Rulers of the Darkness

Thirteen

Marshal Rathar had stayed in Durrwangen to direct the twin fights on each flank of the salient from his headquarters for as long as he could stand- and, indeed, for a little longer than that. As long as both battles were going furiously, he didn't see much point to directly overseeing one or the other. He might have guessed wrong as to which would prove the more important, and would have no one but himself to blame. King Swemmel would have no one but him to blame, either.

Now, though, the Algarvians plainly wouldn't break through in the east. They'd thrown everything they had at Braunau. They'd broken into the village several times. They'd never gone past it, and they didn't hold it at the moment. Rathar had a good notion of the reserves the redheads had left on that side of the bulge, and of his own forces over there. Braunau and that whole side of the salient would stand.

Here in the west, though… Here on the western side of the bulge, the Unkerlanters had badly hurt Mezentio's men. They'd killed a lot of enemy behemoths, and they'd cost the Algarvians a lot of time fighting their way through one heavily defended line after another.

But on this flank, unlike the other, the Algarvians hadn't had to halt. They were still coming, they'd gained the high ground he'd hoped to deny them, and they might yet break through and race to cut off the salient in the style they'd shown the past two summers.

"We'll just have to stop them, that's all," he said to General Vatran.

"Oh, aye, as easy as boiling water for tea," Vatran said, and took a sip from the mug in front of him. His grimace filled his face with so many wrinkles, it might almost have belonged to an aging gargoyle. "Don't I wish! Don't we all wish!"

"We have to do it," Rathar repeated. He got up from the folding table at which he'd been sitting with Vatran and paced back and forth under the plum trees that shielded his new field headquarters from the prying eyes of dragonfliers. The plateau up here sloped down toward the ground the Algarvians had already won. Gullies, some of them dry, more with streams at their bottom, cut up the flat land. Most of it was given over to fields and meadows, but orchards like this one and little clumps of forest varied the landscape. Rathar sat his jaw. "We have to do it, and we cursed well will." He raised his voice: "Crystallomancer!"

"Aye, lord Marshal?" The young mage came running, his crystal ready to hand.

"Get me General Gurmun, in charge of the reserve force of behemoths," Rathar said.

"Aye, sir." The crystallomancer murmured the charm he needed. Light flared from the crystal. A face appeared in it: another crystallomancer's face. Rathar's man spoke to the other fellow, who hurried away. Less than a minute later, General Gurmun's hard visage appeared in the sphere of glass. Rathar's crystallomancer nodded. "Go ahead, lord Marshal."

Without preamble, Rathar said, "General, I want all your behemoths moving to me and to the advancing Algarvians in an hour. Can you do it?"

If Gurmun said no, Rathar intended to sack him on the spot. Gurmun had first won command of an army in the war against the Zuwayzin, when his then-superior proved too drunk to deliver an attack when Rathar wanted it. Drunkenness wasn't Gurmun's vice. He hadn't shown many vices in the three and a half years since, but now would be the worst possible moment for one to make itself known.

"Sir, we can," Gurmun said. "Inside half an hour, in fact. We'll hit the redheads an hour after that. By the powers above, we'll hit 'em hard, too."

"Good enough." Rathar gestured to his crystallomancer, who broke the etheric link. Gurmun's image vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.

Vatran whistled, a low, soft note. "The whole reserve of behemoths, lord Marshal?" He pointed west, toward Mezentio's own oncoming horde of behemoths. "The field won't be big enough to hold all the beasts battling on it."

Rathar didn't answer. He walked to the edge of the plum orchard and swung a spyglass in the direction Vatran had pointed. Advancing wedges of Algarvian behemoths leaped toward his eye. The redheads weren't having things all their own way- Unkerlanter behemoths and footsoldiers and dragons made them pay for every yard they gained. But Mezentio's men had the bit between their teeth. Like any good troops, they could feel it. On they came. If the reserves couldn't stop them…

If the reserves couldn't stop them, odds were Vatran or Gurmun or some other general would get the big stars on his collar, the green sash, and the ceremonial sword that went with being Marshal of Unkerlant. Swemmel had been more forgiving of Rathar than of any other officer in his command, perhaps- but only perhaps- because he truly believed Rathar wouldn't try to steal the throne. But he was unlikely to tolerate failure here. Sitting on the throne, Rathar knew he too would have been unlikely to tolerate failure here.

Unkerlanter dragons struck at the Algarvian behemoths. Algarvian dragons promptly struck at the Unkerlanters, keeping them too busy to deliver the blows they should have. Rathar cursed under his breath. He'd hoped to have gained control of the air by this point in the fighting. No such luck. As far as he could tell, neither side dominated the air above the Durrwangen bulge.

He turned to the southeast, looking for some sign of the arrival of Gurmun's behemoths. No such luck there, either. The plum trees screened him away from a good view in that direction. He looked back toward the Algarvians and scowled. If Gurmun didn't get here when he'd said he would, this headquarters would come under attack before long.

Even though Rathar couldn't see much to the southeast, he knew to the minute when the behemoth reserve began to draw near. Half, maybe more than half, of the Algarvian dragons broke off their fight with their Unkerlanter counterparts and flew off to the southeast as fast as they could go. He might not have seen Gurmun coming, but they had.

Rathar ran back to the table where Vatran still stat. As he ran, he shouted for the crystallomancer again. "The commanders of the dragon wings," he ordered when the minor mage hurried up to him. Then he spoke urgently into the crystal: "The redheads kept you from savaging their behemoths too badly. By the powers above, you've got to keep them from punishing ours before they reach the field. If you fail there, we're liable to be ruined."

One after another, the wing commander promised to obey. Rathar hurried back to the edge of the orchard. This time, Vatran came with him. Fewer Unkerlanter dragons were attacking the Algarvian behemoths. He supposed that meant- he hoped it meant- the Unkerlanters were holding the Algarvian dragons away from their behemoths. "Curse the redheads," he growled. "They're altogether too good at what they do."

Vatran set a hand on his arm. "Lord Marshal, you've done everything you could do here," he said. "Now it's time to let the men do what they can do."

"I want to grab a stick and fight alongside them," Rathar said. "I want to be everywhere at once, and fighting in all those different places."

"You are," Vatran told him. "Everybody out there" -he waved- "is doing what he's doing because your orders told him to do it."

"Not everybody," Rathar said. Vatran raised a shaggy white eyebrow. The marshal explained: "The Algarvians, powers below eat 'em, don't want to listen to me at all."

Vatran laughed, though Rathar hadn't meant it as a joke. Then, at the same time, he and Vatran both cocked their heads to one side, listening hard to a low but building rumble to the southeast. Or was it listening? Vatran said, "I'm not sure I hear that with my ears or feel it through the soles of my feet, you know what I mean?" Rathar nodded; that said it better than he could have.

He stepped out from the cover of the plum trees and looked in the direction of the rumble again. A couple of Algarvian behemoths had drawn close enough for their crews to spy him. Eggs flew toward him, but burst a couple of hundred yards short.

And then he whooped like a schoolboy unexpectedly dismissed early. "Here they come!" he shouted. "Gurmun's on time after all."

Now that their crewmen had seen the Algarvian enemy, the behemoths from Gurmun's reserve- several hundred of them, a whole army's worth- broke into a furious gallop, to get into the fight quick as they could. They cut in behind the leading Algarvian behemoths, moving so fast that the redheads didn't have time to deploy against them.

"Look at that!" Hardly aware he was doing it, Rathar pounded Vatran on the back. "Will you look at that? There hasn't been a charge like that this whole bloody war. Some of them are even using their horns to fight with."

If the field had seemed too small with only the Algarvian behemoths moving forward on it, it suddenly got more than twice as crowded. Rathar knew a moment's pity for the footsoldiers on that field. Neither side's behemoths were likely to. Their crews tossed eggs and blazed at one another from ridiculously short ranges. As Rathar had said, some gored others right through their armor, as if they were unicorns back in the days before mages learned how to make sticks.

Grass fires sprang up in a dozen places at once, making it harder for Rathar to tell what was going on even with his spyglass. But he could see that the Algarvians, as was their way, didn't stay surprised long. They fought back furiously against Gurmun's behemoths. Wedges of Algarvian beasts would pop out from behind orchards and copses, toss eggs and blaze at the foe, and then take cover again. Gurmun didn't need long to adopt the same tactics.

Overhead, both sides' dragons battled to something close to a draw. The Algarvians sacrificed Kaunians. Addanz and the other Unkerlanter mages sacrificed their own luckless people to answer. The sorcerous duel, the duel of horrors, was also as near even as made no difference.

That left it up to the behemoths. They surged back and forth over the plain as the sun crawled across the sky. If the redheads had enough beasts left after shattering Gurmun's reserve, their own attack might go on. But Rathar knew that part of their force of behemoths remained some miles to the southwest. It wouldn't get here while today's fight lasted. Gurmun had the advantage of numbers, the Algarvians, in spite of everything, the advantage of skill. With two heavy weights flung into the pans of the scale, they jounced up and down, now one higher, now the other.

An Unkerlanter behemoth crew blazed down an Algarvian beast. The other Algarvian behemoths in that part of the field attacked the Unkerlanters, badly wounding their behemoth. The driver, the only crewman left on it, charged the Algarvians. He blazed down one and gored another in the flank before his own behemoth finally toppled.

By then, the sun had sunk low in the southwest. Seen through thick smoke, it was red as blood. Rathar wondered where the day had gone. He turned to Vatran. "We haven't broken them, but we've held them," he said. "They aren't going to come pouring through in a great tide, the way we feared they would."

Wearily, Vatran nodded. "No doubt you're right, lord Marshal. They can't hit us another blow like this one- they've left too many men and beasts dead on the field."

"Aye." Marshal Rathar preferred not to dwell on how many Unkerlanter men and beasts lay dead on the fields of the Durrwangen bulge. Whatever the cost, though, he and the soldiers of his kingdom had stopped the Algarvians here. Which meant… He called for the crystallomancer. When the man came up to him, he said, "Connect me to the general commanding our army east and south of the Algarvian forces on the eastern flank of the salient." And when that officer's image appeared in the crystal, Rathar spoke four words: "Let the counterattack begin."

Like the rest of the Algarvian constables in Gromheort, Bembo avidly followed news of the big battles down in the south of Unkerlant. News sheets from across the nearby border with Algarve were brought into town daily, so the constables didn't have to go to the trouble of learning to read Forthwegian.

For the first several days of the fight near Durrwangen, everything seemed to go well. The news sheets reported victories on the ground and in the air, and their maps showed King Mezentio's armies advancing. The news sheets in Forthwegian must have said the same thing, for the locals, who didn't love their Algarvian occupiers, strode through Gromheort with long faces.

And then, little by little, the news sheets stopped talking about the battle. They didn't proclaim the great, crushing triumph all the Algarvians had looked for. "I want to know what's going on," Constable Almonio complained one morning while he and his comrades were queued up for breakfast.

Bembo stood right behind him. Sergeant Pesaro stood behind Bembo. Turning to Pesaro, Bembo said, "Touching to see such innocence in this age of the world, isn't it?"

"It is indeed," Pesaro said, as if Almonio weren't there. "But then, he's the tender-headed one, remember? Almonio wouldn't hurt a fly, or even a Kaunian."

That made Bembo laugh. It made Almonio furious. "I keep trying to behave like a human being, in spite of what the war is doing to all of us," he snapped.

"Like a drunken human being, a lot of the time," Bembo said. Almonio really didn't have the stomach for rounding up Kaunians. He poured down the spirits whenever he had to do it, to keep from dwelling on what he'd done.

But he was sober now, sober and angry. "I still don't know what the two of you are talking about," he said, that edge still in his voice.

"Like a stupid human being," Pesaro said, which only made Almonio angrier. Pesaro, though, was a sergeant, so Almonio couldn't show that anger so readily, not if he had the slightest notion of what was good for him. With a sigh both sad and sarcastic, Pesaro went on, "He really doesn't get it."

Almonio threw his hands in the air. He just missed knocking another constable's mess tin out of his hands, which would have given the other fellow reason to be angry at him. "What is there to get?" he demanded. "All I want to know is how the battle turned out, and the miserable news sheets won't tell me."

"A natural-born innocent," Bembo said again, to Pesaro. Then he gave his attention back to Almonio. "My dear fellow, if you really need it spelled out for you, I'll do the job: if the news sheets don't give us any news, it's because there's no good news to give. There. Is that simple enough, or shall I draw pictures?"

"Oh," Almonio said, in a very small voice. "But if the Unkerlanters have beaten us down at Durrwangen, if they've beaten us in the summertime…" His voice trailed away altogether.

"We're constables," Sergeant Pesaro said, perhaps as much to reassure himself as to make Almonio (and, incidentally, Bembo) feel better. "We've got a job to do here, and an important job it is, too. Whatever happens hundreds of miles away doesn't matter a bit to us. Not a bit, do you hear me?"

Almonio nodded. So did Bembo. He wasn't so sure his sergeant was right, but he wanted to think so. Anything else was too depressing to contemplate. The wine the refectory served with breakfast was nasty, sour stuff, but he had an extra mug anyhow. Almonio had an extra two or three; Bembo wasn't keeping close track.

When he went out on patrol with Oraste, he found his partner in a dour mood. Oraste was often dour, but more so than usual today. At last, Bembo asked him, "What's gnawing at you?"

Oraste walked on for several paces without answering. Bembo thought he wouldn't answer, but after a bit he did: "How in blazes are we supposed to win the war now?"

"What do you think I am?" Bembo demanded, so fiercely that even rugged Oraste gave back a pace. "A general? King Mezentio? I don't know anything about that business. All I know is, the bigwigs in Trapani will come up with something. They always have. What's one more time?"

"They'd better," Oraste growled, as if he'd hold Bembo responsible if they didn't. "That was what should have happened in this big battle. It didn't. How many more chances do we get?"

"As long as they're fighting way inside Unkerlant, I'm not going to worry about it," Bembo said. "If you've got any sense, you won't worry about it, either. You're the one who was always saying that if I didn't like it here, I could get a stick and go fight the Unkerlanters. Now I'll tell you the same cursed thing."

"Powers below eat you, Bembo," Oraste said, surprisingly little rancor in his voice. "You were supposed to say something funny and stupid, so I could stop brooding about the way things are going. But you don't like it any more than I do, do you?"

Instead of answering that straight out, Bembo said, "I had to explain the facts of life to Almonio this morning. He couldn't figure them out for himself."

"Why am I not surprised? That one…" Oraste grimaced. "The other question is, how come I'm jealous of him?"

Bembo didn't answer that at all.

Shouts from around a corner made them both yank out their sticks and start to run. Bembo was amazed at the relief with which he ran. Catching thieves and robbers was why he was here in Gromheort. As long as he was doing his job, he wouldn't have to worry about anything else.

"What's going on here?" he yelled when he got to the two shouting Forthwegians.

Of necessity, he spoke Algarvian. Both Forthwegians looked as if they understood the language. They were middle-aged, and had probably had to learn it in school back in the days before the Six Years' War; this part of Forthweg had belonged to Algarve then. After glancing at each other, they spoke together: "Why, nothing."

"Don't get wise with us," Oraste said. "You'll be sorry if you do." If he could pummel or blaze a Forthwegian or two, he wouldn't have to think about the way things looked in Unkerlant.

One of the Forthwegians said, "It was nothing, really."

"We were just having a bit of a disagreement," the other one said. "Sorry we got so loud."

Bembo put away his stick, but drew his bludgeon from its loop on his belt and thwacked it into the palm of his left hand. "You heard my partner. Don't get wise with us. We're not in any mood to waste time with Forthwegians who want to act cute. Have you got that?" On reflection, Bembo wondered if he should have put it that way. What it meant was, We're jumpy as cats because the war against Unkerlant isn't going the way we'd like. The Forthwegians didn't have to be theoretical sorcerers to figure that out, either.

But Bembo and Oraste had clubs. They had sticks. They had the power of the occupying authority behind them. Even if the Forthwegians were privately contemptuous, they didn't dare show what they were thinking. One of them said, "Sorry, sir." The other one nodded to show he was sorry, too.

"That's better," Bembo said. "Now, I'm going to try this one more time, and I want a straight answer. What in blazes is going on here?"

"We're both oil merchants," one of the Forthwegians said. "Olive, almond, walnut, flax-seed, you name it. Oil. And we were arguing about which way prices were going to go on account of…" He paused. The pause stretched. He'd just admitted knowing things weren't going so well for Algarve. That wasn't very smart. Lamely, he finished, "…on account of the way things are."

"I'll tell you what you were doing," Bembo said. "You were disturbing the peace, that's what you were doing. Creating a disturbance. That happens to be a crime. We'll have to haul you up before a judge."

Both Forthwegians looked appalled, as he'd known they would. "Isn't there some other arrangement we might make?" asked the oil merchant who'd done most of the talking.

"Aye," Oraste rumbled. "We might not bother with a fornicating judge. We might whale the stuffing out of you ourselves instead." He sounded as if he'd enjoy pounding on the Forthwegians. The reason he sounded that way, as Bembo knew perfectly well, was that he would enjoy it.

Unlike Oraste, Bembo didn't usually beat people for the sport of it. He said, "Maybe you boys might find some reason why we wouldn't want to do that."

The oil merchants found several interesting reasons. Those reasons clinked in the constables' belt pouches as they went back to walking their beat. Oraste reached out and hit Bembo in the belly- not much of a punch, but the flesh gave a good deal under his fist. "You're soft," he remarked. "Soft in more ways than one."

"You just want to smash everything flat," Bembo answered. "They're oil merchants. They greased our palms. That's what they're for, right?"

"Funny," Oraste said. "Funny like a man with a wooden leg."

Bembo sent him an injured look. "When we get back to Tricarico, we'll be rich, or close to it, anyway. It's not like we've got a lot to spend our money on here. The wine and the spirits are cheap, and nobody wants to go to the brothel every night."

"Speak for yourself," Oraste said- like any Algarvian, he was vain about his manhood. "The whores here aren't as expensive as they are back home." His lip curled. "Of course, they aren't as pretty as they are back home, either."

Oh, I don't know. Bembo almost said it, remembering his steamy passage with Doldasai. He was vain about his manhood, too. But then he remembered he couldn't talk about that. Nobody'd grabbed her or her mother and father when the Algarvians raided the Kaunian quarter in Gromheort. From that, Bembo figured the blonds had got and used the sorcery that let them look like Forthwegians and slipped out of the quarter before the raids. Nobody'd ever said anything about their disappearance where he could hear, but some high-ranking officers wouldn't be happy that they weren't enjoying what he'd had once. Keeping his mouth shut came no easier for him than for any other boastful Algarvian, but a keen sense of self-preservation made him do it.

Their remaining time on the beat passed easily enough. When they got back to the constabulary barracks, Bembo pounced on the latest edition of the news sheet. "Ha!" he said. "Here's news of the fighting, or of some fighting, anyway."

"What's it say?" Oraste asked.

"I'll read it." Bembo did, in a deep, artificial, portentous voice: " 'In severe defensive struggles southeast of Durrwangen, Algarvian forces inflicted severe casualties on the foe. Despite heavy bombardment by egg-tossers and fierce attacks from Unkerlanter dragons and behemoths, his Majesty's forces withdrew to already prepared rearward positions, yielding only about a mile of ground and shortening their lines in the process.' " He returned to his normal tones to ask Oraste, "What do you make of that?"

His partner pondered, but not for long. "Sounds like a demon of a lot of dead soldiers to me."

"Ours or theirs?"

"Both," Oraste said.

Bembo gave forth with a theatrical sigh. "I was hoping you'd tell me something different, because that's what it sounds like to me, too."

"Where is everyone?" Krasta demanded of Colonel Lurcanio as the carriage pulled up in front of Viscount Valnu's house. She gave her Algarvian lover a peeved look. "Are you sure you got the date right?" She hoped- oh, how she hoped- Lurcanio had got it wrong. If he had, she'd never let him live it down.

But he nodded and pointed through the gloom. "A few carriages are there- do you see?" Even so, his voice was doubtful as he added, "I admit, I expected a good many more."

"Is someone else giving another entertainment?" Krasta asked.

Lurcanio shook his head. In dark night, with no street lamps, Krasta could barely see the motion. He said, "No. I would have heard of that. And if by some chance I did not, you would have."

He was right; Krasta realized as much at once. "We'll just have to find out, then, won't we?" she said as the carriage pulled to a stop. "Where everyone else has gone, I mean."

"Aye. So we will." Now Lurcanio's voice had an edge to it. "Perhaps people have not gone anywhere. Perhaps they have simply chosen not to come."

"Don't be ridiculous." Krasta didn't wait for him to hand her down, but descended from the carriage herself and hurried toward Valnu's house. Over her shoulder, she added, "Why would anybody be as stupid as that?"

Lurcanio caught up with her faster than she might have wanted. "There are times when you can be quite refreshingly naive," he remarked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said in some annoyance.

"I know. It's part of your charm," Lurcanio answered. Krasta would have snapped at him some more, but he'd already rung the bell. A moment later, the door swung open. One of Valnu's servants let them into the front hall. He closed the door behind them before opening the dark curtains at the end of the hallway that kept light from leaking out.

Krasta blinked at the bright lights the curtains revealed. She also blinked at Viscount Valnu, who stood just beyond the curtains. His tunic and kilt were of cloth-of-gold that caught the lamplight and glittered. She wouldn't have wanted to wear such material herself- too gaudy. But Valnu brought it off, not least by appearing to reject the possibility that he might do anything else.

"My lady!" he cried when he saw Krasta. He took her in his arms and kissed her on the cheek. "So good to see you here."

"Spare me your embraces," Lurcanio said dryly as Valnu turned to him. Valnu had been known to kiss him on the cheek, too: Valnu was never one who did anything by halves.

"I obey," he said now, and bowed himself almost double. Krasta had to blink again because of the reflections coruscating from his costume. Then he bowed again, as if intent on showing himself to be even more ceremonious than the average Algarvian. Speaking with unwonted seriousness, he went on, "I am in your debt, your Excellency, and I am not ashamed to own it. Were it not for your good offices, I would probably be languishing in some nasty cell."

"I had little to do with it," Lurcanio answered. "Some of your friends" -he put a certain ironic emphasis on the word- "undoubtedly helped you more."

Valnu didn't pretend to misunderstand him. "But you, sir, unlike they, were known to be disinterested."

"Disinterested? No." Lurcanio shook his head. "Uninterested? There I must say aye. A nice show of the difference in meaning between the two words, eh?"

"Your Excellency, you speak my language with a scholar's precision," Valnu said.

"I beg leave to doubt it," Lurcanio replied. But he didn't sound displeased. He took Krasta's arm and led her past their host. Krasta gave Valnu a bright, even a glowing, smile. She kept trying to forget about the trouble in which she'd landed herself for trifling with him and letting him trifle with her. She probably would have succeeded, too, had Lurcanio not found such a fitting way to punish her. Few lessons stuck with her for long, but that one, at least, had left her cautious.

As for Valnu, his long, lean face stayed sober. Maybe he really did think he owed Lurcanio a debt. Or maybe he didn't feel like taking the chance of getting caught again, either.

His cook and his cellarer had set out an elegant and lavish display, as they always did. Krasta hadn't eaten supper. Even so, she hesitated to go over and get anything. The guests already here left her dismayed. Oh, not the Algarvian officers and their Valmieran mistresses: she was used to them. But the few Valmieran nobles who'd come were either of the fierce and brutal sort or else were those who fawned on the Algarvians the most extravagantly.

"Where are all the interesting people?" Krasta murmured to Lurcanio.

Her Algarvian lover had also been surveying the crowd- not that it unduly crowded Valnu's reception hall. Lurcanio sighed. "Fair-weather friends, most of them."

"What do you mean?" Krasta asked.

"What do I mean? I mean that too many of them are wondering about their choices." Lurcanio let out a scornful sniff. "Mark my words, my dear: no one can recover his virginity as easily as that."

He was being obscure again. Krasta hated it when he wouldn't come out and say what he meant. Powers above, she thought. I always say what I mean. But she'd already asked what he meant once. She had too much pride- and too much dread of his sharp tongue- to embarrass herself by asking again.

With another sigh, Colonel Lurcanio said, "We might as well drink. After a while at the bar, things may look better."

"Why, so they may." Krasta had improved plenty of gatherings with enough porter or wine or, for severe cases, wormwood-laced brandy. This festivity, if that was what it was, looked like a severe case. Even so, she started with red wine, reasoning she could always move up to something stronger later on.

Lurcanio raised an eyebrow when she gave the tapman her order. Maybe he'd expected her to drink herself blind in short order. She smiled at him over the top of her goblet. She didn't want to be too predictable. Smiling himself, a little quizzically, Lurcanio asked for red wine, too. "To what shall we drink?" he asked.

That startled Krasta; he usually proposed toasts himself rather than asking her for them. She raised her goblet. "To good company!" she said, and then, under her breath, "May we find some soon." She drank.

With a laugh, so did Lurcanio. Then the laughter slipped from his face. "I think we are about to have company, whether good or otherwise." He bowed to the Valmieran nobleman approaching him. "Good evening sir. I do not believe we have met. I am Lurcanio. I present to you also my companion here, the Marchioness Krasta."

"Right pleased to meet you, Colonel," the Valmieran said in a backwoods dialect. "I'm Viscount Terbatu." He held out his hand. Lurcanio, in Algarvian fashion, clasped his wrist. Except for a brief nod, Terbatu ignored Krasta. That suited her fine. He looked more like a tavern brawler than a viscount: his nose bent sideways, and one of his ears was missing half the lobe. She drank more wine, content to let Lurcanio deal with him.

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, your Excellency," Lurcanio said, polite as a cat. "And what can I do for you?" By his tone, he assumed Terbatu would want him to do something.

"Fight," Terbatu growled.

"I beg your pardon?" Lurcanio said. And then, though he remained a polished gentleman, he showed he was polished steel. Drawing himself a little straighter, he asked, "Do we need to continue this conversation through friends? If so, I shall make every effort to give satisfaction."

By that, even Krasta understood him to mean, I'll kill you. She thought he could do it, too, and without breaking a sweat. Terbatu put her in mind of a bad-tempered hound barking at a viper. He was liable to be dead before he knew it.

But he shook his close-cropped head. "No, no, no. Not fight you, sir- not that at all. Fight for you, I meant. Valmierans fighting for Algarve. I've tried to get your people to let me raise a regiment and go hunting Unkerlanters, but nobody wants to pay any attention to me. Who do I have to kill to make you wake up?"

Lurcanio rocked back on his heels. To Krasta, who knew him well, that showed astonishment. To Terbatu, it might have shown nothing at all. Krasta was astonished, too, and not so good at hiding it as Lurcanio. "You want to fight for the redheads?" she blurted, careless of her lover beside her. How could any man of Kaunian blood want to do that when Mezentio's men were murdering the Kaunians from Forthweg for the sake of their life energy?

Terbatu said, "I'm not wild about the notion of fighting for Algarve." He nodded to Lurcanio. "No offense, your Excellency." Turning back to Krasta, he went on, "But the Unkerlanters, now, the Unkerlanters deserve smashing up. If ever a kingdom was a boil on the arse of mankind, Unkerlant's the one. Bloody big boil, too," he added, looking to Lurcanio again.

"It certainly is," the Algarvian colonel agreed. After a moment, he bowed to Terbatu. "You must understand, sir, that I appreciate the spirit in which you offer yourself and whatever countrymen who might fight under your banner. There are, however, certain practical difficulties of which I doubt you are aware."

You're a Kaunian, and we're already killing Kaunians to fight Unkerlant. That was what Lurcanio meant. Krasta knew it. Again, she had all she could do not to shout it at the top of her lungs.

And then Terbatu said, "Wouldn't you sooner have live men fighting on your side than dead ones, Colonel?"

Krasta stared at him. So did Lurcanio. After a long, long pause, Lurcanio said, "I have no idea what you are talking about, my lord Viscount."

The backwoods noble started to get angry. Then, grudgingly, he checked himself and nodded. "I suppose I see why you have to say such things, your Excellency. But we're men of the world, eh, you and I?"

Lurcanio certainly was. He didn't look as if he wanted to admit any such thing about Terbatu. Krasta didn't blame him there. He let another pause stretch longer than it should have, then said, "In any case, your Excellency, I am not the man to hear such proposals. You must put them to Grand Duke Ivone, my sovereign's military governor for Valmiera. If you will excuse me-" Rather pointedly, he took Krasta by the elbow and steered her away.

He also left Valnu's mansion earlier than he might have. "I trust you enjoyed yourself, your Excellency, milady?" Valnu said.

Krasta was willing to keep silent for politeness' sake. Lurcanio said, "I am glad to find you such a trusting soul." Once out of the mansion and into his carriage, he asked Krasta, "Do you know what that Terbatu fellow was talking about back there?"

Cautiously- ever so cautiously- she answered, "I think a lot of people have heard things. Nobody knows how much to believe." The first sentence was true, the second anything but: she, at least, knew exactly how much to believe.

"A good working rule," Lurcanio said, "is to believe as little as one possibly can." Krasta laughed a nervous laugh, but he was plainly serious. And if a crack like that didn't mark him as a man of the world, what would?

King Shazli of Zuwayza leaned toward his foreign minister. "The question, I gather, is no longer whether Algarve can go forward against Unkerlant, but whether she can keep Unkerlant from going forward against her."

"No, your Majesty." Hajjaj solemnly shook his head.

"No?" Shazli frowned. "This is what I have understood from everything you and General Ikhshid have been telling me. Am I mistaken?"

"I'm afraid you are, your Majesty." Hajjaj wondered how he would have been able to say such a thing to King Swemmel. Well, no: actually, he didn't wonder. He knew it would have been impossible. As things were, he had no trouble continuing, "Unkerlant will go forward against Algarve this summer. This question is, how far?"

"Oh," King Shazli said, in the tones of a man who might have expected better but who saw the difference between what he'd expected and what lay before him. "As bad as that?"

"I would be lying if I told you otherwise," Hajjaj said. "Down in the south, our ally's attack did not do everything the Algarvians had hoped it would. Now it's Swemmel's turn, and we'll have to see what he can do. One hopes for the best while preparing for the worst."

"A good way to go about things generally, wouldn't you say?" Shazli remarked. Hajjaj nodded. He had to work hard to keep his face straight, but he managed. He'd been saying such things to his young sovereign for many years. Now the king was repeating them back to him. Few things gave a man more satisfaction than knowing someone had listened to him. But then, with the air of someone grasping for straws, Shazli went on, "Things are quiet here in the north."

"So they are- for now," Hajjaj agreed. "For the past two summers, the greatest fight in Unkerlant has been down in the south. But I would say that, at the moment, the Algarvians don't know how long that will last, and neither do we. The only people who know are King Swemmel and perhaps Marshal Rathar."

Shazli poured more date wine into his goblet. He gulped it down. "If the blow falls here, can the Algarvians withstand it? By the powers above, your Excellency, if the blow falls here, can we withstand it?"

"From my conversations with General Ikhshid, he is reasonably confident the blow will not fall on us any time soon," Hajjaj replied.

"Well, that's something of a relief, anyhow," the king said.

"So it is." Hajjaj didn't think he needed to tell Shazli Ikhshid's reason for holding that opinion: that Zuwayza was only a distraction to Unkerlant, and Algarve the real fight. Hajjaj did say, "The Algarvians are the ones who will best know their situation in this part of the world."

"How much do you suppose Balastro would tell you?" King Shazli asked.

"As little as he could," Hajjaj said with a smile. Shazli smiled, too, though neither of them seemed much amused. Hajjaj added, "Sometimes, of course, what he doesn't say is as illuminating as what he does. Shall I consult with him, then?"

"Use your own best judgment," Shazli answered. "By the nature of things, you will be seeing him before too long. So long as the blow has not fallen, when you do will probably be time enough." He gnawed at the inside of his lower lip. "And if the blow does fall, it will tell us what we need to know." He softly clapped his hands together, a gesture of dismissal.

Hajjaj rose and bowed and left his sovereign's presence. Even the thick mud-brick walls of Shazli's palace couldn't hold out all the savage heat, not at this season of the year. Servitors strolled rather than bustling; sweat streamed down their bare hides. Hajjaj was not immune to sweat. Indeed, he was sweating as much from what he knew as from the weather.

When he got back to his own office, his secretary bowed and asked, "And how are things, your Excellency?"

"You know at least as well as I do," Hajjaj said.

"Maybe I do," Qutuz answered. "I was hoping they would be rather better than that, though."

"Heh," Hajjaj said, and then, "What have we here?" He pointed to an envelope on his desk.

"One of Minister Horthy's aides brought it by a few minutes ago," Qutuz said.

"Horthy, eh?" Hajjaj said. Qutuz nodded. What went through Hajjaj's mind was, It could be worse. It could have been an invitation from Marquis Balastro. Or it could have come from Minister Iskakis of Yanina. Horthy of Gyongyos was a large, solid man not given to displays of temper- he made a good host.

Like any diplomat, Horthy wrote in classical Kaunian, saying, Your company at a reception at the ministry at sunset day after tomorrow would be greatly appreciated. Hajjaj studied the note in some bemusement. In the days of the Kaunian Empire, his ancestors had traded with the blonds, but that was all. In far-off Gyongyos, the Kaunian Empire had been the stuff of myth and legend, as Gyongyos had been to the ancient Kaunians. Yet he and Horthy, who had no other tongue in common, shared that one.

There was one irony. Another, of course, was that Zuwayza and Gyongyos shared Algarve as an ally. Considering what King Mezentio's soldiers and mages were doing to the Kaunians of Forthweg, Hajjaj sometimes felt guilty for using their language.

"May I see, your Excellency?" Qutuz asked, and Hajjaj passed him the leaf of paper. His secretary read it, then found the next logical question: "When I reply for you, what shall I say?"

"Tell him I accept with pleasure, and look forward to seeing him," Hajjaj said. His secretary nodded and went off to draft the note for his signature.

Hajjaj sighed. Balastro would be at Horthy's reception. So would Iskakis. The diplomatic community in Bishah was shrunken these days. The ministers for Unkerlant and Forthweg, Valmiera and Jelgava, Sibiu and Lagoas and Kuusamo stood empty these days. Little Ortah, the only neutral kingdom left in the world, looked after the buildings and after the interests of the kingdoms.

From his office in the anteroom to Hajjaj's, Qutuz asked, "Do you suppose Iskakis will bring his wife?"

"I'm sure I don't know, though he often does," Hajjaj replied. "He likes to show her off."

"That's true," his secretary said. "As far as anyone can tell, though, showing her off is all he likes to do with her." He sighed. "It's a pity, really. I don't care how pale she is- she's a lovely woman."

"She certainly is," Hajjaj agreed. "Iskakis wears a mask and wants everyone to take it for his face." No matter how lovely his wife was, Iskakis preferred boys. That didn't particularly bother Hajjaj. The Yaninan minister's hypocrisy did.

"What sort of clothes will you wear?" Qutuz asked.

"Oh, by the powers above!" the Zuwayzi foreign minister exclaimed. That problem wouldn't arise at a Zuwayzi feast, where no one would wear anything between hat and sandals. "Algarvian-style will do," Hajjaj said at last. "We are all friends of Algarve's, however… exciting the prospect is these days."

Thus it was that, two days later, he rolled through the streets of Bishah in a royal carriage while wearing one of his unstylish Algarvian outfits. His own countrymen stared at him. A few of them sent him pitying looks- even though the sun had sunk low, the day remained viciously hot. And someone sent up a thoroughly disrespectful shout: "Go home, you old fool! Have you lost all of your mind?" Patting his sweaty face with a linen handkerchief, Hajjaj wondered about that himself.

The Gyongyosian guards outside the ministry were sweating, too. No one shouted at them. With their fierce, leonine faces- even more to the point, with the sticks slung on their backs- they looked ready to blaze anyone who gave them a hard time. What with Gyongyosians' reputation as a warrior race, they might have done it.

But they bowed to Hajjaj. One of them spoke in their twittering language. The other proved to know at least a few words of Zuwayzi, for he said, "Welcome, your Excellency," and stood aside to let the foreign minister pass.

Inside the Gyongyosian ministry, Horthy clasped Hajjaj's hand and said the same thing in classical Kaunian. With his thick, gray-streaked tawny beard, he too put Hajjaj in mind of a lion. He was a cultured lion, though, for he continued in the same language: "Choose anything under the stars here that makes you happy."

"You are too kind," Hajjaj murmured, looking around in fascination. He didn't come here very often. Whenever he did, he thought himself transported to the exotic lands of the uttermost west. The squared-off, heavy furniture, the pictures of snowy mountains on the walls with their captions in an angular script he could not read, the crossed axes that formed so large a part of the decoration, all reminded him how different these folk were from his own.

Even Horthy's invitation felt strange. Alone among civilized folk, the Gyongyosians cared nothing for the powers above and the powers below. They measured their life in this world and the world to come by the stars. Hajjaj had never understood that, but there were a great many more urgent things in the world that he didn't understand, either.

He got himself a glass of wine: grape wine, for date wine was as alien to Gyongyos as swearing by the stars was to him. He took a chicken leg roasted with Gyongyosian spices, chief among them a reddish powder that reminded him a little of pepper. Nothing quite like it grew in Zuwayza.

One of the Gyongyosians was an excellent fiddler. He strolled through the reception hall, coaxing fiery music from his instrument as he went. Hajjaj had never imagined going to war behind a fiddle- drums and blaring horns were Zuwayza's martial instruments- but this fellow showed him a different way might be as good as his own.

There was Iskakis of Yanina, in earnest conversation with a handsome junior military attachй from Gyongyos. And there, over in a corner, stood Balastro of Algarve, in earnest conversation with Iskakis' lovely young wife. Hajjaj strolled over to them. He had not the slightest intention of asking about the military situation in southern Unkerlant, not at the moment. Instead, he hoped to head off trouble before it started. Iskakis might not be passionately devoted to her as a lover, but he did have a certain pride of possession. And Balastro… Balastro was an Algarvian, which meant, where women were concerned, he was trouble waiting to happen.

Seeing Hajjaj approach, he bowed. "Good evening, your Excellency," he said. "Coming to save me from myself?"

"By all appearances, someone should," Hajjaj replied.

"And what would you save me from, your Excellency?" Iskakis' wife asked in fair Algarvian. "The marquis, at least, seeks to save me from boredom."

"Is that what they call it these days?" Hajjaj murmured. Rather louder, he added, "Milady, I might hope to help save you from yourself."

Not caring in the least who heard her, she answered, "I would like you better if you looked to save me from my husband." With a sigh, Hajjaj went off to find himself another goblet of wine. Diplomacy had failed here, as it had all over Derlavai.

Part of Pekka wished she'd never gone home to Kajaani, never spent most of her leave in her husband's arms. It made coming back to the Naantali district and the rigors of theoretical sorcery all the harder. Another part of her, though, quite simply wished she hadn't come back. The wilderness seemed doubly desolate after seeing a city, even a moderate-sized one like Kajaani.

And she had trouble returning to the narrow world that centered on the newly built hostel and the blockhouse and the journey between them. Everything felt tiny, artificial. People rubbed her raw without intending to do it. Or, as in the case of Ilmarinen, they meant every bit of it.

"No, we are not going to do that," she told the elderly theoretical sorcerer. She sounded sharper than she'd intended. "I've told you why not before- we're trying to make a weapon here. We can investigate the theoretical aspects that haven't got anything to do with weapons when we have more time. Till then, we have to concentrate on what needs doing most."

"How can we be sure of what that is unless we investigate widely?" Ilmarinen demanded.

"We don't have the people to investigate as widely as you want," Pekka answered. "We barely have the people to investigate all the ley lines we're on right now. There aren't enough theoretical sorcerers in the whole land of the Seven Princes to do everything you want done."

"You're a professor yourself," Ilmarinen said. "On whom do you blame that?" Sure enough, he was being as difficult as he could.

Pekka refused to rise to the bait. "I don't blame anyone. It's just the way things are." She smiled an unpleasant smile. If Ilmarinen felt like being difficult, she could be difficult, too. "Or would you like us to bring in more mages from Lagoas? That might give us the manpower we'd need."

"And it might give Lagoas the edge against us in any trouble we have with them," Ilmarinen answered. Then he paused and scowled at Pekka. "It might give you the chance to poke pins in me to see me jump, too."

"Master Ilmarinen, when you are contrary with numbers, wonderful things happen," Pekka said. "You see things no one else can- you see things where no one else would think to look. But when you are contrary with people, you drive everyone around you mad. I know you do at least some of it for your amusement, but we haven't got time for that, either. Who knows what the Algarvians are doing?"

"I do," he answered at once. "They're retreating. I wonder how good they'll be at it. They haven't had much practice."

That wasn't what she'd meant. Ilmarinen doubtless knew as much, too. He hated the Algarvians' murderous magecraft perhaps even more than she did. But she thought- she hoped- he'd made the crack as a sort of peace offering. She answered in that spirit, saying, "May they learn it, and learn it well."

"No." Ilmarinen shook his head. "May they learn it, and learn it badly. That will cost them more." He called down imaginative curses on the heads of King Mezentio and all his ancestors. Before long, in spite of everything, he had Pekka giggling. Then, making her gladder still, he left without arguing anymore for abstract research at the expense of military research.

"He has lost his sense of proportion," Pekka told Fernao at breakfast the next morning. The Lagoan mage probably would have understood had she spoken Kuusaman; he'd made new strides in her language even in the short time she'd been away. But she spoke classical Kaunian anyhow- using the international language of scholarship helped give her some distance from what had gone on.

Fernao spooned up more barley porridge seasoned with butter and salt. His answer also came in classical Kaunian: "That is why you head this project and he does not, or does not anymore. You can supply that sense of proportion, even if he has lost it."

"I suppose so." Pekka sighed. "But I wish he would remember that, too. Of course, if he remembered such things, I would not have to lead the way here now. I rather wish I did not."

"Someone must," Fernao said. "You are the best suited."

"Maybe." Pekka had a little bone from her grilled smoked herring stuck between two teeth. After worrying it free with her tongue, she said, "I had hoped more would be done while I was away."

"I am sorry," Fernao said, as if the failure were his fault.

Pekka didn't think that was true. She knew, however, that Fernao was the only theoretical sorcerer who showed any sign of taking responsibility for the lull. She said, "Maybe you should have been in charge while I went to Kajaani."

"I doubt it," he answered. "I would not care to take orders from a Kuusaman in Lagoas. No wonder the reverse holds true here."

"Why would you not want to take orders from one of my countrymen in your kingdom?" Pekka asked. "If the Kuusaman were best suited to lead the job, whatever it was…"

Fernao laughed, which bewildered Pekka. He said, "I think you may be too sane for your own good."

That made her laugh in turn. Before she could say anything, a crystallomancer came into the dining hall calling her name. "I'm here," she said, getting to her feet. "What is it?"

"A message for you," the young woman answered stolidly.

"I suspected that, aye," Pekka said. "But from whom? My son? My husband? My laundryman back in Kajaani?" That was a bit of sarcasm of which she thought even Ilmarinen might have approved.

"It's Prince Juhainen, Mistress Pekka," the crystallomancer said.

"What?" Pekka squeaked. "Powers above, why didn't you say so?" She rushed out of the dining hall past the crystallomancer, not bothering to wait for her. The woman hurried after her, stammering apologies. Pekka ignored those, but dashed into the room where the crystals were kept. Sure enough, Prince Juhainen's image waited in one of them. She went down to a knee for a moment before asking, "How may I serve you, your Highness?"

"Along with two of my colleagues, I propose visiting your establishment soon," the young prince answered. "We have spent a good deal of money over in Naantali, and we want to discover what we are getting for it."

"I see," Pekka said. "It shall be as you say, of course."

"For which I thank you," Juhainen said. "We expect to be there day after tomorrow, and hope to see something interesting."

"Very well, your Highness. Thank you for letting me know you are coming," Pekka said. "We shall try our best to show you what we've been doing, and, if you like, we can also discuss where we hope to go from here."

Juhainen smiled. "Good. You have taken the words out of my mouth. I look forward to seeing you in two days' time, then." He nodded to someone whose image Pekka couldn't see- probably his own crystallomancer. A moment later, his image vanished.

"A princely visit!" the crystallomancer at Naantali exclaimed. "How exciting!"

"A princely visit!" Pekka echoed. "How appalling!" Performing under the eyes of Siuntio and Ilmarinen had been intimidating in one way: if she blundered, she would humiliate herself in front of the mages she admired most. She didn't admire Juhainen and his fellow princes nearly so much as she did her peers. But performing in front of them would be intimidating, too. If they didn't like what they saw, they could end the project with a snap of the fingers. The power of the purse wasn't sorcerous, but was potent nonetheless.

She hurried out of the chamber with the crystals and started telling every mage she knew. Her colleagues reacted with the same mixture of surprise, anticipation, and dread that she felt. When Ilmarinen said, "With any luck at all, once they see what we're up to, we can all go home," Pekka laughed, too. Ilmarinen sardonic was far preferable to Ilmarinen whining and nagging.

Fernao asked a truly relevant question: "Can they get here by day after tomorrow, with this hostel out in the middle of nowhere?"

"I do not know," Pekka admitted. "But we are going to assume they can. If we are ready and they are not here, that is one thing. If they are here and we are not ready, that is something else again- something I do not intend to let happen."

They readied the animals they would use in the experiment. The secondary sorcerers practiced their projection spells. All the theoretical sorcerers but Pekka prepared more counterspells in case something went wrong with her incantation. She went over the charm again and again. I will not drop a line this time, she thought fiercely. By the powers above, I will not.

The princes did arrive on the appointed day, though late. They brought with them a fresh squad of protective mages. That, to Pekka, made excellent sense. The Algarvians hadn't struck here since their first heavy blow, but there was no guarantee that they wouldn't.

With Juhainen came Parainen of Kihlanki in the far east and Renavall, in whose domain the district of Naantali lay. Pekka went to one knee before each of them. She said, "By your leave, your Highnesses, we shall demonstrate our work tomorrow. For tonight, you are welcome to share our hostel here and see how we live."

Prince Renavall chuckled and remarked, "This is probably an effort to extort finer quarters from us." Pekka and the other mages laughed. So did Juhainen. Prince Parainen only nodded, as if his colleague had said what he was already thinking.

Ilmarinen said, "If we can survive here for months on end, even princes are a good bet to last the night." In a lot of kingdoms, such a crack would have made him a good bet not to last the night. In easygoing Kuusamo, Juhainen and Renavall laughed again. Even Parainen, who worried more about Gyongyos than the Algarvian threat against which the mages were so concerned, managed a smile.

Sure enough, all three princes came down to breakfast the next morning and accompanied the team of sorcerers to the blockhouse. They and their protective mages badly crowded it, and they suffered most because of that, since Pekka insisted on stationing them against the walls where they wouldn't be in the way. "You came to see the sorcery succeed- is that not so, your Highnesses?" she said with her sweetest smile. "And so you could not possibly want to interfere with those who perform it, could you?" Juhainen shrugged. Renavall smiled. Parainen gave back only stony silence.

We had better succeed now, Pekka thought. She recited the Kuusaman ritual that marked the beginning of any sorcerous enterprise in her land. As always, it helped steady her. "I begin," she said abruptly, and did.

For a demonstration for three of the Seven, they broke no new ground. She used a spell they had tested before, and gave it every ounce of concentration she had. The rumbling roar of suddenly released energies shook the blockhouse. Stones and clods of dirt thudded down on the roof, even though the secondary sorcerers had transferred the effect of the spell to the animal cages a couple of miles away.

"May we see what you wrought?" Parainen asked when silence and steadiness returned.

Glad he was the one who'd asked and even gladder he sounded less sure of himself now, Pekka said, "By all means." Ilmarinen caught her eye. She shook her head. This was not the time or place for him to expound on his hypothesis of what they were really doing. To her relief, he subsided.

To her even greater relief, the princes gaped in undisguised wonder at the new crater gouged from the soil of Naantali. Parainen said the two words Pekka most wanted to hear from him: "Carry on."

Numbers had always been Ealstan's friends. He was, after all, a bookkeeper's son, and now a bookkeeper of growing experience himself. He saw patterns in what looked like chaos to most people, as mages did when they developed spells. And when he found chaos in what should have been order, he wanted to root it out.

Pybba's books drove him mad. Money kept right on leaking out of the pottery magnate's business. Ealstan was morally certain it went to resist the Algarvians, but Pybba had paid him a hefty sum not to notice. Vanai didn't want him poking his nose into things, either.

And so, when he probed the mystery, he had to be most discreet. He told neither his boss nor his wife what he was doing. He just quietly kept doing it. My father would act the same way, he thought. He'd want to get to the bottom of things, even if somebody told him not to. Maybe especially if somebody told him not to.

More of the money vanished in the invoices at one of Pybba's warehouses than from any other place in the magnate's business. Ealstan had never been to that warehouse, which lay on the outskirts of Eoforwic. He thought about asking Pybba if he might go look things over there, thought about it and shook his head. His boss would see right through him if he did.

When he went to look the place over, then, he went on his day off. He wore a grimy old tunic and a battered straw hat against the sun. As he headed out the door, Vanai said, "You look like you're ready for a day of tavern crawling."

He nodded. "That's right. I'm going to come home drunk and beat you, the way Forthwegian husbands do."

Even in sorcerous disguise as a swarthy Forthwegian, Vanai blushed. Kaunians often perceived Forthwegians as drunks. In modern Kaunian literature in Forthweg, the drunken Forthwegian was as much a clichй as the sly or aloof Kaunian was in Forthwegian romances. Vanai said, "You're the only Forthwegian husband I know, and I like the things you do."

"That's good." A wide, foolish grin spread over Ealstan's face. He couldn't get enough praise from his wife. "I'm off," he said, and headed out the door.

To get to that warehouse, he could either walk for an hour or ride most of the way on a ley-line caravan. Without hesitation, he chose the caravan. He tossed a small silver bit into the fare box- everything was outrageously expensive under the Algarvians- and took his seat.

Because the fare was high, the caravan wasn't close to full. As best he could tell, the car hadn't been cleaned since the Algarvians took Eoforwic, or maybe since the Unkerlanters took it a year and a half before that. Someone had slit the upholstery of the seat on which Ealstan sat. Someone else had pulled out most of the stuffing. What was left protruded from the gashes in the fabric in pathetic tufts. The seat next to Ealstan's had no padding at all, and no upholstery left, either. None of the windows in the car would open, but several had no glass, so that evened out.

Getting out of the car was something of a relief, at least till Ealstan saw what sort of neighborhood it was. He marveled that Pybba would put a warehouse here; it seemed the sort of place where breaking crockery was the favorite local sport. No matter how shabby Ealstan looked, he had the feeling he'd overdressed.

A drunk came up and whined for money. Ealstan walked past as if the beggar didn't exist, a technique he'd had to perfect since coming to Eoforwic. The drunk cursed him, but only halfheartedly- a lot of people must have walked past him over the last few years. Down an alley, a dog barked and then snarled, a sound like ripping canvas. Ealstan bent down and grabbed a stout olive branch. To his relief, the dog didn't come out after him. He held on to the branch anyhow, and methodically pulled twigs from it. It was better than nothing against beasts with four or two legs.

He had no trouble finding the warehouse. PYBBA'S POTTERY, shouted a tall sign with red letters on a yellow ground. Pybba never did anything by halves, which was part of what made him so successful. People all over western Forthweg knew who he was. His pots and cups and basins and plates might not have been better than anyone else's, but they were better known. That counted for at least as much as quality.

Now that Ealstan had got here, he wondered what the demon to do next. How in blazes could he hope to find out why the money from Pybba's booming business looked to be leaking here? He doubted the clerks would say, if they even knew. Maybe he should have gone out and got drunk instead. He would have had more fun, even if beating his wife wasn't part of it. He could hardly have had less.

As he walked up to the warehouse entrance, he was surprised to see a couple of guards there. He shouldn't have been; he remembered the line item for their salary. But a line item was one thing. A couple of burly men carrying bludgeons was something else again. Ealstan made a point of setting down his olive branch before he got close to them.

"Hello, friend," one of them said with a polite nod and a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "What can we do for you today?"

"Want to buy some dishes," Ealstan answered. "My wife keeps throwing 'em at me, and we're running out."

The guards relaxed and laughed. The one who'd spoken before said, "This is the place, all right. I used to hang around with a woman like that. Aye, she was good in bed, but after a while she got to be more trouble than she was worth, you know what I mean?"

Ealstan nodded. "I hear what you're saying, but you know how it is." His shrug suggested a man who was putting up with a lot for the sake of a woman. Laughing again, the guards stepped aside to let him into the warehouse.

After the bright sunshine outside, Ealstan's eyes needed a moment to adjust to the gloom within. When they did, he gaped at aisle on aisle of crockery, every one with a sign that said SALE! or MARKED DOWN! or PYBBA'S LOW PRICES! As best Ealstan could tell, his boss didn't miss a trick.

He couldn't stand there gaping very long. A woman said, "Get out of the way," and pushed past him before he could. She made a beeline for a display of cups and saucers with a mustard-yellow glaze. Ealstan thought them very ugly, but Pybba was going to rack up a sale no matter what he thought.

Ealstan ambled up one aisle and down the next, making as if to examine more different kinds of pottery than he'd ever seen under one roof. Nothing he spotted on the floor of the main room gave him the slightest hint about where Pybba's money was going. He hadn't really thought anything would. Anything obvious to him would be obvious to other people, too- to the Algarvians, if Pybba really was trying to fight them.

Several doors led into back rooms. Ealstan eyed those as he pretended to examine dishes. Going through one of them might tell him what he wanted to know. It also might land him in more trouble than he could afford. Whatever he did, he wouldn't get the chance to go through more than one. He was sure of that.

Which one, then? From this side, they all looked alike. He chose the one in the middle of the back wall, for not better reason than its being in the middle. After fidgeting in front of it for a minute or two, he opened it and walked into the back room. A man sitting at a desk looked up at him. Ealstan scowled and said, "That fellow out there said this was where the jakes were at."

"Well, they bloody well aren't," the man replied in some annoyance.

"You don't have to bite my head off," Ealstan said, and closed the door behind him. He chose four dinner plates in a flowered pattern, paid for them, and left. The guards nodded to him as he went. He walked away from the ley-line caravan stop, not toward it. Once he was around the corner from the warehouse, he doubled back and found his way to the stop.

To his relief, a caravan car glided up a few minutes after he got to that corner. He put another small silver coin in the fare box and sat down for the ride back to the heart of Eoforwic. The plates rattled against one another in his lap.

A man sitting across the aisle pointed to them and said, "Powers below eat me if you didn't get those at Pybba's."

"Best prices in town," Ealstan answered- one of the many slogans Pybba used to promote himself and his business.

"That's the truth," the other passenger said. "I've bought plenty from him myself."

"Who hasn't?" Ealstan said. Nobody gave him any trouble the rest of the way home, though a couple more people asked if he'd got his plates from Pybba. By the time he got off at the stop closest to his flat, he'd started to think his boss could have occupied all of Forthweg if the Algarvians hadn't beaten him to it.

Vanai wasn't deceived when he brought the plates home. She asked, "Did you learn anything while you were snooping around?"

"Well, no," Ealstan admitted, "but I didn't know I wouldn't before I started out." He was ready to do a more thorough job of defending himself than that, but Vanai only sighed and dropped the subject. That left him feeling bloated: he had what he thought a pretty good argument trapped inside him, but it couldn't get out.

As he went off to cast accounts for Pybba the next morning, he decided that argument could stay right where it was. It would have done him no good had he had to use it to sweeten his boss. Pybba was not a man arguments could sweeten. The only arguments he listened to were his own.

"About time you got here," he shouted when Ealstan walked into his office. Ealstan wasn't late. He was, if anything, early. But Pybba was there before him. Pybba was there before everybody. He had a wife and family, but Ealstan wondered if they ever saw him.

That, though, was Pybba's worry. Ealstan settled down and got to work. Before long, Pybba started shouting at somebody else. He had to shout at someone. The louder he yelled, the more certain he seemed that he was alive.

Halfway through the day, somebody said, "Oh, hello," to Ealstan. He looked up from endless columns of numbers and saw the man who'd been behind the desk in that back room at the potter warehouse. The fellow went on, "I didn't know you worked for Pybba, too."

Pybba overheard. Despite the racket he always made, he overheard a lot. Pointing to Ealstan, he asked the other man, "You know him?"

"I don't really know him, no," the man replied. "Saw him at the warehouse yesterday, though. He was looking for the jakes."

"Was he?" Pybba rumbled. He shook his head in what looked like real regret, then jerked his thumb from Ealstan toward the door. The gesture was unmistakable, but he added two words anyhow: "You're fired."