Clement glanced at the unappetizing mess the aide set down on the table. There was a distinct smell of scorched potatoes.

Ellid continued, “And in these conditions I’m to rebuild a garrison in three months’ time? I can predict now that we’re spending the winter without a roof over our heads.”

Clement said, “I would apologize that my operation has made yours more difficult, but since there’s been no more rocket attacks, it seems justified.”

“You did what you had to, Lieutenant‑General.” Ellid sat down to stir a spoon in what passed for stew, then picked up a lump of bread instead, with no butter, of course. “No kitchen,” she muttered. “But my old cook would have managed, by the gods!”

Clement hacked open a lump of bread and dropped brick‑hard pieces into the watery stew to soften. She was weary of other people’s complaints. Even in the garden, where she worked sometimes to repair the damaged beds and coax the summer flowers into bloom, her fellow gardeners could be heard whining to each other.

“No information?” asked Ellid after a while. Perhaps it had occurred to her that Clement, also experiencing her share of difficulties, had no one to complain to.

“No information,” Clement said. “No one in Watfield admits to knowing anything about the rocketeers. No one claimed the bodies. The Paladins themselves were taken by surprise; that’s all I’m certain of. It took an entire day for them to muster. If they’d known about the attack beforehand, they would have mustered already.”

Side by side, they forced themselves to eat the wretched stew. Ellid finally said, “Better an old enemy than a new one, eh? At least we can anticipate the Paladins most of the time. But these rocketeers, they’re a different kind of people. Do you remember, when we first came here, how angry we used to get because these people didn’t fight like we expected them to?”

“I was nine years old,” Clement said. “But I remember my mother was pretty outraged. That was a strange time.”

“In Sainna, soldiers fought soldiers. Same tactics, same style.”

“Well, we’re never going back to Sainna, are we? Even if the wars are over in that country, no one would be glad to see us return. After thirty years in exile we’d look like an invading force to them.”

“The wars were neverover in Sainna.” Ellid lapsed into a silence, perhaps reflecting gloomily, as Clement was, on their equally untenable situation in Shaftal.

Their silence was interrupted by a gate guard sent to fetch Clement. “A group of gray‑hairs want to talk to someone about the children. They want to negotiate their return, they say.”

*

“You can’t go down there, Lieutenant‑General,” said the gate captain. “They’ll tear you apart, and it’ll be on my head.”

From the watch tower, Clement surveyed the surly crowd below. She saw people in neat, close‑fitting clothing that advertised their leisure and prosperity. She saw laborers in longshirts and breeches with padded knees. She saw young people flirting or playing games of dice, and she saw old people who had brought chairs to sit in. Many of the people waved strips of white cloth on which were painted messages no one on the wall could have read. Baskets of bread were being passed overhead, from hand to hand. Clement caught a whiff of it, and watched with ravenous fascination as a man took a steaming loaf and tore it into pieces to distribute to his friends.

Clement could see no children. Most of the old people appeared to have gathered close to the gate. The siege gate was still closed, and no one could see in, so the people below looked up at the towers. “Lower a ladder,” Clement said.

“Lieutenant‑General!” the captain protested.

She gave him a look, and he turned briskly away to shout commands. She stripped off her weapons and insignias, and, when the ladder was lowered, climbed quickly down. Someone threw a turnip at her, but with shouts and shoving the crowd seemed to get its hotheads under control. Clement set foot on stone, and turned to find herself surrounded by old people, who showed no sign of being disconcerted by her arrival in their midst. “What’s your rank?” asked one, and another said, “Do you speak our language?”

“I’m told I speak it perfectly,” said Clement. One of the three people closest to her looked uncomfortably familiar. A painted strip of cloth was wrapped around her neck and hung down the front of her shirt–a farmer’s work shirt, extravagantly gathered at the shoulders to allow free movement of the arms. The old woman said to the others, “This is the one who took our children. She’s an officer.”

There was a silence. The crowd surged, but then subsided. An old man said, “It was a stupid thing to do.”

“So was burning the garrison,” said Clement.

“Our children had nothing to do with that!”

“I was told you wanted to negotiate,” Clement said impatiently. But someone had already jabbed the man with an elbow.

The woman said, “You look famished. Would you like some bread?” She waved a hand in the air and one of the baskets of bread made a swift journey to them. Somehow, though Clement meant to refuse, she had half a loaf in her hand. One bite, she instructed herself, but could not make herself stop before three.

These were very canny people. “The children,” she said to them, “Are no longer here.”

“What!” they cried.

“They haven’t been here for six days. Shout their names and bang your pans all you want; they can’t hear you.”

“Where are they?”

Clement leaned against the ladder, with one arm wrapped casually around a rung. These people might not realize it, but the soldiers above were poised to raise the ladder, with her on it. She took another bite of the excellent bread. “What will you offer?”

“Take us instead.” The woman gestured at the crowd of gray heads.

It was the second time this old woman had offered herself in place of the child. And it revealed just how little she and her fellow Shaftali understood the Sainnites, for it had not even occurred to them that the children might be more than mere hostages. Clement replied, “I’ll trade for the rocketeers. One child for useful information. One child for every rocketeer, delivered to us alive.”

“They are children!” said one of the people in disbelief. “They are not weights on a scale. They are children!”

“They are weights on a scale as far as we are concerned. Is that all you have to tell me?”

The woman said with unconcealed frustration, “We can’t just deliver these people to you! We don’t even know who they were! One market day, they were in the crowd: strangers, loudmouths with strange ideas. A few days later, your garrison was attacked. That’s all anyone knows.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Clement said. “Well, I appreciate you making this effort to meet with me.” The impatient man uttered a sardonic snort and was jabbed with an elbow again. “If anyone wants to talk again, you can ask for me by name–it’s Clement.”

She started up the ladder, but paused to add over her shoulder, “Maybe you’d better clear the gate. We don’t really want to shoot you, but we will if we must.”

The mob began banging their pans again, and continued long after Clement had safety reached the tower. The remains of her loaf was distributed to the guard, one bite at a time, as long as it lasted. Clement wished she had managed to bring up the entire basket.

Whatever impression Clement had made on the townsfolk, there was no particular result. The crowd at the gate did not dissipate. Everyone in the city now seemed to be wearing those printed strips of cloth. No one came to the gate asking to talk to her. Perhaps no one actually knew anything useful about the garrison’s attackers, but it seemed more likely that no one was willing to be publicly identified as a traitor.

A message from Purnal, who commanded the children’s garrison, eventually arrived. It confirmed the safe delivery of the children, then lapsed into one of his lengthy vituperations, full of dire predictions of what would become of the Sainnites now they had become baby thieves. “What idiot dreamed up this bizarre plan?” he wrote. “Did anyone even try to think of what might result?” She only read one page of his jagged, angry handwriting, and then threw the entire missive into the fire. Cadmar had always done the same with anything that came from Purnal, while commenting that Purnal’s brains were in his leg–the one that had been cut off.