They flew north over the plain. In village after village, folk labored to complete walls and earthworks instead of tending freshly planted fields and gardens. Now and again a cadre of men rode, or marched, along a path, but Volias took no notice. Trouble flew point, but she began to labor. The sun rose higher. The day grew hot and moist. To the southeast, clouds piled up, but there wasn’t much wind to move them.

Just when Nallo feared they would have to land to save the eagle, she spotted the glittering line of a river. The roads and tracks swarmed with people walking, riding, carting, draft beasts pulling wagons, all creeping in the same direction. Soon she realized that the strange cast of ground ahead, the red clay and patchwork fields and textured ground, was not a bizarre land-form but actually streets and buildings grown into the land between two rivers. The city had a massive outer wall, reinforced by a berm and ditch, although a straggle of new settlement grew up outside its protection. The main road seemed almost as wide as the river, its tributary roads and paths lined with villages and hamlets like so many beads on a string, each bracketed by green fields and flowering orchards. At the southern tip of the city, where the muddy yellow-brown waters of the larger river were joined by the blue of the smaller, a bold escarpment jutted out, its flat top almost the breadth of Olossi’s inner city.

Trouble was dropping fast.

“The hells!” She had never landed in a prescribed space which, if overshot, would dump her into water. She shut her eyes as Tumna swooped. “Thunderer, give me courage, let me die without pissing myself—Oof!”

Tumna chirped interrogatively, and a cheerful voice close beside her said, “heya! Unclip, make room, there’s another coming in.”

She slid her feet off the training bar and found hard ground to stand on. Unhooking, she sagged, and was helped away by a young man in reeve leathers. Fawkners ran up to hood Tumna. Off to one side, Volias shouted his wrath into the skies, and Trouble listed wrong while fawkners clustered around her with various implements and bindings.

“Heya! Here she comes!” With a grin, the reeve caught Nallo’s arm.

Sweet pulled up neat as you please and easily gripped one of the huge perches built into the wide parade ground. That left Pil dangling about his own height off the ground, but he unhooked and let go, catching himself in a deep crouch when he hit dirt, then straightening.

“Eihi!” The reeve had cropped hair, and muscular shoulders and arms revealed by his sleeveless leather vest. Watching Pil, he grinned. “Interesting. What is that?”

“That’s Pil,” she said irritably.

“That may be,” agreed the reeve, “but what is he? He doesn’t look like any man I’ve seen before, and I’ve seen plenty.”

“He’s Qin.”

“One of those outlanders that fought the battle of Olossi? We heard rumors, mostly from Volias—” He flicked a glance toward Volias and his stricken eagle, then away as if to stare would be rude. “—but now I see the truth. What’s he like?”