The poles with their corpses were, evidently, the first line of defense. The second was a stockade ringing the outermost neighborhoods of the city; beyond that rose an actual city wall with gates and battlements. Strangely, the stockade gate lay open and unguarded.

Beyond the gate, the outer town had the look of a place ransacked and left to recover. Ramshackle hovels sprouted beside sturdier row houses with shops in front and living quarters in back. Children ran away into shacks. A man trundling a barrow took a sudden detour, and a trio of women carrying washing in bundles atop their heads turned right around and hurried back the way they had come. She dismounted by the first relatively clean inn, chickens scattering from Warning’s hooves as she walked the mare into the unswept yard.

A woman appeared on the porch, tying her black hair up into a bright linen kerchief in the northern style. Her eyes were darkly lined with cosmetics, and she smelled of sour milk. Within the inn, soup boiled, a thin broth flavored with smoky sesame oil. Her gaze flashed away from Marit, a tangle of startled wonder at seeing the sacred winged horse so close that she could distinguish each silver feather, and anticipatory fear because after all how could anything good come of one of them walking into her humble yard and maybe after all now she would get the news of his death because she knew it was coming eventually however much she dreaded it. A child cried in one of the back rooms. She bowed her head and hid her face behind her hands.

“Shardit, are you coming?” called a man impatiently from the interior.

“Shardit,” said Marit, recalling the name. “Is your man with the army? Is that him in there?”

“Just a customer,” she said into the space between her face and her hands. “I haven’t seen my man for months, have I? What else am I to do?”

“Do what you must,” said Marit hastily, thinking of Joss. “You have to go on with life. I’m not here to judge you.”

The awkward silence dragged out. Inside, the child’s crying faded to a grating whimper. A weight was shoved over a floor, like furniture being moved. Beyond the yard, a dog yelped; the steady stroke of someone chopping wood rang.

“Where can I find the commander’s hall?” Marit asked.

“In town, in the old Assizes Court.”

“In the Assizes Court? Where is the actual Assizes Court held, then?”

Marit heard Shardit’s tone alter, because really even a child ought to know this. “Lord Radas runs the Assizes Court, him and his underlings.”

“So that’s where I’ll find him?”

“Him?” The woman was surprised enough that she dropped her hands and looked: a shuddering memory of a man cloaked in sun riding a dazzling winged horse in the vanguard of a mass of armed men. “Neh. You’re come too late. They’ve already left.”

“Left?”

The hands came up to shield the face, like an act of obeisance. “They marched weeks ago. They’re gone.”