“Oh, no you don’t,” said Bloodstar. He put the can behind his back and stood motionless as the woman looked at him inquisitively. She sat quiet for a long moment, and when she moved, finally, it was a tiny gesture, nothing at all, except for the care that she put into it. She sat with her rifle stock in the crook of her thigh, the barrel pointed upward, and then she turned her wrist, so that the gun turned in her hand and the trigger guard faced out instead of in.

The commissar broke the silence. “That’s not very hospitable, Captain,” he said.

“Drunken savages,” muttered Bloodstar. The woman looked at him curiously, and the boy held out his hand. Still muttering, Bloodstar came down towards him and gave him the can. He needn’t have worried.

The boy took only a small swallow, and Thanakar admired the light on his pale skin as he stretched back his head and the liquor knotted his throat for an instant. He didn’t offer any to his sister, nor did she take it. She just sat there, staring at Bloodstar until the boy finished with the can and handed it back, and then she wheeled the horse around and kicked it out into the dark. The dog got up and followed them. Behind Thanakar, the noise in the tents died down.

“Drunken savages,” repeated Bloodstar louder.

“They don’t drink much,” said the commissar. “Not like us. They don’t have to. Nothing to forget.”

“Cannibals,” continued Bloodstar, making the gesture of purification, dropping his face down to each armpit in turn. “That rock cat didn’t die of old age. They murdered it. I bet they eat it.” He poured the rest of the whiskey out onto the rocks, and then dropped the can.

“I’ll bet,” said the commissar sadly, looking out into the dark.

Thanakar sat cross-legged, feeding the fire. “Our ancestors ate meat,” he said. “Not so long ago.”

“Pedants, everywhere,” said Bloodstar, grinning. He sat back down. “How do you know?”

“Teeth. We’ve got the teeth for it.”

“I guess we’ve evolved a little.”

“No,” said Thanakar. “It’s not a question of that. At least, not at the beginning. It was a question of property rights. The eighth bishop banned it. He said animals were God’s property. His property, he meant. Starbridges used to eat meat long after that, long after it was illegal for everybody else. Then we lost the taste for it.”

“Well, that’s evolution, isn’t it?” asked Bloodstar. “They’re savages. Come on. They cut people’s heads off and ride around with them. What do you think happens to the bodies?”

The commissar was still standing. “Whatever they are now, they were a peaceful people once,” he said.

The next day, Aspe crossed over the escarpment down into the river valley, and here the land was more fertile, with the swollen river rushing through. The rain had had some effect here; already a thin gauze of grass had stretched over the wizened earth, grotesque somehow, like a sweet new shroud for an old corpse. This was monastic land and supported a number of villages, each grouped around a shrine. The people of each village had worked at a different cottage industry for the monks. There was a town of weavers, of tinsmiths, of tailors. And in front of each stone gate was the image of that town’s product—a stone umbrella twenty feet high, a stone sock garter, intricately carved, twice the length of a man.