Except that he was holding the marshal’s staff with its jessed and hooded cap, the mark of authority in Copper Hall.

Ladiya said, “It’s hard to resist a lad with good looks and the charm to back them up, but even I can see how he’s gone wild since her death. Three years now, it’s been. You would think he’d have devoured or drunk it off by now. You’re going easy on him, Marshal.”

Marshal?

Masar said, “I keep hoping he will settle down. I do not know what else to do. Nor do I need to. He is Clan Hall’s problem now.”

“Masar,” Marit said. “Ladiya. What happened to Joss? Where is Marshal Alard?” She extended a hand, touched Masar’s elbow. “How long have I been gone—?” Faltering, she gingerly patted Ladiya on the upper arm to get her attention.

They neither of them looked at her or appeared to hear her voice or feel her hand. She might as well not have been standing there, for all the notice they took.

At last it all made sense. As the thoughts lined up in their neat ranks, a weight—more of terror than pain—settled in her chest. All that long way she had walked from the Guardian’s altar across the plain, for days and days she had walked and only now did it occur to her that she had not eaten or drunk or even truly slept. No one had spoken to her or acknowledged her.

No one had seen her.

And for that matter, her feet weren’t dirty.

“Great Lady,” she whispered, as Masar beckoned to Ladiya and they walked past her back into the marshal’s cote and slid the door shut in her face. “Great Lady . . .” Prayers failed.

That girl named Barda had stated that she had intended to marry tomorrow, an auspicious day made especially so because it was also the Year of the Blue Ox.

Marit was pretty sure she had been stabbed by an assassin’s dagger in the Year of the Black Eagle. Three years before the Year of the Blue Ox.

The cloak fell open as she extended both arms and stared at the paler skin of her palms, like a ghost’s hands against her brown complexion.

Joss had “gone wild since her death.”

Three years it had been, according to Ladiya.

Three years.

Now she understood the punishment laid on her.

MARIT WALKED OUT of Copper Hall, one clean foot set in front of the other clean foot and the first again and the second again, out to the turning, and there she stared one way along the North Shore Road and after that the other way. People were out and about, going on their business and their lives. They couldn’t see her, because she was dead.

Is this what it means to be a wandering ghost, one whose spirit has failed to cross through the Spirit Gate?

She wept without sound because no one could hear her. At length she got bored of standing there and crying to no purpose. She turned north and walked toward Haya. The mey passed smoothly; no wonder she didn’t tire. Questions dove like stooping eagles.