At last, when the wrangling died down, Utpanisht said, «We think we can do this. All of us agree it is possible. We still have not made up our minds about what method we need to use.»

«That is because some of these blockheads insist on treating canals as if they were rivers,» Glathpilesh said, «when any fool– but not any idiot, evidently—can see they are of two different classes.»

Falasham's good nature was fraying at the edges. «They hold flowing water,» he snapped. «Spiritually and metaphorically speaking, that makes them rivers. They aren't lakes. They aren't baths. What are they, if not rivers?'

«Canals,» Glathpilesh declared, and Yeshmef voiced loud agreement. The row started up anew.

Abivard listened for a little while, then said sharply, «Enough of this!» His intervention made all the wizards, regardless of which side they had been on, gang up against him instead. He'd expected that would happen and was neither disappointed nor angry. «I admit you are all more learned in this matter that I could hope to be—».

«He admits the sun rises in the east,» Glathpilesh muttered. «How generous!»

Pretending he hadn't heard that, Abivard plowed ahead: «But how you work this magic is not what's important. That you work it is. And you must work it soon, too, for before long Maniakes will start wondering why I've stopped here at Nashvar and given up on pursuing him.» Before long Sharbaraz King of Kings will start wondering, too, and likely decide I'm a traitor, after all. Or if he doesn't, Tzikas will tell him I am.

Kidinnu said, «Lord, agreeing on the form this sorcery must take is vital before we actually attempt it.»

That made sense; Abivard wasn't keen on the idea of going into battle without a plan. But he said, «I tell you, we have no time to waste. By the time you leave this room, hammer out your differences.» All at once, he wished he hadn't asked Beroshesh to set out such a lavish feast for the mages. Empty bellies would have sped consensus.

His uncompromising stand drew more of the wizards' anger. Glathpilesh growled, «Easier for us to agree to turn you into a cockroach than on how to breach the canals.»

«No one would pay you to do that to me, though,» Abivard answered easily. Then he thought of Tzikas and then of Sharbaraz. Well, the wizards didn't have to know about them.

Yeshmef threw his hands in the air. «Maybe my moron of a brother is right. It has happened before, though seldom.»

Glathpilesh was left all alone. He glared around at the other five wizards from the Thousand Cities. Abivard did not like the look on his face—had being left all alone made him more stubborn? If it had, could the rest of the mages carry on with the conjuration by themselves? Even if they could, it would surely be more difficult without their colleague.

«You are all fools,» he snarled at them, «and you, sirrah—» He sent Yeshmef a look that was almost literally murderous."—fit for nothing better than bellwether, for you show yourself to be a shambling sheep without ballocks.» He breathed heavily, jowls wobbling; Abivard wondered whether he would suffer an apoplectic fit in his fury.

He also wondered whether the other wizards would want to work with Glathpilesh after his diatribe. There, at least, he soon found relief, for the five seemed more amused than outraged. Falasham said, «Not bad, old fellow.» And Yeshmef tugged at his beard as if to show he still had that which enabled him to grow it «Bah,» Glathpilesh said, sounding angry that he had been unable to anger his comrades. He turned to Abivard and said «Bah» again, perhaps so Abivard would not feel left out of his disapproval. Then he said, «None of you has the wit the God gave a smashed mosquito, but I'll work with you for no better reason than to keep you from going astray without my genius to show you what needs doing.»

«Your generosity, as usual, is unsurpassed,» Utpanisht said in his rusty-hinge voice.

Glathpilesh spoiled that by swallowing its irony. «I know,» he answered. «Now we'll see how much I regret it.»

«Not as much as the rest of us, I promise,» Mefyesh said.

Falasham boomed laughter. «A band of brothers, the lot of us,» he declared, «and we fight like it, too.» Remembering the fights he'd had with his own brothers, Abivard felt better about the prospects for the mages' being able to work together than he had since he'd walked into the room.

Having wrangled about how to flood the canals, the wizards spent a couple of more days wrangling over how best to make that approach work. Abivard didn't listen to all those arguments. He did stop in to see the wizards several times a day to make sure they were moving forward rather than around and around.

He also sent Turan out with some of the assembled garrison troops and some of the horsemen Tzikas had brought from Vaspurakan. «I want you to chase Maniakes and to be obvious and obnoxious about doing it,» he told his lieutenant. «But by the God, don't catch him, whatever you do, because he'll thrash you.»

«I understand,» Turan assured him. «You want it to look as if we haven't forgotten about him so he won't spend too much time wondering what we're doing here instead of chasing him.»

«That's it,» Abivard said, slapping him on the back. He called to a servant for a couple of cups of wine. When he had his, he poured libations to the Prophets Four, then raised the silver goblet high and proclaimed, «Confusion to the Avtokrator! If we can keep him confused for a week, maybe a few days longer, he'll be worse than confused after that.»

«If we make it so he can't stay here, he might have a hard time getting back to Videssos, too,» Turan said with a predatory gleam in his eye.

«So he might,» Abivard said. «That would have been more likely before we had to pull our mobile force out of Videssos and into Vaspurakan last year, but…» His voice trailed away. What point was there to protesting orders straight from the King of Kings?

Turan's force set out the next day with horns blowing and banners waving. Abivard watched them from the city wall. They looked impressive; he didn't think Maniakes would be able to ignore them and go on sacking towns. Stopping that would be an added benefit of Turan's sortie.

From up there Abivard could see a long way across the floodplain of the Tutub and the Tib. He shook his head in mild bemusement. How many centuries of accumulated rubbish lay under his feet to give him this vantage point? He was no scholar; he couldn't have begun to guess. But if the answer proved less than the total of his own toes and fingers, he would have been astonished.

The vantage point would have been even more impressive had there been more to see. But the plain was as flat as if a woman had rolled it with a length of dowel before putting it on the griddle to bake—and the climate of the land of the Thousand Cities made that seem possible. Here and there, along a canal or a river, a few lines of date palms rose up above the fields. Most of the countryside, though, was mud and crops growing on top of mud.

Aside from the palms, the only breaks in the monotony were the hillocks on which the cities of the floodplain grew. Abivard could see several of them, each crowned with a habitation. All were as artificial as the one on which he stood. A great many people had lived in the land between the Tutub and the Tib for a long, long time.

He thought of the hill on which Vek Rud stronghold sat. There was nothing man-made about that piece of high ground: the stronghold itself was built of stone quarried from it. Here, all stone, right down to the weights the grain merchants used on their scales, had to be brought in from outside. Mud, Abivard thought again. He was sick of mud.

He wondered if he would ever see Vek Rud domain again. He still thought of it as home, though it had scarcely seen him since Genesios had overthrown Likinios and given Sharbaraz both the pretext and the opportunity he had needed to invade Videssos. How were things going up in the far northwest of Makuran? He hadn't heard from his brother, who was administering the domain for him, in years. Did Khamorth raiders still strike south over the Degird River and harass the domain, as they had since Peroz King of Kings had thrown away his life and his army out on the Pardrayan steppe? Abivard didn't know, and throughout his early years he'd expected to live out his whole life within the narrow confines of the domain and to be happy doing it, too. As he seldom did, he thought about the wives he'd left behind in the women's quarters of Vek Rud stronghold. Guilt pierced him; their confines were far narrower than those he would have known even had he remained a dihqan like any other. When he'd left the domain, he'd never thought to be away so long. And yet, many if not most of his wives would have taken a proclamation of divorce as an insult, not as liberation. He shook his head. Life was seldom as simple as you wished it would be.