Not least because the various sides tell different versions and I?m not altogether sure which one is true, if any, even though I was there myself for part of it. I was too young to know a lot of what went on.

Aloud:?After the Protector?s War Rudi and I spent time with each other?s peoples every year as part of the peace settlement, so we were raised together a lot of the time. We?re, umm, very good friends.? ?Extraordinary,? the Bossman said.?My mother used to read me stories like that-Richard the Lionheart, Robin Hood…? ?I always sympathized with the Sheriff of Nottingham, myself, my lord,? Odard said. He raised his hands with a charming grin.?After all, he was on the side of law and order.? ?Rudi?s a… very able man, too,? Mathilda said.?I?m sure he?ll get your wagons back, your Majesty.?

The glitter came back.?He?d better.?

The bossman moved away, and Kate began chattering about something inconsequential. Mathilda smiled and nodded, keeping mental track in case she should say something, without really listening-another skill she?d learned at court.

The problem is that I sort of recognize the way he looked at me-besides the mad whimsy that might order me killed on an impulse. Lord Piotr de Chehalis did too, once-and his interest in a woman starts at the eyebrows and stops above the knees, she thought, remembering a polite discussion of the latest ballad of courtly love that had turned into a brief wrestling match in an alcove.

I didn?t enjoy convincing him he wasn?t as irresistibly attractive as the fifth brandy told him he was Which she?d done via a ringing slap across the chops that left him bleeding from lips cut against his own teeth, no maidenly restraint there. She wasn?t as strong as the burly blond noble, but she?d trained to the sword all her life and there had been plenty of power behind the blow. He?d taken it in silence, bowed, turned and left, not being suicidal enough to draw on her or strike back even when drunk-that had been in Castle Todenangst, the heart of House Arminger?s power.

And besides the Protector?s Guard ready to come at the first call, Tiphaine d?Ath had been in the next room. The Grand Constable would have cut him to pleading, sobbing ribbons on the dueling field and then stood watching him bleed to death by inches, her head cocked slightly to one side and that chilly little smile on her lips. The thought made Mathilda shiver a little even now. Even with nothing said those iceberg-colored eyes had narrowed a little and followed Piotr as he stalked out. Pursing her lips while her left hand?s fingers moved like graceful cables of living steel on the long hilt of her sword, and her right turned a hothouse rose beneath her nose.

Tiphaine liked killing people who annoyed her, men particularly; and she?d been as protective of Mathilda as a mother cat with a kitten as far back as the heir to the throne of Portland could remember. It was rather like having a friendly tiger running tame in the house; you could forget the nature of the beast except that every now and then the claws slid free for a moment.

Piotr never spoke to me again except formally, which pleased me well enough. And it would be very, very reassuring to have Baroness d?Ath here now. Or to be back in Todenangst. Or anywhere I wasn?t in Anthony Heasleroad?s power.

But the only rescue she was likely to get was one she or her friends came up with themselves.

Mary pierced with sorrows, pagan though he is, Rudi was also born of woman. Help him! Help us all!

?At least I?m not hanging up by my thumbs,? Ingolf Vogeler said to himself, looking up at the gray cracked concrete of the cell?s roof and breathing the smells of iron and old sweat and piss and less pleasant things.?Or being hammered with lead-lined hoses. Or being strung up and hammered. Yet. Rudi?s got a couple more days before the month is up.?

It was too dark now to read the graffiti. He?d spent several days tracing the opinions of a generation of prisoners about the Heasleroads, father and son. The standard of literacy had gone down but the sentiments were pretty uniform-and he agreed with every one of them. He?d been tempted to add his own, at length. He?d been born a Sheriff?s son back home in the Free Republic of Richland and sat through schooling every winter until he was fourteen or so, his family being masters of broad acres and able to spare his labor without hardship.

But it was always possible that it would make things worse. Venting was a luxury he could only afford if he gave up every scrap of hope, and he couldn?t do that. For Mary?s sake if not his own, and for the others. ?Here?s my plan!? someone screamed in a cell down the row.?Just listen! First we catch the rats and train them and then-? ?Shut up!? half a dozen others bellowed, until the madman drifted off into grumbles and then snores. ?Fucking politicals!? one of the other voices yelled, and gave the bars of his cell a rattling kick before he lay down again.?Fucking loonies, every goddamned one of you!?

The common prisoners were genuinely angry. Sleep was the only real escape from the State Prison, at least for the hard-cases who made it to this pen inside the perimeter wall of Des Moines? inner citadel. The other ways out led to places that were even worse. The main punishment for of fenses against the-permanent-Emergency Regulations was life at hard labor. Which only meant four or five years in the salvage gangs or quarries or in the mines grubbing out coal, or a miserable decade if you were rented out as a part of a convict chain gang. The Heasleroads thought capital punishment was wasteful, save in exceptional cases. And far too merciful.

Anthony will probably make an exception for me, if Rudi doesn?t get those wagons to the bridge on time. Or maybe even if he does.

The close confinement here was a compliment, in a way; it meant they were taking his capacity to do harm seriously, even if they didn?t believe it had been a Cutter spy who?d betrayed him and Vogeler?s Villains when they were nearly back to the Mississippi with the plunder of Boston?s galleries. Here the Church Universal and Triumphant was a barely noticed oddity somewhere far, far out west, beyond Nebraska and the ranchers and the Sioux. He?d learned better, painfully…

And Rudi?s quite a guy, but he?s not going to pull four Conestoga wagons two hundred miles by himself. Or even with that damned spooky black mare of his, and Edain to help. And even if he did, I somehow doubt Tony Heasleroad will pay up on the bet. Though Rudi may actually have a better chance at it than I would. The Villains just cut their way through and back-he doesn?t have any blood feuds among the wild-men. ?Back in goddamned Iowa,? he muttered, with a quirk of the lips. ?Nothing?s gone right since I took that Boston job from Tony H.?

He sighed, remembering one place near Boston. It had a four-story internal courtyard with a mosaic floor and a marble throne in it, still dimly lit by the great pyramidal glass roof at the top, unbroken by some miracle. The galleries around it had held some things that had riveted him, even in that place of hideous peril; paintings, carved wood, a curious statue with its hand upraised in blessing and an infinite compassion in the ancient stone face. Treasures and wonders beyond knowing lying doomed behind dusty glass, looming up out of the darkness as their lanterns passed, then fading into oblivion. They?d had a list to salvage, but it was a fraction of that one single treasure house.

And if we?re lucky, the stuff we did get is still in those steel boxes on the wagons.

The keepers had solidly boarded the doors and windows to preserve their charges, before they went off to meet their deaths. He?d admired that at the time, and the more so as he saw what was within. There had been this wall of stained glass like nothing he?d seen in all his life, far too large and fragile to take…