"So was I," muttered Cat.

Aquint gazed across the street at the warehouse. "I presume you got a decent look at everybody in there."

"Naturally."

"Then we know who our rebels are. And we know where they congregate." Tyber must have picked the warehouse as a secret meeting place. Odd that the old black-marketeer had turned into a revolutionary, but war did strange things to people. Aquint knew.

He smiled. The game was entering a new phase here. These would-be rebels would help him sustain the fiction that an uprising was brewing in Callah.

"And the first one we hand over to the Felk," Aquint said as he led Cat away, "is going to be that minstrel."

PRAULTH (5)

"WELL? WHAT'S YOUR answer?"

"I... need time."

"There's none to spare."

"If Praulth says she needs time," Xink said pointedly, "you will give it to her." It was at once a show of assertiveness toward the Petgradite, and subservience directed toward her.

Praulth found, somewhat to her surprise, that she still cared for Xink deeply. They remained lovers. But love, she was learning, was a balance of power. Once, those scales had tipped completely in his favor and she had been absolutely helpless in her feelings toward him, lost in a kind of demented devotion that only the freshly deflowered could truly know.

That unequal balance had since transposed.

The messenger from Petgrad was much older than either her or Xink, and he seemed to radiate contempt for the University. His flesh was leathery, his limbs wiry. He looked built for fast travel. His name was Merse.

"You prefer to stay here?" Merse asked, ignoring Xink. "Looking at word-scratchings and arguing about horseshit that happened a hundredwinter ago? Fine. I'll leave you to it."

Praulth blinked, startled by the man's insolence. He was here at Premier Cultat's behest, he'd said, to fetch her to Petgrad, where her talents were desperately needed. With Honnis gone, the Far Speak link between the University at Febretree and Petgrad had been severed.

Xink bounded to his feet, but Merse was faster, coming fearlessly toe-to-toe with the younger, taller man. Merse's ready stance, the fists at his sides, and the combative glint in his eyes all demonstrated that he was more than willing to brawl. Xink, realizing this, wobbled back a step.

"You won't speak to her in that manner," he said nonetheless, voice impressively steady.

Merse's wind-worn face showed a glimmer of teeth.

"Sit," Praulth said, "both of you."

They were in her and Xink's quarters, in the Blue Annex. Praulth, these last few days, hadn't left these confines. Honnis was gone. Her work as a military strategist—she'd thought—was done. But she didn't know what she was supposed to do with herself now. Somehow it seemed impossible that she could simply resume her studies as a fourth-phase pupil. Too much had happened.

She couldn't go back, but how was she to go forward— as what?

Now, here was Merse, telling her she was still needed, still important. It was curious that his manners didn't suit the entreaty he was conveying from Cultat.

"I think your skills as a diplomat require some honing, Merse," she said, trying out a droll tone. Sarcasm and other subtleties of speech were still new to her.

"Diplomat? Petgrad's got no diplomats." He had returned to his chair, as had Xink.

Praulth lifted an eyebrow. "Then how does your premier propose to assemble his alliance?"

"He's sent out his family," said Merse.

She absorbed that. "That seems risky."

A sneer pulled at Merse's lip. "It is, young lady. We're all taking risks. Don't you know what's at stake?"

"I do," Praulth pronounced somewhat icily.

"Then why the hesitating? Let's go. We can be back to Petgrad by the middle of tomorrow."

It still felt overwhelming. Leave the University? She had never considered such a course, not even as an eventuality, after her primary studies were through. She had meant to stay on here as ... as ...

Did she still have academic aspirations? Did she imagine she would one day inherit Honnis's post as head of the war studies council? That seemed as unreal now as leaving.

"Why can't Cultat send one of those—those Far Speak magicians?" She heard the slight quiver in her

voice. She was delaying. "It could be as it was with Master Honnis."

Before he passed into final unconsciousness, Master Honnis had used that remarkable form of magical communication to report—rather ghoulishly—his imminent demise to his wizardry contact in Petgrad. Praulth had sat alongside the cot and watched, amazed by the proceedings.

Merse was shaking his head. "You'll be safer in Petgrad."

"Safer?" Xink asked.

Merse didn't look his way but responded anyway. "The Felk are on the verge of invading the southern half of the Isthmus. They didn't have much trouble capturing the north part. If they come raging this way, do you think this—what do you call it?—campus will stand? Petgrad is the most powerful free city. We've got defenses. If the Felk win the Isthmus in the end, I promise you, we'll be the last to fall."

Praulth felt fear's cold fingers under her flesh. But she felt something more. Excitement. Perhaps even relief that this war wasn't going to pass her by after all.

She stood.

"Xink, did you wish to accompany me," she asked, "or remain behind?" She heard nothing in her voice to indicate which she preferred. He still had a career in academics ahead here at the University, under Mistress Cestrello.

Xink looked back at her with his gold-flecked blue eyes.

PRAULTH LOOKED DOWN at the marker in the tall grass. It was just a temporary one, a plank of wood jammed upright into the ground. Honnis's name was inscribed with a few crude slashes. Here a grander, more thoughtful stone testimonial would stand one day.

Jumper-pine was the variety of timber; the fact summoned itself from her memories of Dral Blidst, the lumber town of her childhood.

She was uncertain whether her mentor would prefer anything more than this simple hunk of wood. Honnis had practiced irascibility as if it were a faith. He hated false sentimentality. If he could be here, alive, he would probably spit scorn at the idea of a monument to his life. He would slap away the tears of mourners. He would do these things without a thought for anyone's feelings.

Praulth missed him.

The marker had been put down in the overgrown foliage that ringed the faculty housing at the center of campus. The trees here were in the grip of autumn, sobbing away their brittle leaves. It was a bathetic setting for Master Honnis's grave, more so since the circular window of his quarters was visible from here, high above, the pebbled glass throwing back the midday's cloud-muted light.

"Idlers," Merse was grumbling a few steps behind her.

Those quarters had been emptied. Honnis's belongings were like most personal effects—junk to the eye that didn't know how and where they fit into the convolutions of a life. Honnis had lived an enormous span of years. He had little in the way of belongings. What he'd been rich in was paper. Parchments. Scrolls. Documents, treatises, scholarly texts that ranged the length of the Isthmus. It was an immensely valuable private collection, and he had bequeathed all of it to the University's Archive.

"Layabouts," Merse continued.

Praulth turned, seeing that he wasn't referring to her and Xink. Instead, Merse's hard gaze was toward the students that walked the campus paths, a veritable army of robed figures going to and from their various studies.

That, of course, was the essence of Merse's objections. "You think they should all be going to war, don't you?" Praulth said. She and Xink were both wearing traveling clothes. It felt strange being without her robe.