Beyong the Gap

XVIII

As Liv went deeper into the Raumsdalian Empire, as the travelers made their way over to the Great North Road and went down it, she saw plenty of towns larger and finer than Naestved. Each seemed grander than the one just farther north had been. Each time, she would ask, "And is Nidaros like this?"

And each time, Hamnet Thyssen would smile and say, "No, not really. Wait till you see the capital. Then you'll understand."

But when at last they came to the city on the long-vanished shore of long-outflooded Hevring Lake, Liv could see very little, and neither could any of the rest of the weary travelers. The blizzard roaring down from the north would not have been despised in the Bizogot country-would not have been despised in the land of the Three Tusk clan. The Breath of God could reach all the way down to Nidaros and beyond. It didn't always, but it could.

Hamnet got a glimpse of Nidaros' great gray frowning walls through swirling snow, but only a glimpse. Of the towers and spires that showed above the walls in good weather, he could see nothing at all. As they neared the city, Liv said, "The wall is very tall, isn't it?" A little later, she added, "The gate seems very strong."

"It is," Hamnet said. She might as well have been examining a mammoth by closing her eyes and feeling first its trunk, then a tusk, then a leg, and finally its tail. She would know something about mammoths after she did that, but probably not as much as she thought.

The guards had as much trouble spying the travelers as Count Hamnet and Liv did seeing the city-maybe more, for the guards had to peer straight into the storm. The travelers were almost on them before they cried, "Halt! Who comes?"

"I am Earl Eyvind Torfinn," Eyvind said. "With me ride Count Hamnet Thyssen, Jarl Trasamund of the Three Tusk clan, and the rest of our comrades. We have come to report success to his Majesty. We have gone beyond the Glacier, and we are here to tell the tale."

"Well, they're here to tell a tale, anyhow," one of the guards said to another, not bothering to keep his voice down. "You really think there's anything beyond the Glacier?"

"How could there be?" the other guard returned. "You keep on going north, it's just Glacier forever. Only stands to reason."

Audun Gilli muttered to himself. His hands twisted in a few quick passes. One of the soldiers' spearheads grew a face that was a nasty caricature of the man holding it. "D'you suppose there are really such things as guards?" it asked in a shrill, squeaky voice.

"How could there be?" the other guard's spearhead answered. It too now looked like its owner… its owner as seen by somebody with a wicked sense of humor. "We fly through the air all by ourselves. Birds do, so we must. Only stands to reason." It crossed its eyes and stuck out an iron tongue.

Both guards goggled. So did their sergeant. Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki looked at each other. Told you so, Ulric mouthed. Hamnet nodded, remembering when Audun Gilli worked that same spell on their winecups.

"I think you had better pass on in," the sergeant said. "They can deal with you at the palace, by God." His spearhead blew him a wet, slobbery kiss. He looked as if he wanted to wring its wooden neck. The other guards' spearheads made more sarcastic gibes.

"Maybe you'd better let them quiet down," Hamnet Thyssen murmured as the travelers rode into the city.

"They will as soon as I get far enough away," Audun Gilli answered. "That spell takes work to keep up, and I'm not going to bother."

"It is a good magic, a funny magic," Liv said in her new and halting Raumsdalian. "You teach me? Make people laugh when I go north again."

Not if I go north again, Hamnet noted. When. She sounded very sure of what she wanted to do. And he couldn't suppress a stab of jealousy when Audun walked her through the spell step by step. Her face was bright and shiny, full of excitement. She and Audun shared something she never could with him.

He scowled and muttered and clasped the reins tightly. He hadn't left himself open to a woman's wounding since Gudrid left him. Liv wasn't hurting him on purpose, which didn't mean she wasn't hurting him.

"I thank you," she told Audun Gilli when he finished. "It is clever. I can do it. I am sure I can do it."

"Not hard," Audun said. "Not good for much, but fun."

"Fun is good." Liv looked around, seemed to come back to herself, and nodded to Count Hamnet. "I begin to see what you mean. This city is… very large. Look at all the big buildings, and at all the people in the streets. And not just people. All the beasts, too."

A string of loaded mules was coming up toward the north gate. The plump merchant leading it had some pungent things to say about the travelers who blocked his path. Then the lead mule screwed up his face and said, "Oh, sure, you think they're as bad as you are, don't you? Fat chance!"

It spoke clearly, distinctly, loudly. The merchant's jaw hit his chest with what should have been an audible clank. The travelers squeezed past the column of loaded mules. The animal in the lead went right on telling the merchant what it thought of him. He didn't stand there gaping long. When anyone-anything-insulted him, he shot back hard. Telling off a mule? He didn't mind. He'd likely done it countless times when the beast couldn't say anything.

"You've got more demon in you than I thought," Hamnet told Audun Gilli.

"Who, me?" the wizard said modestly. "What makes you think that had anything to do with me?"

"I'll tell you what-if Liv tried it, the mule would have had a Bizogot accent."

"I was going to do it," Liv said. "Audun did it first."

"Well, you've got more demon in you than I thought, too," Hamnet said. Liv stuck out her tongue at him. They both laughed, his jealousy dissolving.

Behind them, the merchant called the mule something really unlikely. The mule called the merchant something even worse. Chances were they were both right. Before long, the mule would lose the power of speech as Audun Gilli moved too far away to sustain the spell. The merchant was guaranteed the last word, and all the words after that. But Count Hamnet would have bet the man would never trust the mule not to tell him off again one day.

They moved deeper into Nidaros, streets zigzagging to blunt the Breath of God. The farther they went, the wider Liv's eyes got. "There really is … quite a lot of it, isn't there?" she said. "How do you feed so many people?"

"Me? I don't," Hamnet answered. "You've seen the way I cook. These folk would sooner starve than eat that."

She sent him a severe look. "And you said I had a demon in me."

"All right, then. A lot of food comes up from the south. We have markets. We have storehouses. Meat mostly keeps fresh through the winter, though that's shorter than it is up in the Bizogot country. Grain will last a long time if you store it where mice and rats can't get at it and it can't go moldy."

"How long is a long time?"

"I don't know exactly. Years, anyhow."

"Years," she echoed. "You are luckier than we are. These are the riches that let you build the things we can't, aren't they?"

"I suppose so," Hamnet said. "We have more left over at the end of a year than you do-unless the year is very bad, I mean."

"There's something else about having extra food," Ulric Skakki put in. "We don't all have to hunt or gather all the time. Some of us can make the things Bizogots don't have, yes. And some of us can try to think up new things, things even we don't have, things it would be nice if we did have."

"New things." Liv frowned. "Like what? When you have all this, what more could you want?"

"If I knew, I'd think up new things myself," Ulric said.

"Old men say that when their grandfathers were boys no one made lamps with mirrors behind them to shed more light. I've heard that more than once," Hamnet Thyssen said. "It's a small thing, but it's the kind of thing I mean. Every craft probably has secrets someone thought of not so long ago. Wizards make new spells all the time. Audun Gilli would know more about that than I do." There-he'd said it.

"Thank you, your Grace. That's what I was talking about, sure enough," Ulric Skakki said.

"We do come up with new spells now and then," Liv said. "The rest of the way we live . . . That hasn't changed much, not so far as anyone can remember."

"Ah, but the Three Tusk clan lives hard by the Glacier," Ulric said. "The Bizogot clans farther south trade with the Empire." He turned to Hamnet Thyssen. "Remember those ugly wool caps the Musk Ox Bizogots wore?"

"I'm not likely to forget them," Hamnet said with a shudder. To Liv, he went on, "You're lucky we came back farther west, so you didn't have to see those. But some of the Bizogots take things we make and use them in ways we'd never think of. And the Leaping Lynxes, up by Sudertorp Lake-the shorebirds they take there let them live in a town half the time. They're having to figure out how to do that when most of them have never seen a real town."

"I see." Liv nodded. "Every folk has clever people and fools in it. But in the Empire your clever people have more room to be clever than they do up on the plains."

"Yes, I think that's likely so," Count Hamnet said.

"Maybe. Or rather, sometimes," Ulric Skakki said. "Just remember, most people in the Empire live on farms, not in towns. They're born on a farm, they grow up on a farm, they get old-if they get old-on a farm, and they die on a farm. The clever ones might make better farmers than their stupid neighbors, but that's about it. Farmers don't change the way they do things any faster than Bizogots do. Sometimes they don't change any faster than their beasts."

"You sound like you know what you're talking about," Hamnet remarked. Ulric was always chary of talking about his own past. Was he doing it now without naming names?

His foxy features were perfectly opaque as he smiled at Hamnet. "Well, I try to do that. Harder to be taken for a fool when you do, eh?"

"Er-yes." Hamnet had to drop it. Ulric left nothing on which to get a conversational grip.

The street zigzagged again. Jesper Fletti, who was riding ahead of Hamnet and Liv and Ulric, let out a war whoop no Bizogot in the world would have been ashamed to claim. "The palace!" he shouted. "The palace!" He might have spotted water in the southwestern desert. In an instant, all the guardsmen who'd gone north with Gudrid were shouting the same thing. "The palace! The palace!"'They'd come home at last, and probably all of them had wondered if they ever would.

Come to that, Hamnet Thyssen had wondered if he would come back to Nidaros, too, even if he was still a long way from his castle in the southeast at the forest's edge. A moment later, very much to his surprise, he found himself shouting, too.

Sigvat II didn't stint. He let the travelers use the imperial bathhouse. That was luxury by anyone's standards. Soft robes waited when the newcomers emerged. The gown the Emperor's maidservants presented to Liv told Count Hamnet what a fine figure she really had. Seeing her clean and dressed so was a far cry from the grubby woman in Bizogot-style furs and leathers. Those clothes, the same for women as for men, hardly showed which sex she belonged to. The wine-colored gown left no room for doubt.

It also flustered her. "How do your women stand outfits like this?" she asked Hamnet. "It's drafty!"

The gown did reveal more of her than he'd seen except when they were making love. "It shows the world how beautiful you are," he said.

Liv blushed. Now that she was clean, he could watch the flush rise from her throat all the way to her crown. "It's none of the world's business," she said, which alone would have proved her no Raumsdalian.

"Well, I like the way you look," Hamnet said.

"That's different. You already know more than this. But-" Liv waved her bare arms. "I feel like I'm naked in front of everyone. And it is drafty, even though more fires burn in this palace than in all the tents of the Three Tusk clan put together."

"Which bothers you more? The cold, or everyone looking at you?" he asked.

"Everyone looking at me," Liv said at once. "What will people think?"

"The women will think, I wish I looked that good," Hamnet Thyssen answered. "And the men? The men will think, I wish she were on my arm, not that gray-bearded count's."

Liv flushed again. "Your beard isn't gray," she said. "Only streaked."

"A matter of time." Hamnet didn't worry about his own looks. They were what they were, and he couldn't do much about them. "If things really bother you," he went on, "ask the servingwomen for a fur stole. That will warm you up and cover you up. I think it would be a shame, but do what you like."

"You're a man," Liv said, more or less tolerantly. "Of course you like to look at women."

"Pretty ones, yes."

"There is a what-do-you-call-it at sunset tonight," Liv said. "Could I really come to it dressed like this?"

"A reception. Gudrid will, or in something that shows even more of her," Hamnet answered. "So will plenty of other noblewomen, and noblemen's mistresses. And they'll all say, Who is that fair stranger?"

"You're making that up." But Liv's back stiffened. Hamnet smiled to himself. She liked the idea of outdoing Gudrid, and she thought she could, too. He judged she was right-she was a fine-looking woman with about a twelve years' head start. If they were born on the same day? Count Hamnet wasn't so sure. But, while the calendar might not be fair, it was part of life.

Liv did wear the gown to the reception. She wore it with a stern, jut-jawed determination that warned people not to dare to look at her twice. Because of that, some didn't look at her even once. Others, of course, couldn't get enough.

Hamnet Thyssen proved right about that, and about Gudrid. Her gown revealed and emphasized instead of concealing. She had a lot to show, and showed it to best advantage. When she strode into the reception hall with Eyvind Torfinn, the men already there gave her a couple of heartbeats of… respectful . . . admiration. Then most of them had to turn to the women they were with and pretend they’d done no such thing.

There, at least, Count Hamnet had no problem with Liv. She knew he was content-more than content-with her, and not ogling the woman to whom he'd once been married. All she said was, "Well, you knew what you were talking about." A bit later, she added, "If she tried to wear that up in the Bizogot country, she'd freeze."

"No doubt." Hamnet hid a smile. "But you're not in the Bizogot country anymore."

"Yes, I'd noticed that," Liv said.

"It has its advantages," he told her. "Come drink some wine."

She'd put up with beer and ale on the way south from the frontier. They were different from the smetyn she was used to, but not necessarily better. Wine, even in Nidaros, was an expensive imported luxury. One thing being Emperor meant, though, was not worrying about expense.

The tapman dipped her up a cup of wine red as blood, and another for Hamnet Thyssen. Liv's eyes widened as her nose caught the bouquet. "It even smells sweet," she said, and Hamnet nodded. She raised the silver cup to her lips. "Oh," she whispered.

Hamnet took a pull at his own cup. He nodded again. Nothing else was like wine, not even mead. Some of the southern Bizogots, who lived in country where bees could survive the year around, knew of mead. Liv's clan, though, wouldn't be able to brew it. Hamnet wondered if they ever got any in trade. He hadn't seen or heard of any while he was with the Three Tusk Bizogots.

Liv emptied the cup as fast as she could and held it out to the tapman. Face impassive, he filled it again. She made a good start on the refill, then said, "With this wonderful stuff to drink, why don't Raumsdalians stay drunk all the time?"

"Some of us do." Hamnet thought of Audun Gilli. He looked around for the wizard. As often happened, his eye slid past Audun and had to come back. Audun was drinking, or holding a silver cup, anyhow. He didn't seem drunk-but then, the night was still young. He was talking with a woman who wasn't wearing a great deal more than Gudrid. Maybe she would give him an incentive to stay somewhere within shouting distance of sober.

Ulric Skakki materialized at Hamnet's elbow. So it seemed, anyhow- one heartbeat, he was nowhere near; the next, there he stood, a winecup in hand, a slightly mocking smile on his face. "Not a bad bash," he said.

"No, not bad at all," Hamnet agreed. "I'm getting used to beef and mutton and pork again, after so long eating musk ox and-"

"And worse," Ulric finished for him. Maybe he was thinking of the dire-wolf liver he'd downed on the frozen plains. Hamnet Thyssen had no trouble calling it back to mind. Ulric went on, "How much do you suppose the Rulers would enjoy a spread like this?"

"Oh, maybe a little," Count Hamnet answered. "Yes, maybe."

"I think they might, too." As Hamnet had before, Ulric Skakki looked around. But he wasn't seeking Audun Gilli-he wanted Sigvat II. "I wish his Majesty would come in," he said when he didn't see him. "He hasn't wanted to hear about the Rulers, has he?"

"Not as much as I hoped he would," Hamnet Thyssen said. "As soon as he found out we didn't find the Golden Shrine and we weren't bringing home any treasure, he stopped being interested. I think this reception is a consolation prize."

"I was thinking the same thing," Ulric said. "Pretty soon, he'll throw us out of the palace-either that or he'll start charging us rent."

Hamnet shrugged. "If he does, I'll go back to my castle, that's all. I can give you a room and a bed, if you like."

Liv set a hand on his arm. "But what about the Rulers? You said it yourself. If they come through the Gap, they aren't just the Bizogots' fight. They're the Empire's fight, too."

"I know," Hamnet said. "But if they turn into the Empires fight, it won't matter if I stay here or go back to the castle. I'll have to fight them either way. We may not be so ready if his Majesty doesn't care to listen to Ulric and Earl Eyvind and Audun and me, but we'll have to meet them ready or not."

"You're more likely to lose," Liv said.

"I can't make the Emperor see that. I can't make the Empire do anything about it, either." Hamnet shrugged again. "What I can do, I've done and I'm doing." Liv bit her lip but nodded; she knew that was true.

Musicians struck up a sprightly air. They distracted the Bizogot shaman. She knew about drums and flutes. She even knew about horns, though the Bizogots made theirs from the natural horns of musk oxen, not out of brass. But she'd never seen viols and basses and lutes before coming down to Nidaros. The look of them and the sounds they made fascinated her.

A courtier in a gaudy satin jacket spoke to the musicians' leader. He in turn gestured to his comrades. The strings suddenly fell silent. Horns and drums blared out a fanfare. "His Majesty, Sigvat II, by God's grace Emperor of Raumsdalia!" the courtier bawled into the silence that followed.

Sigvat wore ermine. Liv and Trasamund seemed much less impressed with his robe than his own subjects were. Up on the frozen plains, weasels wore their white coats far longer than they did inside the empire. Those splendid furs were commonplace to the Bizogots, even if they weren't to Raumsdalians.

Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki bowed low when Sigvat strode into the reception hall. So did the rest of the men there. The women dropped curtsies. Liv's was smoother than Hamnet expected. "Who taught you?" he whispered as she straightened.

"The maidservants," she answered, also in a whisper. "This is another strange notion you people have, to use people to serve other people. Among my folk, we can all do everything for ourselves." She drew herself up very straight indeed. In her own way, she had as much Bizogot arrogance as Trasamund did.

"As you were, everyone," Sigvat II called with a wave. "For the rest of the evening, let the thought be taken for the deed." He made for the tapman, who handed him a cup of golden wine from the far southwest.

"Shall we beard him?" Ulric Skakki asked.

"Do you think it'll do any good?" Count Hamnet asked in return.

"How can it hurt?" Ulric said.

Since Hamnet couldn't answer that, he approached the Emperor with Ulric. Sigvat was talking and laughing with a tall, black-haired woman whose gown displayed at least as much of her as Gudrid's. He was married, but who was going to tell the Emperor he couldn't amuse himself where and as he pleased? Not the Empress, certainly; she wasn't even at the reception. Sigvat II saw Hamnet and Ulric coming up to them. He seemed more interested in the black-haired woman. In one sense, Hamnet didn't blame him. In another.. .

"Your Majesty?" the nobleman said, politely but firmly. No one who knew him ever thought he wouldn't take the bull by the horns.

Sigvat's mouth tightened. With ill-concealed annoyance, he told the woman, "Please excuse me."

"Of course, your Majesty," she murmured in tones that said she would excuse him anything. Her curtsy almost made her fall out of that gown. Abstractly, Hamnet wondered why she didn't. Some sort of paste holding it to her? He wouldn't have been surprised.

"Thyssen. Skakki." Sigvat acknowledged the two of them with their family names-the least politeness he could give. No, he didn't like being interrupted. He muttered to himself, then went on, "Well, what can I do for you gentlemen?" That was better-a little, anyhow.

"Your Majesty, we wish to thank you for this reception in our honor," Ulric Skakki said. He was smoother than Hamnet, and sly enough to remind the Emperor that the reception was in the travelers' honor.

"My pleasure." Sigvat unbent-again, a little. When he spoke of pleasure, though, his eyes slid back to the woman waiting beside him. He sipped from his winecup, then went on, "You did something marvelous when you went beyond the Glacier."

"Thank you again, your Majesty," Ulric said.

Before he could go on, Hamnet interrupted him, saying, "One of the things we did, your Majesty, was find danger in the far north. The Rulers are not foes to be despised."

By the way Sigvat II said, "Maybe so," he didn't believe it for a minute. He went on, "Whatever else the so-called Rulers are, they're very far away. I don't think we need to worry about them for a long time-if we ever have to."

"With respect, your Majesty, that may be so, but it may not," Count Hamnet said. "Both our Raumsdalian wizard and the Bizogot shaman who went north with us from the Three Tusk clan believe they have new magic, magic the likes of which no one on this side of the Glacier has ever seen, magic we may not be able to match."

The Emperor's eye found Liv. Even in this hall full of lovely women, she stood out. "While I admire the shaman's, uh, opinions," Sigvat said, "she is not necessarily expert on what Raumsdalian sorcerers know. And neither she nor, uh, Audun Gilli is expert on what the barbarians beyond the Glacier can really do."

Don't bother me about this now. That was what he meant, all right. Hamnet Thyssen didn't care. Stubbornly, he plowed ahead. "We would do better, your Majesty, to meet this new threat as far from our own borders as we can."

"I decide what we would do better to, uh, do." Sigvat II made a face. That didn't come out the way he wanted it to. But even if it didn't, what he meant was only too clear. "If you'd found the Golden Shrine, now . . ."

He cared more about what wasn't there, or wasn't found to be there, than about the real danger. "Your Majesty-" Ulric Skakki began.

"I have spoken." Sigvat II sounded most imperial indeed. "If this people-if these Rulers-show themselves or itself or whatever the right word may be, then Raumsdalia will deal with it or them. Till that time, the Empire has enough real troubles without borrowing imaginary ones. Good evening, Skakki."

That was dismissal, harsh as a slap in the face. Expressionless, Ulric Skakki bowed. "Your Majesty," he said, and stepped away.

When Hamnet Thyssen didn't join him in withdrawing, Sigvat raised an eyebrow. "Your Majesty, you are making a mistake," Count Hamnet said. Then he bowed and turned away without giving the Emperor a chance to reply.

If Sigvat were a different kind of ruler, that could easily have cost him his head. He was too angry to care. But Sigvat, if he didn't want to look north, also wasn't vindictive for the sake of being vindictive. He just went back to the statuesque brunette in the revealing gown. "Sorry to keep you waiting there," he said.

"It's all right, your Majesty," she replied, her voice like a crystal bell.

It wasn't all right, or even close to all right, but Hamnet Thyssen couldn't do anything about it. Savagely, he stalked over toward the tapman. Ulric Skakki was right behind him. "I aim to get as drunk as Audun Gilli ever did," Hamnet warned.

"Good," Ulric said. "We can end up in the same gutter, because I aim to get that drunk too. Maybe we'll keep each other warm."

Hamnet Thyssen wasn't usually a man who drank to oblivion. He'd done it a couple of times after Gudrid left him, but he hadn't seen that it helped him much. He was in the same mess when he sobered up, but with a headache and a sour stomach besides. Once in a while, though, the world seemed too idiotic to stand. This was one of those times.

Eyvind Torfinn and Gudrid had been talking, for all the world like any married couple. Eyvind left her and came over to Hamnet and Ulric, both of whom were getting their cups refilled by the impassive server who took care of the wine. "No luck?" Eyvind asked.

"Not a bit of it, your Splendor. Not one bloody bit," Hamnet growled. "Haven't you tried explaining things for him?"

"Of course I have," Earl Eyvind answered. "Whatever happened beyond the Glacier doesn't seem real to him. God may know why-God must know why-but I don't." He sighed. "Maybe we should have lied. Maybe we should have said we did find the Golden Shrine. That would have kept his interest, anyhow."

Ulric Skakki shook his head. "Jesper Fletti and the rest of Sigvat's hounds would have given us the lie." He wasn't drunk yet, but he didn't care what he said. He had to be disgusted with the world; he didn't usually let himself go like that.

"I suppose you're right," Eyvind Torfinn said with another sigh. "It's most unfortunate."

"It'll be worse than unfortunate if we have to deal with the Rulers here toward the end of next summer," Count Hamnet said.

"Maybe the Bizogots will hold them in check." Eyvind didn't sound as if he believed they could, either.

Hamnet gulped his wine. As he drank, he watched Gudrid out of the corner of his eye. He wished he could stop doing that, but getting what he wished for, even after falling in love with the woman from the north, wasn't easy.

His former wife said something to Liv. Across the room, Count Hamnet couldn't tell what it was. The Bizogot shaman answered. Again, Hamnet couldn't tell how. Gudrid said something else. This time, Liv just shook her head.

Gudrid stuck her nose in the air. Hamnet Thyssen had seen that gesture more times than he could count. Whatever Gudrid heard, she didn't like it. Maybe Liv was rash enough to have said something nice about him. Or maybe she said something rude about Nidaros. Whatever it was, it roused Gudrid s ire, or at least her contempt.

If she'd walked away with her nose held high, everything would have been fine. But she decided she had to do more than that. So as she turned to go, she stepped on Liv's foot. It might have been an accident. It might have been-but it wasn't.

His own anger inflamed by the strong wine he'd poured down, Hamnet Thyssen started over toward them. He hadn't gone more than a couple of strides before he found, not for the first time, that his present beloved could take care of herself.

Liv's lips moved. Hamnet could see that. Gudrid didn't turn back, so the Bizogot woman's words weren't intended for her ear-which didn't mean they weren't intended for her. Gudrid made a fundamental mistake. She forgot the lesson she'd had to learn far to the north-getting on the bad side of a wizard or shaman was a long way from smart.

One heartbeat, Gudrid's minimal gown held together as well as overstrained fabric could reasonably be expected to do. The next, things fell apart, literally and spectacularly. They had no obvious reason for falling apart. It might have been an accident. It might have been-but it wasn't.

Gudrid looked down at herself, first in surprise and then in horror. The involuntary squawk she let out swung every eye in the reception hall toward her. That was just what she didn't want. There was more of her to cover up than she had hands to cover it.

She started to pick up what was left of the gown, then seemed to realize she couldn't put it back together again. She took a step toward a table full of trays of appetizers, but must have decided the trays weighed down the tablecloth too much for her to grab it. With another squawk, she kicked out of the remnants of what she'd worn and fled the reception hall.

"Oh, dear." Eyvind Torfinn hurried after her.

"Well, well. There's a dressmaker who won't live to grow old," Ulric Skakki predicted. "But I'll bet half the men here want to know who he is so they can get him to make gowns for their lady friends."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Count Hamnet answered, but didn't think it was the dressmaker's fault. When he walked over to Liv, he carefully de-toured around the bits of fabric still on the floor. He wagged a finger at her. "That was naughty of you."

"Too bad," she said. "Did you see what happened?"

"I saw, yes. I couldn't hear what the two of you said, but I know she stepped on you on purpose."

"If she did that in the Three Tusk country, I would have killed her," Liv said. "But I know you Raumsdalians are soft when it comes to such things, so I thought I'd embarrass her instead."

"You did," Hamnet said. Gudrid might have arranged for her own wardrobe to fail, but she would have gloried in her nakedness if she did. To get surprised . . . That was embarrassing.

"She's spent a lot of time tormenting you, so she thinks she can torment me, too, because I make you happy," Liv said. "She won't get away with that, no matter what she thinks. I can make her more unhappy than she makes me." Her eyes flamed.

"Chances are she's got the message now," Hamnet said.

"Shed better." Liv glanced over toward Sigvat II, who was happily chatting with the well-made brunette. "Did the Emperor get the message about the Rulers?"

"No, curse it." Hamnet shook his head. "He says he'll worry about them when they bother the Empire, if they ever do. Till then, he doesn't care."

"Well, why should he? He has more important things to worry about." The Bizogot woman's voice was tart. Sigvat s companion laughed at something he said. If the Emperor made a joke, of course it was funny.

"I don't know what to do about it. I don't think I can do anything about it-except bang my head against a stone wall, I mean," Hamnet Thyssen said. "I've done that before. By God, I've made a career out of it. But this time I can see it won't get me anywhere."

"So what will you do, then?" Liv asked.

"Well, I told you I was thinking about going back to my castle and waiting for the sky to fall," Hamnet answered. "Sooner or later, it will. We both know that. And … I was hoping you'd come with me." He had to work to say that, but he got it out. Now to see what happened next.

"I like being with you. You know that. I like it better than I ever thought I could like being with anyone," Liv said. "And the Empire has more . . . more things in it than I thought there were, there could be, in the whole world. But-"

"But?" Hamnet broke in harshly. As soon as Liv started saying nice things, he knew trouble lay ahead.

"But," Liv said again. "The sky will fall here sooner or later, yes. For the Three Tusk clan, the sky will fall sooner. We roam nearest the Gap. The Rulers will strike us first. By the nature of things, they have to. The Three Tusk clan . . . They are my folk. I will do what I can to help them. I have to do that, Hamnet-don't you see?"

He started to ask if anything he could do or say would make her change her mind. He started to, but he didn't; he could see it was hopeless. Not without admiration, he said, "You're as stubborn as I am. Do you know that?"

She nodded again. "That was one of the things that drew me to you. I wondered if we would bang heads, the way musk-ox bulls do in rutting season. But we never did, did we? Not till now."

"You will go north?" Hamnet asked.

"I will. I have to," Liv said.

He thought about his castle, about the estate surrounding it, about the game-filled woods to the east. He thought about how many Raumsdalians, starting with his bailiff, could care for the castle and estate as well as he could. He thought about the Gap, and the building storm beyond it.

"Would you put up with a half-baked Bizogot if I came north with you?" he asked.

Liv stared at him as if she didn't believe her ears. Then she threw herself into his arms. Naked Gudrid might have made a bigger spectacle at the reception, but not by much. Well, Hamnet thought dizzily as the embrace went on and on, at least I know why I'm doing this.