There were fourteen corpses in my apartment, not including those of butchered Annals. Twelve had been Deceivers. One had been my wife and one my nephew. Six perished by Ash Wand, three at Thai Deis hands. Mother Gota gutted two and I pigstuck one when I walked in.

Grasping my shoulder in what was meant to be a comforting gesture, Uncle Doj said, A warrior does not slay women or children. That is the work of beasts. When beasts kill men all men are constrained to hunt and destroy them.

Nice talk, Croaker said. But the Deceivers never claimed to be warriors. He was not impressed by Uncles speech.

Neither was Mather. Its religion, Old Timer. Their Path. They are the priests of death. The sex or age of their sacrifices doesnt mean squat. Their victims all go straight to paradise and never have to take another turn around on the wheel of life, no matter how buggered up their karma was.

Uncle Dojs mood grew blacker by the minute. I know tooga, he muttered. No more tooga. Nobody was revealing any mysteries to him.

Cordy smiled wickedly at the swordmaster. You guys probably won a high spot on their desirable victim list by killing so many of them. If youre a Deceiver theres big status to be gained by killing somebody who has killed a lot of people.

I heard Mathers blather but it did not register as sense. I muttered, Tooga aint no crazier than any other religion around here.

That seemed to offend everyone equally. Good.

Mather turned to fuss at his Guards. They had failed their trust. My own disaster was just one of several. Others were still happening.

Numbly, I said, You cant defend against this kind of thing, Mather. These guys werent commandos. I swatted the nearest corpse with the charred sheets I was holding. They came in here expecting to make it to paradise by midnight. Probably didnt even have an escape plan. In a softer voice, I said, Captain, you might better check on Smoke.

Croaker frowned like I had given away everything but asked only, You need anything? Want somebody to stay? He understood what Sarie meant to me.

This is where I came from. When I kept falling back. I got family with me, Captain. If I start to go bugfuck in the head theyll cool me down. You really want to help? Fix Thai Deis arm. Then go do what you got to do.

Croaker nodded. He made a small gesture that, in normal times meant Go! but which meant a good deal more now. Narayan Singh is going to wake up some morning and realize that he has reaped the whirlwind. There is no safe place for him anymore.