“Good fortune to you,” he said, and stepped out from under the platform, remembering suddenly the envoy of Ilu who had known he could see ghosts. He scanned the docks, the road, but all he saw were the slouching guards and, strangely, a pair of lights weaving up and down in the heavens like candles carried aloft by drunken soldiers.

The envoy was gone.

Far away, horns blatted, and drums beat an angry rhythm. He stared toward the far bank, but of course he could not see it, nor hear the creak of wheels and the patter of feet as they headed downriver along the road. Not out of danger, never that, but away from the worst if their gods chose to be merciful.

The envoy had told him, You’re veiled to our sight.

You’re the only one protected against the demons, Bai had said.

Veiled against demons, Shai thought. They can’t eat out my heart the way they eat out the hearts of others. He brought the wolf ring to his lips as he thought of his clan, of Mai, of Tohon, of the children. Even of Eridit. He thought of Hari, whose spirit was still not at rest.

Even at a distance of several mey, he heard a steady rumbling rising from the city: treachery on the wind.

I can fight them.

He headed back toward the city.

50

“Brought your shadow along, eh, Nallo?” said the vendor, scooping fried eel into her bowl.

She had walked down from Clan Hall into Toskala to haggle over a bed net, since no such item had been issued by the hall. With her purchase draped over her shoulders, she had stopped at her favorite stall for her favorite snack. Pil hung at her back.

“Sure you don’t want some?” she asked him.

His shrug meant no.

“You can’t just eat mutton and yoghurt,” she said, but he looked at her in that way he had that made her feel bad for teasing him. Then he scanned the street. It was dusk, when villagers settled after a hard day’s labor. In Toskala, market stalls were still selling food, folk chattering and haggling, on their way with lamps lit. Olossi had seemed unimaginably complicated to a country girl. Toskala overwhelmed, so huge, so busy, so crowded, so packed with shops and squares and streets selling grains and pies and oil and kites and banners and cord and dried fish and cloth and fans until it made her dizzy. So much! And with a hostile army camped outside their gates and the population swollen with refugees, folk lived as on a knife’s edge. She always felt someone was about to jump out of the crowd and slug her. She liked having Pil at her back.

She chewed eel, sighing with pleasure. “Good today,” she said to the vendor. “Even if you raised your prices.”

The vendor was middle-aged and comfortably portly, wearing a mended tunic and broad-brimmed hat in case it rained. A small umbrella covered the pan and fire. “My thanks. Spice and fuel sellers raised their price, eh? What am I to do?” She laughed too brightly. “I hear tell they’ve sent reeves to Olo’osson, asking for help. You know anything about that?”