"While some, for all their weakness, remain incorruptible."
Joss blinked, fighting back dizziness. The filtered light cast all things sheltered under the Ladytree in a gentle glow. Feden was sipping at his tea, as though he'd noticed nothing. From all around murmured the sounds of folk at rest, eating, chatting, burping, chortling, while farther out beasts lowed and whuffled, a dog barked, and-there-Scar called out an interrogatory yelp, as if the raptor had been caught in that vision and needed to know Joss was safe.
Lord Radas was staring at the dirt again, eyes half closed, as though he were about to fall asleep. Behind, a youthful slave raised and lowered the large fan like the steady, hypnotic beat of a wing. The air stirred by that fan stung Joss's eyes, raising tears.
Shaken, he made his courtesies. He went out beyond the Ladytree to let Scar see him, then walked aside to take a piss, to collect himself, to breathe the air although the heat was itself a hammer. No wonder he'd gotten dizzy.
At length, he retreated back to the cooling shelter of the Ladytree and approached the forester and cart master with some trepidation. The cart master had a pair of medium-sized dogs who, as Joss walked up, pulled back their lips to display big teeth. Their ominous growl rumbled so low that he barely heard it, although his neck prickled. But when their master made his greetings, the dogs shimmied over at once for a friendly rub. They had expressive ears held at point when they were alert and flopped over when they relaxed, and their short gray-wire coats were unexpectedly soft.
He and the two men visited for a while, sharing rice wine and dry rice cake, all of it musty, the remnants of journey food. The wine was good, and he nibbled at the rice cake for courtesy's sake as they discussed the day, the season, the dead year and the new one, and the lands all around.
"Nah, I haven't seen nothing of raids where I'm from." The forester had a clipped accent and a strange way of pronouncing some of his words. He was human, though. Not everything that came out of the Wild was. "My fields are the forest. I keep to my place there in the skirts of the Wild, and the wildings keep to theirs in the heart. I've never gone farther north than Sandalwood Crossing, for that matter. Once a year I do walk down into Toskala to the Guild Hall on behalf of my clansmen in the Wild. We keep a steady harvest of logs coming out of the Wild, according to our charter. We keep to the boundaries, as the gods did order when the world rose out of the sea."
"I have a hard time thinking that outlaws would shelter in the Wild," said Joss.
"If they did, they'd not come out again," said the cart master with a laugh. He patted his dogs. They wagged their tails.
"What about the Ili Cutoff?" Joss asked.
"She's safe enough. I run this route every month. I've not had trouble, not compared to other tales I've heard tell, but I keep my eyes open and you can see also that my good dogs do keep the alert." He pointed. Two others of the same breed stood guard, almost hidden in the outer branch-roots of the Ladytree, watching over the wagons and the road.
Under the Ladytree, folk dozed as the heat grew more stifling. Joss yawned, and caught a quick nap. Shade Hour drew to a close; the heat lessened as the angle of the sun shifted.
At length, the cart master got to his feet. "We need to get another mey of journey in before sunset, if we want to make River's Bend in five days."
Joss drained another cup of wine, made his courtesies, and returned to Scar. A pair of local lads were sitting in the shade of a mulberry tree, watching the eagle from a safe distance. He paused to chat with them; they had more questions than he could answer, and in return they chattered freely about their village and the habitations nearby. Master Tanesh, it transpired, was well known in these parts as a wealthy landholder who treated his hirelings well and his slaves poorly, a man you didn't want to cross who tithed generously at the local temples and had even set aside land for a temple dedicated to Ilu, the Herald, on his own estate.
Behind, the wagons rolled. Joss made his courtesies, and the boys tagged after until Scar, seeing them coming, raised his proud head and stared them down. The boys stopped dead.
"Nah, come on," said Joss. He whistled Scar down from the rock, then coaxed the boys forward to stroke the raptor's copper plumage. This attention the bird accepted with his usual aloof resignation.
"Best go now," said Joss, and the boys scampered back to the tree, to watch as Joss fastened into his harness. Scar lifted heavily, beating hard with slow wing-strokes, seeking an up-current. Finding it, the eagle rose swiftly. The ground dropped away.
As the eagle began quartering the ground, Joss's thoughts quartered the afternoon's conversations. Talk refreshed him as much as drink and food and a nap. He turned the words over and over, seeking patterns, seeking hidden meaning, seeking that which was not meant to be said aloud, but he found nothing yet beyond that strange hammer of memory that had briefly shaken him. Anomalies would come clear in time; they usually did. You just had to be patient, let them work free in their own manner.
No one crosses the Liya Pass anymore.
It had become a land of shadows. He'd known that the morning he and the others had found Marit's gear and clothing, the very clothing she'd been wearing when she and Flirt had flown away from him, the last time she'd been seen alive. He'd known that when they'd found the remains of her mutilated eagle, and months later when he'd flown Flirt's sun-bleached bones to Heaven's Ridge and scattered what was left in the valley of silence. Gone altogether. Gods, he'd been so young.
He turned his attention, again, to the lands below.
This region of Low Haldia, still close to Toskala, was well cultivated and closely settled, villages and hamlets strung along trackways. Seen from the height, the many trackways interlaced across the land, reminding him of the nets he'd cast into the sea when he was a lad, living on the coast. Those days seemed dream-like, seen from the height of his life now, many years later. The cordial made by his aunts had tasted sweeter. His mother's rice porridge had never congealed into lumps. No one had ever gotten hurt, except that time when he and the blacksmith's son had gotten into a fistfight over pretty Rupa. They'd all been-the hells!-just twelve, celebrating their first return to their birth year. Those days sparked so clear and bright in his memory; all days did, until that day he and Marit had met in the Liya Pass and he had talked her into breaking the boundaries. After that, the curse had settled; he knew it for a fact, because his life had become dulled as with a stain, changed, lessened, corrupted, shadowed. Nineteen cursed years. Better he had stayed home and married pretty Rupa, who had been pretty enough but with a decided lack of interest in anything except her clan's fish ponds along the bay. For her, the rest of the Hundred might just as well never have existed. No doubt she was still wading thigh-deep in seawater, with a grandchild tied in a sling to her back.
Gods, he was getting old. And inattentive. Scar was circling, waiting for him to make some signal, choose some direction. The commander was right. He'd gotten unreliable. Too much drink. Too much anger. Too much regret.
A company of men marched briskly along a track off to the east. They had weapons enough that the glint of metal gave away their position.
"Come on, old boy." The eagle took the signal eagerly; he was always keen to go.
They glided on the wind. A man in the company lifted his head and saw them. Others pointed. As they passed over, Joss saw a flag painted with Master Tanesh's mark and, behind it, the master himself, riding a rangy bay gelding. Ahead lay the tidy fields of a splendid estate, ranks of orchard, a tea plantation, dry-field rice being dug for sowing, mulberry trees, flower beds, and a string of ponds like gems surrounding the whole. This was evidently Tanesh's original holding, not one of his satellite estates like Allauk, which lay farther north. The temple dedicated to Ilu, the Herald, was sited in a hillier area, unsuitable for agriculture. Skimming over the temple, Joss spotted apprentices striding across the temple grounds and a few envoys in sky-blue cloaks. Strange, now that he thought on it, that there had been no envoys traveling with this train. Normally every merchant train had an envoy of Ilu alongside, carrying messages according to the ancient charters that designated a holy task to each of the priests of each of the seven gods.