"Come on."

He appreciated her curves and her brisk walk and the scalloped wave of tattoos running up the back of her shapely legs, and let her get a little ahead of him before he followed, just to get the all of her in his view. Her braid didn't reach much farther than the middle of her back. Those gathered took her departure as a signal to move away in silence, all but the man with the scarred chin whose gaze looked ready to sear both hen and rooster.

As Joss passed close by him, the man hissed between his teeth and said, in a murmur that could not have reached beyond the two of them, "The shadow of lust and greed rules here. Watch your back." Then he, too, turned away and, with a noticeable hitch in his stride, favoring his right leg, headed for the east loft.

The woman paused in the alley between the braceworks and the high wall of the west loft, in the shadowed cleft midway between light and light, right where a double-wide door, slid back, opened onto a storehouse built into the outer wall. Ranks of ceramic vessels filled the long chamber: the tall amphorae for groundnut oil; smaller pots marked with the ideograms for sesame and chili oils; the elaborately decorated and stoppered vessels containing the most expensive cosmetic oils; an especially plentiful supply of the distinctive round, sealed pots holding precious oil of naya. Argent Hall had a remarkably well stocked storehouse, any merchant's dream.

"Are you always this slow?" she asked as he halted beside her and gave her his full attention.

He grinned. "Only when I want to be."

She snorted. "Men say so, but they have no stamina."

"Spoken like one of the Devourer's hierodules."

"Do you think so?"

"You have the look of it."

Her fingers, brushing his wrist, were like a wasp's tickling walk along skin. "Do you want to find out?"

He bent toward her, lips to her ear, not quite touching. "You'll find me far more at ease once my business here is concluded."

As she started forward, she said something under her breath that he couldn't quite catch, or maybe it was something he had heard before, lying in the arms of the Merciless One. She devoured the ground with her stride. An impatient woman. She sizzled with a pent-up anger, but he didn't know enough to figure it out.

The alley gave way to the garden court with a narrow reflection pool flanked by fruit and nut trees, a pair of hexagonal fountains spilling water over blue tile, and wide corner terraces heavily planted with a variety of herbs, veil of mercy, and hundred-petaled butter-bright, so yellow that the petals seemed smeared with grease. The marshal's cote was a humble-seeming pavilion built at the far end of the pool. The intricate woodwork in the overhanging eaves and around the closed doors and white-papered windows, and the lacing vines of veil of mercy and climbing stars twining the poles and lattices of the wraparound porch, betrayed that skilled workmanship had gone into both its construction and its ornamentation.

Their footfalls on gravel surely warned the man waiting within. She indicated the steps. As Joss mounted the first one, the door slid open and a retired reeve shuffled out onto the covered porch and stood aside. Joss unlaced his boots, stepped out of them, and crossed up and over the threshold onto the raised floor.

The cote was not a large building. The front room stretched its length, while a single door, currently shut, suggested that a private chamber waited in back. The marshal sat on a pillow at a writing desk, at his ease with a quill in one hand and an ink knife in the other. Such a slender thing, that knife. Joss watched carefully as the marshal toyed with this knife, gaze fixed on the blank paper lying on the desk. He must have been cold, for he was wearing a cloak indoors, although it seemed plenty warm to Joss.

Finally, the marshal set down the knife next to a silver handbell, and looked up. He was young enough that his youth came as a surprise: a man with an unpretentious face and a diffident manner. He was no one Joss had ever seen before, that he recalled, and he had seen plenty of reeves in his time.

"I'm Legate Joss out of Clan Hall."

"I know who you are. Why are you come here?" The man had a child's plain way of speaking.

"I hear Marshal Alyon is dead."

"So he is."

As the pause drew out, Joss understood that no further information was forthcoming. The outer door slid shut behind them, and the woman sashayed in, crossed to the inner door, opened it, stepped through into a narrow chamber made dim with shadows because all its shutters were shut, and closed the door behind her. Outside, someone began sweeping the porch.

"How did he die?" Joss asked.

"In the manner of all creatures. His time on this earth ended, and the gods plucked his soul from the husk to give it a new life in another being."

Joss had always found these sorts of platitudes irritating, and that fueled his rash streak. "We'd heard no news at Clan Hall of his passing."

The marshal blinked.

"We'd wondered about Legate Garrard, and the dozen duty reeves who were withdrawn from Clan Hall at the beginning of the year. No news, and no legate to replace him, and no roster of duty reeves. Clan Hall also sent a reeve this way at the beginning of the Flood Rains. Evo, his name is. Do you have news of him?"

The marshal moved his quill to a different spot on the work table.

It seemed to be all the answer Joss was going to get. He had dealt with uncooperative witnesses many times, but there was something about the hushed room, the lack of pillows on which a visitor might settle to make friendly conversation, the rhythmic stroke of the broom outside, and the memory of that darkened inner chamber that unsettled him as few things did. Even dealing with the ospreys and their corrupt ally had not made his skin creep, not like this.

At last, the marshal replied in that innocuous voice. "You're come into Argent Hall's territories. Why?"

"I was sent here at the order of the Commander at Clan Hall to find out why Legate Garrard was never replaced, and why we've had no word from Reeve Evo. Nor received any news from Argent Hall in almost a year." When the marshal made no effort to reply, Joss went on. "As it happens, I've also heard complaints from merchants that there is trouble both on West Track and on the Kandaran Pass. They claimed that border guards on the Kandaran Pass were in league with ospreys."

The marshal smiled as does a child who is told a ridiculous story. "Do you believe that?"

"I have proof of it."

Such a guileless face. "Proof? How can I believe that?"

"I have a man in custody, an ordinand who was in league with the ospreys. Who admits to the crime."

"Is he with you here?"

"No."

"Where, then? It's a serious charge. The Thunderer's ordinands are the gods' holy soldiers, famous for their devotion to duty and the straight path. It's a hard thing to imagine one of them casting aside his oath to hunt with ospreys."

"He'll come before the Olossi town assizes. Had Argent Hall no word of these attacks?"

"Who told you of this?"

"Some among Olossi's merchants tried-" He broke off, and reconsidered. "Word reached Clan Hall of the council's concerns."

The marshal touched the quill, but picked up the bell instead and rang it. As in answer, a deeper bell rang twice, breathed twice, rang twice, breathed twice, and rang twice again.

"We'll speak tomorrow," said the marshal. "At the parting of day, we take our supper."

Joss considered gain and loss, and decided he had no choice but to stay. He took leave to tend to Scar, to get the eagle settled for a night in the guesting loft. Scar was the only eagle present in the space. For the first time in his life as a reeve quartering in a reeve hall, Joss did not properly leash the eagle. He wasn't sure how quickly he would need to leave.