The Reformer

dried fruit, or simply sitting patiently on their haunches. His crew numbered roughly the same, though all but fifteen of them were oarsmen and sailors, tough hardy men and handy in a fight, but no match for soldiers with swords and light body armor. And from the flat dispassionate stare of the little underofficer, they'd be perfectly happy to slit his throat, throw the crews' bodies after his, and turn pirate if this Emerald gave the word. They were his men, not the King's.

'Your orders, sir?' he said to Adrian.

'Beach the ship lightly,' he said, then looked ahead. 'There's shallow shelving water and soft sand there-just touch her.'

The captain shivered and made a covert sign with his fingers. Those eyes. . They're not like those of other men. As if demons or spirits-or gods? — were looking out of them. Telling him things, that's what the tales say. He's not canny.

He turned to give his orders to the steersmen and sailing master. The sail and yard came down with a muted thump and were furled; below the oarsmen stirred in sleepy protest. There was a yelp or two as the bosun's rope- end persuaders swung, and then the oars came rattling out, poised, dipped down into the dark star-reflecting water and bit. The ship turned towards the black line of the shore, where low waves and white foam and pale sand made a line in the night. It was calm water, and the ship was a raider, built for 'longshore work. Behind him the sorcerer was talking with his woman in Confed, a language the captain knew only a few words of.

'Adrian,' Helga said. 'What's going on?'

The Emerald drew a deep breath. 'I didn't tell you where we were bound,' he said. 'Because I didn't want to spoil things more than. . earlier than I had to.'

'You're bound to attack Confederacy territory,' she said, her voice quiet and level as her eyes.

'Yes,' Adrian said.

'Preble? It's the logical target and weakly held.'

Adrian felt a knife twist deeper. This woman has brains, he thought. Some of the Scholars of the Grove held that the only true love was between man and youth, because only then could there be a meeting of minds and not merely of bodies. He'd admitted the theoretical force of the argument, but not anymore, not anymore. .

'Yes.'

'Adrian. .' She stepped closer and put a hand on his shoulder. He could barely feel it through the shoulderpiece of his corselet, but a heat seemed to gather beneath.

'Adrian, don't do it. You'll be killed, you can't understand even if you win at first, the Confederacy always comes back in the end, please, don't throw yourself away-'

She's thinking of me, he realized with a glow of wonder. He shook his head and went on:

'I've. . got to back my brother. And I'm not going to ask you to fight against your country. . possibly against your father's own troops.'

Shock turned Helga's face white. 'You knew?'

'You favor him. And I knew about the raid.' His hand came down on hers, where it rested on the bronze of the armor. 'Helga. . I didn't give a damn. Don't now.'

She looked at him for a long slow moment. 'I believe you,' she said. 'And you're not sending me back now as a gift to him?'

His mouth quirked. 'Your father is notoriously patriotic. Who was that ancient Confed general, the one who executed his own sons when they proposed surrender. .?'

'Louis deVille,' she said automatically. 'That was in the war of King Peter.'

The one who came up with the phrase Petric Victory, a scholar's corner of Adrian's mind remembered. That was long before the Confed conquest of the Emerald lands, when an Emerald-or half- Emerald-general could still invade there himself. But he'd won no concessions, although he'd carried half a dozen bloody fields against the nascent Confederation's army. The problem was that they could replace the men, and he couldn't.

'Well, if deVille was ready to sacrifice his sons, I think your father-much though he must love you-will sacrifice a daughter for Preble. I'm not going to be buying any favors from him with you.'

Her eyes searched his. 'How well you must know him,' she said. 'Is there nothing you don't know?'

'I don't know how to come by what I want most in the world and still keep my honor,' he said.

The tears that glittered in her eyes stayed unshed; he'd found the one argument that would weigh heaviest with someone raised in the household of a Confed noble of antique virtue. The fact that it's the miserable truth is sort of a bonus, I suppose.

The cry from the bow was soft but carrying. 'She shelves.'

'Avast oars!' the captain called. 'Brace for grounding!'

Adrian and Helga did, with an arm around each other as well as a grip on the rigging. The ship surged softly, and half a dozen crewmen dropped over the bow to hold her steady; the water was to their waists. For all its length and wicked bronze-sheathed ram the galley was absurdly light, a racing shell of thin pine planking.

The man and woman walked to the bow, hand-in-hand, in silence. Adrian vaulted over into the cold water, caught Helga by the waist and lifted her down. She was a solid armful, with the light corselet on her and the rest of her kit. Arquebusiers of the Lightning Band handed down the servant he'd bought her in Chalice, and a light duffel.

'There's enough here to see you safely to Grand Harbor, and the Confed garrison there,' he said, tucking a soft heavy purse of chamois leather into her belt pouch. 'And. .'

'And?' she asked, chin up.

'And I may not be the Confederacy's enemy forever,' he said in a rush. 'When-if-that happens, may I come to call?'

She smiled with a courage that wrenched at his heart. 'Yes,' she said. 'I will so petition my father.' A moment's urchin grin. 'I told you what my marriage prospects are, didn't I?' Solemnly: 'Stay alive, Adrian.'

'I'll do my best. Yes, best I go. Gods go with you.'

He watched the two figures walk up the beach, towards the tree-lined trail a hundred yards inland; it shone white in the moonlight, a wanderer's ribbon across the moor that bordered the sea here. Then he turned and accepted a hand; others boosted him back to the deck. He stood there, unspeaking, while the crew pushed off and the oars bit, backing water and turning the galley's prow to the west.

* * *

Esmond Gellert decided that the waiting was the hardest part.

The Briny Kettle was no warship, no sleek galley lavishly equipped with oars. She was a tub, a merchantman that carried grain and fish and oil and general cargo along the western coasts, out to the Islands, down south to the barbarian country. The only oars she had were half a dozen sweeps on a side, used only for working in and out of awkward ports. For the rest she was a deep-bellied teardrop, with a swan's head curving up over the quarterdeck and steering oars at the rear, one tall mast in the center, and bluff-cheeked bows up front. At five hundred tons she was quite large, and that and her high sides and substantial crew, plus a couple of dart- casters, was usually enough to discourage pirates. Longshore raiding paid better anyway, usually.

'Yeah, waiting's the worst,' Donnuld Grayn said.

Esmond started slightly. 'Hell, I didn't know I was talking.'

The older mercenary grinned gap-toothed, and offered a skin of well-watered wine-one part to three. 'This business, you spend most of the time being bored, and a few minutes out of every hour shitting yourself,' he said philosophically. 'When you're not being seasick, that is. . this tub pitches worse than a galley.'

The Briny Kettle carried no cargo but armed men; five hundred of them, packed like cured fish below decks, or lying flat on deck to ride concealed from anyone else-anyone, for instance, like the inspector in the little customs galley that was coming alongside. Its dozen oars easily matched the long slow rocking-horse pitch of the merchantman, avoiding the bows where a creamy V of white water pointed towards the low dark bulk of the city ahead. Reddish lights glimmered on the water from some of the lights there, and from masthead lanterns on the clustering ships docked to it, and from sentries pacing on the high crenellated walls.

'You're late, Sharlz,' the official called out, holding up a lantern.

That glittered on the water, on his bald scalp and big-nosed face and on the gold hoop in one ear. He was an