"I don't know," the Fox answered, "but the reason I leave the keep most often is that unfriendly strangers-or unfriendly neighbors-are trying to take what's mine, and so I have the great privilege of giving them the chance to ventilate my carcass in ways the gods didn't intend. That may be luck, but I'm not nearly sure it's good luck."

Had he said that to Elise, she would have got angry at him. Had Van said it to Fand, she not only would have got angry, she might have tried ventilating the outlander's carcass in ways the gods didn't intend. Selatre said, "I hadn't thought of it that way." A little later, she added, "The balance may be more nearly fair than it seemed when I've stayed behind. Not that it is, mind you-but more nearly."

"I love you," Gerin said, which left her looking puzzled but pleased.

When they camped that night, the ghosts were quieter than the Fox was used to, although the offering he and his men had given them-the blood of a couple of chickens bought from a roadside village-wasn't much for as many men as they had.

"It was like this when we were bringing your lady from Ikos up to Castle Fox, too," Van said to Gerin. "I remember. She calms the night spirits, that she does."

"That's true," Gerin said. "It was like this then." He scratched his head. On the earlier journey, Selatre was still a maiden, and barely removed from serving as Biton's voice on earth, her only debarment being that the Fox had had to touch her to save her from the monsters unleashed in the earthquake. That was a long time ago now, and four children ago, too, though only three still lived. If Selatre still had the effect on the ghosts that she'd had then, it meant… what? That Biton still spoke through her? If he did, he'd given no sign of it, not in all those years. That he still paid attention to her?

When Gerin wondered about that out loud, Selatre shook her head. "If the farseeing one still watched over me, I would know," she said. But then her face clouded-or perhaps it was just a trick of the light, the fires blending with golden Math's nearly round disk, a couple of days from full, pale Nothos' smaller gibbous fragment of a circle east of it, and Elleb's slim young crescent. "I think I would know it."

"When you were Sibyl, could you feel the god's presence?" Gerin asked.

"I took it so much for granted, I never needed to feel it," she answered, and then looked thoughtful. "Am I taking his absence so much for granted now, I'm not feeling it, either?" She laughed. "You've started me wondering."

"We'll find out," the Fox said, and Selatre nodded. She had come along because of how useful she might be at Ikos, and she could be more useful than she'd dreamt if Biton did still pay attention to her and to what she did. Gerin hoped the god was paying attention. As he'd said, he'd find out before long.

The guards at the border between Bevander's holding and the one that had been Ricolf's looked to their weapons when Gerin and his companions bore down on them. Not so long before, they would have had those weapons ready to hand, for years of civil war among Bevander, his three brothers, and his father had wracked the holding north of them. Bevander had won with the Fox's help, and brought quiet to a stretch of land that had known only turmoil for too long.

"Who seeks to enter this holding?" the chief guard called, which kept him from having to worry about whether to name it the former holding of Ricolf the Red or the holding of Duren Gerin's son or to give it some other name altogether. Gerin approved of playing safe when you had the chance.

He named himself and Duren. That made the guards stir. Before they could say anything, he went on, "We make no claims on this holding now. All we are doing here today is passing through on the way to Ikos."

"But, lord prince," the leader of the guards said, "no one at the castle of-once of-Ricolf the Red will be ready to receive you. We had no word you were planning to come south."

That had not been accidental. "It's all right," the Fox answered easily. "As I said, we're only passing through. No need for anyone to go to any special pains over us." He knew that would fluster the guards more than anything else he could say, but no help for it.

One of the troopers spotted Geroge and Tharma. "Those things!" he exclaimed. "I thought we were rid of those things for good."

The monsters had drawn horrified looks ever since they left the vicinity of Fox Keep, where people were used to them. Gerin had warned them that would happen, in case the reactions of strangers coming to the keep hadn't been warning enough. Now Geroge said, "I am not a thing. Are you a thing?" The guard stared at him. The last thing he'd expect was for Geroge to talk.

Gerin didn't feel like discussing the monsters-or anything else-with the guards. Looking down his nose at their leader, he said, "Do we have your generous permission to pass through?"

They would pass through with or without the border guard's generous permission, and his face said he knew it. Ignoring Gerin's sardonic tone, he replied, "Aye, pass through in peace, and may you learn what you need at Ikos."

Duren spoke up: "Thank you. Give me your name, for I value good vassalage."

That pulled the guard up straighter. "Young lord, I'm Orbrin Darvan's son, and pleased to make your acquaintance." Now he waved the chariots and wagon through with a flourish.

At Van's order, Raffo steered his chariot up near Gerin's wagon. Van said, "I like that. The vassal barons will have a hard time raising any strife against your son if their men feel the way those guards do."

"You're right," the Fox replied, "and Duren handled him just right, too. I don't think we'll have any trouble on the way south, as a matter of fact-not least because Authari and the other leading vassals won't find out we've been here till we're already gone. What worries me is the trip back from Ikos. They'll have had time by then to ready whatever they aim to try."

"Aye, likely so," the outlander said. "Well, we deal with that when we come to it. Can't do anything else." Gerin could only nod; he'd been thinking the same thing himself.

Seeing the keep of Ricolf the Red, as he did late that afternoon, always made him feel strange, what with all the memories it brought to the surface. Seeing that keep with Selatre by his side felt stranger still. When he'd brought her up from Ikos, Ricolf had seen more between them than he had; he'd put the older man's remarks down to the short temper of a former father-in-law. But now Selatre was his wife of many years, and Ricolf gone from men. Things changed.

He found out how much they had changed when a lookout called the challenge: "Who comes to the castle to be Duren Gerin's son's?"

Gerin had been going to answer that challenge. When he heard how it was framed, he waved to his son instead. Duren said, "Duren Gerin's son comes to his own castle, not yet to live in it, but for a night's shelter."

That brought the drawbridge down in a hurry. The warriors who'd lowered it looked much less happy when they saw Geroge and Tharma in the chariot with Duren, but by then it was too late. Between them, Duren and Gerin managed to convince the soldiers the monsters were, if not harmless, at least unlikely to run wild unless provoked. A good look at their teeth gave an incentive against provoking them.

A lame old fellow name Ricrod Gondal's son was serving as steward for the castle in the absence of a lord in residence. He settled Gerin and his comrades in the great hall and fed them barley porridge, roast duck, and ale. When Gerin poured a libation, he wondered if Baivers would manifest himself in the hall. The god did nothing, though, as Elabonian gods were all too wont to do.

Ghosts crowded the hall for Gerin-not the night spirits, pacified by blood and held at a distance by fire, but ghosts from his own past: Rihwin, drunk and dancing obscenely; Wolfar of the Axe, an Elabonian as savage as any Gradi; Ricolf the Red himself, solid, steady, reliable; and Elise, of whom he still could not think without pangs of regret.