"Good harvest this year?" he said.

Hollard and his wife looked at each other and grinned.

"Well, the wheat, rye, barley, and oats came in all right," he said. "We're finally getting a clue. Lord, the mistakes we made the first couple of years! Come Monday we're getting some seasonal people in to start on the apples, then the grape harvest. Corn's been good, so far, and the canola. We didn't get the apples all in last year, and had to let the pigs eat the windfalls, and you heard about the birds, bears, and grapes-every God-damned bird in creation passes this way twice a year, all hungry from their travels. Bloody migratory welfare fowl-and what those…" he stopped and left out a word "passenger pigeons do to a grainfield doesn't bear thinking about, thank God the kids're getting old enough to handle bird-scaring. Then there are the rest of the potatoes."

He reached out to touch wood, and Tanaswada made a geometric gesture of propitiation. "Assuming the weather holds and assuming we get everything in timely, not too bad. Prices have been reasonable this year, despite all that Alban wheat coming in."

"Then you get your easy season," Cofflin said, chuckling slightly to show sympathy. Hollard's laugh was full-throated.

"Oh, right. Nothing but the fall plowing and planting, muck-spreading, shucking and shelling the corn, ring-barking trees and rolling logs and burning 'em and teaming the prime ones out for the timberyard hauler to pick up-

Tanaswada put a cloth over her shoulder, followed it with the baby, and began patting its back. "I've never had it so easy as here," she said. "There, little one, that feels better, doesn't it? Tom, dear, you sit on a machine, the horses pull it, and it cuts the hay… I drive another machine and it turns and rakes it… all that's left to do is pitch it onto the wagon and take it to the barn. Can you call that work?"

"Yes," her husband said.

When the general chuckle had died down, he went on: "I was afraid you had bad news about Ken."

Cofflin shook his head. "Far as I know, he's doing his job well enough." He cocked an eyebrow. "Ever wish you had it, Tom?"

"Never," Hollard said promptly. "Alba was enough fighting for me, unless someone comes here." He looked at his wife and child, around at home and land. "Then we'll fight. Meantime, I'll leave it to Ken and Kathyrn and the others. I've got my family and a good farm and I'm easy with my neighbors. That's enough for me; I'm content to be a… what's the old word?"

"Yeoman?" Martha said.

"Ayup."

Jared Cofflin sipped at the bitter-tasting coffee, pouring in more of the thick Jersey cream and wishing for the ten-thousandth time that they'd had something more than ornamental coffee plants to plant out down in the Caribbean. Or that they had time to send an expedition to Ethiopia; the books said the wild coffee there was a lot better than this. Which was drinkable, if you added some chicory, but only just.

"Well, the whole purpose of this war is to make sure we won't have to fight on our own doorsteps again," he pointed out. "Surely your brother's made that clear to you."

"Oh, it's clear enough to me," Tom Hollard said. "Not everyone looks that far ahead, though. And like I said, the war taxes're hitting a lot of us just when we were finally getting out from under."

"Then it's up to us to convince 'em," Jared said, settling down to work.

A song came from the forecastle of the Chamberlain after the commodore's officer-guests had departed; voices in soft harmony with a flute and the strum of a guitar:

There is much that life withholds

There is much that life denies-

I am content… and most content…

With seaward-gazing eyes.

Marian Alston smiled up through the sloping windows at the frosted stars. A lot of songs had been pulled out of books and record collections that first year after the Event because there was no other way to have music besides making it yourself… but the old words made more sense these days.

"Well, that went off well," she said aloud.

She kicked off her boots, threw her jacket over the back of one chair, and sank back onto the broad semicircle of cushioned bench that ran around the rear of the cabin below the slanting windows, stretching her arms behind her head. Nothing came through the open panes but a little cool sea air; nothing showed save campfires ashore and the riding lights of the ships on the calm sea, and the crescent moon above casting a westward glimmerpath toward Nantucket and home. A single lantern turned the big room into a place of shadows, gleams from polished wood and metal, from the black-lacquered surfaces of the two sets of katana and wazikashi racked on the wall, from the glass that covered the family portraits of them with the girls. It was quiet outside, and the music came plain:

My dreams sail with the tall white ships

My heart, it cannot bide at home;

I share the blue of singing space

The bitter kiss of foam.

The pageantry of storm and cloud;

The mystery of ebb and flow

The song of water as I sleep…

All of these I know.

Swindapa came back from the small head that connected to the commodore's quarters portside and stopped at the sideboard to pour them both drinks. Marian watched her partner's panther-graceful nakedness with a relaxed appreciation that suddenly turned to a stab of joy so piercing that it was pain as well. Memory overwhelmed her for an instant; of a night down along the coast of Brazil, the trades steady on the port quarter in the midnight watch. The two of them had gone forward to watch the phosphorescent waters peeling aside from the bow like waves of heated metal, their wake glowing behind the ship like a mile-long streak of light across the night-dark sea. Swindapa jumped up to the rail, leaning far out with one hand on the shrouds, her loosened hair trailing to the side like a torrent of silver; turned with the wonder of it in her eyes…

No lesser joy can dim the spell

Of quietly enchanted hours;

When the sea wore reflected stars

Upon a breast like flowers.

She took the glass and gave a sigh of contentment as the other curled up beside her and they laid their heads together, kissing and murmuring into each other's ears.

"Yes, dinner was like a feast of kinfolk," Swindapa said, after a minute. "It's a lot like being a part of a lineage, being in the Guard."

Brine-scented dawns-seafaring dreams

How richly these have dowered me;

That I should go through all my days

Companioned by the sea…

"That's the way I wanted it, 'dapa," Alston replied. Band of brothers, she thought-a bit sexist, but traditional. "Mmmm, that's good," she added.

"The whiskey, or this?" Swindapa chuckled, as she undid the buttons of the other's shirt and moved her hands inside.

"Both," Marian said, and finished off the glass. It was due that much respect, part of her last stock of Maker's Mark. Then she pulled her partner to her, trailing lips down her neck, to the breasts warm in her hands, shadow-black fingers against pearl-white skin. The Fiernan gave a shivering cry of delight. Marian raised her head with a chuckle and said:

"The only question is, shall we make out here and scandalize the night-watch with the sound effects, or move over to the bed?"

Swindapa's hands were on her belt buckle. "Both, of course," she said, grinning affectionately. Solemnly for a moment: "It may be our last time to share ourselves."

The forecastle was silent now, and there was a harsher music in the background; one of the Sun People war bands on shore, roaring out the tune to the squeal of a primitive bagpipe and a bohdran and something shatteringly like a Lamberg drum. It was an ancient battle chant, with verses that were new since the Eagle People came to Alba: