"Powers above, straighten up!" Mezentio said irritably. "Do you [..]"

"I'm King Swemmel, to need all that head [..] knocking nonsense? He this it makes people afraid of him, but what does an Unkerlanter knowing [..]. Nothing to speak of - Unkerlanters grow like onions, with their heads in the ground."

"Even so, your Majesty," Sabrino said, nodding. "If only there weren't so many of them."

"By the harnhanded way he's fighting that war against Zuwayza, Swemmel is doing his best to make them fewer," the king answered.

"And my congratulations, by the way, on how well you and your wing fought above Wihtgara. I was very pleased by the reports I read of your exploits. "

"I shall pass on your praise to my dragonfliers," Sabrino said with another bow. "They, after all, are the ones who earned it for me."

"Spoken as a good officer should speak," Mezentio said. "Tell me, Count, in your fighting above Forthweg, did you find many of Kaunian blood opposing you on dragons painted in Forthwegian colors?"

"Speaking solely from my own experience, your Majesty, that's hard to say," Sabrino replied. "One often doesn't get close enough to the foe to see exactly who he is. When the dragons fly high, going up there's a chilly business, too, so the men who fly them are often bundled against the cold. I'm given to understand, though, that the Forthwegians set a good many obstacles in the way of Kaunians who seek to fly dragons, the same as they do against Kaunian officers of any sort."

"I know for a fact that last is true." Mezentio frowned. "Curious how the Forthwegians look down their beaky noses at the Kaunians inside their own borders, but follow like lapdogs when the Kaunians in the east seek to savage us."

"They've paid for their folly," Sabrino said.

"Everyone who harms Algarve shall pay for his folly," Mezentio declared. "Everyone who has ever harmed Algarve shall pay for his folly.

We lost the Six Years' War. This time, come what may, we shall win."

"Certainly we shall, your Majesty," Sabrino said. "The whole world is jealous of Algarve, of what we are and of the way we've pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps even after everyone piled on to us in the Six Years' War."

"Aye, the whole world is jealous - the whole world, and especially the Kaunian kingdoms," Mezentio said. "You mark my words, Count: those yellow-haired folk still hate us for destroying their cozy little empire more than a thousand years ago. If they could kill us all, they would.

Since they can't, they seek to crush us so we may never rise again."

"It won't happen." Sabrino spoke with great sincerity.

"Of course it won't," Mezentio said. "Are we as stupid Unkerlanters, to let them scheme and plot to destroy us without making plans of our own?" The king laughed. "And the Unkerlanters are stupid indeed, with Swemmel always bellowing 'Efficiency!' at the top of lungs and then blundering into one idiotic war after another." He turned away from Sabrino toward a noble who stood waiting to be recognized.

"And how are you, your Grace?"

Sabrino went back for another goblet of wine. That was more t than he'd enjoyed with the king in any other meeting. And Mezentio only knew who he was - which he'd expected - but also where his w had served - which he hadn't. He didn't fight to gain royal notice, he wouldn't turn down royal notice if it came his way.

He drifted through the room, greeting men he knew, flirting serving women and the companions of nobles who happened to live Trapani, and keeping his ears open for gossip. There was plenty; the o trouble was, he didn't always know to what it referred. When one [..wh goateed..] general said to another, "We have only to kick in the door the whole rotten structure win come crashing down," what door was talking about? Whoever was standing behind it wouldn't care to hav kicked in on him. Of that Sabri'no was certain.

A commodore in naval black spoke to a colleague: "Well, this hou to set the history of warfare on the sea back about a thousand years."

Laughing, his friend answered, "They pay off on what you do. T don't pay off on how you do it." Then he noticed Sabrino was listened.

Whatever he said after that was in a voice too low for the dragonflie hear. Annoyed at having been caught, Sabrino took himself elsewhe

A woman put a hand on his arm. She wasn't a servant; the green of silk tunic was darker than that of the national banner, and she wore gold and emeralds than a servant could even have dreamt of As Alga women sometimes did, she came straight to the point: "My friend drunk himself asleep, and I don't want to go back to my flat alone."

He looked her up and down. "Your friend, my dear, is a fool.Tell your name. I want to know whose fool he is."

"I am Ippalca," she answered, "and you are the famous Count Sab the man in all the news sheets."

"My sweet, I was famous long before the news sheets ever hear me," Sabrino said. "When we get back to your flat, I will show why." Ippalca laughed. Her eyes glowed. Sabrino slid an arm around her waist. Together, they left the Salon of King Aquilante V.

"Efficiency." Leudast made the word into a curse. It had already doomed a lot of Unkerlanter soldiers. He looked around. After the homelike fields of western Forthweg, this Zuwayzi waste of sunbaked rock and blowing sand seemed a particularly cruel joke.

He checked his water bottle. It was full. He'd filled it at the last water hole, only half a mile or so south of where he was now. The Zuwayzin hadn't poisoned that one. He'd seen men drink from it, and they'd taken no harm. The naked black savages hadn't missed many water holes, They weren't perfectly efficient themselves -just far too close for comfort.

Sergeant Magnulf trudged by. His boots scuffed through sand. His shoulders slumped, ever so slightly. Even his iron determination, which had never faltered during the war against Gyongyos, was wearing thin here. "Tell me again, Sergeant," Leudast called to him. "Remind me why King Swemmel wants this land bad enough to take it away from anybody. Remind me why anybody who's got it isn't happy to give it to the first fool who wants it."

Magnulf looked at him. "You need to be more efficient with your. mouth, soldier," he said tonelessly. "I know you didn't mean to call King Swemmel a fool, but somebody else who was listening might get the idea you did. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?"

Leudast considered. If they arrested him for disloyalty to King Swcmmel, they'd take him out of this Zuwayzi wilderness. He wouldn't have to worry about black men who wanted to blaze him - or, as arrny runior had it, to cut his throat and drink his blood. On the other hand, he would have to worry about Swemmel's interrogators. He might escape the Zuwayzin. The interrogators… no.

"Thank you, Sergeant," he replied at last. "I'll watch what I say."

"You'd better." Magnulf wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his tunic.

The Unkerlanters called the tunic's color rock gray, but it didn't match any of the rocks hereabouts, which were various ugly shades of yellow.

That also struck Leudast as inefficient, but he kept his mouth shut about it. Magnulf went on, "I'll even answer your question. The king wants this land back because it used to belong to Unkerlant, and so it ought to again.

And the Zuwayzin don't want us to have it on account of it blocks our path toward better country farther north."

"Is there better country farther north?" Leudast asked, again speaking more freely than he should have. "Or does this miserable desert go on forever?"

"There's supposed to be better country," Magnulf said. "I suppose there must be better country - otherwise, the Zuwayzin couldn't raise so many soldiers against us."

That made sense. Along with the rest of the men in his company,