She was simply incapable of turning back. Therefore, she could not go inside the farmhouse, nor confront the survivors of Tain Hu’s house: she would have to return to Helbride, and find another way—

She tried to back out of the breezeway. Ulyu Xe was in her way.

“Move,” Baru hissed.

“I feel good here,” Xe said.

“What’s the problem?” Faham called. “Is it stuck?”

“No,” Yawa assured him, one hand on his shoulder—how quickly she worked to charm him—“it’s just that Baru’s faintly addled. Watch, in a moment she’ll remember how doors work.”

“I am not addled,” Baru protested, “I just think that Iscend really ought to go first.”

Xe put her warm, strong hand on Baru’s shoulder. “They swore an oath,” she said. “Remember that an oath runs two ways. Remember to be worthy of it.”

And while Baru was distracted, Xe’s other hand worked the door latch, and Baru fell stumbling backward into a farmhouse full of people whose loyalty she had ultimately and completely betrayed.

The last thing she saw before they fell on her was Yawa’s impish smile as she reached out and pushed the door closed behind Ulyu Xe, shutting Baru inside. Then everything was hot flesh and wetness, meat flapping at her hands, on her face, the bestial panting of someone who stank of grass and meat—

Baru got her arms around it before she realized it was a dog. “Oh,” she said, with enormous relief, as the golden barrel of man-sized love and drool pranced around her pawing and woofing. “Oh, it’s a—very friendly—er—Xe, would you please—”

“Down, boy,” Xe clucked. The dog went down on all fours, panting enthusiastically, as if it couldn’t wait to lick Baru more. Gingerly, she mopped the dog drool off her chin.

Everyone sat there, staring at her.

All her old companions. Gathered, as if for portraiture, at Execarne’s long dinner table: one ragged exile family under cedar rafters and whale-oil lamps. Closest to Baru sat widowed Ake Sentiamut, who had run Tain Hu’s counterfeiting scheme, and who Baru had left as regent over Vultjag. By her were two men—or, really, a man and a boy—Baru’s jumpy bodyguard Ude Sentiamut, who’d shot a friend in the stomach on the Fuller’s Road, who hadn’t had the courage or ice to slit that man’s throat and end his pain. He had his fatherly arm around pimpled Run Czeshine, a boy who’d been so pathetically taken with Baru that she’d been afraid he might have a glandular condition.