Guardians can’t die.

They can kill, but they can’t be killed.

Now, there was a recipe for corruption.

She rose to shake out her clothing. Why, in the tales, were the Guardians always honorable and upright, the upholders of a justice that is never disturbed by their own petty jealousies or grand descents into lust and greed? How honest were the tales, really?

What had Sediya sung? The cloaks rule all, even death.

Who would believe her, if she walked in off the street into Clan Hall and claimed to be a woman murdered nineteen years ago? Who would even remember her?

One man might.

PART TWO: CUPS

In the Year of the Red Goat

6

JOSS WOKE UP in his private chamber in Argent Hall to find a woman lying beside him on the sleeping mat, naked, tousled, and barely covered by the thin cotton coverlet. He sat up cautiously, rubbing his aching head. He had no idea how she had gotten there.

With a sigh, she rolled over, exposing a face he recognized and eyes that, opening, were clearly alert. She’d been awake for some time.

“The hells!” he muttered, staring at her in shock.

She sat up, exposing a pleasing, muscular figure ripped by healed scars. The worst ran from her left shoulder across the mauled remains of a breast and down past her ribs to pucker to a finish by her belly button.

“Regrets already?” she asked with a smile half of amusement and half of a woman thinking of giving an idiot man a slap to the face.

“Verena,” he said, glad that at least he remembered her name and feeling ten parts stupid and ten parts hungover. Last night’s activities surfaced in his memory as he woke up fully. Oh, yes, he remembered it all now.

She chuckled.

“No regrets at all,” he said feelingly. “It was well worth the doing. I just suddenly realized that I am marshal of this hall now and you are a fawkner here, working under my authority. I’m not sure I should have—I’m accustomed to being a simple reeve—what I’m trying to say is—”

“That you don’t want it said you took advantage of your position to get a woman into your bed?” she asked with a laugh. “Rest easy. You took a lot of coaxing, and an entire pitcher of cheap rice wine before I managed to talk you into it.”

The chamber was strewn with clothing. This scene and its musky aftermath were nothing new, but with the weight of his new authority it didn’t seem as carefree as it once had.

“Heya, Joss! Listen. We’re of an age. I have living a twenty-year-old son and fifteen-year-old twin daughters, may the gods give me patience. My husband has been dead these ten years. It was a marriage arranged by the clan. He and I were never close. I have no wish to remarry, and since the clan got what it wanted from the match—my son has followed his grandfather into the guild—they have no further claim on me. My work and my life are here at Argent Hall. Still, I’m not dead. Yet. You’re an attractive man. If you’ve a wish for this to end here, then say so. I’ll swallow my aging pride and say nothing more of it.”