“Eiya! I’m hit.”

“Maybe. You clean up well, I’ll say that.”

“Bai!” protested the irritable brother.

Joss chuckled. “Did I ever thank you for rescuing me?”

“Likely not. In my experience, men so rarely do. They get what they need, and they leave.”

“How can I thank you, then?”

“Not in the way you’re hoping.”

“How can you possibly know what I’m hoping? Verea, I fear it’s your own thoughts have taken charge of your lips. Not that I’m complaining.”

“Enough of this!” cried the brother. “Make your claim, or let us go on.”

“Yes,” she agreed, smirking in that maddening way that made Joss hotter than the day warranted. The larger ginny opened its mouth, showing teeth. “What claim are you making?”

The flirtation played between them lost its power to amuse. Whatever his expression showed, she caught his change of mood at once. The smaller ginny hissed.

“What?” she demanded.

He raised both hands, showing empty palms, the old gesture for “it’s out of my hands.” “I’ve been sent by order of the temple of Ushara in Olossi, by order of the Hi-eros with the backing of the Olossi temple conclave, to return both of you to Olossi. For breach of contract. For theft.”

She looked thoughtful.

Her brother was not so patient. “I delivered property to the temple, which the Hieros accepted as compensation for Zubaidit’s debt. The accounts book was marked and sealed. I have it here in my possession.” He patted the strap of the pack he had slung over one shoulder.

“New information has come into the light. That’s why I’m here.”

“What I offered, the Hieros accepted,” said the brother. “The payment was ample compensation for Bai’s debt to the temple.”

Bai turned to look inquiringly at Joss, as if to say, “How will you answer that?”

He shrugged. “What you offered in payment for your sister’s debt was not yours.”

“Of course it was mine! If I find a precious stone on the riverbank, it’s mine. That is the law, that any item which has no other claimant can be taken and owned by the one who finds it.”

“There was another claimant.”

“How can there have been another claimant? I found the girl abandoned and dying in the desert so far south of here that I wasn’t even in the empire, much less the Hundred! Am I to understand that now any person who likes can just claim whatever he wants? I claim your eagle, then. Or your sword. Or the temple itself! I’ll claim Master Feden’s storehouse, if I’ve as much right to do so as another person who dances in after me to claim what I found and I transported and I fed and cared for and I sold to pay off my sister’s debt!”

“Kesh,” said Zubaidit in a soft tone. “Let him speak.”

“A man, mature but not yet elderly, came to the temple some nights after you made the exchange,” said Joss. “According to the testimony of the Hieros, and corroborated by every hierodule and kalos I interviewed thereafter, he was dressed in the manner of an envoy of Ilu but claimed to be a Guardian.”