She caught something with that closer look, started slightly, glanced at Smoke. The wizard replied with a tiny nod. She looked at Blade. "You choose to leave me?"

"I'm going with somebody who can get something done besides talk."

That was a long speech for Blade and one that won him no sympathy. The Radisha glared.

"He's got a point," Swan said. "You and your brother just keep fiddling."

"We're more exposed." People in positions like theirs do have to act within constraints or get pulled down. But try to explain that to men who have never been anything but momentary captains and didn't want that power when they had it.

The Radisha rose. "Come," she told us. As we walked, she told me, "I am pleased that you survived. Though you may find it difficult to continue doing so."

That didn't sound like a threat, exactly. "What?"

"You're in a difficult position because your Captain didn't survive." She led us up a spiral stair to the parapet of the fortress's tallest tower. My companions were as puzzled as I. The Radisha pointed.

Beyond the trees and construction across the river there was a large, ragtag encampment. The Radisha said, "Some fugitives crossed elsewhere and carried word north. People started arriving the day after Swan rode south. There are about two thousand already. There'll be thousands more."

"Who are they?" Swan asked.

"Families of legionnaires. Families of men the Shadowmasters enslaved. They've come to find out what happened to their menfolk." She pointed upstream.

Scores of women were stacking wood. I asked, "What are they doing?"

"Building ghats." Narayan sounded nonplussed. "I should have considered that."

"What are ghats?"

"Funeral pyres," Mather said. "The Gunni burn their dead instead of burying them." He looked a little green.

I didn't follow. "There aren't any dead here. Unless somebody makes some." A symbolic gesture? Funerals in absentia?