Blanca and Pedro had been brushed to a dull gleam, their hooves looked as if they had been polished, and both had buckets of water and troughs of hay and grain in their stalls. In the third stall down, she found Zeno industriously polishing the metal bits of her tack. Made of the finest steel from the king’s forges, they shone silver in the lamplight, Sofronia’s evening lighting task having apparently extended to the outbuildings. Crow wondered if that included the necessary. She hoped so; one of the less pleasant aspects of being continually on the road was trying to find an unfamiliar outhouse in the middle of the night.

“There must be some magic in your polish, boy,” she said. “That bridle hasn’t looked that good since we left the capital.”

He gave a proud nod. “My Talent is for horses, and anything to do with them.”

“You’re young to know that.” It happened, though, and often enough not to occasion more than idle comment.

Everyone in the Nine Provinces was born with the gift of magic. What kind and how much was usually revealed to them at the onset of puberty, but sometimes it happened earlier. Crow herself had been thirteen when she felt herself drawn to a former soldier who had lost a leg in battle and stumped into her village on a wooden replacement, there to buy out the local stable and begin an ambitious breeding program. He had found her on the back of a fiery-tempered mare, sans bridle or saddle, and his first and last glimpse of her for the afternoon was her gripping the mare’s black mane as both of them went over the fence and disappeared into the forest at a gallop.

She had apologized when she brought the mare back. He eyed her for a long, uncomfortable moment before stumping over to the wall where his sword hung, still in the scabbard in which he had last sheathed it. He pulled it free and in the same motion sent it hurtling at her. It spun, point over hilt, to smack into her open palm. She had gazed at it in astonishment, unable to remember raising her hand.

She smiled now, remembering doughty old Nicodemus and the long, sweaty hours of schooling in the training area he built in back of the barn. Riding, horse care, use of sword and shield and knife and quarterstaff and longbow and crossbow and a hundred other weapons that she would probably never encounter. “But if you lose your sword and your shield and the only weapon you can lay hand to is a Yranean war club,” Nicodemus had said, “then you’d better by the gods know how to use it.”

Her mother had wept when her daughter’s Talent had been revealed. Her father had been proud, especially when she was named head of her own cohort in the last war. She was an only child, and her mother still yearned for grandchildren, making visits home a nightmarish progression of eligible suitors. Her village was too near the capital, it made visits home too easy, so when the king had called for volunteers to bear the Swords of Justice she had seen a job that would keep her on the road for the better part of every year. She’d been second to sign up, and still took a certain amount of pride in the fact that she had been the first to pass successfully through the Ten Trials of the Sword.

Zeno was regarding the sword with a fascinated eye. “It’s beautiful. My friend Elias is a smith, but he does nothing like that.”

“All the Swords come from the Magi Guild’s forge,” she said. “They do good work.”

They grinned at each other, and he went back to polishing. “How do you get to be a Sword, anyway?”

“Didn’t your mayor publish the Treaty and the Charter?”

He hunched an impatient shoulder. “Who has time for all that reading?”

She sat down next to him in the straw, setting the sword beside her, the hilt ready to hand. Education was part and parcel of their charter, and besides, Blanca’s tack hadn’t looked this good since it was first made. Blanca, her great white head hooked over the stall, whickered agreement down the back of Crow’s neck. Crow reached up to rub the velvety nose. “You know about the wars.”

He nodded emphatically. “We all do. This is the first year in the last twenty that my father was able to sell all our wheat to the miller, and for a good price, too. ’Course the tithe to the king comes out of that, but it’s half of what it was before.” He scrubbed at a bit of stubborn tarnish. “It’s why my father was able to apprentice me out when my Talent revealed itself. Father can afford to hire someone over the next few years.”

She nodded. “King Loukas thinks that your father ought to be able to sell his grain without tithing to maintain an army. That’s why he proposed the Treaty of the Nine.”

“Yeah, but the king wasn’t the one fighting the wars, that was the wizards.” Zeno looked uncertain. “Wasn’t it?”

“It was the wizards,” Crow said. “Not all of them, but some. A few very great, very evil wizards, who were fighting each other for power and control.”

“They wanted to be king?”

It was a lot more complicated than that, but close enough. “They did. So the king tithed the people to pay the army, then directed the army to fight the wizards.”

“And they won.”

“And we won,” Crow agreed.

“ ‘We’ won?” Zeno said.

“I was a soldier in the king’s army.”

“Really?” he said, eyes wide. “Did you kill anybody?”

“Only enemies of the king,” she said, and hoped it was true. “And yes, we won, but the problem still remained.”

“The wizards.”

“Yes. Two died in battle, and the third was tried, convicted, and executed in Hestia.” She had been on duty at that execution and still remembered the curses with which Nyssa had fouled the air as she burned. The circle of wizards surrounding her pyre had been hard put to keep up with the counterspells. Even now Crow wondered if they’d managed to get them all.

“And then the king figured out a way to stop the wars.”

“He hopes so. Everyone was tired of war, like you and your father. It was expensive, and destructive, and it killed too many of us. How much do you get paid to work here?”

He grinned. “A lot. Enough for me to send half home to my mother every week.”

She smiled. “The king will be pleased to hear it. That was what he had in mind when he brought the Nine Provinces together to sign the Treaty, and when he worked with them to write the Charter.”

“How does it work?”

She had repeated it so many times over the past three months that it rolled off her tongue like a monk’s evening prayers. “In the Treaty, the Nine Provinces acknowledge the sovereign rule of Hestia. In exchange, the ruler in Hestia agrees to keep the peace.”

“And you do that.”

“And the Sword and Seer do that.”

“How many Swords are there?”

“Nine Swords and nine Seers, one pair for each province.”

His eyes slid to her sword.

“What?” she said, stifling a yawn. It was late, and Makarios’s beer was finally catching up with her.

“How does it work, exactly? Is it permitted to say?”

She chuckled. “I am no wizard, young Zeno. I bear the Sword of Justice. It speaks through me. The Guild of the Magi has laid it under the most powerful of enchantments. Its power draws on theirs.” And hers, and the Seer’s.

“In Hestia? All that way away?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know magic could be made at such a distance.”

“I don’t think the wizards knew it, either, until the king wrote the Charter, and they had to find a way.” She got to her feet. “And now, young Zeno, I’m for my bed, as you should be for yours.”

“What’s that?” he said, his head turning toward the stable door.

She heard it, too, a rising tide of sound with the unpleasant smell of riot about it. The hilt of the Sword slid into her hand.

A crowd was gathering, lit by torches held high. More people were emptying out of buildings, flooding down narrow streets to gather in the square, jerkins pulled hastily over nightgowns, confusion growing into an ugly, palpable anger. Crow saw Cornelius hurrying out of the inn and caught his elbow. “What is it? What’s wrong?”