“What happened to her?” she asked. “Ashaya, who wore the cloak before me.”

He followed the distant eagles with his gaze, but finally looked at her. “When she walked out of the Hundred, she hoped the gods would abandon her, that she would be able to die and be free, without loosing the cloak into the hands of the others.”

“But I found the cloak.”

“Yes. You did. So maybe you freed her, or maybe she was already gone. It’s something to consider. What living person has ever attempted to uncloak a Guardian, eh? Who could manage it? I’ve been thinking about what happened to you, Kirit. It can’t have been the poison that killed you.”

“The poison that killed Girish?”

“Maybe the brew wasn’t strong enough to kill. Maybe he just choked to death on his vomit.”

She grinned. “As he deserved.”

“Eiya! There’s a conversation I’m not wise enough to assay. You told me the Qin captain forced you to walk into the sandstorm.”

“I wanted to rejoin my tribe. Their voices called to me from the storm.”

“Demons, most likely. Did he seek you out?”

“The captain? Neh. I went to find Mountain to tell him that the slave bearers needed water. A storm can last days. What use is shelter if you die of thirst beneath it?”

“A humble request, but a just one.”

“The captain saw me. He thought I would bring ill luck down on them because that’s what demons do. He gave me a fair choice. I could walk into the storm of my own will, or he would make sure I died some other way before the journey was over. That was the first time since I walked into demon land that I got to choose.” She hid her face behind a hand, and then, finding that the voices of her lost tribesfolk did not call to her as they had in the storm, she lowered the hand and looked at him.

He smiled gently.

“I can’t go home, Uncle. I am a different person, not that one who lived before.”

He sighed and said nothing, by which he meant he agreed.

Yet Rats can’t stay quiet for long.

“Do you know the tale of how the wide lake came to rest here, caught between the mountains and the cliff? It happened in the Tale of Change, when the delvings captured a merling and decided that in order to keep it from escaping back into the sea they must dig a prison far from the ocean and joined to no stream or rivulet down which it could slip and slide. So they cut a path deep through the earth and under the watershed—”

“I missed you,” she said.

For a breath, two breaths, and then five, he could not speak.

A rippling movement flashed above the drowsy waters.

“Look there!” she cried.

A rocky islet lay surrounded by the lifeless waters. The islet, too, revealed no sign of life except for the desiccated remains of flowers draped over a series of crude stone pillars. A horse flew gracefully over the sea and circled the islet, and then the rider noticed them standing exposed on the ridge.