They were slightly built and a poor start in life had left them with delicate constitutions which made them prone to any passing illness. Nevertheless, they thrived while Lattens weakened, happily finishing off each of the meals he barely tasted, so that by the proportion consumed it might have seemed to a casual observer that it was he who tasted the food for them.

For a few days after their even more hurried return to Crough, UrLeyn and those in his immediate party had out-distanced the news from Ladenscion, and there was a frustrating lack of new intelligence from the war. UrLeyn stamped about the palace, unable to settle to anything, and found little solace even in the harem. The younger girls in particular only made him annoyed with their simpering attempts at sympathy, and he spent more time with Perrund than with all of them, just sitting talking on most occasions.

A hunt was arranged, but the Protector called it off just before it started, worried that the chase might take him too far away from the palace and the sick bed of his son. He attempted to apply himself to the many other affairs of state, but could find little patience for courtiers, provincial representatives or foreign dignitaries. He spent longer in the palace library, reading old accounts of history and the lives of ancient heroes.

When news did eventually arrive from Ladenscion it was equivocal. Another city had been taken but yet more men and war machines had been lost. A few of the barons had indicated that they wanted to discuss terms that would let them remain loyal to Tassasen in theory and through token tribute, but retain the independence they had achieved through their rebellion. As generals Ralboute and Simalg understood that this was not a course the Protector wished to pursue, more troops were called for. It was to be hoped that as this news had undoubtedly crossed with the fresh soldiers already on their way to the war, this last request was redundant. This intelligence had been delivered in a coded letter and there seemed little to debate or discuss as a result of it, but UrLeyn convened a full war cabinet in the map-hall nevertheless. DeWar was invited to attend but commanded not to speak.

"Perhaps the best thing would be for you to take yourself away, brother."

"Take myself away? What? Go on an improving tour? Visit some old aunt in the countryside? What do you think you mean, 'take myself away'?"

"I mean that perhaps the best thing would be for you to be somewhere else," RuLeuin said, frowning.

"The best thing, brother," UrLeyn said, "would be for my son to make a full and swift recovery, the war in Ladenscion to end immediately in total victory, and my advisors and family to stop suggesting idiocies."

DeWar hoped RuLeuin would hear the annoyance in his brother's voice and take the hint, but he kept on. "Well then," he said, "the better thing, I should have said, rather than the best, might be to go to Ladenscion, perhaps. To take on all the responsibilities of the war's command and so to have less room in your mind for the worry the boy's illness must be causing you."

DeWar, sitting just behind UrLeyn at the head of the map table, could see some of the others looking at RuLeuin with expressions of disapproval and even mild scorn.

UrLeyn shook his head angrily. "Great Providence, brother, what do you think I am? Were either of us raised to be so lacking in feeling? Can you simply turn off your emotions? I cannot, and I would treat with the gravest suspicion anybody who claimed they could. They would not be a man, they would be a machine. An animal. Providence, even animals have emotions." UrLeyn glanced round the others gathered about the table, as though daring any of them to assert such coldness for themselves. "I can't leave the boy like this. I did try to, as you may recall, and I was called back. Would you have me go and then be worrying about him every day and night? Would you have me there in Ladenscion while my heart was here, taking command but unable to give it my full attention?"

RuLeuin finally seemed to see the wisdom in remaining silent. He pressed his lips together and studied the table top in front of him.

"We are here to discuss what to do about this damned war," UrLeyn said, gesturing at the map of Tassasen's borders spread out in the centre of the great table. "The condition of my son keeps me here in Crough but other than that it has no bearing on our meeting. I'll thank you not to mention it again." He glared at RuLeuin, who still stared tight-upped at the table. "Now, has anyone anything to say which might actually prove useful?"

"What is to be said, sir?" ZeSpiole said. "We are told little in this latest news. The war continues. The barons wish to keep what they hold. We are too far from it to be able to contribute much. Unless it is to agree to what the barons propose.

"That is scarcely more helpful," UrLeyn told the Guard Commander impatiently.

"We can send more troops," YetAmidous said. "But I wouldn't advise it. We have few enough left to defend the capital as it is, and the other provinces have been stripped bare already."

"It is true, sir," said VilTere, a young provincial commander called to the capital with a company of light cannon. VilTere's father had been an old comrade of UrLeyn's during the war of succession and the Protector had invited him to the meeting. "If we take too many men to punish the barons we might be seen to encourage others to emulate them by leaving our provinces devoid of policing."

"If we punish the barons severely enough," UrLeyn said, "we might be able to convince these 'others' of the folly of such a course."

"Indeed, sir," the provincial commander said. "But first we must do so, and then they must hear about it."

"They'll hear about it," UrLeyn said darkly. "I have lost all patience with this war. I will accept nothing else than complete victory. No further negotiations will be entered into. I am sending word to Simalg and Ralboute that they must do all they can to capture the barons, and when they do they are to send them here like common thieves, though better guarded. They will be dealt with most severely."

BiLeth looked stricken. UrLeyn noticed. "Yes, BiLeth?" he snapped.

The foreign minister looked even more discomfited. "I…" he began. "I, well…"

"What, man?" UrLeyn shouted. The tall foreign minister jumped in his seat, his long, thin grey hair flouncing briefly.

"Are you… is the Protector quite… it's just that, sir…"

"Great Providence, BiLeth!" UrLeyn roared. "You're not going to disagree with me, are you? Finally found a sliver of backbone, have we? Where in the skies of hell did that fall from?"

BiLeth looked grey. "I do beg the Protector's pardon. I would simply beg to ask him reconsider treating the barons in quite such a fashion," he said, a desperate, anguished look on his narrow face.

"How the fuck should I treat the bastards?" UrLeyn asked, his voice low but seething with derision. "They make war on us, they make fools of us, they make widows of our women-folk." UrLeyn slammed a fist on to the table, making the map of the borderlands flap in the breeze. "How in the name of all the old gods am I supposed to treat the sons of bitches?"

BiLeth looked as if he was about to cry. Even DeWar felt slightly sorry for him. "But sir," the foreign minister said in a small voice, "several of the barons are related to the Haspidian royal family. There are matters of diplomatic etiquette when dealing with nobility, even if they are rebellious. If we can but prise one away from the others and treat with him well, then perhaps we can bring him to our side. I understand-"

"You understand very little, it would seem, sir," UrLeyn told him in a voice dripping with scorn. BiLeth seemed to shrink in his seat. "I'll have no more talk of etiquette," he said, spitting out the word. "It has become clear that these scum have been teasing us," UrLeyn told BiLeth and the others. "They play the seductress, these proud barons. They act the coquette. They hint that they might succumb to us if we treat them just a little better, that they will be ours if only we flatter them a little more, if only we can find it in our hearts and our pockets to provide them with a few more gifts, a few more tokens of our esteem, why then they will open their gates, then they will help us with their less cooperative friends and all their resistance so far will prove to have been for show, a pretty fight they have been putting up for the sake of their maidenly honour." UrLeyn hit the table again. "Well, no! We have been led along for the last time. The next leading will be done by an executioner, when he pulls on the chain of one of these proud barons and brings him to the public square to be tormented like a common murderer and then put up to burn. We'll see how the rest of them respond to that!"