Now the clan colors were bleached with age, and the branches of the grown tree were naked and skeletal overhead. Only the shaped iron ornaments remained, though—Egar squinted suspiciously—it looked as if even one or two of those might have been stolen from the grave over the past year.

“Motherfucking Voronak tinks,” he muttered.

Yeah, this far south and west it’s just as likely Skaranak renegades, or even some bunch of fuckwit explorers from the south. He’d seen Skaranak grave wards in more than one imperial museum over the years, had never quite been able to drive home to anyone the rage it aroused in him. In Yhelteth, in the city itself at least, they tolerated a variety of beliefs well enough, but behind that there was always the base assumption of a civilized superiority in the Revelation that never failed to piss him off. In the end, the imperials didn’t much care whose sensibilities they trampled on.

Let’s stick to the task at hand, shall we.

He left his horse to crop the grass a short distance off, unstoppered the rice wine flask he’d brought with him, held it lowered in clasped hands, and stood a moment looking down at the grave.

“Hey, Dad,” he said loudly. “Brought you something special this time.”

The quiet wind keened. There was no other reply for him.

“It’s good stuff. Used to drink it in the south all the time. This tavern down by the harbor had it, not far from Imrana’s place. I think you would have liked it in there, Dad. Noisy, full of all these tough guys off the docks. You could see the sea from the front door.” He paused, stared down at the cairn. “I would have liked to show you the sea, Dad.”

He blinked hard a couple of times. Cleared his throat.

“Can’t believe they’re selling this stuff in Ishlin-ichan these days. Bringing it all the way up here. Cost me a ball and an eye, of course, but hey, I’m the fucking clanmaster these days, right?”

Got to relax, Eg. Loosen off. You’ve got a full night out here, and the sun isn’t even down yet.

He lifted the flask and tipped it, poured slowly and steadily, working little circles into the action. The rice wine splattered and darkened the stones, ticked and dripped in the dark places between. When the flask was empty, he upended it and shook out the last drops, then placed it carefully against the base of the cairn. His fingers lingered on it awhile, kept him bent there, face turned slightly away, listening to wind. Then, abruptly, he straightened up. A grimace chased across his face—whether from the brief, flaring pain of holding the posture too long, or something else, he couldn’t say. He cleared his throat again.

“So—I guess, we’re going to build this vigil fire.”

He unsaddled the horse, set out his weapons, blankets, and provisions with drilled, soldier’s neatness. Unbundled the firewood and put the fire together on the scorched and balding patch of grass that marked the previous vigils. The sun dropped free of the tree branches, hung increasingly low at the horizon. He shivered a little, gave it the occasional glance as he worked. He went about collecting a few storm-torn branches he’d noticed lying in the grass earlier, dragged them over and stamped them into manageable lengths, stripped the biggest of the twigs from them, and piled it all up beside the waiting fire. He reckoned the bundle he’d brought with him should last until dawn, but the extra couldn’t hurt. More importantly, the work had shaken some of the shiver from his bones.

He knelt by the unlit fire. Like most Majak, he carried kindling grass and flint in a dry pouch under his shirt. He now dug them out, struck sparks into a wiry fistful of the kindling until it caught, and then poked it carefully into the hollow heart of the fire pile. He tipped his head sideways, almost to the ground, and peered in. Smoke and tiny flames licked upward at the underside of the wood. The smaller pieces began to catch, smoldering and then popping alight. A cheery yellow light spilled out. The warmth of it washed his eyes and face, felt a little like tears. He hauled himself quickly upright again, back into the gathering gloom and chill of the air around him. He stowed the kindling pouch, brushed off his hands. Glanced back at the gnarled marker tree and the declining sun.

“Well, Dad, I—”

A figure stood there.

It was a hammerblow to his heart, an icy clutch of fear that dropped his right hand reflexively to the hilt of the knife at his hip.

It was not his father.

At least, not in any form that made sense. He saw a drab, full-length patched leather cloak of the sort favored by League sea captains, a soft-brimmed hat tilted forward to shade the face, though the sun was behind and in any case almost gone. Erkan, colorful, boisterous, a Majak to the bone, had never owned anything remotely resembling either item.

No. Wouldn’t have been seen dead wearing them, either.

Egar felt the corner of his mouth quirk. The humor pushed out the shock, brought in a shrewd skirmisher’s calculation instead. The cloaked figure looked to be alone. No visible companions or weapons, no horse nearby. Egar sidled a glance across to where his own mount stood, still placidly cropping the grass and apparently unaware of the newcomer, then to the neat piles of his gear on the ground—staff lance and ax, both well out of reach. He could not believe he’d allowed himself to be ambushed this easily.

He kept his hand loose on the hilt of his knife.

“I’m not here to harm you, Dragonbane.”

The voice came across the distance between them as if from much farther away, as if carried on the wind. Egar blinked at the effect.

“You know me?”

“After a fashion, yes. May I approach?”

“Are you armed?”

“No. I have no real need for such accoutrements.”

Egar set his mouth in a thin line. “You’re a shaman?”

Abruptly the cloaked figure loomed a scant two feet in front of him. It happened so fast, Egar would have sworn he never saw the newcomer move at all. A hand clamped brutally on his wrist, held it down so he could not have drawn his knife if his life depended on it. The face beneath the brim of the hat loomed, gaunt and hard-eyed. A gust of acrid chemical burning swirled in the wind, something like the smells that sometimes blew off the Kiriath brewing stacks south of An-Monal.

“There is not much time,” the voice admonished, no less distant sounding than before. “Your brothers are coming to murder you.”

And gone.

Egar jumped, and nearly fell down with the sudden release of the pressure on his arm. He cleared his knife from its sheath, belatedly, whirled about. The figure was nowhere to be seen. It was gone, into the chill of the air and the long grass, like memory of the voice into the wind, like the acrid chemical tang into the sweeter smell of wood smoke from the fire. Like the fading pressure on his wrist.

He wheeled about once more, breathing tightly, knife balanced on his palm.

Quiet, and thickening gray gloom across the steppe.

The band like a hoop of blood. His father’s cairn, the emptied flask laid beside it. The blackening silhouette of the tree.

“My brothers are in Ishlin-ichan,” he told the silence. “Getting drunk.”

He jerked his head westward, roughly the direction you’d take. Threw a glance out to the setting sun.

Saw silhouetted riders there, approaching.