“Won’t you eat something before you ride? We—”

“Can’t! Thanks! Goodbye!”

She ran back to the death house, where Ulvana was having some quiet words with her servant.

“. . . not if you expect to amount to anything in the Arbitrate!” she concluded forcefully as Aloê came up to them.

“Arbiter Ulvana,” said Aloê, “I am sorry to leave you with my work to do, but I must move like a riptide if I am to have a chance of catching this killer.”

“Say what you need, Guardian. I’m ashamed to say we haven’t been much use to you up until now.”

“Can you find someone to put a stasis over both these bodies, and put a guard over them until I send further word?”

“Easily. Is that really all, my friend?”

Aloê was so lonely, trapped within her thoughts and suspicions like a beast swimming in an empty sea, that the last word stabbed right through her. She seized Ulvana’s hand and said, “I’m glad we’re friends. It’s my fault we haven’t been for the last hundred years. But it won’t be my fault if we’re not for the next hundred.”

“Good hunting, Aloê,” Ulvana said, smiling. “And you, Gyllen, mind what I said.”

Aloê mounted her horse and Gyllen climbed unskillfully onto the Arbiter’s. At her motion, he led the way out of town, southward on the Road.

The murder scene was at the first milestone they came to. Gyllen dismounted there and pointed sullenly at a patch of grass behind the stone.

Aloê dismounted and got a coldlight from her bag. She tapped it against the milestone and it sprang into luminous life. She looked closely at the patch of ground.

Yes: someone had bled deeply here. The imprint of the body was clear in the deep, dry grass. And . . . and. . . .

She bent down and scooped up what she saw glittering there next to the bloodstain.

A spell-anchor. Like the spell-anchors she and Denynê had recovered from Earno’s body—Denynê who had taken those anchors with her—Denynê who was now missing.

Was this truly one of those seven anchors? Or just one that looked like them? Had it fallen here by accident or been left here by design? More damn questions. She was sick of them.

It didn’t look like the murderer had gone away through the grass on the side of the Road. Why should they? The murderer had no doubt stepped away from Oluma’s corpse and walked or ridden wherever they chose along the Road.

If Aloê was right, her next stop was A Thousand Towers: to find out who had the knowledge of when Earno was passing this way. Somehow she thought the killer was down there, too. Predatory beasts hide in deep waters after a kill. Murderers would hide in a city.

“Gyllen, I am done with you,” she said. “If you are lucky, we won’t meet again.”

“What difference does a death or two make?” Gyllen said sullenly. “The world is ending, and soon we’ll all die. We should be making ships to cross the Sea of Worlds, not looking for bloody footprints.”

“The next bloody footprint you see,” said Aloê, “will be mine—across your face.”

She mounted her palfrey and rode away southward.

The poor beast couldn’t travel much farther tonight, but she didn’t want to return to Big Rock. She would sleep beside the Road. She would add to her arsenal of questions. And when she got to A Thousand Towers, she would damned well find some answers.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Sea Road to Grarby

“I object to water for its wetness, which is really its worst quality.” Deor would have gone on, but Morlock, weary of his incessant complaints, took a handful of water from the drinking barrel on deck, formed it into a ball, and threw it at him.

While Deor sputtered and the rowers cheered and laughed, Kelat stared in open-mouthed astonishment. “How did you do that?”

Morlock silently mimed the actions of throwing something.

“No, no: I mean the water. It held together like a snowball.”

“I convinced it to.”

“How?”

“Water is quite gullible, in small amounts,” the crooked man said.

Kelat reflected on this for a moment and said, “And in larger amounts?”

From the steering bench Lady Ambrosia said, “Moody. Dangerous. Usually beautiful, but always unpredictable. Sounds like your wife, Morlock, eh?”

Kelat was thinking that it sounded like Lady Ambrosia, but he didn’t think it right to say so. Somehow Morlock had convinced her to bring him along on this journey; he didn’t want to wreck anything, the way he usually managed to do.

Deor, quenched in more ways than one, came back to sit by Morlock. “Harven, have I been getting tiresome?” he asked quietly.

Morlock opened one hand, closed it.

Evidently Deor knew what that meant and said, “Sorry.”

“Eh. Don’t let it worry you.”

It was the second night of their travels, and by dead reckoning they were fairly near their destination, the settlement of Gray Folk on the northeast coast of the Sea of Storms. Kelat had never been on a sea voyage that long, and he loved it. He stood by whenever Morlock and Ambrosia took the bearings of true-east and true-north with the seastone and plotted their progress on the map. He took turns at the oars. He took turns spelling the drummer who helped the rowers keep time. He stood watches as lookout. He spent time watching the different techniques of the steersman (or steerswoman, in Ambrosia’s case). He wished the journey would never end.

He turned to look past the prow and sang out, “Fire on the horizon.” There was a dim red spark there, where the darkness of the sky met the darkness of the sea.

“Where? What? How?” Deor demanded.

“Dead ahead,” Kelat said, pointing. “Something burning. I don’t know how.”

“I see it,” Ambrosia said grimly. “That’s where Grarby ought to be. Any thoughts, Morlock?”

“Get closer,” he said.

“Boat’s made of wood, Morlock,” Ambrosia observed. “Wood burns.”

“It burns?” Morlock looked around in surprise. “Why?”

“Because. . . . Because. . . . Shut your stupid face!”

Morlock shrugged. “Closer.”

“So we go closer,” Ambrosia said. “But listen to me, Master Drummer and all you oarsmen! Be prepared to go to half speed.”

They drove on into the dark water, and the red bud on the horizon grew into a bright, burning flower.

“Lady,” said the captain, “we can beach the ship north of Grarby and march with you.”

“Vornon, you’re a giant,” said Ambrosia easily, “but it can’t be. This ship and crew must return intact to the fleet to help defend our fishing waters.”

The flower grew. Its red light spread toward them, like bright petals cast on the dark water. Ambrosia ordered half speed.

She called the rowers to halt when they could actually see individual buildings on fire in Grarby.

“Haul out the skiff,” she said.

The oarsman stood and moved their benches. They reached down into the innards of the hull and drew out a narrow little skiff on ropes. Morlock came over to help them lower it over the prow into the water.

“What is that?” Deor asked, in real distress.

Ambrosia stood up from the steering bench, stretched luxuriously (causing several sailors to stare wildly—including Kelat, he feared) and leaped forward to clap Deor on the shoulder. “That’s the last boat to Grarby, Deortheorn! Climb aboard!”

“It’ll sink.”

“Then we’ll swim. Get your stuff and come on!”

Deor glumly grabbed his pack and Morlock’s; Kelat ran back to fetch his own and heard Ambrosia say quietly to Vornon, “You’re in command now. Get this ship back and put it at the Vice-Regent’s disposal. Stand by him, Vornon. It will be a long, hard year, and that brings out the traitor in weak-minded men.”

“You’ll be gone for a year?” Vornon said.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, but I don’t know how soon that will be. Carry out my orders, soldier.”