“Yes,” the reeve agreed. “It is time to turn back. We’ve done as much as we can for now. If you will, Tohon, escort these two back to the temple of Ushara outside Olossi. I must return to Argent Hall. Send a messenger ahead of you, and I’ll meet you at the temple.”

Tohon scratched his chin. “Is this temple the place where a man can walk in with no coin in his hand and a woman will have sex with him? And there is no shame in it?”

“How do folk sate their desires in your country if there is no Devouring temple?” Bai asked. “Or do the Qin imprison women in cages as it is said they do in the Sirniakan Empire?”

Tohon had an interesting face, of the kind of man Kesh did not mind bargaining with: He knew how much he wanted to pay and would bargain without malice until a deal was struck.

“Our daughters and wives are not so free in what they will give to others,” he said to Bai, “But neither are we barbarians. We are not like the Sirni.”

“Then come to the temple, and be welcome.” She finished wiping her hands. With a gesture, she called Kesh. “Let’s go. We’ve got a long walk before us.” She looked at the reeve. “Will we meet there, Marshal Joss?”

He looked troubled as he examined the dead man and the living prisoner, now silent and still. “I suppose we will. Here’s a prisoner, Tohon.”

“That one? He’s dead.”

“The hells!” The reeve jostled the man with a foot. When he got no reaction, he knelt and turned him over. Sightless eyes stared. Brown foam stained the mouth.

“Poison,” said Bai.

“Did you see him take it?”

“I saw him die. Didn’t you?”

Without replying, the reeve walked to the wall, and lifted his bone whistle to his lips to call his eagle. A hot wind rose out of the basin, humming among the stones. The sun beat down. Kesh wiped sweat from his brow as he tugged the horses forward.

“He lives too much in the past, and can’t see how change is overtaking us,” said Bai in a low voice, but her gaze stayed on the reeve.

“I’m just glad the man poisoned himself and spared us the trouble of guarding him. Bai! Must you stare like a lackwit at the very man who’s destroyed our plans for a new life?”

“He’s a fool,” she added, but her eyes said something else.

THE ENVOY AND the girl flew north along the shore of the Olo’o Sea, halting during the day to rest and water the horses. The rich farmlands of the Olo Plain gave way to sparsely settled drylands. Irrigated fields and tidy villages became separated by tracts of pastureland and finally by the wilds of scrub grasslands as the land rose steadily toward the foothills. They did not fly high enough to see the peaks of Heaven’s Ridge, the mountain range that ran like a huge stockade all along the northwestern border of the Hundred. By late afternoon he began to seek a place where they might shelter for the night.