The man who'd warned of the Unkerlanter dragons lay writhing on the sidewalk. His hands clutched at his belly, from which blood poured: a flood, a torrent, a deluge of blood. Vanai stared in helpless, dreadful fascination. How much blood did a living man hold? More to the point, how much could he lose before he stopped being a living man?

His shrieks faded. His hands relaxed. The blood poured off the edge of the sidewalk into the gutter. Vanai gulped, fighting sickness.

Almost as soon as it began, the Unkerlanter attack ended. The dragons had flown a long way. They couldn't carry very many eggs, or very heavy ones. As soon as they'd dropped what cargo of death they could bring, their dragonfliers guided them back toward the west once more.

Vanai picked up her groceries and hurried past the stocky man's corpse toward her block of flats. A couple of other bodies lay beyond that one. She tried not to look at them, either. A wounded woman cried out, but someone was already tending to her. Vanai went on without feeling the bite of conscience.

Eoforwic boiled like an anthill stirred by a stick. People who'd been inside their homes and shops when the eggs started falling came rushing out to see if loved ones and friends were all right or simply to see what had happened. People who'd been on the street rushed toward their homes and shops to make sure those were still standing. Here and there, physicians and mages and firefighting crews had to push their way through the chaos to do their duty.

All things considered, the Algarvian constables on the streets did a pretty good job of opening the way so help could get where it was going. They weren't subtle or gentle about it: they screamed abuse in their language and in broken Forthwegian and Kaunian, and they used their bludgeons to wallop anyone who proved even a split second slow in grasping what they meant. But Vanai didn't think Forthwegian constables would have acted differently. They did what needed doing on the spur of the moment; whys and wherefores could wait.

Vanai let out a great sigh of relief when she found her block of flats undamaged but for a couple of broken windows and no fires burning anywhere close by. She carried the barley and turnips and beans up to her flat, set down the sacks in the kitchen, and poured herself a large cup of wine.

She'd got halfway down it, a warm glow beginning to spread through her, when she started worrying about Ealstan. What if he didn't come back? What if he couldn't come back? What if he were injured? What if he were…? She wouldn't even think the word. She gulped down the rest of the wine instead.

Hour followed hour. Ealstan didn't come. There's no reason for him to come, Vanai told herself, over and over again. He's doing what he has to do, that's all. That made perfect sense. Eoforwic was a big city. The Unkerlanter raid had killed or wounded a relative handful of people. The odds that Ealstan was one of them were vanishingly small. Aye, it all made perfect logical sense. It didn't stop her heart from racing or her breath from whistling in her throat with anxiety.

And it didn't stop her from leaping in the air when she heard the coded knock at the door, or from crying out, "Where were you?" when Ealstan came inside.

"Casting accounts. Where else would I be?" he answered. Vanai's expression must have been eloquent, for he added, "None of the eggs fell anywhere near me. See? I'm right as rain."

Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he just didn't want her to worry. She didn't say anything about the cut on her hand, for fear he would worry. What she did say was, "Powers above be praised that you're safe." She squeezed the breath out of him.

"Oh, aye, I'm fine. All things considered, it wasn't much of a raid. I wonder if any of those dragons will get home again." Ealstan sounded dispassionate, but his arms tightened around her.

She squeezed him again. "Why did the Unkerlanters bother, if they didn't do Eoforwic any harm?"

"Oh, I didn't say that," Ealstan answered. "Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?" Now Vanai wanted to shake him. "I was bringing groceries home when it happened, and I came straight here afterwards. How could I have heard anything?"

"All right. All right. I'll talk," Ealstan said, as if she were a constable pounding the truth out of him. "Most of their eggs fell around the ley-line caravan depot, and a couple of them smashed it up pretty well. The Algarvians will have some trouble moving soldiers through there for a while."

"Soldiers or… anybody else," Vanai said slowly. She couldn't bring herself to come out and mention by name the Kaunians the Algarvians sent west to be sacrificed so their life energy could power the redheads' sorceries.

"Aye, or anybody else." Ealstan understood what she meant. He set a hand on her shoulder. "With that sorcery you worked out, you've done more to make that hard for Mezentio's men than all the Unkerlanter dragons put together."

"Have I?" Vanai considered that. It was a pretty big thought. "Maybe I have," she said at last. "But even if I have, it's still not enough. The Algarvians shouldn't have been able to do what they did in the first place."

Ealstan nodded. "I know that. Anybody with any brains knows it. They never would have been able to, either, if so many Forthwegians didn't hate Kaunians." He gave Vanai a quick kiss. "You need to remember that not all Forthwegians do."

She smiled. "I already knew that. I'm always glad to hear it again, though- and to see proof." This time, she kissed him. One thing led to another. They ended up eating supper later than they'd intended to. They were both young enough to take that kind of thing for granted, even to laugh about it. Vanai never stopped to wonder how rare and fortunate it was.

Commander Cornelu guided his leviathan out of the harbor at Setubal and into the Strait of Valmiera. The leviathan was a fine, frisky beast. Cornelu patted its smooth, slick skin. "You may be as good as Eforiel," he said. "Aye, you just may."

The leviathan wriggled its long, slim body beneath him. It was far more sinuous, far more graceful, than its blocky cousins, the whales. It didn't understand what he'd said- he didn't think it would have understood even if he'd spoken Lagoan rather than his native Sibian- but it liked to hear him speak.

He patted it again. "Do you know what kind of compliments I'm paying you?" he asked. Since the leviathan couldn't answer, he did: "No, of course you don't. But if you did, you'd be flattered, believe me."

He'd ridden Eforiel from Sibiu to Lagoas after the Algarvians overran his island. Going into exile in Lagoas was vastly preferable to yielding to the invaders. Without false modesty, he knew Sibian-trained leviathans were the best in the world. Eforiel could do things no Lagoan leviathan-rider could hope to get his mount to match.

But Eforiel was dead, slain off his home island of Tirgoviste. After making his way back to Lagoas again, he'd had this new beast for a while, and he'd worked hard to train it up to Sibian standards. It was getting there. It might even have already arrived.

The leviathan darted to the left. Its jaws opened for a moment, then closed on a mackerel. A gulp and the fish was gone. Those great tooth jaws wouldn't have made more than two bites of a man- maybe only one. Like dragonfliers, leviathan-riders had, and needed to have, great respect for the beasts they took to war. Unlike dragonfliers, they got respect and affection in return. Cornelu wouldn't have wanted anything to do with dragons.

"Nasty, stupid, bad-tempered beasts," he told the leviathan. "Nothing like you. No, nothing like you."

With a flick of its tail, the leviathan dove below the surface. Magecraft, grease, and a rubber suit protected Cornelu from the chill of the sea. More magecraft let him breathe underwater. Without that spell, leviathan-riding would have been impossible. His mount could stay submerged far longer than he could.