“Here come Qin horsemen,” she said, shading her eyes. The sun’s westering light fired the Soha Hills. “You sure you don’t want me to kill that one?”

The reeve had not slackened his control of the prisoner. His frown made Kesh smile and Bai look twice. “If we allow the law to be altered for our own convenience, then we will have murdered the law anyway.”

“There comes a time when change overtakes the traveler, as it says in the Tale of Change.”

“Not so great a change as to abandon the law,” he protested. “You’re the one who agreed to return to the temple because of your respect for the law and the gods.”

She lowered her hand. “It’s true we can’t abandon the law for our own convenience. But I serve the Merciless One, not the reeve halls. Anyway, we can’t know how great a change we face. We can’t know what may happen next. We must be ready for anything.”

Sometimes people talked with words, and sometimes they spoke with looks, and sometimes the way their posture altered communicated their emotion and the words they hadn’t uttered. Kesh watched Bai and the reeve, and he knew they were talking but in words and meanings that excluded him. He was alone, as always. Rescuing Bai had not brought him a companion. She had her own path, and it seemed to him that she treated him little differently than she did the horses, as a beast she needed for the time being to make her way.

“Kesh,” she said. Hearing his name, his spirits lifted. “Taking the horses to drink at the trough made the bandits think we hadn’t noticed they were hiding there.”

He twisted out a smile. He’d had no idea bandits were hiding here, and he had a good idea the reeve hadn’t either. Only Bai had. Ushara trained her hierodules and kalos in the art of love. But the Devourer was also called the mistress of life, death, and desire, the Merciless One, and in the inner precincts of her temples another sort of acolyte was trained.

Riders appeared on the path. Dust settled around them as they halted. One man dismounted and walked across the ridge path to meet them in the fort. He greeted Joss casually as the reeve sheathed his sword.

“Tohon, this is Zubaidit,” said Joss, “and her brother.”

“I recall you,” said the Qin soldier with a respectful nod and the flash of a grin directed at Bai. He paid no attention to Kesh at all. “I’m Tohon, chief of this small company.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I remember you and your captain. Your soldiers did good work in that battle, and better work later, so the reeve tells me.”

“We accomplished what was needed,” he said, a statement neither modest nor boastful.

“How is the road?” the reeve asked.

“There are others fled ahead of us, but we are now strung out far from our lines. Better if they escape than if we push out too far north and get cut off.”