Inversions

6. THE BODYGUARD

The concubine lady Perrund, attended at a discreet distance by a eunuch of the harem guard, took her daily constitutional as usual a little after breakfast. Her route that day took her to one of the higher towers on the east wing where she knew she could gain access to the roof. It was a fine, clear day and the view could be particularly fine, looking out over the palace grounds to the spires and domes of the city of Crough, the plains beyond, and the hills in the deep distance.

“Why, DeWar!”

The chief bodyguard DeWar sat in a large, sheet-covered chair that was one of twenty or so pieces of furniture which had been stored in the tower room. His eyes were closed, his chin was resting on his chest. His head jerked up, he looked around and blinked. The concubine Perrund sat in a seat beside him, her red gown bright against the dark blue of the sheet. The white-clad eunuch guard stood by the door.

DeWar cleared his throat. “Ah, Perrund,” he said. He drew himself up in the chair and straightened his black tunic. “How are you?”

“Pleased to see you, DeWar, though surprised,” she told him, smiling. “You looked as though you were slumbering. I thought of all people the Protector’s chief bodyguard would be the least likely to need sleep during the day.”

DeWar glanced round at the eunuch guard. “The Protector has given me the Xamis-morning off,” he said. “There’s a formal breakfast for the Xinkspar delegation. There are guards everywhere. He thinks I am surplus.”

“You think otherwise.”

“He is surrounded by men with weapons. Just because they’re our guards doesn’t mean there isn’t a threat. Naturally I think I ought to be there but he will not be told.” DeWar rubbed his eyes.

“So you became unconscious out of pique?”

“Did I look asleep?” DeWar asked innocently. “I was only thinking.”

“And very fast a-thought you looked. What did you conclude?”

“That I must not answer so many questions.”

“A fine decision. People do pry so.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I rarely think. There are so many people who think — or think they think — better than I. It would be presumptuous.”

“I meant what brings you here? Is this your morning walk?”

“Yes. I like to take the air from the roof.”

“I must remember not to position myself here next time I want to think.”

“I vary my route, DeWar. There is no certain escape in any public part of the palace. The only safe place might be within your own chambers.”

“I shall try to remember.”

“Good. I trust you are happy now?”

“Happy? Why would that be?”

“There has been an attempt on the Protector’s life. I understood you were there.”

“Ah, that.”

“Aye, that.”

“Yes. I was there.”

“So, are you happy now? The last time we talked you expressed dismay that there had been so few assassins recently, taking this as incontrovertible proof that we must be entirely surrounded by them.”

DeWar smiled ruefully. “Ah yes. Then, no, I am no happier, my lady.”

“I thought not.” The lady Perrund rose to go. DeWar stood as she did. “I understand the Protector visits us in the harem later today,” she said. “Will you be joining us then?”

“I imagine so.”

“Good. I’ll leave you to your thinking.” The lady Perrund smiled, then made for the door which led to the roof, followed by the eunuch guard.

DeWar watched her and the guard go, then stretched and yawned.

The palace concubine Yalde was a favourite of General YetAmidous and was often called to his home in the palace grounds. The girl could not speak, though she appeared to have a tongue and everything else required for speech, and understood imperial well enough and the local language of Tassaseni a very little. She had been a slave. Perhaps there was something that had happened to her during that time which had addled whatever part of her brains would normally have granted her the power of speech. Still, she could whimper and moan and shout when she was being pleasured, as the General never tired of telling his friends.

Yalde sat on the same vast couch as the General, in the principal receiving room of his house, feeding him finger fruits from a crystal bowl while he played with her long black hair, twisting and untwisting it in one large hand. It was night, a bell or so after a small banquet YetAmidous had thrown. The men still wore their dining robes. Present with YetAmidous were RuLeuin, UrLeyn’s brother, BreDelle, the Protector’s physician, Guard Commander ZeSpiole, the Generals Duke Simalg and Duke Ralboute and a few aides and court juniors.

“No, there are paper screens or something,” said RuLeuin. “He must have burst through those.”

“It was the ceiling, I tell you. Think. It would be the best place. Hint of danger, and — whumpf! Straight down. Why, you could just drop a cannon ball on whoever was causing the trouble. Quite easy, really. A fool could do it.”

“Nonsense. The walls.”

“ZeSpiole should know,” YetAmidous said, interrupting RuLeuin and Simalg. “ZeSpiole? What do you have to say?”

“I wasn’t there,” ZeSpiole said, waving a goblet around. “And the painted chamber was never used while I was chief bodyguard.”

“Still, you must know of it,” YetAmidous said.

“Of course I know of it,” ZeSpiole said. He stopped waving his goblet round long enough for a passing servant to fill it with wine. “Lots of people know of it, but no one goes in there.”

“So how did DeWar surprise the Sea Company assassin?” Simalg asked. Simalg was a Duke with vast lands in the east, but had been one of the first of the old noble families to declare for UrLeyn during the war of succession. He was a thin, ever-languorous-looking man with long straight brown hair. “The ceiling, was it not, ZeSpiole? Do tell me I’m right.”

“The walls,” RuLeuin said. “Through a painting, a portrait in which the eyes had been cut out!”

“I can’t say.”

“But you must!” Simalg protested.

“It’s a secret.”

“Is it?”

“It is.”

“There we are,” YetAmidous said to the others. “It is a secret.”

“Does the Protector say so, or his smug saviour?” Ralboute asked. A stout but muscled man, Duke Ralboute had been another early convert to UrLeyn’s cause.

“You mean DeWar?” ZeSpiole asked.

“Does he not seem smug to you?” Ralboute asked, and drank from his goblet.

“Yes, smug,” Doctor BreDelle said. “And too clever by half. Or even more.”

“And hard to pin down,” Ralboute added, pulling his dining robe more loosely over his huge frame and brushing some crumbs away.

“Try lying on him,” Simalg suggested.

“I’ll lie on you,” Ralboute told the other noble.

“I think not.”

“Do you think DeWar would lie with the Protector?” YetAmidous asked. “Do we think he really is a lover of men? Or are these only rumours?”

“You never see him inside the harem,” RuLeuin said.

“Would he be allowed?” BreDelle asked. The court physician was only allowed to make professional calls to the harem when its own female nurse could not cope.

“Chief bodyguard?” ZeSpiole said. “Yes. He could pick amongst the household concubines. The ones dressed in blue.”

“Ah,” YetAmidous said, and stroked under the chin of the dark-haired girl at his side. “The household girls. One level beneath my little Yalde.”

“I think DeWar does not make use of that particular privilege,” Ralboute said.

“They say he keeps the company of the concubine Perrund,” RuLeuin said.

“The one with the wasted arm.” YetAmidous nodded.

“I have heard that too,” BreDelle agreed.

“One of UrLeyn’s own?” Simalg looked aghast. “You don’t mean that he has her? Providence! The Protector would make sure he could stay in the harem as long as he liked — as a eunuch.”

“I cannot imagine that DeWar is that foolish or so intemperate,” BreDelle said. “It could only be courtly love.”

“Or they could be plotting something, could they not?” Simalg suggested.

“I hear he visits a house in the city, though not often,” RuLeuin said.

“A house with girls?” YetAmidous asked. “Not boys?”

“Girls,” RuLeuin confirmed.

“I think I’d ask for double fare, if I were a girl who had to accommodate that fellow,” Simalg said. “He has a sour smell about him. Have you never noticed?”

“You may have a nose for these things,” said Doctor BreDelle.

“Perhaps DeWar has a special dispensation from the Protector,” Ralboute suggested. “A secret one which lets him bed Perrund.”

“She’s crippled!” YetAmidous said.

“Yet still, I think, beautiful,” Simalg said.

“And it must be said that some people have been known to find infirmity attractive,” Doctor BreDelle added.

“Cleaving the regal lady Perrund. A privilege you enjoyed, ZeSpiole?” Ralboute asked the older man.

“Sadly not,” ZeSpiole said. “And I do not think DeWar does either. I suspect theirs is a meeting of minds, not bodies.”

“Too clever by twice,” Simalg muttered, beckoning more wine.

“What privileges do you most miss from the post DeWar now has?” Ralboute asked, looking down as he peeled a piece of fruit. He shooed away a servant who offered to do this for him.

“I miss being near the Protector every day, but little else. It is an unnerving job. A young man’s job. My present post is quite exciting enough without having to deal with murderous ambassadors.”

“Oh, come, ZeSpiole,” Ralboute said, sucking at his fruit and then spitting out a mush of seeds into a waste bowl before sucking again and swallowing. He wiped his lips. “You must resent DeWar, mustn’t you? He usurped you.”

ZeSpiole was silent for a moment. “Usurpation can be the right course, sometimes, Duke, don’t you think?” He looked round the others. “We all of us usurped the old King. It needed to be done.”

“Absolutely,” said YetAmidous.

“Of course,” RuLeuin agreed.

“Mmmm!” BreDelle nodded, mouth full of a sweetmeat.

Ralboute nodded. Simalg gave a sigh. “Our Protector did the usurping,” he said. “The rest of us helped.”

“And proud to do so,” YetAmidous said, slapping the edge of his couch.

“So you don’t resent the fellow at all?” Ralboute asked ZeSpiole. “You are a child of Providence indeed.” He shook his head and used his fingers to break the flesh of another fruit.

“I no more resent him than you ought to resent the Protector,” ZeSpiole said.

Ralboute was stopped in his eating. “Why should I resent UrLeyn?” he asked. “I honour UrLeyn and what he has done.”

“Including putting us here in the palace,” Simalg said. “We might have still been juniors, out of favour. We owe the Grand Aedile as much as any trader who pins his voting document — what do you call it? Franchisement. His Franchisement high on his wall.”

“Just so,” ZeSpiole said. “And yet if anything was to happen to the Protector—”

“Providence forbid!” YetAmidous said.

“— might not a Duke such as you — a person of high birth under the old regime yet who had also been a faithful general under the Protector’s new order — be just the sort of person the people might turn to, as successor?”

“Or there’s the boy,” Simalg said, yawning.

“This talk’s uncomfortable,” RuLeuin said.

“No,” ZeSpiole said, looking at RuLeuin. “We must be able to talk of such things. Those who wish Tassasen and UrLeyn ill most certainly will not shrink from such talk. You need to think of such things, RuLeuin. You are the Protector’s brother. People might turn to you if he was taken from us.”

RuLeuin shook his head. “No,” he said. “I have risen so considerably on his cloak-tails. People already think I have climbed too far.” He glanced over at Ralboute, who looked back with wide, expressionless eyes.

“Oh yes,” Simalg said, waving a hand, “we Dukes are frightfully against such accidents of birth.”

“Where’s that housemaster?” YetAmidous said. “Yalde, be a dear and go and fetch the musicians back, would you? All this talk is making my head ache. We need music and songs!”

“Here!”

“There! There he is!”

“Quick! Catch him! Catch him! Quickly!”

“Aah!”

“Too late!”

“I win I win I win!”

“You win again! What cunningness in one so young!” Perrund picked the boy up with her good arm and swung him on to the seat beside her. Lattens, UrLeyn’s son, squirmed as he was tickled then yelped and dived under a fold in the concubine’s gown and tried to hide there as DeWar, who had run most of the length of the visiting chamber of the outer harem in a vain attempt to head Lattens off, arrived panting and growling.

“Where’s that child?” he demanded gruffly.

“Child? Why, what child could that be?” the lady Perrund asked, hand at her throat, her blue-flecked eyes wide.

“Ach, never mind. I’ll just have to sit down here to get my breath back after chasing the young scamp.” There was a giggle as DeWar sat down right beside the boy, whose hose and shoes stuck out from the woman’s robe. “What’s this? Here are that rascal’s shoes. And look!” DeWar grabbed Lattens’ ankle. There was a muffled shriek. “And his leg! I’ll bet the rest is attached! Yes! Here he is!” Perrund pulled away the fold of her gown to let DeWar tickle the boy, then brought a cushion from another part of the couch and put it under the boy’s bottom. DeWar plonked him there. “Do you know what happens to boys who win at hide-and-seek?” DeWar asked. Lattens, wide-eyed, shook his head and made to suck his thumb. Perrund gently stopped him from doing this. “They get,” DeWar growled, coming very close to the child, “sweets!”

Perrund handed him the box of crystallised fruits. Lattens squealed with delight and rubbed his hands together, staring into the box and trying to decide which to have first. Eventually he grabbed a small handful.

Huesse, another red-gowned concubine, sat heavily down on a couch across from Perrund and DeWar. She too had been involved in the game of hide-and-seek. Huesse was Lattens’ aunt. Her sister had died giving birth to Lattens towards the start of the war of succession. Huesse was a plumply supple woman with unruly fair ringleted hair.

“And have you had your lessons for today, Lattens?” Perrund asked.

“Yes,” the boy said. He was small made, like his father, though he had the red-tinged golden hair of his mother and his aunt.

“And what did you learn today?”

“More things about equal triangles, and some history, about things which have happened.”

“I see,” Perrund said, settling the boy’s collar back down and patting his hair flat again.

“There was this man called Narajist,” the boy said, licking his fingers free of sugar dust.

“Naharajast,” DeWar said. Perrund motioned him quiet.

“Who looked in a tube at the sky and told the Emperor…” Lattens screwed up his eyes and peered up at the three glowing plaster domes lighting the chamber. “Poeslied—”

“Puiside,” DeWar muttered. Perrund frowned severely and tutted.

“— there were big fiery rocks up there and Watch Out!” The boy stood and shouted the last two words, then sat down again and leant over the box of sweets, one finger to his lips. “And the Emperor didn’t and the rocks killed him dead.”

“Well, it’s a little simplified,” DeWar began.

“What a sad story!” Perrund said, now ruffling the boy’s hair. “The poor old Emperor!”

“Yes,” the boy shrugged. “But Daddy came along and made everything all right again.”

The three adults looked at each other and laughed. “Indeed he did,” Perrund said, taking away the box of sweets and hiding it behind her. “Tassasen is powerful again, isn’t it?”

“Mm-hmm,” Lattens said, trying to squirm behind Perrund in pursuit of the box of sweets.

“I think it might be time for a story,” Perrund said, and pulled the boy back to a sitting position. “DeWar?”

DeWar sat and thought for a moment. “Well,” he said, “it’s not much of a story, but it is a story of sorts.”

“Then tell it.”

“It is suitable for the boy?” Huesse asked.

“I shall make it so.” DeWar sat forward and shifted his sword and dagger. “Once upon a time there was a magical land where every man was a king, every woman a queen, each boy a prince and all girls princesses. In this land there were no hungry people and no crippled people.”

“Were there any poor people?” asked Lattens.

“That depends what you mean. In a way no, because they could all have any amount of riches they wanted, but in a way yes, for there were people who chose to have nothing. Their hearts’ desire was to be free from owning anything, and they usually preferred to stay in the desert or in the mountains or the forests, living in caves or trees or just wandering around. Some lived in the great cities, where they too just roved about. But wherever they chose to wander, the decision was always theirs.”

“Were they holy people?” Lattens asked.

“Well, in a way, maybe.”

“Were they all handsome and beautiful, too?” Huesse asked.

“Again, that depends what you mean by beautiful,” DeWar said apologetically. Perrund sighed with exasperation. “Some people see a sort of beauty in ugliness,” DeWar said. “And if everybody is beautiful there is something singular in being ugly, or just plain. But, generally, yes, everybody was as beautiful as they wanted to be.”

“So many ifs and buts,” Perrund said. “This sounds a very equivocal land.”

“In a way,” DeWar smiled. Perrund hit him with a cushion. “Sometimes,” DeWar continued, “as people in the land brought more of it under cultivation—”

“What was the name of the land?” Lattens interrupted.

“Oh… Lavishia, of course. Anyway, sometimes the citizens of Lavishia would discover whole groups of people who lived a bit like the wanderers, that is, like the poor or holy people in their own land, but who did not have the choice of living like that. Such people lived like that because they had to. These were people who hadn’t had the advantages in life the people of Lavishia were used to. In fact, dealing with such people soon became the biggest problem the people of Lavishia had.”

“What? They had no war, famine, pestilence, taxes?” Perrund asked.

“None. And no real likelihood of the last three.”

“I feel my credulity being stretched,” Perrund muttered.

“So in Lavishia everybody was happy?” Huesse asked.

“As happy as they could be,” DeWar said. “People still managed to make their own unhappinesses, as people always do.”

Perrund nodded. “Now it begins to sound plausible.”

“In this land there lived two friends, a boy and a girl who were cousins and who had grown up together. They thought they were adults but really they were still just children. They were the best of friends but they disagreed on many things. One of the most important things they disagreed about was what to do when Lavishia chanced upon one of these tribes of poor people. Was it better to leave them alone or was it better to try and make life better for them? Even if you decided it was the right thing to do to make life better for them, which way did you do this? Did you say, Come and join us and be like us? Did you say, Give up all your own ways of doing things, the gods that you worship, the beliefs you hold most dear, the traditions that make you who you are? Or do you say, We have decided you should stay roughly as you are and we will treat you like children and give you toys that might make your life better? Indeed, who even decided what was better?”

Lattens was shifting and wriggling on the couch. Perrund was trying to keep him still. “Were there really not any wars?” the child asked.

“Yes,” Perrund said, looking concernedly at DeWar. “This may all be a little abstract for a child of Lattens’ age.”

DeWar smiled sadly. “Well, there were some very small wars very far away, but to be brief, the two friends decided that they would put their arguments to a test. They had another friend, a lady, who… very much liked both of the friends, and who was very clever and very beautiful and who had a favour which she was prepared to grant either of them.” DeWar looked at Perrund and Huesse.

“Either of them?” Perrund asked with a small smile. Huesse looked at the floor.

“She was broad-minded,” DeWar said, and cleared his throat. “Anyway, it was agreed that the two cousins would present their arguments to her and whoever lost the argument had to leave and let the favour be granted to the other one alone.”

“Did this third friend know about the cousins’ amusing agreement?” Perrund inquired.

“Names! What are the names?” Lattens demanded.

“Yes, what are they called?” Huesse said.

“The girl was called Sechroom and the boy’s name was Hiliti. Their beautiful friend was called Leleeril.” DeWar looked at Perrund. “And no, she did not know about the agreement.”

“Tut,” Perrund pronounced.

“So, the three met in a hunting lodge in the high, high mountains—”

“As high as the Breathless Plains?” Lattens asked.

“Not so high, but steeper, with very sharp peaks. Now—”

“And which cousin believed in what?” Perrund asked.

“Hmm? Oh, Sechroom believed that one should always interfere, or try to help, while Hiliti thought it best to leave people be,” DeWar said. “Anyway, they had good food and fine wine and they laughed and told each other stories and jokes and the two friends Sechroom and Hiliti explained their different ideas to Leleeril and asked which she thought was right. She tried to say that they were both right in their own ways, and that sometimes one was right and one wrong and sometimes the other way round… but eventually Sechroom and Hiliti said Leleeril had to choose one or the other, and she chose Hiliti, and poor Sechroom had to leave the hunting lodge.”

“What was it Leeril was going to give Hiliti?” Lattens asked.

“Something sweet,” DeWar said, and, magician-like, produced a crystallised fruit from his pocket. He presented the sweet to the delighted boy, who bit happily into it.

“What happened?” Huesse asked.

“Leleeril found out that her favours had been subject to a bet and she was hurt. She went away for a while—”

“Did she have to go away?” Perrund asked. “You know, the way girls in polite society sometimes have to, while nature takes its course?”

“No, she just wanted to be somewhere else, away from everybody she knew.”

“What, without her parents?” Huesse asked sceptically.

“Without anybody. Then Sechroom and Hiliti realised that perhaps Leleeril had felt more for one of them than they had imagined and that they had done a bad thing.”

“There are three Emperors now,” Lattens said suddenly, munching on his sugary fruit. “I know their names.” Perrund shushed him.

“Leleeril came back,” DeWar told them, “but she had made new friends where she had been, and she had changed while she had been away, and so went away again, to stay. As far as is known she lived happily ever after. Sechroom became a soldier-missionary in the Lavishian army, to help fight in the very small, very far-away wars.”

“A female soldier?” asked Huesse.

“Of a sort,” DeWar said. “Perhaps more missionary, or even spy, than soldier.”

Perrund shrugged. “The balnimes of Quarreck are said all to be warrior women.”

DeWar sat back, smiling.

“Oh,” Huesse said, looking disappointed. “Is that all?” she asked.

“That’s all for now.” DeWar shrugged.

“You mean there’s more?” Perrund said. “You’d better tell us. The suspense might be too much to bear.”

“Perhaps I’ll tell you more some other time.”

“What about Hiliti?” Huesse asked. “What became of him after his cousin left?”

DeWar just smiled.

“Very well then,” Perrund chided him. “Be mysterious.”

“Where is Lavishia?” Lattens asked. “I know geography.”

“Far away,” DeWar told the boy.

“Far away across the sea?”

“Far away, over the sea.”

“Further than Tyrsk?”

“Much further.”

“Further than the Thrown Isles?”

“Oh, a lot further than that.”

“Further than… Drizen?”

“Even further than Drezen. In the land of make-believe.”

“And are the mountains sugar hills?” Lattens asked.

“All of them. And the lakes are fruit juice. And all the game animals grow on trees, ready cooked. And other trees grow their own tree-houses, and catapults and bows and arrows grow on them like fruits.”

“And I suppose the rivers run with wine?” Huesse asked.

“Yes, and the houses and the buildings and the bridges are made of diamond and gold and everything precious.”

“I’ve got a pet eltar,” Lattens told DeWar. “It’s called Wintle. Want to see it?”

“Certainly.”

“It’s in the garden, in a cage. I’ll fetch it. Come on, let’s go,” Lattens said to Huesse, pulling her on to her feet.

“Probably time he had his run round the garden anyway,” Huesse said. “I shall be back soon, with the unruly Wintle.”

DeWar and Perrund watched the woman and the child leave the chamber under the watchful eyes of a white-clad eunuch in the high pulpit.

“Now then, Mr DeWar,” Perrund said. “You have delayed long enough. You must tell me all about this ambassador assassin you foiled.”

DeWar told her as much as he felt he could about what had happened. He left out the details of exactly how he had been able to respond so promptly to the assassin’s attack, and Perrund was too polite to press him further.

“What of the delegation that came with the Sea Company’s ambassador?”

DeWar looked troubled. “I think they knew nothing of what he intended. One of them did, maybe. He had charge of the drugs the assassin had taken, but the rest were ignorant. Naive innocents who thought this was a great adventure.”

“Were they sorely questioned?” Perrund asked quietly.

DeWar nodded. He looked down at the floor. “Only their heads are going back. I’m told at the end they were glad to lose them.”

Perrund put her hand briefly on the man’s arm, then drew it away again, glancing at the eunuch in the pulpit. “The blame lies with their masters who sent them to their deaths, not with you. They would not have suffered less if their plan had succeeded.”

“I know that,” DeWar said, smiling as best he could. “Perhaps it might be called professional lack of empathy. My training is to kill or disable as quickly as possible, not as slowly.”

“So are you really not content?” Perrund asked. “There has been an attempt, and a serious one at that. Do you not feel this disproves your theory that there is someone here at court?”

“Perhaps,” DeWar said awkwardly.

Perrund smiled. “You are not really appeased by this at all, are you?”

“No,” DeWar admitted. He looked away. “Well, yes; a little, but more because I think I have decided you are right. I will worry whatever happens and always put the worst construction on it. I am unable not to worry. Worrying is my natural state.”

“So you should not worry about worrying so much,” Perrund suggested, a smile playing about her lips.

“That is more or less it. Otherwise one might never stop.”

“Most pragmatic.” Perrund leant forward and put her chin in her hand. “What was the point of your story about Sechroom, Hiliti and Leleeril?”

DeWar looked awkward. “I don’t really know,” he confessed. “I heard the story in another language. It doesn’t survive the translation very well, and… there was more than just the language that needed translation. Some of the ideas and… ways that people do things and behave required alteration to make sense, too.”

“Well then, you were mostly successful. Did your story really happen?”

“Yes. It really happened,” DeWar said, then sat back and laughed, shaking his head. “No, I’m jesting with you. How could it happen? Search the latest globes, scour the newest maps, sail to the ends of the world. You will not find Lavishia, I swear.”

“Oh,” Perrund said, disappointed. “So you are not from Lavishia?”

“How can one be from a place that does not exist?”

“But you are from… Mottelocci, wasn’t it?”

“Mottelocci indeed.” DeWar frowned. “I don’t recall ever telling you that.”

“There are mountains there, aren’t there? It is one of the… what are they called, now? The Half-Hiddens. Yes. The Half-Hidden Kingdoms. Unreachable half the year. But a small paradise, they say.”

“Half a paradise. In spring and summer and autumn it is beautiful. In winter it is terrible.”

“Three seasons from four would be sufficient to please most people.”

“Not when the fourth season lasts longer than the other three put together.”

“Did something like your story happen there?”

“Perhaps.”

“Were you one of the people?”

“Maybe.”

“Sometimes,” Perrund said, sitting back with a look of exasperation on her face, “I can quite understand why rulers employ torturers.”

“Oh, I can always understand,” DeWar said softly. “Just not…” He seemed to catch himself, then sat upright, pulling his tunic tighter down. He looked up at the vague shadows cast on the softly glowing bowl of the light dome overhead. “Perhaps we have time for a game of something. What do you say?”

Perrund remained looking at him for a moment, then sighed and also drew herself upright. “I say we had better play ‘Monarch’s Dispute’. It is the one game you might be suited for. Though there are also,” she said, waving to a servant at a distant door, “‘Liar’s Dice’ and ‘Secret Keep’.”

DeWar sat back on the couch, watching Perrund as she watched the servant approach. “And ‘Subterfuge’,” she added, “and ‘Blaggard’s Boast’ and ‘Whiff of Truth’ and ‘Travesty’ and ‘The Gentleman Misinformant’ and…”