Verna flapped the ends of her shawl again. "I don't think your theory casts a shadow, Warren. From a young age, children like to play games. They do it all day. People have always played games. When they get older, they have contests with the bow, with horses, with dice. It's part of human nature to play at games."

"This way." Warren caught her sleeve and pointed with a thumb, turning her down a narrow alley. "And the emperor is channeling that tendency into something more than natural. He need not worry about their minds wandering to thoughts of their freedom, or even simple matters of justice. Their passion, now, is Ja'La. Their minds are dulled to everything else.

"Instead of wondering why the emperor is coming, and what it will mean for their lives, everyone is aflutter because of Ja'La."

Verna felt her stomach lurch. She had been wondering just why the emperot was coming. There had to be a reason for him to come all this way, and she didn't think it was just to watch his team play Ja'La. He wanted something.

"Aren't the people worried about defeating such a powerful man, or his team, anyway?"

"The emperor's team is very good, I'm told, but they don't have any special privilege or advantage. The emperor takes no affront at his team losing, except, of course with his players. If an opponent bests them, the emperor will acknowledge their skill and heartily congratulate them and their city. People long for that honor — to best the emperor's renowned team."

"I've been back for a couple months, and I've never seen the city empty out for this game before."

"The season just started. Official games are only allowed to be played in the the Ja'La season."

"That doesn't fit with your theory, then. If the game is a distraction from more important matters of life, why not let them play it all the time?"

Warren gave her a smug smile. "Anticipation makes the fervor stronger. The prospects for the upcoming season are talked about endlessly. By the time the season finally arrives the people are worked up into a fever pitch, like young lovers returned to the embrace after an absence — their minds are dull to anything else. If the game went on all the time, the ardor might cool."

Warren had obviously thought long and hard on his theory. She didn't think she believed in it, but he seemed to have an answer for everything, so she changed the subject.

"Where did you hear this, about him bringing his team?"

"Master Finch."

"Warren, I sent you to the stables to find out about those horses, not to gab about Ja'La."

"Master Finch isabig Ja'La enthusiast and was all excited about today's opening game, soIlelhim ramble on about it so I could find out what you wanted to know."

"And did you?"

They came to an abrupt halt, looking up at the sign carved with a headstone, shovel, and the names BENSTENT and SPROUL.

"Yes. Between telling me how many lashes the other team was going to get, and telling me how to make money betting on the outcome, he told me that the missing horses have been gone for quite a time."

"Since right after winter solstice, I'd bet."

Warren shielded his eyes with a hand as he peered into the window. "You'd win the bet. Four of his strongest horses, but full tack for only two, are gone. He's still searching for the horses, and swears he'll find them, but he thinks the tack was stolen."

From behind the door in the back of the dark room, she could hear the sound of a file on steel.

Warren took his hand from his face and checked the street. "Sounds like there's someone here who isn't a Ja'La enthusiast."

"Good." Verna tied the shawl under her chin and then pulled open the door. "Let's go hear what this gravedigger has to say."

Only the small, street-side window coated with ancient layers of dirt, and an open door in the back, lit the dim, dusty room, but it was enough to see a path through the cluttered mounds of sloppy rolls of winding sheets, rickety workbenches, and simple coffins. A few rusty saws and planes hung on one wall, and a disorderly stack of pine planks leaned against another.

While people of means frequented undertakers who provided guidance in the selection of ornate, expensive coffins for their loved ones, people with precious little money could afford no more than the services of simple gravediggers who supplied a plain box and a hole to put it in. While the departed loved ones of those who came to gravediggers were no less precious to them, they had to worry about feeding the living. Their memories of the deceased, however, were no less gilded.

Verna and Warren paused at the doorway out into a tiny pit of a work yard, its borders steep and high with lumber stacked upright against a fence to the back and stuccoed buildings at each side. In the center, with his back to them, a gangly, barefoot man in tattered clothes stood facing away from them as he filed the blades of his shovels.

"My condolences on the loss of your loved one," he said in a gravelly but surprisingly sincere voice. He resumed drawing the file against the steel. "Child, or adult?"

"Neither," Verna said.

The hollow-cheeked man glanced back over his shoulder. He wore no beard, but looked as if his efforts at shaving were rare enough that he was close to crossing the line. "In between, then? If you'll tell me the size of the departed, I can work a box to fit."

Verna clasped her hands. "We've no one to bury. We're here to ask you some questions."

He quieted his hands and turned around fully to look them up and down. "Well, I can see that you can afford more than me."

"You aren't interested in Ja'La," Warren asked.

The man's droopy eyes came a little more alert as he took another look at Warren's violet robes.”Folks don't fancy the likes of me around at festive occasions. Spoils their good time to look on my face, like it were the face of death itself walking among 'em. Aren't shy about telling me I'm not welcome, either. But they come by when they've need of me. They come, then, and act like they never turned their eyes away before. I could let 'em go pay for a fancy box what the dead won't see, but they can't afford it, and their coin don't do me no good if I grudge 'em their fears."

"Which are you," Verna asked, "Master Benstent, or Sproul?"

His flaccid eyelids bunched into creases as his eyes turned to up her. "I'm Milton Sproul."

"And Master Benstent? Is he about, too?"

"Ham's not here. What's this about?"

Verna bowed her mouth in a nonchalant expression. "We're from the palace, and wanted to ask about a tally we were sent. We just need to be sure it's correct, and everything is in order."

The bony man turned back to his shovel and stroked the file across the edge. "Tally's correct. We'd not cheat the Sisters."

"Of course we aren't suggesting any such thing, it's just that we can't find any record of who it was you buried. We just need to verify the deceased, and then we can authorize payment."

"Don't know. Ham done the work and made out the tally. He's an honest man. He wouldn't cheat a thief to get back what was stole from him. He made out the tally and told me to send it over, that's all I know."

"I see." Verna shrugged. "Then I guess we'll need to see Master Benstent in order to clear this up. Where can we find him?"

Sproul took another stroke with his file. "Don't know. Ham was getting on in years. Said he wanted to spend what little time was left to him being with his daughter and grandchildren. He left to be with them. They live downcountry somewheres." He circled his file in the air. "Left his half of the place, such, as it is, to me. Left me his half of the work, too. Guess I'm have to take on a younger man to do the digging; I'm getting old myself."