Llesho knew that, and Master Den was challenging his statement with a raised eyebrow. No one believed him, it seemed, though they appeared willing to accept the lie as a symptom of the lady's tea. With a little sigh, he relented. The truth, after all, was easier to keep track of. Which was important when he wasn't tracking all that well. "Okay. I knew she was watching me, and I figured that she'd test me with something. But if Markko has been training my body since Pearl Island to withstand the effects of poisons, and if the Lady Chaiujin could drink the tea without any ill effects, I figured I could do it, too."

As he expected, Shokar liked the truth no better than the lie. "I can't believe you would risk your life on the good intentions of a magician who has left a trail of murder from here to Pearl Island," he thundered. "I can't believe you would deliberately swallow poison just to see what would happen. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!" he thundered.

"It was an alkaloid," Carina corrected him with absent precision. She wiped the cup carefully, and rinsed it again with pure water. "And, I think, a spell with it. There are markings etched into the bottom of the cup."

"Of course there must be a spell as well as a potion. Why should anything ever be simple?" Llesho kicked at a bump in the floor of the tent and pulled his foot back quickly when the lump scuttled away under the canvas floor. "The Lady Chaiujin had to know I carry the jade cup that Lady SienMa returned to me-she was daring me to accuse her of taking it. A search would have turned it up exactly where I left it, discrediting me and her husband, for inviting a troublemaking stranger into his camp.

"When that didn't work, she was ready with her backup plan."

"One should always have a backup plan," Master Den agreed. He didn't laugh, but it was a near thing.

"I should have challenged the khan for the honor of Thebin." Shokar fidgeted with his sword. Not a man who chose war as an occupation, he had learned it well enough. Especially in the early stages, when sides were being taken, honor and the reputation of one's cause carried as much weight as sword craft.

Dognut, however, spoke up from his corner, common sense rising out of his usual well of compassion. "The khan had no hand in it, I'd wager, nor acts out of a deep heart-love for his cold wife. But he'd be bound to defend her pretended virtue against us. We'd be dead. Markko would soon have his hands on Adar, and possibly other royal brothers who are still missing. And the khan would mourn the loss of his own honor in murdering the innocent to protect the wicked. This way, a boy lost his head in the presence of a beautiful woman but properly retreated to clear his thoughts rather than offend his host."

Master Den agreed. "Better to appear a fool than a cuckoo in the nest of a powerful man."

"Particularly when you wish him as an ally?" Llesho already knew the answer.

"And what if it had been a poison, meant to kill you and not to make you look the fool you are in front of the Harn?" Shokar was not yet ready to let it go.

"Then I would have lived or died, as Master Markko meant me to do when he fed me his doses," Llesho answered.

Shokar seemed ready to build a full head of steam, worthy of the best of his temper explosions at this answer, but Llesho stopped him with an upraised hand. He didn't have to say, "I am your king;" it crackled in every rigid muscle. When his brother bowed his head in submission, Llesho explained what had seemed obvious to him from the beginning.

"We are at war. Master Markko may command the Lady Chaiujin, or she may battle for her own cause, but I could not back down at the first flight of arrows. If we are to win this war, we have to fight it wherever it finds us, at table or on the playing field, or anywhere else it comes to us. If we don't, we'll die anyway, on our backs if not on our feet."

Shokar trembled with his inner struggle, wishing to protect his young brother while knowing that he couldn't.

"Let it go, good prince Shokar," Master Den advised him. "There comes a point in the nursemaiding of kings when one must relinquish the leading reins and let them ride on their own, even into disaster."

"It wasn't," Llesho objected quickly, but was forced to amend his defense: "A near thing, perhaps, but it worked out."

"And you've put up with this since Pearl Island?" Shokar gave his head a shake and added for Master Den, "I don't know how you do it."

None could misinterpret the little smile Den gave him in return. His Royal Holiness King Llesho was, perhaps, no more nor less than the trickster god had made him. Which warranted greater thought when Llesho had the time.

A stirring at the tent flap interrupted the conversation before anyone could comment. After a brief whispered word with Bixei, who stood guard outside, Shokar nodded, and allowed the newcomer to enter.

"Prince Tayyichiut." Llesho paused in his restless pacing to give the prince a bow of greeting.

"Holy King." Tayyichiut returned the bow, but did not meet Llesho's eyes. He raised a small sack of herbs so that everyone in the tent could see what he was doing, and offered it to Carina. "Bolghai recognized the effects of a potion on the khan's guest, and sends this antidote, with the humble apologies of my father, and his gratitude. He wishes you to know that he would have no harm come to you in his camp, but suggests that perhaps-"

Llesho raised a hand to stop him from committing a breach of hospitality in his father's name. "My troops prepare for departure even as we speak. I would have met with your father again, to make more detailed plans for the battle to come, but we'll have time for that after we free Tsu-tan's prisoners."

The Harnish prince let out a deep breath, as if he'd been relieved of a great burden. "My father hoped you would not forsake the alliance which he holds so near to the honor of this family. He begs you to accept the gift of a half a hundred of his best horsemen, and his son to lead them, to help you regain your companions."

Llesho's first instinct demanded that he reject the khan's offer. He'd had only a handful of days to get used to the idea of Harnishmen who didn't mean to kill him, and Tayyichiut hadn't helped to cement that change of view. The young prince seemed to owe little of his open demeanor to his mother but Llesho wondered how innocent had been the challenge on the playing field that had almost cost him his life. If the mother knew about the cup, did the son also know about the spear? He caught a breath to reject the offer, but the prince seemed to read his objection and moved to counter it before the words were spoken and it came to backing down in front of followers.

"I want to go. Before you answer, let me assure you that I meant no harm when I challenged you to play at jidu with me. I didn't realize that you carried magical weapons along with a magical name and thought only to test your conduct in warlike games. For my foolishness you hold my honor in your hands and I would win it back in battle at your command."

That all sounded too elaborate and poetical for Llesho, who still felt the uneasy effects of the potion fed him by the prince's mother.

Prince Tayyichiut read some of this in his frown, and answered for himself: "The Lady Chaiujin is my stepmother, I call her mother out of courtesy to my father." He said nothing more, but his loathing came through clearly in his voice, and the curl of his lip.

"I would not cost the khan his beloved son in a battle that isn't his to fight." That was Llesho's second doubt, but Tayyichiut swept it away with a wave of his hand.

"You're no older than I am, but you've already proved yourself in battle and you're leading a force of your own to rescue your friends. Just like you, I've trained to fight all of my life. Now it's my turn to prove myself."

"Not like me." It wouldn't help his argument to tell the war-trained prince that, until his fifteenth summer, Llesho'd wielded nothing more dangerous than a muckrake in Lord Chin-shi's pearl beds.

Prince Tayyichiut took the words like physical blows and Llesho knew he couldn't leave it that way between them. None of it was the prince's fault, any more than it was Llesho's. Unfortunately, it left him all out of arguments to make. "I don't want you dead," had been the big one, right after, "I don't trust you any more than I trust your stepmother," which didn't seem the right thing to say in the camp of his father.

"Drink this." Carina interrupted them with a cup of tea in which the leaves and bark still floated. He wrinkled his nose, but she insisted, "It will take away the worst of the effects you are suffering."

She didn't say which effects, and gracefully did not mention their source, but Llesho blushed a deeper wine-color anyway. He hadn't forgotten that he wanted to bed Tayyichiut's stepmother, but the prince had distracted him from the evidence that told the tale to all who might look on him. While Llesho drank, Tayyichiut carefully kept his eyes focused on the top of Llesho's head as he pressed his case.

"I would not stay behind with the women when there is glory to be won."

He couldn't have chosen a less convincing argument to join Llesho's band, nor could he have chosen a worse time to make his fatal point. Carina turned on him with an imperiously raised eyebrow just as Kaydu, returning from a scouting expedition, entered the tent.

"What's this about staying behind with the women?" she asked, shaking all over as if she still had feathers.

"I'd like to know that, too." Carina added her fuel to the fire.

"I didn't mean. I meant, Harnish women don't, or well, not often, and-" He stammered to a halt, as red to the tips of his ears as Llesho had been before he drank down Bolghai's antidote.

"Do you think you can let the boy off the hook now?" Dognut asked with a twinkle. "It would be easier to explain his injuries after after the battle than w~ the battle than w~ "Swaggering about taking on twice as many because our aims are pure sounded very good when you were bragging us up to the khan," Balar conceded, "but even for heroes, greater numbers are better than being outnumbered, especially when the enemy is one who channels powers from this dark magician."

Tayyichiut grinned at Balar. "My father agrees," he said, "Both to the prettiness of the speech and to the value of not testing it too far. Will the monkey come to war with us?"

"He always does," Kaydu assured him.

"I'll hold him for you some of the time," Tayyichiut volunteered brightly.

Llesho felt the stirring of jealousy for friendships that might be born there, between the Harnish prince and his own company. "The Harn are our enemies," he snapped, shocking his brothers and the prince, but not the companions who had known him throughout his journeys.

"It's hard to give that up," Kaydu gave a little shrug. "But we have to find out where this khan will stand in the greater battle to follow. Better to have his son under our eye than to leave the enemy at our back with no hostages to his good intentions."

"My father suggested that as well," Tayyichiut spoke up easily. Too easily.

"You've had a soft life in the lap of your family and the people of this ulus. You think you can win our forces to your side the same way you charm your own horse-guards, who are friends by decree." The effects of the potion, and his own habits of ease among his companions had relaxed Llesho's features, but now he hardened his expression as he hardened his heart. "We are not so easily won, and we-any one among us with whom you will travel-will kill you without a thought if you look like crossing the least of my commands."

He'd never tested that, but it had to be that way if he were truly king. Of course, being king also meant giving orders his people could, in conscience, carry out. But he didn't want this foolish prince to think a winning smile would protect him.

As if dropping a mask of his own, Tayyichiut let the good cheer fall away. "Lady Chaiujin was my father's second wife, until my mother died in her sleep. Then she became first wife." It took little imagination to figure out how Tayyichiut's mother had died. They had that in common, then. "That happened three years ago, and I am still alive."

Llesho understood that, too. He returned the bow, to acknowledge the battles this young warrior waged within the khan's own household. "You won't be any safer in our company, but you don't have to pretend to love your enemies."

"When do we leave?" Tayyichiut was impatient to be gone, and now Llesho could understand his reasons. "At false dawn. Say your good-byes tonight."

The prince accepted this answer with a quick nod and left without a backward glance. When he was gone, Llesho realized that Bolghai's potion had worked. He felt almost normal again. Except, he was famished.

Tayyichiut had told about half the truth, which was better than he expected. Llesho had gathered his party on the playing field that served as the staging area for the khan's encampment. Surrounded by the round white tents in the soft gray light of the little sun, they awaited the arrival of the khan's troops. He'd expected the khan and maybe his chieftains and a few of his advisers would come out to bid them luck in battle, not this turnout of old and young, men and women, who thronged the edges of the field. The crowd stirred and hummed with anticipation, so that Llesho almost missed the echo of distant horses reverberating through the ground underfoot. A cheer went up as the vague tremble of the earth turned into a thundering drive down the wide central avenue of a half a hundred galloping horsemen, each with a second horse on a lead. The warriors of Chimbai-Khan wheeled onto the playing field in a tight formation and drew to a bone-snapping halt at the dais that had been set up for the khan and his family.

With a grin, the Harnish prince at the head of the company leaped from his horse and presented himself to his father.

"The lives of your warriors are yours to command," Tayyichiut recited. Dropping to one knee, he bowed his head, baring his neck to his father's sword in a ritual display of submission. That's when Llesho saw the sling on his back, and the furry monkey head of Little Brother sticking out of it.

"Rise, warrior, and fight bravely for your khan," Chimbai-Khan answered, showing remarkable restraint at the sight of the monkey on his son's back. When he had completed the formal leave-taking for a soldier, he gave a warrior's deep laugh, wrapped his arms around his son, and lifted him off the ground in a huge bear hug that drew one indignant screech from the monkey before he curled more deeply into his sling.

"Bring home tales of wonder, and a scar or two to enchant the ladies," he instructed his son. In the khan's eyes, Llesho read the truth of his desires: for mild tales and small scars, but most of all, the coming home. Tayyichiut was his only son.

"I will." His eyes snapping with pride, Tayyichiut set his shoulders in a military bearing. "Father, bless these, your warriors, as they prepare to die in your name."

"Bring death to your enemies, take only shallow wounds to mark your striving on the battlefield."

The khan let his gaze drift over the waiting horsemen, and Llesho did likewise. Twenty-five of them were youths with not a moment's real experience in battle. When the khan's exhortation to the troops ended, the crowd descended upon his army. Mothers pressed packets on their sons with dainties for them to eat in the saddle. Fathers offered advice and the prized family sword or a quiver of fine arrows, as if these gifts of war-craft could bring their children home safe again. And more boys, swearing in an effort to seem more warlike, were unable to hide their disappointment that they had not been chosen.

With his heart in his boots, Llesho wondered why he'd been chosen to introduce the Harnish prince and his young followers to the battlefield. Perhaps he'd sounded more assured than he felt when he had talked about taking on Tsu-tan. If he'd known what Chimbai-Khan intended, he would have warned him. People he could ill afford to lose died in his quest-advisers and followers both-and the more he needed them, the more likely they were to suffer and die for it.

If the khan had seen the rescued Emperor Shou, he might have thought again about sending his son into this war, small as the coming skirmish might be when compared to the struggles that would follow it. He couldn't even tell that part, however, without risking the empire itself. Enemies, of which the Shan Empire had many, waited only for a sign of weakness to fall on their prey. Llesho didn't want to bring that down on his friend or on the people of Shan. He just hoped that by keeping silent he didn't bring disaster on the Qubal ulus and their young prince.

At least the boisterous young warriors each came with an overseer in tow. An equal number of hard-bitten veterans-with expressions so impassive Llesho knew they felt as frustrated as he did-followed their young charges onto the playing field, driving a herd of riderless horses on leads. As he thought about it, the strategy behind the makeup of the company started to make sense. Hardened warriors would balk at orders from a stranger and a boy, as they saw him. Tayyichiut's youthful cadre, however, would accept the leadership of their own age-mate and ally against their own race's older generation.

The warriors charged with seeing them safely through their first battle would fight at Llesho's command to keep their children alive, and to bring them home as grown warriors who had passed through their first campaign. That Chimbai-Khan had meant to wage this war all along crossed his mind. That the khan had sent his son to draw his first blood gave Llesho both a responsibility to his ally and an opportunity to learn through his son more about the hidden agenda of the khan. Keeping them all alive was the tricky part.

When the battle-scarred fighters drew to a halt, their leader dismounted. It was Mergen.

"Gifts," he said with a bow to Llesho and a sweep of his hand to indicate the horses stamping impatiently among the riders. "We will ride to battle in the Harnish style." That meant traveling at full gallop, an extra horse tied to each rider's mount. The Harnish riders changed mounts in mid-gallop, stepping from stirrup to stirrup as if crossing a stream upon stones.

"Like the wind," Llesho agreed. His own army lacked that skill with horses, so he added, "But even the wind pauses between gusts, to blow more fiercely when it rises again."

"So the wind blows in the East," Mergen gave a wry nod of acknowledgment, but his attention from the moment of his arrival had been focused on his brother, and he waited only for the minimal courtesies before turning to the khan himself.

Discussing statecraft in the khan's ger-tent, Mergen had seemed a mild, thoughtful man. Now he confronted his leader and kin like a storm sweeping over the grasslands. Chimbai-Khan wanted to send his brother to watch over his son's small force. Mergen objected. They spoke too softly for Llesho to hear, their heads drawn together, but their views very far apart. Even from a polite distance he could see lightning flash in the eyes of the khan and thunder answer in the tight-drawn vee of Mergen's brow.

In the end, Mergen won, and Yesugei stepped up to take his place with Llesho's captains at the side of his own young prince.

"I see you plot with my chieftains against me, brother." Chimbai-Khan's low voice held subtle threat as he watched Yesugei exchange places with his brother. It was, Llesho realized, the chieftain's horse, and Ye-sugei's pack. Mergen had never intended to travel with the advance force.

"As always, Great Khan, your advisers conspire to keep you alive."

Llesho wasn't supposed to hear that either, or to see Mergen's quick glance toward the dais, where the Lady Chaiujin stood with the khan's mother and his other advisers. Nor did the khan mean for him to hear his answer, "I make it difficult for you, I know." The slap on Mergen's back, however, he gave as a signal to all that the dispute at the highest ranks had ended in peace.

The remounts had to be apportioned among the various riders and the company sorted into order. As the captains busied themselves insuring the preparedness of their troops, Yesugei himself took charge of Llesho's gift. "She is a strong and a tireless lady," he promised, stroking a hand down her neck and across the mare's shoulder. "I trained her myself."

"She is beautiful." Llesho gave the horse a rub, but he raised a questioning eyebrow at Yesugei "Mergen's no coward," the chieftain explained under cover of pointing out the finer points of horseflesh.

Leaning in as if to comment on the hardy grasslands pony, Llesho gave a quick nod to show that he had figured that out for himself. "Does Mergen really think she will try to kill the khan?" he muttered.

"What do you think?" Yesugei didn't blink. Anyone who saw them talking would think they were discussing bloodlines.

"I think, some gifts carry a heavy price." Llesho wondered if the Lady Chaiujin stewed her own plots or acted for her father in the East. Either way, she was the viper hidden at the bottom of the basket. He'd have to get word to Shou before the emperor put his trust in an alliance that might be false at its heart.

"He wants Prince Tayy out of her reach. I'll be glad to escape her eye as well."

Llesho gave a small nod, understanding well the khan's concern. An ambitious wife didn't need an heir by her rival in her way. Llesho wondered if she carried her own candidate for the role, or if she had convinced the khan that she did.

"Shall we oblige him?" Llesho asked the question lightly, but they understood each other.

Riders and horses sorted out, Llesho led the princes both Harnish and Thebin to bid Chimbai-Khan farewell. With them came Yesugei, who touched his forehead to the back of his khan's hand.

"Bring my son back to me, friend Yesugei."

"He will come back to you a man-you have my word, Chimbai-Khan."

Llesho had fought many battles, and had killed his share of men and monsters both, but he'd never understood how anyone could think him more of a man for taking a life than his older brother Adar, who saved lives. He let Yesugei's promise stand unchallenged, however, and completed his own farewells as diplomacy dictated. But he'd learned something important about the Harn in this leave-taking. More than the city that moved across the grasslands like a great bird of prey, or the food they ate or the way they rode their horses, he thought that maybe this was the greatest difference between the Harn and Thebin. He wondered how safe a peaceful nation could be with allies who bred war into the very bones of its children. That probably depended on the children- Chimbai- Khan's strategy had layers and layers.

With Harlol and his Wastrels scouting ahead and Kaydu above them in the shape of an eagle, they moved out. As Great Sun sent his first rays over the horizon, Llesho took the lead. His brothers like a defensive wall around him, he guided them in the direction Adar had given in his dream travels: West.

They'd be in time. The raiders might share the Qubal style of combat by speed and stealth, but the witch-finder who led them did not. Nor could Tsu-tan travel swiftly with his prisoners in tow, especially with one as weak and broken as Hmishi. Llesho tried to think of that as an advantage, but still it cramped in his gut. They'd find Tsu-tan and put an end to his torments, then they'd take down his master.

More thought would have to wait until first rest, because they were going to war Harnish style. The wind slapped at his face and the drumming of hooves surged in Llesho's blood. He leaned low over the neck of his horse and urged her to greater speed, knew their hearts beat to one rhythm. The wild joy of it drove out thought and the whispers of the death-spear at his back. For the first time since the Long March, his mind was free of memory.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

INTO the afternoon he called a halt for rest and to await the reports of the Harnish scouts and the Wastrels he'd sent forward. They had started across flat plains, but the land rose broken and uneasy as they flanked the Onga River. Stands of slender trees clung tenaciously to hillocks streaked with flecks of mica in the stone. Llesho's mount barked a shin on an outcrop jutting out of the grass like an accusing finger or a book of rocky tablets upended in the ground. Others had taken small hurts as well. Blowing and sweaty, even the uninjured horses needed rest. So did their riders, at least among those not bred to the saddle in the Harnish way.

It gave Llesho an excuse so that he didn't have to admit how worried he was. The scouts should have returned and their continued absence raised the hairs on the back of his neck. What was happening out there?

Tayyichiut wandered over to where Llesho sat a little apart from his brothers. He held his elbow a little way from his side and watched Little Brother, who clung upside down from his forearm and watched him back. "Where is Kaydu?" he asked, rubbing at the same raw wound that fretted Llesho.

THE PRWCE OF DREAMS "Scouting ahead," he answered. He would have added, "in the shape of an eagle" to discourage the prince's interest, or suggested that he take it up with Harlol, but figured that part of it was none of his business.

Checking for a patch of ground free of sharp stones, the Harnish prince lowered himself to the grass. "Without a horse?"

"She has another one." Llesho sneaked a glance at the sky. She might have hidden in the pearly tangle of pink and white and the gray of coming rain to the east. Kaydu had traveled west, however; the dark shadow of an eagle riding the updraft would stand out sharply against the hard, clear turquoise of that sky. He saw nothing, and it was growing late.

"You can tell what someone thinks of your intelligence by how well they lie to you." With his forefinger, Tayyichiut idly scratched at Little Brother's head, a gesture the monkey seemed to take as comfort. He seemed to focus all his attention on the animal, seemed not to have looked at Llesho at all. Continuing in the same even tone, he added, "Judging from that one, you must think I'm pretty stupid."

"Not stupid." Not anymore. The prince had sounded him out for the khan and reported with unnerving insight, after all. It would serve him well to remember that. Llesho snapped his attention back to the moment.