An onslaught of thoughts and images tumbled: She’ll run away, find a temple, any place to take her in, but what if the soldiers capture her as they did Sediya—? A young woman—his own sister—staggers into their humble house, sneaking in out of the alley and huddling in the chicken house until dawn. She’s much younger than her brother, the last child of their parents. Like her niece, she’s pretty enough, but haggard with misery. Her thighs are sticky with blood and she stinks of piss; she limps as her sister-in-law supports her into the house. She is crying, “They’ll come for me. I ran away. Please hide me.”

The shopkeeper jerked his gaze away from Marit.

“They’ll kill us when they learn we’ve gone against them, that we’re hiding one of the captives they took,” he said hoarsely to his daughter, but she was too stunned to speak or move with her cheek flushed red from the blow. Her silence infuriated her father. He raised his hand just as the captain had raised his sword.

“Don’t take your anger out on her,” said Marit, “or she’ll run and you’ll have bartered away your honesty and your honor and your good name for nothing.”

“Just get out, I beg you,” he said, his movement as stiff as that of an aged elder as he kept his gaze averted. “Take whatever you want.”

Reeves could accept tithes, receiving from those they aided the necessities that allowed them to live. She grabbed what she wanted: a feed bag, a pair of brushes one stiff and one softer, a hoof pick, a lead line, rope, and a bundle of tough rags.

She paused with the goods stuffed into the feed bag. What if a reeve became greedy? It happened; they took more than they needed, or they taught themselves to take what they wanted and told themselves they deserved it all. “He passed under the gate into the shadow.” In every one of the Ten Tales of Founding, more than one man and woman crossed the Shadow Gate to the other side, where corruption takes hold in the heart. With each step, the path got smoother as you told yourself why it was acceptable to walk farther down this road. The tales of the Hundred told the story of humankind and the other children born to the Four Mothers. It was natural that some succumbed to the shadows.

Maybe it was unnatural that any did not.

“Where are the reeves who should be aiding you? Isn’t Gold Hall patrolling? Isn’t there a temple of Ilu nearby that can send an envoy to Clan Hall in Toskala to ask for help?”

He laughed recklessly. “The reeves can’t help us. You can walk out of our town and never come back, but we have to live here. No matter what you said to him, they will come back. It’s us will have to face them. Not you.”

“That merchant,” she said. “You said he was from Olossi. Did he give you a name?”