The Reformer

'Well, the one she had wasn't really very good quality,' Adrian explained.

He was tired; they both were, with the load of work they'd been doing. A light meal stood between their couches on a low table: cured fish, olives, oil, bread for dipping, watered wine. The room was plain whitewash with a pattern of leaves in blue around the upper edges, and a door gave out onto a garden full of lilacs. It might almost have been in Solinga, even the smell of the sea was familiar, if it weren't for a subtle wrongness in the noises, an undersmell of strange spices and rank lushness to the familiar reek of a port. Another table at the end of the room was littered with wax-covered board diptychs, scrolls, and scraps of reed-paper, models.

Esmond pulled a piece off a long loaf of bread. 'Well,' he said, with malice aforethought and a brother's cruelty, 'it was a good enough sword to gut Lord Sawtre very effectively. If you finally had to take up with a woman regularly, and with a Confed woman, you at least picked one with some unusual talents.' He laughed. 'At least she's not Audsley's wife-or Justiciar Demansk's daughter.'

His brother might not be a Scholar of the Grove, with an ageless machine and an ancient general's ghost at the back of his mind, but he was an Emerald and no fool-which was to say, a keen observer.

'Wait a minute!' Esmond said, half-rising. 'Shit among the Shades, she is Demansk's daughter-the one captured by pirates.'

'Shut up!' Adrian barked.

Shocked, Esmond fell silent for a moment. Adrian rarely spoke roughly; this time he fought for a visible instant to control his temper, something rare enough to make his brother's eyes go wide.

'You will not speak of that again,' he said coldly.

'But why?' Esmond said.

'Because I don't want her to think I'm using her as some sort of angle against her father-which I'm not, by the way, and won't be.'

Esmond's blue eyes blinked in bewilderment. 'But why, brother if-oh, no. Don't tell me you've been scratched by one of Gellerix's cats and caught a fever!'

That was the slang term for being hit by love; any sensible Emerald regarded it as a form of infectious madness sent by the gods to plague mankind with suffering-the divinities could be remarkably petty and cruel, sometimes.

Adrian looked down and toyed with a dried fig. 'That's one way to put it. You might also say that I like and respect her,' he snapped.

'Adrian, my brother, please-think.' Esmond stopped for a moment, and snorted. 'Here I am, stealing your lines, like an actor. . but really, think, brother. At least there's no question of marr-oh, Gellerix!' he broke off at Adrian's expression.

'Esmond, have you any conception of how dull most women's conversation is?' he snapped. 'How dull most women are? It's not their fault, the gods know, most of them shut up all the time and uneducated, but-'

He stopped at Esmond's expression of bafflement. Your Nanya was like a trembling dove, he thought with kindly exasperation. And the gods know, the Wodep in your soul would make that seem the sum of all womanhood to you. Me, I'm differently made, my brother.

'She's-'

A dangerous glance passed between them, and an unspoken message: You don't call her used goods and I won't say anything about Nanya, that's about it, Adrian thought.

'Adrian,' Esmond said slowly. 'Demansk's daughter is going to be a Confed-not just by origins, she'll have been brought up on their old stories, walked past the death masks of Demansks who were Justiciars and Speakers back to when Vanbert was a mud-and-wattle village. How do you think she's going to feel when she finds out you're fighting to bring the Confederacy of Vanbert to the ground?'

I should remind myself how smart Esmond is occasionally, Adrian thought, wincing. His brother didn't have the temperament for a Scholar, but he had at least as much raw brainpower as his younger sibling, and a tremendous ability to focus.

'That's. . for the time it has to be faced,' he said slowly. 'Look, Esmond. . can't I have a few days? Just a few?'

'Of course,' Esmond said. His eyes grew slightly haunted. 'I know how brief that can be.'

Feet clattered outside, and voices rang; one a high clear soprano. Helga Demansk swept in, wearing women's dress this time, a long blue robe with a fold of her mantle over her hair. That was tied back with a ribbon, and twisted into plaits.

'Adrian!' she said, handing her shopping basket to a maid. 'It fits! Oh, hello, Esmond.'

'Helga,' he said, half-rising and bowing his head. 'What fits?'

'The cuirass and helmet,' she said. 'They do good metalwork here, I've got to admit, even if they are pirate dogs.' Adrian winced slightly, and looked around. 'Oh, don't worry, Adrian,' she went on. 'They're proud of being pirates.'

'But not dogs,' he said.

'Are you going to tell me yet where this new expedition is headed?' she said, a green gleam in her eye. 'Casull will have all the islands soon, at this rate.'

'Are you so eager to slay men, lady?' Esmond asked.

This time Helga looked aside slightly. 'Well, no,' she said. 'Not really. But it's. . exciting, you know what I mean?'

'Unfortunately I do,' Esmond agreed.

Helga reached into the basket. 'And look at what I found,' she went on more brightly. 'A copy of the War of the Thousand Ships. I kept myself sane partly by reciting big chunks of it from memory, but it's been so long since I had anything to read.'

Esmond laughed. 'You and my brother were made for each other by the gods, lady. Even when we were running for our lives, two pack-velipads full of scrolls followed us.'

Helga chuckled, but scowled slightly. 'That idiot Audsley got a lot of good men killed, from what I hear,' she said. 'Damned traitor. . and of course he got his head handed to him when he met. . Justiciar Demansk. Demansk is a real general, and he has the interests of the State at heart.'

correct, Center said. which is why with a high probability he would be hostile to our innovations. however, it would be advisable to gain a fuller psychostatistical profile of him-the subject helga demansk would be a valuable source of data.

Shut the hell up, Adrian thought. He could feel Raj agreeing with him, an eerie nonverbal communication, like some ghostly equivalent of seeing expression on a man's face.

'Sorry,' Helga went on after a moment. 'Sometimes I forget you're Emeralds.'

'Emeralds and Confeds are near-as-no-matter blood brothers here in the Isles,' Adrian said lightly-which was true in one sense, and an outright lie in another.

Helga met his eyes and smiled, and worries seemed to dissolve themselves in time sweeter than honey. After a moment Esmond cleared his throat and stood.

'Well, I can tell when I'm the third wheel on a chariot,' he said. 'Tomorrow, then, brother.'

* * *

'We're getting sort of close to the mainland, aren't we?' Helga said.

'That is the mainland,' Adrian replied.

The galley had been under sail alone, one squat square sail driving the lean hull eastwards. Adrian stood on the quarterdeck, with his arm and cloak around the woman beside him; he'd been still, because if he was still all he need see was the frosted arch of stars above, the ghostly arcs of the moons, the smells of salt water and sweat and tar and the mingling of jasmine and clean healthy woman that was Helga. If he did not think, his mind need not crack and bleed. .

'Sir. .' began the ship's captain; he was Casull's man, and they were not authorized to be anywhere but on the approaches to Preble.

'Shut up, you,' Simun said.

The Islander skipper looked at him, and at the scores of Adrian's arquebusiers sprawled about the galley's deck, sleeping wrapped in their cloaks, throwing dice in the hollow of an upturned buckler, chewing hardtack and