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Riversong, so I didn’t belong there anyway.”
    “Are you going to look for your ancestors, then?” Now he sounded as if he took me seriously. “As well as make your fortune?”
    I hadn’t thought much about my real parents since I left the village. But they were there nevertheless, shadowy, in the back of my mind. “I think so. Someday.”
    “Hm,” he said, and gazed south along the road. “And are things any better in Riversong?”
    “No. Everything’s worse,” I answered emphatically, in the sudden hope that he might come to High Lake with me. With that, great possibilities flashed through my mind—me, playing a sivara, wandering the world with him, singing.
    “They won’t be able to feed you,” I added. “That’s another reason I left. I was always hungry.”
    He removed his gaze from the road and inspected my face. I couldn’t work out why he was looking so intently at me, but I gave him my best, most-trustworthy grin.
    “Well,” he said, “in that case, there’s not much point in going on, is there? But here’s a thought. I need an assistant, somebody who can help me by collecting from my audience, maybe learn to dance a little for the stories. How would you like to join me and see a bit of the world?”
    I couldn’t have asked for more. I looked at the place god’s benign face and thanked him for his gift.
    “I’d like that,” I said nonchalantly, as if I were used to such offers. “Of course I’ll go with you.” And at the same time I thought. Maybe I shouldn't ask him yet if I'll get paid.
    “Good, that’s settled.” He squinted up at the sky. “We’ll go on for a way, and then we’ll stop and eat something. Or are you hungry now?”
    I was, but I wanted to start out before he changed his mind. So I told him I was fine and skipped off beside him, with a final silent thanks to the place god under his burning tree.
    I soon discovered that, unlike all the other grown-ups I’d known. Master Lim seemed to enjoy talking to me. I’d told him, during his previous visit to Riversong, how I’d been found in the drifting boat, but I told him again because he seemed interested, and then I chattered about lots of other things. He listened carefully, nodding from time to time and making suitable noises of alarm or encouragement. I was quite out of breath by the time we stopped to eat.
    By then it was early aftemoon. We sat on a fallen tree by the roadside, and unwrapped my bread and smoked fish and his biscuits and some of his journey cheese, the kind that doesn’t spoil even in hot weather. He’d been telling me about High Lake, but suddenly, just as we began to eat, he broke off and said, “Well, I’ve got another idea. What do you think of becoming a learned woman, Lale?”
    I was so astonished I lost my tongue and could only stare down at the grass by the log, where some lucky ants struggled with a morsel of fallen fish. “What?” I said at last. “I can’t even read.”
    He didn’t reply. I heard a brief buzzing hiss and a soft thunk, and then Master Lim made a peculiar noise like Uuuh, as though he’d suddenly let all his breath out.
    I looked up at him. Protruding from his left eye was a long slender stick with feathers on the end. Master Lim sat very still for a moment and then, as I watched in speechless shock, he toppled slowly backward into the grass. The arrow swayed a little as he hit the ground and then he just lay there, staring one-eyed at the clouds, with his legs draped clumsily across the log. There was hardly any blood, just a couple of tiny rivulets trickling across his temple and into his long brown hair.
    I couldn’t even scream. I put my hands to my face, and sat paralyzed as two men came out of the thicket on the other side of the road. One held a bow with an arrow nocked, the other a long curved knife. They were barefoot, ragged, and dirty and looked starved. The bowman’s face was pocked by some old disease, and the man with the knife had a walleye