“Grey boys,” I mused. Grey boys were imperial troops of the northern armies. “Bit out of their territory.”

“Deserters,” Lady said. “The dissolution has begun.”

“Likely.” I frowned. I had hoped decay would hold off till we got a running start.

Lady mused, “Three months ago travelling the empire was safe for a virgin alone.”

She exaggerated. But not much. Before the struggle in the Barrowland consumed them, great powers called the Taken watched over the provinces and requited unlicensed wickedness swiftly and ferociously. Still, in any land or time, there are those brave or fool enough to test the limits, and others eager to follow their example. That process was accelerating in an empire bereft of its cementing horrors.

I hoped their passing had not yet become a general suspicion. My plans depended on the assumption of old guises.

“Shall we start digging?” Otto asked.

“In a minute,” I said. “How long ago did it happen, Hagop?”

“Couple of hours.”

“And nobody’s been along?”

“Oh, yeah. But they just went around.”

“Must be a nice bunch of bandits,” One-Eye mused. “If they can get away with leaving bodies laying around.”

“Maybe they’re supposed to be seen,” I said. “Could be they’re trying to carve out their own barony.”

“Likely,” Lady said. “Ride carefully, Croaker.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

One-Eye cackled. I reddened. But it was good to see some life in her.

We buried the bodies but left the coach. Civilized obligation fulfilled, we resumed our journey.

Two hours later Goblin came riding back. Murgen stationed himself where he could be seen on a curve. We were in a forest now, but the road was in good repair, with the woods cleared back from its sides. It was a road upgraded for military traffic.

Goblin said, “There’s an inn up ahead. I don’t like its feel.”

Night would be along soon. We had spent the afternoon planting the dead. “It look alive?” The countryside had gotten strange after the burying. We met no one on the road. The farms near the woods were abandoned.

“Teeming. Twenty people in the inn. Five more in the stables. Thirty horses. Another twenty people out in the woods. Forty more horses penned there. A lot of other livestock, too.”

The implications seemed obvious enough. Pass by, or meet trouble head-on?

The debate was brisk. Otto and Hagop said straight in. We had One-Eye and Goblin if it got hairy.

One-Eye and Goblin did not like being put on the spot.

I demanded an advisory vote. Murgen and Lady abstained. Otto and Hagop were for stopping. One-Eye and Goblin eyeballed one another, each waiting for the other to jump so he could come down on the opposite side.

“We go straight at it, then,” I said. “These clowns are going to split but still make a majority for...” Whereupon the wizards ganged up and voted to jump in just to make a liar out of me.

Three minutes later I caught my first glimpse of the ramshackle inn. A hardcase stood in the doorway, studying Goblin. Another sat in a rickety chair, tilted against the wall, chewing a stick or piece of straw. The man in the doorway withdrew.

Grey boys Hagop had called the bandits whose handiwork we encountered on the road. But grey was the color of uniforms in the territories whence we came. In Forsberger, the most common language in the northern forces, I asked the man in the chair, “Place open for business?”

“Yeah.” Chair-sitter’s eyes narrowed. He wondered.

“One-Eye. Otto. Hagop. See to the animals.” Softly, I asked, “You catching anything, Goblin?”

“Somebody just went out the back. They’re on their feet inside. But it don’t look like trouble right away.”

Chair-sitter did not like us whispering. “How long you reckon on staying?” he asked. I noted a tatoo on one wrist, another giveaway betraying him as an immigrant from the north.

“Just tonight.”

“We’re crowded, but we’ll fit you in somehow.” He was a cool one.

Trapdoor spiders, these deserters. The inn was their base, the place where they marked out their victims. But they did their dirt on the road.

Silence reigned inside the inn. We examined the men there as we entered, and a few women who looked badly used. They did not ring true. Wayside inns usually are family-run establishments, infested with kids and old folks and all the oddities in between. None of those were evident. Just hard men and bad women.

There was a large table available near the kitchen door. I seated myself with my back to a wall. Lady plopped down beside me. I sensed her anger. She was not accustomed to being looked at the way these men were looking at her.

She remained beautiful despite road dirt and rags.

I rested a hand upon one of hers, a gesture of restraint rather than of possession.

A plump girl of sixteen with haunted bovine eyes came to ask how many we were, our needs in food and quarters, whether bath water should be heated, how long we meant to tarry, what was the color of our coin. She did it listlessly but right, as though beyond hope, filled only with dread of the cost of doing it wrong.

I intuited her as belonging to the family who rightfully operated the inn.

I tossed her a gold piece. We had plenty, having looted certain imperial treasures before departing the Barrow-land. The flicker of the spinning coin sparked a sudden glitter in the eyes of men pretending not to be watching.

One-Eye and the others clumped in, dragged up chairs. The little black man whispered, “There’s a big stir out in the woods. They have plans for us.” A froggish grin yanked at the left corner of his mouth. I gathered he might have plans of his own. He likes to let the bad guys ambush themselves.

“There’s plans and plans,” I said. “If they are bandits, we’ll let them hang themselves.”

He wanted to know what I meant. My schemes sometimes got more nasty than his. That is because I lose my sense of humor and just go for maximum dirt.

We rose before dawn. One-Eye and Goblin used a favorite spell to put everyone in the inn into a deep sleep.

Then they slipped out to repeat their performance in the woods. The rest of us readied our animals and gear. I had a small skirmish with Lady. She wanted me to do something for the women kept captive by the brigands.

“If I try to right every wrong I run into, I’ll never get to Khatovar.”

She did not respond. We rode out minutes later.

One-Eye said we were near the end of the forest. “This looks as good a place as any,” I said. Murgen, Lady, and I turned into the woods west of the road. Hagop, Otto, and Goblin turned east. One-Eye just turned around and waited.

He was doing nothing apparent. Goblin was busy, too.

“What if they don’t come?” Murgen asked.

“Then we guessed wrong. They’re not bandits. I’ll send them an apology on the wind.”

Nothing got said for a while. When next I moved forward to check the road One-Eye was no longer alone. A half-dozen horsemen backed him. My heart twisted. His phantoms were all men I had known, old comrades, long dead.

I retreated, more shaken than I had expected. My emotional state did not improve. Sunlight dropped through the forest canopy to dapple the doubles of more dead friends. They waited with shields and weapons ready, silently, as befit ghosts.

They were not ghosts, really, except in my mind. They were illusions crafted by One-Eye. Across the road Goblin was raising his own shadow legion.

Given time to work, those two were quite the artists.

There was no doubt, now, even who Lady was.

“Hoofbeats,” I said, needlessly. “They’re coming.”

My stomach turned over. Had I bet to an inside straight? Taken too long a shot? If they chose to fight... If Goblin or One-Eye faltered...

“Too late for debate, Croaker.”

I looked at Lady, a glowing memory of what she had been. She was smiling. She knew my mind. How many times had she been there herself, albeit on a grander game board?