I knelt by her head and looked into her eyes, gleaming portals into an unknowable mind. "Lady," I whispered, "Lady."

"I wish she could talk," said Buck, as he hopped down beside me, holding on to the brim of his beetle hat. "She could tell us who did it."

Blackhoof arrived at the top of the hollow carrying a second square-folded canvas over one arm.

Grum slid down into the hollow with his totems. He knelt by her side, running his hands down her legs, looking at the gashes on her shoulders and wings. "She's lost a lot of blood," he said, "but none of the wounds have touched any major vessels or organs. I can patch her up, I think. If we can get her to a better healer, she'll mend."

Grum planted a healing totem in the ground for her. His palm glowed a soft grass-green, the color of new growth in April, as he waved it over her body. The edges of her wounds knit themselves back together, starting at the corners like a zipper. The scratches began to fade, even as I watched. Lady's eyelids drooped until they were almost closed, turning her eyes into slivers of gleaming dark crescent moons. I stroked her head, warm and solid beneath my hand.

Grum pulled his totem up from its round hole in the ground and reattached it to his belt. "That's all I can do," he said, "She'll need to get to Crossroads for better healing."

Blackhoof spread the second canvas on the ground behind Lady's back, then the four of us half-lifted, half-slid her onto its tan surface. Each of us holding a corner of the canvas, we carried her slung between us as though she were on a hammock, her tattered right wing arching like a giant skeleton hand over her body.

At the kodo, Lady slowly lifted her head to look at Drog's lifeless body suspended in the other canvas. She exhaled a long, drawn-out breath, as though she'd been holding it for some time. Her wing drooped. I pressed my lips together. He didn't deserve such loyalty from a pet he intended to throw away.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I know what he must have meant to you."

Lady eased her head back onto the canvas and closed her eyes. She seemed to let herself go. Her head lolled from side to side with each of our steps.

Cradled in her canvas, we hoisted Lady onto the other side of the kodo and fastened her there. The kodo stood quietly, a long canvas-wrapped bundle on either side, as though it understood the gravity of what it had to do.

The somber procession started back to camp, walking along the creek bed. Blackhoof led the kodo by its halter, Harga walked alongside Drog with one hand on the ropes that held him up, Grum a few yards behind her, and Buck taking up the rear.

I fell into step beside Harga, two of my steps for every one of hers. I took a deep breath.

"Drog found out about you and Blackhoof." I tried to sound as if I knew it for a fact. "That's what you were arguing about. He threatened you, didn't he."

She seemed to pull her mind from a long way away to look down at me. After a long pause, she nodded. "He was furious. Threatened to break Blackhoof's neck for him. But I told him he was no better dan me. He'd cheated on me, you know. She was sent into an internment camp with de kid, though, years ago."

"So you pushed him off, and when you tired of watching him crawl you climbed down and blew the horn. Let the lions finish him off for you. Is that what happened?"

"No," she said, her voice tired, too tired to be angry. "We had our troubles… but I didn't want him dead."

"But he threatened Blackhoof!"

She looked down at me, her eyes weary, her face framed on one side by her drooping red braid. "Ah," she said, "I see you don't understand. We do dis a lot. We did, dat is."

"Did what?"

She smiled with one side of her mouth. "I cheat on him, he find out, he rampage about."

"You did this… often?" I tried to wrap my mind around the idea, but it was like bending a board around a pole.

She nodded, slowly. "De jealous rages... dat's how I knew he still love me."

I looked up into her face. It was like peeking through a keyhole into someone else's life, a life turbulent with waves of love and cruelty and longing and hurting.

"You… you heard the horn blow?" I continued, a little shaky.

She nodded, "I stomped off after he swore at me from down dere. I thought… I thought he was calling de lion himself, as he planned. I figured he go back to camp wit' his new pet, fire Blackhoof, give him his month's wages, and dat would be de end of it. Dat's how dese things always ended. Until de next time."

"And… Blackhoof? What would happen to him?" I looked ahead to the young kodo driver with the cocoa-colored mane, so young he was.

She shrugged, as though shaking off a fly. "He find another job easy. Dey always do."

I felt like I'd swallowed a whole mackerel, and it was now floating belly-up in my stomach. Harga and Drog had been locked in an agonizing embrace; using their love to hurt each other more than any stranger possibly could.

I slowed my step. Harga nodded at me, then walked on ahead.

I let Grum catch up to me. He was sunk in his thoughts, fingering the straps holding the totems to his belt.

"That was some nice healing you did on Lady," I said.

"Thanks," he gave me a wan smile. "I'm getting better."

"How do you manage alone, as a healer? It's got to be hard."

He nodded. "As a healer, if I want something dead I have to have others kill it for me. I'm much more effective with other people."

"Is that why you wanted to join the caravan?" I asked.

He smiled wryly, "Yes, but you saw how that went."

"You went to Drog again last night, after we were all in bed."

He licked his lips. "It was stupid. I thought I'd give it another try."

I hesitated, remembering the argument of the night before. "Who is Igrim?" I asked.

He darted a sharp look at me. "How do you know that name?"

"I heard you say it last night. Who is she?"

He considered a moment. The kodo ambled ahead of us, its tail swinging heavily back and forth. "She was my mother," he said. "I was raised in an internment camp in Arathi Highlands. The guards killed her when I was very small. They beat me, too – that's how my arm got this way. Nerve damage to the shoulder. Much harder to heal than a broken bone."

Internment camp.

I looked at his face. Yes… the lines of the nose and jaw were similar. Grum's face was more refined, but the resemblance was there. "Drog was your father," I said.

Grum inhaled sharply. He looked down at me, his face clouded. I gazed unblinking into his eyes. He considered for a moment, as if weighing his options, then nodded.

"I'd never met him until yesterday, when I joined the caravan," Grum said. "My mother told me all about him, though, back in the internment camp, after the lights were out for the night. She'd lie next to me in my bunk and tell me all about Orgrimmar and my father. She told me what life was like outside the camp, and that when I got free I must find my father and ask him for help. She never doubted that he would help me."

"He didn't seem very happy to see you," I said.

Grum shook his head. "He wasn't… and… he didn't even remember my mother." His face darkened.

"So he wouldn't hire you, even when he knew you were his son?"

"He said a one-armed shaman was no son of his."

I nodded.

Grum continued, "I said if he wouldn't give me a job… maybe he could give me a little money to help pay for further training. I said I'd never bother him again. But he refused me the money, too. He said he didn't have any. I knew that was a lie, though. I saw you give him all that gold."

"Where were you this morning?" I asked. Surely a real detective's voice wouldn't squeak like this. "Did you hear the roaring?"

He shook his head. "I was off looking for raptor nests south of camp. I can't hunt very well," he said, looking down at his arm, "but I can pick up eggs."

"Did anyone see you out there?"

"No. I left pretty early. I needed to think about what to do next. I'd sort of… counted on my father helping me. But I realized this morning that I needed to strike out on my own, make something of myself, then come back one day and show my father how powerful I had become."

His good hand curled into a fist as he spoke, "I planned to come back so powerful he'd beg me to join him, and I'd tell him no… I'd have much better opportunities than his dumpy little caravan."

He smiled proudly, but he was no longer looking at me. His gaze was far away, probably lost in his fantasy of impressing his father.

"When did you get back to camp?"

Grum startled a little, as if he'd forgotten I was there. "After dawn. The camp was empty but I cooked my eggs over the campfire, then Blackhoof ran into camp. He told me Drog was dead and he had come back for a kodo to carry the body."

"Were you upset?"

Grum looked down at his feet, kicking up the dust as he walked. "Yes. I'd only known my father for a day. I'd spent my life dreaming of getting to know him, and now he's gone."

"Even after he was so ungenerous to you, you were still upset?"

He nodded. "He was my father. Now… I have no one."

Grum's voice trailed off into silence.

I trudged next to Grum back to camp. Nobody had an alibi, all of them had a motive. And I had no evidence pointing toward any one of them in particular. Any of them could have blown that horn and then raced away.

The horn.

Where was it? Tossed into the grass somewhere between the body and the camp? Tied to the guilty person's belt? Smashed into little shards?

And where was the money? Ah… that would be harder to toss away in the grass. It might still be on the killer. I eyed the other members of the caravan, but it was impossible to tell if anyone was carrying a fat moneybag, and I had no authority to search them.

I felt the weakness of my position keenly.

We arrived back at camp in mid-morning. The doors of the vacant tents flapped open in a warm, morning breeze. The wind blew the faint off-smell of our garbage pile containing the remains of last night's meal. Grasshoppers were tuning up for the day, with a zik zik zik of their hairpin-shaped legs on their crisp veined wings. It was going to be a hot day.

We lowered Lady to the ground first, easing her down on the strong ropes, opening the canvas and sliding her out like a giant stomach disgorging its contents into the center of camp. Lady lay limply by the circle of logs, her fur rusted with blood, foul-smelling, her eyes half-lidded.

Grum retrieved his pack from his tent, bent over her, and began bandaging her the old-fashioned way, cleaning the tatters of her wings with clean cloths dampened with water from his canteen. It would take a long time.

Blackhoof and Harga began breaking down the tents. In silence. Like a well-rehearsed team.

Lady moved her head restlessly on the hard ground. She could use something soft to put her head on. I walked to my tent to fetch one of my borrowed wolf furs.

Opening the flap, I stepped into a pocket of still, breathless air, hot as the engine room of a ship. It was hard to believe I'd been shivering in here just a few hours earlier.

The darkness shone purple and green as I blinked against it. Blinded by the darkness, fumbling around, I paused a moment to let my eyes adjust to the dim light after the glare of the day outside. Slowly, the garish colors faded away, and dark outlines came into view. The scalloped outlines of the soft grey wolf furs. The straight edge of the gunnysack ground pad I'd laid them on.

And something else.

My mouth went dry and sticky.

On the topmost wolf fur lay a brown-grey kodo horn, intricately carved with a bas relief sculpture of a majestic, white lion.