Jaws of Darkness

Three

Back before the war, Garivald had visited Tolk only a handful of times, though the market town lay less than a day’s walk from Zossen, his home village. AfterKingSwemmel ’s armies drove the Algarvians out of the western portion of the Duchy of Grelz, he’d left the band of irregulars he’d led before Unkerlanter regulars and inspectors could reward him for his fight against the redheads by making something unfortunate happen to him.

And so he’d gone back to Zossen, only to find the war there before him. The village, his wife, his son, his little daughter… all gone as if they’d never been. He’d trudged on to Tolk, farther west still, not least because he had no idea what else to do.

Tolk survived. The Algarvians and their Grelzer puppets hadn’t made a stand there, as they must have at Zossen. Buildings were smashed. Only burnt-out rubble remained of a few whole blocks. But Tolk survived.

Sitting by the fire in a tavern there, Garivald turned to Obilot and said, “Powers above only know what we would have done if this place was gone, too.”

Like him, she had a thick earthenware mug of spirits in front of her. She shrugged as she took a swallow from it. “Gone somewhere else, that’s all. What difference does it make where we are? We haven’t got anything left but each other.”

Garivald still didn’t know exactly what the Algarvians had done to her, and to whatever family she’d had, to make her flee to the irregulars. She’d fought Mezentio’s men longer and harder than he had; she’d been in the band when Munderic, who’d led it before Garivald, rescued him before the redheads could take him to Herborn and boil him alive for making patriotic songs.

He said, “We might have starved before we got anywhere else.” Late winter was the hard time, the empty time, of the year in peasant villages in Grelz, as it doubtless was in peasant villages all over Unkerlant.

Obilot shook her head. She had to bring up a hand to brush dark curls back from her face. She wasn’t pretty, not in any conventional sense of the word: she was too thin, too fierce looking, for anything approaching beauty. But the energy that crackled through her made every other woman Garivald had known, including Annore who’d borne him two children, pallid in comparison. She said, “Two desperate characters with sticks in their hands don’t starve.”

“Well, maybe not,” Garivald said, and drank from his own mug of spirits. In most winters, he’d have stayed drunk much of the time from harvest till planting. How else to while away the long winter with so much time in it and so little to fill that time? As an irregular, he’d found other ways. As a refugee, he was finding other ways still. But, when he put the mug down again, he said, “I don’t feel like a desperate character.”

“No?” Obilot’s laugh held little mirth. “What else are you? What else is anybody in Grelz?” She lowered her voice: “What will you be if the inspectors catch up with you?”

“Dead,” Garivald answered, and drained the mug. He waved it in the air to show the tapman he wanted it refilled. Obilot’s mug was empty, too.

“Let’s see some silver,” the fellow said when he brought a jar of spirits over to their table.

Garivald dug a coin from his belt pouch and set it down on the scarred pine board. “Here. Fill us both up again.”

The tapman scooped it up, looked at it, and made it disappear. He filled both mugs. But then he said, “If you haven’t got the brains to be careful passing money withKingRaniero ’s face-Raniero the traitor’s face, I mean- you’ll land in more trouble than popskull can ever get you out of. You’re just lucky I know a jeweler who’ll give me weight for weight-well, almost-in silver. He’ll be able to melt it down and make earrings or something out of it.”

Nobody at the next table could have heard a word he said. He went back behind the bar. Obilot asked, “How long have you been carrying that silver bit around?”

“How should I know?” Garivald shrugged. “Maybe since beforeKingSwemmel ’s soldiers broke into Grelz. But maybe I got it yesterday, chopping firewood for that baker.”

“If you did, he was probably glad to palm it off on you,” Obilot said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Garivald agreed. “But at least in a place like Tolk, I can find odd jobs to do and make a little money. In a peasant village, Iwould starve. Everybody hates strangers in a village. I ought to know. I did, back when people I hadn’t seen before came into Zossen. For all I knew, they were inspectors or impressers sneaking around.”

“It’s not right,” Obilot said savagely. “With your songs, you did as much as anybody to get the Algarvians out of Grelz. The redheads must’ve thought so, or they wouldn’t have wanted to boil you. But what thanks do you get from your own side? Back in the woods, they were going to arrest you or kill you.”

With another shrug, Garivald answered, “When have you seen a peasant win? Not with our own kings, not with the redheads, not ever.” He didn’t even sound bitter. What point, when he told simple truth?

A youngster who might have been the tapman’s little brother or son brought in more wood and threw it on the fire. A couple of people in the tavern clapped their hands. The young man grinned, taken by surprise. The wood, well-seasoned pine, burned hot and bright.

“We’ve got the right table,” Obilot said, and turned toward the flames. Their reflections danced in her eyes. Garivald was about to do the same when somebody new came in from outside.

“Close the door, curse you,” someone inside said. “You’re letting out the heat.”

Garivald started to chime in, but the words never passed his lips. Instead, he turned his back on the door and leaned toward the fire, as Obilot had done. In a whisper even he had trouble even he had trouble hearing above the crackling flames, he said, “That’s Tantris who just walked in.”

“Tantris! What’s he doing here?” Obilot’s face went hard and feral. “He’s supposed to be off in the woods seventy-five miles east of here. The only reason he’d come to Tolk…”

“Is because he knows what we look like,” Garivald finished for her.

“He knows whatyou look like, the whoreson,” Obilot said. “He’s got to be after you. I don’t count for anything, not to the likes of him.”

She was bound to be right. When Garivald had slipped out of the woods with her and headed back toward Zossen without pursuit, he’d thought the Unkerlanters were willing to let him alone. That seemed a mistake, a bad mistake.

“I led fighters who didn’t take orders straight fromKingSwemmel,” he said. “I made songs people liked, songs that made people want to fight the redheads. This is how my own kingdom pays me back.”

Mezentio’s men had been ready to kill him. Now Swemmel’s were, too. The knowledge tore at him, as if he’d set his foot in a trap. And maybe he had. He sipped spirits and watched Tantris out of the corner of his eye.

The soldier didn’t want to be recognized for what he was; he wore a dark blue tunic of civilian cut rather than the rock-gray uniform tunic in which Garivald had always seen him in the woods. He glanced Garivald and Obilot’s way, but gave no sign of knowing who they were. After a moment, Garivald realized the two of them were silhouetted against the flames in the fireplace. He stayed where he was. Tantris bought a beaker of ale and stood at the bar drinking it.

Obilot kept her voice very low. “Is it true,” she said, “that now there are irregulars-Grelzer irregulars, I mean-fighting for the Algarvians in the lands our armies have taken back from them?”

“I’ve heard it, the same as you have,” Garivald answered. “I don’t know whether it’s true… but I’ve heard it.”

“Till that cursed Tantris walked thought the door, I wouldn’t’ve believed it,” Obilot said. “But now, do you know, I almost begin to understand.” Considering how she felt about the redheads, that was no small statement.

“A good many peasants fled east when Mezentio’s men had to retreat,” Garivald said. “I used to think they were the ones in bed with the Algarvians. I guess a lot of them were, but maybe not all.” If he hadn’t got in trouble with the redheads for his songs, his life in Zossen wouldn’t have been too very different under them from what it had been before the war. That was a judgment on Algarve and Unkerlant both, he supposed.

Obilot turned her head ever so slightly toward Tantris. “What are we going to do about him?”

“Hopehe goes away,” Garivald answered. Tantris drank his ale. He bought a chunk of chewy bread and dipped it into the bowl of coarse salt the tapman kept on the bar. Bite by bite, the bread disappeared. He washed down each bite with another swig of ale. Garivald might have done the same. He had done the same, many times.

The tavern door opened again. This newcomer, unlike Tantris, did not try to disguise what he was: a military mage. Two troopers tramped in behind him. He strode up to the tapman and snapped, “Let me see your cashbox, fellow.”

“Why should I?” the tapman asked. “Are you robbing me?”

“Why?” the mage echoed. “I’ll tell you why. Treason toKingSwemmel , that’s why.” He dropped a silver coin on the bar. It rang sweetly. “This is money of Raniero, the false king, the king of traitors. By the law of similarity, like calls to like. This foul coin calls to one in your box. Whoever harbors money of Raniero is a traitor to His Majesty.”

Garivald’s blood ran cold. The fellow behind the bar had to say no more than, I got it from him, and point, and he would find himself in more trouble than Tantris could give him. What the tapman did say was, “It’s here, under the bar.” He reached down. But what he came out with wasn’t the cashbox, but a stout bludgeon he doubtless used to break up tavern brawls. He didn’t break one up this time. With a shout, he brought the bludgeon down on the military mage’s head.

With another shout, somebody else threw his mug at one of the Unker-lanter troopers behind the mage. It shattered against the back of the soldier’s skull. He went down with a groan. Somebody shouted, “KingSwemmel!” and punched the man who’d thrown the mug. Somebody else shouted, “Powers below eatKingSwemmel!”-a shout nobody would have dared to raise before the Algarvian invasion-and kicked the fellow who’d yelled the king’s name.

In the blink of an eye, the desperate struggle between the Grelzers who’d fought for Swemmel and those who hated him broke out anew in the tavern. The weapons weren’t so fancy as those of the great war still wracking Unkerlant, but that made the battle no less ferocious. People kicked and punched and grappled and bit. Knives flashed in the firelight.

And Garivald and Obilot made their way through the chaos toward the door as best they could. He punched whoever got in his way, regardless of which side the fellow was on. “Let’s see Tantris track us throughthis” he told Obilot, who’d just kicked a man where it did the most good. A savage grin on her face, she nodded.

A jar full of potent spirits flew into the fireplace and smashed. The spirits caught fire as they splashed out. Flames clung to an overturned chair close by. “Fire!” somebody shrieked. Then everybody was fleeing-everybody who could.

Garivald and Obilot weren’t the only ones who ran not just out of the tavern but away from it as fast as they could. “We got away,” she panted. “This time,” he answered, and ran harder.

The sun rose earlier and set later these days. Before long, the equinox would come to the Naantali district. In much of the world, that would mean spring, and so it would here-formally. Pekka was from Kajaani, which lay even farther south. She knew the snow and ice wouldn’t start melting for quite a while after that.

If anything, the weather here was worse than in Kajaani, a port city that had the ocean to soften its climate. In most circumstances, Pekka would have complained about that. Not now. As she rode in the sleigh from the hostel to the blockhouse, she turned to Fernao and said, “I dread the spring thaw.”

She’d spoken Kuusaman. The Lagoan mage nodded and answered in classical Kaunian: “I understand why-all this will turn to mud, and we shall have a demon of a time moving from where we stay to where we need to go to keep on with our experiments.”

“Exactly,” Pekka said. “And we have to go on with the experiments.” That blazed in her. Next to it, nothing else mattered.

The track to the hostel curved. As the horse rounded the bend, the sleigh tilted a little. Under the fur robes that warded them against the weather, Pekka slid toward Fernao. She was very much aware of her body pressed against his for a moment, and wished she hadn’t been quite so aware of it.

It’s harmless, she told herself, not for the first time. Nothing can come of it. That wasn’t quite the same thing, even if it sounded as if it were.

After the sleigh straightened again, Pekka took an extra moment to move away from Fernao. The Lagoan mage raised an eyebrow when she finally did. His eyes were shaped like hers, but green, not dark brown. Was it the combination of strange and familiar that drew her? Or was it just that she worked closely with Fernao every day, while she’d seen Leino for one brief leave since she came to the Naantali district and her husband went off to work on Habakkuk? Whatever it was, it disconcerted her.

She almost wished Fernao would do something overt. Then she could tell him no, as forcefully as necessary, and they could readjust as needed and go on. Of course, he’d saved her life two or three times, from Algarvian sorcerous assault and from her own botched spellcasting-and, this last time, he’d hurled strong sorcery back against Mezentio’s mages. Do I really want to tell him no?

But Fernao hadn’t done anything overt, and didn’t seem likely to. Ambiguity remained. Pekka laughed. It might as well be life, she thought.

“What’s funny?” Fernao asked.

“Nothing, really,” she answered, at which he raised that eyebrow again. Ignoring it, she took her mittened hand out from under the robes to point ahead. “We are almost there,” she said in classical Kaunian.

“So we are,” Fernao agreed. He didn’t expose any part of himself but his eyes to the frigid air. “I wonder how the driver stands it up there, out in the open.”

“We of Kuusamo do not let the cold trouble us quite so much as you do,” Pekka said, which was true-but only to a degree.

When the sleigh stopped, as it did a couple of minutes later, Fernao had no choice but to come forth. The furs he wore were of Kuusaman make; he hadn’t had anything in his own wardrobe to contend against winter in the Naantali district. That wasn’t to say he hadn’t known it’s like before. He remarked, “The only difference between this place and the land of the Ice People is that the sun does come up for a little while here, even in the middle of winter.”

“Er-aye,” Pekka said. The idea that winter could get worse than it did here was horrifying all by itself.

As soon as she got inside the blockhouse, she started to sweat, and started shedding her outdoor clothes one layer at a time. Braziers and, soon, the press of bodies heated the cramped chamber in which she’d incant.

Ilmarinen and Piilis came into the blockhouse together. Ilmarinen had always shared a sleigh withMasterSiuntio, but Siuntio was dead, slain by murderous Algarvian magecraft. Now Ilmarinen rode with the younger theoretical sorcerer. Pekka didn’t know when she would stop missing Siuntio, or if she ever would. Without him, this project would never have begun, would never had gained the backing of the Seven Princes.

Alkio and Raahe came in right behind Ilmarinen and Piilis. The married couple-both solid theoretical sorcerers-were about halfway between Pekka and Ilmarinen in age. Solid, Pekka thought. Aye, they ‘re very solid. So is Piilis. Nothing wrong with their work at all. Were the three of them together a match for Siuntio? Pekka shook her head. She knew better. She wasn’t a match for Siuntio as project leader, either. She also knew that. But she was what they had.

Secondary sorcerers hurried into the blockhouse, too. Some spells protected the animals at the heart of the experiment from freezing before they were needed. Others would transfer the spell Pekka and the other theoretical sorcerers had crafted to the animals when the time came. And with the secondary sorcerers came the protective mages. After two Algarvian attacks, Pekka knew how necessary they were.

But they didn‘t beat back Mezentio ‘s mages the last time, she thought. Fernao did that, Fernao and Ilmarinen and I. Three theoretical sorcerers who shouldn‘t be allowed to work magic like practical wizards. She smiled, recognizing the ironic pride in her thoughts.

The blockhouse had been built with theoretical sorcerers and secondary sorcerers in mind. It hadn’t been built to include the protective mages. When the weather got better, perhaps Pekka could prevail upon the Seven Princes to enlarge it. Meanwhile, people shoved and jostled and stepped on one another’s feet and got in one another’s way.

“Are we ready?” Pekka asked at last. But even herat last proved too soon; the mages were nowhere near ready. When she spoke again, it was in some exasperarion: “Sooner or later, we shall have to go into the field. The Algarvians will not wait for us, and neither will the Gyongyosians.”

Ilmarinen snapped his fingers. “That for the Gongs. They’re honest foes, which means we can beat them without folderol, knock ‘em back across the Bothnian Ocean one island at a time. As soon as the Algarvians started killing Kaunians to make their magecraft mightier, they put themselves beyond the pale.”

Privately, Pekka agreed with him. Even so, she said, “Whichever way we aim the magic, we’ll have to be able to do it in our time. The sooner we learn, the better.”

Not even contrary Ilmarinen could quarrel with that. And Raahe said, “She is right. Let no one complain that we women are slow here.” That made people laugh. More of the mages in the blockhouse were men than women, but only a few more. Kuusamans were emphatically aware of the differences between the sexes but, unlike Lagoans and most folk on the mainland of Derlavai, didn’t think those differences applied to what each sex could do well.

When Pekka asked, “Are we ready?” again, she found that her colleagues were. “Before the Kaunians came, we of Kuusamo were here

…” she said, and her fellow mages-all of them but Fernao-recited the ritual phrases, the phrases that moved them toward readiness for conjuration, along with her.

He has to feel very much alone, a foreigner, a stranger, whenever he listens to us, she thought. /know I would if I were in Lagoas, say, and mages, just brusquely started to enchant without preparing first.

But then such small thoughts slipped out of her mind, driven from it when she focused like a burning glass on what lay ahead. She took a deep breath to steady herself, let it out, and said, “I begin.”

Every time she used the spell, it became sharper, more powerful. All the theoretical sorcerers tinkered with it between experiments. One couplet, one sorcerous pass, at a time, it grew closer to what it had to be. Had she seen this version a year before, it would have astounded her. She couldn’t help wondering how much further they had to go.

If we come as far in the next year as we have in this past one, I’ll be able to shatter the world like a dropped egg without even lifting a finger. She knew that was an exaggeration, but maybe it wasn’t an enormous one. By the nature of things, spells that exploited the inverted unity she’d helped discover at the heart of the laws of similarity and contagion had the potential to release far more sorcerous energy than cantrips based on one or the other of the so-called Two Laws.

How close mortal mages could come to tapping that potential was one question. Another, more urgent question was how much attention she could give to such irrelevant quibbles before making a hash of the spell she was casting now and endangering herself and everybody in the blockhouse with her. She didn’t like remembering Fernao had had to save her from the consequences of dropping a line in one of these spells.

Which is why practical mages make jokes about what happens when theoretical sorcerers go into the laboratory, Pekka thought. Too much of their kidding wasn’t kidding at all, but sober truth.

But then even embarrassment and worry fell away as she lost herself in the intricacies of the spell she was casting. Getting the words precisely right; making sure the passes matched and reinforced them; feeling the power build as verse after verse, pass after pass, fell into place… It was almost like feeling pleasure build when she made love. And then she madethat thought fall away, too-not without regret, but she did it.

Power built, and built, and built-and then, as she cried, “Let it be released!”, itwas released. She felt the secondary sorcerers take hold of what she’d brought into being, felt them hurl it forth to the banks of animal cages set far from the blockhouse, and felt it kindle there.

And then she needed no occult senses to feel it, for the ground shuddered beneath her feet. A great roar rumbled thought the air. She knew that, when she and the other mages went to examine the site, they would find another huge crater torn in the frozen ground. The Naantali district was starting to look like the moon as seen through a spyglass. Its wide stretches of worthless land were the main reasons experiments had moved here.

“Nicely done,” Fernao said. “Very nicely done. When we measure the crater, we will be able to calculate the actual energy release and see how close it comes to what the sorcerous equations predicted. My guess is, the discrepancies will not be large. It had the right feel to it.”

Pekka nodded-wearily, now that the spell was done. “I think you are right,” she replied, also in classical Kaunian.

Ilmarinen said, “And, when we go out to the crater, we can see how much green grass and other out-of-season bits and pieces we find at the bottom of it.”

Pekka grimaced. So did Fernao. The spells they were working with twisted time, among other things. The equations made that very clear. Ilmarinen, ever the radical, kept insisting the twist could be exploited for itself, not just for the energy it released. The unanimous opinion of the rest of the theoretical sorcerers was that the energy release came first.

As Pekka and Fernao rode out toward the crater, an exhausted little bird-a linnet-came fluttering down out of the sky and landed on their sleigh. When Pekka reached out for it, it flew off again, and was soon lost to sight. She stared at Fernao in no small consternation. She’d never seen a linnet in wintertime. They flew north for the winter, to escape the cold. Maybe this one hadn’t escaped the cold. Maybe it hadn’t escaped the sorcery, either.

And if it hadn’t, what did that mean?

Hajjaj’s carriage rolled up to the dragon farm outside Bishah, the capital of Zuwayza. When the carriage stopped, the Zuwayzi foreign minister descended to the sandy soil: a skinny man with dark brown skin and gray, almost white hair he’d earned by lasting close to seven decades-and also by guiding Zuwayza’s relations with the other kingdoms of the world ever since his homeland regained its freedom from Unkerlant in the chaos following the Six Years’ War.

GeneralIkhshidcame bustling up to greet him. Ikhshid was paunchy, with bushy white eyebrows. He carried almost as many years as Hajjaj; he’d been a captain in the Unkerlanter army during the Six Years’ War, one of the few men of Zuwayzi blood to gain officer’s rank there.

Like Hajjaj, Ikhshid wore sandals and a broad-brimmed hat and nothing in between. In Zuwayza’s fierce desert heat, clothes were nothing but a nuisance, however much Zuwayzi nudity scandalized other Derlavaians. Ikhshid had rank badges on his hat and marked with greasepaint on his upper arms.

He bowed to Hajjaj, wheezing a little as he straightened. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said. “Always a pleasure to see you, believe me.”

“You’re too kind,” Hajjaj murmured, returning the bow. “Believe me, the pleasure is mine.” Aimed at a lot of men, Hajjaj would have meant that as no more than the usual pleasant hypocrisy. With Ikhshid, he meant it. He’d never been convinced Zuwayza’s senior soldier was a great general, though Ikhshid was a good one. But Ikhshid, like Hajjaj himself, commanded the respect of every Zuwayzi clanfather. Hajjaj could think of no other officer of whom that was true.

“You do me too much credit, your Excellency,” Ikhshid said.

“By no means, sir,” Hajjaj protested. Zuwayzi forms of greeting and politeness, if uninterrupted, could go on for a long time.

Here, an interruption arrived in the person of Marquis Balastro, the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza. To Hajjaj’s relief, Balastro was not nude, but wore the usual Algarvian tunic and kilt, with a hat of his own to keep the sun off his head. His bow, unlike Ikhshid’s, was deep and flamboyant-Algarvians didn’t do things by halves. “Good day to you, your Excellency,” he said in his own language.

“And to you as well, your Excellency,” Hajjaj replied in the same tongue. He’d been fluent in Algarvian for a long time: back before the Six Years’ War (an era that seemed so distant and different, it might have been a thousand years ago), he’d spent his university days in Trapani, the Algarvian capital.

Balastro struck a pose. “Now, sir, you will see that Algarve stands by her allies in every way she can.”

“I shall be glad to see it, very glad indeed,” Hajjaj said.

That gave the Algarvian minister the chance to strike another pose, and he made the most of it, pointing to the sky and exclaiming, “Then look now at the dragons summoned to Zuwayza’s aid!”

Hajjaj looked. So did Ikhshid. So did the writers from a couple of Zuwayzi news sheets summoned to the outskirts of the capital for the occasion. Sure enough, half a wing of dragons-thirty-two in all-painted in Algarve’s gaudy green, red, and white spiraled down toward the dragon farm.

“They are indeed a pleasure to see, your Excellency,” Hajjaj said, bowing once more. “Bishah shall be safer because of them. After the last raid, when the Unkerlanters pounded us from the air almost as they pleased, dragons to fly against those in Swemmel’s rock-gray are most extremely welcome.”

“I can see how they would be,” Balastro agreed. “Till lately, Zuwayza has enjoyed all the advantages of the Derlavaian War, but only a few of the drawbacks: you won land from Swemmel, yet paid relatively little for it because he was more heavily involved against us.”

That was imperfectly diplomatic, no matter how much truth it held. Hajjaj felt obliged to reply, “Do remember, your Excellency, that Unkerlant attacked my kingdom a year and a half before yours went to war againstKingSwemmel.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Balastro said. “But ours is the bigger fight with Unkerlant, even reckoning in the relative sizes of your kingdom and mine.”

Another undiplomatic truth. When Hajjaj started to answer this time, a landing dragon’s screech drowned out his words. Normally, that would have annoyed him. At the moment, it gave him the excuse he needed to say to Balastro, “Walk aside with me, your Excellency, that we might confer together in something a little closer to privacy.”

Balastro bowed again. “With all my heart, sir. Nothing could please me more.” That might well not have been true, but it was diplomatic.

WhenGeneralIkhshid started to follow the two of them away from the other dignitaries and the writers and the folk concerned with the mundane needs of dragons, Hajjaj sent him a quick, hooded glance. He and Ikhshid had served Zuwayza side by side for many years. The veteran officer stopped after a step and a half and began fiddling with a sandal strap.

Had Hajjaj and Balastro sought privacy among Algarvians, everyone close by would have swarmed after them: the redheads were powerfully curious, and also powerfully convinced they had the absolute right to know everything that went on around them. Hajjaj’s countrymen showed more restraint. They could hardly show less restraint than most Algarvians, the Zuwayzi foreign minister thought.

“How now, your Excellency?” Balastro asked once he and Hajjaj had put a little distance between themselves and the other folk who’d come out to see the Algarvian dragons fly into the dragon farm.

“If you have a grievance with my kingdom, please come out with it,” Hajjaj replied. “Your little hints and gives do nothing but make me nervous.”

“All right, that’s fair enough; I will,” Balastro said. “Here’s the grievance, in a nutshell: you expect Algarve to make you a perfect ally and come to your aid whenever you need something from her, and yet you refuse to return the favor.”

“Zuwayza is a free and independent kingdom,” Hajjaj said stiffly. “You sometimes seem to forget that.”

“And you sometimes seem to remember it altogether too well,” Marquis Balastro said. “I tell you frankly, your Excellency, those Kaunian exiles you harbor have sneaked back to Forthweg and done us a good deal of harm there.”

“And I tell you frankly, I have trouble blaming them when I consider what you Algarvians have done to the Kaunians in Forthweg,” Hajjaj answered.

“When you consider what Kaunians have done to Algarve down through the centuries, you might well say they have it coming,” Balastro said.

Hajjaj shook his head. “No, your Excellency, I would never say that. Nor wouldKingShazli. I have made my views, and his, quite clear to you.”

“So you have,” Balastro agreed. “Now I am going to make something quite clear to you, and I am sure you will have no trouble making it quite clear to your king: if the Kaunians keep hurting us in Forthweg, they make it likelier that we lose the war against Unkerlant. If we lose the war against Unkerlant, you will also lose the war against Unkerlant. It is as simple as that. The more you want to deal withKingSwemmel afterwards, the more you should look the other way when the blonds climb into their boats and sail east to Forthweg.”

“We do not look the other way,” Hajjaj insisted. “Our navy is far from large, but we have turned back or sunk several of their boats.”

Balastro snorted. “Enough to show us a few: no more than that.”

The trouble was, he was right. Hajjaj’s sympathies, and those of his king, lay with the blonds who’d escaped from Algarvian occupation, and from the massacres the redheads inflicted on those blonds. As far as he was concerned, wars had no business being fought that way. Not even Swemmel of Unkerlant had fought that way till the Algarvians forced it on him. Waging war on the same side as the redheads made Hajjaj want to go sweat himself clean in the baths.

But when the choice was having Unkerlanters overrun Zuwayza…

Hajjaj shook his head. When he and Ikhshid were young, an Unkerlanter governor had ruled in Bishah. If the Algarvians lost, if Zuwayza lost, that could happen again. Algarve, however monstrous its warmaking, didn’t threaten Zuwayza’s freedom. Unkerlant did, and always would.

Bitterly, Hajjaj said, “I wish we were an island in the Great Northern Sea, so we would not have to make choices such as these.”

“Wish for the moon while you’re at it,” Balastro answered. “The world is as it is, not as you wish it were. But do you wonder that we hesitate to give you more help against Swemmel when we see how you repay us?”

“Knives have two edges,” Hajjaj said. “If you want to keep us in the fight against Unkerlant, we need the tools and the beasts to go on fighting. If we go out of the war, how much likelier is it that Algarve will lose?”

Balastro looked as if he’d bitten down hard on a lemon. Hajjaj had turned his argument around on him. At last, the Algarvian minister said, “The marriage in which we’re trapped may be loveless, but it is a marriage, and we’d both be hurt if we divorced. Whether we love you or not, your Excellency, we have sent you a present that costs us dear, for our own substance these days is not so large as we would wish, and we have, do believe me, no dragons to spare. We have nothing at all to spare.”

Hajjaj bowed. “Is it so bad as that?”

“It is bad, and it does not get better,” Balastro replied.

“That is not good news,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said.

“Did I tell you it would be?” Balastro said. “Now, sir, you may not love us, but you are wed to us no less than we are wed to you. Even if you do not think us as fresh and lovely as you did when you first went to bed with us, will you not give us a present for a present, to keep us from quarreling and throwing dishes at each other after supper?”

With some amusement, Hajjaj said, “You sound like an old husband, sure enough. And what present would you have from us, as if I don’t know?”

Balastro nodded. “Aye, that one, sure enough. No gauds, no jewels-just do as you say you’ve been doing all along. I am not even asking that you give over harboring Kaunians here. If you will harbor them, you will. But, your Excellency, harbor themhere. If they want to go back to Forthweg, stop turning a blind eye to them. Youcan stop them, and I hope you will not do me the discourtesy of claiming otherwise.”

“I shall take your words toKingShazli,” Hajjaj said. Hating himself, hating what the war made him do for the sake of his kingdom, he added, “I shall take them to him with the recommendation that he follow your suggestion.”

Balastro bowed. “I can ask no more.” When Hajjaj recommended something to the king, whatever it was had a way of happening. Here, Hajjaj wished that were not so. Zuwayza’s marriage to Algarve was indeed loveless. But, as the Algarvian minister had pointed out, it was indeed a marriage, too. Both sides would be worse off if it fell apart. And so, to keep it going, Zuwayza needed to give Algarve a present in return for the present she’d got. Almost, Hajjaj wished the Algarvian dragons had not come. Almost.

SergeantIstvanand some of the Gyongyosian soldiers in his squad squatted in a muddy trench on the miserable little island called Becsehely, whiling away the time shooting dice. Istvan sent the bone cubes rolling across the flat board the big, tawny-bearded men used for a playing surface. When he saw a pair of one’s staring at him, he cursed.

Szonyi laughed. “Only two stars in your sky there, Sergeant. I can beat that easy enough.” He scooped up the dice and proved it-a throw of five wasn’t anything much, but plenty to take care of a two. Szonyi gathered up all the coins on the board.

Still cursing his luck, Istvan leaned back and let the next trooper in the game take his place. Lajos hadn’t been with him as long as Szonyi had. Istvan and Szonyi andCorporalKun had been together since the fighting on Obuda, an island in the Bothnian Ocean some distance west of Becsehely. They’d fought the Kuusamans there, then gone back to the Derlavaian mainland to battle the Unkerlanters in the Ilszung Mountains on the border between Gyongyos and Swemmel’s kingdom and in the trackless forests of western Unkerlant. That was where Lajos had joined the squad. Now, with the stars not shining on the Gyongyosian cause in the fight against Kuusamo, they’d come back to island duty again.

Szonyi set a stake on the board. Lajos, young and eager, matched it. Szonyi threw first: a six. Lajos took the dice and threw another six. They each put down more coins, doubling the stake. Szonyi threw a nine.

Before Lajos picked up the dice, CorporalKun nudged Szonyi and held out a silver coin in the palm of his hand-a side bet. “This that he’ll beat Lajos by two or better.”

“No, thanks.” Istvan shook his head, and then had to brush curly, dark yellow hair out of his face. “Betting on the side is how you make your money. I’ve seen that.”

Lajos threw an eight. Szonyi collected the twofold bets. Behind his gold-framed spectacles, Kun assumed an injured expression. “There,” he said. “You see? You would have won.”

“This time I would have, aye.” Now Istvan nodded. “But anybody who takes a lot of side bets against you ends up without any money in his belt pouch, so go find yourself a new fish. You’ve hooked me too often already.”

Szonyi won the next duel of dice, too. He said, “I don’t make side bets against you, either, Kun. The sergeant’s right-you win ‘em often enough to make some people wonder whether you magic the dice.”

“Oh, rubbish,”Kun said, or perhaps something rather more pungent. Unlike most of the men in the squad, including Istvan, he wasn’t a peasant or herder from a little mountain valley. Such sturdy soldiers gave the Gyongyosians reason to reckon themselves a warrior race. ButKun had been a mage’s apprentice in Gyorvar, the capital, before taking service inEkrekekArpad ’s army. He knew little bits and pieces of sorcery himself. Enough to ensorcel dice? Istvan had sometimes wondered himself.

But he said, “Kun’s luck’s no better than anybody else’s when he’s got the dice in his own hand. I’ve noticed that. It’s only when he’s making side bets that he cleans up. I can’t see how he’d put a spell on somebody else’s dice but not on his own.”

“Rubbish,”Kun repeated-or, again, words to that effect. “I’ll tell you what makes the difference: I know what I’m doing, and you back-country boys don’t. There’s no more magecraft in it than there is to cooking a goose.”

“If there’s no magecraft, we ought to be able to do it, too, once you tell us how-isn’t that right?” Szonyi said. He andKun often banged heads like mountain sheep.

Kunnodded now. “Aye, if you can remember a few simple things.” He raised an eyebrow. By Gyongyosian standards, he was on the scrawny side; Szonyi came close to making two of him. But he had no fear, for he added, “For simple people, even simple things come hard.”

Szonyi bristled. Istvan said, “Never mind the insults. If you can teach us, teach us. I wouldn’t mind learning something to help me put a little extra silver in my belt pouch.”

“All right, by the stars, I will, even if it’ll cost me money,”Kun said, and spent the next little while talking about how to figure odds while rolling dice.

By the time he got through, Istvan was frowning and scratching his head. “Are you sure that’s not magecraft?” he asked.

“Anything somebody doesn’t know how to do looks like magecraft to him,”Kun said impatiently. “This isn’t. It’s nothing but a… fancy kind of arithmetic, I guess you’d call it.”

“How can it be arithmetic?” Szonyi demanded-he was never content with anythingKun said. “Two and two is always four. With this, you’re right some of the time and you’re wrong some of the time. If you run out of silver and bet your tunic, you’re liable to walk home naked.”

“Over the long run, though, you won’t.”Kun ’s smile grew rather nasty. “And if you don’t believe me, why won’t you make side bets with me?”

Before Szonyi could answer, horns blared out an alarm from the high ground, such as it was, at the center of Becsehely. “Scoop up that money, boys. Grab the dice,” Istvan said. “Dowsers must’ve spotted another wave of Kuusaman dragons coming to pay us a call.”

“Dowsing, now, dowsing is real magecraft,”Kun said. “Sensing motion at a distance farther than you can see-how could you possibly do that without sorcery?”

Istvan nodded. “Well, that’s true enough. I was a dowser’s helper for a while, over on Obuda. They gave me the job for a punishment, because he had a heavy sack of rods to carry, but I ended up enjoying it-Borsos was an interesting fellow to talk to. Remember?-he showed up in the Unkerlanter woods, too.”

“That’s right.” Szonyi also nodded. “He was trying to spy out something Swemmel’s stinking goat-eaters were up to.”

The horns cried out again. Booted feet thudded on wet ground as Gyongyosian soldiers who weren’t already in trenches ran for shelter. “Take cover!” shoutedCaptainFrigyes, the company commander. “Take cover, and be ready to come up blazing if the Kuusamans bring boats up onto the beach.”

“May the stars hold that idea out of their heads,” Istvan said, and made a sign to avert the evil omen.

Becsehely was big enough to support a dragon farm. Wings thundering, Gyongyosian dragons painted in bold stripes of red and blue and black and yellow flew out to meet the enemies the dowsers had spotted. Kuusaman colors were sky blue and sea green, which made their dragons hard to see but easy to tell apart from the Gyongyosian beasts once noted.

“I wonder if this really will be the invasion,”Kun remarked, making sure dirt didn’t foul the business end, the blazing end, of his stick.

“They’ve pounded us before when we thought they would land, and they didn’t,” Istvan said. “Here’s hoping they stay away again.”

“Oh, aye, here’s hoping.” ButKun seemed unable to look on the bright side of things. “The trouble is, they’ve taken a lot of islands away from us, too. If they hadn’t, our regiment would still be fighting the Unkerlanters in those woods that went on forever and ever.”

“I’m not sorry to be out of the forest,” Istvan admitted. “Of course, I’d’ve been happier if they’d sent us somewhere besides this miserable flat place. I miss having a horizon with mountain teeth in it.”

“If the Kuusamans do come ashore…”Kun hesitated, plainly wondering how to go on. “If they do come ashore, I wonder if our officers will have to hold us to the oath we swore. The oath about.. . the strong sorcery, I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Istvan said. Algarve and Unkerlant used the life energy from sacrificed people to power their sorcery. The Algarvians killed Kaunians they’d conquered; KingSwemmel ’s sorcerers sacrificed those of their own folk they reckoned useless. Both those answers revolted the Gyongyosians. But they’d seen they might need such wizardry. With a shrug, Istvan continued: “We’re a warrior race.” Most of the company had volunteered to be sacrificed if the need ever arose. Istvan had, without thinking twice. Kun had, too, much more hesitantly.

“The stars already know,” Szonyi said.

“They always know,”Kun said. “But /don’t.”

That thin hiss in the air wasn’t the stars tellingCorporalKun what would be. It was an egg falling, to burst in the sea just off the muddy, west-facing beach of Becsehely. Some dragonflier overhead had been too eager. But other bursts of sorcerous energy walked up the beach toward the trenches where Istvan and his comrades huddled. He hated taking a pounding from dragons more than any other part of war. He knew exactly why, too: he couldn’t hit back. An egg falling out of the sky didn’t care whether he belonged to a warrior race or not.

He looked up. Sure enough, the Kuusaman dragons were harder to see than those his countrymen flew. But, by the way eggs carpeted Becsehely, by the way Gyongyosian dragons tumbled out of the sky one after another, he had no trouble figuring out the Kuusamans outnumbered them. The Kuusamans had been the first to figure out how to transport dragons on board ship, and they’d got better and better at it since.

But they didn’t have things all their own way here. The Gyongyosians had brought heavy sticks to Becsehely, sticks that could blaze through a behemoth’s chainmail and through the behemoth, too-and sticks strong enough to blaze down a dragon no matter how high it flew.

Istvan whooped when a Kuusaman dragon faltered in midair. He whooped again when it started down toward the island. Nor was he the only one. “We nailed that son of a strumpet!” Szonyi shouted.

“He looks like he’s coming straight toward us,”Kun said, and people stopped whooping. Finishing a wounded, furious dragon with hand-held sticks was anything but a morning’s pleasant sport.

This one landed on the muddy beach not a hundred yards in front of Istvan’s trench. Its shrieks tore at his ears. Then, all at once, they stopped. Cautiously-a few eggs were still bursting-he stuck up his head to see what had happened. The dragon lay dead. The Kuusaman dragonflier was holding the stick he took into the air with him. He must have put a beam through the dragon’s eye at close range.

Seeing Istvan, he threw the stick down on the beach and held his hands high. “I-to surrender!” he shouted in horrible Gyongyosian.

Istvan hadn’t expected to capture a dragonflier, but he wouldn’t complain. “Come on, get in this trench before your own people drop an egg on you,” he called.

“I-to thank,” the dragonflier said, and jumped down and ran over to Istvan. “You-no-to kill?” he asked anxiously as he slid into the trench.

In his boots, Istvan would have sounded anxious, too. But the Gyongyosian sergeant shook his head. “No. You Kuusamans, you’ve got captives from my kingdom, too. Once you start killing captives, where do you stop?”

Istvan had to repeat himself with simpler words to get the enemy dragonflier to follow that, but the fellow finally nodded. “Good,” he said. “I- yours-to be.” For a little while, Istvan wondered what was so good about being a captive, but only for a little while. The Kuusaman had come through the war alive. Istvan wondered if he would be able to say the same.

Skrunda wasn’t a big city. Jelgava held dozens, probably hundreds, of towns like it. As in so many of those towns, the people of Skrunda liked to think of it as bigger than it really was. News-sheet vendors hocked their wares as zealously as they did in Balvi, the capital, down in the southeast.

“Habakkuk explained!” one of them shouted, waving a sheet with great abandon. “Floating home of air pirates!”

Talsu couldn’t remember the last time he’d bought a news sheet. They’d been full of lies ever since the Algarvians overran his kingdom. But he’d seen graffiti praising Habakkuk all over Skrunda. He’d also seen that the redheads didn’t love them: they gathered work crews together to wash them off or paint over them. And so he dug into a trouser pocket and came up with a couple of coppers for the news-sheet vendor.

“Here you go, pal,” the fellow said, and handed him the sheet he’d been waving.

“Thanks,” Talsu answered. He kept his nose in the news sheet all the way back to the tailor’s shop where he worked with his father.

That almost got him into trouble, for he noticed a couple of Algarvian constables just in time to get out of their way. He scowled after they swaggered past. Jelgava, like Valmiera to the south, was a Kaunian kingdom. Redheads in a land of blonds, kilts in a land of trousers, seemed shockingly out of place even though King Donalitu had fled to Lagoas and exile more than three years before, even though King Mezentio of Algarve had promptly named his younger brother Mainardo as King of Jelgava in Donalitu’s place.

A whitewashed patch on a fence probably told where a graffito shouting HABAKKUK! had been painted. Talsu walked past it with a thoughtful grunt. He also nearly walked past the tailor’s shop, and the rooms above it where he and his family lived.

His father was working on a tunic of Algarvian military cut in a fabric too heavy for Jelgava’s weather when Talsu walked in. Traku frowned to see the news sheet-Talsu’s father, in truth, spent a good deal of time frowning. “What sort of nonsense are the redheads spouting today?” he asked. He might make uniforms for the occupiers-especially, as now, for Algarvians sent west to fight in freezing Unkerlant-but he didn’t love them.

Neither did Talsu. He’d fought them before his kingdom collapsed, and he’d tried to fight them here in Skrunda, too. He’d spent some months in a Jelgavan dungeon from trusting the wrong people then. No, he had no reason to love Algarvians.

He set the news sheet on the counter. “I bought the miserable thing because it said it would tell me what Habakkuk was.”

“Ah.” That interested Traku, too. He reached for the news sheet. “And does it?”

“Itsays Habakkuk is an iceberg, or a swarm of icebergs, fixed up with sorcery so they’ll sail the ley lines like regular ships and carry a whole great load of dragons while they’re doing it,” Talsu answered.

Traku skimmed through the article. “Aye, that’s what itsays, all right,” he remarked when he was through. “The next question is, do you believe it?”

“I don’t know,” Talsu answered. “We’ve had dragons from Kuusamo or Lagoas or wherever they’re from drop more eggs on Skrunda lately than they did in the whole war up till now, so they’ve gotsomething new, I expect.”

“Maybe.” Traku nodded. “I’ll give you that much, anyhow. But giant chunks of ice with dragons on top of them? I doubt it.” He wadded up the news sheet and flung it in the trash can. “My guess is, the redheads came up with this fancy nonsense because they can’t build real ships as fast as Lagoas and Kuusamo can, and they’re making all the news sheets print it to distract people.”

“You’re probably right,” Talsu agreed. He’d got good at searching out the truth buried in Algarvian lies. This story sounded more like a lie than anything he could easily swallow. He went on: “I saw one other thing in the news sheet-or rather, I didn’t see it.”

“What’s that?” his father asked.

“No more boasting about how the redheads were going to chase the Unkerlanters right out of that town down in the south-Herborn, that’s the name of the place,” Talsu said. “When the Algarvians stop bragging about something, it’s because they haven’t done it or they can’t do it.”

Traku’s opinion of that needed only one word: “Good.”

Talsu nodded. He pointed to the tunic his father was working on. “Do you need any help with that?”

“No, thanks,” Traku answered. “I’ve done just about all the handwork it needs.” He showed the stitches he’d applied himself. “After that, it’s just a matter of laying out the rest of the thread and putting on the finishing touches. You can do some more work on that kilt over there, if you feel like you’ve just got to get some work in this very minute.”

“All right, I’ll do that, then.” Talsu picked up the kilt, which at the moment was only a piece cut out from a bolt of heavy woolen fabric. As he did so, he remarked, “I never thought I’d have to worry about making one of these, not back before the war started I didn’t.”

“Who would have, in a Kaunian kingdom?” Traku said. “We wear trousers, the way decent people are supposed to.” He paused to set thread along a seam he hadn’t sewn. “I do hear that, down in Balvi, there were women wearing kilts even before the war, so they could show off their legs. Trollops, that’s what I call ‘em.”

“Oh, aye, trollops is right,” Talsu said, not without a certain interest. He went on. “You see a few Jelgavan women-even a few Jelgavan men-in Skrunda wearing kilts nowadays. But they just want to lick the Algarvians’ boots.”

“They want to lick ‘em somewhere north of the boots,” Traku said with a coarse laugh.

Talsu laughed, too, deliciously scandalized. Hearing the racket from downstairs, his sister Ausra called, “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Talsu and Traku said in the same breath. The way they echoed each other set them both laughing again, harder than ever.

“What’s so funny?” That wasn’t Talsu’s sister: it was his mother. And she came down into the tailor’s shop to get an answer for her question.

“Nothing, Laitsina,” Traku repeated, this time in more placating tones.

Laitsina looked from her husband to Talsu and back again. “Men,” she said, a distinct sniff in her voice. “You sit around here telling each other filthy stories, and then you expect me to pretend I don’t know you’re doing it. You don’t ask for much, do you?” With another sniff, she went back up the stairs.

“She was right,” Talsu whispered.

“Well, of course she was,” his father answered, also in a whisper. “But so what? Do you think she and Ausra-and now your wife, too, when Gailisa’s up there with ‘em and not working at her father’s grocery-don’t do the exact same thing when they figure we can’t hear ‘em?” Traku shook his head to show Talsu what he ought to think. “Not bloody likely, not when I’ve caught ‘em a time or two.”

“Have you?” Now Talsu was scandalized in a different way.

“Oh, aye,” Traku said. “They can be as foul-mouthed as we ever are, only they don’t want anybody knowing it. It’s their secret, like.”

Some of the things Gailisa had said made Talsu suspect his father had a point. He wasn’t about to admit as much, though. He had far fewer illusions than when he’d gone intoKingDonalitu ’s army. He cherished those he’d managed to keep.

Traku went back to work. Once he’d laid out all the remaining thread on the tunic, he began to mutter to himself and to make quick passes over the garment. He and Talsu hardly thought of what they did as magic; it was just a trick of the tailor’s trade. But magic it was, using the laws of similarity and contagion to make the unsewn thread conform to that which was sewn. The thread writhed and twisted, as if briefly coming to life. When the writhing stopped, the tunic was done.

Traku picked it up, tugged at the sorcerously made seams, and put on a pair of reading glasses so he could examine it closely. When he was done, he set it down and delivered his verdict: “Not bad, if I do say so myself.”

“Of course not, Father,” Talsu said. “You do the best work in town.” He lowered his voice again to add, “Better than the cursed redheads deserve, too.”

“It depends on how you look at things,” Traku said. “I’m not doing this just for the Algarvians, you know. I’m doing it for my own sake, too. I don’t think I could stand doing bad work on purpose, no matter who it’s for.”

“All right. I know what you mean.” Talsu waved, yielding the point. “And it means one more Algarvian who’s never coming back to Skrunda again.”

“That, too,” his father said.

The Algarvian in question, a captain, came into the tailor’s shop that afternoon to pick up the tunic. After trying it on, he nodded. “It being good,” he said in Jelgavan flavored with his kingdom’s trilling accent. “Cloth being nice and thick.” He dabbed at his forehead with a pocket handkerchief. “I sweating here. When I going down to frozen Unkerlant, I not sweating anymore.” He changed back into the thinner tunic he’d worn into the shop, set on the counter the price to which he and Traku had agreed, and carried away the garment he would need while fighting King Swemmel’s men.

“I hope he sweats plenty, down in frozen Unkerlant,” Talsu said after the redhead left.

“Oh, sure,” Traku agreed, as if surprised Talsu would have bothered saying anything like that. “Sooner or later, either the Algarvians or the Unkerlanters will run out of men. Here’s hoping it’s the Algarvians.” He scooped up the silver coins the redhead had left behind and put on his glasses again to examine them. “This Mainardo bugger the redheads call King of Jelgava’s got a pointy nose.”

“Aye, so he does,” Talsu said. “From what I remember of the Algarvian coins I got before things fell apart, Mezentio’s got a pointy nose, too.” He shrugged. “They’re brothers. No reason they shouldn’t look alike.”

“No reason at all,” his father said. “No reason they shouldn’t both be trouble, either. And they cursed well are, powers below eat ‘em.” He paused, got up off his stool, straightened, stretched, and twisted this way and that. Something in his back wentpop-pop-pop, as if he’d cracked his knuckles. He sighed. “Ahh, that’s better. I couldn’t get the crick out of there no matter how hard I tried.” He glanced over to Talsu. “How’s that kilt coming?”

“I’ve done a couple of pleats by hand, and I’ve got the thread laid out,” Talsu replied. “Now I’m going to put on the finishing touches.” The charm he wanted, part Jelgavan, part the classical Kaunian that was Jelgavan’s ancestor, part nonsense words was almost but not quite identical to the one his father had used with the tunic. Again, most of the kilt’s stitchery shaped itself.

Traku examined the finished garment and patted his son on the back. “Nice job. I still think kilts are ugly as all get-out myself, but the redhead who ordered this one’ll get what he paid for-and a free trip to Unkerlant besides.” Talsu’s answering grin was every bit as nasty as his father’s.

Out in the field, MarshalRathar most often wore a common soldier’s rock-gray tunic with the large stars of his rank on the collar tabs. That wouldn’t do for a formal court function. At the orders ofKingSwemmel ’s protocol officer-who plainly outranked even a marshal in such matters-he put on his most gorgeous dress uniform before repairing to the throne room.

“You look splendid, lord Marshal,”MajorMerovec said loyally.

Rathar eyed his adjutant. “I doubt it, if you want to know the truth. What I look like is a gaudy popinjay.” Unkerlanter military fancy dress, like that of the other kingdoms of Derlavai, was based on the regular uniforms of a bygone age, when officers needed to be recognizable at a distance and when cold-hearted snipers hadn’t been able to put a beam through their heads from half a mile away. Rathar’s uniform was scarlet and black, with ribbons and medals gleaming on his chest.

“Splendid,” Merovec repeated. “His Majesty commanded it, so how could you look less than splendid?”

“Hmm.” The marshal nodded. “When you put it that way, you’ve got a point.”

Having satisfied both his adjutant and the fussy protocol officer, Rathar made his way through a maze of palace corridors to the throne room at the heart ofKingSwemmel ’s residence. However magnificent the dress uniform he wore, though, he had to surrender his ceremonial sword to the guardsmen in the antechamber outside the throne room. He thought being without a blade detracted from the effect he was supposed to create, but his was not the opinion that counted. Swemmel’s, as always, prevailed.

Inside the throne room, the king dominated. That had always been true in Unkerlant, and would probably stay true till the end of time. The great throne raised Swemmel-as it had raised his predecessors and would raise his successors-high above his subjects and drew all eyes to him. Set against the king’s jewel- and pearl-encrusted robe and massy golden crown, MarshalRathar ’s uniform might as well have been simple rock-gray. Nothing competed with Swemmel here.

Lesser courtiers nodded to the marshal as he walked past them up the aisle leading to the splendid throne. To them, he was a person of consequence. To Swemmel, Rathar was what the other courtiers were: an ornament, a decoration, a reflection of his own magnificence and glory.

The marshal prostrated himself before Swemmel, knocking his head against the carpet and crying out the king’s praises as loudly as he could with his mouth an inch off that rug. “We suffer you to rise,”KingSwemmel said in his thin voice. “Take your place beside us. We are soon to receive the ministers from Kuusamo and Lagoas, as we have spoken of before, and would have you beside us that we might speak to them with greater efficiency.”

“That is my pleasure, your Majesty, and my duty,” Rathar replied, and stood to the right of the throne where Swemmel could easily seek his opinion. Whether Swemmel would want advice, or whether he would take it once he got it, were questions of a different sort.

A herald cried, “His Excellency, Count Gusmao, minister to Unkerlant fromKingVitor of Lagoas! His Excellency, LordMoisio, minister to Unkerlant from the Seven Princes of Kuusamo!”

As usual, Gusmao and Moisio walked up the aisle toward the throne together: a pair of oddly mismatched twins. Coming from the island their kingdoms had shared for so long gave them a similarity that transcended their complete lack of physical resemblance. Moisio was little and swarthy and flat-faced, with a few wisps of gray hair on his chin to do duty for a beard. But for Gusmao’s neat ponytail and a few differences in the cut of his tunic and kilt, he could have been an Algarvian: he was tall and fair, with red hair and cat-green eyes. Lagoans are of Algarvic stock, too, Rathar reminded himself. They’re allies, not Algarvians. Seeing Gusmao still made him nervous.

Both ministers bowed low toKingSwemmel. Being their own sovereigns’ direct representatives in Unkerlant, they didn’t have to prostrate themselves. Swemmel nodded to each of them. “Through you, we greet your rulers,” he said.

“Thank you, your Majesty.” That wasLordMoisio -a Kuusaman title of annoying ambiguity. He spoke Unkerlanter understandably, but with the most peculiar accent Rathar had ever heard. “I appreciate your courtesy, as always.” Was that sarcasm? With Moisio, you could never be sure.

CountGusmao said, “KingVitorcongratulates you, your Majesty, on the victories your brave soldiers have won against our common foe.” His accent was different from Moisio’s. It was also different from the way Algarvians spoke Unkerlanter, which helped Rathar feel easier around the redheaded Lagoan minister.

“We thank you,” Swemmel said. That restraint astonished Rathar: restraint wasn’t usually one of Swemmel’s outstanding character traits. Then the king leaned forward on the throne and pointed a long, skinny finger atCountGusmao. “We would thank you more were your soldiers fighting on the mainland of Derlavai, as ours are.”

“Taking Sibiu back ought to count for a little something.” Moisio spoke before Gusmao could. The Kuusaman minister courted lese majesty every time he opened his mouth. Swemmel had never executed a minister from another kingdom, not even the Algarvian minister after Mezentio beat him to the punch. There was always a first time, though.

Before the king could start roaring atLordMoisio, Gusmao added, “And from Sibiu our dragons pound Valmiera and Algarve itself.”

KingSwemmelsnapped his fingers, as he had with Rathar in discussing the islanders. “Sibiu is nothing but rocks and mud dropped into the sea. If it fell in Unkerlant, no one would notice. We fight the Algarvian murderers from the Narrow Sea in the frozen south to the Garelian Ocean in the steaming north. Have your overlords the courage to cross to Derlavai and close with the foe?”

He’d asked that question of the ministers from the two island kingdoms a year before. They’d talked about how many other wonderful things they were doing in the fight against Algarve. Rathar knew there was a good deal of truth in what they said. That didn’t keep him, like a lot of Unkerlanters, from resenting them for the easy time they’d had of the war.

“We do close with the Algarvians,” Gusmao said. “We close with them on the sea, we close with them on the air, we have driven them from Sibiu-”

“You do everything except the thing that truly matters,” Swemmel said, and snapped his fingers again. “We know why you hang back, too: you hope to see the Algarvians maim us while we maim them, then come in and sweep up the leavings for yourselves. Is it not so, Marshal?” He nodded to Rathar.

Rathar wished he hadn’t. He suspected Swemmel had a point. Whether the king had a point or not, though, he shouldn’t have raised it with his allies. Rathar said, “His Majesty means we’ve carried the burden on the mainland of Derlavai by ourselves for a long time now. Help would be welcome.”

“We mean what we said,” Swemmel broke in, ruining Rathar’s try for diplomacy.

“Shall we stop fighting the Gyongyosians out among the islands of the Bothnian Ocean, then?” Moisio asked. “That would let the Gongs concentrate on you, of course, but if it’s what you want…” He shrugged.

“Gyongyos is an ague,”KingSwemmel said. “Algarve is a plague. Do you understand the difference? Do you understand anything at all?”

The foreign minister will probably cut his throat, Rathar thought. But then, the king had always had even less use for the foreign minister’s advice than he had for that from his chief soldier.

CountGusmaosaid, “When we hit the Algarvians, you may be sure we shall hit them hard.”

Swemmel yawned. “When you have something new to say, come before us again and let us hear it. Until then…” He made a gesture of dismissal.

“If you will not listen, your Majesty, how can you expect to hear anything new?”LordMoisio asked.

Gasps rose from the Unkerlanter courtiers. One of those gasps rose fromMarshalRathar. He sometimes dared tell the king things others would have hidden from him. Never, not even in the days of the Twinkings War, had he dared be rude to Swemmel. The King of Unkerlant was conscious of his kingship, first, last, and always.

KingSwemmel’s eyes widened, then narrowed. Through those narrowed eyes, he stared down at the Kuusaman minister. “Do you seek to see how far you can try the immunity granted to a diplomat, sirrah?” the king inquired in a voice deadly cold. “We shall teach you the answer there, if you like, but you will not have joy of the learning.”

“You are as good a foe to your friends as you are to your foes,” Moisio answered. “Keep that up a while, and see how many friends you have at the end of it.”

“Your Majesty-” Rathar began urgently. Whether Swemmel did or not, he understood that Unkerlant would have a much harder time beating Algarve and Gyongyos without help from the two island kingdoms.

“Be silent, Marshal,” Swemmel snapped, and Rather, ingrained to obedience, was silent. The king’s head swung back to Moisio. “We grant immunity to no man, diplomat or otherwise, for insolence against our person.”

“ ‘Insolence’? What insolence?” the Kuusaman said. “CountGusmaotold you a thing. You would not hear it. You refused to hear it. Where lies the insolence in that?”

More gasps rose from the Unkerlanters. This time, MarshalRathar kept quiet. Every once in a while, someone taking a line like Moisio’s could get through to Swemmel where flattery and court tricks failed. More often, of course, such attempts ended in disaster, which was why even Rathar used them only as a last resort.

Swemmel said, “I have heard such nonsense as he spouts from both of you before. Why should I care to hear it again?” He wasn’t shouting for his guards to takeLordMoisio away and do something dreadful to him. His failure to shout for them was as much as-more than-Rathar could have hoped for.

“ ‘Why,’ your Majesty?”CountGusmao spoke for himself. “Because it is not nonsense. I told you the truth, and nothing but. When we hit the Algarvians, you may be sure we shall hit them hard.”

“Aye, no doubt. And when will that be?”KingSwemmel jeered.

Moisio did something then that Rathar thought would get him killed in the next instant: he stepped up onto the base of the throne and beckoned to Swemmel to lean down to him. To Rathar’s astonishment, the king did-maybe Swemmel was too astonished to do anything else, too. And the Kuusaman minister, standing on tiptoe, whispered something into his ear.

“Really?” Swemmel, for once, sounded altogether human and not in the least royal.

“Really.”LordMoisio ’s voice was firm. Whatever he’d told the king, he believed it. Hearing the way he affirmed it, Rather believed it, too. The only problem was, he had no idea what Moisio had said. And, by Swemmel’s conspiratorial smirk-one that Moisio shared-he wouldn’t get to find out any time soon, either.