There was nothing out there but dark. Nothing important at all.

There had been another time, when a young Karl Cullinane would have been out in the night, his mind on things of overriding importance, perhaps on hunting slavers, perhaps on other great deeds to be done . . . perhaps on just being young.

Being young had been nice. But that was gone; the years had fled all too quickly.

That was it. The years went by too fast. Just too d.a.m.n fast.

He closed the doors to the balcony and plopped down into his chair.

Maybe it was the baronial council meeting. Perhaps the time wasn't right, but he had called for the session, and it would have to be done sometime. Holts and Biemish would have to sit down at the same table and get used to the idea that this was one country now. And Nerahan deserved to own his own barony again. Still . . .

"Karl?" There was a rustling of cloth behind him; light flared as Andy used a piece of straw to bring fire from the fireplace to a lamp.

"Yeah. Just me." He tried for a light tone in his voice. "Who were you expecting? Go back to sleep."

Ignoring the halfhearted plea, she rose and came to him, her white, silken nightgown rippling in the wind.

"There was a time, old girl, when we both slept raw."

She smiled. "On the cold ground, with too few blankets between us and the ground." Her hand smoothed down her side, and then fluttered up to tug at his arm. "Come back in."

He shrugged. "Okay." He closed the doors to the balcony, reflexively slipping down the crossbar. "Just sit with me for a while."

"What is it?" Andy laid a gentle hand on his shoulder as he sat, scowling.

Karl shook his head. "I don't know. Nothing."

"Then will you please come to bed? Please?" She moved to the bed, pulled back the covers, and slipped between them. "You have a long day tomorrow."

"You get some sleep." He jerked his head toward the bed and took the lamp from her hands. "Just because I have a little insomnia doesn't mean you should stay up with me. Just give me a while. I've got some paperwork to do."

Ushering her back to bed, he padded across the carpet to his study, closing the twin doors quietly behind him. He set the lamp over his desk, then sat down and picked up a sheaf of papers, pretending to read.

The subject was importanta"it was a prcis of the latest land-tax collection in barony Adahana"but, as usual, there wouldn't be any discrepancy he could catch. Minor stealing by tax collectors was the rule, not the exception. While, officially, embezzlement of tax money was a hanging offense, in fact petty tax theft wasn't frowned on, as long as the collectors didn't get too greedy; baronial tax collectors were paid poorly, and there was always the temptation to collect a bit more than the records showed a freefarmer owed.

But even double-entry bookkeeping couldn't catch that; it was the initial entry that was false, not subsequent reconciliations.

But he didn't care. It just didn't seem to matter.

He wished Ellegon were here. Karl could always trust the dragon to help clear his mind.

d.a.m.n. He reached up and tugged at the bellrope, twicea"the nonemergency signal for a guard.

Boots thudded in the hall outside; the door swung open. "Yes, your majesty," the guard boomed, in a voice much larger than his slightly shorter than normal size warranted.

"Shh; not so loud." Karl turned in his chair. "And good evening, Nartham," he said. He would have known who it was just by the volume.

"I am at your service," the guard said, his voice rattling the night.

"Ta havath, Nartham," Karl said. Easy, Nartham. Why this guard always had to talk as though he were a half-deaf artillery sergeant on a parade ground was something Karl couldn't fathom. "My wife's sleeping in the next room, eh?"

"Sorry, sir," the guard said, at a barely reduced volume.

"The prisoner carta"did it leave this afternoon?"

"No, your majesty. Driver got here too late, I hear, and the bara"the judge told him to stay overnight. It should go out at first light."

Karl nodded a dismissala""Thank youa""

a"which Nartham didn't catch. "Is there anything else?"

"No." Karl shook his head. "Good night, Nartham."

"Buta"yes, sir."

As the door closed behind the guard, the twin doors to the bedroom swung open.

"Better talk about it," Andy said from the doorway, her arms crossed defensively over her chest.

"I thought you were going back to bed."

"No. You told me to go back to bed. There's a difference. Not that I was going to go back to sleep anyway, but Nartham's voice could wake up the dead. What is it? What's really bothering you?"

"Probably the trial." He shrugged again. "It doesn't make much of a difference. It's just that . . . Vernim. Idiotic b.a.s.t.a.r.d. If only he'd kept his mouth shut, if only he hadn't been too stupid to see that Thomen was only trying to scare hima""

She shook her head. "And that's what's bothering you? The poacher? Maybe I've gone a bit native, but so what? You declared an amnesty when you took the throne; all he and his family had to do was switch from poaching deer to snaring rabbits."

"But he didn't."

And it wasn't right.

But was that what was bothering him? He honestly couldn't say.

Didn't make sense. In Karl's time, he had had to put up with things a lot more raw than hanging a man who should have been, at worst, flogged.

He shook his head. "Something more's bothering me about this, and I can't figure out what it is."

d.a.m.n idiot thing, at that. A young Karl Cullinane always used to make fun of the California types who were always trying to "get in touch with their feelings" and similar nonsense. Get in touch with your feelings? Not know what you feel? Could anything be sillier?

Except when it happened to you. "Y'know, when I was younger, I wouldn't have put up with this."

Maybe that was it. Then again, maybe not.

"Put up with what?" She set her hip on the arm of his chair.

He reached over and stroked her knee. "I wouldn't have put up with not even hearing you get out of bed, that's what I wouldn't have put up with. I'm getting old," he said, glad that Tennetty wasn't here.

She shook her head and pushed his hand away, not falling for either distraction. "No. That's not it. You wouldn't have put up with a man being hanged for hunting for meat for his table, that's what's bothering you."

He shrugged again. So what? "I had to. There wasn't any choice."

She nodded. "So? You're going to let that bother you forever?"

He shook his head. "Not forever." He'd had to do worse in his time. He'd once marched a bunch of friends into enemy gunfire, and not regretted it for a moment, even though only he and Tennetty had survived.

No. His fists clenched. He had regretted it every moment. Aveneer, Peill, Erek . . . he'd always miss redheaded Aveneer's booming voice, Peill's unrelieved but strangely rea.s.suring frown, Erek's expression of intense concentrationa"he'd always regret having marched them into the cannon's mouth.

He'd always regret the action and the necessity, but not his obedience to the necessity.

Some necessities were always to be regretted. Always; it was a debt to the dead.

"Then what is it?" She smiled down at him. "You know, when you were Thomen's age, you wouldn't have pouted over something like this. You'd either have sprung the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, or let him hang without worrying."

It wasn't so simple now. There were other things to be considered. On balance, it was better to let the idiot hang than to alienate Tyrnael.

"You're right, though," he said. "When I was Thomen's age, I wouldn't have put up with it."

"What would you have done?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe . . . I guess maybe I'd have tried to spring hima"'

No.

He looked over at her. "Did Thomen say anything to you?"

It hit her, too; she shivered. "No. But he wouldn't put me in that awkward a position." She caught her lip between her teeth for a moment. "I'm not sure that I'd have told you even if he had."

He rose to his feet. "We'll talk about that some other time." The question was what to do now. The young baron would take responsibility on his own shoulders. It was something that he had learned from his late father, and that had been reinforced by his emperor and mentor.

"Can you locate him for me?"

She nodded. "Unless he's protecteda"but are you sure you want me to?" she asked as she stretched broadly. She gathered her long, flowing hair up and with a few fingerstrokes almost magically twisted it into a neat bun, securing it with a pair of ebony hairp.r.o.ngs.

Are you sure you want me to?

That was the trouble. Technically, if Thomen was doing what Karl half hoped he was, half prayed he wasn't, the boy was committing treason. . . .

Technically.

The job of a ruler, Karl Cullinane had once noted in his journal, consists primarily of p.i.s.sing on sparks. This counted as a spark. "How quickly can you pin down where he is?"

"I haven't done any locating for a long time." She shook her head. "It'll take me a couple of hours to set up and work the spell."

That could work right. As long as Karl could leave before the prisoner cart did, he'd have the jump on Thomen.

But there were some preparations to be made, if he was going to get out quietly, or be reasonably certain of getting back safely.

Shrugging out of his nightrobe and dropping it to the floor, he padded across the carpet back to the bedroom. "Do it, then meet me at the stables."

As he reached for his clothes, he was smiling: There was something to do.

The engineer on duty at the desk outside of the underground armory was one of Karl's scribes, a thirtyish, somewhat overweight, dark-bearded man who, refreshingly, never seemed terribly impressed with the emperor. Engrossed in his scribblings, it took him a moment to look up as Karl walked down the hall.

He was clearly surprised to see Karl down here in the middle of the night, but managed to muzzle his curiosity.

"A good evening to you, sir," he said, as he put his steel pen back in the inkwell and took a moment to knead his hands together as he stood. "Anything I can help with?"

"No need, Jayar," Karl said, giving Master Engineer Ranella's wax seal across the keyhole a perfunctory look before breaking it with his fingernail. "Just get the lock for me. I'm going out for a bit of exercise around dawn, and I just want a few fresh pistols; I can handle that alone," Karl said, then thought better of it. "Mmm . . . better yet, let's do this a.s.sembly-line stylea"I'll charge, then you load and prime."

There was plenty of time, but there was also no sense in spending a lot of it playing around loading pistols.

"My pleasure." The engineer used the large key from his ring to open the door.

It took Jayar a moment to light the overhead lamp; the engineer carefully set the lamp back in its place before he took down three small wooden canisters; the chalk marks on the canisters labeled one as a portion of the latest batch of Ranella's gunpowder, the second as fine priming powder, the third, which rattled as Jayar hefted it, lead bullets.

They each took a brace of pistols from a rack on the wet stone walls and set the weapons down on a battered workbench over by the opposite wall.

"Aren't you a bit senior to be on the night shift?" Karl asked. After all, Jayar was a sufficiently high-ranking journeyman that Ranella had authorized him an individual signet ring; he was ent.i.tled to access the armory on his own authority.

"Tricky question." Jayar pursed his lips, and c.o.c.ked his head to one side. Karl took a conical bra.s.s powder measure down from a hook, tapped out a healthy charge, loaded the first pistol, and after tamping the powder down, pa.s.sed the tamping stick and weapon to Jayar.

"You and Ranella not getting along?" Karl asked.

"Well . . . careful of the pistol; that's a heavy load," Jayar said. "And in answer to your question, I'm technically too senior to draw it as a duty, but I make a real lousy Engineer of the Day." Jayar shrugged. "I get distracted too easily." He jerked his thumb toward the door and the table with the pen and paper. "Ranella would rather have me in charge when there's n.o.body else around to be in charge of."

"I haven't heard you complaining about it."

"You're not hearing me complain now, sir. It suits me." With the foot-long tamping stick, Jayar pushed some wadding into place, then carefully wrapped the ball in an oil patch and rammed it home, seating it firmly. "I like the night," he said, carefully tipping some priming powder into the pan before shutting it with a firm click. "It gives me a chance to get some writing done, without all the clatter of the day."

"Still working on the history, eh?"

The engineer shrugged. "Somebody's got to do it."

"Mmm? How far have you gotten?"

"Well . . ." The heavy-set man frowned. "Not nearly far enough. But farther than yesterday."

"In other words, I should mind my own business." Karl chuckled.

"I wouldn't have put it that way," the engineer said, setting the pistol down on the table, the barrel pointed toward the wall, away from the two of them. He picked up the next one. "I would have thought just that, mind, but I wouldn't have put it that way."

Karl chuckled. "When you're done, you will let me see it?"

"I'm not sure I want to." Jayar tilted his head to one side. "You might not like how I treat you."

"Then again," Karl said, putting just a touch of steel in his voice, "rank hath its privileges. You will let me see it, when you're done."