All the while Raina was thinking Merritt watched her with keen green eyes. When the silence had stretched overlong, she said, "Your nose is put out, Raina. Simple as that. With your husband away you thought the mice would play, but now there's another cat in the house."

Raina had to give it to Merritt: the woman was sharp. It was true, Raina had been hoping to run things while Mace was away. Return some order to the house, banish the Scarpes to outbuildings, make plans of her own for Hailstone. She'd wanted the chance to guide Blackhail back … to clan.

Breathing deeply, Raina tried to replace her waning strength with air. A woman whom she had trusted and called friend had been cleverly turned against her. Almost it was too much.

She tried one last time. "You are right, Merritt, I'm not happy that Stannig came here. He's Scarpe's guide—let them have him. We're paying tribute to a foreign stone whilst Scarpemen are grinding down the Hailstone and carting it away."

Merritt must have heard something close to breaking in Raina's voice, for she was gentle in her reply. "Who better to do that job? Name me one Hailsman who would relish breaking down the ruined stone? Stannig hopes to spare, not deceive us."

How had he got to her? Raina wondered. What tales had he spun? What promises had he whispered in her ear? Whatever he had done it was subtle, for Merritt was too clever to fall for obvious ploys. Did he know how close Merritt was to Raina herself? Was he trying to isolate the chiefs wife? Raina tucked that thought away for later consideration. To Merritt she said the only thing she had left. "Stannig Beade is a Scarpe. I thought you were my ally against them."

Tutting softly, Merritt shook her head. "Think clearly, Raina. My position on Scarpes in the Hailhouse is unchanged. Tomorrow, through that very door, two hundred Scarpes will come and kick me out of my hearth. They've done some sort of swap-around with the tied Hailsmen who were due to take it. It's a disgrace, and you underestimate me if you think that Stannig Beade can convince me otherwise. He hasn't tried to. I doubt if he'd dare. What he did do was come to me and ask my opinion on some things. And for a wonder he actually listened to the answers. That, I respect. It's fitting that a new clan guide acquaints himself with matters of clan, and also fitting that he takes the time to introduce himself to its widows. He knows there are things wrong in this clan. But right now he doesn't have time for that. His priority is the new guidestone—and rightly so. We must be settled as a clan before we can move forward, have a heart beating before we can breathe. You know that and if you would look beyond his colors, you would see that Stannig Bead is guide first and foremost. Not a Scarpe."

Raina felt a little stunned, as if someone had knocked her with some force on the head. How on earth was she to deal with this? At least now she knew how Stannig Beade had got to Merritt: he had flattered her and opened up a channel to power. It was telling that Stannig Beade had made no such overture to the chiefs wife, no cozy little talk, no confessions of uncertainty, no delicate request for information. He wouldn't dare. Five days ago on the greatcourt they had met eye-to-eye, and she had seen through him and he through her. Stannig Beade knew the chiefs wife for his enemy, and Raina Blackhail knew that before her stood a man who coveted Blackhail's power.

It was then, looking into Merritt Ganlow's superior face, that Raina had decided to steal the Hailstone. She'd be damned if she'd stand by and let some clever, scar-faced Scarpemen have his way with the remains. And Merritt could go to hell too.

Now, one day later, Raina had lost the bravado she'd felt outside the widows' hearth. Strange, but when she had actually stolen the stone from the nibble that was heaped against the roundhouse's east wall, things had begun to change for her. She had chosen her moment carefully, for the night crews were still working on the wall and her only opportunity to be alone was when one of Anwyn's kitchen girls had called the crews inside for ale and supper. Oil lamps and guarded candles had been left burning on poles and on makeshift pedestals of piled stones. A big vat of tar was bubbling on a slow green flame and buckets of white lime had been arranged in a loose half-circle around it. Timber boards and split logs were strewn across the ground, and Raina could smell the itchy, dry-skin odor of sawdust A second scaffold was now in place, bridging the gap between bare ground that had once held the guidehouse and the shattered remains of the stable block. Raina had to be careful to duck her head as she crossed toward the scrap pile of granite.

Stannig Beade's mule-powered stone mill cast its big blocky shadow against the remains of the Hailstone. The new clan guide was wasting no time and Raina could see that the largest chunks of stone had already gone under the mill. What remained were pieces no bigger than a man's head, and even these had been sorted and were lying in a separate pile close to the millstone. Stannig would be grinding at dawn. A charge of anger ran down Raina's spine. How could Merntt Ganlow not see what this man was about? Snapping her head once, as if to shake off some unpleasant insect that had alighted upon it, Raina approached the remains. She had thought, wrongly, that it might be difficult to tell Hailstone from roundhouse stone; the explosion had blasted and commingled both types of rock. Yet there was no mistaking guidestone. If she was ever asked what the differences were, she would not be able to provide an answer that would satisfy anyone other than a clansman. It was guidestone. It was different..

She picked the largest piece, how could she not? And struggled to lift sixty pounds of dead weight to her chest. She had not thought to bring a saddlebag or pack, and had only her shawl to conceal the stone. Now that she no longer had fine chambers lo call her own she slept in one of the dry cells beneath the kitchen that Anwyn used few storing herbs. She took the stone there, walking around the exterior of the roundhouse and not through it. When she rapped on the kitchen door Anwyn answered. The clan matron did not know what Raina carried and did not ask.

Later Anwyn brought her supper, hot onion soup and a wedge of fried bread, and nodded briskly at Kama's request for while spirits and a shoulder pack sturdy enough to carry a small child.

Something had already begun to change for Raina that night, but when she poured white spirits onto a soft rag and began to polish the largest remaining piece of Hailstone, she finally realized what it meant. This was no longer about spiting Stannig Beade and thwarting his plans. This was about Blackhail. This was about preserving its heart. Someone someday would need this and when they did, Raina Blackhail could tell them where to find it.

Crouching amid the flickering shadows of Yarro Blackhail's hidden strongroom, Raina Blackhail slipped the Hailstone from its bag. It was an edge piece from the exterior of the stone and the old chisel lines were still upon it. Raina thought of Inigar Stoop; his body had never been found. Would he be glad she was doing this?

I do not know.

Glancing around the small rectangular-shaped room, Raina wondered where to stow the stone. Over in one comer, perched atop a wooden market crate, were the items she had taken after Dagro's death. Small things, tokens for herself; gifts of modest jewels he had given her, his personal handknife, his belt buckle, a letter Norala, Dagro's first wife, had written to them both before her death, Raina had not been able to bear the thought that Mace Blackhail might claim them as his own, so she had removed them from her chambers and his gaze. Once he had asked her quite pointedly about Dagro's handknife, for it was well made and handsome with a translucent ivory handle and double-edged blade. She had told him that Dagro must have taken it with him to the Badlands for she hadn't seen it in over a month. She had been new to deception then and it had been a very bad lie. He never challenged her on it: any mention of the Badlands left him cold.