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glanced toward the road, not visible from here, although they could hear the talk of men at the grisly task of clearing the road and the singsong chant of the priest. “Until we meet the one who has summoned you.”
    â€œWho is that?”
    The captain sipped at his wine. “I’m only a messenger. The truth is, I don’t know any more than you do.”
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    W ITH EACH DAY they rode deeper into the heart of the empire, traveling south through countryside so densely populated there was always at least one village within view, and more commonly three or four. Farmers laboring in their fields paused in their work, bent with hands on knees, heads bowed, as the company passed. Kesh wasn’t sure if they were showing obedience, or praying that the beast would ignore them rather than ravage them. But the captain and his soldiers took no notice of the common folk. Life went on unmolested. Whatever war had been fought between the noble heirs of the imperial house did not affect those who must bring in the crops. Not like in the Hundred, where the strife had precisely ripped through the houses and fields of the humblest.
    â€œWe’ll never see home again,” said Eliar every morning as they made ready to mount and go on their way.
    â€œSpeak of your own end, not mine,” replied Kesh every day, and every day he found a way to fall in beside Captain Jushahosh, because Eliar’s morose company had become unbearable. To risk so much and then grouse about it! Death was a small price, compared with his betrayal of his sister!
    But Jushahosh was a man like Eliar in many ways: son of a wealthy house, one of many such sons accustomed to a life of sumptuous clothing and platters piled high with food, who in his life had seen little enough hardship and so craved the excitement he kept missing out on. A civil war! How exciting! Yet his company, backing the eventual winner, had seen no action beyond that encounter on the road, which was nothing to be boasted of although they had pickled the heads of the woman and the child in a barrel of wine so the new exalted administrator of the women’s palace could make an accounting of whowas dead and who, therefore, missing. He never tired of hearing Keshad’s tales of his travels. It seemed never to occur to the captain that a man could embroider a small tale and turn it into a large one. Kesh found him lacking in imagination.
    At night, in the privacy of their tent, Kesh forced Eliar to go over and over the basic tale of their partnership, their trade, their expedition south. “So they can’t catch us out in contradictions and decide to burn us.”
    â€œMaybe I’d be better dead,” whispered Eliar.
    â€œMaybe so, but I wouldn’t. I intend to survive this interview, give a good account of myself, and go home with a decent profit.”
    â€œYet if we fail—eiya!—when I close my eyes I see that poor little child with his head sliced off. And that woman—his poor mother—cut down like a beast. Doesn’t it haunt you, Kesh? Are you so unfeeling?”
    â€œYes, I am. There’s nothing I can do for them. They’re dead. I concern myself with the living.”
    The living—like Eliar’s sister. The woman he could never discuss, whose face he ought never to have seen. That face—her glance—haunted his nights and his days.
    They rode ten days after the skirmish on a road marked at intervals with distance markers, just as in the Hundred, only the empire measured not in meys but in a measure known as a cali, about half the distance of a mey. Kesh was careful to count off their distance, and every night he had Eliar record the cali traveled in the accounts book Eliar had brought.
    â€œIt’s a good thing you’re useful for something,” Kesh said, watching the young Silver slash marks by lamplight. “Did you make note of the two crossroads we passed and at what distance we reached