Into the Darkness

5.

Fernao strolled through the streets of Setubal, delighting in the life that brawled around him. The capital of Lagoas had long been the most cosmopolitan city in the world. Now, the mage thought sadly, it was, as near as made no difference, the only cosmopolitan city left in the world.

Lagoas was not at war with anyone. That made the island kingdom unique among the major powers. Oh, Unkerlant was not at war with anyone at the moment, but Fernao, along with everyone else, assumed that was only because King Swemmel, having helped himself to a large chunk of Forthweg, was looking around for his next neighbor to assault. Zuwayza affronted him merely by existing, as Forthweg had, but Yanina had taken in King Penda when he fled Eoforwic. One of them would go under soon. Maybe both of them would go under soon. Fernao guessed Yanina would go first.

But Lagoas, with any luck at all, could stay neutral through the whole mad war. Fernao hoped his kingdom could. Monuments in Setubal’s many parks and at street corners warned of wars past: recent monuments to the fight against Algarve in the Six Years’ War, older ones to war against Valmiera, older ones still to wars against Kuusamo and the pirates of Sibiu who were all the rage in Lagoan romances these days, even a couple of Kaunian columns from the days before the Empire brought its armies back home to the mainland of Derlavai.

What sort of monument might a kingdom erect to a war in which it hadn’t fought? Fernao visualized a marble statue, three times life size, of a man swiping the back of his hand across his forehead in relief. After a moment, he realized the man he’d visualized looked a lot like him. He laughed at that. He’d known he was vain. Maybe he hadn’t known how vain he was.

He turned into a tavern (a good piece of magecraft, that, he thought, now with a laugh that was more like a snort) and ordered a glass of Jelgavan red wine. When the taverner gave it to him, he took it over to a small table by the wall and sipped in leisurely fashion. The taverner gave him a sour look, as he might have done with any man likely to occupy space without bringing in much business.

Plenty of other people were drinking more than Fernao: Lagoans, slant-eyed Kuusamans, Valmierans in trousers, Sibians, even a few Algarvians who’d managed to run their foes’ blockade. The mage wondered what sort of shady deals they were cooking up. Since everyone could come to Setubal, anything was liable to happen here. He knew that very well.

Along with noting the conversation humming around him, he listened with a different part of his being to the power humming through Setubal. There were more power points in a smaller space here than anywhere else in the world; more ley lines converged on the Lagoan capital than on any other city. In a mage’s veins, the song of that power sometimes seemed stronger than his pulse.

A man slid down on to the ladderbacked chair across the table from Fernao. “Mind if I join you?” he asked with a friendly smile.

“It’s all right,” Fernao answered. He would sooner have been alone with his thoughts, but the tavern was crowded. He lifted his wineglass. “Your good health.”

“I thank you, sir. And yours.” The stranger lifted his mug in return. Steam and a sweet, spicy smell rose from it: hot mulled cider in there, unless Fernao’s nose had lost its cleverness. The stranger sipped, then nodded with the air of a connoisseur. “Powers above, that’s good,” he said.

Fernao nodded, politely but without intending to encourage further conversation. But, as he drank a little more wine, he could not help starting to size up the man across from him. And, once he’d started, he found he couldn’t stop. The fellow spoke unaccented Lagoan, but he didn’t look like a native of King Vitor’s domain. Lagoans were more various in their appearance than the folk of many kingdoms—Fernao’s slanted eyes said as much—but very few were dark and stocky and heavily bearded.

Even fewer wore trousers. That was a Kaunian fashion no kingdom sprung from Algarvic stock had ever adopted. Taken all in all, the stranger might have been put together out of pieces from three or four different puzzles.

He also noticed Fernao scrutinizing him, which he wasn’t supposed to do. He smiled again, a surprisingly charming smile from a man less than handsome. After another sip at his hot cider, he said, “Am I correct in understanding, sir, that you are more than a little skilled at getting into and out of places where others might possibly not want to go?”

A trip into Feltre despite the anger of the Sibian Navy qualified Fernao to answer aye. He did nothing of the sort, instead saying, “You are correct in understanding, sir, that my business is my business—and no one else’s unless I choose to make it so.”

The fellow across the table from him laughed gaily, as if he’d said something very funny. Fernao knocked back his wine—the taverner, no doubt, would be pleased—and started to get to his feet. Where nothing else had, that made the stranger lose his too-easy smile. “Please, sir, don’t go yet,” he said in a voice that, despite its polite tones, held iron underneath.

His right hand rested, broad palm down, on the tabletop. He might have had some sort of weapon—a cut-down stick, perhaps a knife under it. But when he lifted it, taking care that Fernao and no one else could see •what he did, he revealed not a weapon but the sparkle of gold.

Fernao sat back down. “You have engaged my attention, at least for the time being. Say on, sir.”

“I thought that might do the trick,” the stranger said complacently. “You Lagoans have the name of being a mercenary folk. That you trade with both sides during the current unpleasantness does nothing to detract from it.”

“That we trade with both sides shows a certain common sense, in my view,” Fernao said. “That you sneer at my people does nothing to attract me to you. And, if we are to continue this discussion, give me a name to call you. I do not deal with nameless men.” Unless I have no choice, he thought but did not say aloud. Here, though, the choice was his.

“Names have power,” the man across the table from him observed. “Names especially have power in the mouth of a mage. But you may call me Shelomith, if you must stick a handle on me as if I were a hot pot.”

“If whatever notion you have in mind could not burn me, you would have approached me in a different way,” Fernao said. And Shelomith was not the name with which the stranger had been born. It sounded like one the barbarous Ice People used. Whatever blood ran in Shelomith’s veins, it was not from that stock. Fernao went on, “You have shown me gold. I presume you have in mind paying me some. How do you expect me to earn it?”

“This for listening,” Shelomith said, and shoved the coin he had concealed across to the mage. It showed the fuzzy-bearded king of Gyongyos, whose image was bordered by an inscription in demotic Gyongyosian script, which Fernao recognized but could not read. He did not think the coin’s origin said anything about what Shelomith had in mind. Gold circulated freely all across the world, and a crafty man could use it to conceal rather than to reveal. As if to point in that same direction, Shelomith spoke again: “For listening—and for your discretion.”

“Discretion goes only so far,” Fernao said. “If you ask me to betray my king or my kingdom, I will do nothing of the sort. I will shout for a constable instead.”

He wondered if Shelomith would find urgent business elsewhere on hearing that. The stranger only shrugged wide shoulders. “Nothing of the sort,” he said in reassuring tones. Of course, he would have said the same thing had he been lying. He went on, “You may remain apart from the proposal I shall put to you, but it could not offend even the most delicate sensibility.”

“Such a statement is all the better for proof,” Fernao said. “Tell me plainly what you want from me. I will tell you if you may have it and, if so, at what price.”

Shelomith looked pained. Fernao got the idea that asking him to speak plainly was like asking the Falls of Leixoes to flow uphill. At last, after another long pull at his cider, he said, as he had before, “You are, are you not, good at getting into and out of tight places?”

“This is where we began.” The mage made as if to get up again, this time with the goldpiece in the pouch on his belt. “Good morning.”

As he’d more than half expected, another goldpiece appeared under Shelomith’s palm. Fernao kept rising. “Good my sir,” Shelomith said plaintively. “Only sit, and be patient, and all will be made clear.” Fernao sat. The stranger passed him the second goldpiece. He made it disappear: a good, profitable morning. Shelomith looked even more pained. “Are you always so difficult?”

“I make a point of it,” Fernao said. “Are you always so obscure?”

Shelomith muttered under his breath. To Fernao’s disappointment, he could not make out which language the stranger used when angry. He sat quietly and waited. Maybe Shelomith would feed him still more gold for doing nothing. Instead, with the air of a man yielding himself up to a dentist, Shelomith said, “Does it not wring your heart to see a crowned king trapped in exile far from his native land?”

“Ah,” Fernao said. “Sits the wind so? Well, a question for a question: don’t you think King Penda is a lot happier sitting in exile in Yanina than he would be had the Algarvians or Unkerlanters caught him in Forthweg?”

“You are as clever as I hoped,” Shelomith said, slapping on the flattery with a broad brush. Fernao would have been naive to fail to get his drift. “The answer to your question is aye, but only to a degree. He is not only in exile; he might as well be in prison. King Tsavellas holds him close, so he can yield him up to King Swemmel if the Unkerlanter’s pressure grows too great.”

“Ah,” Fernao repeated. He fell into slow, sonorous Forthwegian: “And you want him taken beyond King Swemmel’s reach.”

“Even so,” Shelomith answered in the same language. “Having a mage with us will make us more likely to succeed. Having a Lagoan mage with us will make it less likely that King Swemmel can take reprisal against him.”

“A distinct point, from all I have heard of King Swemmel,” Fernao said. “The next question is, what makes you think I am the Lagoan mage you want?”

“You have gone into Algarve in time of war, why should you not go into Yanina in time of peace? You are a mage of the first rank, so you will have the strength to do whatever may be needed. You speak Forthwegian, as you have shown. I would be lying if I said you were the only mage at whom we are looking, but you are the man we would like to have.”

His friends were probably saying the same thing to the other candidates. As soon as someone was rash enough to say aye, they would lose interest in the others. Fernao wondered if he was rash enough to say aye. He’d never been to Yanina. Getting there would be easy enough, if King Swemmel didn’t invade; the small kingdom between Algarve and Unkerlant remained nervously neutral. Getting out—especially getting out with King Penda—was liable to be something else again.

Of course, Shelomith was liable not to care whether Fernao got out or not, so long as Penda did. That might make life interesting in several unpleasant ways. A sensible man would pocket the two Gyongyosian goldpieces and go about his business.

“When do we sail?” Fernao asked.

Marshal Rathar endured the search to which King Swemmel’s bodyguards subjected him with less aplomb than he usually showed. He had not conceived so high an opinion of himself as to think he was above searching. But he did begrudge the time he had to waste before being admitted to his sovereign’s presence.

Once he’d got past the guards, he also begrudged the time he had to. spend knocking his head against the carpet before the king. Ceremony was all very well in its place; it reminded people what a great and mighty sovereign ruled them. Rathar, though, already knew that well. Wasting time on ceremony, then, struck him as inefficient.

King Swemmel saw things otherwise. As always, how King Swemmel saw things prevailed in Unkerlant. Having at last been granted permission to rise, Rathar said, “May it please your Majesty, I am come at your command.”

“It pleases us very little,” Swemmel replied in his light, rather petulant voice. “We are beset by enemies on all sides. One by one, for Unkerlant’s greater glory and for our own safety, we must be rid of them.”

He quivered a little on his high seat. He was quite capable of deciding on the spur of the moment that Rathar was an enemy and ordering his head stricken from his body. A lot of officers, some of high rank, had died that way during the Twinkings War. A lot more had died that way since.

If he decided that, he would be wrong, but it would do Rathar no good. Showing fear would do Rathar no good, `either. It might make Swemmel decide he had reason to be afraid. The marshal said, “Point me at your foes, your Majesty, and I will bring them down. I am your hawk.”

“We have too many foes,” Swemmel said. “Gyongyos in the far west—”

“We are, for the moment, at peace with Gyongyos,” Rathar said.

Swemmel went on as if he had not spoken: “Algarve—”

Now Rathar interrupted with more than a little alarm, saying, “Your Majesty, King Mezentio’s men have been most scrupulous in observing the border between their kingdom and ours that existed before the start of the Six Years’ War. They are as happy to see Forthweg gone from the map again as we are. They want no trouble with us; they have their hands full in the east.”

He needed a moment to decipher King Swemmel’s expression. It was a curious blend of amusement and pity, the sort of expression Rathar might have used had his ten-year-old son come out with some very naive view of the way the world worked. Swemmel said, “They will attack us. Sooner or later, they will surely attack us—if we give them the chance.”

If King Swemmel wanted to go to war with one of his small, weak neighbors, that was one thing. If he wanted to go to war with Algarve, that was something else again. Urgently, Rathar said, “Your Majesty, our armies are not yet ready to fight King Mezentio’s. The way the Algarvians used dragons and behemoths to open the path for their foot in Forthweg is something new on the face of the world. We need to learn to defend against it, if we can. We need to learn to imitate it, too. Until we do those things, which I have already set in motion, we should not engage Algarve.”

He waited for King Swemmel to order him to hurl the armies of Unkerlant against King Mezentio in spite of what he had said, in which case he would do his best. He also waited for his sovereign to curse him for having failed to invent the new way of fighting himself. Swemmel did neither. He merely continued with his catalogue of grievances: “King Tsavellas casts defiance in our face, refusing to yield up to us the person of Penda, who pretended to be king of Forthweg.”

Swemmel had recognized Penda as king of Forthweg until Algarvian and Unkerlanter armies made Penda flee his falling kingdom. That was not the point at the heart of the matter, though. Rathar said, “If we invade Yanina, your Majesty, we collide with Algarve again. I would sooner use Yanina as a shield, to keep Algarve from colliding with us.”

“We never forget insults. Never,” Swemmel said. Rathar hoped he was talking about Tsavellas. After a moment, Swemmel went on, “And there is Zuwayza. The Zuwayzi provocations against us are intolerable.”

Rathar knew perfectly well that Unkerlant was the kingdom doing the provoking. He wondered whether Swemmel knew it, too, or whether his sovereign truly believed himself the aggrieved party. You never could tell with Swemmel. Rathar said, “The Zuwayzin do indeed grow overbold.” If he could steer the king away from launching an attack on Yanina, he would.

He could, which he reckoned hardly less a miracle than those a first-rank mage could sometimes produce. King Swemmel said, “The time has come to settle Zuwayza, so that Shazli may no longer threaten us.” As he refused to accord Penda the royal title, so he also did with Shazli. He went on, “Ready the army to fall upon Zuwayza at my order.”

“It is merely a matter of transporting troops and beasts and equipment to the frontier, your Majesty,” Rathar said with relief. “We have planned this campaign for some time, and shall be able to unleash our warriors whenever you should command—provided,” he added hastily, “that you give us time enough to deploy fully before commencing.”

“You can do this and still leave a large enough force in reclaimed Forthweg to guard against Algarvian treachery?” Swemmel demanded.

“We can,” Rathar said. Unkerlanter officers had been planning for war against Zuwayza since the day Swemmel drove Kyot’s forces out of Cottbus. Some of those plans involved fighting Zuwayza while holding the line against Algarve in the east. It was just a matter of pulling the right sheet of orders from the file, adapting them to the precise circumstances, and issuing them.

“How soon can we begin to punish the desert-dwellers?” Swemmel asked.

Before answering, Rathar reviewed in his mind the man he was likeliest to use. “Not so many ley lines leading up toward Zuwayza as we would like, your Majesty,” he said. “Not many through the desert leading toward Bishah, either. If we hadn’t already established supply caches up there, we’d be a good while preparing. As things are… We can move in three weeks, I would say.” In practice, it would take rather longer, as such things had a way of doing, but he was sure he would be able to keep King Swemmel from actually ordering the assault till everything was ready.

But, as he’d thought only a few minutes before, you never could tell with Swemmel. The king screwed up his face till he looked like an infant about to throw a tantrum. “We cannot wait that long!” he shouted. “We will not wait that long! We have been waiting for twenty years!”

Rathar spoke in what he thought to be the voice of reason: “If you have been waiting so long, your Majesty, would you not be wise in waiting just a little longer, to make sure everything goes forward as it should?”

“If you show yourself a disobedient servant, Marshal, we shall find another to wield the righteous sword of Unkerlant,” Swemmel said in a deadly voice. “It is our will that our army redeem the land the Zuwayzin stole from us beginning no later than ten days hence.”

If someone else suddenly became Marshal of Unkerlant, he would make a worse hash of the war against Zuwayza, and of any later wars, than Rathar would himself. Rathar knew the men likeliest to replace him if he fell, and knew without false modesty that he was abler than any of them. Not only that, but he had his hands on the reins and knew exactly how to guide the horse. Anyone else would need a while to figure out how to do whatever needed doing.

All that went through Rathar’s mind before he worried about his own extinction. He was not sure his wife would miss him; they spent little time together these days. His oldest son was a junior officer. His fall would injure the lad’s career—or Swemmel might decide to destroy the whole family, to make sure no trouble arose later.

Steadily, even stolidly, Rathar asked, “Would you throw away twenty years of waiting, your Majesty, because you cannot bear to wait twenty days?”

Swemmel’s chin was hardly the more prepossessing Rathar had ever seen. Nonetheless, the king stuck it out. “We shall not wait even an instant longer. Will you or will you not launch the assault in ten days’ time, Marshal?”

“If we strike too soon, without all our regiments in their proper places, the Zuwayzin will be far better able to resist,” Rathar said.

King Swemmel’s eyes bored into his. Rathar dropped his own eyes, staring down at the green carpet on which he stood. Nevertheless, he felt the king’s gaze like a physical weight, a heavy, heavy weight. Swemmel said, “We would not have so much patience with many men, Marshal. Do you obey us?”

“Your Majesty, I obey you,” Rathar said. Obeying Swemmel would cost lives. Odds were, it would cost lives by the thousands. Unkerlant had lives to spend. Zuwayza did not. It was as simple as that. And with Rathar in command, the king’s willfulness would not cost so many lives as it would under some other commander. So he told himself, at any rate, salving his conscience as best he could.

When he looked up at Swemmel again, the king was relaxed, or as relaxed as his tightly wound spirit ever let him be. “Go, then,” he said. “Go and ready the army, to hurl it against the Zuwayzin at our command. We shall publish to the world the indignities Shazli and his burnt-skinned, naked minions have committed against our kingdom. No one will lift a finger to aid them.”

“I should think not,” Rathar said. With the rest of the world embroiled in war, who would even grieve over one small, distant kingdom?

“Go, then,” Swemmel repeated. “You have shown yourself to be a good leader of men, Marshal, and the armies you commanded did all we expected and all we had hoped in taking back Forthweg. Otherwise, your insolence here would not go unpunished. Next time, regardless of circumstances, it shall not go unpunished. Do you understand?”

“I am your servant, your Majesty,” Rathar said, bowing low. “You have commanded; I shall obey. All I wanted was to be certain you fully grasped the choice you are making.”

“Every man, woman, and child in Unkerlant is our servant,” King Swemmel said indifferently. “A marshal’s blade makes you no different from the rest. And we make our own choices for our own reasons. We need no one to confuse our mind, especially when we did not seek your views on this matter. Do you understand that?”

“Aye, your Majesty.” Rathar’s face showed nothing of what he thought. So far as he could, his face showed nothing at all. Around King Swemmel, that was safest.

“Then get out!” Swemmel shouted.

Rathar prostrated himself again. When he rose to retreat from the king’s chamber, he did so without turning around, lest his back offend his sovereign. In the antechamber, he buckled on his ceremonial sword once more. A guard matter-of-factly got between him and the doorway through which he’d come, to make sure he could not attack the king. Sometimes the idea was tempting, though Rathar did not let his face show that, either.

He went off to do his best to get the army ready to invade Zuwayza at King Swemmel’s impossible deadline. His aides exclaimed in dismay. Normally as calm a man as any ever born, Rathar screamed at them. After his audience with Swemmel, that made him feel a little better, but not much.

Tealdo liked being stationed in the Duchy of Bari just fine, even if, as a man from the north, he found oncoming autumn in this part of Algarve on the chilly side. The folk of the Duchy remained thrilled to be united with their countrymen, from whom old Duke Alardo had done his best to sunder them. And a gratifying number of girls in the Duchy remained thrilled to unite with Algarvian soldiers.

“Why shouldn’t they?” Tealdo’s friend Trasone said when he remarked on that. “It’s their patriotic duty, isn’t it?”

“If I ever told a wench it was her patriotic duty to lay me, she’d figure it was her patriotic duty to smack me in the head,” Tealdo said, which made Trasone laugh. Tealdo went on, “The other thing I like about being here is that I’m not blazing away at the Valmierans or the Jelgavans—and they’re not blazing away at me.”

Trasone laughed again, a big bass rumble that suited his burly frame. “Well, I won’t argue with that. Powers above, I can’t argue with that. But sooner or later we’ll have to do some blazing, and when we do it’s liable to be worse than facing either one of the stinking Kaunian kingdoms.”

“Sooner or later will take care of itself,” Tealdo said. “For now, nobody’s blazing at me, and that’s just fine.”

He strode out of the barracks, which were made of pine timber so new, they still smelled strongly of resinous sap. Off in the distance, waves from the Narrow Sea slapped against the stone breakwater that shielded the harbor of Imola from winter storms. Endless streams of birds flew past overhead, all of them going north. Already they were fleeing the brief summer of the land of the Ice People. Soon, very soon, they would be fleeing the Duchy of Bari, too, bound for warmer climes. Some would stop in northern Algarve and Jelgava; some would cross the Garelian Ocean and winter in tropic Siaulia, which hardly knew the meaning of the word.

Above the twittering flocks, dragons whirled in lazy—no, in lazy-looking—circles. Tealdo looked south, toward the sea and toward Sibiu. More dragons circled over the sea. Tealdo resented the dragonfliers less than he had when he was marching into the Duchy. They kept the Sibs from dropping eggs on his head. He heartily approved of that. They also kept the enemy’s dragons from peering down on him and his comrades. He approved of that, too.

A trumpeter on the parade ground in front of the barracks blew a sprightly flourish: the call to assembly. Tealdo dashed for his place. Behind him, men poured from the barracks as if from a bawdy house the constables were raiding. He took his assigned place in the ranks of the regiment ahead of almost everyone else. That gave him half a minute to brush a few specks of dust from his kilt, to slide his boots along his socks, and to adjust his broad-brimmed hat to the proper jaunty angle before Sergeant Panfilo started prowling.

Prowl Panfilo did. He favored Tealdo with a glare sergeants surely had to practice in front of a reflecting glass. Tealdo looked back imperturbably. Panfilo reached out and slapped away some dust he’d missed—or perhaps slapped at nothing at all, to keep Tealdo from thinking he had the world by the tail. Sergeants did things like that.

“King Mezentio doesn’t want slobs in his army,” Panfilo growled.

“Told you so himself, did he?” Tealdo asked innocently.

But Panfilo got the last word: “That he did, in his regulations, and I’ll thank you to remember it.” He stalked off to make some other common soldier’s life less joyous than it had been.

Colonel Ombruno swaggered out to the front of the regiment. “Well, my pirates, my cutthroats, my old-fashioned robbers and burglars,” he called with a grin, “how wags your world today?”

“We are well, sir,” Tealdo shouted along with the rest of the men.

“Diddling enough of the pretty girls around these parts?” Ombruno asked.

“Aye!” the men shouted, Tealdo again loud among them. He knew Ombruno chased—and caught—the Barian women as frequently as he had farther north in Algarve.

“That’s good; that’s good.” The regimental commander rocked back on his heels, then forward once more. “No diddling for now, though, except that we’re going to figure out how to diddle our enemies. Go load your packs, grab your sticks, and report back here in ten minutes. Dismissed!”

This time, Tealdo groaned. He knew what they would be doing for the rest of the day: the same thing they’d been doing most of the days since they’d established themselves by Imola. Unless it involved a pretty girl, he soon got sick of doing the same thing over and over. He realized that, when the time for fighting came, all this practice was liable to help keep him alive. That didn’t, that couldn’t, make him enjoy it while it was going on.

His pack sat at the foot of his cot, in precisely the prescribed place. His stick leaned against the wall at the left side of the bed, at precisely the prescribed angle. Panfilo hadn’t been able to find a thing to complain about in the way he handled his gear, If Panfilo couldn’t find it, it wasn’t there.

Tealdo slung the pack over his shoulder, grunting at its weight. When he picked up the stick, his finger accidentally slid into the blazing hole. It didn’t matter here, not directly: in training, well away from any fighting front, none of the weapons carried a sorcerous charge. But it was not a good habit to acquire.

He wasn’t one of the first men back out to the parade ground. But he wasn’t one of the last men out, either, the men at whom his superiors screamed. He enjoyed people screaming at him no more than he enjoyed endless practice. Practice he couldn’t escape. He could keep people from screaming at him, could and did.

“Form by companies!” Colonel Ombruno shouted: a useless order, since the regiment always formed by companies. “Form by companies, and report to your designated practice locations.”

The company commanders shepherded the men off to their own areas. Soon, when a new practice field combined all those areas, they would work together. In the meanwhile…

In the meanwhile, the company commanders got to puff out their chests and strut, like so many pigeons trying to impress mates. Captain Larbino’s strut and his shouted orders did not impress Tealdo: he was no dimwitted female pigeon. But he had to obey, which a female pigeon did not.

Larbino led his company to a cramped underground chamber that had two stairways leading down into it, one broad, the other narrow. The men entered the chamber by the broad stairway. Only a few lanterns, stinking offish oil, cast a dim, flickering glow there. “Powers above, it’s like falling back through a thousand years of time,” Tealdo muttered.

“Take your places!” Larbino’s loud voice dinned in the small, crowded chamber. “Five minutes till the exercise begins! Take your places! No mercy on any man who’s out of place when the whistle blows.”

The soldiers were already taking their places. They had been doing this for three weeks. They knew, or were convinced they knew, at least as much about their part of the operation as did Larbino. They formed a single serpentine line that led to the bottom of the narrow stairway and kinked at each earthen wall. Seen from above, it would have looked like a long string of gut twisted to fit into the abdominal cavity.

Shrill and deafeningly loud, the brass whistle screeched. “I love running in full kit,” Trasone said through the blast, and then, in a lower voice, “In a pig’s arse I do.” Tealdo chuckled. He felt the same way.

“Out! Out! Out!” Larbino was screaming. “They’ll be blazing at you when you do this for real! Don’t stand around playing with yourselves.”

“I’d rather be playing with myself than doing this,” Tealdo said. He didn’t think anyone heard him. The line was uncoiling rapidly as soldier after soldier dashed up the narrow stairs. They’d had dreadful tangles the first few times they tried it. They’d got better with practice. Tealdo declined to admit that, even to himself.

His feet thudded on the timbers of the narrow stairway. Up he went. Anyone who tripped here was a cork in the bottle for everyone behind him. Panfilo had a more expressive term for it: as far as he was concerned, anyone who tripped on the narrow stairway was a dead man.

Tealdo emerged into daylight. Before long, they’d be running the exercise at night, which would make it even more delightful. He dashed to a broad plank that spanned a deep trench and raced across it. Two men from his company had fallen into the trench. One managed to escape without being hurt. The other broke his leg.

Cloth flags on stakes marked the narrow way he and his comrades had to take. He rushed along that narrow way till it suddenly widened out. Where it did, buildings—or rather, false fronts—defined streets through which they had to run. Soldiers with uncharged sticks “fought” from those false fronts, trying to impede the company’s progress. Umpires with green ribbons tied to their tunic sleeves signaled theoretical casualties.

Tealdo “blazed” back at the defenders. One after another, the umpires ruled them deceased. But Tealdo’s comrades were taken out of action, too. He rather hoped he would be, as had happened during a couple of practice runs. Then he could lie down and grab a breather, and no sergeant would be able to complain.

But, at the umpires’ whim, he was allowed to survive. Panting, he raced left, right, and then left again before coming to the gateway for whose capture his company was responsible. More soldiers tried to keep the company from seizing the gate. The umpires ruled those soldiers failed and fell.

The egg one of Captain Larbino’s soldiers set against the gateway was only a wooden simulacrum. An umpire’s whistle blew, signaling a blast of energy. A couple of defenders, miraculously revived from their “deaths”, opened the gate to let the “survivors” of the company inside.

More narrow ways lay beyond, some as twisted as the paths in a maze. Still more soldiers tried to keep Tealdo and his comrades from passing those ways to the end. Again, they failed. More whistles shrilled. Tealdo raised a weary cheer. He and enough of the other soldiers had reached the end of the practice area to have succeeded were this actual battle.

“King Mezentio and all of Algarve will have reason to be proud of you when you fight this well with your lives truly in the pans of the scale,” Larbino declared. “I know you will. You need no lessons in courage, only in how best to use that courage. Those lessons will go on. Tomorrow, we will take the practice course in the dark.”

Weary groans replaced the weary cheers. Tealdo turned and saw Trasone not far away. “Marching into Bari was a lot more fun,” he said. “All this running around looks too much like work to me.”

“It’ll look even more like work when the bastards on the other side start blazing back for real,” Trasone answered.

“Don’t remind me,” Tealdo said with a grimace. “Don’t remind me.”

Leofsig felt like a beast of burden, or perhaps an animal in a cage. He was not a Forthwegian soldier any more, the Forthwegian army having been crushed between those of Algarve and Unkerlant. Not a foot of Forthwegian soil remained under the control of men loyal to King Penda. From east and west, the enemies’ forces had joined hands east of Eoforwic; joined hands over Forthweg’s fallen corpse.

And so Leofsig languished with thousands of his comrades in a captives’ camp somewhere between Gromheort and Eoforwic, not far from where his regiment, or what was left of it, had finally surrendered to the Algarvians. He scowled when he thought of the dapper Algarvian officer who’d inspected the dirty, worn, beaten Forthwegian soldiers still hale enough to line up for the surrender ceremony.

“You fought well. You fought bravely,” the Algarvian officer had said, trilling the slow sounds of Forthwegian as if they belonged to his native tongue. Then he’d hopped into the air, kicking up his heels in an extravagant gesture of contempt. “And for all the good it did you, for all the good it did your kingdom, you might as well not have fought at all. Think on that. You will have a long time to think on that.” He’d turned his back and strutted away.

Time Leofsig did indeed have. Inside these wooden fences, inside these towers manned by Algarvians who would sooner blaze a captive coming near than listen to him, time was very nearly the only thing he did have. He had the tunic and boots in which he’d surrendered, and he had a hard cot in a flimsy barracks.

He also had work. If the captives wanted wood for cooking and wood for heating—not so great a need in Forthweg as farther south in Derlavai, but not to be ignored as winter drew nearer, either—they had to cut it and haul it back. Work gangs under Algarvian guard went out every day. If they wanted latrines to keep the camp from being swamped by filth and disease, they had to dig them. The place stank anyway, putting Leofsig in mind of a barnyard once more.

If they wanted food, they had to depend on the Algarvians. Their captives doled out flour as if it were silver, salt pork as if it were gold. Like most Forthwegians, Leofsig was on the blocky side. The block that was he had been narrowing ever since he’d surrendered.

“They don’t care,” he said to his neighbor after yet another meager meal. “They don’t care in the least.”

“Why should they?” the fellow with the cot next to his replied. He was a blond Kaunian named Gutauskas, and already lean. “If we starve to death, they don’t have to worry about feeding us any more.”

That was so breathtakingly cynical, Leofsig could only stare. The fellow with the cot on the other side of his, though, a burly chap called Merwit, spat in disgust. “Why don’t you shut up and die now, yellow-hair?” he said. “Weren’t for you cursed Kaunians, we wouldn’t have gotten sucked into this war in the first place.”

Gutauskas raised a pale eyebrow. “Oh, indeed: no doubt,” he said, speaking Forthwegian without perceptible accent but with the elegant precision more characteristic of his own language. “Both his name and his looks prove King Penda to be of pure Kaunian blood.”

Leofsig snickered. Penda was stocky and swarthy like most Forthwegians, and bore a perfectly ordinary Forthwegian name. Merwit glared; he was the sort who fought with a verbal meat-axe, and wasn’t used to getting pierced with a rapier of sarcasm. “He’s got a bunch of Kaunian lickspittles around him,” he said at last. “They clouded his mind, that’s what they did, till he didn’t know up from yesterday. Why should he care a fart what happens to Valmiera and Jelgava? Algarve can blaze ’em down, for all I care. I’ll watch ’em burn and wave bye-bye.”

“Aye, King Penda’s lickspittles have done wonders for the Kaunians in Forthweg,” Gutauskas said, sardonic still. “They’ve made us all rich. They’ve made all our neighbors love us. If there were ten of us for one of you, Merwit, you’d understand better.” He paused. “No. You wouldn’t. Some people never understand anything.”

“I understand this.” Merwit made a large, hard fist. “I understand I can beat the stuffing out of you.” He started toward Gutauskas.

“No, curse it!” Leofsig grabbed him. “The redheads’ll come down on all of us if we brawl.”

Merwit surged in his grasp. “They won’t care if we stomp these sneering blond scuts. They can’t stand ’em, either.”

“In the case of Mezentio’s men, it is, I assure you, quite mutual,” Gutauskas said.

When Leofsig didn’t let go, Merwit slowly eased. “You just better watch your smart mouth, Kaunian,” he told Gutauskas, “or one fine day all of you stinking bastards in this camp’ll have your pretty yellow heads broken. You better pass the word, too, if you know what’s good for you.” He twisted free of Leofsig and stomped off.

Gutauskas watched him go, then turned back to Leofsig. “You may find your head broken for having taken our part.” He studied him like a natural philosopher examining some new species of insect. “Why did you? Forthwegians seldom do.” The Kaunian’s mouth twisted. “Folk not of our blood seldom do.”

Leofsig started to answer, then stopped with his mouth hanging foolishly open. He had no special love for Kaunians. His admiration for Kaunians was principally limited to their women in clinging trousers. He needed to think for a bit before he could figure out why he hadn’t joined Merwit against Gutauskas. At last, he said, “The Algarvians have all of us in the palm of their hand. If we start squabbling in here, they’ll laugh themselves sick.”

“That is sensible,” Gutauskas said after his own pause for thought. “You would be astonished at how seldom people are sensible.”

“My father says the same thing,” Leofsig answered.

“Does he?” Gutauskas’s eyebrow rose again. “And what, pray, does your father do, that he has acquired such wisdom?”

Is he laughing at me? Leofsig wondered. He decided Gutauskas wasn’t; it was merely the Kaunian’s manner. “He keeps books in Gromheort.”

“Ah.” Gutauskas nodded. “Aye. I can see reckoning up that on which men spend their silver and gold would give a man vivid insight into the manifold follies of his fellow men.”

“I suppose so,” said Leofsig, who hadn’t thought about it much.

He waited for Gutauskas to thank him for stopping the fight. The Kaunian did nothing of the sort. He acted as if Leofsig could hardly have acted differently. Kaunians never made it easy for their neighbors to get alone with them. Had they made it easy for their neighbors to get along with them, they wouldn’t have been the Kaunians he knew. He wondered what they would have been.

Before he could take that thought any further, a squad of Algarvian guards tramped into the barracks. In bad Forthwegian, one of them said. “We search. Maybe you try escape, eh? You go out.” The others supplemented the order with peremptory gestures with their sticks.

Out Leofsig went, Gutauskas trailing after him. Crashes and thuds inside said the Algarvians were tearing the barracks to pieces. If anyone in there was plotting an escape, Leofsig didn’t know about it. He did know what he’d find when the Algarvians let him and his fellow captives return: chaos. The Algarvians were good at tearing things to pieces. They didn’t bother setting them to rights again. That was the captives’ problem.

He strolled toward the fence around the camp—carefully, because the guards there would blaze without warning Forthwegians who came too close. The fence itself wasn’t particularly strong. Captives could rush it… if most of the ones who tried didn’t mind dying before they got there. A few captives had escaped, the Algarvians discovering it only when their counts came out wrong. Leofsig didn’t know how the escapees had done it. Had he known, he’d have done it himself.

“You there, soldier!” a Forthwegian officer snapped at him. “If you haven’t got anything better to do than waddle around like a drunken duck, draw a shovel and go fill in some slit trenches or dig some new ones. We’ve got no room in this camp for idle hands, and I’ll thank you to remember it.”

“Aye, sir,” Leofsig said resignedly. Even as captives, officers maintained the right to give common soldiers orders. The only difference was, even the brigadier who was the captives’ commandant had to obey the orders of the lowliest Algarvian trooper. Leofsig wondered how the brigadier, who was also a belted earl and a proud and touchy man, enjoyed being on the receiving end of commands. Maybe the experience would teach him something about what a common soldier’s life was like. Somehow, Leofsig doubted it.

The shovels made a sadly mismatched collection. A few were Forthwegian army issue; more, though, looked to have been looted from the farm surrounding the captives’ camp. The officer in charge of the latrines, an intense young captain, had nonetheless arranged them in a neat rack he’d built from scrap lumber.

“Ah, good,” he said as Leofsig made his slow approach. “It’s nasty work, to be sure, but someone’s got to do it. Choose your weapon, soldier.” He pointed toward the rack of shovels.

“Aye, sir,” Leofsig said again, and took as long as he could deciding among them. No one expected a captive to move fast; on what the Algarvians deigned to feed them, the captives couldn’t move fast. Leofsig knew as much, and took advantage of it.

“Now get to it,” said the captain, who probably hadn’t been deceived. As Leofsig started off toward the noisome trenches, the officer spoke again, this time with curiosity in his voice: “What did you do to get sent over here? The redheads mostly give this duty to Kaunians.”

“It wasn’t one of the redheads,” Leofsig said sheepishly. “It was one of our own officers. I don’t suppose I looked busy enough to suit him.”

“Seeing how you went about getting a shovel there, I can’t say I’m surprised,” the captain answered. He sounded more amused than angry; Leofsig hadn’t done anything drastic enough to deserve more punishment than latrine duty in a captives’ camp. After a moment, the captain went on, “Maybe it’s just as well you got nabbed. Seeing you, the Kaunians won’t think they’re the only ones getting stuck with the shit detail.”

“Just as well for you, maybe, sir,” Leofsig said, “but I don’t see how it’s just as well for me.”

“Go on,” the Forthwegian officer said again. “You’re not going to get me to waste any more of my time arguing with you.”

Leofsig wouldn’t have minded doing exactly that. Since he hadn’t managed it, he went off to work. He wished he could hold his nose and dig at the same time. A couple of Kaunians in trousers were already working among the slit trenches. The captain in charge of the latrines had been right; they seemed surprised to have a Forthwegian for company. Leofsig started filling in a trench. Flies rose, resentful, in buzzing clouds. Seeing he was doing the same thing they were, the Kaunians went back to it themselves. Leofsig noted that with some small relief, then forgot about them. He was working as fast as he could now, to get the job over with. If the Kaunians liked that, fine. If they didn’t, he thought, too cursed bad.

“You’ve got the wrong man, I tell you!” the prisoner shouted as Bembo marched him up the stairs of the constabulary building in central Tricarico. Bembo had clapped manacles on him; they clanked with every step he climbed.

When the prisoner’s complaints started to get on Bembo’s nerves, he pulled the club off his belt and whacked it into the palm of his hand. “Do you want to see how loud you can yell with a mouthful of broken teeth?” he asked. The prisoner suddenly fell silent. Bembo smiled.

At the top of the stairs, Bembo gave him a shove that took him into the door face first. Clucking at the prisoner’s clumsiness, Bembo opened the door and gave him another shove. This one sent him through the doorway.

The constabulary sergeant at the front desk was at least as portly as Bembo. “Well, well,” he said. “What have we here?” Like a lot of questions Algarvians asked, that one was for rhetorical effect. The next one wasn’t: “Why’d you haul in our dear friend Martusino this time, Bembo?”

“Loitering in front of a jeweler’s, Sergeant,” Bembo answered.

“Why, you lying sack of guts!” Martusino yelled. He addressed the sergeant: “I was just walking past the place, Pesaro—I swear on my mother’s grave. That last stretch of Reform did the trick for me. I’ve gone straight, I have.”

He wasn’t so persuasive as he might have been; the manacles kept him from talking with his hands. Sergeant Pesaro looked dubious. Bembo snarled. “Oh, he’s gone straight, all right—straight back to his old tricks. After I spotted him, I grabbed him and searched him. He had these in his belt pouch.” Bembo reached into his own pouch and pulled out three golden rings. One was a plain band, one set with a polished, faceted piece of jet, and one with a fair-sized sapphire.

“I never saw them before,” the prisoner said.

Pesaro inked a pen and started to write. “Suspicion of burglary,” he said. “Suspicion of intent to commit burglary. Maybe they’ll get sick of this and finally hang you, Martusino. It’d be about time, if anybody cares what I think.”

“This fat son of a sow is framing an innocent man!” Martusino cried. “He planted those rings on me, the stinking lump of dung. Like I just said, I never saw ’em before in my life, and there’s not a soul can prove I did.”

Being a constable required Bembo to take more abuse than most Algarvians would tolerate, as it let him deal out abuse with more impunity than most Algarvians enjoyed. But he took only so much. Sack of guts had come up to the edge of the line and fat son of a sow went over it. He pulled out his club again and hit Martusino a good lick. The prisoner howled.

“Struck while resisting arrest,” Pesaro noted, and scribbled another line on the form he was filling out. Martusino yelled louder than ever, partly from pain, partly from outrage. Pesaro shook his head. “Oh, shut up, why don’t you? Take him for his pretty picture, Bembo, and then to the lockup, so I don’t have to listen to him any more.”

“I’ll do that, Sergeant. He’s giving me a headache, too.” Bembo gestured with the club. “Go on, get moving, or I’ll give you another taste.”

Martusino got moving. Bembo escorted him to the recording section, to get the particulars on him down in permanent form. A pretty little sketch artist took his likeness. Bembo marveled at the way she could get a man’s essence on to paper with a few deft strokes of pencil and charcoal stick. It wasn’t sorcery, not in any conventional sense of the word, but it seemed miraculous all the same.

He also marveled at the way the sketch artist filled out her tunic. “Why won’t you go out to supper with me, Saffa?” he asked, not quite whining but not far from it, either.

“Because I don’t feel like wrestling,” Saffa answered. “Why don’t I just slap your face now? Then it’ll be as if we’d gone to supper.” She bent her head to her work.

Martusino was rash enough to laugh. Bembo trod on his foot, hard. The prisoner yelped. Bembo did his best to grind off a toe or two, but didn’t quite succeed. Saffa kept right on sketching. Such things happened all the time in constabulary stations. Sometimes worse things happened. Everyone knew that. No one saw any need to make a fuss about it.

When she was done with Martusino’s portrait, she told Bembo, “You’ll have to take the manacles off him for a little while. He needs to sign the sketch, and we’ll need fingermarks from him, too.”

One of the constables in the recording section covered Martusino with a small stick while Bembo unlocked the manacles. Unwillingly, the prisoner scrawled his name below the picture of him Saffa had drawn. Even more unwillingly, he let her ink his fingertips and set the impressions of the marks on the paper beside the sketch.

“You’re out of business for a while now, chum,” Bembo said genially. “Walk off with anything else that doesn’t belong to you, and our mages will lead us straight to your door.” The manacles closed on Martusino’s wrists again.

“I didn’t take anything this time,” the prisoner protested.

“Aye, and they get babies from out behind the fig trees,” Bembo said. He and Martusino both knew a crooked wizard could break the link between a criminal and his sketch, signature, and fingermarks. Having signature and fingermarks to go with the image, though, made breaking the link harder and more expensive for the fellow who wanted it broken.

“We’re done here,” Saffa said.

Bembo took Martusino off to the lockup. Martusino knew the way; he’d been there before. As he and Bembo drew near, the bored-looking warder hastily closed a small book and shoved it into a desk drawer. Bembo caught just a glimpse of a bare female backside on the cover. “I’ve got a present for you, Frontino,” he said, and gave the prisoner a shove.

“Just what I always wanted.” Frontino’s expression belied his words. He examined Martusino. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this lug, but I’ll be cursed if I can remember his name. Who are you, pal?”

Martusino hesitated for a split second. Before he could give a false name, Bembo hefted the club. Martusino abruptly decided playing the game by the rules would be a good idea. He answered the warder’s questions without backtalk after that. Bembo had questions to answer, too, some of them duplicating the ones Pesaro had asked. When they were over, Frontino took a small stick out of the desk drawer—Bembo got another glimpse of that interesting book cover—and aimed it at Martusino. At his nod, Bembo undid the manacles. The constable also held his club at the ready.

“Strip off,” the warder told Martusino. “Come on, come on—everything. You know the drill, so don’t make me tell you anything twice.”

Martusino shed shoes and stockings, then pulled off tunic, kilt, and finally drawers. “Skin and bones,” Bembo said disdainfully. “Nothing but skin and bones.” The prisoner gave him a dirty look, but seemed to think another comment would earn him another clout. He was right.

Frontino rose, gathered up the belongings, and stuffed them into a cloth bag. Then he threw Martusino a tunic, a kilt, and cloth slippers all striped in black and white—lockup garb. Sullenly, the prisoner put it on. It didn’t fit very well. He knew better than to complain. “The judge decides you’re innocent, you’ll get your own junk back then,” the warder said. He and Bembo both grinned; they knew how unlikely that was. He went on, “Otherwise, come see me when you get out of Reform. I may have some trouble remembering where I stashed it, but I expect I will if you ask me nice.” If you pay me off, he meant.

Helpfully, Bembo said, “Pesaro thinks they may just up and hang him this time.”

Martusino scowled. The warder shrugged. “Well, in that case he probably won’t be coming back for it. It won’t go to waste.” Bembo nodded. In that case, Frontino would keep what he wanted and sell the rest. Warders rarely died poor.

“They won’t hang me,” Martusino said, though he sounded more hopeful than confident.

“Come on.” Frontino unlocked the big iron lock on the outer door to the lockup. “Go on in.” Martusino obeyed. Bembo and the warder watched him through the barred window. The inner door had a sorcerous lock. The warder mumbled the words to the releasing spell. The inner door flew open. Martusino went in among the rest of the prisoners awaiting their punishment. Frontino mumbled again. The door slammed shut.

“What would happen if a prisoner who knew some magecraft went to work on that inner door?” Bembo asked.

“It’s supposed to be proof against anyone below a second-rank mage,” the warder answered, “and fancy mages don’t go into the ordinary lockup—you’d best believe they don’t, Bembo my boy. We have special holes for them.”

“I’ve heard fancy whores say things like that,” Bembo remarked.

Frontino snorted and gave him a shot in the ribs with an elbow. “I didn’t know you were such a funny fellow,” he said.

“I don’t want too many people to know,” Bembo said. “If they did, I’d have to go up on the stage and get rich and famous, and I don’t suppose I could stand that. I’d rather stay a simple constable.”

“You’re pretty simple, all right,” Frontino agreed.

Bembo laughed, but not the way the warder thought he did: he’d expected Frontino to say something like that, and was amused to be right. Something else crossed his mind. “Say, what was that you were reading?” he asked. “It looked pretty interesting.”

“Talk about your fancy whores,” the warder said, and pulled the book out of the desk. When Bembo could tear his eyes away from that arresting cover illustration, he discovered the romance was called Putinai: the Emperor’s Lady. Frontino gave it his most enthusiastic recommendation: “She does more screwing in a week than an army of cabinetmakers could in a year.”

“Sounds good.” Bembo read the fine print under the title: “Based on the exciting true history of the turbulent Kaunian Empire.” He shook his head. “Kaunians have always been filthy people, I guess.”

“I’d say so,” the warder agreed. “Putinai does everything, and loves every bit of it, too. You can borrow the book after I’d done with it—if you promise to give it back.”

“I will, I will,” Bembo assured him, with something less than perfect sincerity.

Frontino must have recognized that, for he said, “Or you could spring for one yourself. Seems like every third romance these days is about how vile the Kaunian Empire was and how the bold, fierce Algarvian mercenaries finally overthrew it. Our ancestors were tough bastards, if half what you read is true.”

“Aye,” Bembo said. “Well, maybe I will buy one. A little extra cash in my pockets wouldn’t hurt, though.”

“Maybe we can take care of that.” Frontino got out the bag in which he’d stored Martusino’s clothes and effects, and took from it the burglar’s belt pouch. He and Bembo divided up the silver and the couple of small goldpieces they found inside.

“I get the odd coin,” Bembo said, scooping it up. “Pesaro’s going to want his cut, too.” Frontino nodded. That was how things worked in Tricarico.

Dragons spiraled high above Tirgoviste harbor—above all the harbors of Sibiu—keeping watch against Algarvian attack from the air or from the sea. They reassured Commander Cornelu whenever he looked up into the heavens. No doubt mages behind closed doors also probed for any disturbance in the ley lines that would mean an Algarvian fleet was setting forth against the island kingdom. But, because the mages were hidden away, Cornelu had to assume they were on the job. The dragons he could see.

Today, he couldn’t see them so well as he would have liked: mist and low, thin clouds made them almost disappear. The weather, which would only worsen as autumn gave way to winter, would make it harder for the dragons to give early warning and would put a greater burden on the mages’ shoulders.

Cornelu frowned. Magic was all very well, but he wanted the eyes in the sky to be as effective as they could, too. Seamen who took chances did not often live to take very many. That held equally true for fishermen in sailboats, sailors in cruisers skimming along the ley lines, and leviathan riders like himself.

Musing on the wisdom of taking few chances, Cornelu tripped on a cobblestone and almost rolled down the hill into the sea. Tirgoviste rose swiftly from the shore; some of the bright-painted shops set on hillsides showed noticeably more wall on the side nearer the Narrow Sea than on the other.

A wine merchant had a QUITTING BUSINESS banner stretched across his window. Cornelu ducked in to see what bargains he might pick up. Sibiu was a merchant kingdom; lying where it did, it could scarcely be anything else. The scent of a bargain fired Cornelu’s blood hardly less than the scent of his wife’s favorite perfume.

He found few bargains in the wine shop, only empty shelves. “Why did you put the banner up?” he asked the merchant.

“Where am I going to find any more stock?” the fellow answered bitterly. “Almost all I sold were Algarvian vintages, and the war’s blazed our trade there right through the heart. Oh, I can get in a few bottles from Valmiera and Jelgava, but that’s all I can get: a few. They’re expensive as all getout, too—expensive for me to buy, and too expensive to sell very fast. Might as well pack it in and try another line of work. I couldn’t do worse, believe me.”

“King Mezentio would be lording it over us if we didn’t do something about him,” Cornelu said. “We almost waited too long in the Six Years’ War. We don’t dare take that chance again.”

“You can talk like that—King Burebistu pays your bills.” The wine merchant’s scowl was gloomier than the weather. “Who will pay mine, when the war cuts me off from my source of supply? You know as well as I do: nobody.”

Cornelu left in a hurry. He wished he’d never gone into the shop. He wanted to think of Sibiu as united in the effort against Algarve. He knew that wasn’t so, but thinking of it as being so helped him do his job better. Getting his nose rubbed in the truth had the opposite effect, one he didn’t want.

He hurried down the hill to the harbor. Gulls scavenging garbage from the gutters rose in mewing, squawking clouds as he strode past them. He hoped none of them would avenge itself on his hat or the sleeve of his tunic. As if to give that hope the lie, a dropping splashed on to the cobbles only a yard or so from his shoe. He hurried on, and reached Commodore Delfinu’s office unbefouled.

After the two men exchanged salutes and kisses on the cheeks, Cornelu asked, “Sir, have we had any better luck in getting leviathans into the Barian ports?”

Glumly, Delfinu shook his head. “No, and we’ve lost more men trying, too, as you will probably have heard.” When Cornelu nodded, the head of the Leviathan Service went on, “The Algarvians have Imola and Lungri as tightly locked up as if they were virgin daughters. They keep dragons in the air over them all the time, too, so we can’t learn from above what they’re doing, either.”

“Curse them,” Cornelu said. Dragons above Tirgoviste were one thing, dragons above the ports the enemy had taken for his own something else again—something ominous. Cornelu took a deep breath. “If you like, sir, Eforiel and I will cross the strait and see what they’re up to—and, if you like, put down some eggs to keep them from doing it, whatever it is.”

Delfinu shook his head again. “I am ordering no man across the strait to Lungri and Imola. I have lost too many. The Algarvians are not so skilled in using leviathans as we are”—pride rang in his voice—“but they have become all too skilled at hunting them down.” The pride leaked away, to be replaced by chagrin.

“My lord, you need not order me.” Cornelu drew himself up to stiff attention. “I volunteer my leviathan and myself.”

Delfinu bowed. “Commander, Sibiu is fortunate to have you in her service. But I will not take advantage of your courage in this way, as if I were a cold-blooded Unkerlanter or a calculating Kuusaman. The odds of success do not justify the risk… and your wife is with child, is it not so?”

“Sir, it is so,” Cornelu said. “But I am not with child myself, and I took oath to serve King Burebistu and his kingdom as best I could. What the kingdom requires of me, that shall I do.”

“This the kingdom does not require of you,” Delfinu said. “I have no desire to make your wife grow old a widow, nor to make your child grow up not knowing its father. I will send you into danger: indeed, I will send you into danger without a qualm. But I will not send you to almost certain death when no good to king or kingdom is likely to come from it.”

Cornelu bowed in turn. “My lord, I am lucky to have you as my superior. Unlike the no—” He stopped, unsure how Count Delfinu would take what he’d been on the point of saying.

Even though he hadn’t said it, Delfinu figured out what it was. “Unlike the nobles in the Kaunian kingdoms, ours are supposed to know a little something before they put on their fancy uniforms? Is that what you had in mind, Commander?” To Cornelu’s relief, he laughed.

“Well, aye, sir—something on that order, anyhow,” Cornelu admitted.

“Kaunian blood is older than ours, which makes them take more pride in it than we do,” Delfinu said. “If you ask my opinion, being older only makes it thinner, but no Kaunian has seen fit to ask my opinion. For my part, I confess to losing very little sleep over theirs. Personally, I feel more sympathy for Algarve, but I know my kingdom’s needs come ahead of my personal sympathies.”

“Myself, I have no great use for the Kaunian kingdoms,” Cornelu said, “but I have no use at all for Algarve. Did King Mezentio get his hands on us, he would squeeze till our eyes popped out of our heads.”

“Since I think you are right about that, I can hardly argue with you,” Delfinu said. “But, for the time being, I cannot in good conscience send you forth against the Barian ports, either. Enjoy your time off duty, Commander, and keep in mind that it is not likely to last.”

“Very well, my lord.” Cornelu saluted again. “I think I’ll draw a bucket from the rest crate and pay Eforiel a visit in her pen. She’ll think I’ve forgotten her, poor thing. I don’t want that.”

“No, indeed.” Count Delfinu returned the salute. “Very well, Commander, you are dismissed from my presence.”

The chamber in which the large Leviathan Services rest crate sat had a strong fish smell. The smell would have been much stronger had the rest crate been other than what it was. Cornelu reached in and drew forth a big bucket full of mackerel and squid, all of them as fresh as when they’d been pulled from the sea. He lugged it down to the wire-enclosed pen where his leviathan slowly swam back and forth, back and forth.

Eforiel swam to the little wharf that jutted out into the pen. She stuck her head out of the water and examined Cornelu first with one small black eye, then with the other. “Aye, it’s me,” he said, and reached out to pat the end of her tapered snout. “It’s me, all right, and I’ve brought you presents.”

He tossed her a squid. Those enormous jaws came open. They closed on the squid with a wet smacking noise. When they opened again, the squid was gone. Eforiel emitted a soft, pleased grunt. Cornelu fed her a mackerel. She approved of that, too. He kept tossing her treats till the bucket was empty.

He had to show her it was empty. “Sorry—no more,” he said. Now the noise she made, though like nothing that could come from a human throat, was full of disappointment. “Sorry,” he repeated, and patted her again. She didn’t take his hand off at the wrist—or his arm at the shoulder. She was a clever, well-trained beast.

Commodore Delfinu had as much as ordered Cornelu to have a good time while he wasn’t assailing the Algarvians. After taking the empty bucket back for scrubbing, he headed away from the harbor, off to the quarters he shared with his wife. He could think of no one in whose company he would sooner be.

Costache was baking when he walked in; the spicy smell of cakes made the small, square rooms in which they lived seem anything but military. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said. “I didn’t know whether Delfinu would send you out or not.”

“He didn’t,” Cornelu said. That Delfinu had kept him in Tirgoviste because he judged going out to the Barian ports a suicide mission was nothing his wife needed to know. He walked over to Costache, took her in his arms, and gave her a kiss, leaning over the swell of her belly to plant it on her mouth. With a grin, he told her, “I’m glad I’m taller than you are. Otherwise, I’d have to sneak up on you from behind instead of doing this the regular way.”

“If you’d sneaked up on me from behind instead of doing it the regular way, I wouldn’t be expecting now,” Costache retorted. Her green eyes sparkled. Now that she wasn’t throwing up every morning any more, pregnancy agreed with her. Along with her belly, her cheeks were rounder than they had been. To disguise that a bit, she let her red-gold hair fall straight to her shoulders, where she had worn it piled high on her head.

Cornelu did step behind her. He reached around and cupped her breasts in his hands. They were fuller and rounder than they had been, too. They were also more tender—he had to be careful not to squeeze too hard. When he was careful, they were more sensitive than they had been; Costache’s breath sighed out.

“You see?” Cornelu murmured into her ear. “From behind isn’t so bad.” Having murmured into that ear, he nibbled it.

Costache turned and put her arms around him. “And how are things from in front?” she asked.

Things from in front were fine. In its generosity, the kingdom of Sibiu had furnished them with two military cots, which they’d pushed together. With Cornelu and Costache both eager, the cots might have been a fine, soft bed at a fancy hostel. Before long, his wife gasped and quivered beneath Cornelu. Her belly grew hard and firm as her womb tightened during her spasm of pleasure. Cornelu spent himself a moment later.

He didn’t let his weight down on her, as he would have before she was with child. “We won’t be able to do it like that much longer,” he said, and set a hand on her belly to show why. “Someone in there is getting in the way.” As if indignant, the baby kicked. Cornelu and Costache both laughed, as content as any two people could be during wartime.