He unhitched, sighed as he rubbed his joints, and turned to give a quick check to Scar's harness and feathers before approaching the village. Scar lowered his huge head. His head feathers were smooth and flat, his eyes as big as plates with the brow ridge giving him a commanding gaze, and his beak massive. Folk would focus on that head, when it was the talons they ought to fear most.

"You'll need coping soon," he said, examining the curved beak.

Scar's head went up. He spread his wings, flared his feathers, fanned his tail.

Joss spun.

A trio of armed men had emerged from the village. They strode halfway to their visitors, then halted just out of arrowshot. Scar called out a challenge. The eagle's entire posture had shifted. He expected the worst. Joss caught up his staff and walked over to meet them, scanning the palisade walls, the surrounding fields, but he saw no threatening movements, no flash of hidden bows, no mass of men waiting to strike.

"Greetings of the dusk to you," he called when he got close enough.

None smiled or offered greetings.

"Go back!" said the spokesman. "Leave this place. We want no reeves here."

"I'm just looking for a night's lodging. A place to shelter my head. A quick study of your assizes court, if you've need of an outside eye to look over your cases."

"No. Just leave us. You know what they'll do to any village that harbors a reeve."

"What who will do?"

The eldest among them, whose head was shaved in the manner of one of the Lantern's hierophants, croaked out words. "They promised we would not be harmed if we let no reeve enter our village."

"Who promised this?"

"By the seven gods, just leave us alone and go your way."

The sun's lower rim brushed the tops of the trees.

"I'm not your enemy," said Joss.

They stared at him with closed gazes. They refused to utter another word, despite his calm questions and pleasant manner. So he retraced his steps, never turning his back to them in case they decided to toss those javelins.

That night they camped outdoors, in a rocky clearing. Scar was restless. The trees tossed in a rising wind as Joss sought relief under an overhang. Of course the first kiss of rains blew up from the southeast that night, a brief downpour that soaked him through. By dawn the wet had all dried up, and the humid quality to the air portended another hot day. Knotted by doubt and anger, and with a growing headache, he retraced his flight along the Thread. By midday he saw a telltale spire of smoke far ahead. They glided in.

The town of River's Bend had been burned to the ground.

"They were so frightened," he said. "I see that now. I didn't recognize it at the time."

"The folk in River's Bend?" asked the commander.

"No, those three men outside the village that turned me away. They were so frightened."

"Just like in Herelia," said the commander, pouring more cordial into Joss's cup. "That's why we reeves had to leave Herelia, in the end."

"Their fear? Or the burned villages and murdered villagers?"

"The one made the other. We reeves are not an army to impose our authority by force. There was nothing we could do, and the villagers in Herelia soon learned it. Thus are we cast out. Now, I see, the contagion is spreading out of Herelia. And we are left with the same dilemma. If we do nothing, we blind ourselves and undercut our own authority. If we interfere, the local folk die. This is what comes of the death of the Guardians. Indeed, I expect it is their loss that has seeded the plague."

Joss toyed with his cup, turning it round and round as the red liquor lapped the rim, never quite spilling over. His left hand was bandaged; he'd cut it badly searching for survivors among the ruins of River's Bend. He'd found none, although it was true he'd not found nearly as many corpses as he ought to have done. People were missing, and as of yet, neither whisper nor shout had been heard of their whereabouts or their remains.

"I thought sure some of the foresters might have witnessed, and survived," he went on, "but when one pair of them did venture out of the Wild to get a look, near dusk, they told me it happened at night and not a one of their clan saw anything or heard anything."

"Think you they were lying?"

He shrugged. "I couldn't tell. They none of them sleep the night at the river's shore. They all hike into the Wild to their clan houses. That's where they feel safe."

"Now we see why."

The entry bell out on the porch rang to announce visitors. The door was slid open, and the legates filed in. Joss began to rise, seeing his meeting was over, but the commander gestured for him to remain seated.

He lifted his hands as a question.

"While you were gone, I received word from Marshal Masar that he is shorthanded and has no one to replace you as legate. It seems I acted in haste when I dismissed you. Allow me to say that I was, on that one occasion, mistaken."

He almost laughed, but he swallowed his moment of amusement because of the serious expressions worn by the other five legates. They made no comment. All seemed too preoccupied with their own grievances and worries even to have heard her rare joke. Indeed, they had a difficult time paying attention when, as the first order of business, the commander had Joss recount the scene at River's Bend.

"That's all very well," said Legate Garrard, "and a terrible thing, as I need not go on about, but I must return to Argent Hall. I've received an urgent message from Marshal Alyon demanding my return. Urgent."

"On what matter?"

Garrard shook his head. "We've had trouble, as I've spoken to you about on many occasions these last seasons. Too many troublesome reeves are being allowed to transfer into Argent Hall from the other halls."

"We're well rid of those who left us," said the legate of Iron Hall, a stocky man boasting two stark-white scars on his broad, dark face.

"That may be," said Garrard with heat. "I don't blame your masters for letting them go. I blame Clan Hall for not blocking all this moving about."

The commander merely shook her head. "Clan Hall has no mandate to block transfers that are agreed to by the marshals of the six halls. Marshal Alyon must stop the transfers. Why hasn't he?"

"It's true we're shorthanded, and we need every reeve and every eagle. But Marshal Alyon is old, ill, and easily pressured by certain factions within the hall. It's too much for him, all the territorial squabbles to be resolved, the gossip, the tempers, the fights-"

"Fights?" asked the commander coolly. She beckoned to the old reeve who acted as her chamberlain, and he brought in a tray of cups and poured cordial all around.

Legate Garrard was normally an even-tempered man, with the black coarse hair and creamy brown complexion common in the south. But he was so agitated now that the other legates stared at him. "He thinks he's being poisoned."

"Poisoned!" cried the legate from Iron Hall. "Poisoned? Who in the hells would want to poison that old man? He's as harmless as a mouse. Now, if it were my old marshal, what passed the Gate ten years back, any one of us would've done it, and gladly, for she were the worst-tempered person I ever did meet in my life."

This comment brought silence. No one laughed. From the parade ground, an eagle screamed a challenge, but there came no answering call.

Taudit, the legate from Horn Hall, stood. "I'm leaving," she said. "My marshal has recalled me, together with all the reeves posted here from Horn Hall. A reeve flew in this morning with the message. We've all been recalled. I'm sorry."

The commander sipped at her drink. Then she nodded. Joss was stunned. He hadn't seen this coming, but it was obvious from the commander's response that she had not been taken by surprise.