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“No need,” she said, at last taking her hand from beneath her apron, “for I brought it out with me, and here ’tis.”

It was a blue plate with a delicate webbed pattern. A for-special plate. After a moment Roland recognized the webbing for what it was: young oriza, the seedling rice plant. When sai Eisenhart tapped her knuckles on the plate, it gave out a peculiar high ringing. It looked like china, but wasn’t. Glass, then? Some sort of glass?

He held his hand out for it with the solemn, respectful mien of one who knows and respects weapons. She hesitated, biting the corner of her lip. Roland reached into his holster, which he’d strapped back on before leaving this woman’s father, and pulled his revolver. He held it out to her, butt first.

“Nay,” she said, letting the word out on a long breath of sigh. “No need to offer me a hostage, Roland. I reckon I c’n trust you with my Oriza. But mind how you touch, or you’ll lose another finger, and I think you could ill afford that, for I see you’re already two shy on your right hand.”

A single look at the blue plate—the sai’s Oriza—made it clear how wise that warning was. At the same time, Roland felt a bright spark of excitement and appreciation. It had been long years since he’d seen a new weapon of worth, and never one like this.

The plate was metal, not glass—some light, strong alloy. It was the size of an ordinary dinner plate, a foot in diameter. Three-quarters of the edge (or perhaps a bit more) had been sharpened to suicidal keenness.

“There’s never a question of where to grip, even if ye’re in a hurry,” Margaret said. “For, do’ee see—”

“Yes,” Roland said in a tone of deepest admiration. Two of the rice-stalks crossed in what could have been the great letter “Hn,” which by itself means both here and now. At the point where these stalks crossed (only a sharp eye would pick them out of the bigger pattern to begin with), the rim of the plate was not only dull but slightly thicker. Good to grip.

Roland turned the plate over. Beneath, in the center, was a small metal pod. To Jake, it might have looked like the plastic pencil-sharpener he’d taken to school in his pocket as a first-grader. To Roland, who had never seen a pencil-sharpener, it looked a little like the abandoned egg case of some insect.

“That makes the whistling noise when the plate flies, do ya ken,” she said. She had seen Roland’s honest admiration and was reacting to it, her color high and her eyes bright. She looked thus more like her father than ever.

“It has no other purpose?”

“None,” she said. “But it must whistle, for it’s part of the story, isn’t it?”

Roland nodded. Of course it was.

The Sisters of Oriza, Margaret Eisenhart said, was a group of women who liked to help others—

“And gossip amongst theirselves,” Eisenhart growled, but he sounded good-humored.

“Aye, that too,” she allowed.

They cooked for funerals and festivals. They sometimes held sewing circles and quilting bees after a family had lost its belongings to fire or when one of the river-floods came every six or eight years and drowned the smallholders closest to the Whye. It was the Sisters who kept the Pavilion well tended and the Town Gathering Hall well swept on the inside and well kept on the outside. They put on dances for the young people, and chaperoned them. They were sometimes hired by the richer folk to cater wedding celebrations, and such affairs were always fine, the talk of the Calla for months afterward, sure. Among themselves they did gossip, aye, she’d not deny it; they also played cards, and Points, and Castles. (How Henchick’s brow would have furrowed at the thought of gossip, Roland thought. How his eye, cold to begin with, would have chilled at the mention of cards!)

“And you throw the plate,” Roland said.

“Aye,” said she, “but ye must understand we only do it for the fun of the thing. Hunting’s men’s work, and they do fine with the bah.” She was stroking her husband’s shoulder again, this time a bit nervously, Roland thought. He also thought that if the men really