"I'll get to the point, then, Magister," he said. "It's about our visitor. I nerd your help."

"Problems with the boy?" Cinnabar actually looked mildly concerned.

"Not the boy-or at least that's not the visitor we mean." He raised his voice. "You can come out now, Chaven!"

The physician had to bend at the waist to make his way through the doorway of the bedchamber, where he had been sitting with Flint. Even with his head bowed so as not to touch the ceiling, he loomed almost twice Cinnabar's height.

"Good evening, Magister," he said. "I think we have met."

"By the oldest Deeps." Cinnabar was clearly amazed. "Chaven Makaros, isn't it? You're the physician-the one who's supposed to be dead."

"There are many who would like that to be true," said Chaven with a rueful smile, "but so far they have not had their wish granted."

Cinnabar turned to his hosts. "You surprise me again. But what is this to me?"

"To all of us, I'm beginning to think," said Chert. "My bracing can't take the weight of all these secrets any longer, Magister. I need your help."

The head of the Quicksilver clan looked up at the physician, then back at Chert. "I've always thought you a good and honest man, Blue Quartz. Talk to me. I will listen. That much at least I can promise."

When Ludis saw that his visitor had arrived, the Lord Protector of Hi-erosol gestured for his military commanders to leave. The black-cloaked of¬ficers rolled up their charts of the citadel's defenses, bowed, and departed, but not without a few odd glances at the prisoner.

Ludis Drakava and his guest were not left entirely alone, of course: be¬sides the Golden Enomote, half a pentecount of soldiers who never left the lord protector's presence even when he slept, and who stood now at atten¬tion along the throne room walls, the lord protector also had his personal bodyguards, a pair of huge Kracian wrestlers who stood cross-armed and impassive on either side of the Green Chair. (The massive jade throne of Hierosol was reputed to have belonged to the great Hiliometes, the Worm-Slayer himself, and certainly was big enough to have seated a demigod. In recent centuries, more human-sized emperors had removed much of the

throne's lower foundation so they could sit with their feet close enough to the ground to spare their pride.)

Ludis, a former mercenary himself, was broad enough in chest and shoulders to mount the Green Chair without looking like a child. He had once been lean and muscled as a heroic statue, but now even the light armor that he wore instead of the robes of nobility-perhaps to remind his subjects he had won the throne by force and would not give it up any other way-could not hide the thickness around his middle, nor could his spade¬like beard completely obscure his softening jaw.

Ludis beckoned the prisoner forward as he seated himself on the un-cushioned jade. "Ah, King Olin." He had the rasping voice of a man who had been shouting orders in the chaos of battle all his grown life. "It is good to see you. We should not be strangers."

"What should we be?" asked the prisoner, but without obvious rancor.

"Equals. Rulers thrown together by circumstance, but with an under¬standing of what ruling means."

"You mean I should not despise you for holding me prisoner."

"Holding you for ransom. A common enough practice." Ludis clapped his hands and a servant appeared, dressed in the livery of House Drakava, a tunic decorated with a stylized picture of a red-eyed ram, a coat of arms that had not been hanging in the Herald's Hall quite as many years as the other great family crests. You can make yourself emperor in one day, warned an old Hierosoline saying, but it takes five centuries to make yourself respectable. "Wine," commanded Ludis. "And for you, Olin?"

He shrugged. "Wine. One thing at least; I know you will not poison me."

Ludis laughed and pawed at his beard. "No, no indeed! A waste of a valu¬able prize, that would be!" He flicked his hand at the servant. "You heard him. Go." He settled himself, pulling the furry mantle close around his shoulders. "It is cold, this sea wind. We plainsmen never get used to it. Are your rooms warm enough?"

"I am as comfortable as I could be any place with iron bars on the doors and windows."

"You are always welcome at my table. TWre are no bars on the dining hall."

"Just armed guards." Olin smiled a little. "You will forgive me. I cannot seem to lose my reluctance to break bread with the man who is holding me prisoner while my kingdom is in peril."

The servant returned. Ludis Drakava reached up and took a goblet from the tray. "Or would you like to choose first?"

"As I said." Olin look the other goblet and sipped. "Xandian?"

"horn Mihan. The last of the stock. 1 suppose they will make that foul, sweet Xixian stuff now." Ludis drank his off in one swallow and wiped his mouth."Perhaps you scorn my invitations because you are a king and I am only a usurper-a peasant with an army." His voice remained pleasant, but something had changed. "Kings, if they must be ransomed, like to be ran¬somed by other kings."

Olin stared at him for a long moment before replying. "Beggaring my people for ransom is bad enough, Drakava. But you want my daughter."

"There are worse matches she could make. But I am told her whereabouts are… unknown at the present. You are running out of heirs, King Olin, al¬though I also hear your newest wife has whelped successfully. Still, an infant prince, helpless in the hands of… what is their name… the Tolly family…?"

"If I did not have reasons already to wish to put my sword through you," said Olin evenly, "you would have just given me several. And you will never have my daughter. May the gods forgive me, but it would be better if she truly is dead instead of your slave. If I had known then what I know about you now I would have hanged myself before allowing you even to suggest such a match."

The lord protector's eyebrow rose. "Ah? Really?"

"I have heard of what happens to the women brought to your chambers- no, the girls. Young girls."

Ludis Drakava laughed. "Have you? Perhaps as you curse me for a mon¬ster you will tell me what your own interest is in girl-children, Olin of Southmarch. I hear you have developed a… friendship with the daughter of Count Perivos."

Olin, still standing, bent and put down his goblet on the floor, sloshing a little wine onto the marble tiles. "I think I would like to go back to my rooms now. To my prison."

"My question strikes too close to home?"

"All the gods curse you, Drakava, Pelaya Akuanis is a child. She reminds me of my own daughter-not that you would understand such a thing. She has been kind to me. We talk occasionally in the garden, with guards and her maids present. Even your foul imagination cannot make that into any¬thing unseemly."

"Ah, perhaps, perhaps. But that does not explain the little Xixian girl."

"What?" Olin looked startled, even took a step back. His foot tipped over the goblet and the dregs pooled on the floor.

"Surely you don't think you can meet with a chambermaid, or laundry maid, or whatever that little creature is, let alone my castle steward, with out my knowing it. If such a thing happened I would have to poison all my spies like rats and start over." He brayed a laugh. "I am not such a fool as you think me, Southmarch!"

"It was curiosity only." Olin took a deep breath; when he spoke again his voice was even. "She resembled someone, or so I thought, and I asked to meet her. I was wrong. She is nothing."

"Perhaps." Ludis clapped for the servant again, who came in with an ewer of wine and refilled the lord protector's cup. He saw the goblet on the floor and looked accusingly at Olin, but did not move to clean it up. "Tell the guards to bring in the envoy," Ludis ordered the man, then turned back to his captive. "Perhaps all is as you say. Perhaps. In any case, I think you will find this interesting."