"We sure got a surprise when we discovered those Braunsknechts." Though the Imperials had gotten a big surprise themselves.

Delari chuckled.

Herren and Vernal seemed a little starstruck this morning. And unusually friendly. "Stop that!" Hecht told Vernal.

Delari chuckled again. "Everybody loves a winner."

"There's a problem, sir."

"I don't like the sound of that. What?"

"I thought it was my imagination till Sergeant Bechter mentioned having the same problem."

The Principate listened. Hecht described the creepy feelings he sometimes got and that Bechter sometimes saw a particular man when that feeling got to him.

"I may have seen this man myself, once or twice. Bechter says he looks a lot like Grade Drocker a few years before his misfortune. Though shorter."

Delari frowned. Drocker's passing still pained him.

Hecht preferred to avoid the subject, too. Because Drocker's unhealing wounds, that claimed him eventually, had been his fault.

"Sir, I'm just reporting hearsay. I didn't know Grade Drocker before his misfortune."

"What happened to my son still troubles me, Piper. A lot. You can't imagine how much. But talking around the sides of it doesn't help. Say what you mean if you have something to say."

"Yes, sir. Though there isn't anything else to say, now."

"How is your Anna doing?"

"She's worried." Hecht explained.

"We haven't learned anything more from the man who was butchered. No one claimed his body. Other than the usual sailors and embassy people, there aren't many Pramans around. The dead man doesn't seem to have any local connections. If we had anyone capable, I'd try raising his shade."

"Sir!" That lurked at the edge of the blackest of sins imaginable.

Osa Stile looked shaken, too.

Might Hagid bin Nassim have known Osa Stile, back in Dreanger?

Possibly. Hagid's father might have been in on the planning. But had Osa seen the corpse?

"Only thinking out loud. Tell Anna not to worry. We'll arrange for her to feel more comfortable." The old man might have been decreeing a new law of nature.

Chip by chip, glacially, another face emerged from the facade of the doddering Principate Muniero Delari. Was this the real Eleventh Unknown? Hecht was certain, now, that

Muniero Delari was the heavyweight sorcerer far peoples believed members of the Collegium to be.

"Herren, stop that!"

"You don't like it, Captain-General?"

"I like it altogether too much. Stop it."

Osa Stile snickered. So did both girls. But Herren desisted.

Delari made a tiny gesture. Osa's amusement stopped instantly.

Osa might not be as much in control as he wanted.

"There are two worlds, Piper. This is particularly true in the Church," Principate Delari said. They were under the Chiaro Palace, overlooking the huge map. Hecht saw no obvious changes. "But it's true everywhere, every when. There's the raucous old world of everyday passion, pain, and corruption. The one where we come of age, basically. Then there's the world few touch but which most are sure exists. That's the world of secret powers and secret masters. The silent kingdom. The silent kingdom shapes the raucous world without revealing itself. Just as surely as do the Instrumentalities of the Night, though with more direction and purpose. The silent kingdom hides in the secret spaces between mankind and the Night."

Hecht asked, "This is a common belief amongst men of talent?"

Delari peered at him intently, sniffing after the thought behind the question.

"Some of us have a foot in the world between. Knowing about it only because we've been shown. Others, like our Special Office brethren, are too ideological to contribute."

"And get shown for no obvious reason? Because of the murky motives of those already inside?"

The curtain had been opened enough for one day. The Principate changed topic. "Has the girl spoken yet?"

"Uh . . Vali?"

"Yes."

"Not where any adult can hear. She talks to Pella. Occasionally. Sometimes Pella deigns to tell us what's on her mind. Mainly, she's worried about what's going to happen to her. You find out anything about her?"

"No. There is a Vali Dumaine but she's Countess of Bleus. The wife of the Count who got into it with Anne of Menand. They don't have children. She's twenty-nine. Rumor says evil sorcery keeps her from conceiving. It also says Anne means to buy the Archbishop of Salpeno with the Dumaine honors."

"She's giving everything away."

"She's a determined woman."

"With everything to gain. I see that."

Hecht could not understand how one harlot could become so influential.

Delari mused, "She must be quite something in private."

"Curious?"

"Intellectually. I'd like to meet her."

"Uhm. But you can't hazard even a guess about where my Vali fits?"

"Beyond stipulating that circumstantial evidence suggests that she does, no."

"But if the Brotherhood of War was interested… Sir! I just had an unpleasant thought. A connection I didn't see before."

"Yes?"

The old man reminded Hecht of the pensioner instructors at the Vibrant Spring School, waiting for him to state a conclusion he had had trouble reaching.

"Sir, the people holding Vali were conspiring with the Special Office. Who sent me to the House of the Ten Galleons in the first place."

"So you've just realized that they must know where the girl is?"

"I'm a little dim sometimes, sir. I'm a fighting soldier, remember."

"Can you take it another step? Or two?"

"Sir?"

"Have they decided that it's better for Vali to be with you, out of sight, safe from people whose loyalties are commercial? Did they set you up to spirit the girl out of Sonsa?"

"I couldn't guess, sir. My thinking tends to be more linear."

"I understand. It's one of your charms. Quite possibly the main reason that Bronte Doneto recommended you to his cousin. You're a sharp blade that looks like it can be used

with little danger of cutting both ways."

Hecht wished Gordimer the Lion believed that. "Maybe. But he also thinks he can manipulate me if he wants."

Delari grunted. "There's still another possibility, Piper. And it seems the most obvious and likely to me."

'Sir?"

'Did the girl just make up a story to win help getting out of an awful situation? Creating fictitious personal histories isn't exactly unheard of, Piper."

"Uh… I'll ask Pella about that."

"Good. Do. There's nothing new here. Just more of the same, worsening at a frightening rate. Will all the water in all the seas end up part of the ice? Will even Firaldia go under?"

Hecht thought Firaldia would drown in refugees first.

The great map did show that there would be no quick, direct confrontation over Clearenza. The passes to the heart of the Grail Empire were closed. A courier might make his way out of the continental heartland, but no armed force ould make the transit for months yet.

Hecht asked, "Do we know where Lothar and his sisters are?" Johannes Blackboots had preferred the Imperial cities of Firaldia, Plemenza in particular. He liked to stay close enough to tweak Sublime's nose when the mood took him.

"Hogwasser. In Lothar's case."

"Sir?"

"Sorry. Bad joke. Hochwasser. Means 'high water,' literally, but generally translates as 'flood.' The name goes back to antiquity. When it was called something else that meant the same thing."

Imperial times. Today it served as the headquarters for Hecht knew a little about Hochwasser because he claimed to have passed through during his journey south from Duarnenia. It was a military city, of sorts, and had been since old Imperial times. Today it served as the headquarters of the Grail Emperor's lifeguard, the Braunsknechts.