Bastion

his fingers under it, so tightly his breath was choked off immediately and he couldn’t make a sound. Quick knife to the kidney to paralyze him, twist, remove, wipe and resheath. Then softly lowering him to the cave floor, garrote still choking off any possibility of breath. Holding the wire tight, one foot on the man’s shoulders, as the body quivered and stilled.
    “Tsk,” Bey said in his ear. “I heard his feet drumming on the stone. You must learn to do better than that.”
    “I’d just as soon not, thanks,” Mags whispered back, letting go of the end of the garrote, which had a wooden handle so he didn’t destroy his fingers while choking a man to death. “Good job on those two, I didn’t hear a thing.”
    “I would have been devastated if you had.” Bey bent and got the wire off the cooling corpse’s neck. “Take this and go back to the caravan. I will dispose of this offal.”
    •   •   •
    Bey must have been incredibly strong; he had picked up the body and thrown it over his shoulder as if it were a sack of grain. Then again, Bey hadn’t been starved for most of his life, and he had been training physically for most of his life.
    Mags felt both unclean and conflicted. On the one hand, since he had Bey’s memories, it felt satisfying to have pulled off such a clean kill. A job well done, like a good Kirball goal—
    On the other hand, he had just murdered a man in cold blood, and he felt unclean.
    Bey was not being cautious on his return; there was no need. Mags saw him moving across the cave floor, and he settled in next to Mags on the straw with a sigh.
    “What happens to the talismans when the Sleepgivers die?” he whispered.
    “The talismans die with them, and the Ancestor Spirits are released.” Bey paused. “Mind, I cannot swear that the spirits imprisoned in the talismans are actually the Spirits of our Ancestors.” He paused again. “In fact . . . the more I think about it, the less likely that seems. Because if they were the Spirits of our Ancestors, one would think they would inform each other when a talisman-bearer falls. And yet, they do not.”
    “Sounds more like a Karsite demon to me,” Mags said, after a while.
    “All the more reason to cease this practice,” said Bey, firmly. “But, I think I will leave this until I am Shadao. There is no sense in making trouble for myself until I am in power.”
    “Well, now what happens?” Mags asked.
    “Now . . . ehu, I am torn.” Bey sighed in the darkness. Then there was a rustling of straw, Bey picked up one of his hands and put a familiar shape into it. “Please to eat of this apple while I think.” The sounds of someone biting into a crisp fruit told him Bey was taking his own advice. Mags realized that his throat and mouth were very dry, and did the same. “Well . . . if I were to order you, I would tell you to remove your talisman and send your mind up above, among the Sleepgivers, to see what you might find.”
    “Not certain I’d find anything,” Mags offered. “The last couple of times I tried that, back in Haven, the talismans of the Sleepgivers saw me and shut me out.”
    “But they did not warn their bearers?” Bey bit, and chewed. The clean scent of apple wafted around both of them. Bey, like Mags, had the habit of eating his apples seeds and all. A desert dweller’s habit, in Bey’s case, and the habit of a boy who had mostly starved in Mags’.
    There was a frown in Bey’s voice when he spoke again. “I cannot imagine a Spirit of one of my Ancestors not warning me when the Blessed were sniffing about my mind. And the Spirits in the Talismans are supposed to be the Spirits of the greatest of the Sleepgivers. So, so, so. Either they are very stupid Spirits, or they do not think kindly enough of their bearers to protect them in that way. Something to think on. Well, then . . . are you brave enough, oh, my cousin, to send your mind aloft?”
    Mags didn’t even have to think about it twice. They needed information, and that was a fact. And he’d rather be doing this, than choking a man to death.
    “I can do this . . . passively, if that makes any sense. Let things come to me. That’s less likely to alert them.” He took his talisman off, finished his apple and settled himself.
    It was a matter of expanding shields, he knew now, rather than dropping them. He could safely ignore his friends, huddled in the dead-end tunnel . . . and he was glad he was not an Empath. Their