Darkness Descending

Fifteen

Officially, Hajjaj was far in the north, up in Bishah. Any number of witnesses would swear at need that the Zuwayzi foreign minister was hard at work in the capital, right where he should be. Hajjaj didn’t want any of them to have to take such an oath. That would mean something had gone wrong, something had made the Algarvians suspicious. Better by far they never, ever come down to Jurdhan.

He strolled along the main street, such as it was, of the little no-account town: one elderly black man wearing only a straw hat and sandals among many black men and women and children, all dressed, or not dressed, much as he was.

Nudity had its advantages. By leaving off the bracelets and anklets and gold rings and chains he would normally have worn, Hajjaj turned himself into a person of no particular importance. He would have had a harder time doing that with shabby clothes. When he walked into Jurdhan’s chief--by virtue of being Jurdhan’s only--hostel, no one gave him a second glance. That was just what he wanted.

He went upstairs (the hostel was one of a handful of buildings in town to boast a second story) and walked down the hall to the chamber where, he’d been told, the man he was to meet awaited him. He knocked once, twice, then once again. After a moment, the latch clicked. The door swung open.

A short, squat, swarthy man--swarthy, but far from black--wearing a knee-length cotton tunic looked him up and down. “Powers above, you’re a scrawny old bugger,” he remarked in Algarvian.

“Thank you so much, my lord Ansovald. I am so glad to see you again, your Excellency,” Hajjaj answered in the same language. Speaking Algarvian to the former--and perhaps future--Unkerlanter minister to Zuwayza tickled his sense of irony, which needed little tickling. But it was the one speech they truly had in common. His own Unkerlanter was halting, Ansovald s Zuwayzi as near nonexistent as made no difference.

If Ansovald noticed the irony, he didn’t let on. “Well, come in,” he said, and stood aside. “If you want to put on a tunic and hide that bag of bones you call a carcass, I’ve got one here for you.”

That was the usual practice for Zuwayzi diplomats. Hajjaj had grown resigned to wearing a long tunic when calling on envoys from Unkerlant and Forthweg, a short tunic and kilt when seeing a minister from an Algarvic kingdom, a tunic and trousers when meeting with Kaunians, and clothes of some sort, at any rate, when dealing with lands like Kuusamo and Gyongyos, where style of apparel carried less political weight. But growing resigned to it didn’t mean he loved it. He shook his head and answered, “No, thank you. This is unofficial, which means I can be comfortable if I please, and I do.”

He’d thought about wearing a tunic to this meeting too, thought about it and rejected the notion. Nothing would have drawn stares like a clothed Zuwayzi strolling through Jurdhan--nothing except a naked Unkerlanter strolling through Cottbus. And maybe his nudity would disconcert Ansovald.

If it did, the Unkerlanter diplomat didn’t show that, either. “Come in, then,” he said. “I told you that already. I’d sooner you were a woman half your age, but I don’t suppose King Shazli would.”

“No, in a word.” Hajjaj walked into the chamber. Ansovald closed the door behind him, closed it and barred it. From any other kingdom’s minister, Ansovald’s words would have been monstrously rude. From the Unkerlanter, they were something of a prodigy. This was the first time Hajjaj could remember him caring in the slightest for what King Shazli thought.

The room was furnished Zuwayzi-style, with carpet piled on carpet and with cushions large and small a guest could arrange to suit his own comfort. Hajjaj wasted no time doing that. Ansovald followed suit rather more clumsily. He did not offer Hajjaj wine and cakes and tea, as any Zuwayzi host would have done. Instead, very much an Unkerlanter again, he bulled straight ahead: “We aren’t going to settle the war between us this afternoon.”

“I never expected we would,” Hajjaj replied.

“And you can’t tell me you’re able to make the cursed Algarvians pack up and go home, either,” Ansovald growled. “Aye, you and the redheads are in bed with each other, but I know which one’s the tail and which one’s the dog.”

Despite the mixed metaphor, Hajjaj followed him. The Zuwayzi foreign minister said, “If Unkerlant hadn’t come up and ravaged us by force, we would likely be neutral now, not allied to King Mezentio.”

“Oh, aye--tell me another one,” Ansovald jeered. “You’d kick us when we were down, just like everyone else.”

That held a grain of truth, or more than a grain. But what was true and what was diplomatic often had only a nodding relationship, or sometimes none at all. Hajjaj said, “Wouldn’t you be better off if you had fewer foes to fight?”

“What’s your price?” Ansovald was an Unkerlanter, all right: no subtlety to him, no style, no grace. Hajjaj vastly preferred dealing with Marquis Balastro, Algarve’s minister to Zuwayza.

On the other hand, the urbane and dashing Algarvians had been the ones who’d started murdering Kaunians for the sake of advantage in the war. By all accounts, King Swemmel of Unkerlant had wasted not a moment in imitating them, but Algarve went first. Try as he would, Hajjaj couldn’t forget that.

“Your Excellency, Unkerlant went to war with us because the Treaty of Bludenz no longer suited your sovereign,” he said.

“Kyot the traitor signed the Treaty of Bludenz,” Ansovald said, which was true: like Forthweg, Zuwayza had used the chaos reigning in Unkerlant after the Six Years’ War to regain her freedom.

But Hajjaj said, “And King Swemmel always adhered to it afterwards. He got good results when he did, and bad results when he decided not to any longer and invaded us. Isn’t it efficient to do what works well and inefficient to do the opposite?” Swemmel and, because of him, his countrymen prated endlessly of efficiency, but the talk came easier for them than the thing itself.

Ansovald’s heavy features were made for scowling, and he scowled now. “You black thieves have stolen more land now than the Treaty of Bludenz ever gave you, and you know it cursed well, too.”

Hajjaj breathed heavily through his arched nose. “One reason we have is that you tannish thieves stole so much of what you’d honestly yielded in the treaty. Give us the border we had before, give us guarantees that you mean to give what you say you’re giving, and I may persuade King Shazli to be satisfied.” Since the slaughters to power sorcery had started, the Zuwayzi foreign minister kept casting about for ways to get out of the war. He had some hopes for this one, the more so as Unkerlant had requested the meeting.

Ansovald proceeded to dash them, saying, “King Swemmel will give you the borders you agreed to in Cottbus and not another inch of ground.”

“I agreed to those because Unkerlant invaded my kingdom,” Hajjaj exclaimed indignantly. “I agreed to them because we stood alone, without a friend in the world. Things are different now, and King Swemmel had better recognize it.”

“Oh, he does,” Ansovald said. “By even offering so much, he admits--unofficially, of course--Zuwayza has a right to exist. That is more than you have had from him before. Take it and be thankful.”

The worst of it was, he had a point of sorts. But only of sorts. In tones far more frigid than Zuwayzi weather ever got, Hajjaj said, “It cannot be. Unkerlant got that border after beating us in war. We are not beaten now, as you yourself have said. And if King Swemmel did not recognize that Zuwayza has a right to exist, why were you his minister in Bishah for so long?”

“He treated with you. You Zuwayzin are here, after all.” Ansovald sounded like a man admitting something he didn’t care for but couldn’t deny. “But being here is not the same as being a kingdom.”

“This is the bargain for which I spirited myself out of Bishah? This, and nothing more?” Hajjaj asked. When Ansovald nodded, the Zuwayzi foreign minister felt betrayed. He said, “I cannot take it back to my own sovereign--who is King of Zuwayza, whether Swemmel recognizes him or not. I had hoped you might have some room to dicker, considering how much of Unkerlant Algarve holds these days.”

“Less today than yesterday,” Ansovald said, drawing himself up with touchy pride. “Less tomorrow than today. We will whip them out of our kingdom altogether before spring--and when we do, your turn comes next.”

Hajjaj did not think that would happen. “It was only weeks ago that Cottbus was on the point of falling,” he pointed out.

“It’s not on the point of falling now,” Ansovald growled. “By this time next year, Trapani will be on the point of falling to our brave Unkerlanter soldiers. You and your chief who calls himself a king had best bear it in mind and behave yourselves accordingly.”

With dignity undamaged by creaking knees, Hajjaj got to his feet. Bowing to Ansovald, he said, “I had hoped to be dealing with a reasonable man.” Since the Unkerlanter came as King Swemmel’s envoy, that was probably optimistic, but he had hoped. He went on, “If you truly believe what you just told me, I can only conclude some malignant mage has stolen your wits.”

“King Mezentio’s armies are falling to pieces on the snow-covered plains of Unkerlant,” Ansovald insisted.

“We shall see,” Hajjaj said politely. “But I cannot tell you that I believe you are right, and I cannot see much point to any further discussions between us so long as we differ so widely.” He bowed again. “Your safe-conduct will carry you back through our lines to your own kingdom.” As a parting jab, he added, “You must remember, though, that it will not protect you from any Algarvian soldiers you may meet on your way back to Cottbus.”

Ansovald gave him a dirty look. It was also, Hajjaj judged, an alarmed look; Ansovald knew where the lines ran. Gruffly, the Unkerlanter put the best face on it he could: “Less snow up here than in the rest of the kingdom. But we’ll root the whoresons out of these parts, too; see if we don’t.”

“Good day, sir,” Hajjaj said, and left Ansovald’s chamber. He thought Ansovald said something after he closed the door but didn’t bother going back to find out; the Unkerlanter sounded unhappy with the world.

Sighing, Hajjaj went downstairs and out of the hostel. He was unhappy with the world, too. Zuwayza wouldn’t be able to get out of the Derlavaian War so easily as he’d hoped. He sighed once more. That, all too often, was the way things worked: easier to get into trouble of any sort than to get free of it afterwards.

He made his way back to the ley-line caravan depot. Lying on a ley line was Jurdhan’s reason for being. The next northbound caravan wouldn’t be heading back to Bishah for several hours. He didn’t have a special caravan laid on; the Algarvians might have noticed, and he--and his king--didn’t want them to find out he’d been talking with the Unkerlanters. The redheads would seek to become even more overbearing allies than they were already.

He wished Zuwayza could have gone on without any allies at all. Then he sighed one more time. That wasn’t the way things worked, worse luck.

Along with the rest of the Lagoan force on the austral continent, Fernao trudged west toward Heshbon, the easternmost colony the Yaninans had carved out for themselves on the northern coast of the land of the Ice People. He’d visited Heshbon before, after spiriting King Penda of Forthweg out of Yanina. He would willingly--eagerly--have forgone visiting the place again, but nobody’d asked his opinion.

“Well, you were right about one thing,” Affonso said as the two mages kicked their way through the snow.

Fernao eyed his colleague and tentmate. “I’m right about any number of things,” he said with a sorcerer’s almost unconscious arrogance. “Which one have you got in mind?”

“I wouldn’t eat camel meat if I had any choice,” Affonso answered, “and neither would anyone else in his right mind.”

“The Ice People like it.” Fernao paused meditatively. “Of course, that proves your point, doesn’t it?”

“Aye.” The younger mage’s sigh sent a foggy cloud out in front of him. “Cinnabar.” He made the word into a curse. “No one would ever come here if it weren’t for that. I wish I never had, I’ll tell you that.”

“There are furs, too,” Fernao said, as the Lagoans did whenever discussions of why anyone bothered coming to the land of the Ice People began. Affonso proceeded to tell him, in great detail, what he could do with the austral continent’s furs. His argument made up in intensity what it lacked in coherence. Fernao laughed loud and long.

After Affonso regained some of his temper, he said, “Do you suppose the Yaninans will come out and fight us this side of Heshbon?”

“Trying to figure out what the Yaninans will do is always foolish because half the time they don’t know themselves till they do it,” Fernao answered. That was how Lagoans usually thought of Yaninans. Having been in Patras, the capital of Yanina, Fernao understood how much truth the cliche held.

“Can they hire enough Ice People to give us a hard time?” Affonso asked.

That was a better question, and one with a less certain answer. Fernao only shrugged and kept walking. The idea worried him. By what he’d seen in Heshbon, King Tsavellas’ men hadn’t gone out of the way to endear themselves to the natives of the austral continent. On the other hand, gold could be endearing all by itself. And the Yaninans hadn’t had much luck attacking the Lagoan army on their own.

Two evenings later, just as the Lagoans were making camp, half a dozen Ice People rode up to them on camels plainly a cut above the common stock. One of them proved to speak Yaninan. Not many Lagoans did, so Lieutenant General Junqueiro summoned Fernao to interpret for him. Fernao’s Yaninan was also less than perfect, but he thought he could make himself understood in the language.

The man of the Ice People who spoke Yaninan said, “Tell your chief I am Elishamma the son of Ammihud, who was the son of Helori, who was the son of Shedeur, who was the son of Izhar, who was the son of...” The genealogy went on for some time, till Elishamma finished, “... who was the son of a god.”

He necessarily used a word from his own language for that last. Instead of abstract powers, the Ice People believed in men writ large on the face of the universe. Fernao found the notion ludicrous, to say nothing of barbarous. He hadn’t come to argue such notions with Elishamma, though, but to translate for Junqueiro. Having done so, he added in Lagoan, “Give him all your forefathers, too.” He started to say, Whether they’re real or not, but refrained. No telling if some of Elishamma’s companions understood Lagoan.

Junqueiro did him proud, naming a dozen generations of ancestry. If any of them was fictitious, Fernao couldn’t have proved it. The lieutenant general said, “Ask him what he wants from us.”

Fernao did. Elishamma told him, complete with histrionics centuries out of fashion anywhere but the austral continent: not even the Algarvians indulged in so much boasting and bragging. Fernao couldn’t try to hurry it along, not without mortally insulting the chieftain.

At last, Elishamma ran down. That let Junqueiro ask once more, “And what do you want with us?”

“The mangy ones”--so Ice People spoke of men less hairy than themselves--“of Yanina will pay us gold to fight you. How much gold will you pay us to stay calm?”

“Before I answer, you will allow me to speak with my wise man here,” the Lagoan commander said, pointing to Fernao. Junqueiro had chosen just the right lordly tone; Elishamma inclined his head in acquiescence. “You may remain here,” Junqueiro told him. “My mage and I shall leave the tent to confer.” After Junqueiro had turned that into Yaninan, he got up and went outside with the general. Junqueiro muttered, “Powers above! Don’t they ever wash?”

“From all I’ve seen--and smelled--no, Your Excellency,” Fernao said. Junqueiro rolled his eyes. The mage went on, “In justice, this is a cold country. Washing in a stream here, even when the streams aren’t frozen, fairly begs for chest fever.”

“Feh.” Junqueiro dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand, which proved that Lagoans, though at war with Algarve, were of Algarvic stock themselves. It also proved he couldn’t smell himself anymore. His hazel eyes sharpened. “To business. Have the Yaninans really made this offer? If they have, how much have they offered? Is it worth our while to pay the Ice People more? How much harm can they do us?”

“As for the first, I’d say it’s likely,” Fernao answered. “The Yaninans haven’t had much luck fighting us by themselves, so why shouldn’t they pay somebody to do the job for them?”

“You’d say it’s likely.” Lieutenant General Junqueiro clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Can’t you use your sorcery to know for sure?”

Fernao s sigh brought forth a large cloud of fog. “In this country, sir, the spells of mages not born here have a way of going awry. They have a way of going dangerously awry, in fact.”

Junqueiro gave him a dirty look. “Then why did we bring you hither?”

“Because Colonel Peixoto, back in Setubal, has more enthusiasm than brains,” Fernao answered. “Sir.”

By the expression on Junqueiro’s face, that was mutiny, or as close to mutiny as made no difference. The commanding general visibly contained himself. “Very well,” he said, though Fernao knew it wasn’t even close to very well. “By your best estimate, sir mage, however you arrive at them, what do you think the answers to my other questions are?”

“However much the Yaninans paid Elishamma, it will be less than he claims,” Fernao answered. “He will try to cheat us. No doubt he will try to cheat King Tsavellas, too. Aye, I think it’s worth our while to pay him more than the Yaninans do, if we can. And I pray your pardon, sir, for I’ve forgotten your last question.”

“If we don’t pay them, how bad can they hurt us?” Junqueiro said.

“On those cursed camels of theirs, they move faster than we do--faster than we can,” Fernao answered. “I wouldn’t want them harrying our supply route by land, not with the Algarvians already harrying the sea route from Lagoas to the austral continent.”

Junqueiro paced back and forth, kicking up snow at every step. He stopped so abruptly, he caught Fernao by surprise. “All right, then,” he growled. “Let’s go on in and dicker with the stinking--and I do mean that--son of a whore.”

Elishamma’s face helped him: It was almost impossible to read. His beard grew up to just under his eyes; his thick, grizzled mustache covered his lips. His hairline started low on his forehead, so low that his eyebrows were only thicker tufts at the bottom of it. That left next to no bare skin from which Fernao and Junqueiro could gauge his expression.

But he was not a great bargainer. And he made a mistake: he got greedy. When he solemnly declared the Yaninans had offered him a hundred thousand gold pieces to assail the Lagoan army, both that army’s commander and its highest-ranking mage laughed in his face. “All of Yanina put together isn’t worth a hundred thousand gold pieces,” Junqueiro said. Fernao enjoyed translating that. It wasn’t true, not literally, but it matched his feeling about the kingdom.

Elishamma yielded ground without visible embarrassment. Even had he been bare-faced, Fernao doubted he would have shown embarrassment. He had as much effrontery as any Yaninan ever born. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was but fifty thousand.”

Fernao responded to that without wasting time translating for Junqueiro: “All of Yanina put together isn’t worth fifty thousand gold pieces, either.”

When Elishamma lowered the proposed bribe again without loudly declaring he’d been telling the truth all along, Fernao smiled to himself and brought his commander back into the discussion. Junqueiro knew how much the army could afford to pay out, which Fernao didn’t. He beat the chieftain from the Ice People down to just over a tenth of what he’d originally tried to get.

“Is it agreed, then?” Elishamma said at last.

Junqueiro nodded and started to speak. Before he could, Fernao said, “Aye, with one exception: What hostages will you give us? These fellows you brought here with you may do.” He turned the words into Lagoan so his superior could understand. Junqueiro looked startled, and probably had to work hard not to look horrified, for taking hostages had gone out of style in civilized countries--though rumor said the Algarvians were reviving it in the lands they occupied.

But Elishamma only sat still and then slowly nodded. “I did not know if you would think of this,” he said. “You mangy ones are often absentminded when it comes to such things. Had you not spoken, I would not have reminded you.”

“I believe that,” Fernao said. “But I have come to this land before, and I know something--not everything, but something--of its ways. What is your fetish animal?”

Again, Elishamma paused. Finally, he said, “I do not think I will tell you. You are a shaman, after all. Foreign magic is not strong here, but I do not care to take a chance with you.”

“You flatter me,” Fernao said. In fact, odds were Elishamma did flatter him. But his tone suggested he might be able to harm Elishamma if he learned to which animal the chieftain was mystically bound.

“What are you two saying?” Junqueiro asked. Fernao explained. Junqueiro surprised him by finding exacdy the right thing to do: he leaned over and patted Fernao on the back, as if to say he was certain the mage could indeed put paid to Elishamma if he found out what his fetish animal was. The chieftain noted that, too. He looked unhappy enough for Fernao to recognize the expression.

Now Junqueiro asked, “Is it agreed?”

“It is agreed,” Elishamma said. “You have here Machir and Hepher and Abinadab and Eliphelet and Gereb.” He proceeded to give all their genealogies, too. “Their heads shall answer for my good faith.” He spoke to his followers in their own guttural language. They bowed to him in acquiescence.

“Do any of you speak the Yaninans’ language?” Fernao asked in that tongue. None of the men of the Ice People answered. Fernao shifted to Lagoan: “Do any of you speak this language?” Again, the hostages kept silent. Were they concealing what they knew? How much would it cost to find out? Fernao knew no sorcerous way of learning. He headed into the future as blind as any other man.

Bembo paced through the streets of Gromheort. He was glad to be walking a regular constables beat today, not going after Kaunians to ship them west--or even east, though he still didn’t understand why that one caravanload of blonds had headed off in the wrong direction.

When he remarked on that, Oraste grunted and gave him three words’ worth of what was undoubtedly good advice: “Don’t ask questions.”

Not asking was easier--Bembo had no trouble seeing that. He had nothing against doing things the easy way; he’d always preferred it. And so, instead of asking another question, the plump constable said, “Don’t hardly see any Kaunians on the streets these days.”

“I don’t miss ‘em, either,” Oraste answered. Like a lot of what he said, that not only didn’t need a reply but practically precluded one.

“Here we go.” Bembo strode into an eatery. The Forthwegian proprietor greeted Oraste and him with a broad smile that was bound to be false but was welcome anyhow. Then he handed them lengths of spicy sausage and cups of wine. They tossed back the wine and left the eatery tearing bites off the sausage.

“Not too bad.” Oraste finished the last of the meat, licked his fingers, and wiped them on his kilt.

“No,” Bembo agreed. “They know they have to keep their constables happy, or else the constables will keep them unhappy.” That was how things worked back in Tricarico. And the Forthwegians were a conquered people. If they didn’t keep Bembo and his comrades happy, the Algarvians could be a lot tougher on them than ever they could back in their own kingdom.

Oraste jerked a thumb at a broadsheet as he and Bembo marched past it. “What do you think of that?” he asked.

The broadsheet showed bearded Forthwegians in long tunics marching side by side with uniformed Algarvians sporting imperials or waxed mustaches or side whiskers or no facial hair at all. Bembo couldn’t read Forthwegian to save his life, but he knew about Plegmund’s Brigade. With a shrug, he answered, “If these buggers want to blaze Unkerlanters, that’s fine by me. And if the Unkerlanters blaze them instead of hurting our boys, that’s fine by me, too.”

“Suppose the Forthwegians decide to up and blaze us instead?” Oraste said: practically a speech, from him.

“Then we smash ‘em,” Bembo answered; he liked problems with simple answers. After a moment, he added, “Not too much risk of that, I don’t think. The Forthwegians don’t love us, but they don’t love Swemmel, either. Of course, I can’t think of anybody who does love Swemmel--can you?”

“Nobody in his right mind, anyhow,” Oraste said, and laughed, more likely at his own joke than at Bembo’s. They marched on for another couple of strides. Then Oraste grunted. “Besides, we’re cleaning out the Kaunians here. Aye, that’ll keep these whoresons happy.”

A troop of unicorn cavalry trotted west past the two constables, heading toward the distant front. Some, though not all, of the Algarvians on the unicorns wore white smocks over their tan tunics. Back when the fight against Unkerlant began, no one in Algarve had dreamt it would last into the winter, let alone almost through it. The unicorns’ white coats--whiter by far than the concealing smocks--were splotched with gray and brown paint, to make the animals stand out less against a background of melting snow.

One of the cavalry troopers jeered at Bembo and Oraste: “You boys have the soft jobs. Want to trade with me?”

Bembo shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “I may be a horse’s arse, but I know better than to be a unicorn’s, by the powers above.” That won a snort from Oraste and another from the Algarvian cavalryman, who went on riding, his unicorn’s harness jingling at every stride.

Oraste said, “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of the Unkerlanters.” Bembo shrugged again. The trouble with going off to fight in the west was that the Unkerlanters were altogether too likely to get rid of him. He didn’t point that out; if Oraste couldn’t see it for himself, the burly constable was a lot dumber than Bembo thought he was.

Besides which .. . “Be careful what you wish for because you may get it,” Bembo said. “They’re sending a whole great whacking lot of men off to the west.” That most likely meant a whole great whacking lot of men off to the west were getting killed or maimed, something on which Bembo would have preferred not to dwell.

And he didn’t have to dwell on it, either, for a plump, middle-aged Forthwegian woman burst out the front door of a block of flats and ran toward him and Oraste, shouting, “Constables! Constables!” The Forthwegian word was similar to its Algarvian equivalent; the Forthwegians had never heard of constables till the Algarvians introduced them to the western part of Forthweg, which had been ruled from Trapani for a century and a half before the Six Years’ War.

“What’s this?” Oraste asked suspiciously. Bembo didn’t know, either, and was just as suspicious. His experience had been that Forthwegians didn’t look for constables--they looked out for them. The woman spewed forth a stream of gibberish: the handful of Forthwegian words Bembo know were vile.

“Wait!” he said, and threw up his hands as if stopping an oncoming wagon. “Do you speak any Algarvian?” The woman shook her head. Her massive bosom shook too. Bembo found the spectacle anything but entrancing. He sighed, then shifted languages and asked a question that obscurely embarrassed him: “You speaking Kaunian?”

“Yes, I speak some Kaunian,” the woman answered--she had more of the tongue than he did, which wasn’t saying much. “Live next to those nasty people long enough and some rubs off.”

Bembo tried to follow her and at the same time to dredge up vocabulary he hadn’t had to worry about since the last time a schoolmaster beat it into his back with a switch. “You wanting to telling me what?” he asked. He gave up on grammar and syntax; if he could make himself understood, he was ahead of the game.

And the woman did understand him. Pointing back toward her building, she said, “A wicked wizard has cheated me out of a week’s pay. I wait on tables. I am not rich. I will never be rich. I cannot afford to have a miserable mage take away my money.”

“What’s she yattering about?” asked Oraste, who either had never learned Kaunian or didn’t remember so much as a word. Bembo explained. Oraste’s long face got longer. “A wizard? Oh, aye, that’s just what you love to do when you’re a constable: go after a wizard. Have to blaze the whoreson if he tries to give you trouble. Otherwise, he doesn’t just try--he cursed well does it.”

“I know, I know. Don’t remind me.” Bembo turned back to the Forthwegian woman. “Wizard doing was what?”

“What was he doing?” Her bosom heaved once more. Sparks flashed in her dark eyes. “He was cheating me. I told you that. Did you not listen?”

Constabulary work could be exasperating in Tricarico, too. Every kingdom had its share of fools. Bembo remained convinced he met more than his share. He pointed at the woman. “You taking toward he we.”

Into the block of flats they went. It was more battered and more crowded than any equivalent back in Algarve. The stairway stank of stale olive oil and staler piss. Bembo wrinkled his nose. The Forthwegian woman took the smell for granted, which suggested it had been there before the Algarvians overran Gromheort.

On the third floor, the woman pointed to the doorway farthest from the stairs. “There!” she said loudly. “The thief lives there.”

“Kick it in?” Oraste asked.

“Not yet,” Bembo answered. “We’ve only got this gal’s side of it. For all we know, this fellow in there may be right. For all we know, he may not be a wizard at all. Powers above, he may never have set eyes on her before.” The woman listened to him in impatient incomprehension. With an unhappy mutter, he started toward the door. “Cover me,” he told Oraste.

“Oh, aye,” his comrade said, and drew his stick. “Just in case the dingleberry is a mage.”

Bembo was thinking the same thing. The thought made him carefully calibrate his knock. He was aiming for being firm without being overbearing. He didn’t draw his stick, but had his hand on it. When he heard someone moving inside the flat, he didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed.

After a click of the latch, the door swung open. The fellow who stood in the doorway staring at Bembo through thick spectacles might have been a mage. As easily, he might have been an out-of-work clerk. Comprehension filled his face when he saw the heavy woman behind the constables. He muttered something in Forthwegian that had to mean, “I might have known.”

“You speak Algarvian?” Bembo barked at him.

To his relief, the fellow answered, “Aye, somewhat. I should have guessed Eanfled would summon the constables.” He looked past Bembo and Oraste and said something to the woman. Bembo didn’t know what she answered, but it sounded hotter than anything he’d learned.

He pointed to the woman. “Did you work magic for her?”

“Aye, I did,” the man answered.

“What does he say?” the woman--Eanfled--demanded in Kaunian. Bembo, feeling harassed, did his best to answer. The man took over; he spoke Kaunian, too.

“Ask him what sort of magic he did,” Oraste suggested--in Algarvian, of course. Again, Bembo tried to translate.

“She wanted to lose weight,” the man said--in Kaunian. “I made a spell to take the edge off her appetite. I had to be careful. Too much and she would starve herself to death. No great loss,” he added, “but people would talk.”

Eanfled let out a furious screech that made doors open all along the hallway. “You cheated me, you whoreson!” she shouted. “Look at me!” There was certainly plenty of her at which to look.

“You were fatter before,” the fellow with the spectacles answered calmly.

“Liar!” she yelled at him.

Oraste nudged Bembo. “All right, smart boy, what are they saying?” he asked. After Bembo told him, he grunted, “That’s about what I thought. What are we going to do about it?”

“Shake ‘em both down,” Bembo answered. He turned to the low-ranking, or more likely amateur, mage, with whom he could converse more readily. “Tell this walking pork chop here that we’re going to haul the both of you up in front of the military governor, and we’ll see if there’s anything left of either one of you when he’s through.”

Looking very unhappy, the bespectacled man translated that into Forthwegian. The fat woman looked even more appalled. Bembo wondered if she was part Kaunian and feared that would come out. She didn’t look it, but you never could tell.

“Ahh . . . Do we really have to do that?” the Forthwegian man asked. Bembo didn’t say anything. The fellow said, “Couldn’t we come to some sort of understanding?”

“What have you got in mind?” Bembo countered. By the time he and Oraste left the block of flats, their belt pouches were full and jingling. If the would-be mage and his dissatisfied customer found themselves unhappy with Algarvian notions of constabulary work, Bembo cared very little. After all, he’d made money on the deal.

Shouldering his axe, Garivald trudged across fields still covered in snow toward the woods out beyond the village of Zossen. Pretty soon, the snow would start to melt. Then the fields would go from frozen to soupy, after which they would dry enough for plowing and sowing. Meanwhile, he still needed firewood.

As he tramped along, he glanced toward a spot in a vegetable plot not far from the house of Waddo, the firstman. Zossen’s crystal lay buried there. Garivald had helped bury it. If Zossen’s Algarvian occupiers ever found out about that, they would bury him. He couldn’t dig up the crystal now, either, because he’d have to do it secretly, and that was impossible. He just had to keep on worrying about it.

“As if I haven’t got enough other things to worry about,” he muttered.

It wasn’t as if the crystal would work now. It wouldn’t, not here in this magic-starved backwater of the Duchy of Grelz, not without blood sacrifices to power it. But it had connected Zossen to Cottbus--which meant it would connect Garivald to Cottbus, and to King Swemmel. He knew what the Algarvians would make of such a connection: they would make an end of it, and of him.

Once he got in among the trees, he breathed easier. He couldn’t see the spot where the crystal lay buried anymore, which took a weight off his mind. And none of the redheads could see him anymore, either, even if they were looking for him. That was also a relief.

For a while, he didn’t have to use the axe much. A lot of big branches had simply fallen off their trees, torn from them by the weight of ice they’d had to bear through the winter. Garivald just needed to trim them and stuff them into the leather sack he was carrying. He found some fine lengths of oak and ash that would burn long and hot in the hearth.

He was trimming the smaller branches from one of those lengths when, all at once, he whirled around, the axe ready to swing. He couldn’t have said what had warned him he wasn’t alone any more, but something had, and, whatever it was, it was right.

Bandits and brigands prowled the woods. That was what the Algarvians called them, anyhow: Unkerlanter soldiers who hadn’t surrendered after Mezentio’s men overran them. Some of them were nothing but bandits; others kept up the fight against the redheads. At first, Garivald thought this fellow came from that latter group. But the soldier--he was plainly a soldier--was too neat and clean for one of those men. And Garivald had never seen a hooded white smock like the one he wore. It was too thin to give any warmth; its only possible purpose was concealment.

Realization smote. “You’re a real soldier!” Garivald blurted.

The fellow in the white smock chuckled. “Well, so I am,” he said. “And what are you, friend? For that matter, what village are you from?”

“Zossen,” Garivald answered, pointing back through the trees. Eagerly, he went on, “Are we going to be running the Algarvians out of here soon?”

To his disappointment, the Unkerlanter soldier shook his head. “No such luck, pal. I squeezed through the redheads’ lines for a look around, that’s all. How big a garrison have they got in your village?”

“Just a squad that’s been there since they took the place,” Garivald said. “But they’ve had other men coming through--a lot of’em moving west lately.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” the soldier said with a grimace. “The hope was that they’d run out of men, and that we’d be able to roll ‘em up and clean ‘em out before the good weather comes back.”

“Powers above make it so!” Garivald exclaimed. “Powers above make our powers grow. Powers above make the redheads go.” More and more these days, he thought in doggerel. Sometimes it came out of his mouth, too.

“Well, I have to tell you I don’t think it’s going to happen,” the Unkerlanter in the white smock said. “The cursed Algarvians didn’t quite shatter the way we hoped they would. We’ve got a lot more fighting to do before we’re finally rid of ‘em.”

“Too bad,” Garivald said, though that sounded likely to him, too.

“And you’re the fellow who makes songs, aren’t you?” the soldier said. “I’ve heard about you.”

“Have you?” Garivald didn’t know what to think of that. His whole life in a peasant village had taught him that drawing notice was dangerous. But, if no one ever heard his songs, if no one ever played them, what good were they?

“Aye, I have,” the soldier said. “That’s one of the reasons I came this far east--because I’ve heard of you, I mean. Keep writing them, that’s what the officers say. They’re worth a regiment of men against the Algarvians.”

Garivald’s heart thudded in his chest. He didn’t think he’d ever felt prouder. “A regiment of men,” he murmured. “My songs, worth a regiment of men?” He wanted to make a song about that, even if he’d only be able to sing it to himself. Anyone else, even Annore, would laugh.

“Well, I’m on my way now,” the soldier said, turning his face back toward the east. “Have to see if I can make it past the redheads going the other way. Shouldn’t be too hard; they still don’t know what to do in snow.” Off he went, as used to the snowshoes on his feet as if he’d been born wearing them.

“Worth a regiment of men,” Garivald repeated once more. But then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t so glad the Unkerlanter in white had come looking for him. If that fellow knew where to find the peasant who made songs, how long would it be before the Algarvians figured it out, too?

He finished filling the leather sack with wood. Then, bent almost double under its weight, he staggered back toward Zossen. As he neared the village, he saw the man he least wanted to see. And, worse luck, Waddo saw him, too, saw him and waved and limped toward him, putting a lot of weight on his stick.

“Hello, Garivald!” the village firstman exclaimed, as if he hadn’t seen the other peasant for the past ten years.

“Hello,” Garivald answered warily. He and Waddo were bound together because of the buried crystal. He wished with all his heart they weren’t. He didn’t trust Waddo; the firstman had been King Swemmel’s hand in Zossen, and had always sucked up to inspectors and impressers when they came to the village.

Of course, the Algarvians despised and harassed Waddo for that very reason. Here and there in the Duchy of Grelz, they’d hanged firstmen who did things that didn’t suit them. Garivald didn’t suppose he wanted to see Waddo dancing at the end of a rope. On the otlier hand, Garivald had just thought about how Waddo had maintained his tiny authority by aiding those who had more power. If he decided to bend the knee to the redheads’ puppet King Raniero rather than to King Swemmel, how could he best ingratiate himself with the Algarvian garrison?

By throwing me to the wolves, Garivald thought. As if he were a mage, a wolf began to howl, somewhere off in the distance. Every few winters, Zossen or some nearby village would lose somebody to a hungry pack that came prowling close. It hadn’t happened this year. No, Garivald thought. This year, we have Algarvians instead. That’s worse.

Waddo heard the wolf, too, and grimaced. “I hope he finds a whole company of frozen redheads to eat.”

“Aye,” Garivald said. He agreed with Waddo--he hoped the wolves found a whole regiment of frozen redheads--but wished he didn’t have to answer the first-man at all. Anything he said gave the other man a greater hold on him.

He needed a moment to realize he now had a greater hold on Waddo, too. Realizing it brought him little joy. To use that hold, he would have to betray Waddo to the Algarvians. He couldn’t imagine anything that would make him want to do that. No matter how much he despised the firstman, he loathed the invaders far more.

“May next spring and summer be better,” Waddo said.

“Aye,” Garivald repeated. He started to look back toward the woods in which he’d met the Unkerlanter soldier, but checked himself before the motion was well begun. He didn’t want Waddo wondering why his eyes went that way. He revealed as little to the firstman as a fellow cheating on his wife told her.

Waddo limped closer. He spoke in a hoarse whisper: “When the ground gets soft, we’ll dig up that crystal and get it out of here.”

“Aye,” Garivald said for the third time, now with real enthusiasm. “The farther, the better, as far as I’m concerned.” Getting the crystal away from Zossen would reduce the danger that he’d wind up on the end of a rope.

“Maybe,” Waddo said softly, “just maybe, we can even activate it again and get word back to Cottbus of what’s going on in these parts.”

Now Garivald stared at him as if he’d gone crazy. “Whose throat will you slit to power it?” he demanded. “Not mine, by the powers above.”

“No, of course not yours,” the firstman said, twisting his fingers into the gesture people used to turn aside words of evil omen.

“Whose, then?” Garivald persisted with peasant common sense. “It’d have to be someone’s. We’re not close to a ley line. We’re not close to a power point, either. They’re few and far between in these parts.”

“I know. I know.” Waddo sighed. “Maybe we could draw enough life energy from sacrificing animals. They used to do that in the old days, if you believe the stories the grannies tell.”

“We might, I suppose.” But Garivald remained unconvinced. “If Cottbus thought we could power a crystal with animal sacrifices, why did they send us captives to kill and guards to kill ‘em to keep the thing going?”

The firstman sighed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “All right, maybe we can’t make it work. But we can get it out of here and bury it in the woods somewhere so the Algarvians don’t stumble over it.”

“That would be good,” Garivald said. “I already told you that would be good. I don’t want the cursed thing around here anymore than you do.” Unlike Waddo, he’d never wanted the crystal in Zossen. He’d liked living in the middle of nowhere. That let him pass his life with only minimal interference from the grasping hands of everyone who served his king.

But the Algarvians had grasping hands, too. And they weren’t just trying to seize his crops. They wanted his land and his village and everything he and everybody else had. They wanted Unkerlant, all of it. He could see that. Anyone who couldn’t. . . Anyone who couldn’t had to believe Raniero was the rightful King of Grelz.

Once the crystal got out to the woods, if it did, he might be able to let some of the men the Algarvians called brigands know it was there. They could likely find a way to use it. Maybe they would cut a few redheads’ throats. Or maybe they would cut the throats of a few Unkerlanter traitors instead.

He nodded. One way or another, he judged, they could do the job. “Aye,” he said to Waddo. “When the ground turns soft, we’ll dig it up and get it into the woods. Then we won’t have to worry about it anymore.” But the Algarvians will, he thought.

Raunu swung the hoe, lopped the stalk off a weed in Merkela’s herb garden, and chuckled. “I’m getting good at this business,” the veteran sergeant said. “Never thought I would. I was a town boy. My mother made sausages, and my father hawked ‘em through the streets. So did I, before I got sucked into the army in the middle of the Six Years’ War.”

Skarnu was also weeding. “And you stayed in.”

“That’s right.” Raunu nodded. He was more than twenty years older than Skarnu, but probably stronger and certainly tougher. “Once the fighting got done, it was easier work for better pay than I’d had before.”

“Easier than farm work?” Skarnu asked, beheading a weed himself.

“In between wars, sure,” Raunu answered. “And I was good at it, too, by the powers above. It took me awhile, but I got as high up as a fellow like me was ever going to get in the army.”

As a commoner was ever going to get, he meant. He’d spent thirty years serving Valmiera, and had risen to sergeant and no higher. Skarnu had joined the army with no experience and immediately became a captain. But then, he was a marquis. As he wouldn’t have before the war, he wondered if the rank and file of the Valmieran army would have fought harder against Algarve had a few very able men--his mind reached no further than that--had the chance to become officers.

Merkela came out of the slate-roofed farmhouse. She surveyed the weeding efforts of the two soldiers-turned-farmers with something less than full approval. Taking the hoe from Skarnu, she slaughtered a couple of weeds he and Raunu had both missed. Then she returned it with a flourish, like a drill sergeant showing a couple of raw recruits how a stick ought to be handled.

Raunu snickered. Skarnu felt faintly embarrassed. “I’ll never get the hang of farm work,” he muttered.

“You’re better than you were when you first came here,” Merkela said: an endorsement of sorts, but not a ringing one. Then her whole manner changed. Leaning forward, she asked, “Are we going to do it tonight?”

Raunu snickered again, in a different way. Skarnu knew Merkela didn’t mean taking her up to her bedchamber and making love to her. He might do that, too, but only afterwards. “Aye,” he said. “We are. People have to know that collaborating with the Algarvians has a price.”

“Anyone who has anything to do with the Algarvians ought to pay the price,” Merkela declared.

Skarnu wondered about that. Where did you draw the line between simply going on with your daily life and collaborating with the redheads? Was a tailor a collaborator if he made the occupiers tunics and kilts? Was the chap who steered a ley-line caravan a collaborator if he took Algarvians around Priekule? Maybe not. But what if he took them in the direction of fighting? What then? Questions were easy, answers less so.

Merkela didn’t care to look so hard. She had her answers. Sometimes Skarnu envied her certainty. Seeing the world in black and white--or redhead and blond--was simple, and required next to no thought. He shrugged. In broad outline, they agreed. He knew who the enemy was, sure enough.

As if to echo that, Raunu said, “This Negyu’s a bad egg, no doubt about it. He tells the Algarvians everything he hears, and everything his wife hears, too.

“And his daughter’s carrying a redhead’s bastard, the little slut,” Merkela added. “And she doesn’t even have the decency to be ashamed. I heard her bragging in the market square at Pavilosta about all the presents her man gives her. I bet she gave him one, too--the clap.” No, she didn’t need to look hard to hate.

“We’ll take care of’em,” Raunu said.

“We ought to make it look as much like an accident as we can,” Skarnu said. Blazing Negyu didn’t bother him. Blazing Negyu’s wife and his pregnant daughter felt different, even if they were as much hand in glove with the Algarvians as Negyu.

“Why?” Merkela shook her head, making her golden hair fly back and forth. “We ought to paint something like DAY AND SUNSHINE on their door to give the redheads something new to think about.”

“If we do, they’ll take hostages and they’ll blaze them,” Skarnu said. That was why her husband Gedominu was no longer among the living.

But she said, “The more hostages they blaze, the more the people will hate them.” Anything that made Valmierans hate the occupiers was fine by her. She looked to Raunu for support, since it didn’t seem forthcoming from her lover.

But the veteran shook his head. “The more hostages they blaze, the more people will fear them, too.” The glare Merkela gave him said he’d betrayed her. Raunu stood up under it without flinching; as a longtime sergeant, he’d stood up under more than his share of sour looks. Seeing that she couldn’t sway him, she flounced off. Raunu glanced at Skarnu and muttered something under his breath. Skarnu could not quite make it out, but thought it was, Better you than me.

Sometimes farm work made the day pass swiftly. Sometimes, the sun seemed nailed to one place in the sky. This was one of those latter days. Skarnu felt he’d been working for a week before he went into a supper of ale and cheese and a porridge of beans and sour cabbage and parsnips. Merkela was a good cook, but not even her skill could make the bland supper very lively.

Once it was done, once she’d washed the bowls and mugs and silverware, she took Gedominu’s hunting stick from its hiding place by the hearth. “Let’s go,” she said.

Skarnu kept their sticks--infantry weapons that blazed heavier beams farther than the one Merkela carried--hidden in the barn. After reclaiming them, they started south down the road toward Negyu’s farm. They were all ready to dive off the road and into the undergrowth to either side at the least hint of trouble. The Algarvians had declared a curfew after the murder of Count Simanu and did sometimes patrol the roads to enforce it.

About halfway to Negyu’s farm, the road passed through a wood of mixed elms and chestnuts. They weren’t in leaf yet, but they would be soon. Out of the darkness came a soft challenge: “King Gainibu!”

“The Column of Victory,” Skarnu replied--not the most original challenge and answer for Valmieran patriots, but easy for them to remember. Getting the right response, four more men stepped out into the roadway. After handclasps, Skarnu said, “Single file down the road. Raunu, you’re the best of us--you walk point. Let’s go do what needs doing.”

They obeyed without argument. To the farmers, Skarnu deserved to be obeyed because he’d been an officer in JQng Gainibu’s army. They assumed he knew what he was doing. Raunu, who’d taught him everything he did know about fighting, understood how ignorant he remained. But he’d given the right order this time, and so the sergeant kept quiet.

The night was crisp, but not so cold as it had been earlier in the winter. It said spring would come, even if not quite yet. Skarnu was warm enough and to spare in the sheepskin jacket that had been Gedominu’s even if that jacket fit him worse than it might have.

As they drew near Negyu’s farm, Raunu halted them. “All I can do is take us straight up the road,” he said. “One of you fellows who’ve lived here forever will know of some little deer track that’ll lead us right to the whoreson’s back door without the Algarvians’ ever being the wiser about how we got there.”

That produced a low-voiced argument between two of the locals, each convinced he knew the best shortcut. Finally, resentfully, one of them yielded and let the other take Raunu’s place at the head of the little column. “Leave it to me,” the farmer said proudly. “Curse me if I don’t get you there all right.”

Maybe the powers above were listening harder than they were in the habit of doing. In the middle of another dark stretch of wood, a new challenge rang out--this one in Algarvian. Skarnu and his men froze, doing their best not even to breathe. Could he have done so in perfect silence, he would have throttled their know-it-all guide.

“Who going there?” This time, the challenge came in bad, willingly accented Valmieran. Again, Skarnu and his comrades stayed perfectly still. Maybe the Algarvians would decide they’d imagined whatever they’d heard, and would go on their way.

No such luck. After a muttered colloquy, the men from the redheads’ patrol began moving toward the Valmierans who’d come to hurt their pet collaborator. Closer and closer came the footsteps, though Skarnu wasn’t sure he could see the enemy soldiers.

“Who going there?” another redhead called. No one, Skarnu thought loudly. Go away. But the Algarvians kept coming. With a moan of fright, one of the farmers who’d joined Raunu and Merkela and him--the very fellow who’d wanted and won the privilege of leading them to Negyu’s farm--broke and ran. Naturally, the Algarvians started blazing at him. As naturally, the flash from their beams revealed to them that he wasn’t the only Valmieran out breaking the curfew.

Those beams also revealed where some of the Algarvians were. Merkela was the first to blaze at them. A redhead fell with a groan. “Take cover!” Skarnu shouted to his followers, and was proud that his yell came out a split second before Raunu’s.

Then Raunu yelled something else: “Reinforcements, come in from the left!” For a moment, that made no sense to Skarnu, who knew too well that he had no reinforcements. Then he realized the redheads didn’t know he had none.

Fighting by night was a terrifying, deadly dangerous business. Every time anyone blazed, he gave away his position. That meant blazing and then rolling away at once, before an enemy looking for your beam could send one of his own at you. Skarnu had done it at the front against Algarve, back in the days--how distant they seemed now!--when Valmiera could hold a front against Algarve.

He wished he knew about how many Algarvians he was facing now. Not a company, or anything of the sort, or they would have rolled over his little band of raiders without a second thought. His comrades and he had probably been unlucky enough to stumble across a patrol with about as many in it as they had. But the Algarvians, curse them, would be carrying a crystal. They’d have more men here all too soon.

“We’ve got to break away!” he shouted. But he couldn’t slide off into the woods by himself, not without Merkela and Raunu. Keeping low, keeping to what cover he could, he scuttled toward where he thought they were, softly calling, “King Gainibu!”

After a moment, Merkela answered, “Column of Victory.” Then, in no small anger, she added, “You idiot--I almost blazed you.”

“Well, it’s not if you’re the only one trying to,” he answered. “We’d better find Raunu and slide away. We won’t get to Negyu’s tonight, or any time soon.”

“No.” Merkela’s whisper held both ice and fire. “And how did they come upon us just when we were getting so close? Who let them know we were going to visit the traitor?”

That hadn’t occurred to Skarnu. On the battlefield, he’d worried about incompetence and cowardice, not betrayal. But Merkela was right. This was--or could be--a different sort of war.

“King Gainibu!” From the darkness came Raunu’s voice.

This time, Skarnu answered, “Column of Victory.” He went on, “We won’t have a victory this time, though. We’d better disappear--if the redheads let us.”

“No arguments from me,” Raunu said. Had he argued, Skarnu would have thought hard about staying and fighting. But Raunu only let out a glum sigh. “Cursed bad luck we ran into that patrol.”

“Bad luck--or treason?” Merkela asked, as she had with Skarnu. Raunu grunted, almost as if he’d been blazed. Like Skarnu, he’d thought of war as a business where the sides were easy to tell apart. Skarnu realized he’d have to do some new thinking.

After the dreadful weather and hard fighting he’d gone through in Unkerlant, Colonel Sabrino found the mild air and bright sunshine above Trapani a great relief. An even greater relief was knowing that Algarve’s enemies were all hundreds of miles away from the kingdom’s borders, pushed back by the might of King Mezentio’s soldiers--and by the might of his mages, though Sabrino did not like thinking about that so well.

He waved to the dragonfliers of his wing, who’d flown back to Trapani with him, then pointed down toward the dragon farm on the outskirts of the capital. In good weather, with no enemies close by, he didn’t bother using the crystal he carried. Hand signals were plenty good, as they had been back in his great-grandfather’s days when men first began to master the art of flying dragons.

Down spiraled the wing. One after another, the dragons settled to earth. Ground crewmen ran up to chain the fierce and stupid beasts to their mooring stakes. That would keep them from fighting one another for food (foolish, for they all got plenty) or for no reason at all (even more foolish, but then they were dragons).

Sabrino undid his harness and dismounted. His dragon was too busy screaming at the ground crewmen to pay him any attention. Ground felt good under his feet. Being home felt good, too, even if only for a little while. The sunlight, the color of the sky, the green of the new grass that was beginning to sprout--all seemed right to him at a level far below thought. So did the smell of the air, even if one part of the smell was the rank reek of dragonshit.

Captain Domiziano came up to Sabrino. Saluting, the squadron commander said, “Good to get away from the front for a little while, and I’d be the last to deny it. Still and all, I wish we were going back soon. Powers above know the footsoldiers need the help of every dragon they can get in the sky above ‘em.”

“We have different orders,” Sabrino said, and said no more about that: he liked those orders no better than Domiziano did. Instead, he went on, “Almost two and a half years since we flew our dragons out of here to fight the Forthwegians. I stood in the square below the palace balcony listening to the king declare war, then hurried down here fast as I could go. Some way, things have hardly changed since then. Others . . .”

“Aye.” Domiziano’s head bobbed up and down. Pride lit his handsome features. “Then we were the oppressed, the victims of the greed of the Kaunian kingdoms. Now we’re the masters of Derlavai.”

That wasn’t what Sabrino had meant, but it wasn’t wrong, either. He didn’t explain what he had meant; he didn’t feel like wasting time talking about it. “I’m going into the city,” he said. “I want to freshen up--I smell like a stinking dragon--and pay some calls. We don’t fly out of here till three days from now. Things shouldn’t fall apart without me around till then.”

“Oh, no, sir,” said Domiziano, who, as senior surviving squadron leader, would command the wing till Sabrino returned.

“Good.” Sabrino slapped him on the back, then headed for the stables to commandeer a carriage to take him to a ley-line caravan stop: the dragon farm didn’t lie on a ley line. That could occasionally be a nuisance. Now, though, Sabrino enjoyed the chance to relax as he headed toward town.

He was tempted to go to his mistress’ flat and freshen up there. Fronesia would be glad to see him. Since he paid for the flat and gave her lavish presents besides, it was her duty to be glad to see him. But he had duties of his own. If he called on Fronesia before he saw his wife, Gismonda would be furious when she found out, and how could he blame her? She would know he’d go see Fronesia later, but that would be later. He didn’t want to hurt her pride, and so, with an inward sigh, decided to keep up appearances after all.

Trapani, set as it was on a broad, swampy plain in central Algarve, had never belonged to the Kaunian Empire. No one could have guessed that by the public buildings, though. Many of them were in the classical style, most with the marble painted, some left cool and white in the more modern mode. In days gone by, the Algarvians had envied and imitated their Kaunian neighbors. No more. The sharp verticals and extravagant ornamentation of native Algarvian architecture seemed far more natural to Sabrino than anything the blonds had ever built.

He hadn’t sent a message ahead to let his household know he was coming. He hadn’t known he was coming till he got the order to bring his wing east and had had as few stops as he could manage since then. He chuckled as he walked up to his own front door. If the household couldn’t stand a surprise every now and then, too bad. He grabbed the bellpull and yanked with all his might.

“My lord Count!” exclaimed the maidservant who let him in. “My lord Count!” exclaimed one of the kitchen wenches, who, fortunately, didn’t drop the tray she was carrying toward the stairs. “My lord Count!” exclaimed the butler, who, with Gismonda, ran the household when Sabrino was away. Over and over, Sabrino kept agreeing that he was who he was.

“My lord Count!” Gismonda said when he went upstairs with the kitchen wench. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”

Sabrino bowed and kissed her hand. “Good of you to say so, my dear,” he replied. His wife was a handsome, determined-looking woman not far from his own age. He respected her and liked her well enough. As Algarvian nobles went, they had a tranquil marriage, not least because neither pretended to be in love with the other.

“With things as they are in the west, I truly didn’t expect to have you back in Trapani any time soon,” Gismonda said. No, she was anything but a fool.

“I have new orders. They take me out of Unkerlant,” Sabrino said. His wife asked no more questions. That was only partly because she understood that, as a soldier, he couldn’t tell her everything. More had to do with the polite pretenses and silences noble husbands and wives used to keep their lives tolerable.

Gismonda turned to the kitchen wench. “Fetch us a bottle of sparkling wine and two crystal flutes.” After the girl had gone, Sabrino’s wife looked back at him. “And when did you come to Trapani?”

Have you already gone to your mistress to shame me? was what she meant. She knew how he thought. He’d been wise to come here first: indeed he had. “Not an hour and a half ago,” he replied. “If you sniff, you can smell the brimstone reek of dragon on me yet. I want to make myself presentable before going to the palace.”

Gismonda did sniff--and nodded, satisfied. “Will you take me to the palace?”

With another bow, Sabrino shook his head. “Would that I could, but I may not. I shall not wait on the king for pleasure, but in connection with these orders I have got.”

“Will he change them for you?” his wife asked.

“I doubt it,” Sabrino answered. “He trusts his generals--and he’d better, for if they aren’t to be trusted, powers above preserve the kingdom. But I hope he will let me see some of the sense behind them, if any there be.” Gismonda raised an eyebrow; that let her know what he thought of things.

Better for a hot soak, Sabrino changed into a fresh uniform, one that didn’t bear the effluvium of dragon. Then, after a last nod to his wife, he caught a ley-line caravan for Palace Square, the power point--in more ways than one--at the heart ofTrapani.

Walking into the palace, he felt a curious sense of diminution. Anywhere else in the kingdom and he, a count and a colonel, was a presence of considerable consequence. In the building that housed the king, though ... The servitors gave him precisely measured bows, less than they would have given were he a marquis, much less than they would have given were he a duke.

“His Majesty is not receiving at present,” a gorgeously dressed fellow informed Sabrino. “A reception is planned for later this evening, however. Is your name on the list of invited guests, your Excellency?”

“Not likely, since I was in combat in Unkerlant till day before yesterday, but I’ll be there anyway,” Sabrino answered.

Had the palace official argued with him, Sabrino would have drawn the sword that was for the most part only a ceremonial weapon. But the man nodded, saying, “His Majesty is always pleased to greet members of the nobility who have distinguished themselves in action. If you will please give me your name ...”

Sabrino did, wondering how pleased King Mezentio would be to greet him.

He’d roused the king’s ire by trying to talk him out of slaughtering Kaunian captives to power sorcery against the Unkerlanters. Mezentio had been sure that would win the war. It hadn’t. No king was fond of meeting subjects who could say, “I told you so.”

But there were other things Sabrino wanted to tell Mezentio. And so he nodded his thanks to the splendid flunky and then left the palace to sup and drink a couple of glasses of wine before returning. When he came back, he wondered if the servitor had just been getting rid of him. But no: now his name was on the list of Mezentio’s guests. A serving woman whose kilt barely covered her buttocks led him to the chamber where the king was receiving. He enjoyed following her more than he expected to enjoy talking with his sovereign.

Flutes and viols and a tinkling clavichord wove an intricate net of sound as background to the gathering. Sabrino nodded approval as he headed over to get a glass of wine. No strident thumpings here. However civilized the Kaunians claimed to be, he couldn’t stand their music.

Goblet in hand, he circulated through the building crowd, bowing to and being bowed to by the other men, bowing to and receiving curtsies from the women. He wouldn’t have minded receiving more than a curtsy from some of them, but that would have to wait on events: and besides, he hadn’t called on Fronesia yet.

King Mezentio seemed in good spirits. His smile didn’t falter as Sabrino bowed low before him. “I greet you, my lord Count,” he said with nothing but courtesy in his voice. But then, he was Sabrino’s age or older; he’d had plenty of time to learn to hide what he thought behind a mask of policy.

“I am very pleased to greet you, your Majesty, though only briefly and in passing, as it were,” Sabrino replied, bowing again.

“Briefly, eh?” Mezentio said. He planned Algarve’s grand strategy; he didn’t keep in mind where every colonel commanding a wing of dragons was going.

“Aye,” Sabrino said. “My men and I are ordered across the Narrow Sea to help the Yaninans in their fight with Lagoas. If your Majesty will pardon my frankness, I think we could do better fighting the Unkerlanters.”

“I have pardoned your frankness before,” Mezentio said, now with an edge to his voice--no, he hadn’t forgotten their disagreement in Unkerlant. “But I will also say that, unless we keep the cinnabar that comes from the land of the Ice People, your dragons will have a harder time fighting anyone.”

Stubbornly, Sabrino said, “There’s also cinnabar in the south of Unkerlant, across the Narrow Sea from the austral continent.”

“And I intend to go after it this summer, too,” the king answered. “But I also intend to keep what I already have, and to do that I have to prop up the Yaninans on the other side of the sea.” He sighed. “Since I see none in attendance here this very evening, I can tell you the truth: being allied to them is like being shackled to a corpse.”

Any joke a king made was funny by virtue of his rank. This one actually amused Sabrino. Bowing once more, he said, “Very well, your Majesty. My men and I will do what we can to keep the corpse breathing a little longer.” That, in turn, made Mezentio laugh--and when the king laughed, everyone around him laughed, too.