“Possible. Not likely with all this product at stake.”

Maya fixed him with a glare. “It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.”

“Which will certainly be included in my report.” Tanax glared back. “A centarch must be capable of making hard choices for the greater good. Saving a few lives here might condemn more later, if the rest of the smugglers remain undetected. This is what Pragmatics like you and your master never understand.”

“I …” Maya forced herself to keep silent. I can’t fight him, not here. “I think I should get some rest.”

“By all means.” Tanax nodded to Beq. “Take her back to our headquarters. Varo and I will handle things here.”

“What needs to be handled?” Maya said. “The smugglers are dead.”

“The complicity of the villagers still needs to be examined.”

“Their children were taken hostage!” Maya said.

“So they claim. We’ll see.” He gave a thin smile. “I still plan to do a thorough investigation.”

*

Maya didn’t say much on the journey back to Kaiura’s house, which seemed ten times as long in her exhausted state. Beq walked beside her, watching in case she stumbled, but Maya kept her eyes ahead and her back straight.

A thorough investigation. She wanted to scream. These poor people have been through the plague already, and he wants to keep pushing. It was no wonder the villagers she saw as they made their way across the valley gave her frightened looks. If this is how centarchs usually behave, no wonder Jaedia had us in disguise.

When they reached the house, Beq led her upstairs to a second-floor bedroom. It clearly belonged to a young girl—there were hand-carved toys scattered across the floor, mostly swords and horses, and enthusiastic if incompetent paintings pinned to the walls—but a bedroll had already been rolled out beside the small bed, with Beq’s large pack and Maya’s smaller one sitting beside it.

“There’s no inn in town, so Kaiura offered to put us up,” Beq said in answer to Maya’s questioning look. “Her girls are sleeping in her room.”

Maya had every confidence that Kaiura had “volunteered” the lodgings as easily as she’d given up her home to Tanax’s investigation. Might as well be generous, since we have the legal authority to take what we want, not to mention enough power to reduce the town to ash. Another coal of anger, added to the already-smoldering fire. It’s not right. She and Jaedia had stayed with villagers plenty of times, of course, but they’d always paid for their beds, either in money or in chores.

“You can have the bed,” Beq went on. “Go ahead, lie down. I’ll get you some water.”

Maya nodded, suddenly feeling the weight of her exhaustion. She sat down on the bed, yawned, and blinked sleepily.

When she next opened her eyes, the sky outside was dark. The pain in her arm and leg had subsided to a dull ache. She lay in the bed, under a thin summer sheet, stripped of her boots and outer clothes. On the floor, Beq lay sprawled across her bedroll, her own sheet kicked to the side.