Anji seemed struck dumb. Mai stared. She had never seen him at a loss. Never. Never.

"The new emperor is interested in the var's offer. Of course. He'll lose without our support. Even a fool can see it. But he has one demand. Just one, before he allows our troops into the empire. He wants proof of your death." He waved the message. "This message, here in my hand, is an order. For your head. By order of the var himself."

"Ah." The sound escaped Anji on an exhale.

Beje waited, but the captain said nothing more. His hands were in fists, his gaze sightless, and he did not move.

"Why does the new emperor, this one called Farazadihosh, want you dead, Anjihosh?"

Mai had gone hot, arms tingling, as though fire burned nearby. She held her breath, waiting.

Anji found his breath, and she breathed again as he spoke, his voice so low she strained to hear him. "Because I'm his younger brother."

Beje waved the message dismissively. "I know you're the new emperor's brother. Why does he want you dead?"

"Ah. Ah, well." Slowly, he recovered himself, like a man pulling himself by rope out of flooding waters: hand over hand. "It is the custom of the emperor to kill all his half brothers when he ascends to the throne. Usually his full brothers as well, if he has any."

"Half? Full? What does this mean?"

"The same man sired us. We had different mothers."

"But surely your father the Emperor Farutanihosh had a chief wife. Her sons would always take precedence over sons by secondary wives and concubines."

"No. The emperor may elevate any of his wives or concubines at any time he pleases. He may disinherit, or give preference to, whichever son is his favorite, or the favorite of whichever wife grips his staff most firmly."

"Tss! That's no way to be strong. Brothers should support one another."

"Not in the royal court of the Sirniakan Empire. Azadihosh's mother tried to have me murdered once my mother fell out of favor. That's when my mother had me smuggled west to the Qin."

Beje scratched an ear. "To her brother, the var. Then if princes are so ruthless in the empire, how comes there to be a claimant to rise against the new emperor?"

"My father the Emperor Farutanihosh has always been a canny and ruthless administrator. No one contests-contested-that. No one who contested that survived. But the noble clans consider-considered-him to be a softhearted, weak man, because at the request of his mother he left alive his younger full brother, Ufarihosh. He even let him marry and govern the southern provinces. The brothers were on good terms, if royal brothers can ever be said to be on good terms in the empire. Azadihosh and his mother must not have been able to murder Ufarihosh's sons before a claimant rose out of their ranks."

"Yet these would be the nephews of the emperor, not the sons of the emperor. Surely that would damage their claim."

"Perhaps. The southern provinces are populous, and traditional, old-fashioned. The son of an emperor known to be weakhearted, like Farutanihosh, might not receive their support if a better claimant raised his spear. Anything could happen there. I don't know. My mother hoped to keep me out of palace politics by sending me away to her own people, to the Qin, where it would never matter what happened to me. I would be an exile. I would be dead to the court. But now they've come to find me, just as she feared. She meant to keep secret what had become of me. Do you know how my brother found out where I was?"

"I do not."

"Hu. A mystery, then." He kept his gaze on Beje, each man watching the other intently, as if waiting for a knife to be drawn. "What do you mean to do, Commander?"

Beje tucked the message back inside his tunic. He scratched one ear again, pulling on the lobe. Mai remembered to breathe. Anji nodded at her to show he hadn't forgotten her, before looking back at the commander.

"It's too bad that you never arrived here," said Beje. "After that terrible storm in the desert some days ago, I sent out a scout. We found dead horses, dead men, and your banner, torn and dirty, but recognizable. Your ring, too, that gold lion given to you by the var when you were twelve and first come to court. A shame! The storm must have caught your troop unprepared."

"It never would! That's a slur on my competence!"

The commander smiled sharply. "You must choose between incompetence or death, Anjihosh. This is the chance I will give you, because I am shocked that my cousin the var would betray his own nephew to the Sirniakans. But then, this is the same man who gave his sister to their emperor as a plaything. It's like spitting at the gods to treat a woman of our people in such a way. I hold to the old ways."

"None better," said Anji with a brief smile.

"None better! But shamed anyway, because of my daughter." He picked up the carving and tossed it to Anji, who caught it deftly. "You'll have to take all your men. Those who won't go with you I will kill. I can't take any chances."

Anji glanced at Priya. "They'll all go with me."

"Any men who know you came to me will have to go with you as well, including Tohon. He's the best scout I have. You can trust him. Your wife can take the Mariha girl as an attendant. I don't know what use she is except for pouring khaif."

Anji had an amused smile back on his face. "Where am I to go, Commander? If my uncle the var will not have me, then I cannot ride west. I cannot ride east into Sirniaka. South lies desert and, beyond that, mountains whose passes are so high that travelers die with their own blood boiling on their lips."

"North," said Mai. "You said yourself there's a place that merchants speak of, like that one who found Uncle Hari's ring. Shai is going there anyway. We'll go with him."

Anji laughed.

"There is one pass running north, through high mountains, to this land of a hundred lords," said Beje. "But it's said the land there protects its own with ancient magic. That any folk who travel that way with malice in their hearts cannot survive the journey. The road vanishes. Blizzards drown them."

"Merchants go there," insisted Mai.

"Merchants travel where soldiers fear to ride," said Beje with a laugh that sounded uncannily like Anji's: amused, resigned, ironical.

"Merchants travel, but every merchant travels with a guard," said Anji. "Mai is right, of course. We'll go north, if you can put us on the proper road. We can hire ourselves out as a guard to some merchant caravan heading over the pass."

"These Sirniakans are fiends for official chits and seals. I hear they arrest any person who hasn't a pass to account for his whereabouts. Heh! Even their dead must have a permission chit for their ghosts to depart for the other life!"

"I still have the palace warrant my mother gave me. We'll go swiftly."

"That you must. You'll have to ride into the northern reaches of the empire, but I think you'll be safe if you move fast, before anyone suspects the truth."

"We can leave at once."

"No baths?" Mai asked, feeling all her dirt, every grain of it.

Anji chuckled. He met her gaze, and she laughed, suddenly not caring. Dirt was the least of it. Dirt was nothing, not if he loved her. "I promise you a bath. When it is safe."

"Why not now?" asked Beje, eyeing her with the glint of lechery in his expression, nothing she hadn't seen a thousand times in the marketplace. She smiled, in the way she'd learned to acknowledge men without encouraging them, and he laughed and slapped his thigh.

Anji rose, sobering. "There was a troop of riders on our trail."

"It's true you'll need to leave before they see you," said Beje, "but you need have no fear of them. They are the men who came from the desert, the ones who found your remains. I'll need your officer's tunic, your banner, and your ring."