“Oh, the girls don’t matter.”

“I disagree, sire.”

“Shut your mouth, you insolent little prick!” hissed table-Uthar.

The king’s pale face also darkened with anger, but then he smiled. “Not at all, not at all!” Lathmar said. “The next King of the Vraids will have to think for himself.”

Kelat said evenly, “I’ll mention it to him when I see him, sire.”

Deor felt it was time for a diplomatic stomp on Kelat’s toes. He narrowly missed—the boy had superb reflexes—but his action drew the king’s attention to him and away from the misbehavior of the Prince Uthar called Kelat.

Lathmar the Old looked Deor up and down and said, “Hm! You’re not one of mine, are you?”

“No, sire,” Deor said politely. “I’m Deor syr Theorn, Thain to the Graith of Guardians, harven-kin to your regent, Lady Ambrosia Viviana. I’m honored to meet you.”

“Hm! From the Wardlands, eh? Wardic dwarf?”

“Yes, sire,” said Deor, though he didn’t really like the sound of that.

“Well, we do very well for ourselves out here, you know,” the great king said. “Lady Ambrosia has hundreds of dwarves down from the mountains sometimes. They do a lot of our digging, you see.”

“Yes, sire.”

“I don’t understand all of the digging, as a matter of fact, but the Lady Ambrosia assures me it is necessary and that it might as well be done by a pack of filthy dwarves as by honest Vraidish gentlemen.”

“Majesty,” whispered table-Uthar nervously.

“Oh? Oh? Oh?” the old king said in evident confusion. “Oh? Oh? Oh? Oh? Have I said something untoward? Set me straight, boys. Set me straight. Keep me honest. What was I saying?”

“You were insulting my friend, sire,” said Kelat coolly.

“Uh, what? No! No! I don’t think so. Was I?” The doddering old man turned to Deor with a tear in his eye.

“Don’t mind it, your majesty,” said Deor. “We do like to dig. And it’s no fun if you stay clean while you do it; that’s a fact.”

“Fun, is it? Fun. Hm. I would like to have fun, I think. Perhaps I should try it. Yes, I think I will try it. You—you there. You—Prince Uthar. Get me a shovel. That’s what you dig with, isn’t it? I’m going to have some fun, for once.”

“Alas, sire, I believe it’s time for your nap,” gurgled table-Uthar in a fit of desperate invention.

“Nap,” said Lathmar, Great King of All the Vraids, quietly. “Nappy nap nap. Yes. I would like a nap. Where—where’s my nurse? Where’s Magistra Gullinga? I—I—”

The old king wandered out as abruptly as he had wandered in, and both of the Prince Uthars present drew a sigh of relief.

“They shouldn’t let him wander around alone,” Kelat said.

“That Gullinga frail is no better than a paper hat in the rain,” said table-Uthar.

“If she has a son he won’t be named Uthar,” Kelat agreed.

“Don’t be so sure. He wasn’t joking about that late supper with Kyllia, although it was Kyllia from Fishtown, not your mother.”

“My mother’s dead.”

“And resting undisturbed. I thought you’d want to know. There’s not much the old fool won’t stick his penis in, except—”

Table-Uthar’s voice faded to a whisper, faded out entirely.

Deor turned to see his old friend Ambrosia in the doorway. He was about to speak to her when she drew the sword at her hip and struck at the gaping prince behind the table.

Kelat uttered an inarticulate cry of protest and, drawing his spear, leapt between Ambrosia and her intended victim. The blades clashed and Ambrosia stepped back, on guard, watchful.

Morlock walked into the booth and said dryly, “Kelat. Deor. Prince Uthar. Ambrosia, what are you doing?”

“What are you doing, Uthar Kelat?” Ambrosia said. “Unless I’m mistaken, you and Uthar Olthon detest each other. Yet here you are risking death for him. You are risking death—aren’t you aware of it? Before your mother’s grandparents were born I was learning to fence against the best swordsman in the world.”

“Second-best,” Deor said firmly. He admired Morlock very much, but the truth was the truth. (Morlock favored him with a rare smile, but no one else seemed to notice he had spoken at all.)

Kelat shook his head and held his ground. “I can’t let that. . . . I have to do something about it.”

“All right,” said Ambrosia patiently. “But why?”

“He spoke the truth!” shouted Kelat. “Someone should make that old man keep his pants on! You can’t kill someone for telling the truth!”

“A disappointing answer,” Ambrosia said, sheathing her sword. “Of course I can kill someone for speaking truth. If I had killed your half-brother for doing so, he wouldn’t have been the first man I killed for that very reason. A ruler of men does what she must, Kelat. You must learn that, or you will never be a ruler of men.”

“So what?” muttered Kelat, and sheathed his own sword.

She shrugged her crooked shoulders and turned to open-mouthed, motionless table-Uthar. “Prince Uthar Olthon, remind me of your task here.”

The hapless prince closed his mouth with a snap, opened it and closed it again without speaking, and finally managed to say, “Lady Regent, I keep track of the whereabouts and well-being of all the princes.”

“And you do that from in here?”

“Lady, I recruited a cadre of the younger princes to run messages for me around the camp. They either know where everyone is or know who knows. You called it an ingenious system once.”

“And so it is. From now on, though, you have a single task. You are to keep track of King Lathmar at all times and keep him out of trouble. That does not mean—” she paused to glare at Kelat “—making him keep his pants on. It does mean making sure he takes them off only in private, and does not otherwise tarnish the majestic name his grandfather wore so proudly in another age of the world.”

“Yes, Lady. I will, Lady. May I use my young messengers?”

“No, your successor will need their services.”

“Very well, Lady Regent.”

There was a brief silence.

“Prince Uthar Olthon,” Ambrosia said gently.

“Yes, Lady?”

“Where is King Lathmar?”

“I—” Olthon sighed and got to his feet. “Your pardon, gentles,” he muttered, and left the booth.

“I feel like a walk, myself,” Ambrosia said. “Won’t you join me, my friends?”

They filed out of the booth’s narrow door into Uthartown. Ambrosia strode alongside Morlock, and Deor and Kelat walked behind.

It was strange for Deor to look on the decent-sized village and know that everyone (or almost everyone) in it was named Uthar, and that each Uthar was also the son of the demented old man he had just met. There were a pair of decrepit old geezers playing drafts—sitting on the ground between a couple of booths, with a board scratched into the dirt and chunks of rock for counters.

“Haha, Uthar! King me, you bitch of a bitch’s bastard!” crowed one of the relics.

“I’ll king you with this,” replied his opponent, briefly grabbing his sagging trousers at the crotch.

These princes looked far more decrepit than their father. But some of their half-brothers were playing naked in the mud nearby. Deor was no judge of human pups, but he guessed these were two or three years old at most.

“Lady Ambrosia,” said Deor, “can you explain to me about all these Uthars?”

“The next king must be named Uthar, so—”

“I do understand that,” Deor interrupted, earning a respectful look from Kelat. “But is it quite usual in the unguarded lands for a man to have hundreds of children?”

“Well, that’s my fault, I suppose,” Ambrosia admitted.

“Madam,” said Deor, not knowing what else to say.

Ambrosia looked back at Deor and then quizzically at Morlock. “He fears there may be some scandal,” Morlock explained.

“Oh? Well, it’s not scandalous. A long time ago—well, Lathmar and I, we helped each other out of a tight place.”

“Doesn’t sound less scandalous,” Morlock observed.