“Uncle, eh? Then we must accept how things are done here in the Hundred. He’s a good man. It can’t hurt the child to be related by such bonds to the man who now stands as commander over all the reeves of the Hundred.”

Of course his words rolled out like so much nonsense. At first breath, she wondered what any of this had to do with the quiet woodland surrounding them, with the sun’s glamour setting the peaks in bright relief against a rich blue sky, with the brown earth under her slippered feet, and the whisper of a breeze in her ear bringing with it the faintest chiming lure of a distant melody sung by unseen voices.

She licked dry lips. “What do you mean, Anji? What has happened?”

“Hu!” He laughed for the first time, and she laughed, seeing his happiness in the quickness of his smile and the way he looked sidelong at her, almost flirting. “Grim news, truly, and a difficult path ahead. But it’s true it’s hard to feel the shadows in this place, as if the gods hold their hearts here.”

Sheyshi brought bowls of spiced tea, and the men settled more comfortably on the stone wall while Mai adjusted the pillow under her to cushion the places down there where she was still rather sore.

“I can’t sing,” he added with another smile, “although I know how you love your songs. So for you, plum blossom, and only for you, flower of my heart and mother of my son, I will tell you the story of the events of the last many days as a tale.”

AT THE HIGH salt sea, on the edge of the Hundred, a vast escarpment splits the land and the mountains plunge downward to a flat plain. If you stand on the sharp ridge that separates the waters from the cliff, you can gaze over the drylands, a desert that extends for an unknown distance, inimical to life.

But Kirit can smell the grass of home, even if maybe it is only memory.

She said, “Uncle, I killed the ones who hurt me.”

“I know,” he said sadly.

“I killed a lot of bad people. Their hearts were rotten.”

“Some hearts do rot. Although that does not give us leave to behave as they would.”

The day was very hot, and the air so dry her lips were already cracking. “I thought revenge would heal me. I found Shai. I looked into his heart, only his heart was veiled. But I do not need the third eye and second heart to know him, since I lived for two years in the same household. He was tempted, but he did not succumb. And if he could resist the worst in himself, then so must I. I won’t become a demon.”

The wind tore at their cloaks. Far away above the southern range, raptors circled so high that they were nothing more than specks in the fierce blaze of the heavens.