He glanced over his shoulder toward the waiting Qin as they both heard voices from the inner rooms. His hand tightened on her wrist. She gritted her teeth because he was strong from years of carpentry, and he was anyway more passionate now than she had ever seen him in all the years they had grown up together in the same clan house in faraway Kartu, where she had been everyone’s favorite child and Shai had been the youngest and least-favored of Grandmother’s seven sons, only two years older than she was. They had played together more like siblings than niece and uncle, and she knew him as well as anyone did.

His round face glowed, and maybe it was sweat but maybe it was determination that animated him. “I have a chance to prove myself to the Qin.”

More Qin soldiers poured through the doors into the garden. When Anji appeared, still talking to O’eki, Shai released her. She rubbed her wrist as Anji marked Chief Tuvi and Priya, greeted Eliar with a nod, and walked over to her.

“You’ll have heard,” he said to Mai. Shai dropped his gaze to the paving stones. “The scouts leave tomorrow at dawn.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned closer. “You are sick?”

“I am well, just the usual trouble.”

“What trouble?” demanded Shai.

She made a sharp sideways gesture with her head, and mercifully he took the hint and moved away, then halted to watch them.

“Why does Shai go?” she asked in a low voice. “He isn’t a soldier.”

“It’s true he’s not ready for the rigors and subtleties of such an assignment, but it would be dishonorable of him not to seek out his missing brother at Horn.”

“He could easily die!”

“Tohon will look after him. There’s another reason. You know and I know that for whatever reason, both Shai and I can see the ghosts of the newly dead. He can even hear their voices, which I cannot.”

“Yes, and in Kartu, people who saw ghosts were burned.”

“That may be true, but among the Qin, they were honored as holy ones, and in the empire, such boys were taken away to become priests.”

“You weren’t.”

“Because I was the son of the Sirniakan emperor, and nephew of the Qin var through his sister, who was my mother.”

“Yet both your father and your uncle betrayed you in the end.”

He shook his head curtly. “Leave it, Mai. My point is, we don’t know how such people are treated in the Hundred, whether honored or hated. But what matters right now is that a man who can hear the voices of newly-made ghosts makes a valuable scout.”

“What if he doesn’t come back, Anji? He’s my only kinsman here.”

“Then it has fallen out as it will fall out.”

Further argument was useless. Anji was determined, and anyway Shai did have to try to find Hari’s bones or he would dishonor the Mei clan. She nodded her acquiescence. Shai, seeing her nod, smiled brilliantly at her, a rare gift from a young man usually frowning.