“… but the good Doctor could not accept it, that so many people must turn into beasts, and tear each other apart. He went to King Vjai Muna and said, ‘Great King, I am a doctor and a man of wisdom, and if you give me what I need I will learn how to cure this terrible disease.’ And the king said, ‘What do you need me to give you?’”

  “And the Doctor told the King, ‘I must do a very difficult thing. Give me power over your outlaws and criminals, and the men who have offended you, and over any other man who is not afraid to help me, and give me space to work. Then we will know how this Blemish works.’ King Vjai Muna agreed. And the Doctor gave the Blemish to the criminals, and took their blood to study it, and put their blood in other criminals to see what would happen, to understand the Blemish.”

  Hjan looks down; Grenia is still wide awake in his lap. He knows many other stories he could tell her, old folktales from Thrim and Kerigzana which his father told him as a boy. But she is still of an age to delight in hearing the same thing over and over, and this is her special favorite to hear when he comes back from a mission. She won’t accept anything else.

  “The Doctor did this many times, and other things too, but he did not learn how to defeat the Blemish. Many of the criminals died, or had to be killed when the Blemish drove them mad. The Doctor was unhappy with what he had to do, but he knew the Blemish would kill even more people if he did not learn how to get rid of it.

  “Soon the King came to him and said, ‘My people are angry. They hear things that frighten them, about what you do here. They say you are a witch, or a sorcerer. Have you learned how to cure the Blemish yet?’ And the Doctor said, ‘I have not. I need more time.’ And the King went away angry, while the Doctor kept working.

  “Now the Doctor started drawing out men’s blood, or sometimes his own, and mixing it with the Blemish, to see what would happen. He still did not learn how to cure the Blemish, but he learned something very strange and frightening: if he mixed the blood of healthy men with bits of turned flesh he changed in a certain way, it would form powerful creatures that lived for only a few hours. And he learned that when the blood was his own, the creatures would obey him, or do what he would do in their place.

  “Now the Doctor spoke to his son and said, ‘This is a terrible secret, and dangerous. Many kings would kill to know it. I know Vjai Muna is a greedy and wicked man at heart. He would use it to rule all Kerigzana, and Syoshen Vukh too. He must never learn it. But he will want to know what I have learned. He will not let me give him nothing, for all that I have cost him. What shall I tell him?’

  “And the Doctor’s son said, ‘Only you and I know this secret, Father. Let us burn all your notes, and flee this land.’ And the Doctor agreed. So they destroyed the notes, and together with the little boy who helped the Doctor they ran out of the King’s palace in the dead of night. But Vjai Muna had become suspicious. He had his men watching the Doctor and his son in secret. They knew he had discovered something very strange and powerful. The King caught them trying to flee, and took them prisoner, and told them he would do dreadful things to them if they did not give him the secret of making beasts of great power.”

  He looks down. The bright blue Dük eyes are still wide open. “And the Doctor said to Vjai Muna, ‘If you will spare us, I will show you. But I destroyed all my materials before I left. Bring me my son and my helper, and we will prepare a demonstration for you.’ And Vjai Muna, who was hungry for power to defeat his enemies and rule Kerigzana, agreed. He said, ‘you will show me this secret, in the presence of your son and your helper-boy. And I will have many armed men on hand, ready to slay you all if you betray me.’ So the Doctor had no choice but to obey. He prepared all he needed in two days’ time, and made a mighty creature before the eyes of the King and all his court. But before the King could applaud, or ask how it was done, the beast sprang on him, and tore him apart, together with many of his men.

  “So did the good Doctor protect his secret from the unworthy, at the cost of his own life. For many of the King’s guards fled in terror when the great beast turned against them, but not all. One of them stood his ground long enough to run the Doctor through with his sword to avenge his King, before the beast cut him down. And with the Doctor dead the beast ran wild in his rage, setting the palace on fire. His son was forced to flee, and let the palace be his father’s funeral pyre.

  “Now the young man and the boy were alone, in a country that hungered for their blood. They ran for days, through frozen mountain passes, fleeing vengeful soldiers and mobs of frightened and ignorant men ready to burn them for witches. The son said to the boy, ‘We cannot live without a protector. We must find another, better king to save us, and use the power my father died for to rid the world of wicked kings like Vjai Muna.’ And the boy agreed.

  “So it was that they came to the court of the High Queen, who had heard tales of the sorcerer of the north. She was not frightened. But she had heard, too, of the fate of Vjai Muna, and she did not wish to join him. Boldly the young man told her, ‘Let us make a compact, a promise between us, and seal it with marriage. Give me your daughter’s hand, High Queen, and I will use the secrets of Hjan Dük the Elder to defend your kingdom to my last breath.’

  “And the High Queen, impressed by his boldness, said, ‘And will you teach me those secrets, that I may use them as well?’ But the young man told her, ‘I will not, because they are not mine to tell. They were bought with the blood of the dead, and belong to the dead who bought them. I am the heir to those dead. I will use what I know, but I will not betray their trust. If you kill me, the secret dies with me. This boy does not know them.’

  “At that the High Queen laughed, and said, ‘You are brave, and will make a good husband for my daughter. Very well. Lend me your power, and keep your secrets, and restore Syoshen Vukh. For you see, I too have a debt to the dead to pay.’”

  Hjan glances down; Grenia is finally asleep. She is beautiful in sleep, at least to her father. She has her mother’s golden hair, and her father’s nose—unfortunately—and a ruddy northern complexion. But she will be tall, and strong, and bold. Her blue eyes will stare down kings someday. But not tonight. Tonight he picks her up easily, puts her into bed, and pulls up the covers to her chin. A kiss to the forehead, and he is gone.

  Prid is waiting for him outside the door. “Something that couldn’t wait?” He knows Prid wouldn’t bother otherwise.

  The boy glances downstairs, where Tatzine is giving her last orders to the help before retiring, before he says, “Makin’ another go of it, they is. Caught‘m in they papers, numbers don’t add. Been pulling dust ‘n juice off the top, while we was off and not looking.”

  “Of course they are.” The idiots simply don’t learn. Or rather, Eyanna Vogh doesn’t value them enough to stop trying. Few of them have lived long enough to learn anything, so far. “Thank you, Prid. I’ll get it from here. As always.”

  There is another story Grenia likes—though her mother doesn’t—about the Miser of Pellyg’s Ford. It’s an old ghost story from the far north of Kerigzana, about a rich old man who acquires a priceless jewel by treachery, then spends the rest of his life worrying that it will be stolen from him. The obsession grows on him until he can do nothing but watch over it, and in the end he wastes away and dies with it in his hands. They bury him with it, because they cannot remove it without cutting his hands to bits. Even his ghost cannot pass on to the next world, he is so deeply infatuated with the stone, and it watches over his tomb to kill any robbers who try to break in after it.

  Grenia loves to hear about the robbers, and he makes up new ways for the ghost to kill them every time he tells the story. He keeps sending new robbers and their ghastly deaths until Tatzine comes up the stairs, then brings the story to a close before she can hear. The whole time, he pictures himself as the Miser. But what is the stone?

  There is no need to hurry. He learned that long ago. Nobody the High Queen can find has anything like the brilliance of Hjan Dük the Elder. She wouldn’t even want to find such a person; people that clever have a way of making their own plans. Instead she will have found a handful of more or less literate men and women with some very rough inkling of the scientific method, and set them up in a secluded place to try and replicate the work of a genius with whatever resources she thinks she can divert to them without her son-in-law noticing.

  As far as she knows he has never found out—her research team has had five terrible accidents, claiming the lives of twelve people and destroying three different facilities. She shouldn’t be surprised, given what she has to work with. Poorly made cambions are unstable, and the clods she hires haven’t the least idea what they’re doing. Even Father had multiple accidents and setbacks.

  He hoped she would eventually learn to be content with what she has. A stupid notion. Eyanna Vogh is never content, and his father’s work could die with him on any given mission. But he cannot expect her to believe in an infinite series of catastrophes. Possibly she already suspects—Hjan cannot tell how oblivious he is expected to be, either. He knows the twins have heard rumors, about the failures. Eventually he will be caught engineering another accident, or she will confront him, and then he does not know what will happen. Or he can ignore them, and run the risk that they will finally learn enough to let her dispose of him.

  Hjan waits until Tatzine has put out the lights upstairs, and the servants have gone to their beds below, and all the familiar household noise has settled to a dusty silence. Then he retreats to his study and locks the door. He teases a forlorn stub of ashen wood from the fireplace back to life, uses it to light the lamp. His notes and files are exactly as he left them; Eyanna has surely given up nosing there. Every word of them is in Thrimmish, rendered in his personal system of glyphs, and encrypted moreover—his father’s last words, again in Thrimmish, are the key. After six years’ practice he has learned to encrypt and decrypt mentally in seconds. There may be a handful of mathematicians in Pasavana or Hausan who could do something with his papers, but they will never come within a hundred miles of them.

  He has a few ideas to add, but they will keep for the morning, when he is fresh. His business tonight is with the great fat braid of cords hanging above the window, and the pills in the desk drawer. The key about his neck unlocks the drawer, and his fingers quest inside the box for a single acrid lozenge. A careful sniff—he does not think his dear mother-in-law would tamper with them, or benefit if she did, but there is no sense taking chances. It is as bitter and astringent as ever, but he tucks it under his tongue and bears its sting it until it is completely dissolved.

  They take effect as he is undoing the braid; he sees his hands blur in the lamplight, then multiply—the images of possible actions appearing in the air before he does them. The drug doesn’t actually allow him to see the future, as he understands it. It only disturbs his perceptions of time and his own actions. The distinction doesn’t feel meaningful when he is in its grip.

  The braid has seventeen strands of slender cord: two to the fourth in all different colors, plus the far fatter white strand in the center, which represents the true universal Nehm. The other sixteen may be assigned arbitrarily to whomever or whatever Hjan pleases, and he takes care to assign them differently every time so as not to teach habits to the threads. Tonight the dark red is himself, the teal Tatzine, the black High Queen Eyanna Vogh. He assigns ten, then gets to work. Two at a time he twists them together, then three at once, feeling how they resist or tangle under his fingers. An expert would do this quicker and more surely, but there is no diviner in all Syoshen Vukh he would trust to keep his secrets.

  It is a subtle thing he seeks after—without the drug he would have no hope of finding the infinitely faint catches and snags where every individual action interacts with every other. He is like an astronomer peering through a telescope, trying to see with his eyes the disturbances in a planet’s orbit from the influence of another two million miles away. He always leaves the white cord be—the workings of the cosmic Nehm are beyond him. But if the other strands are planets influencing his own, the white is an entire star, overwhelming in its power. It shapes everything, including the lesser nehm, the wise and righteous paths, of individual lives. And the relations between them.

  Teal and red: resistance, difficulty. But he knew that. Too many external factors to isolate. Tatzine has her duty, and he his, and they will not always go the same direction. Black and red: troublesome, but the cords slide smoothly for the moment, even with the teal added. It is not time to diverge from her yet. Not drastically. Next he tests himself against her other relations, and the twins, and then each against the rest. Nothing remarkable.

  Hjan is probably reading it wrong, being ill-trained. He has not had the time or resources to train properly. He can only trust that he is adhering closer to Nehm than he would based only on his own limited personal judgment. There is no guarantee of personal prosperity either way. It might be to the greater benefit of all for him to perish in agony, and his family with him. If it is so, it will happen.

  Most of these Boghen consult a diviner rarely and selfishly, for the odd matter on which they cannot make up their minds—is it a good time to buy another cow? Which girl should my son marry? When they are desperate, they turn to their gods, and offer sacrifice. But even gods, good or bad, faithful or false, are bound by Nehm. If they try to oppose it, they too will fail. Involving them will only add another layer of complication, so Hjan has never bothered to so much as learn their names. Whether they even exist is beside the question.

  When he is done testing every possibility, he unravels it all, shakes the strands loose, then closes his eyes for the great braid, twisting the strands together however feels right. The drug is fading already, he can feel it, and his fingers move with greater urgency, to finish before it is gone. When he is finished—when the ends of the strands are too short to twist any longer and be trusted to stay in place—he opens his eyes to inspect it from different angles. The black is mostly hidden behind the different colors of the High Queen’s children, but he can see that his own dark red is there as well, thoroughly mingled. It is not yet time for them to part. Hjan is pleased to see that teal touches red at several points. But not all of the royal children are equally close to the center …

  The last trace of the drug fades, and he drops to his knees with teeth bared, groaning at the grip of the giant who has just clenched his skull in its fist.

  The headache passes quickly, as it always does, and he makes his way to bed to find Tatzine waiting up for him in the dark. Enough light trickles in through the drapes for him to see she is sitting in bed with her arms about her knees. Hjan slides in beside his wife, puts an arm around her shoulders, and kisses her on the cheek.

  “What’s happened?” she asks, before he can take things any further.

  “Nothing. Just wanted to check something before bed.” He rubs her shoulder. She shrugs his arm off.

  “What were you checking, then? Prid doesn’t drop by to be friendly, and you don’t go to your study at this hour unless something’s wrong. What is it?”

  “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before. A minor problem with the cambions. I can take care of it.”

  “Is that so.”

  “Yes. Nothing for you to worry about, I promise.” He tugs gently at her arm, but she stays sitting up.

  “What do you mean by that? That you don’t think it’s important, or that I don’t deserve to know?”

  “My love—“

  “Or is it that I can’t be trusted?”

  “I mean that cambions are my concern, your family are yours.”

  “What if I need to know about the cambions to deal with my family?”

  “You’ve never been that curious before. Has something happened with you?”

  “Maja Ruud came by, while you were putting Grenia to bed. She said she wanted to talk. I asked if it was about the meeting, she said no. She said she was only feeling nostalgic for old relations … like our father, Farnilla, and the Wenns.”

  “Not very subtle.”

  “She didn’t need to be subtle, Hjan. That’s what scares me. My sweet sister was far too confident, with tomorrow hanging over all our heads together. It wasn’t a discussion of terms, it was an offer to accept our surrender.”

  “She scared you, because she was trying to scare you. A bluff.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she doesn’t need to bluff, because the whole family, bar Mother, is behind her. Do you care to gamble our lives on which it is? I don’t.”

  “The Queen can’t kill us, love. She needs us.”

  “She needs you,” Tatzine corrects him. “For the moment. That could change, if she let Ghano tie me to a chair and cut off my fingers and toes until you talked. Don’t tell me she wouldn’t.”

  “Tie you to—what? Gods, what’s gotten into you, woman?”

  “Fear.”

  “So I see.” And she is, in fact, trembling. He can feel it in the mattress. “Because our secret is out now.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “So they say. Mother isn’t happy. So if you have anything important to tell me, anything I can take to the meeting tomorrow that might save our lives, I’d appreciate it.”

  He is tempted to tell her to relax, but she knows her own kin. And he, too, remembers what happened to High King Arvell, and little Farnilla, and the Wenns. He calls up the image of teal and red cords in his memory, and decides. Likely she won’t take it well. “Prid came to tell me that someone’s been poaching from our stores again.”

  “Again?”

  “It’s happened before. Several times. Not live subjects or tissue, we track those too close. Refined adjuvants and ichor, grams and ounces at a time. The High Queen has been trying to work things out for herself.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t recall exactly. Years.”

  “And that’s nothing for me to be worried about?”

  “It’s not. They have no hope of success, even if I let them be, and I don’t. They keep having accidents.” Tatzine puts her face in her hands and makes a noise like a quiet smothered scream. “Stop that! You’ll wake Grenia. I told you, cambions are mine to handle.”

  Slowly she lifts her face from her hands to stare at him. He is about to say something else—he isn’t sure what—when she shoves him out of bed. Before he can rise she is atop him, all her weight pressing the wind from his chest. He levers himself up to throw her off, stops short at a flash of moonlight on metal inches from his eye: the knife she keeps under her pillow.

  “I don’t intend to use this, husband, unless you make me,” she says in a voice just tiptoeing over a whisper. “But you are going to lie there and listen to me, Hjan Dük. I don’t care about your pride, I don’t care about your secrets, I don’t care about the men your dead father killed, and I especially don’t care what kind of conversation you think you had with your triple-damned ball of yarn. But you are the father of my child, and the only other person in this world who would care if she was an orphan by the end of the week, so we are going to work together, do you hear me?”

  It still wouldn’t be hard to throw her off, and she needs him still more than her mother does. The thought is very tempting, just now. But there is precedent for women in her family killing their husbands—beginning with Arvell—and she is still her mad mother’s daughter, and most importantly she may be right. “I hear you.”

  “If there’s a problem involving my family, and especially my mother, it is most certainly my problem, and I need to have a say in how we handle it. You are not Boghen, Hjan. You didn’t grow up with these people, you don’t know how they think. Even if you think you do, you don’t. Do you understand that?”

  “I would shrug if you weren’t straddling my arms. What’s to understand? The whole scheme is daft, you can’t deduce my father’s work from a handful of—“

  “Who is trying to do that? Who’s actually doing the stealing?”

  “We don’t catch them in the act of taking it. Inventory disappears, and we find it in little mole-holes, which I destroy in a way that looks like an accident. Taking one or two to interrogate hasn’t been an option. But it stands to reason that the High Queen’s behind it.” He pauses. “Or someone working for her. Does it matter?”

  “Yes, my sweet. It matters a great deal. Do you know for a fact that Mother knows this is going on, and that it isn’t, oh, Ghano, trying to find a way to start a coup?”

  “Again, what difference does that make to me? I don’t want him to have it either.” The knife’s tip is quivering ominously an inch from his left eye. “Can’t you put that damn thing away? I’m talking, aren’t I?”

  “Talking, yes. Listening, no.” But she returns it to its sheath, and throws it back on the bed. “You must be the cleverest imbecile I have ever met. Did you know that?”

  “You’ve said the like before.” He pushes himself up, and she hops up onto the mattress. Her anger seldom lasts long. Wild oscillations in mood might be part of the family madness, or else he might be seeing her personal form of self-control. After six years, he can’t tell which.

  “All that time … I could have used that. We could be much farther ahead than we are, if I’d known.”

  “Maybe,” he allows. Tatzine is chewing her thumbnail now, her eyes darting sharply about as she mulls her options. He has never liked that habit, that expression; it makes him wonder if she imagines her teeth gnawing and grinding through, say, her brother Ghano. The fairy tales never tell you what happens if you marry the wrong kind of princess, and the usual half of the kingdom must be won by force.

  We could be much farther ahead. I could have used that. It will do no good to explain to her why he can’t trust her. It isn’t just that she doesn’t believe in Nehm. It’s that she doesn’t want to. Hjan doubts if she could fathom the concept of a law higher than her own benefit. Thank Eyanna Vogh for that. And love? He bought her like a broodmare at seventeen, and she has never faulted him for it, because if he hadn’t, someone else would have, and that someone would have allowed her less freedom. She appreciates the power he brought her for a dowry. Anything more would be naively sentimental.

  “Get back in bed,” she tells him of a sudden. “That floor is cold. Do you have to be told everything?”

  “Not everything,” is all the protest he gives. Hot lead is fuming in his belly. He doesn’t want to lie down and make it run up his throat. But she is stronger than he, when it matters, and forces him gently back. Soon she is straddling him again, and nuzzling at his neck.

  “We have to stay together, husband,” she murmurs in his ear. “There isn’t anyone else to help us. All I have is you.”

  Nehmpegyin has not come very far down from the days when it was Nimpezia, and steamboats ran up and down the Paore a mile away. The old oil derricks are rusted almost to nothing by now, but the wells were only beginning to be exploited to compete with Rafadian imports when the Blemish struck. The city barely noticed the loss of the newborn market that might have transformed it into a second Pasavana, and possibly eclipsed the first in time. Its elders declared the region closed to the outside world, and enforced it to the point of starving or driving out half its inhabitants. The ancient capital of the High Kings was preserved from all taint, its government kept intact in spite of the chaos outside. In time the rusting boats were hauled out out of the river and broken up for scrap parts, and a new generation of elders dreamed of a glorious rebirth until Eyanna Vogh came out of the wilds to put them to the sword and live out their dream for them.

  When she did, she was greatly vexed to learn that the palace built by Tatnan five hundred years ago was not only ruined but completely dismantled and built over, only the edge of one foundation stone still visible below an aging granary. If her namesake Eyan bothered to build himself a dwelling during his brief third-century reign, there was no record or trace of it left. So she continued the elders’ custom of holding court from the old hotel, one of the few remnants of the city’s stillborn oil boom.

  Today the High Queen presides over a council of her subsidiary kings and nobles—which is to say, her family—in what was once the hotel ballroom, its peeling wallpaper stripped and painted over with murals of daily life around Syoshen Vukh. They cluster their chairs by bloc or clique, forming a rough circle around the central space where Vogh’s best engineers give a report on the parts taken in the recent raid. Hjan and Tatzine sit by themselves a ways to the right of Ghano, who is to the immediate right of his mother, who is perched on a massive gilded oak throne that took four men to haul in this morning.

  The news is encouraging; whatever it was they lost off the back of the wagon, it wasn’t indispensable. They have already begun stamping out rifles of reasonable quality. The cartridges are more difficult for whatever reason, but the mechanics estimate they will have usable bullets by the end of the week. Heads nod all round the room, but there are no smiles. They have heard optimistic reports before. They are the safest kind of reports to give. If no bullets appear by the week’s end, reasons will be found, and the least necessary sorts of person will hang for it.

  Kan Kurnel, Prince of Nath and (by default) minister for industrial development, waits until they are finished with their projections. Then he waves his hand, and another man marches in holding up a new carbine as he would a crown. Ostentatiously Kurnel rises to take it from his hands and read the serial number off the stock, explaining what the letters and numbers mean. He returns it to the fellow who brought it, who bears it to High Queen Eyanna Vogh. She looks the weapon over with a smile. All around the room, tense shoulders relax by barely perceptible degrees.

  The gun starts its rounds of the room, passing hand to hand for all to admire, while King Ghano of Balsupree, Lion of the Paore and Shield of the Realm, rises to congratulate his half-brother on the accomplishment. He is thirty now, a year younger than Hjan, and heir apparent. His beard is a magnificent cloud of curling red-gold locks; his crown mostly hides the darker receding hair above. A brilliant blue tunic of antique cut, trimmed in gold, covers his broad chest, with an equally vivid half-length emerald cape slung across his right shoulder and pinned in place with a golden brooch at the left. His greatest advantage may be that he looks and sounds more like a king than anyone else in the room. His late sire Arvell is said to have been much the same.

  “You have accomplished a great deal in three days,” he intones. His voice is deep and slightly nasal, reminding Hjan of a trombone. “The time of victory will not be long in coming, I think, when we may face the invaders in an even battle, properly armed. I pledge any support I may give to scale up our production, or to arm and train the people.”

  Kurnel stands and bows with his arms folded across his chest. They have a father in common, but the Prince of Nath is slight and dark, if paler than a Siocene. The ends of his black mustache droop past his bare chin. “I have adequate manpower and raw materials,” he says. “Production will accelerate as my men become more comfortable with the equipment. I’m afraid scaling up is out of the question for the present; our limiting factor is in the tools themselves, which we cannot replicate without still larger tools.”

  “Can we get them from someone else?” drawls Queen Maja Ruud from her chair. She wears a full-length gown with a long slit up the sides, the better to display her long legs by crossing them. The gown is dark and embroidered with gems, her butter-blond hair twisted in plaits atop her head. Maja Ruud has never been as pretty as her younger sister, her face too hard and worn by long wild nights for Hjan’s taste.

  “I don’t see how,” says Kurnel. “The Republic will be on high alert, and the parts in question in Marransheel under heavy guard. I don’t believe we could get them up the Paore intact.”

  “Even with generous help from the Beardogs?” says Maja Ruud, with a sly glance at Hjan.

  “The lower Paore has been heavily militarized for some years,” says a visibly annoyed Ghano. He has no love for Hjan or Tatzine, but this is his specialty. “They cannot sail up the river to invade us while my men keep watch at Habarach, nor can we simply float downstream and loot at will. Certainly not so far as Marransheel, at the river’s mouth. In the unlikely event Hjan and his associates made it to their capital alive, they would find the river generously mined on their return. They have stockpiled mines in bulk for this very purpose. I know it for a fact.”

  Maja Ruud presses on. “Somewhere else, then? They can’t have the only—whatever parts we need—on the continent, in Marransheel.”

  “They might have some in Pasavana,” Tatzine offers, her face sweet and innocent. Her sister glowers back, but does not press the point; her own men have had poor luck raiding the Free City of late.

  “There will be no more raids for equipment at this time,” declares Eyanna Vogh from her gilded throne. “The Republic will be eager to retaliate; we would do better to concentrate on arming the border villages.” She snaps and points a finger at the low table before her, where a server rolls out a map. Most of her kin rise from their seats to gather around it. “Our eastern flank is secure enough. Ghano holds the Paore. The attack will come from our south or west.”

  “They were scouting west of Carzo Muth when we struck Tefeia,” says sixteen-year-old Prince Dorn. “Under cover of an embassy. They might intend to strike there.”

  “Too obvious,” Ghano overrules his son. “A feint, nothing more.”

  “They might attempt a punitive raid, if not a major attack,” Dorn persists.

  “You have men. See that they suffer if they try it. Meanwhile, do not waste the council’s time with trifles.” Dorn flinches back; for all his adolescent bluster, he was only legitimized and given his wretched fief three months ago. A diplomatic coup his father may well be regretting now.

  “There are no roads sufficient for a proper invasion,” observes the Princess Velraya, an unusually thoughtful cousin under Maja Ruud’s wing. “Near Carzo Muth or anywhere else. We’ve seen to that. We had best guard the headwaters of the Nistrale. They have no better options.”

  “For now,” the High Queen agrees. “We have just proven that vulnerability. The Nistrale should be a priority.”

  “What about the Groye?” demands Maja Ruud, pointing to the river south of the Nistrale.

  “Nothing to fear,” says a voice from the corner. Fat old King Thorpas, brother and betrayer of the late High King Arvell, didn’t bother to come and look at a map he has long since memorized. “None of its tributaries are navigable so far down. We’ll cut their balls off if they try to lunge by land. Entrust that to me.”

  “We have one other vulnerability,” Ghano says, tapping a finger on the northwest of the map where two more rivers protrude through their border. “But it is not on their land.”

  “No. It’s on ours.” Tatzine puts in smoothly. Every head swivels to stare at her. “The Beardogs would like to use those rivers for our next offensive against the usurpers.”

  “An invasion of Pasavana?” says High Queen Eyanna Vogh. She does not look displeased with the thought, only skeptical.

  “Not necessarily as far as the city itself,” Tatzine assures her. “But then, now that our secret is revealed, we have no reason for excessive restraint. We might carry out my sister’s plan after all, and bring the Prince of Nath a royal gift.” Kan Kurnel blinks, then nods cautiously—Tatzine has had no dealings with him before.

  Eyanna turns her hard stare on Hjan. “And your husband is willing to extend himself so far?”

  “Risks must be taken, Your Highness,” he tells her. “Now that we’ve revealed that cambions are possible, we have to move quickly, to gain strength before they learn our secrets for themselves. The better position we are in now, the less painful the coming conflict.” He hopes his confident tone gives them no clue that this entire plan was concocted in the small hours of the morning, after a grueling argument.

  “I don’t like it,” says Maja Ruud. “If they’re ready to get cambions themselves, we’d do better not to further risk the only man who gives us our own edge. Unless he’d care to share what he knows at last?”

  Eyanna Vogh shuts down the feeble diversion herself. “There’s no sense starting that old argument again. Hjan has given good service already; if he thinks he can win us still greater treasure, I am willing to give him the opportunity.”

  Maja Ruud has no choice but to swallow her rage and accept that the Beardogs will be moving through her territory, doing her work for her. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “All the same,” Ghano puts forward, “the Republic or the Union are better-positioned to launch a major research program than we are. Their wealth vastly exceeds ours. It would behoove us to secure our advantage before risking Hjan further.” He has no notion what they are doing, but as expected he is unwilling to let it pass without a fight.

  And Hjan is ready for him. “They need a substantial base of turned men to work with first. Both powers have been aggressively culling their populations for years. Should I die, Syoshen Vukh will still have an advantage. Even so, you’re not wrong. I’ve entrusted Tatzine with the cipher to my notes. Grenia is fluent in the Thrimmish dialect they are written in—at least, she knows enough to get the gist. Many technical terms are transliterated. As long as they both remain behind and alive, you will be able to reconstruct my father’s work.”

  Ghano has nothing to say to that. Eyanna Vogh looks delighted, which is for all purposes the last word on the subject. Hjan smiles at his wife, who smiles back. Yes, working together has its advantages. The High Queen’s anger is turned for the moment. Tatzine will be out of harm’s way, as he wanted. It will do. All he has to do is not die himself. Hjan can trust to Nehm for that much.

  One more task remains, and it is Hjan’s alone to perform, but it must wait until after council, when all the little beggars of the Nehmpegyin court have peeled away by twos and threes. It doesn’t take especially long; Eyanna is sufficiently taken with the idea of assaulting Pasavana to brush away other claims on her attention like so many buzzing flies. When every other question has run out of steam, Hjan kisses his wife goodbye, and she hurries to buttonhole Kan Kurnel for an extended and pointless discussion of their prospects for reviving the capital’s oil industry. Ghano, Maja Ruud, and their associated parasites dutifully linger behind to eavesdrop, leaving Hjan—a known political incompetent—free to trail after the High Queen as she leaves the room.

  He catches up to her in the old conference room, whose antique table is currently scattered with cards from an interrupted game. She has settled her aging frame into the chair at the end, and is calling for a drink when he walks in. She turns to stare, then grimaces. “Oh, what is it now?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Your Majesty, but something has come up, and I needed to speak to you privately. Prid came to me last night to report discrepancies in our accounts at the laboratory.”

  Eyanna blinks, and gives him a wary look. It is still possible to tell that she was once as pretty as Tatzine, and in much the same way, twenty or thirty years before. Her eyes are hazel, not green, and there is grey in her hair, but it was once just as blonde and curly as her younger daughter’s. Now the High Queen of Syoshen Vukh looks like nothing so much as a plump, middle-aged housewife. “Discrepancies, you say.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid someone has been pilfering ingredients.”

  “And why would they do that, Mister Dük?”

  “It could be for any number of reasons, Your Highness. They might be looking to sell it, or to do research of their own. Or, obviously, if they had some notion what they were doing, they might be planning some kind of insurgency.”

  The High Queen looks weary. Hjan is pleased to see it. All the covert sites he has uncovered to date have been close to Nehmpegyin, where she could keep an eye on them. Her impatience confirms her daughter’s suspicion: she was behind the thefts herself. “I doubt it. More likely you lost some, or some clod assistant spilled and tried to hide it.”

  Here it is. “I would agree with you, Your Highness, if the amounts were small. But in this case, so much has gone missing that I don’t think we can afford to assume that.”

  She gives him a cold, hard stare. “How much?”

  He is careful to meet her stare, not looking away for even an eyeblink, as he replies, “At least a quart of ichor, and upwards of two pounds in mixed adjuvants. Enough to make a dozen strong cambions, easily. Frankly, it was blatant. Prid couldn’t believe it, at first.”

  The High Queen’s jaw has dropped, and her eyes have lost focus. She is staring not at Hjan but through him in her horror. To keep from laughing he gives vent to some of the rage he normally takes great pains to smother. “We had an agreement, High Queen. My father’s secrets were bought in dead men’s blood and sealed with his own. No other man has any right—“

  “Oh, shut your mouth, fool, I’ve heard it all before.” The rebuke is automatic by now, but brings her back to herself. “Do you think I had anything to do with this?”

  “I wasn’t accusing you,” he says. It doesn’t sound convincing, but under the circumstances it shouldn’t.

  “You’d better not. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will be sending someone around to confirm your accounting, and then I will see to it that no further discrepancies take place. I promise you that. Now, if you don’t have any other cheery news to share, get out. I’m tired of you already.”

  He gratefully obeys, not even stopping to bow or say goodbye. In some ways their relationship is pleasantly simple; they don’t have to pretend to love each other. He has no concerns about the threatened audit. He dumped the appropriate amounts of material down the drain in person this morning, while Tatzine kept the household occupied with other matters, and made sure the books matched—fortunately Prid had not corrected them after his initial discovery. She will probably speak with Prid as well, but the boy was a veteran pickpocket when Father recruited him, and can bareface better than half the royal family.

  Tatzine is waiting for him at the door to their house. Grenia is out in the park with her nanny. They hurry upstairs, and let the help think what they like. Once the bedroom door is closed behind them, she shoves him up against it, kisses him fiercely, and whispers, “How did it go?”

  “Just as planned,” he mutters as he runs a hand down her back.

  “Magnificent. I knew you could do it.”

  “No, you didn’t. You thought she would see plain through me, admit it.”

  “Mmm. I was a little worried. Not much.” She smiles, and adds, “If I’m going to be stuck here while you’re off to war, I need something to do with my time. Is Grenia ready to be a big sister, do you think?”

  He smiles back. This is all pleasant enough, but he can still see traces of the young Eyanna Vogh in her face. Before she turned old, and fat, and bitter, and put her husband to the sword, she might have been a bright and beautiful creature just like this. And she might have used Arvell the same way.

  He had no doubts whatever about his ability to brazen it out. Her Majesty might have seen guilt in his face if he’d felt at all guilty, but he didn’t. He could feel his nehm guiding him the entire time. Now she will oblige him by removing her own spy from his laboratory staff, and questioning him so thoroughly as to render him useless for further duty. When she is done she will conclude that he was working for one horrid member of her family or another. Whichever one he confesses to most convincingly.

  Who will it be? Fat old Thorpas, who has already turned on his own blood kin? Unlikely; he shows no sign of ambition or discontent, and is not in line for the throne. Ghano? Already the heir, and invincible besides—she needs him to guard the Paore. No, the best target for her suspicion will be the lovely Maja Ruud, who will only harden her mother’s misgivings by complaining relentlessly about the coming attack on Pasavana. With luck, she will not live another year to frighten Hjan’s woman again.

  If only his woman didn’t frighten him …