parade ground. She popped the shutters and leaned out into the night air.
“I’d just as soon you kept the windows closed and stayed out of sight,” Walegrin
requested, unable to give her a direct order.
An inaudible sigh ran the length of her back. She pulled the boards closed and
stared expectantly at him. “I’m your prisoner, then?”
“Damn, woman-it’s for your own good. No one’s going to think of looking for you
here-but I can’t keep them out if they get a notion to look. If you’ve got any
close friends you think you’d be safer with you just tell me about them and I’ll
see that you spend the night there.”
Kama had pushed as hard and far as she dared-more from habit than grand design.
“Is there any food left below?” she asked in a more civil voice, “or water?”
“Fish stew with fat-back; some wine. I’ll send some up.”
“And water, please-I’d like to wash before my funeral rites.” She flashed the
smile that made men forget she was deadly.
Torchholder, still garbed in the regalia he had worn when the Beysa had healed
the Stormchildren, came to the garrison barracks flanked by the gravediggers.
The diggers demanded to view the body but Molin, once he saw Walegrin’s anxiety,
dismissed them with a wave of his hand.
“Not before the rites,” he snarled contemptously. “Until the spirit is
sanctified and released, the impure may not view the remains.”
“Ain’t no ‘Shankan funeral I’ve ever heard of,” the second of the gravediggers
complained to his superior.
“The man was an initiate into Vashanka’s Brotherhood. Would you risk the