"Meaning?"

"Meaning, you thickheaded and ungrateful excuse for a descendant, that you've survived another two attempts for every one you know about. Thanks mainly to your great-great-grandpa. Since the end of the Calziran Crusade, you've become the focus of an assassination industry."

The old man made no sense. He never had. Hecht said so.

"You're right, Piper. Insofar as your argument goes. You're a talented military personality. You've had some luck. You've had support from some hidden sorceries. But there's no reason to think you're likely to reshape the world. Easier to assume you've triggered a lethal obsession in someone of immense power."

"That's easy. The Rascal. I've never been close to anyone else who has his connections with the Instrumentalities of the Night."

"The Rascal?"

"Er-Rashal el-Dhulquamen. The great…"

"I know who he is. From the little I've been able to find out, he seems the most likely candidate for being your great enemy. And he's completely mad."

"Really?"

"Sarcasm doesn't become you, Piper. Let's get this amulet change done. Your bodyguards have begun to develop a vague notion that something is going on. Give me your left hand."

Whatever happened next, it did not stick in Hecht's mind. After some vague fumbling around his left wrist, there was a moment when he felt like he had been relieved of the weight of the world. Then he was standing in the middle of the meadow, alone. His left wrist itched horribly.

For an instant he thought he must be something more than just Piper Hecht, Captain-General of the Patriarchal armed forces. The word soultaken came to mind. He drove it out.

He might be something wicked, after these years with the Unbeliever, but a tool of the Instrumentalities of the Night he was not, nor would he be.

Before he shook his disorientation completely disconcerted lifeguards surrounded him again.

He had had enough fresh air.

"Bechter! Titus! What is this?" Hecht had found four similar rings on his map of the End of Connec. The map lay on its own crude table. It never got put away. Three rings were silver. The other was gold.

Bechter and Consent arrived. Consent said, "I don't know."

The rings were covered with symbols, none Chaldarean. Two lay atop sites where serious setbacks for Sublime's cause had occurred. Places where Arnhanders and Grolsachers, striving to do God's work, had suffered severe defeats.

Another ring lay on Viscesment. The last rested atop Antieux, eighty miles to the southwest in the End of Connec.

"Sergeant Bechter, see if you can't find the Principate for me."

"Which one?"

"How many do we have? Did Doneto sneak back?"

"No. But two more showed up last night. The Bruglioni and Gorin Linczski from Aparion."

"Linczski? I don't know him. And that name doesn't sound Aparionese."

"I think he's from Creveldia, originally. Sedlakova could tell you about him."

"Why are they here?"

Bechter shrugged. "Aparion? Sonsa?"

"The old man is the one I want."

"On the way, then."

"Bechter, when people like that turn up I want to hear about it when they're still on the horizon. Not the next day. No exceptions. No excuses."

Principate Delari said, "The meaning would be between you and grandfather. You talked to him?"

Hecht nodded. "Mostly he talked about saving me from people who want me dead. You're sure it was him?"

"Yes. The rings may have belonged to someone who had you marked as a target. Though that's just a guess. I couldn't understand him half the time when he explained things face-to-face. Let me study the rings." Seconds later, "They all have the same symbol stamped inside." He indicated a trident that looked like a diving bird. "Piper?"

"Sorry. I was startled. I've seen that before. It's a pagan religious symbol. From antiquity."

"Eastern?"

"I saw it there. But I think it turned up everywhere before the Old Empire tamed the Instrumentalities of the Night."

"Let's look at the map again." After fifteen seconds' study, "Has anyone plotted the appearances of the revenants in the Connec?"

"Revenants?"

"Hilt. Rook. Weaver. Shade."

"Never heard of those last two."

"More of the same. Personifications. Discord. Crop disease."

"Saints?"

Delari chuckled. "You might say. Answer the question."

"I can't. Titus can, I'm sure." He called downstairs for Consent. When Titus arrived, Hecht said, "We need to know where all those weird things were seen. In the Connec."

"Sir?" Consent seemed unfocused.

"Rook. Hilt. Those things. I know you've heard the stories. We've talked about it"

"Oh. Yes. I kept a journal on that."

"Show us some whereats on the map."

"All over here. Where the Grolsachers first turned up. The Sadew Valley." Consent went on. Sightings had been grouped closely where two of the rings had lain. But the ande Lette area had produced the most sightings. No ring lay there.

"What about Antieux? Or Viscesment?"

"No reports there yet."

"Interesting," Delari said.

"Is something wrong, Titus?" Hecht asked.

"Sir?"

"You seem distracted."

"I just got a letter from Noe. Anna and the kids are fine. They've moved back to her house."

Hecht knew. As the Captain-General's woman Anna could take advantage of the courier service.

"She had bad news?"

"My uncle Shire. You met him. Shire Spereo. He died."

"I'm sorry."

"Thank you. But it isn't your problem. What I don't understand is, he committed suicide."

"Wow! That doesn't seem like him."

"You're right. But there have been several unlikely suicides since Gledius Stewpo went."

"Is something going on?"

"If there is I can't work it out. They were all old guys. Except for Stewpo and another refugee from Sonsa, they hadn't left the quarter in twenty years."

Principate Delari asked, "Were they wealthy?"

"Sure. That's about all they had in common. Though they all knew each other."

Delari nodded to himself. "Bring me your notes about sightings of old Instrumentalities. On the other matter, ask how those men became wealthy. Could their consciences be catching up?"

Consent cocked his head slightly, mouth open. 'That's an interesting thought." He shuddered. "I'll get the journal." He clumped down the stairs.

Before Hecht asked, Delari said, "No. Not me." Then, "But maybe Grade's mission didn't die when he did."

"Small world. If that's it."

"It is a small world when it comes to the people who shake it. And there are far fewer coincidences than we want to believe. The Instrumentalities of the Night weave schemes that arc across generations. We can't see ourselves caught in the web."

Hecht had created Piper Hecht so thoroughly that he was not tempted to challenge that heresy.

"You're amused?" Delari asked.

"The normal course of business here could put us on the Society's list. To do my job right I have to take into account the misbehavior of beings that I'm not supposed to believe exist."

"You can believe. You just can't call them gods." The old man chuckled. "We need to find out what unusual things have happened in the areas the rings marked."

"But…"

"Not just something that might be Rook scattering maggots. Any unusual, unexplained events. Any unusual histories. At this remove, even the most ancient folklore."

"Titus could send people to find out. But we can't twiddle our thumbs while he does." The Connec was growing less restive. The flood of Grolsacher refugees had begun to dry up. The disorganized bands of Amhander crusaders had decided to wait on Sublime because it had begun to look like the Patriarch meant to let them do the dying before he swooped down on a province too exhausted to resist.