Once started, Pari spoke so quickly that Joss had a hard time following him. "I admit Master Alyon was ill, and infirm, there at the end. There were a foursome of veterans who had the running of things. I heard whispers that he was being poisoned. He did get better right toward the end when he brought in that Devouring girl to do his cooking for him and who knows what else besides. That was around the time when he recalled Garrard. Talk was that Marshal Alyon had Garrard in mind for succeeding him. But then comes this man who calls himself Yordenas-not much older than me, mind you!-and first he tells Dovit that he's out of Iron Hall and then he tells Teren that he's out of Copper Hall, so there's some confusion, as you can guess."
"The eagle would have a band to mark its territory."
"That's just it. None of us have ever seen Yordenas's eagle."
"How can that be?"
"He says it's nesting up in the Barrens. But I've never heard tell of an eagle gone on its nesting season for that long."
"It could be. I've heard tell of a nesting pair gone most of a year's time. But it is odd, that he comes to you as a reeve, and yet has no eagle. So what happened then?"
"Master Alyon just up and died one night, and it all changed. We blink, and overnight this Yordenas is sitting in the marshal's cote and there are more reeves supporting him than opposing him. When Garrard protests, next thing you know Marshal is calling it out as a mutiny and thirty or more are dead and their eagles flown back to the mountains, just like that."
"Those are the eagles that never came back to choose new reeves?"
"That's right, most of them. Thirty or forty others left then, reeves and eagles both, although I don't know where they went. It just gets worse. Patrol routes changed. Marshal closed the gates to outsiders, any outsiders, even folk come to report on trouble in their village or to ask for help. We got word anyway of ospreys on the Kandaran Pass and along the West Spur, and there come some Olossi merchants to beg for our help one night, so Dovit and Teren went out on patrol without permission, but they never came back. That was a two-month back, I think. Most of them I knew from three years back when I first got chosen are gone, except the ones I never liked at all. The others are dead with Garrard. Or they left."
At last, he took a breath. He was trembling. The sliver of moon called Embers Moon was rising in the east, heralding dawn.
"Why did you stay?" asked Joss.
His chin tilted back. The faint moonlight seemed to catch and gleam on the white scar of his chin. He was Toskala-chinned, like Joss, recently shaven. He looked very young.
"Someone had to."
Joss grinned sadly. "You've courage to have stuck it out."
Pari shrugged, as if embarrassed or ashamed. "Didn't do anyone any good."
"You did what you could. You'll have to go north. Follow the course of the River Hayi. It runs east-west until the Sohayil Gap; a little past that, the river bends northeast. Once to the Aua Gap, continue north. You can't miss the River Istri. Any land-holder there can tell you in which direction-seaward or ridgeward-Toskala lies, if you don't recognize the lay of the ground."
"Where are you going?" asked Pari.
Joss considered. This might be some kind of complicated ploy, and he daren't risk trusting him, although his heart told him that the young man was being honest. It was hard to playact that kind of righteous, helpless pain.
"I've heard tell of this trouble along the West Spur, as I told the marshal. I'm investigating it. What do you know about it?"
"No one confides in me," he said with a tone very like a child's whine. "Just that caravans were being attacked. Women kidnapped, although that was before my time. I suppose the merchants in Olossi would know about it. It's their trade that would be hurt."
"What do you know about the merchants in Olossi? Anything that could help me? Any names? Anything?"
He shrugged. "I've went to the Devouring temple a few times, but not recently. Marshal likes to hold us close against him these days, those of us he doesn't trust. I see reeves flying out solo, so I suppose they're carrying messages. Maybe to Olossi. I think they have some kind of understanding with the council there, but I don't know. Anyway, I come from Sund. That's the territory I know best. I'm not allowed to patrol out on my old rounds anymore. I suppose no one is patrolling there at all."
"So Yordenas is the name of this new marshal?"
Pari laughed as at a cruel joke. "He calls himself Yordenas."
"When you get to Clan Hall, be sure to tell all of this to the Commander just as you've told it to me. They can check the records, see if such a reeve is recorded."
"It won't matter," said Pari.
"Why not?"
"This is the thing. Garrard stabbed him, when they got in that fight. It was ugly, the things they said, and afterward it was worse. But he didn't die. He should have died, but he didn't. A day later he was up and walking like nothing had happened. I think he's a demon, not a person at all."
"A stab wound can call out a lot of blood, but do little real damage."
"So you might think. It was a killing blow, I'm telling you."
Joss whistled softly, under his breath. He could not make sense of this young man and his passion and his anger and his tendency to slip into a child's manner of grievance.
"You don't believe me."
"I'm not sure what there is to believe."
Pari cursed in a low voice, then gave a breathy, cackling laugh like that of a man driven past endurance. "No, you couldn't know, not unless you'd been there. I'm just saying this: Wolves and ospreys stalk the land. And they're winning the battle."
"I can't argue with that."
Night turned. The eastern horizon sparked, limned in fire.
"Best be going, friend," Joss went on. "Argent Hall will be looking for us. Best if we're well away."
"They'll find us." Pari looked back toward Killer, who was shaking herself awake and looking none too eager to face the day given her interrupted night. "I'm not brave. Mostly, I was afraid to run for fear they'd catch me and do something awful to me. I don't even know what. Marshal Yordenas has something wrong with him, but I don't know what it is. And the rest pant after him like they're dogs and he's the one holding their dinner."
"So it may be. Best we be going."
Pari looked him in the eye, a stare both belligerent and frightened, but he shook himself, nodded, and flattened his mouth into a determined grimace. "Don't trust anyone."
Joss strode back to Scar, who had the ability to come awake fast and ready to go. They launched first, and he circled twice until Pari finally got up off the ground and headed east-southeast, making for the river, just as he should. Joss pulled south toward the faint glimmer of watch lights still burning on Olossi's watchtower several mey distant. His gaze tracked the distance reflexively. It caught on an anomaly. A pale spot rose in the southeast, like another creature flying, except no eagle had that ghostly color. He blinked, and the spot vanished. It was only a trick of the predawn light.
With the dawn, he closed in on Olossi Town. He had to get Olossi's council to talk. He had to ferret out the ones who had sent that doomed delegation into the north. Where had that Devouring girl come from, and why had she tried to kill him?
Not that there was any proof, only his word against hers beyond the evidence of the knife and Pari's garbled history. No proof, no clues, no evidence, not even an explanation for why things seemed so very wrong at Argent Hall. Marshal Yordenas could always claim that the youth was disaffected, that the woman-the assassin-acted on her own. Nothing to do with me, he would say, how could I know I harbored these vipers in my hall?