Drepteaza’s eyes narrowed now, narrowed dangerously. She didn’t believe him. “But they wouldn’t care about you if you didn’t know things we don’t.”

“Neither would you,” he pointed out.

“Of course we wouldn’t – are we fools?” She didn’t waste time denying it. “But if they want you back so much, that means – ” She broke off. Hasso could fill in the blank. That means you’re worth something after all.

If he denied it, they’d knock him over the head. No more Leneshul. It would be toenail-tearing time. “In the world I come from, there is no magic,” Hasso said. “What I know has nothing to do with magic. It has to do with, uh, arts and craft.” No way to say technology or engineering in Lenello.

“So we could use it as well as the blonds?” Drepteaza said. Hasso didn’t say yes or no. She went on, “You had better show us some of this.”

“You know why I don’t. I have an oath to King Bottero.” Hasso liked the Lenelli. He felt he could almost become one of them if he stayed here long enough and got used to their ways. In Bucovin his looks, if nothing else, would leave him a stranger the rest of his life. He would be as bad off as a Jew in Germany. Maybe worse – some Jews looked like Aryans. He sure as hell didn’t look like a Grenye. A good thing they took oaths more seriously here than in his own world.

“Velona tried to harm you, yes?” Drepteaza said. “The wizard tried to harm you, yes? What is your oath to their king worth to you if it’s worth nothing to them? Or do you think they struck at you without his knowledge, without his let?”

“I don’t know,” Hasso said slowly. “I have to think about that.” It was worth thinking about, too. Priestesses were supposed to have answers, weren’t they? He didn’t know whether Drepteaza did. She sure had some good questions, though.

“We have to think about you, too,” she said. “You can’t do much! Oh, Lavtrig preserve us!” She walked out of the room shaking her head.

When Hasso got breakfast the next morning, the serving girl who gave him his tray looked at him as if he had horns and a tail and she thought he’d start breathing fire any minute. The morning before, she’d laughed and joked with him. She’d taken him for granted. She didn’t any more. He knew what that had to mean.

“Only I,” he said, knowing he’d botched the Bucovinan grammar as soon as the words were out of his mouth. But Jiril didn’t speak Lenello – or at least she’d never let on that she did.

She might have just found a scorpion in her sock. “Wizard!” she said, and aimed at him a pronged gesture that couldn’t possibly do her any good.

He sighed. Either Drepteaza had blabbed – which didn’t seem likely, but wasn’t even close to impossible – or the guards had overheard and started running their mouths. It made no real difference. Any which way, the cat was out of the bag.

The Lenelli admitted that some of their renegades had used magic for the natives. The Bucovinans had said the same thing. They’d also talked about the trouble they had keeping Lenello wizards using the magic for them and not to rule them…. Or worse, Hasso thought. If the SS had had magic to help it clear out the ghettos in Poland and Russia, wouldn’t it have used every spell it could? In a heartbeat. Hasso had no doubts about that at all.

What could he do? He muttered to himself. What he could do and what he might do were two different creatures. Could he run a panzer without training? Not bloody likely. So why should he expect to work magic without learning how?

But the Bucovinans probably thought he could. All they knew about magic was that they couldn’t work any. That might be useful.

Or it might get him killed, if they decided it made him too dangerous to leave alive. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Some wizard that made him!

How Jiril looked at him wasn’t the only sign that things had changed. Nobody else came in all morning. The guards didn’t want to let him out, either. He was half surprised that they didn’t come in and take away his furniture. The maid who brought him lunch seemed less frightened than Jiril had, but she also wasn’t easy with him.

No sign of Leneshul at all, dammit.

Drepteaza didn’t visit till late afternoon. When she did, a full complement of tough-looking guards came in with her. The natives hadn’t bothered with that for a while. They looked ready to ventilate him if he breathed funny, too. Maybe not back to square one, but square two? It seemed that way, worse luck.

Drepteaza didn’t act afraid, but she didn’t act even halfway friendly any more, either. What did her expression mean? Something on the order of more in sorrow than in anger, Hasso judged. And, sure enough, the first words out of her mouth were, “What are we supposed to do with you, Hasso Pemsel?”

The way she used his full name reminded him of Velona, a sudden stab he really didn’t need just then. She spoke in her own language, but he answered in Lenello: “Priestess, you should set me free and give me a big estate and servants and plenty of gold and silver to pay for them.”

She blinked. Whatever she’d expected, that wasn’t it. One of the guards glowered at him. Another one laughed. They knew Lenello, then. After a moment, Drepteaza said, “Maybe that would keep us safe from you. If we were sure it would, it might be worthwhile. Killing you is surer – and cheaper.”

She wasn’t kidding. She didn’t joke very often, and he always knew when she did. Much too conscious that he was talking for his life, he said, “I am a captive for some time now. You could kill me whenever you want.”

“Before, we knew you were a snake. Now we know you are a viper,” Drepteaza said. “You can do more and worse to us than we thought.”

“Or I can do more and better for you,” Hasso said.

“Maybe you can. But you still have your famous oath to King Bottero – Bottero the invader, Bottero the robber, Bottero the murderer, Bottero the torturer.” No, Drepteaza wasn’t joking. “The goddess who does not care what a man is, the wizard who tries to slay his own lord’s sworn man. Do they deserve your oath, Hasso Pemsel?”

That was a different way of asking what she’d asked the night before. Unhappily, Hasso said, “They’re worried about what I can do, what I know. So are you, remember.”

“There is a difference,” Drepteaza said.

“What?” Hasso asked.

She gave him a look that said he was either disingenuous or very, very stupid. “You already helped them. That attacking column you showed them, and whatever magic you worked for Bottero…”

Not to mention rescuing Velona, Hasso thought. The Bucovinans didn’t know about that, which was a good thing for him. He uncomfortably recalled the spell he’d made to find the underwater bridges. The natives didn’t know about that, either, and Hasso wasn’t a bit sorry they didn’t.

“In my world, a prisoner only has to give his name, his rank, and his pay number to his enemies,” he said. Never mind that people broke the rules all the time when they needed to squeeze something out of somebody. The rules were what they were.

“You give your soldiers numbers?” Drepteaza frowned. “Why aren’t names enough?”

“We have more soldiers than we have names – many more,” Hasso answered. When he told her how many men the Wehrmacht held, she didn’t want to believe him. Neither had the Lenelli when he talked about such things.

Unlike the Lenelli, who usually thought they knew it all, Drepteaza didn’t argue with him. She just said, “Well, let that be as it may,” and went on, “You are not in your world now, Hasso Pemsel. You are here, and you have to live by our rules.”

“Don’t I know it!” he exclaimed.

“We could have killed you. We could have killed you the width of a millet grain at a time. We could have sent you to the mines – a living death. Did we do any of that? No. We treated you well. Don’t you want that to go on?”