CHAPTER 2.

Andrea Cullinane.

Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor,

For half of creation she owns:

We have bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame,

An' we've salted it down with our bones.

(Poor beggarsa"it's blue with our bones!)

Hands off o' the sons o' the Widow,

Hands off o' the goods in 'er shop,

For the Kings must come down an' the Emperors frown

When the Widow at Windsor says "Stop!"

(Poor beggars!a"we're sent to say Stop!)

a"Rudyard Kipling.

One of the differences between Karl and mea"and it's a major onea"is that I'm far too considerate to ever leave my wife a widow. Guess I'll just have to live forever.

a"Walter Slovotsky.

Squinting in the bright morning sunlight, Jason Cullinane walked past the salutes of the two guards and out into the day. It was a pretty day, the sky above wasa"

Huh?

He turned. "Kethol? Durine?" What were they doing on guard duty?

Bringing his flintlock carbine back up to port, redheaded Kethol split his weatherbeaten face in a grin. "Good morning, sir."

Tossing his head to clear a shock of hair from his eyes, ma.s.sive Durine nodded a good morning, bringing one huge paw up to scratch at where his rough grown beard really didn't end, and his bull neck really didn't begin. The man was built like a bear.

"Morning, sir," Durine echoed.

"What are the two of you doing on front door duty?"

Kethol shrugged. "Got into a bit of trouble last night with the general." A tall, rawboned man, he gripped his rifle with knuckles like walnuts.

"Doing what?"

"It was mainly my fault, sir." It was Durine's turn to shrug. "I had too much beer last night. Got into a little barracks fight."

Jason looked them over more carefully. There was a nasty bruise over Kethol's left eye, and the knuckles on Durine's left hand were almost raw.

"Over what?"

Durine shrugged again.

"One of the wh.o.r.es in town," Kethol said. "Pirojil's taken a fancy to her. Loryal's been bothering him about it."

"Loryal?"

"One of the new troops, from Tyrnael. Him and his three brothers joined up just before the Emperor and us took off for Ehvenor. When Piro punched Loryal, two of the brothers jumped him, then Loryal and another brother jumped me when I tried to come between them and settle things down." He broke into a toothy smile. "'Course, I was calling them poxy sons of a motherless cur while I was trying to calm them down. All Durine did was pull two of them off, while Piro and I settled things, two-on-two."

"Injuries?"

"Just a few." Durine shrugged, again. "Pirojil lost two teeth, and the Spider says some of Piro's ribs are cracked. He took a nasty bite in the ear; Loryal beat him kind of bad. Kethol's dance-partner is lucky the cleric got to him pretty quick, or he'd be singing lead tenor. My two got their heads cracked, just a little. All resting in the infirmary. The Spider put Piro's teeth back together, but left the rest. They all start their punishment tours when they're up and about."

Jason nodded. Valeran had given him long lectures about barracks discipline. What Garavar had done was sound economics, and even sounder discipline: use the minimum magic necessary to heal the combatants beyond danger or permanent damage, but let them ache for a whilea"the more, the better.

But to every rule there were exceptions. Durine, Kethol and Pirojil had been his father's companions on his last ride to Ehvenor. "I'll see Garavara""

*As you were, Jason.* Ellegon's voice was firm. *Even when you're wearing the crown, you'd better have a better reason than that for overruling Garavar.*

He tried to cover the interruption with a cough, and wasn't at all sure he was successful. Buta"

*But nothing. Now let's go see your mother.*

"I'll see you later, then," Jason said, knowing that he hadn't covered his gaffe well.

*Actually, you didn't cover it at all. They know you were going to meddle in Garavar's domain. But they probably won't say anything about it.*

Jason left the path for the gra.s.s. It was shaping up to be a pretty day. A light, gentle wind blew in from the west, accompanied by only the fluffiest of clouds in the blue sky overhead.

The gra.s.s was up to his calves, trimmed that morning by sweeping scythes into a rippled sea of lush green. Jason breathed in the rich smell of the new-mown gra.s.s, enjoying it.

That was the thing about peace, he used to say; it gave people time and inclination to care about something as trifling as the height of gra.s.s on a lawn. There were limits to even an Emperor's powers; it was simple to forbid everybody except the caretakers to walk on the gra.s.s, but during wartime it was hard to find somebody to care for it.

He walked around to the side of the main residence tower, stepping from the softness of the lawn to the stones of the parade ground.

A huge, vaguely triangular head lifted from the warmth of the stones and stared at him.

"Morning, Ellegon," Jason said as he walked over to the ma.s.sive beast. Father used to say that Ellegon was the size of a Greyhound bus, which Jason had never quite understood. Now, a bus was a kind of cart, but wasn't a greyhound a kind of dog, a small mastiff or something?

Ellegon was huge; Jason couldn't imagine a dog a twentieth that size.

*Good morning, Jason,* the dragon answered. With a deep grunt, he got first his forelegs and then his rear legs underneath himself, then raised himself to his feet, his ma.s.sive, leathery wings curling and uncurling almost spasmodically, while smoke and steam issued from nostrils the size of dinner plates.

The dragon's mouth sagged open to reveal rows and rows of teeth the length of a forearm . . . and an incredible miasma of dragon halitosis, painfully bad breath that reeked of decaying flesh and rotting fish. Ellegon wasn't fastidious about what he ate.

Jason gagged. "Turn your head away, please."

*Sorry.* Scales creaking in the morning air, Ellegon turned his ma.s.sive head away, clearing the air with a quick shot of flame.

It never really made sense to Jason, the way that others had to restrain a fear of Ellegon. It was like, well, like being afraid of Tennetty's swords. The universe was divided into two kinds of people, and only one kind was endangered by either.

*They're not just afraid of being eaten. Humans don't like me because I know too much.*

Way too much. It was one thing for Ellegon to save Jason from making a fool of himself in front of Kethol and Durine; it was another for the dragon to probe into . . . private matters.

*I won't mention it again,* the dragon said, although Jason could have sworn he heard a distant mental mumble: Just like his father. Spends too much time thinking with what's between his legs rather than what's between his ears.

"And you eat too much, too.a"Let's go see her."

It was only a few hundred meters across the parade ground to the northwest cornera"too short for Ellegon to bother with flying.

Jason walked quickly, the dragon lumbering along behind.

Normal humans like to steer well clear of working wizards; it's only prudent. Andrea Cullinane's workshop was far away from anything else within the walls of the castle. If it hadn't been for security considerations, everybody involved would have been more comfortable with putting it outside the inner curtain wall, or perhaps in Biemestren township itself.

But security considerations had been involved; Mother's Biemestren workshop had, as far back as Jason could remember, been in a low stone building in the northwest corner of the inner ward.

Jason knocked on the door. There was no answer. "Mother, it's me. Jason."

Nothing.

*She's in there. Do you want me to try?*

No. I'd better do this myself.

His hand trembled at the door latch.

One of the things he'd been taught early was not to interrupt Mother when she was working. It was one of the few lessons that involved switching; Mother hated hitting him almost as much as he hated it. She said that "don't disturb the wizard" was the This Side equivalent of "don't touch the driver," whatever that meant.

That was the trouble with dealing with the Other Siders, like his parents, and Walter Slovotsky, and Doria Perlsteina"they kept talking in terms that n.o.body could understand. It wasn't just all this stuff about cars and planes and microwaves (and what was a microwave, anyway? Was it how an Other Side dwarf said goodbye?) it was that their frame of reference was, so often, so completely different from normal people's.

But while he couldn't understand the referent, the lesson had long since been driven home, and learned below the level of conscious decision. He knew that she wasn't really working anything dangerous: Ellegon would have warned him.

*You got that right.*

Still, his hand shook. d.a.m.ning his traitor fingers for trembling, Jason lifted the latch and swung the heavy oak door slowly inward, slipped inside, and closed the door behind him.

"Mother?"

He sniffed involuntarily. The inside of the stone building was dark and dank, the thick air heavy with smells strange and familiar. There was a distant odor he couldn't quite place, although he could make out the rich, musky fragrance of marrhymh and the sharp tang of burning peppercorns. Mainly the smell reminded him of stale sweat.

The only light in the room oozed out of a crack at the junction of wall and ceiling; all that it revealed was the narrow entryway where Jason stood, and the dark hall beyond. Rows of black gauze curtains obscured everything beyond that.

"Mother?"

He pushed through a layer of curtains, and another, and then another. The curtains were dry to his fingers, but they seemed to cling wetly to his face; shuddering, he pushed inward.

"Mother?"

He could barely make out the light of a lamp through the last set of curtains. He pushed through to see the form of his mother, huddled over her workbench, making jerking, almost random jottings with her quill pen, while an oil lamp flickered above her. To her right, a crystal globe lay supported in the coils of a bra.s.s snake, its head impaled on the north pole, staring languidly at the world. At her left was a rough clay statue of a man standing with his arms crossed over his chest. Where his left hand lay on his arm there were only two full fingers; the other three were stumps.

The statue was still visibly wet; beyond it lay a clump of clay and a half dozen small knives, short sticks bearing wire loops, and other clayworking tools he couldn't readily identify.

"Mother," he said, "put it away."

She didn't answer, but continued to scribble.

"Mother," he said. "Put it away."

Nothing.

"I'm going to count to ten, and then take it away from you."

She shook her head, flinging stringy black hair back and forth. "No. I got closer last time. Maybe I cana""

The crystal glowed brighter.