"Oh, dear," Lanius said unhappily. He knew what sparked fury like that in his wife. Knowing, he tried to pretend he didn't. "What's wrong, dear?"

"You are, that's what. You're wrong if you think you can bed any cute little chit of a serving girl and have me sit still for it. Not even Queen Quelea would put up with the trouble you give me." Sosia scaled the tray the mug had sat on at him. He sidestepped more nimbly than he'd thought he could. The tray slammed into the wall with a noise like a thunderclap.

No servants came running to see what the trouble was. When the servants heard shouts and bangs like that, they already had a good idea what the trouble was. They were likely to interfere only if they saw blood dribbling out under the doorway to the royal bedchamber.

Sosia went on, "Well, you won't be bedding Oissa again, by the gods! I sent her packing – you can bet on that."

"Oh, dear," Lanius said again. He'd have to find out where Sosia had sent Oissa. Was she still in the city of Avornis, or had Sosia exiled her to the provinces? The provinces, probably; the queen didn't do those things by halves. Wherever she was, Lanius knew he would have to find a quiet way to make sure she stayed comfortable. That was only fair. He was, in his own way, scrupulous about such things.

"What have you got to say for yourself?" Sosia snarled. " 'Oh, dear' doesn't do the job, believe you me it doesn't."

She wouldn't believe him if he called Oissa a liar. The next best thing was to plead for mercy. He tried that, spreading his hands placatingly and saying, "I'm sorry."

She laughed in his face. "How many times have you told me that? How many times have I believed it? How many times have I been a fool? The only thing you're sorry about is that I found out again."

"I am sorry," Lanius insisted. "I don't want to make you unhappy." That was true. He also noticed Sosia was careful not to say she'd never let him into her bed again. If she said that, what was to keep him from going out and looking for another serving woman? If the King of Avornis looked, he wouldn't have to look very far, either. They both knew that.

"If you don't want to make me unhappy, why do you do things like this?" Sosia demanded. "You don't fall in love with them, not anymore."

"I only did that once," Lanius said. Sosia rolled her eyes. Lanius' cheeks heated. No matter how embarrassing, what he'd said was true. Only his first affair had turned into what he thought was love.

"Why?" Sosia asked once more.

That had but one possible answer, the obvious one: Because it's fun. The trouble with that answer was equally obvious – Sosia wouldn't want to hear it. That being so, Lanius looked around for something else. "I don't know," he said at last. "I just do."

"You certainly do," his wife agreed bitterly. "You can't resist a pretty face, can you?" Face wasn't exactly the word she meant.

Lanius felt himself flush again. "I am sorry," he repeated. She went right on glaring at him. "That doesn't mean you don't want to keep on doing it. It only means you don't want me to find out about it. Pretty soon, there'll be banished serving girls in every country town in the kingdom."

"How can I make it up to you?" Lanius said.

"You could start by not dropping your drawers whenever you walk into a linen closet," Sosia snapped. That was more precise information than he'd thought she would have. Somebody had been spying on him.

"I'll… do my best," Lanius said – a promise that was not a promise.

Sosia knew perfectly well that it wasn't a promise, too. She looked no happier. "If you were somebody ordinary, I could walk away from you and try my luck somewhere else. But I can't even do that, can

I?"

"No," Lanius said, thinking, And neither can I. He compensated for it by sporting with the maidservants. If Sosia tried turning the tables on him that way, the scandal would be enormous. It probably wasn't fair, which didn't mean it wasn't true. He sighed once more. "We are what we are, and one of the things we are is, uh, left with each other." He'd almost said stuck with each other, which was true but less polite.

His wife sent him yet another furious glance. This one said she had no trouble reading between the lines. She looked around. He thought it was for something else to throw. He got ready to duck. Instead, she burst into tears and stormed out of the bedchamber. She slammed the door behind her – one more punctuation mark on the quarrel.

"Is… Is everything all right, Your Majesty?" a servant asked him when he too left the bedchamber.

"These things happen," Lanius answered vaguely. That he and Sosia had fought would be all over the palace by now. Before long, all the intimate details of the fight would be blown so out of proportion that the two people who actually knew the truth would never recognize them. Such things were all too familiar to the king. They'd happened before; they would happen again. What a depressing idea, he thought.

King Grus stood by the entrance to the mine the Avornan soldiers had dug under the walls of Trabzun. A last couple of men came out of the shaft. They'd filled the end of it with wood and brush – the hurdles the Menteshe had used to bridge the ditch in front of the palisade were now playing a new role – and then drenched all that with oil. An oil-soaked rope led from the entrance to the mass of waiting fuel.

A captain handed Grus a lighted torch. "Would you care to do the honors, Your Majesty?" the man asked.

"I'd be delighted," Grus replied, matching courtesy with courtesy. He stooped and touched the flame to the rope. It caught at once. Fire snaked down it and out of sight. Grus asked, "How long will we have to wait?"

"Shouldn't be long," the captain said. "If smoke doesn't start pouring out of the hole pretty soon, something's gone wrong in there." The corners of his mouth turned down. "In that case, somebody has to go down in there and start things up again."

"Who?" Grus asked. That struck him as an unenviable job, especially if the break was very close to the brush and wood that would become a conflagration as soon as flames reached them.

"Who?" the captain echoed. "Me." No wonder he looked unhappy.

Pterocles stood close by. He and the other wizards had been maintaining the masking spell ever since the digging started. Now he asked, "Your Majesty, may I lift the spell when the smoke bursts forth?"

"That depends. Can the Menteshe work any kind of magic to foil the mine in the time between when they see the smoke and things start falling down?" If things do start falling down, the king thought; mining was an imperfect art.

"I can't imagine how," Pterocles answered.

"Then go ahead," Grus said.

He waited. So did the captain, apprehensively. So did Pterocles, who looked pleased he was about to be relieved of a burden. Just when Grus began to wonder whether something had gone wrong, thick black smoke began billowing from the hole. Coughing, Grus stepped upwind of it. So did the captain, his face now wreathed in smiles. Pterocles had had sense enough to stay upwind from the beginning.

Grus wondered how long the fire would take to consume the supports that had kept the mine from collapsing under the weight of earth and stone above it. He started to ask the officer, then held his tongue. He would find out as soon as anyone did.

Avornan soldiers waited near the shaft. When the moment came – if it came – wooden gangplanks would take them over the ditch and let them charge to the attack. On the wall, Menteshe pointed out toward the rapidly swelling column of smoke. The motions were tiny in the distance, but Grus saw them distinctly. What did the defenders think? Were they hoping something had gone wrong within the Avornan lines? Or did they realize the very stones on which they stood were liable to come tumbling down at any moment?