"With my brother-in-law, my charming brother-in-law?" Lanius murmured. Without the least hesitation, he shook his head.

Once upon a time, Trabzun had been the Avornan city of Trapezus. Behind its gray stone wall, it still was a city of sorts, but it wasn't an Avornan city anymore. The tall, thin towers sprouting up in large numbers would never have occurred to a builder from the kingdom Grus ruled.

"They look like asparagus," Grus remarked.

"If you say so, Your Majesty," Hirundo answered. "Me, I think they look like something else myself."

"Something else? Oh." Grus made a face that almost matched Hirundo's leer. "Maybe yours is that skinny. I hope mine's not."

"What you do with it is as important as what you've got," the general declared in lofty tones.

Grus pointed toward Trabzun. "Well? What are we going to do with it? That place can stand a proper siege, and we can't go on without reducing it. The garrison could sally and do horrible things in our rear."

Hirundo could have risen to that, too, but he didn't. He said, "If you expected to get all the way to Yozgat in one campaigning season, you probably expected too much."

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't have my hopes," Grus admitted.

"Nothing wrong with hopes, as long as you don't let them ran away with you," Hirundo said.

Did I let them run away with me when I came south of the Stura in the first place? Grus wondered. He shook his head. He refused to believe that. And if he had hoped to get all the way to Yozgat (and he had)… He'd known he would probably need to be lucky. He had been, up till now.

"Maybe they'll surrender," he said, knowing he would have to be very lucky to see that happen.

"It's just like pretty girls – never hurts to ask, but they don't say yes as often as you wish they would," Hirundo answered.

"We won't have as much fun when they do here, either – if they do." In spite of saying that, Grus sent a herald up to the walls of Trabzun. The man shouted out a demand that the city open its gates to the Avornan army. He used both his own language and the guttural tongue of the Menteshe.

Soldiers on the wall shouted insults at him. To leave the rest of the army in no doubt that those were insults, they emptied chamber pots into the ditch in front of the wall. Some of them flung the pots out at the herald. None struck home, but he quickly rode back to the Avornan lines.

"They won't yield, Your Majesty," he reported.

"Oh, yes, they will," Grus said. "They just don't know it yet."

In the previous few years, he'd besieged several Chernagor towns. All of them were stronger than Trabzun seemed to be. This place didn't have the sea covering much of its perimeter. He sent his riders out to close the line around it. All the time, he hoped the Menteshe inside would sally. He would much rather have faced them out in the open than in the advantageous position the walls gave them.

They sat tight, though. Maybe they were hoping for rescuers, or maybe they thought they could outlast the besiegers. Maybe they were right, too. That unappetizing thought made Grus scowl, but he kept at the siege all the same. The Menteshe would surely prove right if he didn't try.

He didn't intend to storm the walls. That would be quick and decisive if it worked – and had about as much chance of working as he did of throwing double sixes back-to-back at dice. You could do it. He'd done it. But you were a fool if you counted on it, because it wasn't very likely.

His men methodically dug a trench around Trabzun. They heaped up the excavated dirt inside the trench to serve as a breastwork to protect them from whatever the Menteshe inside the city might do. Then they dug another trench, this one beyond their encampment. The breastwork on the outer trench faced outward. Any relieving force would have to battle its way through the fieldworks to get at the Avornans.

Even though Grus didn't try to storm Trabzun, he wasn't eager to wait till the defenders starved enough to submit. Summoning Pterocles, he said, "When I was besieging a rebel's castle, the witch who served me as chief sorcerer before you managed to stop up the castle's water supplies, and my foe had to surrender. Can you do the same here?"

The witch who served me as chief sorcerer. He sighed. He'd loved Alca for a while. He hadn't loved her well enough to leave Estrilda, though. He sighed again. Nothing seemed sadder than the memory of a love that had fallen to pieces.

Pterocles knew about Alca. He also knew better than to say anything about her, or about the way Grus hadn't mentioned her name. All he did say was, "I don't know, Your Majesty. I can try to find out, if you like."

"Yes, please, if it's not too hard." Grus didn't add, And it had better not be. He and Pterocles had worked together long enough to let the wizard understand that without its being said.

"I'll get right at it," Pterocles said. "Seems a pretty straightforward use of the law of similarity. Do we have an arrow that's been shot from the walls of Trabzun? A stone from a catapult would be even better."

"If you want arrows, talk to the surgeons," Grus said. "As for stones, well, I don't think their catapults have done much, but maybe we could provoke them, if that's what you really want."

"If you'd be so kind," Pterocles said. He and Grus had worked long enough to let the king understand that that meant, You'd cursed well better, if you expect me to work the magic you need.

Grus concentrated a couple of dozen men beyond bowshot of the walls of Trabzun but within reach of a stone-thrower. They lingered out in the open, not doing very much but seeming fascinated with something on the ground. He wondered how long they'd have to wait for the Menteshe to notice them.

It wasn't long. The nomads were alert to whatever the Avornans did. A stone the size of a man's head hissed through the air. But the Avornan soldiers were alert, too. They scattered. The stone thudded home harmlessly. One of them scooped it up and carried it away. They tried not to offer the Menteshe such a tempting target again.

Pterocles briefly borrowed a hammer from a blacksmith and knocked chips off the ball of stone the catapult had shot. He mixed them in with the dirt he used to form walls and buildings and round towers that looked like a miniature version of Trabzun's. Catching Grus' eye on him, he nodded. "Yes, Your Majesty, it is a model of the city," he said. "Now it's a model of the city that includes something from the real city. That will make the magic more accurate."

"Good," Grus said, and waited to see what Pterocles would do next.

The wizard held a forked stick over his model, as though he were an ordinary dowser trying to find water for a farmer who wanted to dig a well. But an ordinary dowser would have let his stick rise and fall as it would. Pterocles didn't. He chanted a spell as he worked with it – an insistent charm set, Grus realized, to the tune of a song children sang in the streets of the city of Avornis.

"Here we go," Pterocles murmured, as the tip of the stick dipped, and then dipped again and again and again, pointing now toward one part of the model of Trabzun, now toward another.

"What does that mean?" Grus asked.

After finishing the chant, Pterocles answered, "I'm very sorry, Your Majesty, but I'm afraid it means the town has a great many wells and cisterns and such inside it. We wouldn't be able to close off all of them at once."

"Oh." Grus had been afraid he would say something like that. He'd watched ordinary dowsers at work any number of times. When their sticks dipped, it meant they'd scented water. The same evidently held true here, even if Pterocles, a better wizard than any ordinary dowser, didn't need to walk the whole territory he tested.

"I am sorry," Pterocles repeated.