"That's great. . . ."

Inside, however, he felt himself go cold with fear. He had dismissed what Lehmann had said as idle talk, but the man had been right. Somehow he had known.

"Gregor? What is it?"

"I was told. Li Min told me."

She gave a small laugh. "He couldn't have. I only found out yesterday. I haven't told anyone, not even May. I was waiting to tell you first."

"He knew," he said quietly. "The bastard knew." He heaved a sigh then. "Look, stay here a moment, there's something I want to check."

He made to turn away but she called him back. "Gregor?"

"Yes?"

"Did you ... I mean, you did want another child?"

Looking at her, he realized suddenly how scared she was, how close she was to tears. He went to her and held her tightly, stroking her back, physically reassuring her. "Marie, Marie, my darling love, you know I do." He lifted her chin, making her look at him. "It's wonderful news. Really it is. But . . ." His smile slowly faded. "Get May in and settle her. Okay? I'll be back in a while."

Outside, in the imperial gardens the evening light was failing. Walking back to the duty room Karr ran a dozen different scenarios through his mind, yet he knew, even before Bremen confirmed it. They were dead; the surgeon and all his staff. Blown into the next world by a bomb planted in some new equipment they'd taken delivery of only that morning.

Returning to his rooms he rehearsed how he would tell her-how to reveal to her just how small, how vulnerable, they were-but facing her he found there was no need. She read his eyes and looked down, nodding.

"Where's May?" he said softly, wearily.

"Asleep. She tired herself out."

"Ah . . ." He nodded, then reached for her, holding her tightly against him, squeezing her arms, her back, reassuring himself that she was there, alive and warm-at least for this much longer-knowing suddenly how easily he could have lost her.

"We'll be safe here," he said. "War or no war, Tongjiang at least is safe."

She smiled, as if comforted by his words, yet something in her eyes mirrored back his own growing doubts. Nowhere was safe anymore. Nowhere. Not even Tongjiang.THE MOON WAS FULL, burning a perfect circle of white in the blackness of the sky. Beside it the mountain glistened, its crooked peak thrust like an ice pick into the frigid air.

Lehmann stood on the slope on the far side of the valley, staring at the scene, his hood thrown back, his breath pluming in the air. It had been months since he had come out here. Months since he had seen anything so beautiful.

He shivered, more from awe than from the cold, then turned and looked to his lieutenant, Soucek, who had just arrived.

"Is there any word yet?"

Soucek rubbed his gloved hands together and shook his head inside the fur-lined hood. "Nothing."

"Ah." Lehmann turned back, distracted by the news. It was strange. Visak was normally so reliable.

"He's over two hours late," Soucek added, coming alongside him. "Do you think something's happened to him?"

He shrugged. For a moment he was silent, breathing in the pure, cold air, letting the inhuman perfection of the place fill him, then he turned, looking back at Soucek.

"It's almost time. You know that, don't you? All these years we've waited, and now . . . Well, now that it's here I hesitate. We have the means, the will, the strength, to beat Li Yuan. Even so, I hold back. And I don't know why. That's why we're here, Jiri. To try to see things clearly. To work out if there's anything we've overlooked."

"It's to be war, then?"

Lehmann nodded, his face masklike, almost transparent, in the moonlight, his eyes sparkling unnaturally, like a demon's. "Are you afraid, Jiri?"

Soucek hesitated, then nodded.

"Good. That's a fighter's emotion. To be afraid, yet to be in control of one's fear."

Soucek stamped his feet, the cold getting to him. "It seems a long time since we killed Lo Han. Seven years. . . . You know, I felt alive that day. I felt . . . well, close to something. Something I'd never experienced before. But these past few years, since we defeated Fat Wong and his cousins . . . Well, sometimes it's seemed like a dream. As if I wasn't fully awake."

Lehmann turned, looking at Soucek directly, understanding what the other man was saying. He, too, had missed the danger. Missed that feeling of extending himself-of putting himself at risk. It had all been too easy. Too safe.

"You're right, Jiri. We have been sleeping. Letting events drift when we should have been seizing the moment and shaping it. Playing at being kings when we should have been stoking the fire beneath the throne. But now it's time to change that."

Soucek had been staring at the tree line far below. Now he looked back at Lehmann. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we ought to push a little and see what happens."

"Push?"He turned, looking to the east, as if he could see beyond the mountains, beyond the great sweep of Eastern Europe and the Urals, right to where Li Yuan sat at his desk in Tongjiang.

"Push. Create pressure in the House. Ferment trouble among the African Banners. Assassinate some of Li Yuan's leading officials. That kind of thing."

"And his offer?"

Lehmann shrugged. He didn't know. He was tempted to say no, to defy Li Yuan and see what he did.

But maybe that would be too direct.

"I don't think he wants to go to war. I don't think he has the will. Besides, he'll wait on his cousins-see what they say first. No, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced we should play a double game.

Play loyal subject to his face while undermining him at every opportunity."

"And if we're wrong?"

"Then we fight."

He stopped, looking past Soucek, then relaxed. It was one of his own men. "What is it, Stewart?"

Stewart stopped and bowed his head. "There's no sign of Visak," he said breathlessly. "No one's seen him since six. He was due to meet some of our people in Osnabriick but ... he didn't show."

"I see." He dismissed the man, then turned to Soucek. "What do you think?"

"Think?"

But it was clear what Soucek thought. His eyes gave him away. He thought Visak had gone over-sold them out-and if Soucek thought that, then maybe it was true. But he would find out first. Make sure before he acted.

"You know what I think?" he said, looking up at the moon hanging there like a great white stone in the sky. "I think we'd better get back. I think the game's begun."

"Daddy?"

Jelka pushed the door open with her knee, then stepped inside into the darkness, the tray balanced carefully between her hands.

Her father was sitting in his chair, the holo-viewer on the floor in front of him, the control module in his lap, the golden fingers of his right hand wrapped about it. In the air before him stood the boy, dressed in a miniature of the Marshal's uniform.

She went across and set the tray down, then stood behind him.

It was something they had recorded only weeks ago; part of the great Kakvala she herself had set to music. Watching it she felt once again the sharp pain of Pauli's absence, that awful, gnawing uncertainty of not knowing where he was, nor what was happening to him.

Pauli stood there, straight and tall and proud, his dark hair combed neatly across his forehead, his whole body lifted slightly on the balls of his feet as he sang, his eyes staring into the distance as he concentrated on the words.

"Hereupon the bird spoke language,And the hawk at once made answer: 'O thou smith, O Ilmarinen, Thou the most industrious craftsman!

Truly art thou very skillful, And a most accomplished craftsman!'

Thereupon smith Ilmarinen Answered in the words that follow: 'But indeed 'tis not a wonder, If I am a skillful craftsman, For 'twas I who forged the heavens, And the arch of air who welded.' "

He sang on, his pure high voice seeming to capture the very essence of those ancient days-of that distant time before the City had been built over the land, before the World was cloaked in ice. Looking at him, she realized with a start of surprise how very like his father he was-not the Hans Ebert she had known on Chung Kuo, the one who had almost married her, but the one she had met on Mars-"the Changeling," as she liked to think of him. She shivered, strangely moved by the thought. Her father had brought the boy up well. There was nothing spoiled about him, nothing impetuous or soft-nothing corrupt. His voice was like a light shining out from deep within, revealing the perfect pitch of his inner being, resonant with innocence and hope. So strange that was, so utterly strange, considering that his father had been a traitor, his mother a madwoman and a whore. But the boy . . . She listened as he finished, entranced and deeply moved, the ancient tale made new in his song.

The old man froze the image, a tremor passing through him, tears on his cheeks. She laid her hands gently on his shoulders. He turned, looking up at her, then reached up, grasping her hands tightly in his '1 own.

She squeezed them, for once not bothered by the cool, metallic feel of his left hand.

"We'll get him back," she said, fighting down the tears. "You know we will."

"It's not that easy," he said, his face hardening. "Things are changing by the hour."

He released her hands, then stood, turning to face her, all softness gone from him suddenly. "Things are bad, my love. We could be at war within the week."

She stared at him. "War?"

He nodded. "I asked the T'ang for Karr, but he refused. Things are happening. Pauli . . . Well, Pauli's but a single stone in the great game. We"-his voice faltered, then carried on-"we must deal with this matter ourselves."

She frowned, not understanding. "Deal with it? How?"

He turned his head, looking athis desk and the tray there. "Is that soup?"

"Yes . . . but answer me, Daddy. How? How are you going to deal with this?"

He looked back at her, a sour smile on his lips. "I have not been a soldier sixty years for nothing. I knowpeople. . . ."

"People?"

Again he looked away. "It's best you don't ask."

Best? She shivered, seeing there, in her father's eyes, a steely hardness, a determination which she recognized from the past-that same determination that had made him defy his T'ang and kill Lehmann before the whole House-that same iron-hard spirit that would wreck a world before it allowed harm to one of his own.

Maybe it is best 1 don't know what you are planning, she thought. Then, reaching up, she gently stroked the drying tears from his face.

THE CELL WAS DARK, the dull red glow of the LOCKED signal above the studded door the only source of illumination. On the bunk in the corner lay the boy, a rough blanket covering his nakedness.

Two guards patrolled the corridor outside. He could hear their booted footsteps click and echo in the silence.

Cold. It was so cold here.

He huddled into himself, conscious of the camera somewhere in the dark above him watching his every move. Infrared it was-he knew that. Uncle Knut had told him all about such things. He turned over, facing the wall, trying to relax, trying not to cry. He had done so well. Throughout it all he had held his head up and been brave, like he'd been taught. But now, alone in the darkness, it was suddenly much harder.

No, he told himself, swallowing hard. They're watching me, waiting for me to break down, so 1 mustn't. For Uncle Knut's sake, I mustn't.

For a moment his thoughts wandered and he imagined himself in his own bed, back in the Mansion; imagined that the footsteps were those of the servants; then he remembered. The servants were all dead: he had seen them die, Chang Mu and Shih Chih-o, Li Ho-nien and his favorite, the young Ma Ch'ing, the last in his room, fighting them vainly, trying to stop them from taking him.

He shuddered, trying to control himself, to push back the memories, but they were too powerful for him.

Unbidden, a tear trickled down his cheek and then another.

And his mother . . .

He gritted his teeth, but a low moan forced itself out from somewhere deep inside him.

Be brave, he heard the old man say. Whatever you have to face in life, be brave and face it squarely. But it was hard to be brave when no one came, when no one even knew where you were.

Harder yet when the memories came crowding back to haunt you.

He ducked his head beneath the blanket and secretly wiped the moistness from his cheeks, then sat up and turned, placing his feet on the cold earthen floor, ignoring the cold.

Remember the song, he told himself, hearing Jelka's soft voice coaxing him in his head. And, lifting his head, he began, his pure, high voice sounding in the silent darkness, making the guards outside turn and listen.

"Still the sun was never shining,Neither gleamed the golden moonlight, Not in Vainola's dark dwellings, Not on Kalevala's broad heathlands.

Frost upon the crops descended, And the cattle suffered greatly, And the birds of air felt strangely, All mankind felt ever mournful, For the sunlight shone no longer, Neither did there shine the moonlight. . . ."

IT WAS AFTER ELEVEN when Tsu Ma finally left the Council Chamber. He had been loath to call such a meeting, despite what had happened earlier, but the news from his agents in Tongjiang could not be ignored. If their reports were true, Li Yuan was preparing for war, and that would mean trouble in his own City.

He stood in the tiny anteroom a moment, alone-for the first time since the dawn, alone-and tried to still his racing thoughts. Too much had happened too fast. That business with Fei Yen . . .

Tsu Ma let a sigh escape him, then sat down, raking his fingers through his hair distractedly. He had always thought Li Yuan had known; had known yet been too tactful, too much a "brother," to ever mention it. Since the day of Li Yuan's coronation, when he had approached him about the child, he had assumed the boy was his: that Li Yuan knew yet had forgiven him. If he had thought for a moment . . .

"Aiya . . ."he said softly. If he had known what harm the woman could do he would have killed her. Or was that true? Wasn't he still more than a little in love with her? Hadn't his anger at her today been tempered by some other, darker feeling?

He blew out a long breath, then leaned forward. If the truth were told, seeing her there in the cell, chained and defiant, he had felt that old, familiar fire burn up in him again-had remembered, for the briefest instant, how it had been to lie with her. No other woman had ever fired him so. No other had ever made him lie there sleepless with the memory.

Tsu Ma shuddered, then stood, realizing suddenly that someone was standing in the doorway, waiting. It was Hwa Kwei, his Master of the Inner Chambers.

"Chieh Hsia?"

"What is it, Master Hwa?"

"My Mistress, the Empress, has sent me to ask if you will be coming to her rooms tonight."

His wedding night ... He had forgotten. This was, after all, his wedding night.