Manrie expected the people to flee, but instead they stood up from their tables as the dead went past them. There was something expectant and reverential in their postures. The food was forgotten, and the grease-smeared faces shone in the dying light. They looked relieved. “But don’t the people of Raesidae want their dead to rest?” Manrie whispered to herself.

  Koenbahki answered her in the same low tone. “Some do. I do. They are not my dead. I’m frightened, Manrie.”

  She took the other girl’s hand, and looked around for Little Praeda. Taeyaho was comforting her, holding her in his lap, one thin hand covering her eyes. The silent procession moved between the tables. The spirits’ faces were strangely still, as if they were deep in thought or listening to some distant music. In life they must have moved through shades of expression, showed joy or sorrow, teased and scowled. Now they were reduced to the same mask of distraction, worn on every face. They did not seem aware of the crowd as they walked over the bridge.

  The figures that led the shimmering parade reached the furthest of the Jahnajeel tables and began to pass it. Braedsmi Jahnajeel was grinning with delight and bouncing on his toes like a small child. The Jahnajeel, too, had been rearranged by Cloedeya’s feast. Braedsmi’s siblings were scattered throughout the other tables. But as the ghosts left the bridge the triplets moved together, and the rest of their household began to follow them, the clients crowding close behind them, the slaves at the back, as if the ghosts had reasserted the social order. Only the tall veiled woman and the short, unnoticeable woman who was her companion stayed seated at the head table.

  Cloedeya was at Manrie’s side, his voice urgent. “Manrie, could you go back into the barrow? Could you see if the disc is still there?”

  Manrie shivered at the thought of standing in that dark, cavernous place, with no sense of walls or enclosure, bounded only by the permanent night. “Why?” she asked, in a small voice.

  “She doesn’t need to,” Big Praeda said. “It’s obvious that the Jahnajeel have stolen the disc.”

  “But how?” Cloedeya asked, and his voice seethed with desperation. They all turned to look at the veiled woman, who had walked past them on the bridge that morning, going to Jahnajeel House. Cloedeya took a step forward, as if he meant to confront her, but Big Praeda blocked him. And then people were moving around them, having left their meals to follow the procession to the east bank of the river. “Why?” Cloedeya asked, glaring at them, and Manrie thought *he is angry and he’s never angry — he must be very afraid.*

  “It’s been like this,” Koenbahki said miserably. “Not for all of us. But every night, certain people have found their way to the Jahnajeel. To hear the dead speak.”

  A figure passed close to them and Cloedeya called out to him. “Gaelstrup, where are you going?”

  The stable master’s big face swung towards him, and his head shook rapidly, like that of an anxious horse. “You had no right,” he hissed. “No right to hide our dead. The Jahnajeel have brought them back.”

  “But how can you want that?”

  “She talks to me. My Sahlda. I can hear her again, in the mouth of Haelahza Jahnajeel.” He turned away, and Manrie studied the other faces, all avid, some joyous, each seeking a reprieve from grief.

  The other caravaners were whispering among themselves. “If they’ve taken the disc, we need to get it back.”

  “Why? Maybe it’s better there. Why shouldn’t they speak to their dead?”

  “But it’s selfish!” This was Big Praeda. “Some get solace, but everyone else is afraid.”

  “Raesidae has always been a selfish place.”

  “Was that really the witch? Why would she want to play games with the disc?”

  “It can’t be the witch. Why would they tolerate her?”

  “Enough!” Cloedeya said. He turned to Manrie. “Will you…” he hesitated, suddenly shy, almost diffident. “We should go together. To Jahnajeel House. How else will we know?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But not Little Praeda.”

  “No. Just you and I.” He looked around. “And maybe you, Taeyaho, if you’re willing.”

  The boy lowered his bright head, his sweet features clouded with reluctance. But he nodded.

  “And the rest of us?” Big Praeda demanded. “Are we to just stay here and do the dishes?”

  “Come with us if you want. But I won’t ask you to.”

  “I’ll stay,” Uku said. “None of my dead are here.”

  “I…I’ll stay too,” Melsa said, all the events of the night having returned her to shyness.

  “My dead aren’t here, either,” Koenbahki said, “but I want to go.” She squeezed Manrie’s hand.

  “Big Praeda?” Cloedeya asked.

  The last glimmer of sunlight flushed across Big Praeda’s wide cheeks. “I’ll stay and take care of Little Praeda. I have no need to talk with the dead.”

  Cloedeya nodded. He turned and began to walk towards the east side of the river. The others fell in beside him. They passed the littered tables, and Manrie looked with regret at the neglected feast. She glanced behind her and saw that the Zairiset were making their exodus towards the west bank, followed by the other families. And she understood how Raesidae was divided. Not only between slave and free, client and patron, and between the four merchant houses. Divided between those who grieved and those who didn’t. Like every place, she supposed.

  And then they were at the end of the bridge, and turning to the south, walking down the road that ran beside the river. The thin moon was casting its light over the lake water. The night had fully arrived. Somewhere out there in the middle of the lake was the witch’s island. If the woman in the veil was really the witch, there was a boat tied up somewhere along the shore, hidden away. Manrie imagined a rough hewn vessel, scarred wood made tarry with curses.

  The road turned east and brought them under the portico of Jahnajeel House, and there was no one to stop them from going through the six rounded doors. As they passed through a tunnel in the wall, the sound of water in the caves below boomed up at them. It seemed to Manrie like the sound of a giant fist, knocking on a door. They came out into a wide courtyard and found themselves at the back of a crowd of people. There were trees growing up from the dusty ground, gnarled and twisted as if they were growing out of the side of a cliff. There was a pool at the center of the courtyard, with a low wall tiled in blue speckled with lantern light. Seeing it, Manrie felt a wave of deja vu. The same shade of blue as the tiles on the stairs that led to Aizdha’s chambers. The tiles that she had gone up and down for years as she served her master. The scholarly part of her mind named the beetle from which the glazers extracted that blue shade. But the rest of her mind seemed to fill again with the pungent smoke of the betzazarra that the stranger had packed into Aizdha’s pipe. She felt time constricting. Only Koenbahki’s hand in her own kept her rooted to reality.

  Nuhrmer Jahnajeel was speaking, his breath moving his veil. His rank odor seemed to travel with his words, and some of the people in the crowd were not shy about holding cloths to their noses. He was addressing an old woman who stood close to him, trembling as if she were afraid or moved deeply by fear or love. “Grandmama, I am here,” Nuhrmer said in a high pitched voice. The voice of a child, although Nuhrmer’s stockiness was visible beneath his robes. “I am here, and I love you. I forgive you for taking my rag doll. I was naughty, I admit it. I didn’t mean to burn the hem of your robes.”

  “Child,” the old woman said, her voice cracking, “child, I am to blame. If I had held my anger, you wouldn’t have run down to the lake and…” A sob. She buried her face in the sleeve of her robe.

  “Grandmama, that was my choice. My action. I could have stayed. I could have apologized. You are not to blame.”

  “But I am,” the old woman sobbed. “I am!”

  “No. And I am not unhappy, here in death. I rest. I feel as if I lived a full life. It was my only life. How could it not be full?”

  “Speak for my father!” an impatient voice called out from the crowd. Manrie could barely stand to look at the townspeople’s faces. They all seemed distorted to her, leering, as if they were more hungry than sad. As if their everyday faces were only masks that hid a desperate need.

  Braedsmi Jahnjaeel turned his head toward the man. He was veiled, but his glowing eyes were wide with approval. “You should do what he says,” his sister murmured.

  “I will do what you say,” Braedsmi said, as if the thought had just occurred to him and he was delighted by his own cleverness.

  Then he went rigid, his back arched, his hands gripped the edge of the cistern. He began to shake, a wild trembling that threw him down into the dirt beside the well, where he writhed as the crowd watched him in silence. When it subsided his sister leaned forward and extended a hand to draw him up. He stood, hunched over, his head quavering beneath the veil. “I am here, Ruprae. What is it you ask of me?”

  “Father, where did you bury the gold? That bag you stole from that traveling merchant? I have looked everywhere, but I cannot find it. Where is it, Father?”

  “In the caves below, my boy. Do you have the courage to go and seek it there?” He let out a howl of delight, as if he had played a great joke on the man.

  “But where are the ghosts?” Manrie hissed. “I don’t see them here, in the courtyard.”

  “I think…I think they’re in the cistern,” Koenbahki said.

  “In the water?”

  “Yes. Won’t they spoil it? Would people really drink that water after this?”

  Manrie wanted to move closer, but everyone had suddenly stilled. She glanced back and saw the tall, veiled figure emerging from the tunnel behind her. People shifted away, pressing close to each other. Braedsmi’s body shook and then he straightened, the guise of the old man flying off of him. The veiled woman stalked forward, the separate strands of her strange robes undulating softly in the still air. She stood before the twins and said, “Speak of Tirtatehni Jahnajeel.” Her raised a hand as Braedsmi opened his mouth. “Do not call her!” she hissed. “Call her brother. Call her father.”

  Manrie moved, pushing through the crowd to the side of the courtyard, from where she could see the triplets in profile and the wide pool of the cistern behind them. Koenbahki came with her, and she was aware of Taeyaho and Cloedeya following after. There was some secret communication passing between the veiled figures. Manrie could almost feel the tattered woman’s will, as if it was a stone pressing down on her. She could sense the Jahnajeel siblings giving way to it. The only sign of their surrender was a wisp of light that rose over the pool. A sinuous band, like a beam of sunlight that had been twisted. A face passed along it, and Haelahza went rigid. Her brothers held her as she shook, rooting her to her seat on the rim of the cistern. Then the shaking stopped, and she raised a steady hand and pulled her veil away.

  Her face was clean, shining, her features very regular and attractive. But her mouth was pinched and lines had formed around it, a miser’s mouth. “I am too old to be disturbed,” she said in a querulous voice. The voice of an old man.

  “You are Stahmak Jahnajeel?” the tattered woman asked.

  “I am he.”

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  She turned her head to Nuhrmer. “Summon his son. Summon Abaalcri.”

  The stink coming off of Nuhrmer seemed to grow, as if it was the effulgence of fear. Manrie gasped. It was like a wall of putrescence. And then it was gone, and a shape was rising out of the pool. It seized the stocky man and he fell face forward, down into the dirt. No one helped him up. His brother Braedsmi beamed down at him, as if delighted to see him stricken. His spasming hands quieted, and then they flattened against the earth, and he pushed himself to standing and faced the tattered woman, his shoulders thrown back in arrogant self-regard.

  “Abaalcri Jahnajeel, you believe that the grave has absolved you of your crimes,” the tattered woman said. “I call you forth before this tribunal of your descendants. You must speak the words that you have kept hidden. You must tell of your transgression.”

  The veiled head moved as if in protest, and then bent forward, cowed. “It was not my fault,” a voice hissed from beneath the veil. “She always enticed me. Even when we were children. She always touched me. We would reach for a ball at the same time. Or she would hold up some morsel for me to taste. She would leave her window open when she was dressing. One night she saw me watching her, and made to close the shutters. But I saw the look of regret on her face as they closed.”

  “She was barely a woman. She was your sister.”

  “She flirted with everyone. All of the men of Raesidae. And I had to endure their comments, their sneers. She kissed Danalbawae Nahrm under the spruce tree beyond the barrow. I saw her. I saw his hands on her. And when she sat at dinner that night she looked at me. I knew what she wanted of me.”

  “When you called her into your chambers, she was frightened when you shut the door. You had sent all of the slaves away. Your father had traveled to Yenceyan.”

  “She pretended to be afraid. I saw what she wanted. It was in her eyes. I knew that she felt it, too. We were held by the same desire.”

  “You were not. You raped her.”

  “No.”

  “You raped her, and then you were ashamed, so when your father returned you told him that you had caught her entertaining a traveling merchant in her chambers.” The tattered veil swung towards Haelahza. “You did not believe him, Stahmak Jahnajeel. You closed yourself in your room and pondered what you should do. Why did you decide what you decided?” The woman’s voice rasped over the last words, and Manrie thought that this was the source of her anger. All of her outrage over the rape concentrated within its aftermath.

  Haelahza’s pretty face clouded with self-loathing. “They made me choose!” she complained, her voice quavering. “They made me choose between them. My children. If what my daughter said was true, my son would be disgraced. My line would end. Jahnajeel House would fall, and could no longer claim its place among the First Families. We would have to flee, to leave our beautiful home, to leave the lake, to try to find our way in Yenceyan. And the story would follow us. It would follow us everywhere. How a brother raped his sister. Besides, who would the townspeople believe? My upright son, so canny in his business dealings. Or my daughter, already known as a flirt and much given to seeking the attention of men.”

  Haleahza stared at the tattered woman. Crows feet had grown around her eyes and dark patches weighed them down. “It was not an easy decision. I sat in my room, in the dark, for three days. I could not stand my life, could not accept what my son had done. I never accepted it. I killed myself a year later. My daughter was gone, and there he sat, day after day, making sums in the counting rooms, taking inventory in the vault, preparing goods for travel. He, who had never touched a woman before, now fondled every slave. I watched him, and I knew that I had created him with my lie. Better that he had died. But I made sure he married, made sure that his wife became pregnant. And then I sailed out into the lake and set my boat afire.”

  “You are not absolved,” the tattered woman said. She turned to Braedsmi Jahnajeel. “Summon Olaeyorg, the fisherman.”

  This spirit came reluctantly out of the cistern, a meager, flickering light. It settled on the smiling Braedsmi with an air of apology. His smile faded. His lips turned downwards and a line appeared between his eyebrows as he scowled. “I am here.”

  “Tell it,” the tattered woman demanded. “Tell how you rowed her to the island.”

  “I was meant to kill her. To take her onto the water and push her from the boat. Three gold coins I had from Stahmak Jahnajeel to do this deed. But I am not a murderer. I knew of the island, as I had sailed further into the lake than many a man. I took her there, and left her with provisions. And I returned to her, again and again throughout the years.”

  “She begged you to take her back to shore. She was so lonely. Cold at night. Afraid. Bitten by the spiders that crawl from the sand. Threatened by the snakes that sun themselves on the rocks. She slept in trees at night, and spoke to no one.”

  “I could not take her back. Her brother would have learned that she was still alive.”

  “You could have taken her to the western shore. You could have released her to find her way in the land.”

  “I was good to her. I never forced her. She tried her wiles on me, and when I would not bend to her requests, I did not demand that she continue.”

  “You were happy to lay with her, but you were deaf to her entreaties.”

  “I suffered enough,” the spirit said mulishly. “She cursed me. I was the first that she cursed.”

  “And when you fell ill, you made no provision for her. You sent no one to the island with food. She cursed you, and it meant her end.”

  At that moment a gust of wind rushed through the six doors and into the courtyard. People bowed under it. Voices cried out. Manrie cowered away from it. It slammed into Braesdmi and Halaehza and pushed them back into the cistern. Nuhrmer fell to the ground and cowered against the cistern wall. People were running for the tunnels, pushing against the wind. The tattered woman had disappeared.

  Manrie hunched her body and crawled forward, buffeted, her robes flaring around her. There was a voice calling through the wind, a sharp, angry voice, but none of the words were meant for her. They slid around her and refused to enter her ears. She came to the edge of the cistern and looked down. Braesdmi and Halaehza were flailing around in the water, their robes billowing up around them. Manrie saw the disc glowing at the very bottom of the cistern, and put a foot up onto the rim. A hand grabbed at her.

  “What are you doing?” Koenbahki screamed. Her voice was full of terror. But she had followed Manrie to the well. Such courage must be love. Manrie gave into it. She stepped back. She could see the spirits in the roiling water, their faces shifting across the surface. Halaehza had managed to thrash her way to the edge. She lifted an entreating hand to Manrie, and Manrie took it and began to pull at her. Then Taeyaho was at her side, and Cloedeya, and together they helped the scrambling woman out of the water. Braedsmi came next. He was smiling again. His body was spastic with fear, yet the grin could not leave his face. Manrie stared into the vacuum of that grin as she helped him from the water.

  The wind had died. The triplets shivered against the edge of the cistern. Halaehza was crying. Nuhrmer was cursing quietly, and the words were as foul as his stench. Braedsmi grinned and grinned.

  Cloedeya bent, meaning to comfort Halaehza, but she hissed at him and bared her teeth, just like a wet cat. Slaves were shuffling forward, reluctant and afraid. They came in a group, finding safety in numbers. They subsumed their cowering masters and patted at them with the sleeves of their dried robes. Cloedeya stepped back and watched, critically, his eyes made even more asymmetrical by his distress. Then he caught the glances of the other caravaners, gave a sad little nod, and led them away.

  They went back through the tunnels and out onto the road. Below them, water boomed in the cave. As if it was the voice of the stars, shouting down into the ground and echoing up at them. Manrie looked out at the placid lake water. She found that she was shaking, as if she’d just emerged from that water, and, like a dog, was trying to find a way to dry herself. And suddenly she found all of it so repulsive. The three weird triplets. The lascivious swiveling of Pruetahna Zairiset’s bony hips. The meek little woman who hid beside the woman in the tattered veils - the witch - the ghost. Koenbahki chose that moment to try to take her hand, and Manrie was suddenly sick of her as well. The speed with which she’d tried to claim an intimacy that she had no right to. Her cloying need.

  She brushed Koenbahki away and quickened her pace to catch up to Cloedeya, who was walking with his head down, dejected. For a moment she let his silence rest, but only for a moment. Her mind was casting around for something to comment on, something to say that would fill the awful silence and give vent to her hatred of this place. A shimmer of moonlight across the lake water caught her eye.

  “I don’t know why it gets so loud when it goes into the caverns,” she said, her voice tart with bitterness. Then she paused over her own words. “Cloedeya, where to they get the salt?”

  “The salt?” he asked.

  “Those wagons on the way to Yenceyan. You said they were carrying salted fish. Where do the Jahnajeel get the salt?”

  She had managed to rouse him from his brooding. “I don’t know. I suppose they trade for it.”

  “Have they always salted their fish?”

  “As long as I remember.” He shrugged, with an uncharacteristic lack of curiosity. But she understood. He hated Residae, too. He had spent his childhood trying to get away, trying not to think about his home. She could picture him leaving, setting out on the road and slowly being charmed by the world as he journeyed further and further from his birthplace. Seduced by it, when perhaps he hadn’t liked it at all when he left home.

  They came onto the bridge, and saw Big Praeda and Little Praeda and Melsa moving among the tables, in the company of the household slaves. They were taking the platters of half-eaten food and sadly scraping them into the water below. Melsa looked up and caught Manrie’s eye. She blushed. For a moment Manrie was confused by her embarrassment, but as she stepped closer, she heard a high, piercing groan coming from one of the wagons. Then panting, squealing, high and ecstatic howls. Offered to the night as if they were a musical performance. Koenbahki came up beside Manrie and tilted her head to the right, listening closely, her lips pursed as if she were a connoisseur of such sounds. “No one I know,” she said briefly.

  “Who is it?” Manrie demanded of Melsa. “Who’s in our wagon?”

  Melsa couldn’t meet her eye. “Tafaemi...and Uku.”

  “Uku! Uku? But…why? I don’t understand.”

  “She’s been making eyes at him all day.”

  “So? He doesn’t have to respond!”

  “But he chose to.”

  Manrie turned in fury. She found herself staring straight into Cloedeya’s face. All those nights when he and Big Praeda and Melsa had disappeared into one of the wagons. It was as if they had been creating this moment between them. Turning the caravan into a place that allowed more than food and friendship. That allowed this. He hadn’t ever really fled from Raesidae. He had carried Pruetahna Zairiset’s smug carnality within him. As if it were a disease that had infected him, that he had spread to the two women he traveled with. She almost spit on him in her anger.

  Behind him, Taeyaho retreated into an embarrassed sulk. No wonder he went and slept in caves when he could. She brushed past him, fleeing the bridge, running deliberately into the eery and demanding shadows of Jahnajeel House. Back through the entrance tunnels, back into the abandoned courtyard, only stopping at the edge of the cistern, where she gazed down past the blue tiles, into the cloudy depths. She thought that she could see the disc glowing beneath the murk that the spirits had brought to the water. She poised to dive, then stopped. Why should it matter? Didn’t Raesidae deserve this? Deserve seances and the accusations of the dead? Deserve to never move beyond past crimes, to flagellate themselves with guilt and never believe a word of forgiveness? Why should she rescue them? Why should she rescue anyone? The world deserved its ghosts. The discs could stay with the Man on the Mountain, as far as she was concerned.

  A movement out of the corner of her eye. The small, frightened woman, the mother of the triplets. Maedreth. Manrie went for her. The woman tried to dart away, to find sanctuary in the shadow of a pillar. Manrie grabbed her and shook her by her rough robes. Slave’s robes. But this woman wasn’t a slave.

  “Don’t see me! Don’t see me!” Maedreth cried.

  “That won’t work on me. I haven’t heard it a million times. You haven’t lulled me into thinking you’re not here.”

  “Don’t see me!”

  “Why are you like this? Why do you just let things happen to you?”

  “Don’t see me!”

  “Stop it! I see you. You are here. You are real. You don’t deserve your curse.”

  “You heard her! We all deserve it!”

  “Because of something your ancestors did? Because a man decided to rape his sister, and his father didn’t punish him?”

  The little woman looked down. She was breathing quickly, spastically, her bird-like form fluttering in Manrie’s arms. “She hates us,” Maedreth whispered. “She curses us all.”

  “Is that why she left her island? To accuse you? To curse you some more?”

  Wide, luminous eyes lifted to her. The tight, wizened face seemed to flatten. “She came because the ghosts are walking. Because she can confront them now, when she couldn’t in life.”

  “And you’re helping her. You’ve been with her all day. She brought the disc from the barrow. She gave it to your children.” Then Maedreth’s words caught up with her thoughts. “Confront them? In life? But she couldn’t have known them.”

  “She did.”

  “A woman can’t live that long.”

  “Not a woman,” Maedreth’s voice was barely a whisper. “A ghost.”

  Manrie almost let her go. “A ghost?”

  “Her ghost.”

  “Whose? The girl who was raped? The witch’s?” Maedreth nodded. Then Manrie did release her. She stood back, stunned. “Both?” she asked. “The witch is a ghost? A spirit?” Another small, twitchy nod. “But she walked in the daylight,” Manrie protested. “She isn’t affected by the disc.”

  The little woman had no answer for that. She was looking away, her terror shrinking her. “Don’t see me,” she pleaded in a small voice. “Don’t see me.”

  Manrie felt the unwanted tug of pity. The same tug that had brought Cloedeya back here. Cloedeya, who didn’t think joy could be kept for oneself, or protected, but must be brought into the most terrible of places. Then her pity turned to anger. Anger at the witch, who could not let things lie, who had subjected generations of innocents to her revenge. What did Maedreth have to do, really, with that ancient crime? Yet here she was, trying to make herself a shadow. When she had given birth to her children, had anyone even noticed? Or had they found the infants abandoned, here in the courtyard? Or not abandon, but with a mother they could not see or notice? Raesidae was terrible, because the witch had made it terrible.

  Manrie turned and went to the edge of the cistern. She looked down into the cloudy depths. Then she shrugged out of her outer robes and dove.