Chapter Three

 

 

"One shallah against four Outlookers," Tansen mused, rolling his left shoulder to test his wound. "How did he do it?"

Having agreed to Koroll's proposition, he had been moved to a comfortable—though locked, barred, and heavily guarded—bedchamber in the fortress. He had stayed there for several days while the Outlookers, in an ironic twist of fate, did everything they could to help him recover from the wound they had inflicted. They fed him nourishing meals, cleaned, mended, and returned his clothes, and removed his shackles. They permitted him light exercise in the courtyard, treated his wound twice daily, and politely knocked before entering his chamber. He had even politely endured the presence of a chanting Valdani priest every day. Although he would have preferred the healing magic of his own kind, he would not ask for a Sister to be brought to the fortress to be terrified and humiliated by uncouth Valdani.

"The Outlookers separated to search for his accomplice in the dark," Koroll told him. "Two remained with Josarian; they were dead when the other two returned."

"And Josarian was gone," Tansen surmised.

Koroll nodded. "He knows those mountains the way a man knows his wife's body. Otherwise we'd have caught him by now."

Sitting once again at the table in Koroll's command chamber, Tansen watched with dry amusement as Koroll blessed a cup of wine and then handed it to him. Ever since Tansen had promised to kill their rebel, the Valdani had extended all manner of ritual courtesy to him. His wound protested as he reached for the cup, but he could tell it was healing. By the time he found Josarian, he'd be in fighting shape again.

"But how did one shallah kill two armed Outlookers?" Tan persisted.

"By the look of the bodies, he used something to bludgeon them with." Koroll's eyes grew hard. "He beat them to death."

A yahr, Tansen realized. Koroll wouldn't know, of course; the whole point of a yahr was that most Valdani didn't know. Upon seizing Sileria from the Kintish Kingdoms over two centuries ago, the Emperor of Valdania had issued a decree: All Silerians were forbidden to carry weapons, and violation of this decree was punishable by death. Most Silerians couldn't speak or understand Valdan in those days, let alone read it, and the idea of going anywhere without a weapon was so unthinkable among Silerians that most of them didn't believe the decree even after it was translated for them. Consequently, there had been a horrific number of executions during those early years of Valdani rule, as well as widespread chaos, countless murders, and more than a dozen bloody massacres as the Valdani disarmed whole villages at once.

Even worse, the disarmed Silerians were in more danger from their still-armed countrymen than the Valdani were. Once the weapons of a family, community, or religious sect had been confiscated, their blood enemies were more likely to attack them than to cause trouble for the Valdani. Recognizing this, the Valdani altered their plans and began disarming Silerians with strategic precision, dispassionately encouraging the internal chaos which destroyed what had been a relatively prosperous, if fragmented, society under Kintish rule. Within five years, the rich fields of Sileria's lowlands lay fallow and barren, dispossessed beggars crowded the streets of Shaljir and Cavasar, and whole shallah villages were wiped out. The people of Sileria, devastated, humiliated, and ruined, became the Emperor's slaves.

In the years following the Disarmament, Silerians began developing weapons out of their daily tools—weapons that couldn't be readily identified and therefore confiscated. Ever resourceful as they carved a new life out of their fierce mountains, the shallaheen developed the yahr, a deadly striking weapon. It was made of two smooth, short, wooden sticks, sometimes metal-tipped, which were joined by a short rope. If the Outlookers noticed a yahr, they saw only a small bundle of sticks, or a distinctive shallah grain flail, the tool which had inspired the weapon.

Tansen had not touched a yahr since the night, nine years ago, he had used one to kill a man. One who trusted you, a voice from the Otherworld reminded him; he silenced it.

But shallaheen used the yahr on their own kind. Tansen had never before heard of an Outlooker being killed with one. It was a good weapon, but even so, Josarian must be a very good fighter to have killed two armed Outlookers with it.

"Was he wounded?" Tansen asked Koroll.

"According to rumors, yes."

Tansen said nothing. The rumors that people chose to share with Outlookers were not to be credited. "And he's definitely still alive?"

"Alive?" Koroll slammed his fist down on the table. "Alive, you ask? The fatherless son of a whore is wreaking havoc throughout my district! By the Sign of the Three, I wish his insides would rot and consume him!"

"Do go on," Tansen urged blandly.

Koroll glared at him. "He has looted an Outlooker outpost. He burned down another outpost. He incited villagers to kill two tribute collectors, urging them to see for themselves that Valdani die as easily as shallaheen do." Koroll rose to pace before the window in agitation. "He defiled a Shrine of the Three less than four leagues from Cavasar!"

"He's not Valdani," Tan pointed out reasonably, "so he doesn't worship the Three."

"Don't push me, shatai," Koroll snapped. "I could still have you tortured to death in the main square."

"Yes, you could," Tan agreed. "But you won't. You're afraid no one but me can kill him."

"Some of the peasants are already saying he can't be killed." Koroll's expression was grim. "Frankly, enough of my men are provincial bumpkins that this kind of rumor could be dangerous if it starts passing among the ranks."

"You really think they could become frightened of a shallah?" Tansen asked, letting contempt creep into his voice.

"This one..." Koroll nodded and slumped back down into his chair. "This one is different. He's very dangerous. Cunning. Bold. He strikes as fast as a serpent, then disappears just as quickly. I've had patrols searching for him for almost two twin-moons, and we still haven't captured him! Neither bribes nor threats get us any useful information, but everyone knows who he is and what he's doing."

Which, of course, explained how Koroll himself had learned Josarian's name. "Does he have a family?"

"Don't they all?" Koroll said wearily. "Only a wizard could untangle the net of a shallah's blood and bloodpact relations, let alone his enemies."

"Where does he live when he's not hiding in the mountains and tormenting Outlookers?"

"The village of Emeldar. But he won't be there."

"Perhaps not," Tansen agreed politely. "But it may be a place to start." He suspected that Josarian could sneak home every night without the Outlookers being any the wiser. If he had eluded pursuit for this long, then the locals were loyal to him. "I need a lead, a starting place. I can't look behind every gossamer tree in the mountains, after all."

"I suggest you begin your search in the Orban Pass, just a hard day's ride from here," Koroll snapped.

"Why?"

"Because I received word this morning that Josarian attacked four of my men there."

"How?"

"Bow and arrow." He scowled. "This is the thanks we get for allowing hunting weapons."

"Were the arrow tips poisoned?"

"Yes. The poison was Valdani. Stolen, of course."

"And?" Tansen prodded.

"They're all dead."

"How do you know it was Josarian?"

"This is Sileria, not Kinto or the Moorlands!" Koroll thundered. "Bandits here don't attack armed Outlookers!"

"Those men were a patrol looking for Josarian?" Tansen guessed.

"He found them first." Koroll's voice was bitter.

"Four Outlookers," Tansen mused.

"We're keeping this as quiet as possible."

"Word will spread."

"I know." Koroll's fair Valdani complexion was chalk white now. "And the gods will grow thirsty."

 

 

The following day, Koroll and four Outlookers escorted Tansen beyond the city walls. His belongings had already been returned to him, bundled up in his worn satchel and strapped to the back of the saddle he now sat in. He'd also been given enough coin to live modestly until the next dark-moon; a shatai, Koroll had asserted, didn't need money for bribes, since only a fool would refuse to cooperate with him. His swords, however, remained firmly strapped to Koroll's saddle as they rode away from Cavasar. Tansen would not be trusted with those until they had released him. His gold, of course, would remain in Koroll's keeping until he returned with proof of Josarian's death. He didn't necessarily have to complete the job by the next dark-moon; but that was clearly when Koroll's confidence in him would begin to wane.

"If I were to be slaughtered like a goat in Cavasar upon honorably fulfilling our contract," Tansen told Koroll as they road side by side, "all shatai everywhere would be very annoyed."

Koroll chuckled. "If you were to come back and cut me in half for having pressed you into service on behalf of the Emperor, His Radiance would also be annoyed." He glanced at Tansen. "However, I think I see before me a reasonable man, despite the shallah blood in your veins. If we can do business together this time... Who knows? There may well be other contracts, eh?"

"You will find that I usually charge a higher fee than the return of my own gold," Tansen said dryly.

Koroll laughed out loud at that. "All right, here's a better bargain. Kill Josarian, and I will pay you double the gold I took from you. Fair enough, shatai?"

Tansen smiled slightly. "I, too, appreciate a reasonable man, Commander."

Koroll grinned at him. The military governor's spirits had been light ever since seeing Tansen train in the courtyard this morning. Deprived of his swords, Tansen ran through forms and drills empty-handed, testing his endurance, exploring the limitations of his healing wound. Concentrating as he had been taught, excluding everything that might distract him from honing his skills, he hadn't realized until he was done that a dozen Outlookers were watching him in stunned silence.

Then Koroll spoke from a balcony overhead. "We don't see many shatai here," he reminded Tansen, grinning broadly.

Looking up at him, seeing the exultation in his captor's expression, Tansen realized that even Koroll had started to half-fear that Josarian truly couldn't be killed.

Every man can be killed, Tansen thought as he rode beside Koroll now. Every man. The burden of that memory had never grown lighter, and so he turned away from it, as always. He rolled his left shoulder against the slight throbbing of his wound, and reflected with satisfaction that at least Koroll now believed he could kill Josarian. He almost smiled when he considered how scandalized his shatai-kaj would be to learn that Tansen's ability to kill a Silerian mountain peasant had ever been doubted.

Koroll pulled his mount to a halt when they reached a fork in the road. He pointed to the road on the right and told Tansen it led to the Amalidar Mountains and the Orban Pass. Somewhere beyond there lay Emeldar, Josarian's native village.

"You are, of course, absolved in advance of any violent acts you are forced to commit against Silerians in your pursuit of this villain," Koroll said. "May the Three watch over you, shatai."

"I'll take the protection of any gods that care to offer it." Tansen paused and added, "Twice the amount of gold you took from me—I have your word on that?"

Koroll nodded. "Frankly, it's worth even more than that to me, but I have a budget to consider."

"Yes, of course." Tansen watched Koroll release the strap that bound the Kintish swords to his saddle.

"Not that I don't trust you," Koroll said, "but it's never wise to take a man for granted." He tossed the swords into the tall grass beside the road, then turned his mount around and galloped back toward the city, with four Outlookers hot on his heels.

Pleased with the impression he had evidently made, Tansen grinned as he watched them kick up a cloud of dust.

 

 

Tansen spent the first night of his quest at a humble inn where he met a small caravan of traders who had left Cavasar shortly before he had. They were traveling through the mountains to the southern coastal city of Adalian, a port which even now was still occasionally attacked by marauding Moorlander pirates. The Valdani only controlled the northern Moorlander tribes—and they didn't even always control those very well. The southern Moorlands were peopled by fierce, barbaric tribes of hairy, blue- and green-eyed giants who, a thousand years ago, had sailed across the Middle Sea in search of gold and slaves.

In those long-ago days, the Moorlanders were united under one Great Chief to whom all chiefs swore their allegiance. They became a mighty and powerful people, driving back the older civilizations north of their lands until their empire extended well into what was now Valdania. Other Moorlander tribes pushed south, claiming the lands all the way up to the Sirinakara River, the great river that forever divided them from the Kintish.

Still dissatisfied, they had ventured across the sea, lured by the wealth and prosperity of Sileria, the vast, mountainous island floating in the Middle Sea. Daurion, the last great Yahrdan of Sileria, chosen by the Guardians to hold this island with a fist of iron in a velvet glove, drove the invaders back, killing most of them before they could return to their ships and the open sea. Legend whispered that Daurion himself had been a Guardian, possessed of their strange gifts and dangerous powers. A great warrior, he repeatedly repelled Moorlander invasions—until he was betrayed by his own kind, slaughtered by one he trusted. After Daurion's death, internal conflict, claims, counter-claims, and the chaos resulting from a divided leadership gave the determined Moorlanders the opportunity they needed. The Conquest was achieved almost overnight as Moorlanders swarmed across the land, taking what they wanted and burning down the rest.

For two centuries, the Moorlanders carried gold, crops, livestock, and slaves out of Sileria. A once proud and free people resisted this servitude, and Sileria became a violent, lawless land. When the Moorlanders' empire eventually began dissolving into warring tribes, their power collapsed and they lost their hold on Sileria. They retreated back to the sea from which they had come, leaving behind the round stone towers and thick-walled palaces they had built throughout the southern and western regions of the island. Along those same shores, some eight centuries later, one occasionally still saw another legacy of the Moorlanders, too, in a green- or blue-eyed man, in a woman whose hair was the fair shade of a Moorlander rather than the brown or black of a Silerian, or in a youth who towered over his companions.

The city of Adalian boasted its fair share of such people, as well as a brooding stone palace overlooking the city, which building was now occupied by Outlookers. The traders Tansen met at the inn outside of Cavasar were on their way to Adalian's famous Temple Market—so called because the market was set up in and around five vast crumbling temples built by the Guardians centuries before the Conquest, desecrated by the Moorlanders, and abandoned long, long ago.

Before leaving the inn, Tansen sold the traders the horse that Koroll had given him. Born and raised a shallah, he had never particularly liked horses, although his training as a shatai had included combat on horseback, and he had practically lived atop a horse while in the Moorlands; such were the ways of Moorlanders. But this was Sileria, so the horse would be a burden where he was going. Donkeys, goats, and shallaheen fared well on the narrow mountain paths and rocky slopes he'd be traveling, but horses slowed down a man up there—which was why mounted Outlookers were generally so inept at preventing smuggling and black market trade in the mountains.

The Kintish word for Sileria meant "The Horseless Land." The shallaheen had no use for horses, and the lowlanders wanted them but could seldom afford them. The aristocrats and wealthy merchants only used them in the countryside, preferring to walk or be carried in palanquins when traveling through the crowded, narrow streets of Sileria's cities. The sea-born folk went everywhere by boat, having no interest in any portion of Sileria that was neither shore nor port city. The Guardians lived even higher up than the shallaheen, the Sisters adhered to a vow of poverty, and the zanareen almost never left the rim of Darshon's volcano.

Waterlords and Society assassins liked to appear on horseback, of course, as a mark of their superiority. However, despite the power they still wielded in Sileria, the Emperor of Valdania had sworn to destroy them and had been pursuing this goal since before Tansen's birth. Consequently, many of them were obliged to live in hiding and practice a little discretion these days. And horses weren't all that easy to hide in The Horseless Land. This last consideration, even more than speed, was what motivated Tansen to get rid of his.

The traders would be taking the broad, paved Valdani road all the way to Adalian, so Tansen's horse would serve them well. Just to make sure they really needed it, he slipped out of the inn in the middle of the night, crept into the stables, and used the wavy-bladed shir he carried to disable one of the traders' horses. Just touching the flat of the blade to the vulnerable frog on the bottom of the animal's hoof was all that was needed. There was no serious damage, but the horse would be lame for several days. Seeing no visible wound or swelling, the traders were bewildered; sorcery certainly had its uses. Tansen, however, hated the shir so much that, until the day Koroll unwrapped it, he hadn't even looked at it in longer than he could remember. Nonetheless, he wouldn't have left Cavasar without it, not even if it meant dying by slow torture in the main square. He was relieved when Koroll had returned it to his possession, apparently assuming he might need it to do his job. The required nine years had passed, but he knew there would be no ease for him until he took the shir back to its source. Not after what he had done.

Dazzled by the first shatai they had ever met, the traders accepted Tansen's advice with relief when he told them he'd learned quite a bit about horses while sojourning in the Moorlands.

"I've seen this sort of thing before. It's more common than you suppose," he lied blithely while pretending to examine the horse's leg that morning. Shallaheen, after all, were taught from their cradles how to lie. "Merely a bruise. He'll be better in a few days."

"A few days?" One of the traders repeated with obvious distress. "We haven't got a few days! And what if this happens again?" He turned to one of his companions with an accusing glare. "I told you we should have brought spare mounts."

"No, you didn't! You said—"

"My friends," Tan interrupted, "I think I can help."

He sold them his horse at a reasonable price, rode with them as far as the Orban Pass, and waved them off, saying he'd walk from here. Eyes wide with awe at the young, exotically dressed swordmaster who had condescended to befriend them, the chubby, aging traders rode away. After leaving Adalian, Tansen knew, they would follow the trade route going east, and Koroll's horse would effectively disappear.

Alone now, he examined the site of Josarian's latest attack on the Valdani. The bloodstains had already dried to shrunken brown blotches in the dry climate. Seeing where the men had fallen, Tansen studied the surrounding cliffs, looking for the best vantage point for an ambush, then searched for a way to get there. It took him some time to reach the spot. He was winded when he got there, and one hand was scraped from a spill he'd taken when loose rocks had slid out from beneath his feet. While able to outfight, outrun, and outlast most men, he realized ruefully that he'd lost the conditioning that made a shallah able to climb up and down these punishing mountains from sunrise to sunset, sure-footed as a goat and breathing no harder than a Kintish courtesan at work.

Cavasar lay in the extreme west of Sileria, its view of Mount Darshon blocked by the foothills of the Amalidar Mountains until after a person emerged on the other side of the Orban Pass. Now, as he stood on a cliff top overlooking the pass, Tansen was able to see the country beyond it, and the distant snow-capped peak of Darshon, wherein dwelt Dar, the goddess he had been raised to worship.

Staring at it now, seeing it for the first time since he had gone into exile, Tansen forgot about Josarian, Koroll, Outlookers, and his work. If he'd been a spiritual man, he'd have prayed. As it was, he simply stared in awed silence, fighting the emotions that burned his blood and the memories which screamed for release. In the village of Gamalan, his boyhood home, the slopes of Darshon were so near, they had seemed to stretch from one end of the horizon to the other, filling the sky. When Dar belched or bellowed, Gamalan shook. When Dar spewed fire, the shallaheen in Gamalan saw the smoke of the burning villages that lay close to Her angry mouth. And when Dar erupted in fury, spilling forth lava, the Gamalani carved bloodpacts on their palms to answer Her call... and prudently moved their children to safer ground.

As a child, Tansen had played on the rough gray and black tumbles of ash and rock left by Dar's long-ago tantrums. He had seen his elder brother go off to join the mad zanareen and eventually die by throwing himself into the volcano while suffering from the delusion that he was the Firebringer. Taught by his proud and crafty grandfather to honor all the traditions of his people, Tansen had prayed to Dar every day and helped gather the annual ritual offerings to placate the goddess for another year. But he had not prayed since the first time he'd killed a man, and he did not pray now.

His stomach tightened as he wondered what Dar's revenge on him for that day would be. Vast and forbidding even at this great distance, the mountain loomed starkly against the brilliant blue sky, its snowy peak rising through the wispy clouds. Still unable to pray after all these years, Tansen bowed his head in respect. Whatever Dar's revenge, he would face it. If, that was, he survived the revenge of the Society.

Forcing himself to turn away from the sight which he had alternately longed for and feared these past nine years, he now searched for signs of his quarry in the spot he suspected Josarian had used to launch his attack against the four Outlookers. Within moments, he found a couple of footprints in the dust. It looked like his intended opponent was a big man. A few wisps of feather from the fletching of the arrows confirmed that the maker of those footprints must have been the murderer of the four dead Valdani. Josarian had known the Outlookers' route, planned ahead, and waited for them. He wasn't just some hot-headed brawler; he was capable of strategy, forethought, and planning. He could hold off his attack and await the right moment. And he could kill in cold blood.

Tansen absently brushed away the footprints with the toe of one well-made Moorlander boot and pondered what he had learned so far. Who was this rabble rouser? Why had he decided to kill two Outlookers rather than accept the smuggling charge? As far as Tansen knew, smuggling still earned the offender a flogging and a year or so in the mines of Alizar, whereas the murder of an Outlooker meant—as Tansen well knew—death by slow torture. Since the two surviving Outlookers could identify him, Josarian must have known the Valdani would search every village in the district until they found him. There was no turning back once he'd killed those men.

And, having killed them, why hadn't Josarian simply disappeared? Shallaheen didn't travel far from home as a rule, and they were all distrustful of strangers. Certainly going away wouldn't have been easy, especially if he was wounded, but it was an obvious option; it was what Tan himself had done nine years ago. Josarian wouldn't even have to go into exile, since the Society didn't care about the murder of a couple of Outlookers. He could simply remove or alter his jashar—the knotted, woven, and beaded belt that conveyed a shallah's name and history—then go to a distant corner of Sileria and become someone else; the Valdani would be unlikely to find him or learn the truth. Yet he had chosen not only to stay right here, but also to incite the populace, launch further attacks against the Valdani, and make himself the most hunted outlaw in Sileria.

Why? Did he enjoy the fame? Was he insane with hatred? Did he simply like killing, burning, and stealing? He was obviously no fool, but it was too soon to be sure just how shrewd he was. Could he be goaded into a fight with a shatai, or would he run away? If he wouldn't come to Tansen willingly, could he be tricked or trapped? Would a peasant who had lived his entire life in these mountains even know what a shatai was? Tansen hadn't known, after all, until he'd seen one kill three men in the streets of a Kintish port city nine years ago.

While he considered these questions, he searched for Josarian's trail and found exactly what he expected to find: nothing. Josarian wasn't careless. He had covered his escape route and left no clues about which direction he had gone from here. Tansen would have to find him some other way. Having been born and raised in eastern Sileria, Tansen didn't know this district. No people anywhere in the three corners of the world were more secretive than shallaheen, and this was Josarian's territory. Without cooperation from the locals, Tansen could well spend the rest of his life searching this district to no avail. So he'd have to find a way to make Josarian come to him.

 

 

"He wears a jashar and speaks the mountain tongue like he was born to it," Zimran told Josarian one night.

They sat by the cooking hearth of Josarian's younger sister, who kept urging her outlaw brother to eat more. This was Josarian's first visit home in nineteen days, and his sister Jalilar had been so certain of his death that she'd even gone to see the Guardians on Mount Niran four days ago. They didn't seem to think he was in the Otherworld yet, but Jalilar knew that was no guarantee. The Otherworld was a mysterious place, and the journey to get there was long and arduous. Many never arrived, and no one knew why. Others were believed to be there, but wouldn't answer when Called. No, there were no guarantees.

So, unconvinced by the reassurances of an old woman whose three-fingered hand seemed too small and delicate to have endured torture by the Valdani, Jalilar had left the secret Guardian encampment and returned home to wait impatiently for Josarian to sneak into Emeldar one night. The continued presence of the Outlookers in the village was her proof that, whatever else may have happened to her brother, they hadn't caught him yet. Outlookers were such fools, they really believed that their failure to catch Josarian here meant he hadn't been home since that fateful night he'd become an outlaw. Jalilar looked at her brother again, relief warming the chill of dread that had settled into her bones. Her husband, Emelen, would be home soon, and he'd be almost as relieved as she to see Josarian, with whom he had grown up.

"You think this stranger is a shallah?" Josarian asked Zimran. He refused the additional food his sister tried to coax him into eating. "Jalilar, I'll burst soon."

"He must be," Zim insisted. "He has the first two bloodpact marks on his right palm. A few on his left." He added as an after-thought, "No marriage-mark on the right palm, they say."

Josarian absently looked down at the marriage-mark Calidar had carved on his palm the day they had married. It ran from the base of his thumb diagonally up to the base of his fourth finger. She had carved no child-marks across it, and now she never would.

"And he carries swords?" Josarian asked. "You're sure of this?"

"I am sure."

"Have you seen him? With your own eyes?"

"No."

"Then how do we know it's true?"

"Josarian, who would make that up?" his sister interrupted.

"Why would the Outlookers let him carry swords?" Josarian asked.

"Because he has promised to kill you," Jalilar said, her voice thick with fear.

"Zimran could walk into an Outlooker outpost tomorrow and promise to kill me. Do you think they'd let him carry a sword? What's so special about this shallah, that he may bear arms based on a promise to kill me?"

Zimran shrugged, then continued his description of the man searching for Josarian. "He wears fine foreign clothes. No one is sure, but a merchant from Malthenar thinks they're Moorlander. Someone in Britar saw the swords unsheathed and says they bear foreign writing that looks like the inscriptions carved on old Kintish temples and shrines."

Having ruled Sileria for six centuries, from the fall of the Moorlanders until the Valdani had seized it from them two hundred years ago, the Kints had left behind many temples, shrines, and palaces. Josarian had an uncle who now stabled some of his sheep in an abandoned Kintish shrine on Mount Orlenar.

"Kintish swords?" Josarian frowned in perplexity. "Moorlander clothes? A shallah?"

"Or part-shallah?" Jalilar guessed.

"What does the jashar say?" Josarian asked Zim. Although considered illiterate by roshaheen—outsiders—the shallaheen communicated information with elaborate strands of beaded knots and weaving. Any self-respecting man displayed his identity and history wherever he went by wearing his jashar; a woman's history was related in the woven headdress she wore on special occasions. Since this mysterious stranger wore his jashar, perhaps they could learn something useful from it.

"He is Tansen mar Dustan shah Gamalani," Zimran said, "born in the Year of Red Moons."

"Younger than you," Jalilar said to Josarian.

"But not much," Zimran added.

"The Gamalani?" Josarian sat up straighter. "Gamalan..."

"Does that mean something to you?" Zimran asked.

"Something Calidar told me..." He frowned and searched his memory. "A cousin... Yes, that's it."

"What?"

"Calidar and I had to postpone our wedding because her family went into mourning for a cousin who'd been killed by Outlookers."

"Yes, I remember," Jalilar said.

"The cousin had been given in marriage to honor the end of a bloodfeud. She went to live in Gamalan, which is..." He shrugged. "Somewhere near Darshon, anyhow."

"Calidar's clan had a bloodfeud with a clan on the other side of Sileria?" Zimran asked him. "What were they fighting about?"

"Who knows? They didn't seem to anymore." Such was life in Sileria. "The point is, Calidar's cousin died there when the entire village was slaughtered by Outlookers."

"I remember hearing about the slaughter, but I never knew the name of the village. Gamalan?" Zimran’s dark eyes widened when Josarian nodded. "And the stranger is a Gamalani who survived the slaughter somehow." Zim shrugged. "Maybe he didn't live there."

Individuals and whole families often spread out from a clan's village of origin to make marriages, seek new pastures for their livestock, apprentice to artisans and craftsmen, take possession of inherited smallholdings, or flee Outlookers, assassins, or bloodfeuds. Josarian had no particular reason to suppose the stranger seeking him was somehow involved in the cataclysmic destruction of Gamalan and its feud-withered clan—but he suspected it, nonetheless.

"A killer carrying swords and employed by the Valdani," he mused. "Who knows, Zim? Maybe he survived because he helped slaughter the Gamalani. Or betrayed them to the Valdani. Maybe he revealed something so big—a secret cache of smuggled weapons, the murder of a tribute collector—that the Outlookers decided to kill every man, woman, and child in the entire village."

"Sriliah," Jalilar said, the worst thing one shallah could ever say about another—worse than coward, cuckold, killer, liar, thief, or whore: traitor.

"Well, depending on who got killed that day," Zimran said, "it might explain one thing that no one understands."

"What's that?" Josarian asked.

"They say that while he's looking for you..."

"Yes?"

"A Society assassin is looking for him."