He was irked because I had not been sirring him. Various smart remarks occurred. I stifled them. My status might not remain enigmatic. “Yes. Though not so much as in earlier days. Not enough of us left since Juniper to make that stuff worth the trouble.”

Sly shot, Croaker. Put them on the defensive. Tell them the Company fell to its current pitiful state laboring for the Lady. Remind them that it was the empire’s satraps who turned first. That must be common knowledge by now, among the officer corps. Something they should think about occasionally.

“Pity, that,” the Colonel said.

“You my personal watchdog?”

“Yes. She sets great store by you for some reason.”

“I wrote her a poem once,” I lied. “I also got the goods on her.”

He frowned, decided I was bullshitting.

“Thanks,” I said, by way of extending an olive branch. “I’ll write for a while before I go.” I was way behind. Except for a bit at Blue Willy I had done nothing but jot an occasional note since leaving the Plain.

I wrote till cramps compelled me to stop. Then I ate, for a guard brought a meal as I sanded my last sheet. Done gobbling, I went to the door, told the lad there I was ready to go topside. When he opened up I discovered I was not locked in.

But where the hell could I go if I got out? Silly even thinking of escape.

I had a feeling I was about to take on the official historian job. Like it or no, it would be the least of many evils.

Some tough decisions stared me in the eye. I wanted time to think them over. The Lady understood. Certainly she had the power and talent to be more foresighted than a physician who had spent six years out of touch.

Sunset. Fire in the west, clouds in raging flame. The sky a wealth of unusual colors. A chill breeze from the north, just enough to shiver and refresh. My guardian stayed well away, permitting the illusion of freedom. I walked to the northern parapet.

There was little evidence of the great battle fought below. Where once trenches, palisades, earthworks, and siege engines had stood, and burned, and tens of thousands had died, there was parkland. A single black stone Stella marked the site, five hundred yards from the Tower.

The crash and roar returned. I remembered the Rebel horde, relentless, like the sea, wave after wave; smashing upon unyielding cliffs of defenders. I recalled the feuding Taken, their fey and fell deaths, the wild and terrible sorceries...

“It was a battle of battles, was it not?”

I did not turn as she joined me. “It was. I never did it justice.”

“They will sing of it.” She glanced up. Stars had begun to appear. In the twilight her face seemed pale and strained. Never before had I seen her in any but the most self-possessed mood.

“What is it?” Now I did turn, and saw a group of soldiers some distance away, watching, either awed or aghast.

“I have performed a divination. Several, in fact, for I did not get satisfactory results.”

“And?”

“Perhaps I got no results at all.”

I waited. You do not press the most powerful being in the world. That she was on the verge of confiding in a mortal was stunning enough.

“All is flux. I divined three possible futures. We are headed for a crisis, a history-shaping hour.”

I turned slightly toward her. Violet light shaded her face. Dark hair tumbled down over one cheek. It was not artifice, for once, and the impulse to touch, to hold, perhaps to comfort, was powerful. “Three futures?”

“Three. I could not find my place in any.”

What do you say at a moment like that? That maybe there was an error? You accuse the Lady of making a mistake.

“In one, your deaf child triumphs. But it is the least likely chance, and she and all hers perish gaining the victory. In another, my husband breaks the grasp of the grave and reestablishes his Domination. That darkness lasts ten thousand years. In the third vision, he is destroyed forever and all. It is the strongest vision, the demanding vision. But the price is great... Are there gods, Croaker? I never believed in gods.”

“I don’t know, Lady. No religion I ever encountered made any sense. None are consistent. Most gods are megalomaniacs and paranoid psychotics by their worshipers’ description. I don’t see how they could survive their own insanity. But it’s not impossible that human beings are incapable of interpreting a power so much greater than themselves. Maybe religions are twisted and perverted shadows of truth. Maybe there are forces which shape the world. I myself have never understood why, in a universe so vast, a god would care about something so trivial as worship or human destiny.”

“When I was a child... my sisters and I had a teacher.”

Did I pay attention? You bet your sweet ass I did. I was ears from my toenails to the top of my pointy head. “A teacher?”

“Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which there is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.”

“Interesting.”

“Well. Yes. There is a god of sorts, Croaker. Do you know? Not a mover and shaker, though. Simply a negator. An ender of tales. He has a hunger than cannot be sated. The universe itself will slide down his maw.”

“Death?”

“I do not want to die, Croaker. All that I am shrieks against the unrighteousness of death. All that I am, was, and probably will be, is shaped by my passion to evade the end of me.” She laughed quietly, but there was a thread of hysteria there. She gestured, indicating the shadowed killing ground below. “I would have built a world in which I was safe. And the cornerstone of my citadel would have been death.”

The end of the dream was drawing close. I could not imagine a world without me in it, either. And the inner me was outraged. Is outraged. I have no trouble imagining someone becoming obsessed with escaping death. “I understand.”

“Maybe. We’re all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!”

Old Father Tree entered my thoughts. He would perish in time. Yes. Death is insatiable and cruel.

“Have you reflected?” she asked.

“I think so. I’m no necromancer. But I’ve seen roads I don’t want to walk.”

“Yes. You’re free to go, Croaker.”

Shock. Even my heels tingled with disbelief. “Say what?”

“You’re free. The Tower gate is open. You need but walk out it. But you’re also free to remain, to reenter the lists in the struggle that envelopes us all.”

There was almost no light left except for some sun hitting very high clouds. Against the deep indigo in the east a squadron of bright pinpricks moved westward. They seemed headed toward the Tower.

I gabbled something that made no sense.

“Will she, nihil she, the Lady of Charm is at war with her husband once more,” she said. “And till that struggle is lost or won, there is no other. You see the Taken returning. The armies of the east are marching toward the Barrowland. Those beyond the Plain have been ordered to withdraw to garrisons farther east. Your deaf child is in no danger unless she comes looking for it. There is an armistice. Perhaps eternally.” Weak smile. “If there is no Lady, there is no one for the White Rose to battle.”

She left me then, in total confusion, and went to greet her champions. The carpets came down out of the darkness, settling like autumn leaves. I moved a little nearer till my personal guardian indicated that my relationship with the Lady was insufficiently close to permit eavesdropping.

The wind grew more chill, blowing out of the north. And I wondered if it might not be autumn for us all.