"He struck you?"

"He did," Olvar grinned back. "I won't hold it against him. We put him through an indecent amount of pressure, no, I did, not we."

Mairild nodded. Whatever Olvar was, craven was not one of those things. He was so honest she sometimes mistook it for stupidity. She didn't repeat that mistake often though. A great brain on a huge body. The brain of a brilliant killer.

She watched him from the corner of her eyes. A brilliant, deadly child was probably closest to the truth, but that thought scared her more than she wanted to admit. They couldn't afford a child in the council, at least not a vengeful one.

They walked down a flight of stairs and emerged just outside the tavern where the outworlder taleweaver had allegedly taken refuge during the riots. At least a hastily written sign said so, the part of it that wasn't riddled by cuts and holes from the shelling less than an eightday earlier.

"Is there a reason you didn't tell General de Laiden we've known of the attack?"

"Yes," Olvar agreed, "a good one. We didn't."

"We didn't?"

"No. I believed there were irregulars terrorizing the countryside south of the highways, maybe even a baron or count who had grown megalomania, but a full scale attack by Chach? No I didn't know that."

"Neither did I," Mairild admitted. She hated doing it. She was supposed to know. It was her job to know, even when it was obviously impossible for her to do so. The council took for granted that she should deliver the impossible on schedule. She gave Olvar a long stare before she voiced her opinion. "Someone paid good money, very good money for silence. I've never been overpaid before." That was as close to admitting she used forbidden sources she dared go.

He just shook his head. He probably didn't care the least. He wanted her information so he could send his soldiers to do the killing. In that way he was refreshingly simple-minded, and dangerous.

"I think Lady Kirchenstein-Yui will agree to lend us a few of their self-moving wagons with the crew to man them."

"You think or you know?"

"I know I'll be able to convince her in the end," Mairild answered.

"I don't know how you do it, but go on. Play your magic with your words and I'll put the vehicles to good use."

Mairild shivered at Olvar's choice of words. Magic was the last she could afford to use now. Too many eyes were directed at her now. Magehunting's not the least worrisome of those. That minister was about as much of a fanatic as any of the sect leaders she'd encountered since the last deity showed it's ugly, shining face in the night sky.

How many enemies had she made since then? Or even before? She shook the emerging suspicions away. Always keeping an eye over her shoulder was no way to gather information. Paranoids made bad spies.

They made their way down a few streets—the boulevards were busy with carts and wagons emptying Verd of rubble. For once manual labour had to be used to move debris out of the capital.

Just on the west side of what had once been the crossing between Artists Street and Runaway Alley she found Anita. Even though the outworlder still had her duties as official envoy she was most often found among her own giving a hand wherever one was wanted.

The problem, as Mairild saw it, was that too often it was. Not that she was about to say so, not when she was going to ask a favour or in worst case demand restitution from the very people who had saved them.

She bowed when their eyes met, and from then on the haggling started, and to Mairild's enormous surprise she found herself enjoying the entire episode almost as much as she'd loved taking the stage over thirty years earlier.

#

Arthur was in an ugly mood. Ken never ceased his shouting fits, and Arthur, honestly didn't understand what it was all about. He'd not lied, not even made better the absolute truth as he'd seen it, and only his Weave had got them out alive.

We don't take sides. He'd be damned if he didn't take the side of his own life. Besides all taleweavers were supposed to be sacrosanct here, and the charging horsemen had made their very best to trample two of them at once. Didn't that make them doubly damned?

Now he was on his way to force this last piece of information down Ken's sore throat. We are sacrosanct. I just saved an entire kingdom from eradication by Weaving. I took the side of as many survivors as possible. I didn't kill anyone, so get the bloody hell off my back and find someone else to pick on! That kind of conversation was what he had in mind.

Of course Ken would have none of it, or almost none. The part of sacrosanct and wiping out kingdoms from the face of the earth worked surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that it had Arthur scared for several hours. Ken must have some rather awful memories of his own from if his reaction was anything to go by.

Arthur wondered about it. If he'd got his calculations right Ken should have been here during what they called World War. Had he played some part in it? Was that the reason for his unwillingness to do right rather than some holy rules applying to all taleweavers?

Too many questions and far too few answers. Always a situation that grated on the newscaster in him, and that created personae carried over to the taleweaver as well. Arthur was aware of that, Ken's words to the opposite effect aside.

Nothing he could do about it, nothing he really wanted to do about it for that matter. He'd cleared the air, or at least emptied his lungs in Ken's face, and that would simply have to do.

Just as he'd done on the way to Braka, almost a year ago, he joined point and scouted ahead as much as he was able to without the sensors all body walkers had feeding the TADAT. He still beat them here. This was forest landscape, and none of the three survivors seemed used to it.

Point, he had to remember that. He was alone. This was no armed vanguard. They were pitiful refugees on the run. So, they were heavily armed refugees on the run, but he suspected the three had far less ammunition than they admitted. The walkers didn't look too healthy neither. That scraping sound hadn't been part of the background noise when they left Verd.

He clung to the trees, quickly dashing from one to another after he'd made certain none had seen him. Some equipment he'd coerced Granita into giving him helped of course, and this was as close to the stalk outs during the perpetual Chinese civil wars he'd covered in his youth as he was ever going to come. At least so he hoped.

Fifty meters, fifteen seconds scanning, clear, another fifty meters and repeat. This was the deadening repetition needed for anyone who skulked among the trees. On Earth, without the scanners, it would have taken him longer, much, much longer. The human senses were only so good.

This way he was almost certain he outclassed anyone in a deadly game of hide and seek, but he couldn't be sure. Gring would have made short work of his attempts, as would Neritan. Did the unseen enemy use mindwalkers as scouts? Did that enemy even exist?

He stalked through the forest for the remainder of the night and relayed his all clear messages over the silent link he'd appropriated together with the scanner. Panopilis could probably have done it almost as well, without tiring, but Arthur had a need to be alone. The daily quarrels with Ken had taken their toll, as had the deaths, and the fear, and the not knowing what the hell was really going on. It all ate on them.

So it was that morning found him hidden in that thin border between forest and fields, uncertain about what to do. He stared into a foggy nothingness even his portable scanner refused to see through, and with little else to do than to wait for Panopilis and the military grade equipment he had Arthur did the second best. He fell asleep.