“What is it, Yordenas?” asked Lord Radas, voice clipped with impatience.

“That’s death’s cloak! The one you were looking for last year.”

“So we had determined long since.”

“I sniffed her out, that one time. Remember I told you? I told you this cursed outlander was hiding something from you, but you wouldn’t listen to me.” His tone grated.

Marit despised him at once, the feeling so strong it left a taste.

Lord Radas sighed. “What is it, Yordenas?”

“Cursed if there isn’t another one out there, lord.”

“Another what?”

“The cloak of mist you spoke of, lord. The lost one.”

Lord Radas’s expression changed, a tic by his eye jerking twice before it stilled.

Hari moaned, eyes rolling back in his head as his body sagged and his hands opened in a gesture of acquiescence; he had stopped breathing. His cloak fluttered, rippling as in wind, and slithered over his body like a lilu embracing her chosen one.

From deeper within the tent a calm voice spoke. “Death is come, as expected. Mist returned, a puzzle to tease us.”

The brawny soldier dropped to both knees, cowering.

There is a kind of fear that begins formless, deep in the pit of the belly, and wells up with such speed that it catches you and blinds you before you know you’ve been taken. Marit pushed to her feet, not even sure what monster clawed at her heart, only that she was ready to run.

She had heard that voice before.

A woman pushed aside cloth to enter. She had a round, dark face, ordinary in its lineaments, no one who would stand out in a crowd. She wore a cloak, black as night. Under that she wore humble laborer’s clothing, a linen tunic and wide trousers. Lord Radas and Yordenas wore best-quality silk tabards, embroidered with goldthread trim, under-tunics dyed in subtle colors rarely seen outside wealthy homes and temple precincts. They looked like peacocks, like the scions of Nessumara’s richest houses who strutted about the streets and canals in their finest to make sure folk did know they had the coin to be extravagant. Even their cloaks dazzled, while hers had no color at all.

“Radas,” she said in a pleasant, ordinary voice, “go forth. Ask the young woman to enter. Treat her gently. Smile.”

She looked Marit up and down, while Marit reined in her breath and her composure. This was the woman who had murdered two reeves in the forest beside West Spur without touching them.

“Death ever challenges, but in the end even death can be defeated. You are not so different than the one who came before you, although he was grandson to an out-lander.”

“Who is the one who came before me?” Images spun in Marit’s memory of a handsome man with long black hair, a brown face, and demon-blue eyes.

The woman turned to Radas. “Yet a warning, Radas, before you go out to greet the new one. She is small and young, and quite ugly, as pale as a worm. Easy to discount. But she carries her staff.”