“Yes, yes,” Emil said patiently, and felt her forehead.

“You trust me because I’m so much like you. Even a fool like Willis can see it.”

“No, I trust you because I know you’re trustworthy. What is the matter with you?”

“Last summer, a Sainnite war horse kicked me in the head. I was like this for months afterward.”

“Sit down. I’ll have someone get your gear. I want you to stay with me tonight.”

By full dark, South Hill Company had dispersed, with a third of the Paladins under the command of each lieutenant, hauling gear and supplies to new encampments on the various overlooks. Zanja traveled in the smallest group, which consisted of Emil, the distinguished guests, and a few fleet‑footed couriers. They traveled m a wide circle, north through woods so thick that the dignitaries had to lead their horses, west through farmlands, then south upon the dark road, back to the end of the lowlands, just to the southwest of Fen Overlook.

Mabin had insisted on accompanying Emil, though Emil was concerned that the Sainnite seer might detect her presence and send the soldiers out hunting her. The two of them sat awake while the rest of their small company slept, though Zanja was only pretending. Without witnesses surrounding them, the two commanders acted less formally, and it seemed apparent that they had a long acquaintance, though they did not act like friends. After a while they walked away, and Zanja was able to doze upon the hard ground. When she woke up later it was still dark, and her head seemed ready to finally split open and spill its contents.

No doubt Emil was keeping watch upon the stone overlook, waiting to know for certain whether Zanja’s prescience had been accurate. She could go to him and tell him the whole truth: that she had lied to him, that she had twice failed to kill the Sainnite seer, that she feared she was being tempted into treachery by a man who understood her better than she understood herself.

She got up and made her way through a haze of darkness and pain, until she could actually see him, a thin, still silhouette against the stars, the Man on the Hill. Her affection for him washed over her and brought her to a standstill. Wasn’t he already making his precarious way between the fragile and competing loyalties that held South Hill Company together? Already, he had to know the minds of his people, the minds of the enemy, and his own mind. Surely it would do him no good if she imposed her burdens upon him, in the selfish hope that somehow they would become easier for her to bear.

“Zanja,” said a low voice. “Are you having trouble sleeping? Sit with me a while.”

It was Mabin. Like Emil, she sat alone m the darkness, waiting for the dawn. Zanja went over to her reluctantly. “Councilor.”

“It’s not a good night for sleeping. I’ve been watching the torch bugs swarm. Sit down, sit down.”

Zanja squatted nearby, wishing that she’d had the sense to stay in her blankets until sunrise. Even with Mabin just a dark shadow, still she felt too closely watched, as though Mabin were a fox, and she a mouse.

“I hear that fire bloods are often tormented by nightmares,” Mabin said.

“Yes, madam, so I hear.” Was Mabin lonely, or troubled, to be inviting a total stranger into intimacy like this? She added, lest she seem too rude, “But I am just tormented by my headache.” A swarm of torch bugs swirled in a nearby bush, like sparks in a wind, except that the air was warm and still.

“Emil seems to think highly of your abilities.”

“I think highly of his.”

“So do I,” Mabin said after a moment, as though she’d had to think about it. “Yet I confess, I am concerned. Like that man tonight–Willis was his name?–I wonder that he is willing to let an opportunity go by like this, just on your say‑so. How can we even be certain of the existence of this Sainnite seer?”

“How can we not be certain of it?” Zanja said reasonably.

“Because it seems so unlikely! And it’s always possible that the Sainnites are just better strategists, or luckier than we. And perhaps the whole point is to make South Hill Company cautious, so that at the very moment when you mustact, you will hesitate. And we must not lose control of South Hill.”

For a dizzying moment, Zanja realized how likely it was that Medric was using her for this very purpose Mabin had described– that he had discovered in a vision her closeness to Emil, and so had realized that he could subvert the entire company by subverting her. This was the nightmare that caused Zanja such dismay, but she could not endure to consider it directly for longer than a moment. She said, though she was sick of explaining herself, “I can never depend upon my prescience to serve me when I need it to. But when it does serve me, it has never been completely wrong. And Emil’s and my talents seem to complement each other, for when he forms the questions I can form the answers, and he has the knowledge to interpret those answers, and I in turn can sense whether or not his interpretation is the right one. So we are more certain together than we would be separately: certain of each other and certain of what we know.“

“ ‘A steeliness disguised in ritual humility,’ Norina wrote of you.”

Irritated by this reminder of the Truthken’s heavy hand, Zanja said, “My people believed that courtesy comes from strength, not from weakness, and that it was no shame to be constantly reminding each other that without this fabric of ritual courtesy our tribe would have fallen apart.”

After a moment, Mabin said, “Norina also wrote that you are wasted in South Hill. I want to bring you with me, to help me plan strategy for all of Shaftal.”

“Thank you, madam, but Norina is wrong. I belong where I am.”

Mabin’s head lifted as though now she was surprised. If she had ever been turned down before, which seemed unlikely, certainly it had never been so promptly and directly.

“Well then,” she said, with ill‑disguised irritation, “It is your choice, of course. Let me ask you directly what concerns me. What makes you think the Sainnites have a seer?”

“The glyph cards told us.”

“It was a divination?” Mabin sounded appalled.

Zanja rose abruptly to her feet. “Madam, Emil surely is better qualified to explain our method. I know you will excuse me, for I feel quite dizzy and must go lie down.”

But as she returned to her blankets, Zanja heard Emil utter a grunt of surprise from atop the pile of boulders where he kept watch. She reached him in a few strides, in time to see the fading aftermath of a rocket’s faraway explosion.

“Oh,” Emil said, “it was beautiful. Did you see it? That Annis is a genius.”

Mabin had come up behind Zanja, too late to see the fireworks. “What happened?”

Emil said, “One of the scouts set off a rocket. Not over trees, but over the river. That explains why we’ve seen no sign of the Sainnites on the road. They came up the river.”

“By boat?”

“No, not against the current, surely. More likely they simply walked up the riverbank.“ Emil’s teeth showed in the darkness; he was grinning with relief. ”The Sainnites are nervous now, I’d wager, after seeing that rocket. What do you think they’ll do, Zanja?“

“I don’t know,” Zanja said. She was sick of her talent, sick of being asked questions and then being challenged for knowing the answers.

“Well, let’s pretend they continue onward and find the camp empty. They’ll take the road home, won’t they, rather than walk home on rocks?”

“Then they’d follow the edge of the fen and come out just below where we are,” she said.

“So we’ll get a good look at them, anyway, and be able to see how they’re judging our strength.”

Perhaps just to be certain that the message had been received, or perhaps out of sheer delight, the scout set off another rocket over the river. “Oh,” Mabin said when it exploded, “that is a sight. We could set those off just for show. A waste of good gunpowder, though.”