The elders looked up as Joss approached.
'Greetings of the day,' said Joss.
The two men stared at him, making no welcoming gesture. Then one rose abruptly and smiled. Joss turned. Chief Sengel approached, accompanied by a stocky young man in a well-worn quilted militiaman's coat whose hands bore a farmer's calluses.
'Commander Joss! An unexpected visit.' The hells. Joss offered a forearm; Sengel hit hard, and his grin flashed when Joss did not stagger or wince. 'This is Laukas, freshly jessed.'
'Is that right?' said Joss. 'You're the first I've heard of in — well — months. You are well come to the reeves, comrade.'
The young man did not smile. 'I'm ready to fight,' he said. His
hair, Joss saw, had been pulled back but wasn't quite long enough to wrap in a ribboned topknot.
'What's your eagle's name? Maybe it's one I know.'
Laukas glanced at Sengel, and the chief nodded. 'Shy,' said the young man. 'Although she's actually pretty bold, so I guess you reeves -1 mean, we — make a jest of their names?'
'But-' Joss stumbled over his words. 'Shy is Masar's eagle.'
'Wait here,' said Sengel.
'Yes, Marshal.' The young man stepped aside obediently.
'What in the hells?' demanded Joss.
Sengel walked with Joss out to the end of Council Pier where they could talk without being overheard. The channel was running low this deep in the dry season. A dead fish stank on a muddy lip of stone. The city had a tense anticipation of coiled rope just before it's flung. Boats moved purposefully, piled high with an assortment of debris and junk, branches, planks, wheels, a blackened spar. Older folk poled and rowed, accompanied by youths.
'A cloak came down in the night. We filled him full of arrows and javelins until he did fall and lie in a stupor. I'd spoken to Masar about the situation. He claimed the right to unclasp the cloak as payment for his family.'
'He's an old, failing man!'
'Which is exactly why I let him do it. Don't you suppose that's how he wanted to die, knowing he'd struck a blow rather than wasting away on a pallet? Now what can I help you with? I don't have much time. The enemy's eastern line is more than halfway across the mire and we've not got everything in place yet. Do you bring a message from the captain?'
'Aui!' And yet, he could imagine Masar taking on one last battle. It was a proud way to go. 'Listen. Can you spare a flight to move troops up from the army to Toskala?'
Sengel shrugged. 'I can't, Commander. I've got three flights out today bringing in reinforcements to me. If you've just come from the army, you might have seen them.'
Joss shook his head, rubbing his forehead. 'I went by Horn Hall first.'
Sengel looked closely at him. 'What is it, Commander? Something troubling you?'
A horn rang in the distance. Drums rapped out a measure. Every soul seated under the council roof turned to stare eastward
over a wide channel, although he could see nothing but the crowd of one- and two-story buildings that filled the neighboring isles. So much was hidden from him. He didn't know the streets and alleys of this city — not Nessumara, precisely, although its complex tangle of islets, islands, canals, river channels, backwaters, and mires was famous in tale and in truth — but this unfolding market of events whose paths were obscure to him.
'I just think it's cursed odd we reeves have become carters.'
Sengel laughed in the easy Qin way. 'Not at all. Reeves are soldiers, doing what needs done.'
'Why'd the young man call you "marshal"?'
Sengel began walking back to the shaded square where people waited impatiently for him. 'A courtesy, nothing more. I'm in charge of Nessumara's defenses at the moment, and that includes the reeves. If there's nothing else, Commander, I have to go inspect the defenses. If you don't mind, could you walk Laukas over to Copper Hall? He hasn't even been issued reeve leathers or harness. It just happened this morning.'
Laukas wasn't shy, precisely, but bitter.
'Who's marshal now?' Joss asked him as they crossed the bridge.
'Chief Sengel's acting as marshal. He's got everything in hand in Nessumara. Without him, it'd be like we were walking into a cursed ambush, wouldn't it? But now we have a hope of victory.'
Midmorning, Keshad was working in quiet amity beside O'eki, each man at his own writing desk, when the door into the compound slammed open. Keshad splattered ink over his neat column of accounts.
O'eki looked up more calmly. 'Seren? What is it?'
The Qin soldier limped inside and a young reeve hurried in behind, his face so creased with worry that O'eki set his brush on its stand and rose.
'Reeve Siras has come from Merciful Valley,' began Seren.
The reeve broke in over Seren's words. 'You're to come immediately to Merciful Valley, Master O'eki. Chief Tuvi tells me to bring also Master Keshad.'
37
'What's wrong?' demanded Keshad, throat tight.
The reeve wiped his brow. 'Mistress Priya suggested you close down the warehouse until you return.'
'Very well,' said O'eki in a tone so flat Kesh was shocked to see how gray he had turned. 'It will take me a short while to lock everything up. Seren, ask a hireling to collect a change of clothes and such necessities as we'll need.'
The Qin soldier nodded and limped out, brows drawn down.
'What's happened, curse you!' demanded Keshad.
'Close up your books quickly, Kesh,' snapped O'eki. 'Grab anything you need. Make it fast.'
The hells!
They launched from Assizes Square. O'eki hooked in with Siras, and Kesh was handed over to Reeve Miyara, who looked as if she hadn't slept in a week.
'What happened?' he asked as she hooked him in.
'Anything the chief wants you to know, he'll tell you.'
The earth lurched; the ground leaped away from under him as wings battered the air. He yelped, squeezing shut his eyes. She offered no word of encouragement, no friendly banter to ease the transition. After a while he cracked an eye only to find the land falling away so rapidly he felt sick to his stomach, so he clamped his eyes shut again.
'How do you get used to this?' he muttered. Her knee jabbed into his back. 'Aui!'
He took the hint. If she didn't want to talk, then he wouldn't talk. But it was cursed hard to keep your eyes shut for so long, and the next time he opened them there was nothing but water beneath, swaying and glittering under a cloudless sky.
Better not to look. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes, but after a while his arm got tired, and then the other arm got tired, and eventually the steady rumble of the wind and the tense silence of his companion numbed him enough that he could regard the sea below with resigned terror. Just let Miravia be alive. As long as he held to that thought, he could endure.
They'd launched before noon and soon he had to piss, even though they'd warned him to relieve himself before flight. But there was nowhere to land except the south shore shining gold off to the left, and he sure as the hells wasn't going to ask her to detour just for him. They rose higher yet until the air stung in his
chest and his eyes watered, and he started to shiver, but she said nothing and the eagle flew on, alternating gliding on strong winds and then beating for stretches. To cross the Olo'o Sea by ship took two days, or a long day and night, yet the waters quickly slid past as the day wore on. Late in the afternoon they passed above the hinterlands of Astafero, the settlement a smear of buildings far below, and sped straight for the magnificent Spires. The winds buffeted them, and he shuddered convulsively in a cold blast that swept off the high, forbidding peaks wjiose crowns glittered a blinding white.
They plummeted and he shrieked as the earth hurtled up. They hit and he fell hard to his knees as she unhooked him without warning. He knelt at a cliff's edge, the spray of a waterfall spanning the gulf of air. He crept away from the chasm, and the first time he tried to stand he could not. The reeve was shucking the harness from her eagle, releasing it, and by the time he got his feet under him she was walking in company with a Qin soldier into the trees. Another sentry waited at the path's edge, so he hurried after.