She smiled, an ironic quirk that made him want to like her. But he must not succumb to congeniality; he had made that mistake a long long time ago.

“No, for it seemed to me that they smelled sweet with corruption. I am a reeve—that is, I was a reeve—so I knew better than to trust them.”

“Tell me your story. Don’t come any closer. I can hear you perfectly well from here.”

She laughed bitterly. “There! I’m told by your words what you think of me. Yet what choice have I?”

Her horse nuzzled her arm. She fished in a sleeve and plucked out a turnip. This delicacy the mare peeled daintily from her hand. Telling and Seeing watched the exchange with interest; was that an accusatory gaze Seeing turned on him, as if to say Where’s my treat?

She went on. “My name is Marit, if indeed I am still who I once was, which I at times doubt. I was a reeve, out of Copper Hall. My eagle was called Flirt.” At the name her voice hardened, choking down anger. “I believe I must be dead. I was stabbed in the heart twenty years ago when I was taken prisoner by men under the command of Lord Radas. It surprised me then, for I’d seen Lord Radas stand in authority over the assizes in Iliyat some months before that day, and he seemed a man like any other. I understand now that he had changed to become something other than what he was before.”

“He had become a Guardian.”

She covered her eyes with the back of a hand, then lowered the hand. “Yes, that’s what I have had to come to believe. For a long while after I was stabbed I was not awake, not aware, but not asleep either. Dead, yet I never passed the Spirit Gate. I have been alone since that day.”

“Why would you trust me with this secret?”

“You don’t have the stink of corruption that the others do. You know what I am, don’t you?”

“In some ways I may, but in more ways I do not. Therefore, alas, I cannot trust you. She has been trying to find and destroy me for years, but I have so far eluded her.”

“Who is she?”

He waited, to see how she would answer herself, but she only watched him with a hard stare. Eager to hear. Desperate to understand. Aui! He wanted to like her. It was true there was no taint to the air, no vile taste on his tongue, nothing to suggest that she had turned on the path away from the lit road and walked into the shadows. That she was what she claimed to be was inarguable. The cloak at her shoulders gleamed with the pallor of bone. The horse—he’d not seen this mare before, or if he had he did not recognize its markings and face—tolerated her; maybe it even liked her.

Taking pity, he said at last, “If you don’t know who she is, then I will not tell you.”