“This was a peaceful place once,” said Alain. “Well tended and well loved.”

“Maybe so,” muttered Heric, “but they still kept a girl from Salia to serve the steward’s son in whatever manner he wished.”

“How do you know?”

“She got free and come to the bandits, that’s why. It was she made the plan, and give the signal. She knew the ways and times of the household, that’s why. The others said she killed that one herself, the one who used her, but I didn’t see it.”

“Made she no protest when four girls were taken to be used in the same rough manner she was? And worse, for they were killed after?”

“What did she care for them? She wanted revenge, and took it. It was she argued loudest that they were a nuisance and ought to go. I think it was for that she was jealous of the attention they got. She liked keeping the men on a string, you know how it is. That girl at Lavas, called Withi, I liked her well, but she did do that to me, curse her. Went off in the end with a man who could keep her fed.” His tone was self-pitying. “The Salian girl, she said also those other girls cursed her ill with words and slaps, back when she was only a concubine. So it was revenge twice over.”

“Might she have been lying?”

‘About what? Being taken to bed each night by a man she hated? The other girls slapping her and calling her a Salian whore? How would I know?”

Alain tramped on, unable to speak for the bitterness lodged in his throat. It seemed that injustice was woven through the world in inexplicable patterns, impossible to tease apart without unraveling the entire web.

“Seems like God are blind and deaf and mute,” continued Heric, having gotten a good wind to fill the sails of his complaining. “But I heard a story about a phoenix. You heard it? They say a phoenix descended from heaven and tore the heart out of the blessed Daisan to make him suffer just like the rest of us. I wonder if it’s true.”

“I think that story was twisted in the telling.”

“Huh. ‘Truth flies with the phoenix.’ That’s what one of those girls cried out as they was cutting her throat. Well, she flew, anyway right up to the light, or into the Pit.”

“Don’t mock!”

Rage barked and Sorrow growled. Heric fell into a sullen muttering that was not audible enough to fashion into words.

They went on, and soon a second murmuring noise caught Alain’s hearing. He lifted a hand and halted on the path just before it curved left. He recognized this place from his morning’s passage along this way. In another twoscore or so steps they would come to the main road. As they listened, they heard the sound of a cavalcade moving along the as-yet-unseen track: harness jingling, wheels scraping along dirt, voices chattering, and a dog’s bark. Sorrow whined but did not answer.