Through the Darkness

Fourteen

Leudast crouched in the ruins of the great ironworks near Sulingen’s port on the Wolter. He and his countrymen held only the eastern part of the ironworks now; the Algarvians had finally managed to gain a lodgment inside the building. One forge, one anvil at a time, they were clearing the Unkerlanters from it.

“What do we do, Sergeant?” one of his troopers called to him.

“Hang on as long as we can,” Leudast answered. “Make the redheads pay as high a price as we can for getting rid of us.”

He coughed. The air was full of smoke. It was also full of the twin stenches of burnt and rotting flesh. When he looked up, he could see the sky almost unhindered by roof beams. Eggs dropped by dragons and lobbed from tossers had left only a few bits of ceiling intact. He wondered why they hadn’t fallen in, too.

He sprawled behind a forge. Chunks of chain mail still lay on the anvil nearby. The Unkerlanter smith had kept working as long as he could. Dark stains on the floor argued that he’d kept working too long for his own good.

Ever so cautiously, Leudast peered westward over the top of the forge. He didn’t see anything moving in the eyeblink of time before he ducked back down again. The Algarvians were every bit as careful hereabouts as were his own countrymen. Fighting in a place like this, even the most wary soldiers died in droves. The ones who weren’t wary died even faster.

“Leudast!” someone called from behind him.

“Aye, Captain Hawart?” Leudast didn’t turn his head. Watching what was in front and to either side of him mattered. If he looked to the rear, bad things were liable to happen before he could look back.

“I’m coming up,” Hawart said. Leudast blazed a couple of times, almost at random, to let the officer scramble up beside him in back of the solid brickwork of the forge.

“What now, sir?” Leudast asked. Once again, the regiment Hawart was commanding had shrunk to a company’s worth of men, while Leudast’s nominal company was only a little bigger than the usual squad. They’d been brought up to strength since falling back into Sulingen-been brought up to strength and then seen that strength melt away like snowdrifts when the warm north winds started to blow.

“We’re going to let them have this building, Sergeant,” Hawart answered. “Holding on to even a piece of it is just costing us too dear.”

“But what about the piers, sir?” Leudast asked in no small alarm. “How are we going to get more men up into Sulingen? If we lose the ironworks here, we can’t hold the piers, and if we can’t hold the piers. ..” He shuddered. “If we hadn’t been able to bring in those three brigades a few nights ago, we would have lost the city by now.”

Hawart nodded. “I know all that, believe me I do. By now, we’ve lost most of the men in those brigades instead. A lot of them went in here, and you know what’s happened to this place. And the rest, or most of the rest, went into the granary, and the Algarvians hold it, or what’s left of it. Those brigades probably saved Sulingen, but they wrecked themselves doing it.”

“Wrecked plenty of Algarvians, too, by the powers above,” Leudast said savagely. Captain Hawart nodded again. Leudast repeated the question the officer hadn’t answered before: “If we give up the ironworks, if we’ve lost the granary, if we lose the piers, too-how do we bring in reinforcements?”

“They’ve run up more piers farther east, in the districts we do control,” Hawart said. “We’ll have to hang on to those. But we can’t hold these any more. Some prices are too high to pay.”

As if to underscore that, the Algarvians started tossing eggs into the ironworks from the west. Leudast and Hawart huddled side by side. Fragments of the eggs shells hissed through the air with malignant whines. So did bricks and boards and chunks of iron hurled by the blasts of sorcerous energy. Here and there, wounded Unkerlanters shrieked. Here and there, wounded Algarvians shrieked, too. The fighting was at quarters too close for either side to toss eggs without hurting some of its own soldiers. That didn’t stop the redheads, and it didn’t stop the Unkerlanters, either.

Even while the eggs were still falling, Leudast and Hawart looked around opposite ends of the forge. Sure enough, the Algarvians were moving forward, taking their chances on being hurt by their own side while the Unkerlanters had to keep their heads down. The redheads were brave. Leudast had seen as much, many times. They were also clever. He’d seen that, too. This time, they were too clever for their own good. He blazed down three of them, one after another.

“Got you, you son of a whore!” Hawart exclaimed, which argued his luck was also good. Leudast blazed again. An Algarvian screamed. Leudast nodded, well pleased with himself.

But his pleasure evaporated when Hawart started shouting orders for the withdrawal from the ironworks. The Unkerlanters knew how to conduct retreats. We’d better, Leudast thought bitterly. We’ve had enough practice. They did it by odd and even numbers, the same way they conducted advances. Half stayed behind and blazed while the rest slipped away to new positions. Then the first group fell back past the second while the second covered their withdrawal. The redheads could move forward only slowly and cautiously.

“We’re clear,” Leudast said when he left the ruins of the iron manufactory and came out into the ruins of the rest of Sulingen. He stayed in the open not an instant longer than he had to, but dove into the first hole in the ground he saw.

Most of his countrymen did the same thing. One trooper, though, crumpled and fell to the ground, stick slipping from hands that could hold it no more. There was a neat hole in the side of his head, just above and in front of his left ear.

“Cursed sniper!” cried one of the Unkerlanters hiding in the wreckage of what had been a block of ironworkers’ cottages. “That whoreson hides like a viper, and he’s got eyes like an eagle. He’s picked off a couple of dozen of us, maybe more, the past few weeks.”

“Bugger him,” Leudast said. “Bugger him with a straight razor.” No matter how fiercely he spoke, though, he made sure he didn’t expose any part of his person to the Algarvian sniper.

“We ought to bring in a sniper of our own and get rid of him,” Captain Hawart said.

“I hate snipers, theirs and ours, too,” Leudast said. “They aren’t going to change the way the battle goes. All they’re good for is blazing some poor fool who’s squatting somewhere taking a dump. Powers below eat the lot of them.”

“Powers below eat the Algarvians,” Hawart answered. “Can you see the granary without getting killed doing it?”

“I think so.” Leudast wriggled around in his hole. Sure enough, he could make out the top of the tall, strong brick building-and the Algarvian banner lazily flapping above it. Leudast cursed. Before long, those red, green, and white stripes would be flying above the ruins of the ironworks, too.

He trained his stick on the battered manufactory, ready to punish the first of Mezentio’s men who pursued the retreating Unkerlanters. But the Algarvians proved too battlewise for that. Instead of charging straight into the meat grinder, they used their egg-tossers again, to make the Unkerlanters stay down. And their footsoldiers came at the Unkerlanter defenders not straight out of the manufactory but in a pincer movement from north and south of it.

Some of the redheads yelled “Mezentio!” and “Algarve!” Others cried, “Sibiu!” Leudast had seen that the enemy soldier soldiers who raised that shout were uncommonly ferocious. If they got in among his comrades, bad things happened. He turned to blaze at them-and never saw the Algarvian who blazed him.

The beam went straight through his left calf. He did what he’d seen and heard so many other soldiers do-he screamed in pain and clutched at himself, everything else forgotten. A moment later, one of his comrades blazed the redhead, who also screamed. Leudast heard him, but only distantly. His hurt filled the world.

He tried to put weight on the wounded leg, and found he couldn’t. When he looked down, he saw two neat holes in his calf, each about as thick as his middle finger. Some stick wounds were self-cauterizing. Not this one: blood ran down his leg from each hole and began to pool in his boot. He fumbled for the length of bandage he carried in a pouch on his belt. His fingers didn’t want to obey him. He found he did better when he didn’t look at his leg. Even after so much horror on so many battlefields, the sight of his own blood left him queasy.

Somebody shouted, “The sergeant’s been blazed!”

“Can you move, Sergeant?” somebody else asked.

“I can crawl,” Leudast answered. He gulped. That white bandage was turning red fast. And binding up the wound didn’t make the pain go away. If anything, he hurt worse than ever. He tasted blood in his mouth, too; he must have bitten down on the inside of his lip or cheek without even noticing.

“Here, Sergeant. I’ll get you away.” That was Aldrian, stooping beside him. “Can you get your arm over my shoulder?” Leudast wasn’t sure he could. When he tried, he managed. “Go on one leg if you can, Sergeant,” the youngster told him. Leudast tried. He wasn’t sure whether his awkward hops did more good than harm, but Aldrian didn’t complain, so he kept hopping.

They hadn’t got more than a couple of furlongs from the actual fighting line before a grim-faced inspector popped out of a hole in the ground and aimed his stick at both of them. “Show blood,” he said curtly. He looked ready, even eager, to blaze. If neither of them could show a wound, he’d kill them both for cowards.

But Leudast used his free hand to point to the bloody bandage on his leg. With a grudging nod, the inspector gestured with his stick, waving the two soldiers on. Eggs fell around them moments later. Aldrian tried to hold Leudast up as they both dove for cover, but Leudast banged his calf anyhow. Fresh fire ran through it. He howled like a lovesick hound. He could no more have kept himself from howling than he could have kept his heart from beating.

After a journey that seemed endless but was surely less than a mile, they came to one of the gullies than ran down toward the Wolter. Fresh troops were coming up out of the gully and heading for the battle line. Other men-physicians’ orderlies-took charge of Leudast from Aldrian.

“How bad is it?” one of them asked him.

He glared at the fellow. “I died last week,” he snapped.

That startled a laugh out of the orderly, who gave the wound a quick examination and delivered his verdict: “They can patch you up. We’ll get you down to the river, then sneak you over tonight, I expect. You’ll be back at it.” Had the orderly judged Leudast wouldn’t be back at it soon, he got the feeling they would have cut his throat so they wouldn’t have to bother with him.

As things were, they got him through the gully, moving against the stream of men coming up from the river. Algarvian dragons dropped eggs on the gully while they were in it. Most burst to either side, but a couple gave the redheads gruesome successes. Overhanging cliffs hid the spot where the orderlies laid Leudast from Algarvian attention. He had plenty of wounded soldiers for company.

“You’ll go over tonight,” one of the orderlies repeated. Somewhat to his own surprise, he did. As the boat carried him south across the Wolter, he realized it was the first time since the war with Algarve began that he’d been taken away from the fighting, not toward it. That was almost worth getting wounded for. Almost-the pain in his leg said nothing could really be worth it.

Traku gave Talsu a severe look. “Hold still, curse it,” the tailor told his son. “If you were a wee bit smaller-just a wee bit, mind you-I’d box your ears but good. How can I measure you for your wedding suit if you keep fidgeting like you’ve got a flock of fleas in your drawers?”

“I’m sorry,” Talsu answered, more or less sincerely. “Weren’t you nervous before you married Mother?”

“Oh, maybe a little,” Traku said. “Aye, maybe just a little. I expect that’s why your grandfather said he’d box my ears for me if I didn’t hold still.”

Talsu’s eyes went to the bolt of dark blue velvet that lay on the counter. “Seems a shame to put so much effort and so much money into an outfit I won’t wear much,” he said.

“Powers above, I hope you don’t want to be the kind of fellow who puts on a wedding suit five or six times over the course of his life, and each one with a different girl,” Traku said. “Some of our nobles are like that-reach out and grab for anything that looks good to them. Algarvians are like that, too, except most of the time they don’t even bother getting married, from what I’ve heard.”

“By their own faithlessness they condemn themselves,” Talsu said, one of the classical Kaunian sentences he’d studied the week before. His father raised an inquiring eyebrow. He translated the sentence into modern Jelgavan.

“Sounds fancier in the old language, I will say,” Traku observed. “I think that’s what the old language is mostly good for-sounding fancy, I mean.” He turned brisk again. “You’ll wear your outer tunic unbuttoned, of course. And you’ll want a fine pleated shirtfront, right?”

“You’ll work yourself ragged, Father,” Talsu protested; Traku had refused to let him help prepare his wedding outfit in any way.

And Traku shook his head now. “No, I won’t. I’ll use the spells that Algarvian military mage gave us. That’ll cut the work in half, maybe more, all by itself. That fellow might have been a redheaded son of a whore, but he knew what he was talking about. Can’t argue that.”

“I wish we could,” said Talsu, who wanted as little to do with the occupiers of Skrunda as he could arrange. He changed the subject: “Do you know what Gailisa will be wearing?”

“Haven’t the faintest idea,” her father answered at once. “I didn’t get her business, because you’d’ve found out before the day was done if I did. Whatever it turns out to be, I expect it’ll be pretty, on account of your sweetheart’ll be in it.”

“It’d be prettier if you made it,” Talsu said. “Everybody knows you’re the best in Skrunda.” Even the Algarvians knew that much, but Talsu wanted to think about the occupiers as little as he could, too.

His father said, “I thank you kindly, that I do. But Gailisa will look just fine, and you know it.” Traku turned his head so he could glance up the stairs. He evidently decided neither Ausra nor Laitsina was within earshot, for he lowered his voice and added, “Besides, you know what a bride’s proper outfit on her wedding day is.”

“Aye,” Talsu said, and hoped he didn’t sound too eager.

Along with Talsu’s outfit, Traku was also working on his own-of somber black relieved by a white pleated shirtfront to be worn under an unbuttoned outer tunic like his son’s-and his wife’s and daughter’s. Laitsina had chosen pale peach linen, while Ausra would wear blue velvet like Talsu’s, though her tunic would flare at the hips and be buttoned, buttoned snugly, to show off her bust.

Traku turned down work to get all the wedding clothes ready for the day. He irked an Algarvian captain till the redhead found out why he couldn’t get a uniform tunic ready in a hurry. “Ah, a wedding,” the Algarvian said, kissing his bunched fingertips. “I am having in every town where I am stationed a wedding. This is making pretty girls happy. Is making me happy, too.” He leered.

Neither Talsu nor Traku said anything to that. It sounded like the sort of thing one of Mezentio’s men would do-maybe even worse than no weddings at all. The Algarvian bowed to each of them in turn and left the shop, whistling one of the intricate, ornate tunes that delighted his countrymen and baffled Talsu and every other Jelgavan he knew. If music didn’t have a strong, thumping beat, what good was it?

The hall where Talsu and Gailisa married was also the one in which, before the Derlavaian War, veterans of the Six Years’ War had been wont to get together and drink and tell one another lies about what heroes they’d been. Flowers and olive and almond and walnut boughs and crepe-paper streamers made it look a lot more cheerful than it had when the veterans congregated there. Even so, Talsu smelled, or imagined he smelled, the citrus-flavored wine the veterans had swilled down by the pitcherful. Maybe it was only the flowers. He noticed his father sniffing, too, though.

When he came into the hall, one of his cousins called to him, “Say, did you invite the redhead who stabbed you? Hadn’t been for him, there probably wouldn’t be a wedding now.”

That held some truth-just how much, Talsu didn’t know and, by the nature of things, would never be able to find out. His mother and sister bristled at the suggestion. If they hadn’t, he might have. As things were, he could laugh and shake his head and send his cousin a rude gesture. That made his cousin laugh, too.

Up at the head of the hall, an assistant to the burgomaster of Skrunda stood waiting, dressed in colorful baggy tunic and trousers from the days between the overthrow of the Kaunian Empire and the rise of the kingdom of Jelgava. For a few hundred years, Skrunda, like most of the towns of the Jelgavan peninsula, had been a power in its own right. The tradition lingered in ceremony, though nowhere else.

Traku murmured, “I’m glad the Algarvians don’t send their officials to do weddings and such.”

“So am I,” Talsu answered. “I wouldn’t really feel married if a redhead said the words over Gailisa and me.”

“Well, come on.” Traku took him by the elbow. “We’ve got to be waiting up there when your bride approaches-if she approaches.” He grinned at Talsu. “She’s got the right to call the whole thing off, you know.”

“So she does.” Talsu refused to let his father rattle him any more than he was already. Instead, he teased back: “And you’d be stuck with the bills for the feast.”

“Oh, I’d probably have a thing or two to say to her father about that,” Traku said. “Step lively now, son. We’ve got people to impress.”

Talsu didn’t know whether he stepped lively or not. He imagined himself on parade in dress uniform, and marched as impressively as he could. The men in the audience who’d been in the army-most of them, odds were-would surely recognize what he was doing. But nobody laughed at him, which was all that mattered in his eyes. A lot of them had probably gone up to wait for their brides at exactly the same slow march tempo.

After bowing to the burgomaster’s assistant, Talsu did a neat about-turn and stood waiting for Gailisa. Every once in a while, a bride didn’t come up and pledge herself with a prospective groom. People gossiped about scandals like those for months. Often, jilted grooms had to move away. Talsu was sure no such thing would happen here. He was sure, but. .

He couldn’t help letting out a small sigh of relief when, escorted by her doughy father, Gailisa walked toward him in tunic and trousers of grass-green linen that made her golden hair shine like the sun. He also couldn’t help glancing toward the cousin who’d given him a hard time and who, at the moment, looked consumed with jealousy. That was exactly what Talsu wanted to see.

When Gailisa came before the burgomaster’s assistant, she bowed as Talsu had done. Then she turned to her bridegroom. She and Talsu bowed to each other. Then she bowed to Traku while Talsu bowed to her father, who went very red returning the courtesy.

“We are gathered here today to celebrate in public what has been agreed upon in private, the wedding of Talsu and Gailisa,” the burgomaster’s assistant intoned. For all the excitement he showed, he might have been made of clockwork. Talsu wondered how many times he’d said these words. “For the town must recognize this union to make it true and binding. And the town is pleased to do so, confident that the two of you will live many happy years together and bring up many children who will be a delight to Skrunda and an asset to the Kingdom of Jelgava.”

What Kingdom of Jelgava? Talsu wondered. Mainardo’s kingdom, under the thumb of the Algarvians who set Mezentio’s brother on the throne? The words that solemnized the wedding neither asked nor answered any such awkward questions. That was probably just as well.

“By the power vested in me as representative of the independent community of Skrunda, I have the authority to make this wedding both true and legal, so long as that be the wish of those entering into it,” the burgomaster’s assistant said. The independent community of Skrunda had been a joke before the war; with Algarvian occupation, it was a worse joke, and a sadder one, now. Somehow, that didn’t matter. “Is it your wish, separately and conjointly?” the burgomaster’s assistant asked.

“Aye,” Talsu and Gailisa said together. Traku and the burgomaster’s assistant might have heard them. Talsu doubted anyone else did.

But that didn’t matter, either. The burgomaster’s assistant spoke loud enough for them both: “It is accomplished!” Everyone in the hall cheered. Talsu took Gailisa in his arms and planted a decorous kiss on her mouth. The cheering got louder. Several people shouted bawdy advice. At any other time, Talsu would have been furious. Now, he grinned at Gailisa. She smiled back. Was she waiting as eagerly as he was? He hoped so.

They had a while to wait. They ate and drank and danced and accepted money for luck (and to set up housekeeping on their own) and congratulations. All the men in the crowd wanted to kiss Gailisa, and none of the women seemed to mind if Talsu wanted to kiss them. He had an enjoyable time indeed.

The best advice came from his father: “Don’t get too drunk, boy. Tonight of all nights, you don’t want to fall asleep early.”

After the wedding, Gailisa would move in with Talsu for the time being, even though his room, crowded for one, would be desperately small for two. But none of that mattered the first night, either. They’d rented a room in a hostel not far from the hall. As they went into the hostel, some of the wedding guests gathered outside, calling out more lewd suggestions.

Inside the room waited a jar of wine and two glasses. Talsu opened the jar and poured the glasses full. He gave one to Gailisa and raised the other high. “To my wife,” he said, and drank.

“To my husband.” She drank, too. Not very much later, her fingers were exploring the scars on his flank. “I didn’t realize it was this bad,” she whispered.

“The healers left some of that. They opened me up while I was slowed down, so they could patch up what the cursed Algarvian did,” Talsu said. His fingers wandered and explored, too, and liked everything they found. He laughed. “The redhead didn’t hurt anything really important.” Gailisa lay back. He soon showed her he was right.

Sweat ran down Hajjaj’s face as he bowed low before King Shazli. The autumnal equinox had come and gone, but that was a small thing in Bishah, as indeed it was in most of Zuwayza. The northern kingdom’s capital often had its hottest days in early fall, and this year looked to be no exception. Not even the thick clay walls of Shazli’s palace could hold all the heat at bay.

“What is your judgment, your Excellency?” Shazli asked. “Will our allies strike south over the Wolter and carry all before them?”

“Just in getting to the Wolter, your Majesty, they have carried all before them,” Hajjaj replied. “The Algarvians are a bold and formidable people; anyone who thinks otherwise does so at his peril. They have come a long, long way from their own border-well, from the Yaninan border-to Sulingen on the Wolter.”

“But they haven’t come far enough, not if they’ve come to Sulingen,” Shazli replied. “What they want, what they need, lies on the far side of the river. Can they get it?”

Hajjaj bowed again; Shazli had found the right question to ask, which was certainly the beginning of wisdom. “If they are going to do it in this campaigning season, they had better do it soon,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “I’ve seen Cottbus in the wintertime. Sulingen is a long way south of Cottbus. I wouldn’t care to try a winter campaign in those parts, not against the Unkerlanters.”

“What happens if they fail?” Again, Shazli found the right question.

“The less cinnabar they have, the less good their dragons do them,” Hajjaj said. “They made their own disaster down in the land of the Ice People. If the Unkerlanters make one for them in Sulingen …” He shrugged his scrawny naked shoulders. “The war gets harder for them.”

“Which also means the war gets harder for us,” King Shazli said, and Hajjaj could only incline his head in agreement. The king said, “And what do we do under these circumstances, your Excellency?”

Hajjaj spread his hands. “If you have a better answer than the ones I’ve found, your Majesty, I beg you not to be shy with it. Believe me, as things are now, I am looking for any answers I can find.”

Shazli said, “Waiting and seeing, playing Unkerlant and Algarve off against each other. . What else can we do?”

“I see no other choice,” Hajjaj said. “Unkerlant has raised this false Reformed Principality against us. And if we cast ourselves altogether into Algarve’s arms, if we expel the Kaunian refugees and do everything we can to help Mezentio’s men finally seize the port of Glogau …”

Shazli made a sour face. “I am not going to expel the refugees,” he declared, and Hajjaj had all he could do to keep from clapping his hands. The king went on, “With the Algarvians fighting so hard down in the south, could they take Glogau now, even with our help?”

“You would do better asking General Ikhshid than me,” Hajjaj replied.

“Perhaps I shall,” the king said. “But I also want your opinion. You are not a warrior, but you may well know more about the workings of the world than any other man alive.”

“If that be so, the world is in worse shape than even I imagined,” Hajjaj said, on the whole sincerely. His sovereign raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. After a moment’s thought, he did: “In my unprofessional opinion, the Algarvians have put their whole striking force in the south. If they win there and have anything left after the victory, we may see them moving again here in the north come spring. I doubt very much they can do anything before then.”

“Whatever we end up doing, then, we need not decide at once,” King Shazli said, and Hajjaj nodded. Shazli smiled. “Good.”

“Aye,” Hajjaj said. “We have fought Unkerlant, and we have also fought Algarve, fought to stay cobelligerents and at least somewhat masters of our own fate and not helpless cat’s-paws like the Yaninans. At this stage of things, can you imagine King Tsavellas refusing Mezentio anything?”

Shazli’s arched nostrils flared; his lip curled in scorn. “If Mezentio told Tsavellas to send his virgin daughter to a soldiers’ brothel, Tsavellas would do it. I do not want Zuwayza so beholden to Algarve.”

“Geography makes that less likely for us than for the Yaninans, but I see what you are saying, your Majesty, and I agree,” Hajjaj said. “Geography makes us worry about Unkerlant, worse luck.”

“We are free of King Swemmel,” Shazli said. “If this war ends with us free of Swemmel and of Mezentio both, we shall not have done too badly, whatever else happens. I know you will continue working toward that end.”

“With all my heart,” Hajjaj said, and rose to his feet: he recognized a dismissal when he heard one. Shazli nodded. Hajjaj bowed and left the royal presence.

He hadn’t taken more than half a dozen paces out of the king’s audience chamber before a steward sidled up to him and asked, “And what is his Majesty’s will, your Excellency?”

“I am sure he will make it known to you at the time he deems proper,” Hajjaj replied. The steward’s face fell; he hadn’t looked to be so smoothly rebuffed. Hajjaj smiled, but only on the inside, where it didn’t show. He’d been fending off inquisitive courtiers for as long as the steward had been alive.

When the Zuwayzi foreign minister returned to his own office, his secretary asked, “Anything new, your Excellency?”

Now Hajjaj did smile for the whole world, or at least for Qutuz, to see. “Not very much,” he said. “We go on, and we do the best we can as one day follows another. What else is there?”

With a saucy grin, Qutuz set those last two sentences to the tune of a traditional Zuwayzi song about a camel herder longing for the lover he could not visit. “And may we have better fortune than he did,” the secretary finished.

“That would be good,” Hajjaj agreed. “You are, of course, every bit as much a wandering son of the desert as I am.” Relatively few Zuwayzin were nomads these days. More lived in Bishah and other urban centers, and lived lives more like those of other settled Derlavaians than those of their wandering ancestors.

Qutuz understood that, too. “Oh, indeed, your Excellency. I spend my every free moment riding my camel from one waterhole to the next.”

“Since your moments here are not free,” Hajjaj said, “pray be so good as to find out whether General Ikhshid is at liberty to see me for a few minutes, either here or in his own office.”

“Just as you say, your Excellency, so it shall be.” Qutuz’s flowery language might have come straight from the desert, too. Hajjaj bent over and rubbed his backside, as if he’d been riding a camel much too long. Laughing, Qutuz activated his crystal and spoke with one of General Ikhshid’s aides. He turned to Hajjaj. “The general says that, if you don’t mind going over there, he can see you directly.”

“I don’t mind,” Hajjaj said. “We’re old men, Ikhshid and I; he wouldn’t make me walk without good cause.”

Soldiers bustled in and out of Ikhshid’s headquarters, which was certainly a busier-looking place than the foreign ministry. The stocky, grizzled general bowed Hajjaj into his own office and closed the door behind them. “Sit- make yourself comfortable,” he said, and waited till Hajjaj had arranged a mound of pillows on the floor. Then, with military abruptness, Ikhshid came to the point: “Well, your Excellency, what won’t you talk about over the crystal now?”

“You know me well,” Hajjaj said.

“I’d better, after all these years,” General Ikhshid replied. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“I shall, never fear,” Hajjaj said. “His Majesty and I were discussing the Algarvians’ chances of taking Glogau either with or without our aid.”

“Were you?” Ikhshid’s eyebrows rose. “And what were your views on the subject?”

Hajjaj did his well-honed best to keep his face from showing anything. He said, “I would sooner have your unvarnished opinion, if you please.”

Ikhshid’s grunt might have been laughter or anger. “Afraid I’ll turn weather-vane on you? Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.” Hajjaj shrugged and held his face still. After a wordless grumble, Ikhshid said, “They can’t do it this campaigning season, that’s certain sure. They’ve stripped the north and center bare as a Zuwayzi to free up dragons and behemoths and egg-tossers for the push to the Mamming Hills.”

“They’ve made Unkerlant do the same, too,” Hajjaj pointed out.

“I don’t deny it,” Ikhshid said. “But the Unkerlanters are just trying to hold on in Glogau. They aren’t trying to break out. You don’t need as much to hang on, because the country fights with you, if you know what I mean.”

“All right,” Hajjaj said, more than a little relieved to find Ikhshid’s judgment confirming his own. “Another question: will the Algarvians take Sulingen?

“They’ve already taken it, or taken most of it, anyhow,” Ikhshid answered.

“That’s not what you want to ask. What you want to ask is, will they have anything left to throw across the Wolter once they’ve finished clearing the town, and will Swemmel’s men have anything left to throw at ‘em while they’re trying to do it?” He waited. Hajjaj obediently asked him those two questions. Ikhshid gave him a wry grin. “Your Excellency, I haven’t the faintest idea. If we knew ahead of time how a war was going to turn out, we usually wouldn’t have to fight it.”

“I thank you.” Hajjaj inclined his head to the general. “Truly you are a font of wisdom.”

Ikhshid waggled a forefinger at him. “You’re so cursed smart all the time, Hajjaj-did you know who would win when the redheads took on Valmiera? They tried going east in the last war, too, and it bloody well didn’t work. The Valmierans didn’t think it would work this time, either. Turned out they were wrong.”

“So it did.” After some thought, Hajjaj nodded again. “Very well. I take your point. Since we cannot know what happens till it happens, we had best be as ready as we can for all the possibilities.”

“There you are.” Now General Ikhshid beamed at him. “I always knew you were a smart fellow, your Excellency. And you do keep proving it.”

“Do I?” Hajjaj scratched his head. “Easy enough to see what wants doing. How to do it? That is a very different question, General.”

“You’ll find a way,” Ikhshid said. “I don’t know what it is yet, and you don’t, either, but you will. And Zuwayza will be better off with you as foreign minister than we would be without you.”

Hajjaj considered that. Without false modesty, he decided Ikhshid was likely to be right. He gave the general a seated bow. “You pay me a great compliment.”

“You’re likely to earn it.” Ikhshid opened one of his desk drawers. Like Hajjaj’s, his desk stood low to the ground, so he could work at it while sitting on the floor. From the drawer he took a squat jar of Forthwegian apricot brandy and a couple of earthenware cups. He poured them both full, then handed Hajjaj one. “And now, your Excellency, what shall we drink to?”

This time, Hajjaj replied at once: “To survival.” Ikhshid nodded and raised his cup in salute. They both knocked back the potent spirits. When Ikhshid offered the jar again, Hajjaj did not say no.

Ealstan and Vanai walked hand in hand through the streets of Eoforwic. He was still bemused whenever he glanced toward her; with her sorcerous disguise, she could have been his sister new-come from Gromheort. But that she looked like Conberge was in the eyes of the world a small thing. That she looked like a Forthwegian, any Forthwegian, mattered far more.

In her free hand, Vanai was carrying a wickerwork basket. She held it up and smiled. “I wonder what sort of mushrooms we’ll find,” she said.

“Me, too.” Ealstan also carried a basket. “We’re probably out too early, though. The fall rains have hardly started. Things will be better in another couple of weeks.”

“I don’t care,” Vanai said. “We can go out then, too, if you want. I’ll never say no to going after mushrooms. But I want to get an early start.”

He squeezed her hand. She’d been trapped inside the flat for most of a year. He couldn’t blame her for going out at any excuse or none. And they weren’t the only people on the street with baskets in their hands and looks of happy anticipation on their faces. In Forthweg, people thought any chance of getting mushrooms was worth taking.

“There’s that park I was telling you about.” Ealstan pointed ahead. The grass in the park hadn’t been trimmed in a long time-probably not since the Unkerlanters took Eoforwic, almost certainly not since the Algarvians drove the Unkerlanters off to the west. “See-it’s a good big stretch of ground. We might find almost anything in here.”

Vanai looked discontented. Ealstan knew why she did. Before he could say anything, she did it for him: “I know we can’t go out into the countryside. Things won’t last long enough to let us.”

Things. She wouldn’t talk about the spell, not in so many words, not where other people could hear. Ealstan had no doubt that was wise. A couple of Algarvian constables came by just then. Vanai started to flinch. Ealstan kept on holding her hand and wouldn’t let her. He found a way to harass the redheads: holding up the basket, he smiled and said, “Shall we get some for you?”

The constables understood enough Forthwegian to know what he meant. They made horrible faces and shook their heads. “How can they eat those miserable, nasty things?” one of them said to the other in their own language. The second constable gave an extravagant Algarvian frown. Ealstan didn’t let on that he’d understood.

“That was wonderful,” Vanai whispered, which made Ealstan feel twice as tall as he really was, twice as wide through the shoulders, and as heavily armored as a behemoth. He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss. It wasn’t at all like kissing Conberge.

“We may do as well in the park as we would anywhere else,” Ealstan said. “We don’t know the good hunting spots here, the way we did around Gromheort and Oyngestun.”

“Maybe.” Vanai didn’t sound convinced. But then she brightened. “Look. There’s a little grove of oaks.” When she smiled that particular smile, she didn’t really look like Conberge, either; no smile from his sister had ever made Ealstan’s blood heat so. With a small sigh, Vanai went on, “In the middle of the city, it would probably be too crowded.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Ealstan said, and the regret in his voice made Vanai laugh. When he thought about it, he laughed, too. They could always go back to the flat, where they would be sure of privacy, and where the bed was far more comfortable than grass and fallen leaves. Even so, looking toward the scrubby trees, he had the feeling of a chance wasted.

“Well, even if we can’t find a chance for that here, let’s see what we can find,” Vanai said. She scuffed through the grass, head down, eyes intent: the pose of a mushroom hunter on the prowl. Ealstan had the same posture. So did a good many other people going through the park by ones and twos and in small groups.

They’re all Forthwegians, Ealstan realized. Every year before this, he’d noticed occasional blond heads among the dark ones: Kaunians in Forthweg loved mushrooms as much as Forthwegians did. But now the Kaunians in Eoforwic remained shut up in the district into which the Algarvians had forced them. They were easier to round up that way, whenever the redheads needed to steal some life energy to power their sorceries aimed at the Unkerlanters.

Vanai stooped, almost as if she were pouncing, and came up with a couple of mushrooms. “Meadow mushrooms?” Ealstan asked-almost as common as grass, they were better than no mushrooms, but that was all he’d say for them. Vanai shook her head and held up the basket so he could get a better look. “Oh,” he said. “Horse mushrooms.” They were near kin to meadow mushrooms, but tastier, with a flavor that put him in mind of crushed anise seeds.

“I’ll saute them in olive oil tonight,” Vanai said, and Ealstan smiled in anticipation. Someone else, not too far away, bent and tossed mushrooms into his basket, as Vanai had tossed the horse mushrooms into hers. Nodding toward the man, she murmured, “He could be a Kaunian, you know.”

The fellow didn’t look like a Kaunian. He looked like a Forthwegian about halfway between Ealstan’s age and his father’s, but further down on his luck than they’d ever been. But Vanai was right. Quietly, Ealstan said, “You did something wonderful when you passed that on through the apothecary.” He wouldn’t mention the spell where anyone else might hear, either.

“I hope I did,” Vanai answered. “I can’t know, not for certain. Maybe he didn’t do what he said he would. But oh, I hope!”

Perhaps buoyed by that hope, they did wander into the oak grove. Ealstan kissed Vanai there, but that was all. He found some oyster mushrooms on the trunk of an oak, and cut them off with the little knife he wore on his belt. Kicking at the tree’s gnarled roots, he said, “There might be truffles growing down there.”

“Aye, and there might be a hundred goldpieces buried there, too,” Vanai said. “Do you think it’s worthwhile digging?”

“No,” he admitted. “But if there were some big truffles along that root, they’d be worth a lot more than a hundred goldpieces.”

When they came out on the far side of the oak grove, they walked toward a marble equestrian statue, twice life size, of a warrior king facing west, toward Unkerlant. “That’s Plegmund, isn’t it?” Vanai asked.

“No one else.” Ealstan’s mouth tightened. His opinion of the great Forthwegian ruler had plummeted when the Algarvians named their puppet brigade after him, and then again when Sidroc joined it. “There should be a plaque on the base telling what a hero he was.”

But there was no patinated bronze plaque, only an unweathered rectangle on the stone to show where one had been. And a couple of stone bases that had supported bronzes now stood alone, supporting nothing. Vanai figured out why before Ealstan did. “The Algarvians must have taken the metal, to use it in their weapons,” she said.

“Miserable thieves,” Ealstan growled. After three years of war, he hadn’t imagined Mezentio’s men could give him new reasons to despise them, but they’d done it.

And then, from beyond the statue of King Plegmund, someone called his name. He jumped a little; few people in Eoforwic knew him well enough to recognize him. But there was Ethelhelm, coming out of a group of mushroom hunters. A couple of them started to come with him, but he waved them back. “Hello,” he said with a broad, friendly smile, and clasped Ealstan’s hand. His gaze swung toward Vanai. “And who’s your pretty friend?”

His voice had an edge to it. What that edge meant was, So you‘ve dumped your Kaunian lady and found yourself a nice, safe Forthwegian girl, eh? You’d better not sneer at me anymore for cozying up to the Algarvians, then.

“This is Thelberge,” Ealstan answered: the first Forthwegian name that popped into his head. He hadn’t expected to meet anyone who knew him, and he really hadn’t expected to meet anyone who knew anything about Vanai. He wished he’d told Ethelhelm less. Since he hadn’t, he had to make the best of it. “Thelberge”-he wondered how Vanai would feel about his giving her a name-”do you know who this is?”

“Why, no,” Vanai answered. Maybe she was even telling the truth; she’d seen Ethelhelm only once, after all. Truth or not, though, she sounded politely curious, not frightened, and Ealstan admired her coolness.

He also thought he could get away with overacting here. Striking a pose, he said, “Well, sweetheart, I told you I cast accounts for the famous Ethelhelm. Here he is, in the flesh.”

Grinning, Ethelhelm struck a pose, too, as if about to hunch over his drums. Vanai’s eyes-brown now, not blue-went wide. “Really?” she breathed, and then started babbling about how much she loved Ethelhelm’s songs. Ealstan marveled at her performance, not least because he knew what she really thought of Forthwegian music.

When she stopped gushing, Ethelhelm smiled at her and nodded to Ealstan. “I won’t keep you,” he said. “Just wanted to let you know I spied you there, and to meet your friend.” On the last phrase, that hard edge returned to his voice. Ealstan wondered if Vanai noticed it. Had she just been Thelberge, a sweet bit of fluff, she wouldn’t have. Ealstan was sure of that.

“I’m so pleased to meet you,” she gushed, for all the world as if she were nothing but a bit of fluff. “Good luck with your mushroom hunting.” Ethelhelm chuckled and waved to her as he ambled back toward his… friends? Entourage? Ealstan wondered whether the band leader knew the difference these days.

As soon as Ethelhelm was out of earshot, Ealstan said, “Maybe we ought to go back to the flat.”

He wondered if Vanai would try to talk him out of it, but she didn’t. “Aye, maybe we’d better,” she said. They didn’t flee; that might have drawn Ethel-helm’s notice. But, after they’d drifted into the oak grove once more, she stopped and looked at Ealstan. “Thelberge, eh?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. To his relief, she shrugged. He went on, “I didn’t think anything like that would happen. Powers above be praised, we got away with it.”

Vanai nodded. They walked on for a few steps. Then she said, “He thinks you’ve got rid of the Kaunian girl you used to know.” Ealstan could only nod. Vanai’s mouth tightened. “I don’t like what he’ll think of you on account of that.”

“He’ll think I’m giving in, the same way he is,” Ealstan answered.

“That’s what I meant,” Vanai said sharply. She took another few strides and shrugged again. “Maybe it’s for the best. Now he won’t think he has a hold on you because you’re with a blonde.” Ealstan had to nod again. He hated thinking in those terms, but anyone who didn’t only endangered himself.

Not long after they left the park, he bought a news sheet, as much to distract them both from the alarm they’d had as for any other reason. The news sheet, of course, printed what the Algarvians wanted the Forthwegians to read. An address by King Mezentio topped the headlines. “I wanted to reach the Wolter, and so I have,” Ealstan read aloud. “We’re in Sulingen because it’s a vitally important city. It has a huge ironworks, and it’s a cinnabar shipping port. That was why I wanted to capture it and, you know, modest as we are- we’ve got it. There are only a few more tiny pockets left, and we’ll get those, too. Time doesn’t matter. Not a single ship comes up the Wolter anymore, and that’s the main thing.”

“Is he right?” Now Vanai sounded worried.

Ealstan was worried, too. “I hope not,” he said, and wished he hadn’t bought the news sheet.

Pekka wished she hadn’t had to come up to Yliharma for her latest set of experiments. But she could hardly have asked Siuntio and Ilmarinen to come down to Kajaani, not when they were frail old men and she young and strong and healthy. The capital had far better libraries than Kajaani City College, too, and laboratories with fancier sorcerous apparatus. The trip made good logical sense.

She still wished she could have stayed home. Now Elimaki had to watch Uto all day long; she couldn’t give him back to Leino in the evening, for Leino was learning the art of front-line magecraft. Pekka knew how much she was asking of her sister. Ihave to find a way to make it up to her, she thought, not for the first time, as her ley-line caravan pulled into the depot in the center of Yliharma.

Ilmarinen stood waiting on the platform when she got off. “Welcome, welcome,” he said, reaching for her carpetbag. “With any luck at all, we’ll blast the whole world to a cinder this time-and then we’ll teach the Lagoans how to do it, too.” His smile was wide and bright and full of vitriol.

“Would you rather have the Algarvians learn first?” Pekka replied. Her wave encompassed Yliharma. “Look what they did with the old magic. If the new is what we think it is, and if they learn it-”

Ilmarinen interrupted her: “We don’t know how close they are. We don’t know if they’re working on it at all. We do know the Lagoans will find some way to diddle us if they learn what we know.”

“No, we don’t know that,” Pekka replied in some exasperation. “We’ve been down this ley line before. And we don’t know enough to make the new magic work for us, not yet. Maybe the Lagoans will help us find the rest of what we need.”

“More likely they’ll steal it from us,” Ilmarinen said.

Instead of arguing any more, Pekka strode past him off the platform and toward the gateways leading out of the depot. That made him hurry after her and kept him too busy to complain. When he leaped into the street to wave down a cab, she smiled sweetly and said, “Thank you very much.”

“You’d have taken a whole bloody week before you got one,” Ilmarinen said-grumbling about one thing seemed to suit him as well as grumbling about another. He raised his voice to give the hackman an order: “The Principality.”

“Aye, sir,” the fellow said, and flicked the reins to get his horse going.

Workmen on scaffolds and in trenches still labored to repair the damage Yliharma had suffered in the sorcerous attack the winter before, but there were fewer of them than there had been on her latest visit. More and more Kuusamans went into the service of the Seven Princes every day. Pekka knew that all too well; every night she slept alone reminded her of it.

She slept alone in the Principality that night, in more luxury than she would have enjoyed back home. It failed to delight her. She would have traded all of it for Leino beside her, but knew she would have had to make the trip to Yliharma even if her husband had stayed at his Kajaani City College post.

In the morning, she ate smoked salmon and rings of red onion on a hard roll in the hotel dining room. Hot herb tea went well with the delicate fish. It also helped fortify her against the chilly drizzle that had started falling during the night.

As she was eating, Master Siuntio came into the dining room, accompanied by a tall, redheaded man who used a pair of crutches and one good leg to move himself along. The elderly theoretical sorcerer waved to Pekka. “Hello, my dear,” he said, hurrying toward her table. Then he switched from Kuusaman to classical Kaunian: “Mistress, I have the honor to introduce to you the first-rank mage, Fernao of Lagoas.”

“I am honored to meet you, Mistress Pekka.” As any first-rank mage would, Fernao spoke the universal tongue of scholarship well. He went on, “I know several languages, but I fear Kuusaman is not among them. I apologize for my ignorance.”

Pekka rose and extended her hand. A little awkwardly, Fernao shifted his crutch to free his own hand and clasp hers. He towered over her, but his injuries, his courteous speech, and his narrow, slanted eyes made him seem safer than he might have otherwise. She said, “No apologies needed. Everyone is ignorant of a great many things.”

He inclined his head. “You are kind. I should not be ignorant of the language of a kingdom I am visiting. Corresponding with you in classical Kaunian is well enough, but I ought to be able to use your tongue face-to-face.”

With a shrug, Pekka answered, “I read Lagoan well enough, but I would not care to try to speak it. And”-she smiled-”when we corresponded, we had little to say, no matter how long we took to say it. Will you both sit down and take breakfast with me?” Another thought occurred to her; she asked Fernao, “Can you sit down?”

“Carefully,” he answered. “Slowly. Otherwise I end up on the floor, without even the pleasure of getting drunk first.” Siuntio pulled out a chair for him. He sat exactly as he’d said he would, too. A waiter hurried over. The fellow proved to know Lagoan, which didn’t greatly surprise Pekka-travelers from many lands stayed at the Principality, and the hostel staff had to be able to meet their needs.

Siuntio said, “Fernao has already offered several suggestions I think good; our experiments will go forward better and faster because he is here.” He spoke classical Kaunian as if he were big and blond and snatched by sorcery from the heyday of the Empire. Pekka was sure he spoke fluent Lagoan, too, but he didn’t use it here.

“You are too generous,” Fernao said. The waited brought him salmon then, and a roll and butter for Siuntio. The Lagoan mage waited till the man had gone, then continued, “You folk here have a two years’ head start on the rest of the world. I hurry along as best I can, but I know I am still behind you.”

“You have done very well,” Siuntio said. “Even Master Ilmarinen has told me as much.”

“He has not told me as much,” Fernao said after a bite of smoked salmon. When he chose to show it, he had a wry grin. “Of course, I am only a Lagoan.” He ate some more of the salmon and onion. “You have no idea how much better than roasted-half charred, really-camel hump that is.”

He was right; Pekka had never tasted camel, and had no great desire to do so. In something else he’d said, though, he might well have been wrong. “We may have a two years’ start on you,” Pekka told him, “but are you sure we have a two years’ start on the Algarvians? I wish I were.”

Fernao’s grimace suggested he’d taken a bite of camel after all. “No, I am not sure of that,” he admitted. “I have seen no Algarvian journals dating from since Lagoas declared war, and Mezentio’s mages may not be publishing any more than you were.”

“My belief is that the Algarvians are not traveling quickly down this ley line,” Siuntio said, not for the first time. “They have put so much work into their murderous magic, I think it occupies most of their mages.”

“That makes good sense,” Fernao said, “but not everything that makes good sense is true.”

“I am painfully aware of it,” Siuntio said. “Were I not, Ilmarinen’s work would be plenty to prove the point.”

“He will be waiting for us at the university, I suppose?” Pekka said.

“Aye, unless he’s gone off in a fit of pique,” Siuntio answered. Pekka bit her lip. With Ilmarinen, that was anything but impossible. But Siuntio went on, “I do expect to find him there.”

Fernao ate fast, as if afraid an Algarvian mage might start experimenting while he savored his smoked salmon. Getting up out of his chair was an even more awkward process than sitting down in it. Pekka signed the chit for all three breakfasts. The Seven Princes could afford it.

She and Siuntio had to help Fernao up into a cab. He sighed, saying, “I have not got used to being a burden to everyone around me.” Pekka and Siuntio both assured him he was nothing of the sort, but he didn’t seem inclined to listen. He sat glumly for some little while as the cab horse clopped through the streets of Yliharma. At last, he remarked, “I had heard the Algarvians struck you a heavy blow, but I had not realized it was as heavy as this.”

“It could have happened to Setubal, too,” Pekka said.

“It nearly did,” the Lagoan mage answered. “Mezentio’s men had set up a murder camp across the Strait of Valmiera from our city, but we raided it and freed most of the Kaunian captives there. We keep close watch, lest they try again.”

Thinking aloud, Pekka said, “If they work out the proper spells, I wonder if they have to be as physically close as they seem to believe. Could they not transmit the force of the magic along a ley line?”

She sat squeezed rather tightly between Fernao and Siuntio. Both men sent her looks full of consternation. Fernao said, “They started using their magecraft in Unkerlant, where ley lines are few and far between. It may well be, we have the powers above to thank for that.”

“And what do the sacrificed Kaunians have for which to thank the powers above?” Siuntio asked. Fernao looked as if he’d bitten down on one of the sour citrus fruits Jelgavans used to flavor wine. He made no reply.

When they reached the sorcerous laboratory the Algarvian attack had almost destroyed, they did find Ilmarinen waiting for them. He tilted his head back so he could look down-or rather, up-his nose at Fernao. “Come to see how it’s done, have you?”

“Aye,” the Lagoan mage answered equably. “After all, what else am I but a thief?”

Ilmarinen started to come back with something sharp. Before he could, Siuntio took him aside and spoke to him in a low voice. By the way he suddenly stared at Pekka, she was able to make a good guess as to what Siuntio told him. Ilmarinen said, “That’s a nasty thought, my dear. I’m the one who should have come up with it.”

Pekka smiled her most charming smile. “I’m sure you would have, Master Ilmarinen, if you hadn’t been too busy fuming about Fernao here.”

They’d all spoken Kuusaman, but the Lagoan mage caught his name. “What was that?” he asked. Pekka translated for him. He said, “You need not defend me, Mistress; I can take care of myself. And I have spent some time fuming about Master Ilmarinen, too, so he is entitled to fume about me.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m entitled to,” Ilmarinen snapped; like Siuntio, he could use classical Kaunian not just to get ideas across but almost as if it were his birthspeech.

“Shall we proceed to the experiment?” Siuntio said. “In every moment we quarrel among ourselves, the Algarvians gain.”

“Oh, aye, this one will solve everything,” Ilmarinen said. “We’ll have Mezentio hiding under his bed in no time flat.”

“Maybe we can confirm the actual consequences of the divergent series on the half of the specimens on the negative axis,” Siuntio said.

“You know what they are,” Ilmarinen said. “You all know what they are. You just don’t want to admit it. Even when you’ve had your noses rubbed in it, you don’t want to believe it. Bloody cowards, the lot of you.”

“I believe it,” Fernao said. “I want to find out what we can do with it.”

To Pekka’s surprise, Ilmarinen beamed. “Well, what do you know? Maybe you’re not worthless after all.” The only thing different Fernao had done was agree with him for two sentences. Contemplating that, Pekka had all she could to not to laugh out loud. Aye, in many ways, Ilmarinen and her little son Uto were very much alike.

Cornelu’s leviathan snapped up a squid. Life of all sorts teemed in the chilly waters of the Narrow Sea. Despite his rubber suit, despite the magecraft that helped ward him, those waters felt unusually chilly today. Maybe that was his imagination. Imagination or not, the Sibian exile wished his Lagoan masters had picked a warmer season of the year to send him forth.

Whenever the leviathan surfaced, Cornelu looked around warily. In these waters, the Algarvian navy and Algarvian dragonfliers reigned supreme. Sailors and men on dragons who served King Mezentio might well take him for one of their own. He hoped they would, but he intended to do his best to disappear if they didn’t.

He was particularly careful when he crossed a ley line. Whenever his amulet detected the thin stream of sorcerous energy that formed part of the world grid, he used it to search for nearby ships. He hadn’t found one yet, but that didn’t make him stop looking. If he wanted to get back to Setubal, being careful was a good idea.

“And I do want to get back to Setubal,” he told his leviathan. The great beast kept on swimming; had it been a man, it would have shrugged. Without a doubt, it was happier out in the open ocean.

But then, it wasn’t seeing Janira. When he was in Setubal, Cornelu went back to the eatery where she worked every chance he got. He’d taken her to a music hall and to the unicorn races. He’d kissed her-once. Only now that he was going to be away from her for a long time did he realize how smitten he’d become.

It wasn’t just that he could speak his own language and have her understand. It wasn’t just that he was desperately looking for a woman after Costache’s betrayal. He told himself it wasn’t, anyhow. He hoped it wasn’t.

With a tap, he urged the leviathan to stand on its flukes, to extend his horizon as it lifted its front end-and him-out of the water. There to the north was the mainland of Derlavai. He knew the little spit of land that stuck out toward him-it lay just west of Lungri, a coastal town in the Duchy of Bari. After the Six Years’ War, Bari had been split off from Algarve and made self-ruling, but it was Algarvian again now. Its return to Algarvian allegiance had touched off the Derlavaian War.

Cornelu urged the leviathan farther south. He wanted to be sure he gave the headlands of Yanina, which thrust far out into the Narrow Sea, a wide berth. The closer he came to land, the closer he was likely to come to trouble. He didn’t want trouble, not on this journey. He wasn’t hunting downed Algarvian dragonfliers, or Algarvian floating fortresses, either. He had a delivery to make. Once he did, he could hurry back to Setubal.

As he’d hoped he would, he got round the Yaninan headlands before the sun set in the northwest. It stayed above the horizon less every day, an effect magnified by the high southerly latitudes in which he found himself. Farther south, down in the land of the Ice People, it would stop rising at all before long.

His leviathan slept in catnaps. He wished he could do the same, but no such luck. Long journeys on leviathan back often got longer because the beasts went their own way when the men who rode them slept. Sometimes they carried two riders on long voyages, to make sure that didn’t happen. The Lagoans hadn’t seen fit to give Cornelu a comrade. He wondered what that said about the importance of the mission they’d given him.

Even more to the point, he wondered what the Unkerlanters would think it said about the importance of the mission the Lagoans had given him. Nothing good, unless he missed his guess. He shrugged. He was following the orders he’d been given. The Unkerlanters were and always had been great ones for following orders. How could they blame him?

After he woke, the first thing he did was look for the moon. It was setting in the west ahead of him, casting a silvery streak of radiance across the sea. He patted the leviathan. “Have you been swimming this way all the time I’ve been asleep?” he asked it. “I hope you have. It’ll make things easier.”

The leviathan didn’t answer. It just kept on swimming. That was the purpose for which the powers above had shaped it, and it admirably fulfilled its purpose.

Not long after the sun rose, he had his first anxious moment. The leviathan came upon a fishing boat flying the red-and-white banner of Yanina. It was a sailboat, and used no sorcerous energy, so Cornelu didn’t detect it till he saw it. His mouth tightened. The Algarvians, sneaky whoresons that they were, had invaded Sibiu with a great fleet of sailing ships, and sneaked into his kingdom’s harbors precisely because no one had imagined an assault not based on magecraft.

But the Yaninans, even though they didn’t use the world’s energy grid, proved to have some sorcery aboard their boat. As soon as they saw him-or, more likely, saw his leviathan-they ran to an egg-tosser at the stern of the fishing boat, swung it toward him, and let fly.

It wasn’t much of an egg-tosser; the boat wasn’t big enough to carry much of an egg-tosser. The egg the Yaninans lobbed fell far short, bursting about halfway between the boat and Cornelu’s leviathan. They didn’t seem to care- they promptly launched another one at him.

“All right!” he exclaimed. “I believed you the first time.” He swung the leviathan on a course that steered well clear of the fishing boat. The Yaninans couldn’t possibly have been worrying about Lagoans in these waters. Maybe they feared he was an Unkerlanter. But, for all they knew, he might have been one of their own. They hadn’t tried to find out. They’d just tried to get rid of him. And they’d done it, too.

Once he’d left them behind, he laughed. They were probably telling themselves what a great bunch of heroes they were. By everything the war had shown, the Yaninans were better at telling themselves they were heroes than at really playing the role.

Early the next morning, the leviathan brought Cornelu into the Unkerlanter port of Rysum. A ley-line patrol boat and a couple of Unkerlanter leviathans paced him into the harbor. A dragon flew overhead, eggs slung under its belly. He’d told King Swemmel’s men who he was and where he’d come from. They were supposed to know he was coming. Considering the war they were fighting with Algarve, he didn’t suppose he could blame them for suspecting him, but he thought they were carrying those suspicions further than they had to.

Rysum wasn’t much of a port. None of Unkerlant’s ports on the Narrow Sea was much, not by the standards prevailing farther east. They all iced over several months a year. That kept them from matching their counterparts in Yanina and Algarve, which lay more to the north. Rysum wouldn’t stay clear much longer.

As soon as Cornelu climbed a rope ladder up onto the pier by which his leviathan rested, a squad of soldiers ran up and aimed sticks at him. “I am your friend, not your enemy!” he said in classical Kaunian-he spoke not a word of Unkerlanter.

Anywhere in eastern Derlavai-even in Algarve, which slaughtered Kaunians to fuel its sorceries-he would have found someone who understood the old language. Not here; the Unkerlanters, squat and dumpy in their long, baggy tunics, jabbered back and forth in their own guttural tongue.

He could have spoken to them in Algarvian. He held back, fearing that would get him blazed down on the spot. And then an Unkerlanter officer spoke Algarvian to him: “Do you understand me?”

“Aye,” he answered in some relief. “I am Commander Cornelu of the Sibian Navy, an exile serving out of Setubal in Lagoas. Are you not expecting me? Why are you all acting like I’m an egg that’s about to burst and fling this place to those hills yonder?” He pointed north and west, toward the low hills that crinkled the horizon there.

“What do you know of the Mamming Hills?” the Unkerlanter rapped out.

“Nothing,” Cornelu said. After a moment, he remembered the cinnabar mines in those hills, but he got the idea that changing his answer would not make the officer glowering at him happy. He kept quiet.

That proved a good idea. The Unkerlanter said, “What have you brought us?”

“I don’t even know. What I don’t know, I couldn’t have told Mezentio’s men,” Cornelu said. “I did hear the Kuusamans gave it to the Lagoans. The Lagoans gave it to me, and now I am giving it to you.”

“The Kuusamans, you say?” The Unkerlanter officer brightened; this time, Cornelu had managed to say the right thing. “Aye, that accords with my briefing. We will take it from your leviathan.” He started giving orders to the soldiers in his own language.”

Cornelu didn’t know what he was saying, but could make a good guess. “They’ll get eaten if they try,” he warned.

“Then we will kill the leviathan and take it anyhow,” the Unkerlanter answered, as if it were all the same to him-and it probably was.

It wasn’t all the same to Cornelu. If anything happened to the leviathan, he’d be stuck in southern Unkerlant for the rest of his days. Comparing exile in Setubal to exile in Rysum reminded him of the difference between bad and worse. “Wait!” he exclaimed. “If you let me, I’ll go down there and get it for you myself.”

“You should have brought it up with you,” the officer said grumpily.

“You might have thought it was an egg and blazed me,” Cornelu said. “Now will you trust me to do what needs doing?”

Every line of the Unkerlanter’s body proclaimed that trusting a foreigner- especially a foreigner who spoke Algarvian and looked like an Algarvian-was the last thing he wanted to do. But, his heavy features clotted with suspicion, he gestured toward the rope ladder and said, “All right, go on-do this. But do it with great care, or I am not liable for what will happen to you next.”

Moving slowly and carefully, Cornelu climbed down the rope ladder. His leviathan swam toward him as he dropped into the cold water. He took the small pack attached to the leviathan’s harness. It was small, aye, but it was heavy; Cornelu had to swim hard to get back to the ladder with it strapped to his back. Climbing up with the added weight wasn’t any fun, either, but he managed.

He set the oiled-leather pack on the pier. “Move away from it!” the Unkerlanter officer said sharply. Cornelu obeyed. The Unkerlanter spoke in his own language again. One of the soldiers came up and put the pack on his own broad back while the rest covered him. He walked up the pier and onto dry land.

Once the soldier got off the weathered planks, the officer relaxed a little. He even unbent so far as to ask, “Do you need food for your voyage east?” When Cornelu nodded, the officer barked orders. Another soldier ran off and returned with smoked fish and hard sausage-the sort of fare that wouldn’t suffer much from salt water.

“My thanks,” Cornelu said, though he already had enough to do well unless the leviathan wandered very badly while he slept. He had fresh water and to spare. Waving in the direction the Unkerlanter with the pack had gone, he asked the officer, “Do you know what’s supposed to be in there?”

“Of course not,” the fellow replied. “It is not for me to know such things. It is not for the likes of you to know them, either.” The words weren’t too bad, not coming from a military man. The way he said them … All at once, Cornelu felt something he’d never imagined he would: a small bit of sympathy for the Algarvians fighting Unkerlant.