving made his guts lurch and bowels go loose, and he coughed and heaved and felt the fog overwhelm him once again.

He dreamed, but in fragments: the pain in his head; Scar; a woman inviting him to her bed with a sly smile; a field of rice stubble; sipping from a bowl of water whose pure fragrance drowned him; the deserted temple up in the high hills of the Liya Pass that stank of fear and shame. Here he is wandering. Where has Marit gone? He tries to call after her, but his voice makes no sound. He will never find her.

A click and a scrape woke him.

"For shame!"

He stirred, hearing a voice young and feminine and pleasing.

"Is it right you allow this man to lie in his filth? He looks ill. Is he even conscious?"

"He's a murderer." That was a man's voice, low and rumbling like sifting through gravel.

"Has he been seen at the assizes yet?"

"No, verea. He has not."

"Who is he?"

"Not our business to know, verea."

"If he hasn't been seen at the assizes, then he's only accused. The magistrate hasn't read the sentence. You'd think it best if he came to the court smelling like a decent person. If you won't clean him up, I will."

"Not allowed, verea. He's not allowed up, nor anyone allowed down."

He cracked one eye, then the other, but it wasn't easy; some dried substance had crusted them over. The walls-for there were walls all around him-were stone built, and not so very far away. He was curled up in one corner on stone that was both slicked in patches with a drying stink and elsewhere rimed with a dried coating that crackled under him as he tried to shift up, to sit, to see where those voices were coming from. The walls were plain, with no openings.

"He's waking," said the young woman's voice. "Do something, I pray you!"

He gagged and his stomach heaved again, but he had nothing in him. His throat was raw; each swallow was a stab of pain. His head throbbed. His clothes were stiff and nasty, and it became clear to him immediately that he had soiled himself while ill. But at least now he could sit up, blinking in the flickering lantern light. Where was that light coming from?

Ah! It was above.

He squinted up. The movement hurt his neck. Far above, floating in a sea of darkness, was a ceiling constructed of night or, possibly, planks of wood. There was an opening cut within them, and floating in this hatchway the veil of mist.

Yet as he stared, the gray mist hovering over the opening vanished abruptly to be replaced by a man's disinterested face. The light was withdrawn, a lantern hauled up on a rope, and he sat in blackness trying to recall who he was and why he was here. Footsteps cracked away down an unseen corridor above him, quickly swallowed in the echoless stone.

"I like that," said the gravel voice.

He was answered by a wheedling tenor. "That the Silver girl who always comes?"

"That one? How should I know? Always got their faces covered, don't they?"

"Heh! But you'd recognize the voice."

"Yeah, I would do. Same one. Seems nice enough, but you know how it is."

"Neh, I don't, for I've never stood so close to a Silver before, not even one of the men. Never seen one of their women. I thought they weren't allowed into the light."

"You're come recently from the country, aren't you!"

"No shame in that!"

"Neh, neh, never meant there was. Those Silvers, the women are so ass-ugly that they daren't show their faces in the light of day where others can see. That's what I hear."

"You ever seen one of their faces?"

"Not me! It's a curse if you do, for they've certain tricksy magics, you know. Curses and rots and suchlike. Make your cock fall off if you so much as look at them crosswise. They paint their hands with all manner of spells, did you notice that?"

"I thought she had a skin disease on her fingers."

"Oh, no, those are spells. Not even tattoos. Spells, painted on their hands. It's the only part of them you ever see. Nay, don't mess with them, I tell you."

"Aui! I won't!"

"She's all right, though, that one. She comes through and brings food for the prisoners whose families have no way to feed them. Else they'd starve, you know."

"What would make a person go and do that?" asked Tenor. "If family can't help you, then why would you go and trust a stranger? Probably better to die."

"Don't know why she does it. They're outlanders, you know. Comes of their peculiar customs, I'd wager."

"I did hear one thing," added Tenor cunningly. "That they pay off those who would make trouble for them. That's why they never come to trouble before the law."

"Neh, maybe so, but they do trade fairly, you must give them that. My old uncle needed a medicinal for his son who was sick with the flux, and it happened it was the end of the season and there was none to be found except in the end one of the Silver shops had a last vial. I'll tell you, that merchant could have charged him ten or twenty times over, for Uncle was that desperate, and there are some merchants in this town who would have done so, but that Silver charged him market price, same as anyone. It was fairly done. So I don't mind the girl or her escort."

"Always an escort, those men with her?"

"Always. The Silvers treat their womenfolk like slaves, didn't you know that? Always under guard. Can't walk out on their own, or show their face. Bodies completely covered in those loose robes, which is peculiar, if you think about it."

"The men do look funny," agreed Tenor, "with those pulled eyes and their hair all tied up in cloth like women sometimes do. I hear they have unnatural congress with beasts."

"And horns, under the cloth! That's why they must cover their heads. They're demon-born, back in their old country. It's why they were run out and come here to the Hundred."

The Hundred!

Joss found his memory and his voice.

"Enough!" he croaked. Speaking that word made his head ache worse. "What have the Silvers ever done to you that you should speak of them so cruelly?"

"Eiya!" yelped Tenor. "It speaks!"

Light wavered before the opening, dropped through, but it was as blinding as the darkness, slamming right into his eyes.

"He does stink," said Gravel. "I'll ask Captain if we can wash him up. Whew!"

"He looked harmless enough. Who's been feeding him?"

"That girl brings a ration of rice every day, enough to share out among the destitute. We shove his portion in through the hatch. First day he did take it, but he cast it all back out again a time or two."

"I can smell that! Eh!"

"Then he was sleeping or sick. I'm no healer! I thought him like to die. But Captain Waras came by and said to let him be, and we must obey the captain."

"What day is it?" Joss said in his strange, roughened voice.

"Wakened Crane," said Gravel kindly.

"Council day, isn't it? I have the right to appear before the council."

Gravel snorted. "Even if we could let you out, council bell already rang, so by the time you crawled up to Fortune Square it'd be all over for the week!"

They laughed as if this were the best joke they'd heard that day.

"You're too late for this week!" cried Tenor over Gravel's honking laugh.

The lantern was drawn up, and the hatch shuttered with a slam of wood. Their laughter and footfalls faded away, leaving him in unrelieved night. He groped at his chest, but the bone whistle was gone. Of course. There was a slight movement of air in the dungeon through slits set in the walls or ceiling, but no view of the sky. He grimaced, realizing truly how horribly grimy and disgusting he had become, matted in his own dried vomit and feces and urine. His head pounded, but at least he could think.

Gingerly, he lay flat on his back and stretched out with arms over his head. In this position, he easily touched opposite walls. He was no better than a rat trapped in a hole. His foot nudged the rim of an object: It was the food tray with a lump of cold rice and the bowl half full of warmish water that smelled as if it had not been fouled. There weren't too many bugs. He didn't mind the bugs.

He drank, and he ate, and this time he kept it all down.

37.

Captain Waras led them on a long, hot, and sweaty walk up through Olossi Town to a place he called "Fortune Square." Certainly their fortunes would rise or fall depending on the outcome of this council meeting.

At the council hall, she and Anji were allowed to sit on benches in the outer room while Sengel and Toughid took their usual places a few paces to either side of Anji, watching the occasional entrance and exit, and indeed every movement that flickered into being however brief its life, and marking each least scrape, rattle, and word that flew into the air. Priya was watchful, but Sheyshi had her eyes shut fast as she mumbled a singsong prayer in the voice of a woman near to tears with fear. There was no one else there except Captain Waras's guards, and Mai expected that Sengel and Toughid could make short work of these six callow youths who hadn't the posture of men who have been tested.

Anji listened carefully to her account of her conversation with Tannadit. He made no comment until she was done.

"Sixteen 'Greater Houses'? And an untold number of dissatisfied Lesser Houses? 'Silvers'? I wonder what they are. Useful, anyway. You learned more than I did. I mostly heard tales of merchants and traders and peddlers who could not bring their goods into the north, past a town called Horn. If goods come up from the south, and cannot be moved elsewhere, it will hurt the merchants in this city."

"You think you could offer your company as caravan guards on the roads here."

"It seems possible."

"Isn't 'Horn' the name of the town where my uncle's ring was found?"

"Yes."

They suffered an interminable and dreary wait through the afternoon while the air grew more turgid and the heat more stifling. She whispered thanks to the Merciful One that here there was no need to cover her face, as there had been in Sirniaka. She whispered thanks that she was allowed to whisper thanks without fear of being burned alive. At last, the doors slid open, and a steadily increasing stream of women and men flowed into the building through the entry chamber and on into the high-raftered hall where the council met.

She studied them as they passed, marking the most curious faces. A man obsessively fingered a fresh scar on his clean-shaven chin; it looked like someone had clawed him with a nail. An old, bent woman needed assistance to walk, closely tended by a pair of younger relatives, who resembled her about the eyes and jaw. A stout woman of middle years swaggered with the assurance of a Qin officer, a servant skulking like a beaten dog at her heels. Most of these folk had gleaming black and brown-black hair caught up in looped braids. Some of the women wore their hair pinned high, with a horse's-tail fall down their back or a cluster of heavily beaded braids that clacked softly as they walked, like gossips. A pair of men came in with their hair entirely wrapped in cloth whose ends were tucked away to make a turban. The younger was a remarkably handsome young man, despite his pale complexion and strange headdress, and he was dressed in a rich marigold-yellow silk knee-length overcoat. His gaze roamed, as if he were looking for someone, and when he saw her, he smiled winningly, but was pulled on his way immediately by the scowling older man who probably was his father if one judged by looks and dress. No other men wore their hair wrapped away in a turban.

The shutters were taken down in the hall to let air move through, although there wasn't much wind. The afternoon shadows had lengthened, and if there wasn't precisely a breeze rising up off the river and delta, there was a softening of the heat. The hall was lined with benches. It was a vast space bridged by huge crossbeams of wood. Trees never grew so large in Kartu, not even on Dezara Mountain where the sacred grove was tended. Already, these Olossi people were bickering, seating themselves in clots and clusters that suggested factions and alliances.

The murmur of their voices was like the whisper of wind in leaves-just like in the poem! Although that tale had a bad ending.

She shifted, feeling anxious. Priya and Sheyshi knelt on the floor. Anji sat utterly still, hands resting on his knees, back straight, expression smooth and pleasing in the manner of silk. She could not guess what he was thinking.

In Kartu, of course, the overlords ran everything, even back in the days of the Mariha princes. The council met only when the rulers of Kartu called in the leading men of the town to inform them of new regulations to be implemented.

The din of competing voices from the council chamber was rising. A young woman hurried past clutching pens and several scrolls; ink stained her fingers. She glanced at Mai and Anji, and her eyes widened in surprise. She dropped a pen. Bending to pick it up, she lost two more. A grand gentleman swept up the steps behind her. He was attended by a surly-looking man with a crooked nose who was wearing a leather vest and leather trousers almost exactly like those worn by Reeve Joss. Reeve leathers, Joss had called them. The clerk cast a frightened glance back as he approached, and scrambled to gather her things and get into the hall.

"Shut the doors," said the grand gentleman, pausing in the entry chamber with a gaggle of attendants bringing up the rear. He wore a magnificent overrobe of iridescent green silk, embroidered with orange feathers and gold starbursts along the hem and sleeves and neckline. His long hair was braided in three loops, decorated with ribands and beads. If he saw Anji and Mai, he did not deign to notice them, but the man with the broken nose stared rudely at them, gaze dropping down to examine Mai's chest.

A grating and quite high woman's voice shouted for silence in the hall. When it was quiet, the gentleman strode into the chamber with his gaggle trailing him in the manner of nervous goslings. Attendants shoved the doors shut, screens colliding with other screens in a series of sharp reports like staffs whacking wooden targets.

That nasal soprano rose again, calling the council to order in rapid-fire words Mai had trouble following; at speed, and muffled by the closed doors, the differences in pronunciation and phrasing made it difficult to understand. The long wait and the stifling heat had turned her thoughts to mud. She found it hard to concentrate as words and comments emerged from the council hall.

". . . never allow outlanders to settle . . . bad luck . . . goes against the gods . . ."

". . . fools not to hire out a guard for caravans going north . . ."