No one found any cause to disagree.

“I suggest we remind one another of that occasionally, so it gets said sometime when Murgen is around to hear it.” Sahra never promised to spare Narayan’s ragged old hide. Maybe she could ambush him and take back that unfinished first Book of the Dead.

Swan pointed out, “That crow is still following us.”

A small but lofty fortification overlooked the bridge and ford from the south bank. The bird was up top watching us. It had not moved since our crossing. Maybe it wanted to rest its bones, too.

River whispered, “We still have one bamboo pole with crow-killing balls in it.”

“Leave it alone. It doesn’t seem to mean any harm. For now, anyway.” I was sure it had tried to communicate several times. “We can take it out if anything changes.”

At Ghoja we heard nothing but the traditional grumbling about those in charge. Rumors concerning events in Taglios seemed so exaggerated that no one believed a tenth of anything they heard. Later, after we reached Jaicur and were taking it easy for a while, the temper of rumor began to change. It now carried a subtle vibration suggesting the great spider at the heart of the web had begun to stir. It would be a long time before any concrete news caught up but the general consensus was that we should get going right now and not dawdle along the way.

Runmust discovered that a man answering Narayan’s description had been seen lurking in the vicinity of the shop operated by his now-pseudonymous offspring, Sugriva. “The man does have a weakness. Should we kill Sugriva while we’re here?”

“He’s never done anything to us.”

“His father did. It would be a reminder to him.”

“He doesn’t need reminding. If Narayan is so dim that he thinks we’re done with him now, let him. Just let me be there to see the look on his face when we catch him again.”

Narayan had stood out in Jaicur because the city was still very nearly a military encampment. People would remember us as well, if asked during the next few weeks.

I roamed around looking for my childhood a few times but nothing that I remembered, people or places, good or evil, remained. That past survived nowhere but within my mind. Which was the one place I wished that it could die.

The practical rules of Company field operations resemble those obeyed by stage magicians. We would prefer our audience saw nothing at all but we do realize that invisibility is impractical. So we try to show the watcher something other than what he is looking for. Thus the goats and donkeys. And, south of Jaicur, all new looks and identities for everybody, with the enlarged party breaking up into two independently traveling “families,” plus a group of failed southern fortune-hunters dragging home in despair and defeat after having had their spirits crushed by the Taglian experience. There were quite a few men of the latter sort around. They had to be watched. Many were not above taking advantage of weaker parties if they thought they could manage it. The roads were not patrolled anymore. The Protector did not care if they were safe.

Doj and Swan, Gota and I formed the advance party. We looked weak but that old man was worth four or five ordinary mortals. We had only one scrape. It was over in seconds. Several blood trails led off into the brush. Doj had chosen to leave no one dead.

The land became less hospitable and rose steadily. In clear air it was possible to look ahead and catch the faintest glimpse of the peaks of the Dandha Presh, still many days’ journey south of us. The paved road ended alongside an abandoned work camp. “They must’ve run out of prisoners,” Swan observed. The camp had been stripped of everything portable.

“What they ran out of is enemies Soulcatcher thought were worth an investment in a road. She could always find people she doesn’t like and use them up in an engineering project.” And she had done so on the western route, which was being followed by the rest of the Company. They would have paved footing all the way to Charandaprash. Their road, and the waterways serving it, had remained under construction until just a few years ago, when the Protector evidently decided the Kiaulune wars really were over, that it was not necessary to make life easy for the Great General and his men, and bullied the Radisha into no longer spending the money.

I wondered what the Radisha’s perspective would be. I suspected she had believed she was in charge right up to the moment we disappeared her. Then she had begun getting an education, here amongst her faithful subjects.

We reached Lake Tanji, which I love. The lake is a vast sprawl of icy indigo beauty. When I was a lot younger, we fought our deadliest encounter with the things that had given the Shadowmasters their names there. More than a decade later you could still see places where rock had melted. If you went exploring some of the narrow gulches scarring the hillsides, you could find clutches of human bones that had come back to the surface with time.

“This is a place of dark memory,” Doj remarked. He had been here for that battle, too. And so had Gota, who had stopped complaining long enough to deal with her memories also.

She really did have a lot of pain these days.

The white crow streaked overhead. It dropped down the slope ahead, vanished into the ragged foliage of a tall mountain pine. We saw that bird almost every day now.

There was no doubt it was following us. Swan swore that it had tried to strike up a conversation with him once when he was out in the brush relieving himself.

When I asked what it wanted, he said, “Hey, I got the hell out of there, Sleepy. I’ve got problems enough. I don’t need to get known as a guy who gossips with birds, too.”

“It might’ve had something interesting to say.”

“Without a doubt. And if it really wants to tell somebody something badly enough, it’ll come talk to you.”

Right now Swan looked down the slope and said, “It’s hiding from something.”

“But not from us.” I looked back up the slope. The ground appeared untouched up there. There was no sign of other travelers. Below me, downhill, the meandering track appeared occasionally upon the slope and along the shore, both of which were deserted. This was no longer a popular route. “I could retire beside that lake,” I told Swan.

“Must not be the best place or somebody would’ve beaten you to it.”

He had a point. This country was far emptier now than it had been twenty years ago. Then there had been villages around the lake.

“There you go,” Swan said, looking back.

“What?” I looked. It took a moment. “Oh. The bird?”

“Not just a bird. A crow. The regular kind of crow.”

“Your eyes are better than mine. Ignore it. If we don’t pay it any special attention, it shouldn’t have any reason to concentrate on us.” My heartbeat was rising, though.

Maybe it was just a feral crow and had nothing to do with Soulcatcher. Crows are not fastidious about their dining.

Or maybe the Protector had, at last, begun looking for us outside of Taglios.

White crow in hiding, black crow in the air, searching. What did it mean?

Not much we could do about it, whatever. Though Uncle Doj had a calculating eye whenever he looked up at the black crow.

It lost interest after a while. It went away. I told the oth- ers, “That shouldn’t be a problem. Crows are smart, for birds, but one by itself can’t remember a lot of instructions or carry much information back. If it is one of hers.” We had to assume that it was. Crows were much less common than they used to be. Those remaining always seemed to be under Soulcatcher’s control. Her control was probably why they were dying out.

If this one was a scout for the Protector, it would be days yet before it could report.