Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

But all the tales agreed that Guardians couldn't die.

The reeve hall was a huge compound surrounded by fields and orchards and open ground where a pair of reeves — relatively new ones, by the look of their tentative maneuvers — were learning to harness up under the supervision of a patient fawkner. She didn't recognize the young reeves, but she was pretty sure the fawkner was her good friend Gadit, although she was holding her body at a canted angle, as if her right shoulder was stiff from injury.

High watchtowers stretched up as little more than scaffolding. She did not recognize the pair of very young men lounging on gate duty, but their bored faces and listless chatter irritated her. They did not bother to challenge her, and they ought to have; she was an unlikely sight, with her naked feet and calves and a cloak clutched tightly around her body, yet she walked through the gate unremarked. She would have words with Marshal Alard about their lackadaisical attitude.

It was difficult to remain annoyed in the familiar environs she loved: the wide-open land-side parade ground with its chalk-laced dusty earth; the low storehouses side by side in marching order; the barracks and eating hall sited where the high ground dipped,

making a bit of a windbreak; the high lofts set back to either side, and beyond them the seaward parade ground that overlooked the cliff and the choppy bay.

Most reeves must be out on patrol, since she did not recognize the few faces she saw. Two very young fawkner's assistants scurried toward the lofts with harness draped awkwardly over their backs. A youth shuffled past holding a cook's ladle while sneezing and wiping his nose. A young woman seated on a bench was sniveling while Marit's dear friend and fellow reeve Kedi spoke in the tone of a man who has said the same cursed words a hundred times:

'It's done, Barda. When an eagle chooses you, you've got no choice in the matter.'

'But I don't want this. I never wanted it.' She wasn't a whiner. She was genuinely overwhelmed, her eyes rimmed red but hollow-dark beneath; her hands were trembling. 'I was supposed to get married tomorrow. All the temples agreed it was an auspicious day for a wedding, Transcendent Ox, in the Month of the Deer, in the Year of the Blue Ox. Especially for a long and steady and calm alliance. That's all I ever wanted, and I like Rigard, only now his clan has called off the wedding. They've broken the contract, because now I'm a reeve. I was just walking to market and the bird dropped down out of the sky and I screamed I was so scared. Don't you see? My life is ruined!'

Kedi sighed in that weary way he had. His hair had been trimmed back tightly against the skull, almost shaven bare like a clerk of Sapanasu, and when he shifted to slap away a fly Marit realized he was leaning on a crutch. He wasn't putting any weight on his left leg.

'Heya! Kedi!' she called.

But he was too intent on the young woman. 'I know it's not what you wanted. But let me tell you that every reeve in this hall envies you for the eagle who chose you.'

'Trouble? It's a stupid name. She scares me.'

'She's the most beautiful and best-tempered raptor in the Hundred.'

Trouble! Marit wanted to ask what had happened to Trouble's reeve Sisha, a particularly good friend who besides could hold more ale than anyone, but Kedi had launched into an energetic description of Trouble that would make the hardest heart melt, so she walked down the alleyway between storehouse and fawkner's barracks that led to the marshal's garden.

Alard had loved flowers, the more resplendent, the better. So Marit was startled to see that his carefully nurtured beds of azaleas and peonies and heaven-full-of-stars had been replanted into ranks of practical herbs, as though the cook and the infirmarian had snuck in when the old man wasn't looking.

She climbed the steps to the roofed porch, where she paused, listening to the shush of a broom around the corner in a steady accompaniment to voices murmuring beyond the closed doors. Ladiya appeared butt-first, attention focused on lines of dirt forming ranks along the boards.

'Can I go in?' Marit asked.

The old woman still had her back to Marit and did not answer. She tilted her head to one side until it rested against the thin wall. Eavesdropping.

As the voices from inside were raised, it was impossible not to overhear.

'You've been marshal for one month. I'm surprised you waited so long to get rid of me!'

To hear his voice, healthy and strong and angry, hurt like a dagger to the heart, but it was the pain of unlooked-for joy that brought tears to her eyes. He was still alive.

'Joss, you have the makings of a good reeve — of an excellent reeve, perhaps — but you are out of control.' The words were emphasized in a firm voice, entirely calm and utterly sincere. She knew that voice very well. It went on speaking, each word crisp as if with frustration hooded. 'Still, with things the way they are, and the problems in Herelia, I can do nothing but send you to Clan Hall to get you out of my jesses. I will let the commander deal with you, thank the gods, so that I do not have to. I have enough to deal with here. If I could keep you belled I would, but I cannot. In the old days, so they say, a rogue and errant reeve was subject to execution for the kind of insubordination we have seen from you, the repeated breaking of the law, going time and again to Guardian altars despite knowing that it is absolutely out of bounds, despite knowing what happened the first time you did it. But we do not have the luxury now of punishing you in that way. The gods know we need you, and especially we need Scar. So I am sending you to Clan Hall and that is final. You leave today.'

The last word rang. Afterward, there came a pause. Marit braced herself for the storm.

Instead of an answer, one of the doors was slammed open and Joss — as handsome as ever! — charged with all his loose-limbed passionate grace out of the chamber and past Marit without giving her a glance.

'Joss,' she said. 'Sweetheart.'

He was already gone.

Ladiya turned around as a reeve whose short hair was laced with silver walked onto the porch in Joss's wake.

'Did you overhear all that?' he asked without a sliver of amusement, but he wasn't angry either. Masar was the most upright, bland, and humorless person Marit had ever known, and she had known him pretty well, having taken him as a lover for half a year when she was a lot younger. He'd been as humorless in bed as out of it, and he'd accepted her departure from the affair with a straight face and never in the years after showed the slightest sign that he resented her or, for that matter, pined after her. He was absolutely rock solid, a person who would back you up and risk his life to save yours and never ever cross the line past which proper behavior became improper.

Except that he was holding the marshal's staff with its jessed and hooded cap, the mark of authority in Copper Hall.

Ladiya said, 'It's hard to resist a lad with good looks and the charm to back them up, but even I can see how he's gone wild since her death. Three years now, it's been. You would think he'd have devoured or drunk it off by now. You're going easy on him, Marshal.'

Marshal?

Masar said, 'I keep hoping he will settle down. I do not know what else to do. Nor do I need to. He is Clan Hall's problem now.'

'Masar,' Marit said. 'Ladiya. What happened to Joss? Where is Marshal Alard?' She extended a hand, touched Masar's elbow. 'How long have I been gone-?' Faltering, she gingerly patted Ladiya on the upper arm to get her attention.

They neither of them looked at her or appeared to hear her voice or feel her hand. She might as well not have been standing there, for all the notice they took.

At last it all made sense. As the thoughts lined up in their neat ranks, a weight — more of terror than pain — settled in her chest. All