The Red wolf conspiracy

Almost Free

3 Vaqrin 941

5:56 p.m.

Niriviel, the moon falcon, shot by overhead, a cream-colored arrow. On the bench beside the splendid catfish tanks of the Lorg Academy of Obedient Daughters, the girl with blond hair felt her heart lift at the sight, and then an instant's regret at the thought that she would never see him again. An instant was all she could muster, for while she loved the falcon, she hated the Academy a thousand times more.

Behind her, a woman cleared her throat. The blond girl looked over her shoulder to see one of the Lorg Sisters frowning at her in silence. In her dark brown robe the Sister's face seemed whiter than the lilies in the tanks; whiter than the fish weaving slow paths among the stems.

"Good evening, Sister," said the girl.

"Her Grace will see you in the hatcheries," said the woman tersely.

Startled, the girl rose to her feet.

"After your meditation, child!"

The Sister turned on her heel and stalked off. The girl sat again, sidelong to hide her face from the Academy windows, and pressed her knuckles hard against the wrought-iron bench. A meeting with the Mother Prohibitor! It was a rare honor: girls did not have private audiences with the head of the Order except for the gravest of reasons. It's a trap, she told herself. I knew they'd try something.

The Accateo, as the Sisters liked to call it, was the most costly and exclusive school for girls in the Imperium. Also the oldest, which partly explained the Sisters' tendency to speak Old Arquali, and dress in cloaks like funeral wraps, and to serve dishes (horse-liver puddings, starling broth) that had vanished from even the most traditional Etherhorde dining rooms a century ago.

Also the loneliest, thought the girl, warming to her theme.

Also the darkest, cruelest, most ignorant heap of stone ever to disgrace the word school.

Her name was Thasha Isiq, and she was dropping out. It ought to have been the happiest day of the two years she had spent at the Lorg. Two years without a glimpse of father or friends, without hearing the ocean or climbing Maj Hill. Two years without laughing, except softly in corners, and at the risk of punishment.

But she could not rejoice in her coming freedom, not yet. The Sisters' power was too great. They woke you with their songs (guttural chants recounting the evil history of womankind); they studied your private journals, not just openly but with a red quill for correcting your grammar; they questioned you about your dreams; they compared you with the impossibly pure First Sisters in the time of the Amber Kings; they gave you chores in house or gardens, along with meditations to recite nonstop while doing so. Then came breakfast. And after that, the real labor: your education.

Thasha had known nothing about the Academy when Syrarys, her father's consort, announced that she was to be enrolled. When she realized Syrarys meant the walled compound with the grim towers and fanged iron gate, she refused outright. A great battle followed between daughter and consort, and Thasha lost. Or rather, surrendered: her father's illness, a brain inflammation that had lasted years, suddenly worsened, and the family doctor told her bluntly that Eberzam Isiq would not recover unless he was spared, temporarily at least, the work and worries of fatherhood.

To Thasha the diagnosis stank of trickery. Syrarys hated her, though she pretended love. And Thasha had never quite trusted Dr. Chadfallow, friend to the Emperor though he was.

The welcome letter from the Academy promised lessons in music, dance and literature, and for a while Thasha took heart, for she had dearly loved all three subjects. Today she almost hated them.

The trouble was evil. It was the great obsession of the Sisters, and with it they poisoned everything they touched. "Literature" meant poring together over the journals of former students, now wives in the richest households across the known world: journals that recorded in humiliating detail each woman's lifelong struggle against the inherent wickedness of her nature. "Dance" meant mastering the stiff waltzes and quadrilles of society balls, or the erotic performances certain families demanded of brides for twelve nights before their weddings. "Music" just meant sin. Confession of sin in whining arias. Regret for sin in madrigals that never ended. Memory of sin in low, groveling groans.

For close to a thousand years, the Accateo had spiritually mangled girls. They entered jittery, wide-eyed waifs; they left docile dreamers, hypnotized by the epic of their own rottenness and the lifelong struggle ahead to become slightly less so. Thasha looked over at a girl her own age, pruning the roses a few yards away: eyes heavy with lack of sleep, lips moving ceaselessly with her assigned meditation. Now and then she smiled, as if at some happy secret. A pretty girl, of course.

Thasha shuddered. It could have been her. It would have been her, if she had stayed much longer. When a single story about the world pursues you all day, every day, and even prowls the edges of your dreamlands, it soon becomes hard to remember that that story is just one among many. You hear no others, and if you remember them at all, it is like remembering snowflakes in the midst of a steaming jungle: silly, fantastic, almost unreal.

Of course, that was exactly the point.

But even as these thoughts came to her, Thasha felt a stab of guilt. Hadn't the Sisters themselves taught her all this about her mind? This, and a thousand other lessons? That there was more to love in this world than gossip and rich food and a dress from the Apsal Street tailors? And she thanked them with hate. By detesting them, laughing at them inwardly. By slandering them to her father. By dropping out.

She looked down at her hands. There was an ugly scar on her left palm that looked as though it had been made with a jagged stick. Almost two years ago, on her fifteenth night in the Lorg, Thasha had run to this bench in tears, guilt like she had never dreamed of hammering in her chest: guilt for existing, for not loving the Sisters as they loved her, for letting her father waste his fortunes in sending her here, where she spat on every opportunity. Guilt for questioning the Sisters, guilt for trying not to feel guilty. It was unendurable, this guilt, even before the elder Sisters caught up with her. We warned you, they said. We told you exactly what you would feel. A girl who chooses to be weak may hide the truth, but her heart knows. What does it know? That its owner is a vain and useless blight upon the earth. A canker. A parasite. Tell us we're wrong, girl. Thasha could only sob as they prattled on, adding up reasons for grief, and then she reached out and snapped off a brittle rose stem and drove it straight through her left hand.

The Sisters shrieked; one hit her on the back of the head; but the act of mutilation saved Thasha's life. She knew it: another minute and she would have died of self-loathing. As it was her head cleared instantly, and she thought, How obvious, how brilliant, to make us love them for torturing us! And before the Sisters marched her to the infirmary Thasha swore that however long she stayed, she would think her own thoughts and feel her own feelings when she sat on that bench.

Yes, she had become a woman here. By fighting them.

Thasha rose now, and with grateful fingers bid her bench goodbye. Then she turned and moved swiftly toward the fish hatcheries. She could see the Mother Prohibitor's red cloak through the translucent glass. Don't explode, don't attack her, she thought. You're almost free.

Some girls would never know freedom again. The Lorg had no graduation process. You simply stayed until you found a way of leaving, and there were not many of those. You could drop out in highest disgrace, which was Thasha's choice, even though the furious Sisters had promised to warn every other school in the city of her "spiritual deformities." You could murder a Sister, which was slightly less disgraceful. You could be recalled by your parents, as Thasha had begged her father to do in fifty-six letters, starting her first night in the Lorg. You could (this was Thasha's invention) climb Sister Ipoxia's weeping cherry until the rubbery tree bent over with your weight and dropped you over the wall; but the local constables had sharp eyes, and hauled runaways back to the Academy at once, for which they received the blessings of the Mother Prohibitor and a handful of coins.

Or you could marry. This was the one entirely legitimate way out of the Lorg. The school sponsored two Love Carnivals a year, when the Sisters dropped their teaching, gardening, wine-making and catfish cultivation to become frenetic, full time matchmakers. One of these started in just three days: by then Thasha wanted to be far from the Lorg. Her timing had enraged the Mother Prohibitor. Someone had heard her shout in the vestry: "Three hundred men seeking Love Conferences, and she renounces? What are we to tell the nine who put her at the top of their lists?"

(Nine suitors, girls had whispered behind Thasha's back. And she's only sixteen.)

As the Sister who taught Erotic Dance had told them yesterday (exhausted into something like honesty; her skills were in great demand this time of year), one needn't be rich to attend the Lorg. The school also recognized merit-that is, beauty. Thasha's classmates included a number of exceptionally lovely girls from modest households. Not a bad investment for the Lorg: what their families could not pay, their future husbands would gladly make up for in matchmaking fees.

It was a thriving enterprise. The girls nearly always consented. Marriage to a wealthy stranger felt like charity once you believed you deserved nothing more than contempt.

The Mother Prohibitor was a lanky, quick-moving old woman; in her red rector's cloak she put one in mind of a scarlet ibis looking for dinner among the tanks of newly hatched fish. When Thasha opened the door of the glass house enclosing the tanks she looked up sharply, and gestured with a dripping hand-net.

"My eyes begin to fail me," she said, in her surprisingly deep voice. "Look at their tail spines, girl. Are they yellow?"

Thasha gathered her cloak and knelt by the tank. "Most are yellow-tailed, Your Grace. But there are some with green stripes. Very pretty fish, they'll be."

"We must catch them. Those green ones. All of them, right now."

She held out the net. Thasha noted the great emerald ring on the woman's pale hand. Girls gossiped about that ring: it bore the words DRANUL VED BRISTФLJET DORO-Where thou goest, I follow fast-in silver Old Arquali script about the priceless gem. Some girls thought the phrase a magic charm. Others held that it was the motto of a secret order, not the Lorg merely but some guild of crones scattered across the world and elbow-deep in the plots and schemes and stratagems that ruled it. Thasha felt the old woman watching her. She took the net from her hand.

The tank was shallow, and Thasha caught the dozen or so green-tailed hatchlings in a matter of minutes, dropping them one by one into a bucket next to the Mother Prohibitor.

"They will not be pretty fish, Thasha Isiq," said the old woman when she was done. "They will not be any sort of fish much longer. The Accateo now specializes in bili catfish, these yellow-tails. A more succulent meat, they have. They fetch an excellent price, and the Slugdra ghost-doctors will also pay for their intestines, which they use in love potions. There, Sister Catarh has brought your street clothes."

Thasha looked up quickly at the Sister in the doorway, who set down a bundle tied with string, bowed and withdrew.

"I will thank you not to grin like an imbecile," said the Mother Prohibitor. "Get up! So you're leaving. Did you meditate this morning on your tragically altered fortunes?"

"I did, Your Grace."

"You're lying, naturally," said the old woman, her tone matter-of-fact as she churned the water of the tank with her cane. Thasha bit her tongue. Legend held that the Mother Prohibitor felt a needle in her side whenever a girl lied in her presence. Thasha hoped for a few more opportunities.

"Failure," the Mother Prohibitor was saying, "is not an accident. Not a thug who grabs you in an alley. It is a liaison in a darkened house. It is a choice."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Be still. The bane of that choice will pursue you. Though you flee to the ends of the earth, it will dog your heels."

Really, thought Thasha. We live just nine blocks away.

The Mother Prohibitor took a letter from her robe and studied it, as one might a fruit gone suddenly and swiftly rotten. "Failure withers the lives of those who choose it. That is why it has no place in our curriculum. Only two girls this century have left in disgrace. I praise your good father"-she raised the letter-"that he has kept you from becoming the third."

"He sent for me!" The words burst out of Thasha before she could stop herself.

"While you wear that robe you are a Lorg Daughter, and will obey me," said the Mother Prohibitor. "Yes, he sent for you. Do you know why?"

"Perhaps he misses me, Your Grace. I know he does."

The old woman just looked at her.

"Are you of the faith, child?" she asked. "Do you believe that there is a Tree in Heaven, the Milk Tree as we name it, and that this world of Alifros is but one of its fair fruits that in time must ripen and fall, or be picked by Rin's own hand?"

Thasha swallowed. "I don't know, Your Grace."

The old woman sighed. "The truth will find you, if you are half the young woman you seem. Go now with our blessing, and know that the voices of your sisters old and young will be raised in song, that the Angel who guides all honest pilgrims will bring you safe to distant shores."

Stunned, Thasha lowered her eyes. She had expected curses, humiliation. In the school hymnal, the canticles for dropouts read like death sentences. To invoke the Angel of Rin…

"Do you see that box on the workbench? Bring it here. I have two gifts ere you depart."

Thasha fetched the box, about the size of a hatbox. At the old woman's command she untied the string and lifted the lid. Inside was a buckled leather pouch, and within the pouch, a book. Thasha turned it in her hands. The book was old and very thick: four inches thick, but not heavy in the least. Its smooth black leather bore no words at all.

Thasha was struck first by the paper, which was so thin she could see her hand through a page if she lifted it alone, but sharp and white when laid against the rest.

"Dragonfly-wing leaf," said the old woman. "The thinnest paper in the world." Taking the book from Thasha, she opened it to the first page and held it up:

The Merchant's Polylex: 5,400 Pages of Wisdom

13th Edition

"You will remember the number thirteen," said the Mother Prohibitor. Then she ripped out the page. Greatly confused, Thasha watched her tear it into many pieces and drop them into the bucket with the dying catfish. "Have you seen a Polylex before?" the woman asked.

"Lots of them," said Thasha. "My father has-"

"The newest edition. Of course he does. Every sailing man of means owns a Polylex, if he owns any book at all. It is a traveler's companion-an encyclopedia, dictionary and history of the world, written and rewritten over centuries and published anew every twenty years. What are you thinking?"

Thasha blushed. "I'm sorry, Your Grace. My father says the Merchant's Polylex is full of rubbish and rot."

The Mother Prohibitor frowned, so that her eyebrows met like crossed knives. "This particular copy is rare. Some would call it priceless. Keep it near you-and read it now and again, girl. Decide for yourself what is rubbish, and what is gold. Now put it away, and show me that hand of yours."

Thasha knew which hand she meant. The old woman turned it palm-up and traced the old wound with her fingers. Thasha's mind was a-whirl. Why would the Mother Prohibitor make her such a gift when she had barely dodged disgrace? Why were they talking at all?

"Somewhere in the Polylex," said the Mother Prohibitor, "you will find a legend from the old kingdom of Nohirin about another girl with a wounded hand. She was called Erithusmй, and she was born without fear. She laughed at earthquakes, crawled under elephants' feet, ran into burning fields to admire the flames. But on her sixteenth birthday the king of Nohirin came with his warriors and took her away to the north of that land, a place of ice-sheathed mountains, and ordered her to enter a high cave and fetch out what she found there.

"The king knew well what she would find: a magical weapon called the Nilstone, one of the great horrors of history. None knew whence it came. Out of the gullet of a dragon, said some. Fallen from the moon or a wander-star, others claimed. But all agreed that it was evil. The king's own great-grandfather had hurled it into the cave, and for a century no one who ventured within had returned alive. But fearless as ever, Erithusmй went in, braving pits and ice-weirds and darkness, and at last she found the Nilstone.

"It lay surrounded by frozen corpses-all the men the king had sent before her, slain the instant their fingers touched the cursed device. But when the girl lifted it she felt only a tiny pinprick on her hand. And when she took it from the cave she was possessed of powers beyond any mage in Alifros. With a word she scattered the king's army; with a snap of her fingers she called up a gryphon to bear her away. For three years Erithusmй flew from land to land, working magic such as none had ever seen. Here she quelled a plague; there she made springs flow where sandstorms had raged the day before.

"But all did not go well. She stoppered a volcano, and three others exploded nearby. She drove the old king of Nohirin from power, and nine evil princes fought for his throne, begging her aid to slay one another. And she found that the stone had begun to burn her palm where she held it. Confused, Erithusmй flew to the sacred isle of Rappopolni, and entered the Dawn Temple there, and knelt before the high priestess.

"Extending her hand, she said, 'I can work miracles; why can I not heal this little burn?' The priestess replied: 'Because even you, my daughter, are not entirely free of fear. No man or woman can be. Through fear the Nilstone is poisoning you, and turning your good deeds to ruin. Your choices are but two: cast it away and become yourself again, or keep it and die.'"

The Mother Prohibitor still held Thasha's hand. Thasha waited, barely breathing.

"A legend," the old woman said at last. "And a warning, for some. You may look up the ending in your spare time. Now then, my other gift is a reminder. A Lorg Daughter is never alone. On the path you are doomed to tread, one of us at least will be near you. Remember, Thasha: in dire need you may call upon her; she cannot refuse. Now I must work. Is there anything you would ask me?"

Thasha blinked. To her amazement, she felt like crying. "My P-Promissory Tree, Your Grace. Must I kill it, with my own hand?"

Every girl entering the Lorg planted a cherry tree in the Promissory Orchard, which filled half the compound and was now in radiant bloom. Dropouts had to uproot their saplings and chop them to bits.

The Mother Prohibitor looked at her for a silent time. Then she raised her hand and made the sign of the Tree over Thasha's head.

"It has taken root, child," she said at last. "I think we must let it grow."

She turned her back without another word. Thasha left the hatchery, nearly blubbering. She loved them! Which was madness! She couldn't wait to be gone. Was it possible the old woman realized that kindness would hurt longer than cruelty as a parting gift? Or was she, Thasha, so plainly ugly inside that she saw even peace gestures as attacks?

Did they know her better than she knew herself?

Almost running, she made her way through the Great Hall. Earlier that day she had sent her belongings by coach, and made her goodbyes, which were bitter. The few friends she had told Thasha she was abandoning them. Could she deny it?

At the gatehouse the ward-sister let her into a small changing room. Alone, Thasha dried her eyes and untied her bundle of clothes. She laughed: there were the man's shirt and breeches, and even the longshoreman's cap. She had worn all these to the gate two years ago, in protest at her banishment. They were a little snug now.

When she had changed, she stepped out of the room and surrendered her school cloak.

"I'll keep it safe for you," said the ward-sister.

This was taking ceremony too far, Thasha thought. But she bowed her thanks, and the woman unlocked a small door in the fanged gate, and Thasha stepped out, free, into an exquisite summer evening and a breeze off the Ool.

She took three happy steps-and froze. A thought struck her like a boot to the shins.

She walked back to the gate. "Ward-sister!" she called. "You say you'll keep my cloak safe? What for?"

The woman looked over her shoulder. "Don't be obtuse, child. For wearing."

Thasha drew a deep breath. "Yes, Sister, for wearing. I apologize for my imprecision."

"Quite so. Good night."

"Sister, please, I meant to ask, who are you keeping-"

"Whom!"

"Whom, whom, yes," said Thasha, squeezing her eyes shut. "Whom are you keeping it for?"

"For whom is preferable, of course. Whatever is the matter, child-are you ill? We shall keep it for you."

"But I'm not coming back."

The Sister clucked impatiently. "The letter from your father's, your father's… from the Lady Syrarys announces quite plainly his request for your temporary removal from-"

"Temporary!" shouted Thasha.

"With the aim of improving your manners, no doubt!" snapped the ward-sister. "Three feet beyond the gate and she starts interrupting! May the Angel forgive you! A charwoman's girl would know better, but not the ambassador's daughter, no, she-"

"Ambassador!"

"Miss Thasha, you are screeching my words back at me like a circus macaw! For the last time I bid you good night!"

Thasha ran as she had not run since fleeing the constable, the leather pouch under her arm. All the bright life of Etherhorde-laughing boys in a fountain, old men throwing knackerballs on a close-trimmed lawn, a sourdough heat from the baker's door, Nunekkam flutes in the shadows like whistlers in a cave-all this she barely noticed despite two years of longing for it. Suddenly the evening made a horrid kind of sense. They meant to send her back! Thasha knew it had never happened before: the Accateo did not grant leaves of absence. It had to be her father. Only he could be influential enough to challenge seven centuries of rust-rigid practice.

Eberzam Isiq was a retired admiral, commander of not just a ship but a whole fleet that had swept down the Chereste Coast five years ago, from Ulsprit to a place called Ormael. What was it all about? Killing pirates, some said. Killing rebels, traitors to the Imperium, said others. Her father had just chuckled and said it was a matter of opinion.

But everyone seemed to agree that it had been a mighty victory, and that her father was the hero of the campaign. At banquets, fat dukes and generals pressed their wine-sour lips to Thasha's cheek. Such an elegant girl! Eberzam has the Gods' own luck! They said her father would make Prefect of Etherhorde one day, or perhaps governor of one of the greater Arquali territories. It made little difference to Thasha. All she knew was that her father had come back wounded-struck in the head by a fragment of cannonball-and that his illness began shortly thereafter.

He was better now, or so the letters from Syrarys claimed (Eberzam himself had written just twice, on her birthdays). But an ambassadorship? That meant sailing beyond the Empire, didn't it? And why send an old warrior across oceans to speak for Arqual?

Obeying a sudden impulse, Thasha crossed the road, climbed a low fence and dropped into Gallows Park. It was darker under the park's old oaks and conifers, but it would save her five blocks. She ran downhill, barely glancing at the famous wishing-well (some girl was always crying there, ostentatiously), or the melted iron lump that was a monument to the Heroic Blacksmiths, or the glowing webs of the torch spiders luring moths into the trees. At last she reached the Ool, flanked here by a ruined wall left over from days when bandits still dared to cross the river into Etherhorde. A few fishermen crouched among the gloomy stones. Otherwise the park looked deserted.

If it was her father who wrote to the Lorg, Thasha decided, it was Syrarys who put the pen in his hand. Every year they were together her influence over the admiral grew. And although she had never spoken of it, Thasha was all but convinced that Syrarys was behind the decision to send her away in the first place.

How long had they told the Sisters she would be gone? A month? A week?

I'll change his mind, she thought. I have to, I-

"Pah! Too easy!"

An arm caught her broadside across the chest. From the corner of her eye she saw a tall man step through a gap in the ruined wall. The arm that had stopped her slid to her throat and jerked her toward the gap.

No time to think. Thasha drove an elbow into the man's side, twisted out from under his arm and flung herself backward and away. Her fists were raised to strike him again. But she was off-balance, winded by his first blow. Some root or stone caught her heel, and she fell.

Instantly the man was on her. A knee pinned her legs to the ground. A dagger! In the fastest act of her life Thasha flailed at the blade as the man stabbed downward. But she was not fast enough. It was over, and she'd barely felt it. The knife was buried to the hilt in her chest.

"Dead," said the man. "Dead for a five-penny sweet."

One shock chased another: she was still breathing, she felt no pain, she appeared unharmed. Strangest of all, the face of her attacker belonged to a friend.

"Hercуl! You monster!"

"You are quick," said the man, "and stronger than I recall. But carelessness trumps both speed and muscle. It is one thing to scurry through a park at night, another to do so with your mind in a fog."

"I was so anxious to get home."

The man's eyebrows rose. "If you dare make excuses to me."

"No excuses. I'm sorry, Hercуl, I failed. May I get up now?"

The man lifted a hilt without a blade from her chest, then rose and helped her to her feet. He was a slender, elfin-eyed man in middle years, with unruly hair and somewhat threadbare clothes. Now that he was no longer attacking her he assumed a cordial air, folding his hands behind his back and smiling fondly. Thasha looked at her chest: bits of a glittering something clung to her blouse.

"Sugar knife," said Hercуl. "A very popular candy. Boys across the city play with those foul things, more's the pity."

"I never thought my first fight would be with you."

"Be glad it was."

Hercуl Stanapeth was her old dance instructor, from the days before the Lorg. But Thasha had learned (from certain military cousins) that he also taught fighting-that he was, in fact, from Tholjassa, where princes the world over sent for bodyguards. The cousins whispered of great deeds at arms, long ago, but Hercуl would not speak of his past. He also refused to give her fighting lessons, until she began paying bullies in the street for black eyes and bloody noses. She did not fool him with this tactic, but she did convince him of her desire to learn. His price: strictest secrecy, even from her father. If there was no law against training girls to hit and kick and use knives, it was merely because such an outrage had not occurred to anyone.

"Let us be off," he said. "Even I do not linger here after dark."

They set off along the Ool. Bats skimmed low over the water, feasting on flies. In the south the countless stars that made up the Milk Tree were starting to wink above the hills.

"My letters reached you?" Thasha asked.

Hercуl nodded. "I commend your decision, Thasha. The Lorg is an abomination. And of course I am happy to see you myself. What's that you're carrying?"

Thasha handed him the leather pouch, now slightly muddied. "It's just an old Merchant's Polylex. The Mother Prohibitor just gave it to me. She told me a strange story from it as well, about a girl called Erithusmй and her Nilstone."

"She spoke to you of the Nilstone!" said Hercуl sharply. "I dare say you won't find mention of that in the Polylex."

"The Mother Prohibitor said I would," said Thasha. "But don't worry, I know the book can't be trusted. And this one's the thirteenth edition, so it's completely out of date."

Hercуl's hand froze. "You mean of course the fourteenth edition. Or the twelfth?"

Thasha shook her head. "The thirteenth. I saw the title page, before the Mother Prohibitor tore it out. Why she did that I can't imagine-she said it was one of the most valuable books in the school."

"The most valuable, I should think. And the most dangerous. Put it away." He handed it back to her.

They walked on, Hercуl frowning slightly. At last he spoke again.

"You're right, of course. A normal Polylex is a hotchpotch: the work of brilliant explorers and charlatans, geniuses and frauds, all bound together in a single volume. The newest version, for instance, declares quite seriously that Tholjassans cannot be harmed by Tholja stingrays. Trust me, we can.

"But the thirteenth Polylex is an entirely different matter. Each book is written by the Ocean Explorers' Guild, which is an ancient club of sailors and businessmen here in Etherhorde. His Supremacy the Emperor is their honorary president, and approves each new Polylex before it is sold. No one took the book seriously until a century ago, when the thirteenth Polylex was written. Its editor was a man named Pazel Doldur. He was the brightest historian of his time-and the first in his family ever to go to school. They were poor folk: his father and elder brother joined the army because no one starved in uniform. Both were killed in mountain campaigns. Afterward his heartbroken mother sent Doldur to the university, on 'gold the Emperor pays to widows and mothers,' she claimed. As I say, he was brilliant, and studied hard. But his mother soon grew ill and died. It was only decades later, when he was starting work on the Polylex, that Doldur learned she had given her body to lords and princes in the Emperor's court, night after night, in exchange for his school money. Her disease came from one of those men."

"How perfectly ghastly!"

Hercуl nodded. "Doldur lost his mind with guilt. But he devised a brilliant revenge. It took many years, but he transformed the Polylex into an honest book: honest enough to shame all the wicked men alive, his Emperor included. It told of slave profits and deathsmoke peddlers. It revealed the existence of the Prison Isle of Licherog-imagine, there was a time when no one knew of the place! It told how merchants buy children from the Flikkermen to work in factories and mines. It named the massacres, the burned villages and other crimes of war that kings had worked so hard to make their subjects forget.

"All this he hid, in bits and pieces, within the usual five thousand pages of flotsam. And the Emperor never noticed. Perhaps he never read a word. In any case, he quickly gave Doldur his blessing. The thirteenth Polylex was copied and sold.

"The scandal tore this Empire apart: others did read carefully, you see. Within a year, Doldur had been executed, and nearly every copy of his book tracked down and burned. Merely to speak of a thirteenth edition was dangerous. To be caught with one was punished by death."

"Death!" cried Thasha. "Hercуl, why on earth would the Mother Prohibitor give such a book to me?"

"A fine question. Twenty years have passed since I last heard of someone caught with that book. An old witch, I believe. On Pulduraj."

"What happened to her?"

"She was tied to a dead mule and thrown into the sea."

Thasha stared at the innocent-looking pouch. "I knew they didn't like me," she said.

They crossed the footbridge over the old millers' canal. Hercуl touched his closed fist to his forehead, as she had seen him do at the center of other bridges: a Tholjassan custom, he had told her, but what it signified he would not say.

After a few minutes the words burst out of her: "What should I do with this blary thing?"

Hercуl shrugged. "Burn it. Or read it, learn from it, live with the danger of possessing it. Or take it to the authorities and condemn the Mother Prohibitor to death."

"You're a big help."

"Moral choice is not my sphere of instruction."

Thasha's face lit up suddenly. "Hercуl! When can our fighting lessons start again?"

Hercуl did not return her smile. "Not soon, I'm afraid. Much is happening in this city, and for good or ill I have become a part of it. The fact is I must leave you in a few minutes, and before that I have something to say. Something it were best you told your father, and soon."

He led her away from the river and into a dark stand of firs. Stopping by a large tree, he crouched low and motioned for her to do the same.

"Your family is being watched, Thasha," he whispered. "The admiral, the Lady, Nama and the other servants-now you as well. Somehow they knew you were leaving the Lorg tonight. If one good thing came of your rash plunge into this park, it is that you lost your watcher. You very nearly lost me."

"Watching us? Why?" Thasha was astounded. "Is this about what the ward-sister mentioned? An ambassadorship?"

Hercуl shook his head. "Don't ask me to speculate. And the fewer people you speak to about your father's business, the better. Come now, if you tarry longer they will know you met someone in the park."

They rose and walked on, fir needles crunching underfoot. Ahead, the glow of fengas lamps pierced the trees.

"Hercуl," said Thasha, "do you have any idea who they are?"

Hercуl's voice was uncertain. "There was one, a man I thought I knew, but that is hardly possible-" He shook his head, as if dispelling a bad dream. They had reached the edge of the firs. "Tell your father," he said. "And Thasha: tell him when he's alone, will you? Quite alone?"

Without Syrarys, she supposed he meant. Thasha promised she would.

Hercуl smiled. "I nearly forgot-Ramachni sends his compliments."

"Ramachni!" Thasha gripped his arm. "Ramachni's back? How is he? Where has he been?"

"Ask him yourself. He is waiting in your chamber."

Thasha was overjoyed. "Oh, Hercуl! This is a good sign, isn't it?"

Again her teacher hesitated. "Ramachni is a friend like no other," he said, "but I would not call his visits a good sign. Let us say rather that he comes at need. Still, he was in a jolly mood tonight. He even wished to come out into the city, but I forbade it. His greeting could not have been as… inconspicuous as my own."

"Inconspicuous!" Thasha laughed. "You tried to kill me!"

Hercуl's smile faded at the word kill. "Walk straight home," he said. "Or run, if you wish. But don't look back at me. I shall visit when I can."

"What's happening, Hercуl?"

"That question troubles my sleep, dear one. And I have no answer. Yet."

He found her hand in the darkness and squeezed it. Then he turned and vanished among the trees.

The old sentry at her garden gate bowed with the same flourish as two years ago. Thasha would have hugged him if she hadn't known what embarrassment the man would suffer. Instead she hugged Jorl and Suzyt, the blue mastiffs who waddled down the marble stairs to greet her, whimpering with impatience at their arthritic hips. They were her oldest friends, and slobbered magnificently to remind her of it. Laughing despite herself, she finally broke away from them and faced the house again.

In the doorway above her stood the Lady Syrarys. She was beautiful, in the lush Ulluprid Isles way of beauty: dark, smoldering eyes, full lips that seemed on the point of sharing some delicious secret, a cascade of straight black hair. She was half the admiral's age, or younger.

"There, darling," she said, as those gorgeous lips formed a smile. "Out of school for one hour and you're muddier than the dogs themselves. I won't kiss you until you've washed. Come in!"

"Is he really going to be an ambassador?" said Thasha, who hadn't moved.

"My dear, he already is. He took the oath Thursday at His Supremacy's feet. You should have seen him, Thasha. Handsome as a king himself."

"Why didn't he tell me? Ambassador to where?"

"To Simja-have you heard of it? Wedged between our Empire and the enemy's, imagine. They say Mzithrinis walk the streets in war-paint! We didn't tell you because the Emperor demanded strict secrecy."

"I wouldn't have told anyone!"

"But you said yourself the Sisters read your mail. Come in, come in! Nama will be calling us to table."

Thasha climbed the stairs and followed her into the big shadowy house, angry already. It was true that she'd complained of her letters arriving open and disordered. Syrarys had laughed and called her a worry-wart. But now she believed: now that those worries suited her purposes.

Thasha had no doubt what the consort's purposes amounted to. Syrarys meant to leave her behind, and wanted her to have as little time as possible to change her father's mind. And if I hadn't been dropping out? Would they have left without saying goodbye?

Never. She could never believe that of her father.

Watching Syrarys, she asked casually, "How soon do we sail?"

If the consort felt the least surprise, she hid it perfectly. "The Chathrand should be here within a week, and sail just a few days later."

Thasha stopped dead. "The Chathrand! They're sending him to Simja on the Chathrand?"

"Didn't the Sisters tell you? Yes, they're finally treating your father with the respect he's earned. Quite the expedition, it's going to be. An honor guard's been assembled for your father. And Lady Lapadolma is sending her niece along to represent the Trading Family. You remember Pacu, of course?"

Thasha winced. Pacu Lapadolma was her former schoolmate. She had escaped the Lorg ten months ago by marrying a colonel in the Strike Cavalry two decades her senior. A fortnight later she was a widow: the colonel's stallion, maddened by wasps, kicked him in the chest; he died without a sound, apparently.

"Hasn't she remarried yet?" asked Thasha.

"Oh no," Syrarys answered, laughing. "There was talk of an engagement, a Duke Somebody of Sorhn, but then came proposals from the Earl of Ballytween and the owner of the Mangel Beerworks and the animal-trader Latzlo, who was so mad for Pacu that he sent her a bouquet of five hundred white roses and fifty weeping snow-larks, all trained to cry her name. Pacu didn't care for any of them-said they all looked alike."

"Of course they did."

"The suitors, dear, not the birds. Luckily her great-aunt stepped in. By the time Pacu gets back even Latzlo may have forgotten her."

"I'm going with you," said Thasha.

Syrarys laughed again, touching her arm. "You are the sweetest girl."

Knowing very well that she was not, Thasha repeated: "I'm going."

"Poor Jorl and Suzyt. They'll have no one, then."

"Use any trick you like," said Thasha evenly, "but this time I'm going to win."

"Win? Trick? Oh, Thasha darling, we've no cause to start down that road. Come, I'll kiss you despite your dirt. My little Thashula."

It was her babytalk-name, from long ago when they were close. Thasha considered it a low tactic. Nonetheless they pecked each other's cheeks.

Thasha said, "I won't cause trouble in Simja. I have grown up."

"How delightful. Is that a promise to stop throwing your cousins into hedges?"

"I didn't throw him! He fell!"

"Who wouldn't have, dear, after the thumping you gave him? Poor young man, the lasting damage was to his pride. Knocked silly by a girl who barely reached his shoulder. Come, your father is in the summerhouse. Let's surprise him."

Thasha followed her through den and dining room, and out into the rear gardens. Syrarys had not changed. Smooth, crafty, clever-tongued. Thasha had seen her argue a duchess into tongue-tied rage, then walk off serenely to dance with her duke. In a city addicted to gossip she was an object of fascination. Everyone assumed she had a younger man, or probably several, hidden about the metropolis, for how could an old man satisfy a woman like that? "You can't kiss a medal on a wintry night, eh?" said a leering Lord Somebody, seated beside Thasha at a banquet. When he stepped away from the table she emptied a bottle of salad oil into his cushioned chair.

She had no great wish to defend Syrarys, but she would let no one cast shame on her father. He had been wounded so many times-five in battle, and once at least in love, when the wife he cherished died six days after giving birth to a daughter. Isiq's grief was so intense, his memories of his lost Clorisuela so many and sharp, that Thasha was astounded one day to hear him speak of her as "my motherless girl." Of course she had a mother-as permanently present as she was permanently lost.

Syrarys, for her part, scarcely needed defending. The consort glided among the ambushes and betrayals of high society as if born to them. Which was astounding, since she had come to Etherhorde just eight years ago in chains. Silver chains, maybe, but chains nonetheless.

Admiral Isiq had returned from the siege of Ibithraйd to find her waiting in his chambers, along with a note scrawled in His Supremacy's childish hand: We send this woman full trained in arts of love, may she be unto you joy's elixir.

She was a pleasure-slave. Not officially, of course: slavery had by then gone out of fashion and was restricted to the Outer Isles and newly conquered territories, where the Empire's hardest labor was done. In the inner Empire, bonded servants had taken their place-or consorts, in the case of pleasure-slaves. By law such women were one's property, but Thasha had heard of them won and lost in gambling matches, or sent back to slave territories when their looks began to fade.

She was barely eight when Syrarys arrived. Still, she would never forget how the young woman looked at her father: not cringing like other servants, but quietly intrigued, as though he were a lock she might pick with skill and patience.

Eberzam detested slavery by any name, calling it "the gangrene of empires." But to refuse a gift from the Emperor was unthinkable, so Thasha's father took the only step that occurred to him. He kept Syrarys in the house for a plausible six weeks and then declared himself in love. He petitioned the crown at once for her citizenship, but surprisingly he was rebuffed. The second note from Castle Maag read: Wait one year one day Adml at that time if love yet flourish we shall raise this seedling to status propitiatory. What that could mean no one knew, but the admiral obeyed, and became a reluctant slave-keeper for the first time in his life.

That year Syrarys was effectively imprisoned in the family mansion, but the sentence did not seem to trouble her. She turned her attention to Thasha, embracing the little girl half as a mother, half as older sister. She taught her Ulluprid games and songs, and persuaded the cook to make the dishes of her childhood, which Thasha agreed were more sumptuous than the best Etherhorde fare. In turn Thasha helped to perfect her Arquali, which was strong but leaned too heavily on the slave school's vocabulary of seduction.

They were best friends. The admiral couldn't have been happier. Thasha barely noticed when he stopped visiting Syrarys' bedroom and installed her in his own.

At the end of the required year he wrote again to Castle Maag, declaring his love stronger than ever, and this time it was the simple truth. Days later, admiral and slave were summoned to the Ametrine Throne, where Syrarys knelt and was named Lady Syrarys, consort to Eberzam Isiq.

The city gasped. With the stroke of a pen the Emperor had changed Isiq's slave-mere property in the eyes of the law-into a member of the aristocracy. In the long history of the Magads' rule, nothing of the kind had been done. By granting Isiq this boon, the Emperor was raising him immensely on the ladder of power. And no one knew why.

So it was that the most beautiful slave in Arqual became its most mysterious Great Lady. And ceased, from one day to the next, to be Thasha's friend.

A blue fengas lamp blazed in the summerhouse-actually just a large gazebo with a liquor cabinet. Admiral Eberzam Isiq, Prosecutor of the Liberation of Chereste and the Rescue of Ormael, among other violences, sat reading in a wicker lounger, a blanket over his legs and nearly as many moths bouncing off his bright bald head as circling the lamp above. The startling thing was that he didn't notice. As Thasha drew near she saw a big moth crawl from her father's ear to the top of his scalp. He didn't move. One hand whisked irritably at the page where his eyes were trained; that was all.

"Prahba!" she said.

It was her private nickname: Prahba was "the old sailor nobody could kill," a storybook hero who conquered every sea, and even outran Death, when the specter chased him against the wind. The admiral jumped, scattering the moths and slamming several in his book. He twisted to look at Thasha. He made a wordless sound of joy. Then she was hugging him, half in his lap, scratching her face on his stubbled neck and giggling as if she were not sixteen but six, and he had never banished her to a school run by hags.

"Thasha, my great girl!"

"I want to come with you."

"What? Oh, Thasha, morning star! What are you saying?"

His voice dry as coal. Two years had passed, but it might have been ten. His jaw trembled more than before, and the sideburns that were all that remained of his hair had lost their color: they were milk-white. But his arms were still strong, his beard neat, and his blue eyes, when they ceased their wandering and settled on you, were piercing.

"You can't leave me here," she said. "I'll be no trouble in Simja, I promise."

The admiral shook his head. "Simja will be the trouble, not you. A motherless girl in that cesspit. Unmarried, unprotected."

"Silly fool," she said, kissing his forehead. This was going to be easier than she thought. "You protected the whole Empire. You can protect me."

"How long?"

Thasha sat back to look at him. His eyes were forlorn.

"And the ship," he wheezed. "Those animals."

"Prahba," she said seriously, "I have to tell you something quickly. I saw Hercуl on the way back from the school-"

"Eberzam!" cried Syrarys, mounting the steps. "Look who I found at the garden gate!"

The admiral had started at the mention of Hercуl, but now he smiled at his daughter. "You're the living image of your mother. And that reminds me…" He took a small wooden box from the table and passed it to Thasha. "Open it," he said.

Thasha opened the box. Coiled inside was an exquisite silver necklace. She lifted it out: each link was a tiny ocean creature: starfish, sea horse, octopus, eel. But they were all so finely and fluidly wrought that at arm's length one saw only a silver chain.

"It's so beautiful," she whispered.

"That was hers, your mother's," said Isiq. "She loved it very much, hardly ever took it off."

Thasha looked from her father to Syrarys, barely trusting herself to speak. "But you gave it-"

"He gave it to me, years ago," said Syrarys, "because he thought he had to. As if I needed him to prove his feelings! I only accepted it as a guardian-keeping it safe until you came of age. Which, as you've just finished saying, you have." She took the necklace and put it around Thasha's neck. "Breathtaking!" she said. "Well, Eberzam, perhaps you'll consent to wear a dinner jacket tonight? Nama has lost all patience with him, Thasha. Puffing on sapwort cigars in his dressing gown. Rambling the garden in his slippers."

Isiq's eyes twinkled as he looked from one to the other. "You see how I am persecuted. In my own home."

He tossed the blanket aside and swung to his feet: an old man's imitation of military quickness. Thasha almost took his arm, but his hand waved her gently away. He leaned on no one, yet.

Thasha greeted the servants in the kitchen-Nama especially she had missed-washed her hands and ran upstairs to her old bedroom. Nothing had changed: the short, plush bed, the candle on the dresser, the table with the mariner's clock. She closed the door behind her and turned the key.

"Ramachni!"

There was no reply.

"It's me, Thasha! Come out, the door is locked!"

Silence again. Thasha rushed to the table, lifted the clock, looked behind it. Nothing.

"Blast and damn!"

She had spent too long in the garden, and Ramachni had left. He was a great mage; he could travel between worlds; Hercуl had even seen him call up storms. He had causes and struggles everywhere. Why had she expected him to wait while she dawdled below?

"You're not going to spring out at me, are you? Like Hercуl?"

Although he sometimes looked like an ordinary man, Ramachni usually visited her in the form of a mink. A jet-black mink, slightly larger than a squirrel, and he was not above nipping her if her attention wandered during their studies.

But there was no black mink in her room tonight. He was gone, and might not reappear for days, weeks, years. She could not even blame Syrarys, for the simple reason that Syrarys did not know Ramachni existed. Feeling a perfect idiot, Thasha flopped down on the bed. And froze.

Words burned on her ceiling in a pale blue fire. They were magic beyond any doubt, and her heart thrilled, for Ramachni very rarely let her see his magic. Even now she had only an instant to enjoy it, for as soon as she read a word it flickered and died. It was like blowing out candles with her mind.

Welcome out of prison, Thasha Isiq! I do not say Welcome home, for your notions of home are about to change, I think. Don't worry about missing me: I shall return before you know it. But Nama comes in and out of this room every minute, making sure it is ready for you, and I am tired of hiding under the dresser.

Hercуl is quite correct, by the way: someone is prowling your garden. Your dogs swear to it. Jorl is so anxious he barely makes sense. When I ask about the intruder, he responds: "Little people in the earth! Little people in the earth!"

By prison you may think I mean the Lorg. Not at all! The prison you are escaping is a beautjful one: beautiful and terrible, lethal even, should you remain in it much longer. You shall miss it. Often you will long to retreat to it, to nestle in its warmth as you do now in that bed you've outgrown. Brave soul, you cannot. It is your childhood, this prison, and its door is locked behind you.

At dinner, Thasha's father spoke of his ambassadorship. In every sense an honor. Simja was a Crownless State of tremendous importance, lying as it did between Arqual and her great rival the Mzithrin. The two empires had kept an uneasy truce for forty years, since the end of the horrific Second Sea War.

But battles or not, the power-struggle continued. The Crownless Lands knew the peril surrounding them, for the last war had been fought in their waters, on their shores and streets.

"They look at us and see angels of death, as Nagan put it," said Isiq. "You remember Commander Nagan? Perhaps you were too young."

"I remember him," said Thasha. "One of the Emperor's private guards."

"Right you are," said Isiq approvingly. "But on this trip he will be protecting us. A fine man, a professional."

"He used to visit," said Syrarys. "Such a careful man! I feel safer knowing he'll be aboard."

Isiq waved impatiently. "The point is, the Crownless Lands fear us as much as they do the Mzithrin. And now they've gone clever on us, with this damnable Simja Pact." He bit savagely at the dinner bread. "Fine footwork, that. Don't know how they managed it in just five years."

"What is a pact?" asked Thasha.

"An agreement, darling," said Syrarys. "The Crownless Lands have sworn to keep both Arqual and the Mzithrin out of their waters. And they've promised that if one Crownless State is attacked, the rest will all come to their aid."

"But I thought Arqual had the greatest fleet on earth."

"She does!" said Isiq. "That fleet bested the Mzithrin once, and could do so again. Nor could all seven Crownless Lands defy us, should we be so cruel and stupid as to make war on them. But what if the Crownless Lands and the Sizzies fought us together?" He shook his head. "We should be hard pressed, hard pressed. And the Mzithrin Kings have the same fear: that those seven States could one day turn on them, with our own fleet alongside, and lay their empire to waste. That is what the Simja Pact guarantees: utter annihilation for either empire, should they try to seize the least barren islet of the Crownless Lands."

His hand slapped the table so hard the dishes jumped. "Obvious!" he shouted, forgetting Thasha and Syrarys entirely. "How did we not see it? Of course they'd flirt with both sides! Who wouldn't prefer a quiet wolf to one baying for your blood?"

"Prahba," said Thasha quietly, "if we're the wolves, does that make Simja the trailing elk?"

The admiral stopped chewing. Even Syrarys looked momentarily shocked. Eberzam Isiq had wanted a boy, and Thasha knew it: someone to build model ships with, to read his battle-logs to and show off his wounds. A boy to set up one day with a ship of his own. Thasha could never be an officer, nor wanted to be. Her models looked like shipwrecks, not ships.

But she had a knack for strategy that unsettled him at times.

The admiral reached unsteadily for the wine. "The wolves and the trailing elk. I remember telling you that parable. How a wolf pack drives and harries a herd until it identifies the slowest, the weakest, then cuts it off from the rest and devours it. I do remember, Thasha. And I know what you're thinking: that the old man knows how to fight wars, but not make peace. You forget that my life did not begin when I joined the Imperial navy. And perhaps you also forget that I have hung up my sword. When I sail west it will be in a merchant ship, not a man-o'-war."

"Of course," said Thasha. "I've spoken foolishly. Silly ideas come to me, sometimes."

"More than silly, in this case. Did you not hear what I said about the Pact? If we move against any Crownless State all the rest will turn against us, and the White Fleet of the Mzithrin will join them."

"Eat your salad, Thasha," whispered Syrarys.

"War on that scale would make the Second Maritime look like two brats squabbling in a bathtub," said the admiral, his voice rising. "Do you think I would be party to such madness? I am not a spy or a military messenger, girl! I am an ambassador!"

"I'm sorry, Father."

The admiral looked at his plate and said nothing. Thasha found her heart pounding. She had rarely seen him so upset.

Syrarys gave a consoling sigh, and poured them each a cup of coffee. "I know so little of the world," she said, "but it occurs to me, Thasha darling, that such a remark-it's very clever, of course-"

Ah, here it comes, thought Thasha.

"— but at the wrong moment, it might just… worry people."

"It might be a disaster!" said Eberzam.

"Surely not, dear," Syrarys countered sweetly. "When you're careful, misunderstandings can be sorted out. Don't you think so, Thasha?"

"Yes, I do," said Thasha tonelessly. Beneath the table her hands made fists.

"An hour ago, for instance," Syrarys said, laying a hand on the admiral's own, "Thasha and I were recalling that summer party in Maj District. Fancy, I had the idea she had thrown her cousin into a hedge. When in fact he merely fell."

Eberzam Isiq's face clouded even further. He had been at the party, too. He took his hand from Syrarys' grasp and touched his head behind one ear, the site of the old wound. Thasha shot a glance of blazing rage at Syrarys.

"They are such an excitable bunch, those cousins," said the consort. "I believe there's still a rift between our households."

Another pause. The admiral cleared his throat, but did not look up. "Thasha, morning star," he said. "We live in an evil time."

"Prahba-"

"If Arqual and the Mzithrin come to blows," the admiral said, "it will not be like other wars. It will be the ruin of both. Death will stalk the nations, from Besq to Gurishal. Innocents will die alongside warriors. Cities will be sacked."

Now he raised his eyes, and the forlorn look Thasha saw in the garden was stronger than ever.

"I saw such a city. A lovely city. Bright above the sea-" His voice sounded ready to break, but he checked himself.

Syrarys laid her hand on the table. "This can wait until morning," she said firmly.

"No, it cannot," said the admiral.

"Dr. Chadfallow says you mustn't exhaust yourself."

"Chadfallow be damned!"

The consort's eyes widened, but she held her tongue.

Thasha said, "What I said was awful, Prahba, but it won't happen again. Forgive me! I've spoken to no one but the Sisters for two years. It was just a careless moment."

"Such moments can be lethal," he said.

Thasha bit her lips. She was thinking of Hercуl.

"A darkness follows the death of cities," said the admiral. "A darkness of hunger and cold, and a darkness of ignorance, and a darkness of savage despair. Each darkness speeds the others, like the currents of a whirlpool. We must do everything we can to stay out of the whirlpool."

"I'm older now," Thasha said, feeling the jaws of Syrarys' trap closing on her. "I have better sense. Please-"

He held up a hand for silence: a soft gesture, but one that allowed for no contradiction. Thasha was trembling. Syrarys wore a tiny smile.

"In six days I board Chathrand," said the admiral. "His Supremacy has just given me the heaviest burden of my life. Believe me, Thasha: if I saw some other path I should take it. But there is none. That is why I must tell you-"

"You can't send me back to that school!"

"— that you will be sailing with us to Simja, a journey often weeks or more-"

"What!" Thasha leaped out of her chair. "Oh, thank you, thank you, my darling Prahba! You won't regret it, never, I promise!"

"And there," said the admiral, fending off her kisses, "you will be married to Prince Falmurqat Adin, Commander of the Fourth Legion of the Mzithrin Kings."