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But the Sibians all tramped over to the Admiralty offices at the required time, too. Cornelu wondered what sort of orders- or lies- they would hear from the Lagoan officers in charge of getting the most out of them. Cornelu sometimes thought the Lagoans were as intent on using up the Sibians as they were on using them. He shrugged. He couldn't do anything about that.

At the Admiralty, a grizzled Lagoan petty officer whose ribbons and medals declared that he'd fought bravely during the Six Years' War spoke to the Sibians: "Down the hallway to the conference room." Unlike a lot of his countrymen- including plenty with fancier ranks and fancier educations- he spoke Sibian, not Algarvian. He even had a Facaceni accent.

"Where did you learn my language?" Cornelu asked him.

"Always a bit of dealing going on," the Lagoan answered, and said no more. Smuggler, Cornelu guessed. Whether he was right or wrong, he couldn't do anything about it now.

Gold letters over the entrance to the conference room proclaimed that it was named for Admiral Velho, one of Lagoas' heroes in the last naval war against Sibiu a couple of hundred years before. Assembling Sibians here to listen to whatever the Lagoans had to say struck Cornelu as less than tactful, but the Lagoans had been less than tactful ever since the Sibian exiles arrived.

Cornelu turned to complain to one of his countrymen as he started into the conference room, but stopped with the words unuttered. One look at the map on the far wall swept them out of his head. The other Sibians were pointing and staring, too. Their talk rose to an excited buzz.

A Lagoan officer in tunic and kilt darker than the Sibian sea-green stood beside the map. "Have we got your attention?" he asked the exiles- in Algarvian. For once, Cornelu didn't care. With that map in front of him, he would listen to anything.


Fifteen


“To sing a song of victory." Words bubbled inside Garivald like stew bubbling in a pot over a hot fire. "The day they thought they'd never see." He paused, waiting for the next couplet to form. "They thought they'd hit us hard in summer. But now we know their days are numbered." He shook his head. That wouldn't do, not even with music to make the bad rhyme and scansion less obvious.

He cast about for a better line. Before he could find one, the Unkerlanter regular named Tantris came up to him. Whatever line might have taken shape flew away instead. He gave Tantris a dirty look.

The regular ignored it. He said, "We need to strike the followers of Raniero the pretender, to show them they aren't safe even though his Majesty's troops haven't yet started taking Grelz back from the invaders. Can we do it?"

"You're asking me now?" Garivald said, intrigued. Tantris nodded. Garivald persisted: "You're not giving orders? You're not saying you know everything and I don't know anything, the way you did before?"

"I never said that," Tantris protested.

"No?" Garivald glowered at him. "Where's Gandiluz, then? Dead, that's where. Dead because you wouldn't listen to me when I told you Sadoc could no more work magic than a bullfrog can fly. You had it all planned, the two of you. But you weren't quite as efficient as you thought, were you?"

Tantris gave him a long, expressionless look. "You do want to have some care in how you speak to me."

Garivald wanted nothing of the sort. Tantris put him in mind of all the inspectors and impressers he'd had to obey his whole life long. But he didn't have to obey this whoreson. The band of irregulars in the woods west of Herborn was his, not Tantris'. One word from him and the regular soldier would meet with an unfortunate accident. Garivald smiled. Power was heady stuff.

Tantris nodded as if Garivald had spoken his thoughts aloud. "Everything gets remembered, you know," Tantris said. "Everything. With his Majesty's armies moving forward again, debts will be paid, every single one of them. Before very long, Grelz will find out exactly what that means."

Birds chirped. Leaves were green. The sun shone brightly. But, just for a moment, winter lived in Garivald. He held the whip hand right now. But behind him stood only his irregulars. Behind Tantris stood the whole great apparatus of Unkerlanter intimidation, reaching all the way back to the throne room in Cottbus and to King Swemmel himself. Which carried more weight in the end? Garivald knew too mournfully well. With a sigh, he said, "We hate the redheads and the traitors worse than we hate each other. We'd better, anyhow."

"Aye. We'd better." Tantris' smile was crooked. "And we'd better show the traitors that we're still in business around these parts. Their hearts will be down in their boots anyhow, with the Algarvians falling back toward the borders of Grelz. A lot of them will be looking for ways out of the fight. Their hearts won't be in it anymore."

"Maybe," Garivald said. "Some of them follow King Raniero-"

"False King Raniero," Tantris broke in.

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