"Huh." He stood a moment, looking increasingly abstracted. "Come over here." He took her hand and towed her to the western side of the tower, overlooking the walnut grove. "Do you suppose that you could give an exact tally of Joen's sorcerers, if you tried? In her camp, from here?"

Ista blinked. "I don't know. I could try."

The trees' feet were now wading in gray shadow, though their very tops still glowed golden green in the last of the light. Campfires twinkled through the leaves, and a suggestion of the pale squares of many tents. Men's voices carried enough to be heard up on the battlements, although not well enough to make out what they said in the Roknari tongue. On the far side of the grove, the cluster of big green tents, gaudy with pennants, began to glow like verdant lanterns from the lamps being set within them.

Ista took a long breath to try to compose her mind. She extended her perceptions, closing her eyes. If she could sense Joen or Sordso from here, could they sense her? And if Joen could sense her... she took another breath, banished the frightening thought, and determinedly uncurled her soul once more.

Upwards of five hundred faint soul-lights moved like fireflies among the trees, the Jokonan soldiers and camp followers busy about their ordinary tasks. A smattering of souls glowed with a stronger, much more violent and disrupted light. Yes, there were the threads, the snakes, wavering through the air from those scattered whorls to converge all in one dark, disturbing spot. Even as she watched, one line crossed another as their possessors moved in space, passing like two strands of insubstantial yarn that did not knot or tangle.

"Yes, I can see them," she told Illvin. "Some are snubbed up near to Joen, some are all spread out across the camp." Her lips moved as she made her count. "Six hug the command tents, twelve are arranged near the front of the grove, nearest to Porifors. Eighteen altogether."

She peeked, turned half around toward the river and the Jokonans' second camp investing the town, and closed her eyes once more. Then turned fully around, toward the bivouac of the third column that had set up along the ridge to the east of the castle, cutting the road to Oby and commanding the valley upstream. "All the sorcerers seem to be in the main camp near Joen. I see no ribbons reaching to the other two camps. Yes, of course. She would want all her sorcerers as close under her eye as possible."

She completed her turn and opened her eyes again. "Most of the sorcerers seem to be sheltered in tents. One is standing under a tree, looking this way." She could not see his physical body, through the leaves, but she could tell which tree it was.

"Hm," said Illvin, staring over her shoulder. "Can Foix tell which is which? What man is a sorcerer, what man is not?"

"Oh, yes. I mean, he can now. He saw the sorcery light with me when the cups broke—and again, standing on the wall when the rest of it began." She glanced warily back over her shoulder at Illvin's tense, closed expression. His eyes were tight with thought, some notion that did not seem to give him much pleasure. "What are you thinking?"

"I am thinking... that by your testimony Arhys appears to be immune to sorcery, but sorcerers do not appear to be immune to steel. As Cattilara proved upon poor Umerue. If Arhys could close with them, just them, and yet somehow avoid the other fifteen hundred Jokonans around Porifors..." He drew a breath, and wheeled. "Liss."

She jerked upright. "Lord Illvin?"

"Go and find my lord brother, and ask him to attend upon us here. Fetch Foix, too, if he is to be found."

She nodded, a bit wide-eyed, scrambled up, and scuffed rapidly down the tower's turning stairs. Illvin stared out over Prince Sordso and Princess Joen's camp as if memorizing every detail. Ista leaned uneasily by his side, studying that profile suddenly gone distant and cool.

He looked back and smiled down at her in apology. "I am seized by a thought. I fear you will find me a rather distractible man."

It wasn't how she would describe him, but she smiled briefly back in attempted reassurance.

All too soon, footsteps sounded on the stairs. Arhys emerged into the luminous twilight, followed by Liss and Foix. Arhys looked scarcely more corpselike than anyone else in Porifors at present, but his face was spared the usual smears of sweat. Foix's stolidity masked a deep depletion. He had spent the afternoon clumsily trying to undo sorceries all over the castle, to little effect. Dy Cabon had named the effort fundamentally futile, for various theological reasons that no one stayed to listen to, and yet had begged Foix's aid himself when faced with the rising demands of the sick.

"Arhys, come here," said Illvin. "Look at this." His brother joined him at the western parapet. "Five gods attest we know this ground. Royina Ista says there are but eighteen sorcerers in Joen's pack altogether. A dozen lie in the front of the camp, along there..."—his hand swept in an arc—"six more in the command tents, a rather better guarded area, I suspect. One big circle could pass round them all, if it were rapid enough. How many sorcerers do you think you could excise with steel?"

Arhys's brows rose. "As many as I could close with, I suppose. But I doubt they would just stand there while we galloped up to them. As soon as they thought to drop our horses, we'd be afoot."

"What if we attacked in the dark? You said you see better in the dark these days than other men."

"Hm." Arhys's gaze upon the grove intensified.

"Royina Ista." Illvin turned urgently to her—and where was all that Sweet Ista now? "What happens when a leashed sorcerer is slain?"

Ista frowned. Surely the question was rhetorical. "You've seen it yourself. The demon, together with whatever pieces of its mount's soul it has digested, jumps to whatever new host it can reach. The body dies. What the fate of the remaining parts of the person's soul may be, I do not know."

"And one other thing," Illvin said, excitement leaking into his voice. "The leash is broken. Or at least—Cattilara's demon broke from control at Umerue's death. More: at that moment, the free demon became Joen's rebellious enemy, dedicated to flight from her as fast as possible. How many demons could Joen suffer to have cut away from her array—jumping randomly into unprepared hosts, or even turning on her—before she was forced to retreat in disorder?"

"If she doesn't have others in reserve, ready to harness like a fresh team of horses," said Arhys.

"No," said Ista slowly, "I don't think she can. All must be there, tied in her net, or they will fly—away from each other if not from her. By Umerue's testimony, it took Joen three years to develop this array, to bring each sorcerer-slave to some apex of carefully selected, stolen skills. Without another visit to whatever back door of hell her master demon can unlock, I doubt she can replace them. And all she'll get at first is a spate of mindless, formless, ignorant elementals. We know she spills them, too; it cannot be a well-controlled process, not when dealing with the essence of disorder itself. Although... Cattilara's demon fears recapture; if that is not just some filial obsession of Umerue's, it implies recapture is possible. I don't know how quickly Joen might effect it."

"With several freed demons flying in all directions, it would be more difficult, I should guess," said Illvin.

Arhys leaned his elbow on the stone wall and eyed his brother. "You are thinking of a sortie. A sorcerer-hunt."

"Aye."

"It cannot be done. I am certain to take wounds—which Catti would be forced to bear."

Illvin looked away. "I was thinking the royina could switch you back to me. For the occasion, as it were."

Ista gasped protest. "Do you realize what that would mean? Arhys's injuries would be yours."