I did not fool him. "She knew it was coming. The Greylings were here." Something behind the still chittered softly in reponse to the sound of his voice. Like the baobhas, the greylings are a harbinger of death. One of a great many in Hsien. Some of the things that had been howling in the wilderness earlier would have been, too.

I said the things you say to the young. "It was probably a blessing. She was in constant pain and there was nothing I could do for her anymore." The old woman's body had been a torment to her for as long as I had known her. Her last few years had been hell.

For a moment Tobo looked like a sad little boy who wanted to bury his face in his mother's skirt and shed some tears. Then he was a young man whose control was complete again. "She did live a long life and a fulfilled one, no matter how much she complained. The family owes One-Eye for that."

Complain she had, often and loudly, to everyone about everything and everyone else. I had been fortunate enough to miss much of the Gota era by having gotten myself buried alive for a decade and a half. Such a clever man am I. "Speaking of family, you'll have to find Doj. And you'd better send word to your mother. And as soon as you can you'll need to let us know about funeral arrangements." Nyueng Bao funerary customs seem almost whimsical. Sometimes they bury their dead, sometimes they burn them, sometimes they wrap them and hang them in trees. The rules are unclear.

"Doj will make the arrangements. I'm sure the Community will demand something traditional. In which case my place is somewhere out of the way."

The Community consists of those Nyueng Bao associated with the Black Company who have not enlisted formally and who have not yet disappeared into the mysterious reaches of the Land of Unknown Shadows.