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I wished I could tell Lady that we would be going home soon. She had no
     love for the Land of Unknown Shadows.
    I am sure she will not enjoy the future wherever we go. It is an absolute
     certainty that the times to come will not be good. I do not believe she
     understands that yet. Not in her heart.
    Even she can be naive about some things.
    “The short answer is that we can probably put a reinforced company across as
     early as next month. If we can acquire the shadowgate knowledge.”
    Crossing the plain is a major undertaking because you have to carry with you
     everything you will need for a week. Up there there is nothing to eat but
     glittering stone. Stone remembers but stone has little nutritional value.
    “Are you going too?”
    “I’m going to send scouts and spies, no matter what. We can use the home
     shadowgate as long as we only put through a few men at a time.”
    “You won’t take Shivetya’s word?”
    “The demon has his own agenda.”
    She would know. She had been in direct communion with that Steadfast Guardian.
    What I knew of the golem’s designs made me concerned for Lady. Shivetya, that
     ancient entity, created to manage and watch over the plain—which was an artifact
     itself—wanted to die. He could not do so while Kina survived. One of his tasks
     was to ensure that the sleeping Goddess did not awaken and escape her
     imprisonment.
    When Kina ceased to exist, my wife’s tenuous grasp on those magical powers
     critical to her sense of self-worth and identity would perish with her. What
     powers Lady boasted, she possessed only because she had found a way to steal
     from the Goddess. She was a complete parasite.
    I said, “And you, believing the Company dictum that we have no friends outside,
    don’t value his friendship.”
    “Oh, he’s perfectly marvelous, Croaker. He saved my life. But he didn’t do it
     because I’m cute and I jiggle in the right places when I run.”
    She was not cute. I could not imagine her jiggling, either. This was a woman who
     had gotten away with pretending to be a boy for years. There was nothing
     feminine about her. Nor anything masculine, either. She was not a sexual being
     at all, though for a while there had been rumors that she and Swan had become a
     midnight item.
    It turned out purely platonic.
    “I’ll reserve comment. You’ve surprised me before.”
    “Captain!”
    Took her a while, sometimes, to understand when someone was joking. Or even
     being sarcastic, though she had a tongue like a razor herself.
    She realized I was ribbing her. “I see. Then let me surprise you one more time
     by asking your advice.”
    “Oh-oh. You’ll have them sharpening their skates in hell.”
    “Howler and Longshadow. I’ve got to make decisions.”
    “File of Nine nagging you again?” The File of Nine—“File” from military
     usage—was a council of warlords, their identities kept secret, who formed the
     nearest thing to a real ruling body in Hsien. The monarchy and aristocracy of
     record were little more than decorative and, in the main, too intimate with
     poverty to accomplish much if the inclination existed.
    The File of Nine had only limited power. Their existence barely assured that
     near-anarchy did not devolve into complete chaos. The Nine would have been more
     effective had they not prized their anonymity more than their implied power.
    “Them and the Court of All Seasons. The Noble Judges really want Longshadow.”
    The imperial court of Hsien—consisting of aristocrats with less real world power
     than the File of Nine but enjoying more a demonstrative moral authority—were
     obsessively interested in gaining possession of Longshadow. Being an old cynic I
     tended to suspect them of less than moral ambitions. But we had few dealings
     with them. Their seat, Quang Ninh City, was much too far away.
    The one thing the peoples of Hsien held in common, every noble and every
     peasant, every priest and every warlord, was an