"Chief bodyguard?" ZeSpiole said. "Yes. He could pick amongst the household concubines. The ones dressed in blue."

"Ah," YetAmidous said, and stroked under the chin of the dark-haired girl at his side. "The household girls. One level beneath my little Yalde."

"I think DeWar does not make use of that particular privilege," Ralboute said.

"They say he keeps the company of the concubine Perrund," RuLeuin said.

"The one with the wasted arm." YetAmidous nodded.

"I have heard that too," BreDelle agreed.

"One of UrLeyn's own?" Simalg looked aghast. "You don't mean that he has her? Providence! The Protector would make sure he could stay in the harem as long as he liked — as a eunuch."

"I cannot imagine that DeWar is that foolish or so intemperate," BreDelle said. "It could only be courtly love."

"Or they could be plotting something, could they not?" Simalg suggested.

"I hear he visits a house in the city, though not often," RuLeuin said.

"A house with girls?" YetAmidous asked. "Not boys?"

"Girls," RuLeuin confirmed.

"I think I'd ask for double fare, if I were a girl who had to accommodate that fellow," Simalg said. "He has a sour smell about him. Have you never noticed?"

"You may have a nose for these things," said Doctor BreDelle.

"Perhaps DeWar has a special dispensation from the Protector," Ralboute suggested. "A secret one which lets him bed Perrund."

"She's crippled!" YetAmidous said.

"Yet still, I think, beautiful," Simalg said.

"And it must be said that some people have been known to find infirmity attractive," Doctor BreDelle added.

"Cleaving the regal lady Perrund. A privilege you enjoyed, ZeSpiole?" Ralboute asked the older man.

"Sadly not," ZeSpiole said. "And I do not think DeWar does either. I suspect theirs is a meeting of minds, not bodies."

"Too clever by twice," Simalg muttered, beckoning more wine.

"What privileges do you most miss from the post DeWar now has?" Ralboute asked, looking down as he peeled a piece of fruit. He shooed away a servant who offered to do this for him.

"I miss being near the Protector every day, but little else. It is an unnerving job. A young man's job. My present post is quite exciting enough without having to deal with murderous ambassadors."

"Oh, come, ZeSpiole," Ralboute said, sucking at his fruit and then spitting out a mush of seeds into a waste bowl before sucking again and swallowing. He wiped his lips. "You must resent DeWar, mustn't you? He usurped you."

ZeSpiole was silent for a moment. "Usurpation can be the right course, sometimes, Duke, don't you think?" He looked round the others. "We all of us usurped the old King. It needed to be done."

"Absolutely," said YetAmidous.

"Of course," RuLeuin agreed.

"Mmmm!" BreDelle nodded, mouth full of a sweetmeat.

Ralboute nodded. Simalg gave a sigh. "Our Protector did the usurping," he said. "The rest of us helped."

"And proud to do so," YetAmidous said, slapping the edge of his couch.

"So you don't resent the fellow at all?" Ralboute asked ZeSpiole. "You are a child of Providence indeed." He shook his head and used his fingers to break the flesh of another fruit.

"I no more resent him than you ought to resent the Protector," ZeSpiole said.

Ralboute was stopped in his eating. "Why should I resent UrLeyn?" he asked. "I honour UrLeyn and what he has done."

"Including putting us here in the palace," Simalg said. "We might have still been juniors, out of favour. We owe the Grand Aedile as much as any trader who pins his voting document — what do you call it? Franchisement. His Franchisement high on his wall."

"Just so," ZeSpiole said. "And yet if anything was to happen to the Protector —»

"Providence forbid!" YetAmidous said.

"— might not a Duke such as you — a person of high birth under the old regime yet who had also been a faithful general under the Protector's new order — be just the sort of person the people might turn to, as successor?"

"Or there's the boy," Simalg said, yawning.

"This talk's uncomfortable," RuLeuin said.

"No," ZeSpiole said, looking at RuLeuin. "We must be able to talk of such things. Those who wish Tassasen and UrLeyn ill most certainly will not shrink from such talk. You need to think of such things, RuLeuin. You are the Protector's brother. People might turn to you if he was taken from us."

RuLeuin shook his head. "No," he said. "I have risen so considerably on his cloak-tails. People already think I have climbed too far." He glanced over at Ralboute, who looked back with wide, expressionless eyes.

"Oh yes," Simalg said, waving a hand, "we Dukes are frightfully against such accidents of birth."

"Where's that housemaster?" YetAmidous said. "Yalde, be a dear and go and fetch the musicians back, would you? All this talk is making my head ache. We need music and songs!"

"Here!"

"There! There he is!"

"Quick! Catch him! Catch him! Quickly!"

"Aah!"

"Too late!"

"I win I win I win!"

"You win again! What cunningness in one so young!" Perrund picked the boy up with her good arm and swung him on to the seat beside her. Lattens, UrLeyn's son, squirmed as he was tickled then yelped and dived under a fold in the concubine's gown and tried to hide there as DeWar, who had run most of the length of the visiting chamber of the outer harem in a vain attempt to head Lattens off, arrived panting and growling.

"Where's that child?" he demanded gruffly.

"Child? Why, what child could that be?" the lady Perrund asked, hand at her throat, her blue-flecked eyes wide.

"Ach, never mind. I'll just have to sit down here to get my breath back after chasing the young scamp." There was a giggle as DeWar sat down right beside the boy, whose hose and shoes stuck out from the woman's robe. "What's this? Here are that rascal's shoes. And look!" DeWar grabbed Lattens" ankle. There was a muffled shriek. "And his leg! I'll bet the rest is attached! Yes! Here he is!" Perrund pulled away the fold of her gown to let DeWar tickle the boy, then brought a cushion from another part of the couch and put it under the boy's bottom. DeWar plonked him there. "Do you know what happens to boys who win at hide-and-seek?" DeWar asked. Lattens, wideeyed, shook his head and made to suck his thumb. Perrund gently stopped him from doing this. "They get," DeWar growled, coming very close to the child, "sweets!"

Perrund handed him the box of crystallised fruits. Lattens squealed with delight and rubbed his hands together, staring into the box and trying to decide which to have first. Eventually he grabbed a small handful.

Huesse, another red-gowned concubine, sat heavily down on a couch across from Perrund and DeWar. She too had been involved in the game of hide-and-seek. Huesse was Lattens" aunt. Her sister had died giving birth to Lattens towards the start of the war of succession. Huesse was a plumply supple woman with unruly fair ringleted hair.

"And have you had your lessons for today, Lattens?" Perrund asked.

"Yes," the boy said. He was small made, like his father, though he had the red-tinged golden hair of his mother and his aunt.

"And what did you learn today?"

"More things about equal triangles, and some history, about things which have happened."

"I see," Perrund said, settling the boy's collar back down and patting his hair flat again.

"There was this man called Narajist," the boy said, licking his fingers free of sugar dust.

"Naharajast," DeWar said. Perrund motioned him quiet.

"Who looked in a tube at the sky and told the Emperor…" Lattens screwed up his eyes and peered up at the three glowing plaster domes lighting the chamber. "Poeslied —»

"Puiside," DeWar muttered. Perrund frowned severely and tutted.

"— there were big fiery rocks up there and Watch Out!" The boy stood and shouted the last two words, then sat down again and leant over the box of sweets, one finger to his lips. "And the Emperor didn't and the rocks killed him dead."