YetAmidous slapped the table with the flat of his hand and stood up out of his seat. "Well said, sir! That's the spirit!"

ZeSpiole watched BiLeth shrink further in his seat, and exchanged looks with RuLeuin, who looked down. ZeSpiole pursed his lips and studied the map on the table. The others gathered round the table — lesser generals, advisors and aides — busied themselves in a variety of other ways, but none looked directly at the Protector or said anything in contradiction.

UrLeyn gazed round at their faces with a look of mocking admonition. "What, is there nobody else to take my foreign minister's side?" he asked, waving one hand at the subsiding form that was BiLeth. "Is he to remain alone and unseconded in his campaign?"

Nobody said anything. 'ZeSpiole?" UrLeyn said.

The Guard Commander looked up. "Sir?"

"Do you think I am right? Should I refuse to entertain any further advances from our rebellious barons?"

ZeSpiole took a deep breath. "I think we might profitably threaten the barons with what you have mentioned, sir.

"And, if we take one, carry it out, yes?"

ZeSpiole studied the great fan of window on the wall opposite, where glass and semi-precious stones shone with sunlight. "I can appreciate the prospect of seeing one of the barons so humbled, sir. And as you say, there are enough widows in this city who would cheer his screams sufficient to drown them out."

"You see no intemperateness in such a course, sir?" UrLeyn asked reasonably. "No rashness, no cruel impetuousness which might rebound on us?"

"That would be a possibility, perhaps," ZeSpiole said, with a flicker of uncertainty.

"A 'possibility', 'perhaps'?" UrLeyn said in a voice that mocked the Guard Commander's. "But we must do better than that, Commander! This is an important matter. One that needs our gravest consideration. We cannot make light of it, can we? Or perhaps not. Perhaps you disagree. Do you disagree, Commander?"

"I agree that we must think hard about what we are going to do, sir," ZeSpiole said, his voice and manner serious.

"Good, Commander," UrLeyn said with what appeared to be sincerity. "I am glad we have extracted a hint of decision from you." He looked round everybody else. "Are there any other views I should hear from any of you?" Heads went down all around the table.

DeWar began to be thankful that the Protector had not thought to turn round and ask him his opinion. Indeed he still worried that he might. He suspected nothing he could say would make the General happy.

"Sir?" said VilTere. All eyes turned to the young provincial commander. DeWar hoped he wasn't going to say something stupid.

UrLeyn glared. "What, sir?"

"Sir, I was, sadly, too young to be a soldier during the war of succession, but T have heard from many a commander whose opinion I respect and who served under you that your judgment has always proved sure and your decisions far-sighted. They told me that even when they doubted your decree, they trusted you, and that trust was vindicated. They would not be where they are, and we would not be here today" — at this the young commander looked round the others — "were it otherwise."

The other faces round the table searched UrLeyn's for a response before they reacted.

UrLeyn nodded slowly. "Perhaps I should take it ill," he said, "that it is our most junior and most recently arrived recruit who holds the highest opinion of my faculties."

DeWar thought he detected a sense of cautious relief around the table.

"I'm sure we all feel the same way, sir," said ZeSpiole with an indulgent smile to VilTere and a cautious one to UrLeyn.

"Very well," UrLeyn said. "We shall consider what fresh troops we might be able to send to Ladenscion and we shall tell Ralboute and Simalg to prosecute the war against the barons without respite or negotiation. Gentlemen." With that, and a perfunctory nod, UrLeyn rose and marched away. DeWar followed.

"Then let me tell you something closer to the truth."

"Only closer?"

"Sometimes the truth is too much to bear."

"I have a strong constitution."

"Yes, but I meant that sometimes it is too much for the teller, not the told."

"Ah. Well then, tell me what you can."

"Oh, there is not so much, now I approach it. And it is a common story. All too common. The less I tell you of it the more you could be hearing it from a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand mouths or more."

"I have a feeling it is not a happy story."

"Indeed. Anything but. It is just that of women, especially young women, caught up in a war."

"Ah.,

"You see? A story that scarcely needs to be told. The ingredients imply the finished article, and the method of its making, do they not? It is men who fight wars, wars are fought taking villages, towns and cities, where women tend the hearths, and when the place that they live is taken, so are they. Their honour becomes one of the spoils, their bodies too invaded. That territory taken. So my story is no different from that of tens of thousands of women, regardless of their nation or their tribe. And yet for me it is everything. For me it is the most important thing that ever happened to me. For me it was the end of my life, and what you see before you is like a ghost, a spirit, a mere shade, unsubstantial."

"Please, Perrund." He reached out his hands towards her in a gesture that required no response and did not seek to end in a touch. It was instead a movement of sympathy, even supplication. "If this hurts you so, you don't need to continue for me."

"Ah, but does it hurt you, DeWar?" she asked, and there was a sharp edge of bitterness and accusation in her voice. "Does it make you embarrassed? I know you have a regard for me, DeWar. We are friends." These two sentences were uttered too quickly for him to be able to react. "Are you upset on my behalf, or your own? Most men would rather not hear what their fellows have done, what people who may indeed be very like them are capable of. Do you prefer not to think about such things, DeWar? Do you think that you are so different? Or do you become secretly excited at the idea?"

"Lady, I gain no benefit or pleasure at all from the subject."

"Are you sure, DeWar? And if you are, do you really think you speak for the majority of your sex? For are women not supposed to resist even those they would happily surrender to, so that when they resist a more brutal violation how can the man be sure that any struggle, any protestation is not merely for show?"

"You must believe that we are not all the same. And even if all men might be said to have… base urges, we do not all give in to them, or pay them any respect, even in secret. I cannot tell you how sorry I am to hear what happened to you…"

"But you have not heard, DeWar. You have not heard at all. I have implied that I was raped. That did not kill me. That alone might have killed the girl I was and replaced her with a woman, with a bitter one, with an angry one, or one who wished to take her own life, or attempt to take the life of those who violated her, or one who simply became mad.

"I think I might have become angry and bitter and I would have hated all men, but I think I would have survived and might have been persuaded, by the good men I knew in my own family and in my own town, and perhaps by one good man in particular who must now for ever remain in my dreams, that all was not lost and the world was not quite so terrible a place.

"But I never had that opportunity to recover, DeWar. I was pushed so far down in my despair I could not even tell in which direction the way back up lay. What happened to me was the least of it, DeWar. I watched my father and my brothers butchered, after they had been forced to watch my mother and my sisters being fucked time after time by a fine and numerous company of high-ranking men. Oh!