Now the Kaunian courtesan frankly gaped. "You would do that… for a blond?" She didn't make him answer; she might have been afraid of the result. She might have been wise to be afraid, too. Instead, she hurried on, "If you do that- if you can do that- I'll give you anything you want." She shrugged. Bembo watched, entranced. She said, "What difference would one more time make, especially if it was the last?"

"If you think I'll go all noble and say, 'You don't have to do that, sweetheart,' you're daft," Bembo said. Doldasai nodded; she understood such deals. Bembo went on, "Now, where are they?"

"They're quartered in Count Brorda's castle- the place where your governor rules now," she answered. "Their names are Daukantis and Feliksai."

Bembo started to say he didn't care what their names were, but then realized knowing might be useful. Instead, he asked, "Do you know whereabouts they are in the castle?"

"Aye." Doldasai told him. He made her repeat it so he had it straight. She did, and then said, "Powers above bless you. For you to do such a thing-"

He reached out and caressed her. She let him do it. "Believe me, sweetheart, I know why," he told her. And I'm not going to risk my neck for theirs, either, he thought. If it's easy, fine. If it's not… I copped a feel, anyhow. Aloud, he went on, "There are rooms above a tavern called the Imperial Unicorn, a couple of blocks inside the Kaunian district. You know the place?" Her eyes showed she did. Bembo said, "Wait for me there. We'll see what I can do, and we'll see what you can do."

Back in Algarve, the great stone pile that lay at the center of Gromheort would have been labeled quaint. Here in Forthweg, the adjectives chilly, ugly, and gloomy more readily sprang to mind. Soldiers and bureaucrats bustled this way and that. Nobody bothered noticing a plump, redheaded constable. To Bembo's vast relief, the sentry in front of Daukantis and Feliksai's door was a soldier he'd never seen before, not a fellow constable. With a nasty smile, he said, "I've come for these Kaunian buggers. They're going straight back in with the rest of their stinking kind."

Very possibly, nobody'd told the sentry why the blonds were being held. He didn't argue. He didn't make Bembo sign anything or ask his name and authority. He just grinned wolfishly, opened the door, and said, "They're all yours. Good riddance to 'em."

No one paid any attention to a constable marching a couple of Kaunians along in front of his stick, either. Once Bembo got them out of the castle, he murmured, "Now they don't have a hold on your daughter any more." They gaped and then started to weep. That was nothing out of the ordinary, either.

At the edge of the Kaunian quarter, another constable waved to Bembo and called "Caught a couple, did you? You lucky whoreson!" Bembo waved his hat with typical Algarvian braggadocio.

Like the ancient Kaunian Empire, the tavern called the Imperial Unicorn was a sad shadow of its former self. Bembo took Doldasai's father and mother upstairs. She was pacing the narrow hallway there. She looked from Bembo to Feliksai and Daukantis and back again in astonished disbelief. "You really did it," she whispered, and then flew into her parents' arms.

"Bargain," Bembo said pointedly.

"Bargain," Doldasai agreed. She took her mother and father into one of the little rooms, then came out and took Bembo into another one. "For what you just did, you deserve the best," she said, and proceeded to give it to him. If she didn't enjoy it herself, too, she was a better actress than any courtesan he'd known. Her pleasure might have been set off more by her parents' rescue than his charms, but he thought it real even so.

And his own pleasure, as he left the Kaunian district, was more than merely physical. He hadn't quite done a good deed for the sake of doing a good deed, but he'd come a lot closer than usual, close enough to leave his conscience as happy as the rest of him, which was saying a great deal.

"Come on, boys, get yourselves ready," Major Spinello told the troopers in his regiment. "We've been kicking the Unkerlanters' arses for almost two years now. We'll go right on doing it, too, won't we?"

The Algarvian soldiers cheered. Some of them waved their sticks in the air. What a liar I'm turning into, Spinello thought. He hadn't told a lie, or not exactly. If his countrymen hadn't won victory after victory, he and the regiment wouldn't have been here deep in northern Unkerlant.

But Swemmel's men could kick, too. Every time he took off his tunic to bathe, the puckered scar on the right side of his chest reminded him of the truth there. Had that beam caught him in the left side of the chest, it wouldn't have left a scar. It would have killed him outright. And the Unkerlanter campaign against Sulingen had come too close to killing all the Algarvian armies in the southern part of King Swemmel's domain. It hadn't, though. Like Spinello, they'd been badly scarred. Like him, too, they kept battling.

"All right, then," he told his men. "We'll go forward for King Mezentio, powers above bless him. And we'll go forward because there aren't any Unkerlanters on the face of the earth who can stop us."

He got more cheers from the men. Even some of his officers applauded. Captain Turpino didn't look altogether convinced. Turpino, in fact, looked about to be ill. He didn't lead with speeches. He was always at the head of his company when an attack went in, and that seemed to be enough for him. Spinello led from the front, too, but he remained convinced that getting the most from his soldiers was also a sorcery of the sort the universities didn't teach to mages.

Just before Spinello could give the command that would send his men forward, a rider on a lathered horse came up calling his name. "I am Spinello," he said, drawing himself up to his full if not very impressive height. "What would you? Be quick- we are about to attack."

"I have orders for you, sir, and for your regiment." The messenger opened a leather tube he wore on his belt and took out a roll of paper bound with a ribbon and a wax seal. "From army headquarters."

"I see that," Spinello said. Brigade headquarters would have been much less formal. He took the orders and used his thumbnail to crack the seal, then unrolled the paper and quickly read it. Even before he'd finished, he started to curse.

"What's wrong, sir?" Turpino asked.

"We are not going to stamp the Unkerlanters into the dust today," Spinello answered.

"What?" His men howled furious protests: "Don't they think we're good enough?" "We'll lick 'em!" "A plague on the Unkerlanters, and another one on our generals!"

"You have your men very ready for action," the messenger observed.

"What's gone wrong, sir?" Captain Turpino had. He assumed something had, and Spinello could hardly blame him for that. Spinello had thought something was wrong, too, till he'd gone all the way through the orders.

As things were, he said, "Nothing, Captain. It is, if you like, even a compliment." He passed the paper to Turpino so the senior company commander could see for himself. Spinello addressed the regiment as a whole: "We are withdrawn from the line for rest, refit, and reinforcements- this because of our outstanding fighting qualities, as the general heading up the army says in so many words. They want us in very top shape before they throw us into battle again, so we can do the enemy as much harm as possible."

"Aye, that's what it says," Turpino agreed. "It also says we're going to get sent south when the refit's done."

Spinello nodded. "That looks to be where the war will be won or lost. I say that because, having fought there, I see the difference between that part of the front and this one. Here, we go forward or we go back, and not a whole lot changes either way. There… There they take whole armies off the board when things go wrong. They've gone wrong for us and the Unkerlanters both. Next time, by the powers above, I want 'em going wrong for Swemmel's men, and we can help make that happen."