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them keeping to the Road. Certain doom befalls . . .”
    “This for
that
? Unt uh! This spear was my . . .”
    “Naw, you niggas right on time, matterfact. They got
all
the fights going today. Dogs, birds, dudes . . .”
    A wealthy merchant, in robes dyed the deepest color of lilies, remonstrated with the garrison’s commandant, whose cicatrix boasted three stingers, a thornwasp prince-of-nest. A handful of fo-so wore breastplates weathered by rust or verdigris; the commandant’s, however, was made of some mirror-polished alloy, flashing even in the shadows under-tower. Not quite able to make out the discussion between the merchant and elite soldier in so much crosstalk and din, Demane sidled closer.
    The merchant had just come in with that smaller caravan, fresh off the route Master Suresh l’Merqerim meant to follow tomorrow. Standing attendance on the merchant was a man prepossessing as only brothers were: thick-thewed, with a brawler’s ears, nose, and scars. His master was most insistent: “And yet, that is precisely what we
did
do. Do you think us fools? All the way through the Wildeeps, not a man jack set foot off the safe way!”
    “Then we have misspoken,” said the fo-so in the gorgeous cuirass, “and do most humbly beg your pardon.” A man hopes, of course, to inoculate others with his own sense of serenity, by employing that tranquil tone and placid pose. A shame, then, it serves only to infuriate! “Yet we must request that you please moderate your—”
    “You fail to
listen.
What I am trying to
tell
you, if you could
hear
it, is that some eater of men—a lion,
some
thing—hunted us south to north across the Wildeeps. Seven men,
seven
(can you see these fingers? well, count them, then:
seven
!) were dragged away in the night. Eaten alive, screaming! The beast came onto the Road. I shall repeat that, for the salient detail here seems not to penetrate your stopped-up ears.
Onto
the Road, man!” As the merchant became exercised, his guardsman shifted impatiently in place. The brother’s coloring was the ruddy-dark iridescence of a plainsman buffalo rider. When he moved, and bone or brawn pressed from beneath the skin, his complexion paled or darkened, going redbone, redbrown, dark brown across his face and bare arms. “There was a caravan some days behind us. Others from the Station will be going south. What of them? You must send down a party of soldiers and root the thing out!”
    “Would that our remit did extend to such adventures.” The commandant spoke in round tones, with graceful gestures. “But here at Mother of Water’s garrison, our warrant is the security and defense of this Station, not the mounting of bold expeditions into the bush. Therefore, lacking leave from His Holiest Majesty in Olorum, we must regrettably . . .”
    Messed Up roared. “This was my
Daddy
spear! Fuck if I’m selling it for no chip of wood on a leather
string
! Y’ALL MUSTA LOSS Y’ALL DAMN MIND.” He threw deadly elbows, shaking his shaggy head, and the brothers couldn’t calm him. Somehow Messed Up had lost none of his corpulent powers to the rigors of the desert crossing. Not easily, then, did Demane bind that tantrum within an embrace.
    “I got him, y’all, I got him,” Demane told the others. “Go ahead into the Station. We catch up later.”
    He got Messed Up out past the gates into the bright sun.
    Messed Up’s eye on the wounded side was squinching tight-shut, and then bugging wide-open. That cheek tic’d; it juddered—not one of his good days.
    “Tomorrow when we go, you just hand em that little piece of wood on the string, and you get the spear back.
Your
spear. Nobody else’s. Feel me?” Demane wondered what other words might explain check and reclamation . . . but then Messed Up meekly nodded.
    (And why now? Was this yet more strange sorcery? No: gratitude. After the clash with bandits outside Ajeric, hadn’t the Sorcerer sewn Messed Up whole and fine again, when half his face hung