Scar flared and spread his wings, disturbed by the difficulty of the night landing, the lack of a roost, and the presence of the other eagle, but after a command from Joss, he tucked his head under his wing and settled in to wait.

Joss unhooked from his harness, hooked the unlit lantern to his belt, and kicked through the stubble. The other man met him halfway. He had kept his traveling cloak on, a signal that he didn't expect a fight. Both raised their staves out in front into "holding."

"Why did you come after me?" asked Joss.

"You're really from Clan Hall?"

"So I am."

"Legate Garrard is dead."

"How do you know?"

Wind rustled in the dry stalks. Insects chirruped. He smelled a trace of hearth fire, drifting from an unseen farmhouse. A line of mulberry trees rimmed the sea break of the field. It grew suddenly cool, as though the weather had turned back several months to the season of Shiver Sky, but maybe that was just his instinct for trouble shivering to life.

The young man cleared his throat. "Once I speak, I cannot return to Argent Hall. They'll kill me."

"They'll kill you anyway, if it has come to that. They'll never trust you, knowing you came after me. Tell me what you know. Afterward it's best you fly to Clan Hall to report to the Commander. Do you know the way?"

"I was there one time, my first year."

So were they all. It was part of their training.

"I think I can find it," he added, but he didn't sound sure of himself. He lowered his staff to "resting," as a measure of trust, but Joss only spotted the tip of his own against the earth, ready to strike if this proved to be an ambush.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Pari. That's Killer."

"Killer?" He peered through the curtain of night, but the eagle seemed smaller than average and already asleep, head tucked.

"She's very calm," said the young man with a hoarse laugh. "Kind of lethargic, actually. I think her first reeve gave it to her as a hope name."

"Well, then, Pari, I'm Legate Joss, out of Clan Hall. That's Scar. Why did you come after me?"

The other man was breathing harshly, and he caught back what sounded like a sob. "Ai, where to start? You know, they tell you that the reeves are incorruptible. It's what they teach you the day you step into the circle. Reeves are incorruptible because the eagles can't be corrupted. The hells! What a stupid thing to believe!"

"Don't take it too hard," said Joss softly. "It's true about the eagles, anyway."

"Oh. Sure!" He was aggrieved as only the young can be, when the still waters in which they have gazed all this time are shattered by a tossed stone. "But a dog can no more cleanse his master's shadowed heart than a child can stop its father from drinking away the wages his family needs for food, or drag its den-crawling mother from clouds of sweet-smoke where she drowns while her children bawl outside."

"A sight seen too often," Joss agreed. "What happened at Argent Hall?"

"I'm three years in, and I never knew that reeves did come and go so much. Folk transferred out, and transferred in. Why, I think a hundred reeves come in just in these last three years, and there was already a big turnover before that, so the old ones tell me. And no new reeves chosen for over two years now. That's even though there's more than forty eagles who've lost their reeves and flown off in the last few years, and never returned."

Joss shook his head. "I've never heard of that happening before. No new reeves chosen at all?"

"Only one who came after me. She's dead, now, and her eagle flown."

A nasty feeling was gnawing at his gut, like a lilu turned from tempting woman to its natural form right in the middle of its grazing. "Clan Hall is aware of the transfers, but in truth there's nothing can be done by the Commander. She has only a supervisory position. But everyone knows it's disruptive to the eagles to transfer them. It's done only if necessary."

"Yeah, it was plenty disruptive here, or so they say, as I've never known anything but trouble in Argent Hall. All the ones who had a bad temper, or weren't getting along in their other hall. Reeves who had hit someone too hard, or drank too much, and one woman who's addicted to the sweet-smoke, even, though she still flies! One reeve-that would be Horas-they said he murdered a man but nothing came of it when the family tried to get justice. And the reeves at Argent Hall who complained most about the disruption, they were asked to leave and go elsewhere. Or they just left, and weren't seen again."

"All this done at the order of Master Alyon?"

Once started, Pari spoke so quickly that Joss had a hard time following him. "I admit Master Alyon was ill, and infirm, there at the end. There were a foursome of veterans who had the running of things. I heard whispers that he was being poisoned. He did get better right toward the end when he brought in that Devouring girl to do his cooking for him and who knows what else besides. That was around the time when he recalled Garrard. Talk was that Marshal Alyon had Garrard in mind for succeeding him. But then comes this man who calls himself Yordenas-not much older than me, mind you!-and first he tells Dovit that he's out of Iron Hall and then he tells Teren that he's out of Copper Hall, so there's some confusion, as you can guess."

"The eagle would have a band to mark its territory."

"That's just it. None of us have ever seen Yordenas's eagle."

"How can that be?"

"He says it's nesting up in the Barrens. But I've never heard tell of an eagle gone on its nesting season for that long."

"It could be. I've heard tell of a nesting pair gone most of a year's time. But it is odd, that he comes to you as a reeve, and yet has no eagle. So what happened then?"

"Master Alyon just up and died one night, and it all changed. We blink, and overnight this Yordenas is sitting in the marshal's cote and there are more reeves supporting him than opposing him. When Garrard protests, next thing you know Marshal is calling it out as a mutiny and thirty or more are dead and their eagles flown back to the mountains, just like that."

"Those are the eagles that never came back to choose new reeves?"

"That's right, most of them. Thirty or forty others left then, reeves and eagles both, although I don't know where they went. It just gets worse. Patrol routes changed. Marshal closed the gates to outsiders, any outsiders, even folk come to report on trouble in their village or to ask for help. We got word anyway of ospreys on the Kandaran Pass and along the West Spur, and there come some Olossi merchants to beg for our help one night, so Dovit and Teren went out on patrol without permission, but they never came back. That was a two-month back, I think. Most of them I knew from three years back when I first got chosen are gone, except the ones I never liked at all. The others are dead with Garrard. Or they left."

At last, he took a breath. He was trembling. The sliver of moon called Embers Moon was rising in the east, heralding dawn.

"Why did you stay?" asked Joss.

His chin tilted back. The faint moonlight seemed to catch and gleam on the white scar of his chin. He was Toskala-chinned, like Joss, recently shaven. He looked very young.

"Someone had to."

Joss grinned sadly. "You've courage to have stuck it out."

Pari shrugged, as if embarrassed or ashamed. "Didn't do anyone any good."

"You did what you could. You'll have to go north. Follow the course of the River Hayi. It runs east-west until the Sohayil Gap; a little past that, the river bends northeast. Once to the Aua Gap, continue north. You can't miss the River Istri. Any land-holder there can tell you in which direction-seaward or ridgeward-Toskala lies, if you don't recognize the lay of the ground."

"Where are you going?" asked Pari.