FOUR

Dust. Whenever Adrian remembered the retreat to the west, it was the dust that came back, the acrid taste of it in his mouth and clogging his nose. After a while he got the knack of sleeping while he rode, nodding along in a half-doze. Shouting woke him.

He rubbed a hand over his face, smearing reddish dust and sweat. Esmond was standing in the stirrups, looking forward.

"Messenger just came in," he said, with a little more life in his voice than there had been over the past week. There was still something missing from it. . . .

Youth, lad, Raj said. That comes to us all. He’s just had it removed faster and more painfully than most.

"And there go the cavalry," Esmond went on.

The velipadsmen were riding at the head of the column, where they could spread out to screen the infantry. Adrian blinked gummy eyes as he watched them fan out into the low rolling hills ahead; they were Southron barbarians, mostly, mercenaries serving for pay and adventure under Confed officers. Screen . . . he thought, watching their velipads trot into the ripe standing wheat like boats breasting a sea of living bronze—Damn, I’m thinking in hexameter—if the cavalry were being sent out to screen the main force, then the Emerald light infantry would too.

One of Audsley’s tribunes rode up, fingers plucking nervously at the crimson sash that circled his muscled cuirass.

"Deploy," he said, pointing westward with his staff of office. "The enemy is approaching from the west in strength. No more than three miles distant."

"Three miles?" Esmond said sharply. "To their cavalry screen, or to their main body? How many? Who commands?"

The legate looked down his well-bred nose; he was about their age, a young spark of the nobility following his patron to war, and unused to such a tone from a mere Emerald mercenary.

"Judiciar Demansk commands," he drawled. "But that needn’t concern you, Emerald; you won’t be treating with him yourself, you know."

He reined his velipad about and clapped heels to it. Esmond snorted. "If Judiciar Demansk was ever involved in this—and I beg leave to doubt—he’s certainly going to prove his loyalty to the State now. With our blood and bones."

probability 97%, ±2, Center said helpfully in the back of Adrian’s mind. probability approaches unity as closely as stochastic analysis permits.

I could die here, he knew sharply. Suddenly he could see and smell and feel more vividly than ever in his life; the smell of trampled barley and dust, the heavy shamble of a half-armed Audsley "volunteer" a hundred paces back, the song of a shrikewing . . .

probability 52%, ±3, Center said. as you were warned.

"All men are initiates of the mysteries of death," he whispered.

"Death, hell," Esmond said, grinning through sweat-caked dust. He raised himself in the stirrups and called to his men: "Those poor sorry ignorant bastards are going to be doing the dying, aren’t they, lads?"

The men cheered him. "Deploy, and remember the training! They’ve got nothing like our thunderbolts—or our guts. Deploy!"

Judiciar Demansk grunted as he looked up from the folding map table set on the little ridge. Trampled barley stems were glassy and a little slippery under his hobnailed sandals, and he was sweating under the bronze back-and-breast that tradition mandated for a general officer.

"Here they come, the fools," he muttered.

Audsley had been a competent commander once; how could he have gotten himself into this position? Good Confed troopers are going to die because Audsley and his friends can’t pay their debts, he thought. Meanwhile the Islanders raid the coasts and the barbarians stir in the southlands. What a waste. Granted that the State was like a knot of vipers these days, all old good ways breaking down, but this . . .

This was a ratfuck waiting to happen, he thought coldly. One day—not too long from now—a strong man was going to have to seize the reins, or everything would melt down as the generals fought over the bones of the Confederation like crabs in a bucket. Either one strong man emerged to end the endless rivalries, or it would go on until the Southrons and the Islanders fought each other to see who picked the bones of civilization. But Audsley is not that man.

Am I? ran through his mind, and he pushed the thought away with a mental effort. Even if he was, this wasn’t the time. Not yet.

His head swiveled from side to side, the silk neckerchief that kept his skin from rasping on the edges of his back-and-breast sodden with the heat and chafing him.

Ten thousand men, he thought. Two brigades of regular infantry, somewhat understrength; call that six thousand all up. The core of his force, and they waited in formation with ox-stolid patience. Companies deployed in lines three deep, each battalion with a company in reserve; the men were kneeling with their shields leaned against their shoulders. The helmet crests ruffled in the wind; here and there an underofficer walked down the lines and checking on lacings and positions. And three battalions as general reserve, he thought. That ought to be enough. He could feel the regulars, ready to his hand like a familiar tool that a man grasps by instinct in the dark.

A thousand cavalry. Mercenaries, Southrons under Confed officers. They lacked any semblance of the strict order and silence of his infantry brigades. There was a general uniformity of equipment—mail shirts, kite-shaped shields, helmets, lances and long swords—but within that every man suited himself. They had some discipline, of course, more than any barbarian warband, which wasn’t saying much. And he had to admit that they were highly skilled individual fighters, sons of the Southron warrior class for the most part. Audsley doesn’t have any cavalry at all.

Forward of the main line his light forces were deploying, skirmishers with javelin, sling, bow, buckler and assegai. They didn’t have the staying power of the heavy infantry, but with any luck they’d handle this battle alone.

He narrowed his eyes. Audsley had a core of men in regular formation, looking fairly well equipped—one full brigade’s worth, say four or five thousand men. They’d be veterans, but not drilled much recently, and it was a scratch outfit. On the flanks shambled more of his supporters, not properly equipped and in no particular order; eight or nine thousand of them, but they were meat for the blade. Out in front were what looked like mercenary light infantry.

"Grind me away these rabble," he said, in a voice harsh with distaste and impatience. "Loose the velipads!"

Let the Southrons earn their pay, he thought. Every rebel they killed was one less to menace his precious trained men . . . and every Southron who dies is one less to raid over the border a few years down the road.

Gallopers spurted away from the command group. A few minutes later the cavalry on either flank began to trot forward, moving into open order. The Confed officers dressed their ranks, and then dust spurted as the trot turned into a canter and then a slow hand gallop. Lanceheads came down in a rippling wave.

"Here come the even-more-barbarous barbarians," Esmond said, his voice full of confidence. "God of the Shades, accept our sacrifice—even if it does have fleas."

Adrian didn’t join the chuckle that ran through those of the Emeralds who could hear his brother; it rippled down the loose formation as men repeated it to their neighbors. His own mouth was dry as he watched the line of bright points boiling out of the dust . . .

Intimidating, isn’t it? Raj’s voice whispered. A vison ran through his mind: another battlefield, and thousands of men riding the giant dogs he’d seen before. Men in steel helmets and breastplates, big bearded yellow-haired men with fifteen-foot lances, some of them with great wings sweeping up from the backplates of their armor. The howling of men and mounts and the earth-shaking thunder of paws filled his mind.

Ahead—ahead and to the right of Raj’s viewpoint—men in blue uniforms and bowl helmets bent over the curious chariotlike device Raj called a cannon.

"Juicy target," one of them said, grinning and spitting through brown irregular teeth. He stood aside and gripped a cord that ran to the rear of the cannon. "Nine hundred meters, shrapnel shell . . . fire!"

Adrian blinked and nodded, smiling internally. A few of his slingers gave him odd looks, but it was only to be expected that a man who made miracles would be . . . odd, occasionally.

"Fuses ready!" The fuse men whirled the rods that held the slowmatch, and trails of bitter blue smoke cut through the air. "Light!"

Each touched the slowmatch to the fuse of a grenade, and the cords sputtered into life. There was a gingerly care to the gestures that put the round brown pottery shapes into the pockets of the slings; the fuses were supposed to be seven-second, but they weren’t entirely reliable yet.

"Targets—"

The slingers raised their staff-slings, eyes picking out spots in the onrushing formations. The snarling fangs of the velipads were clearly visible now, and the shouting contorted faces behind the bar visors of the helmets.

"Loose!"

The slings had yard-long wooden handles, and the silk cords at their ends were as long again. Each man swept staff and cords around in a full circle that put the strength of their shoulders and torso into the cast, not simply their arms. The one-pound bomblets didn’t have the blurring speed a lead shot did; those almond-shaped bits of metal could punch through a shield and kill the man behind it through a cuirass. The grenades did snap out quickly enough to make men look up and raise their shields.

Crack. Crack. Crackcrackcrackcrack—

Vicious red snapping sparks, faint in the midday sun, visible only against the puffs of dirty gray-black smoke. The velipads reared and whistle-screamed at the noise and the unfamiliar sulfur stink. What couldn’t be seen or heard were the fragments of hard ceramic and lead shot that smashed out too fast for the eye to catch, and the shockwaves of the grenades. Then men and beasts screamed as fragments gouged into flesh. The order of the charge disappeared into sudden chaos. An armored man and heavy war-velipad weighed over a ton; at a full gallop they couldn’t turn swiftly, or overleap the writhing heap of mangled flesh that suddenly appeared at the footclaws of the mount. The riders’ efforts to turn their beasts simply added to the chaos as clawed feet skidded out from under the torquing weight that hindered them. Worse, the lancers further back in the formation could see nothing within the dust cloud ahead of them, and spurred their velipads forward.

And the second volley of grenades burst over the heads of the milling, thrashing mass. More velipads went down, to add to the bone-breaking weights rolling and kicking in the tangled barrier of flesh. Another volley, and another . . .

"They’re running, by the Maiden!" Esmond shouted.

"That they are," Adrian replied, grinning, slapping him on his corseleted shoulder. He carefully avoided looking at the killing ground before him.

"D . . . ddd . . .  !" the courier stuttered, his face the color of the whey that dripped from the pans when the dairywoman squeezed the curds to make cheese.

"Control yourself!" Judiciar Demansk snapped, shading his eyes with a hand; when that proved inadequate he swung up onto his velipad and stood in the stirrups.

Something had happened to his cavalry, and that was a fact. There was a huge cloud of dust; extraordinary noises were coming out of it . . . and so were Southron mercenaries, some of them lashing their velipads, others lumbering on foot, all of them in utter screaming witless panic.

"Runner," he said. "If those imbeciles attempt to interfere with the formation, give them a volley of darts."

An order which his regular infantry would follow with zeal and enthusiasm. Nobody liked Southrons.

Demansk’s eyes scanned as much of the battlefield as he could see. "And a general order," he went on. "The enemy has some sort of incendiary weapon." The pirates of the Isles used those, naphtha and seabeast oil and quicklime, compounds that would burn even under water. "Remind the officers that it can’t do more than kill them."

One could get away with a good deal in the Confederacy, in these degenerate days. Even his own estate was no safe anymore. But running away in battle wasn’t among the pardonable offenses, thank the gods.

"Here it comes," Adrian said, licking dry lips.

look for a line of retreat, Center’s passionless voice said.

What?

Do it, lad. This is a disaster waiting to happen, Raj confirmed.

"Esmond," Adrian whispered. "We should be preparing a line of retreat."

His brother looked back at him, his eyes sapphires in his dust-caked face. "Adrian," he said, "there are times when I think the Gray-Eyed gave you the general’s gifts. All right, let’s see."

He thought for a moment, called a pair of his underofficers, gave low-voiced instructions. They trotted off to the rear.

The Emeralds were on the right of the rebel position, at the junction between Audsley’s brigade of fully-equipped troops and the shapeless clot of the volunteers. The dust had died down a little, and out of it Demansk’s army came marching. Light sparkled and rippled down their line, sunlight off the points of the darts they held in their right hands, off helmet crests and standards and the gray gleam of oiled links of mail.

"My, aren’t they pretty," Esmond said.

Adrian found himself joining in the chuckle that ran down the ranks of the Emeralds. I wonder if the rest of them are as nervous as I am, he thought.

Most of them, Raj murmured. The ones that aren’t are stupid, overconfident, or very experienced.

Adrian licked his lips, tasted the sweat running down his face from the light helmet, and spoke: "Pick your targets. Aim for officers and standards—standards, and the ones with the transverse helmet crests. Wait for it, wait for it."

"Now!"

The slingers were loosing as fast as their loaders could put lighted grenades into the pockets of their weapons. The projectiles arched out towards the first line of Confed regulars, and eyes went up nervously under the helmet brims. Horns screamed harsh bronze music, and the whole formation speeded up into a trot—not a solid line, but a sinuous bronze-and-steel snake that advanced in pounding unison, keeping its alignment across the slight irregularities of the barley fields.

Crack. Crack. Crackcrackcrackcrack—

The bombs exploded, and a two-hundred-yard stretch of the Confed line vanished in smoke and malignant red snaps. Screams sounded louder than the explosions, as sharp metal and ceramic sliced into human flesh.

. . . and out of the smoke marched the survivors, still moving at the same steady trot. Men double-timed up from the second and third ranks, and the whole formation rippled and closed as the gaps were plugged and the replacements effortlessly fell into alignment. Adrian could hear the harsh clipped commands of the officers and file closers, but no screams apart from the wounded men—and not all of those.

"Shit," Esmond swore feelingly. Then louder: "What a target! Give ’em more, lads."

Adrian whipped his own staff-sling around his head, aiming for a standard in the fourth rank of the nearest Confed battalion borne by a man with the tanned head of a direbeast over his helmet. The bomb flew faultlessly, exploding at waist level before the standard-bearer had time to do more than flinch. Smoke kindly hid what happened next, but he could see the pole with the upright gilded hand totter backwards and fall. Then the standard rose again; a trooper had scooped it up, bracing it on his hip as he trotted forward.

Esmond’s head was whipping back and forth as he tried to keep the whole field under observation. He fell back half a dozen steps.

"The battalion in front of us is edging right," he yelled to his brother. "But any second now –"

"Vanbert! Vanbert!"

The shout was loud, and the rebel regulars to their left closed formation and raised their shields in a sudden bristling of vermillion-dyed leather and brass, turning their formation into some huge scaled dragon. The volunteers to the Emerald’s right tried to do the same—most of them had shields, at least—but lacked the instinctive cohesion of real fighting units.

Ahead the attackers’ formation rippled as well. Adrian felt the small hairs along his spine as he realized why; the whole front line was leading with the left foot, getting ready to—

"VANBERT! VANBERT!" the front-line troopers roared, pivoting forward as their throwing arms flashed up.

The sound of seven thousand men shouting in unison was like a blow to the gut. The whistle as seven thousand arms launched their lead-weighted darts made Adrian’s testicles try to draw themselves up into his gut.

Heads up, lad, Raj’s voice said, cool and steady at the back of his brain.

Not many of the volley struck the Emeralds—the grenades had cleared too much of the front line opposite them. Men went down, here and there; others cursed and flung aside their shields as the barbed points with the ball of lead behind the points stuck and could not be removed. To their left, the volley struck the raised shields of Audsley’s brigade, most of them glancing from the curved surfaces or the metal facing, some rattling off mail, some punching into flesh.

"That’s torn it," Esmond said.

He was looking to the right, where the volley had ripped into the shapeless clot of half-armed volunteers. What happened there was like a glass jar falling on rock, only what it spilled was redder than any wine. Few of the volunteers wore armor, and none had the tight shield-to-shield formation that was the only hope of stopping most of the missiles.

"VANBERT! VANBERT!"

Another volley, and the Confed trumpets sounded again, a complex rising-falling note. The battalions facing the volunteers drew their assegais with a long rasping slither and began to double-time forward.

"It’s time," Esmond said; his face was white about the lips—with rage, Adrian realized, and the effort of will it took to order retreat rather than stay here and die killing Confeds. He nodded to their right, where the scythe of Demansk’s wing was about to rip into the edge of the unravelling rebels.

"You’re right, brother," Adrian said. He raised his voice. "One more volley to discourage them, men, and we’ll leave the Confeds to each other."

The bombs punched out, as accurate as the first round. Other men were helping the wounded who were still mobile, or giving the mercy-stroke to the helpless. Adrian swallowed a bubble of pride; his mercenaries and freedmen and general rabble were steady with the many-headed beast almost within arm’s length of them.

Esmond’s light infantry spread to cover the grenadiers, hefting their javelins.

"Give them a shaft, then we go!"

Esmond turned, hefted his javelin and threw with a skill that made it seem effortless. It ended in the face of a Confed underofficer; the fan-crested helmet snapped back, and the volley that followed made them waver for an instant. The Emeralds turned and trotted away in a compact body, heading to the rear and to the west—behind the still-solid ranks of Audsley’s brigade.

The same mounted galloper as before drew rein before them; Adrian could smell the rank omnivore breath of the velipad as it came up on its haunches, pawing the air before it with great blunt claws.

"Where do you think you’re going?" the young Confed nobleman cried. "Back to your posts, you Emerald scum –"

Thunk.

Esmond’s javelin punched through the light cuirass of linen and bronze scale with a sound like an axe hitting wood. The Confed goggled, and then his eyes slid down to the slim ashwood shaft in his gut. He slid free of the saddle with the same expression of bewildered indignation, as if he could not believe that a mere Emerald mercenary had dared to raise a hand against him.

"For every slight, for every insult, I will send a dozen of them to the Shades," Esmond muttered as he caught the velipad and swung into the saddle with effortless grace. "For Nanya, not all their lives are enough."

Adrian swallowed at the sound of his brother’s voice, even now. There was a huge rasping slither behind them as Audsley’s men drew their assegais in turn, then a banging clatter like all the smiths’ shops in the world as the fight came to close quarters. He risked a glance over his left shoulder; the volunteers were going down like greatbeasts under a sacrificer’s axe, but there were so many of them that it would take some time . . . and the dust and confusion were immense. Without Center to sketch images across his vision it would have all been a mass of steel and shouting and blood, patternless, Chaos and Old Night come again.

"When Demansk’s men get through with the rabble, they’ll curve in to take Audsley’s regulars from the rear," he called up to Esmond. "If we get out of the bag in time . . ."

"Exactly," Esmond said, like an apparition of Wodep the War God on the restive velipad, his armor splashed with blood.

Me too, Adrian realized, daubing at himself. Me too.

"Strike sail," Adrian said.

The skipper of the Wave Strider shrugged. "Lay aloft!" he shouted. "Strike sail!"

The ship they’d hijacked was much like the ones their father had run out of Solinga for most of their lives: a hundred feet long and forty at the broadest part of the hull, fully decked, with one tall mast and a single large square sail. Adrian didn’t think his father would ever have tolerated the skirt of weed that showed green against the blue water all around, or bilges that stank badly enough to overpower even the iodine smell of the sea. The swan’s head that curled above them on the quarterdeck was standard, but the blue and gold paint was chipped and faded. For all that, the hull was watertight and they’d made good time from the west-coast port of Preble. Adrian licked dry lips, squinting out over the white-flecked blue of the Western Ocean; they hadn’t had time to ship extra water or supplies, and with two hundred men aboard they were down to a cupful a day—green, slimy, sweeter-tasting than any wine.

The big yard came down with a rattle, and a curse from the Emerald mercenaries on deck who had to scramble out of the way. With the sail down, Adrian had a better view of the craft that was approaching them.

It was no merchantman. The hull was low and long and snake-slender, with glaring eyes and snarling teeth painted above a bronze ram that flashed out of the water with every forward bound. Outriggers held seats for oarsmen who would drive two banks of long oars when the mast was down. Right now it was rigged for cruising, the mast up and a sail painted the same blue-gray as the hull bent to it. Two light catapults stood manned near the bows, ready to throw rocks or jugs full of clingfire; two ballistae flanked the quarterdeck, with giant javelins ready to hurl. The knot of men by the steering oar was bright with plumes and gold and blowing cloaks dyed in the famous purple of the western islands. And the flag above them had the stylized cresting wave of the Lords of the Isles.

The other ship’s sail came down like magic, neatly furled—a heavy crew, a warship’s crew. Esmond came up beside his brother, shading his eyes with a palm. As he did, the oars flashed out of the other ship’s sides and struck the water all together like the limbs of a centipede, slashing creamy froth from the waves. The slender hull jerked forward, then turned to present its ram to the merchantman’s side in a smooth curve, turned by the oars as well as the twin steering oars; they could hear the clack . . . clack . . . clack of the hortator’s mallets on the log that served as drum.

"Bireme," Esmond said. "Twenty marines, hundred and twenty oarsmen, thirty sailors. They can’t be far from home. Royal ship too, I think, not a freebooter. Very well-trained crew."

Adrian nodded, although being a royal ship wasn’t always much of a distinction, with Islanders. Any king’s ship would turn pirate if the opportunity offered.

One of the officers on the warship’s quarterdeck raised a speaking trumpet. He hailed them in Confed, accented but understandable.

"Ahoy there! What ship?"

"Wave Strider, out of Preble," the captain said. "Bound for Chalice."

"What cargo?"

The voice sounded suspicious; there were far too many armed men on the merchantman’s deck, but she was equally obviously no pirate or longshore raider. That would make her cautious. Even a successful ramming run might leave the warship vulnerable to boarding; a little bad luck, a ram caught in the wounded ship’s timbers, and the Wave Strider’s men could swarm aboard. That was how Confed ships had beat the Kingdom’s fleets despite the Islanders’ seamanship, grappling and turning naval battles into land fights.

Adrian stepped forward, speaking in the tongue of the Isles; he could feel Esmond stiffen in surprise. Which was natural enough, since as far as he knew Adrian spoke only a few words.

"Our cargo is brave men," he said. "Come to serve King Casull IV, Lord of the Isles, Supreme Autocrat, Chosen of the Sun God and Lemare of the Sea, against the thieves and tyrants of Vanbert. We are Adrian and Esmond Gellert, of Solinga."

The ships were close enough now that Adrian could see the officer’s eyes go wide in a swarthy, hook-nosed face. The plume at the forefront of his turban nodded as he turned and spoke urgently with some others.

"They’ve heard of us, and not just through Father," Esmond murmured at his ear.

"Now the question is whether they want to get in good with the Confeds or poke them in the eye," Adrian murmured back.

The gorgeously-dressed officer turned back, sun breaking off the gilded scales of his armor. "The King, may he live forever, must hear of this," he said. "You will transfer to Slasher."

"Esteemed sir, we will remain with our men," Esmond said, in slower and more heavily accented Islander. "But we are very eager to lay our fates at the feet of the King, to whom the gods have given a great realm."

There was a moment of tension as stares met. The plumes nodded again as the Islander captain nodded. "Very well. Make what sail you can."

"Enter," King Casull said.

The audience chamber was small and informal, one wall an openwork lattice of carved marble looking down over the city of Chalice. For the rest it held a mosaic of sea monsters—most of them quite real, as Casull had learned in his years as a skipper and admiral, before the previous King had met an untimely end in the last war with the Confeds—an ebony table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, embroidered cushions, a tray of dried fruit and pitchers of wine and water. A girl in a diaphanous gown knelt in one corner, strumming a jitar, and two guards stood by the entrance, the points of their huge curved slashing-swords resting on the floor before their boots and their hands ready on the hilts. A stick of incense burned in a fretted brass tray, melding with the scent of the flowers in the gardens outside, and the tarry reek of the harbor below.

Two men came through the door with a eunuch chamberlain following, in robes even more gorgeous than theirs.

"O King, live forever!" all three cried as they prostrated themselves on the floor.

The silver aigrettes at the front of the two merchants’ turbans clicked on the tessellated marble of the floor, as did the ruby in the eunuch’s turbon. A palace chamberlain might lack stones, but not the opportunity to acquire precious stones. Casull smiled slightly to himself at his own pun and made a gesture with one hand. Another girl rose with silent grace and moved to pour thick sweet wine into tiny cups carved from the gemlike teeth of the salpesk.

"Rise, my friends," he said genially. His father had once told him that even if you had to kill a man, it cost nothing to be polite. "Speak. Your King would hear your tale."

The merchants rose and sat cross-legged on cushions, raising the cups the slave handed them in a two-handed gesture of respect before sipping appreciatively. Both were middle-aged men with gray in their curled, oiled beards. Enri and Pyhar Lowisson, Casull reminded himself. Brothers. Their father had been a fish farmer, but the sons had made a fortune in trade . . . and in raiding, during the chaos of the wars with the Confeds. They’d served ably in Casull’s own campaigns against islands that had fallen away from the Kingdom while his predecessor was occupied on the mainland, too.

"Know, O King, that we have long traded with Solinga," Enri said; he was the elder of the two.

Casull nodded. "Dried fish, textiles and spices for wine, grain and jerked meat," he said. "With sidelines in zinc ore, bar iron and general handicrafts."

The merchants blinked and bowed their heads in respect. "Go on," the King said.

"We have dealt, over the years, with one Zeke Gellert of Solinga," Enri went on. "He died last year, but we exchanged tesserae with him some time ago."

Casull nodded again, silent. He’d found that was more effective than talking, often enough. Tesserae were tokens—usually ivory—exchanged between guest-friends in the Emerald countries. The token was broken in half; when the other half was presented, the guest-friend was obliged to offer help and shelter to the man who brought it, and the obligation was hereditary. Or so Emeralds generally thought; Islanders were more . . . flexible. Still, it would harm the Lowissons’ reputation in the Emerald lands if they turned away their guest-friend’s heirs.

Enri moistened his lips and sipped delicately at the wine. "Well, O King, Adrian and Esmond Gellert have come to Chalice, claiming hospitality of us . . . and wishing an introduction to the King’s self."

He hesitated, and the King spoke. "The Adrian and Esmond Gellert who took part in Audsley’s rebellion in the Confed territories, yes," he said. "They are outlaws in the Confederacy—not the first time exiles from the mainland have sought the Isles."

Although no other exiles have been preceeded by such rumors, he thought. Weapons like the lightning of the gods, thunder and fire that left men torn to shreds . . . There may be something to it, he thought. Still, less than rumor paints, or Audsley would have made himself master in Vanbert.

The conversation wound on, intricate and indirect; the three might all be self-made men, but they’d aquired polish as well as wealth and power on their journey up the slippery pole of rank. The Isles weren’t like the mainland, where a man’s life was fixed at his birth. Here a sailor or a peasant might end his days with a palace and a harem, if he had the luck and the nous; but equally, the pit of failure yawned before his steps all his days, and his rivals’ knives were always sharp and ready.

Casull smiled and nodded. Yes, you wish to share in any favor that may befall the Gellerts, he thought. Yes, equally, you wish to avoid the blame for any failure, if they are nothing but boasters. Yes, these desires conflict—for if you wait too long, you will surely lose. A beautiful dilemma.

At the end, he clapped his hands. "We will grant these Emeralds the favor of an audience," he said. "Talk is cheap, and stolen goods are never sold at a loss."

His gaze sought the city that tumbled down the slopes from the palace to its circular harbor. And I need any help I can get, he thought. The Isle were far from united, and when they were the Confeds would still outweigh him by thirty to one. Skill and distance had kept the Islands independent, but . . . what was that old saying? Ah, yes.

Quantity has a quality all its own. He would seize any advantage that came his way with both hands, preparing for the inevitable struggle.