Shadowplay

"Then we must finish this wall today." The count turned and shouted for the foreman, Iri

Scratching his sagging chin, Iri

"Paint it?" Akuanis leaned toward him, uncertain he had heard correctly: his ears were still ringing from the impact of the last thousandweight of stone ca

Iri

face of an engineer astonished to discover that civilians, even those filled and experienced in warfare like Count Perivos, could not understand plain Hierosoline speech. "Of course, Lord, paint it with ashes or black mud. So the Xixies will not see it."

"So that…" Perivos Akuanis shook his head. All across the park the men who had not been injured in the last blast, and even those whose in juries were only minor, were scrambling back to work."I confess, you have lost me."

"What good are our arrow slits, Kurs," said Iri

"Ah. So we paint…"

"Just splash on a little mud if that's all we can find-something dark. Throw a little dirt onto it at the bottom. Then they will not see the trap until we've feathered half of the dog-eating bastards…"

The foreman's cheerful recitation was interrupted by the sudden ap¬pearance of Count Perivos' factor, who had been overseeing the evacuation of the palace, but now came ru

It took Perivos Akuanis a moment to make sense of that. "King Olin, do you mean? Are you saying that Ludis has given Olin of Southmarch to the autarch? How can that be?"

His factor had to pause for a moment, hands on knees, to catch his breath. "As to how, my lord, I couldn't say, but Drakava's Rams came for him before I could finish moving him and the other prisoners, Kurs. I'm sorry. I've failed you."

"No, the fault is not yours." Akuanis shook his head. "But why are you sure they meant to take Olin to the autarch and not just to Ludis?"

"Because the chief of the Rams had a warrant, with the lord protector's seal on it. It said precisely what they were to do with him-take him from his cell and take him to the Nektarian harbor Seagate where he would be given to the Xixians in return for 'such considerations as have been agreed upon, or something like."

Count Perivos smelled something distinctly unsavory. Why would Ludis trade such a valuable pawn as Olin, unless it were to end the siege? But

Sulepis would surely never give up the siege for the single lowly prize of a foreign king, especially the master of a small kingdom like Olin's, which hadn't even managed to ransom him from Ludis after nearly a year. None of it made sense.

Still, there was no good to be gained wasting time trying to understand it. Count Perivos handed his sheaf of plans to the factor, then turned to the foreman. "Iri

The count hurried away across the wreckage of what had once been Empress Thallo's Garden, a haven for quiet thought and sweet birdsong for hundreds of years. Now with every other step he had to dodge around out¬crops of shattered stone knocked loose from the gate or smoking gorges clawed into the earth by ca

With twenty full pentecounts of the city's fiercest fighters surrounding his temporary headquarters in the pillared marble Treasury Hall, it would have been reasonable to suspect that Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hi-erosol, feared an uprising from his own people more than he feared the massive army of the autarch outside his city walls.

Perivos Akuanis looked bitterly at the huge encampment as he walked swiftly between the rows of soldiers. We have nearly had two breakthroughs along the northern wall since the last sunrise. Neither of them would have happened if these men hadn't been held back-a thousand out of the seven or eight thou¬sand trained soldiers in the entire city, all they had to counter the autarch's quarter of a million. The Council of the Twenty-Seven Families had sur¬rendered the throne to Ludis so that a strong man would stand against the Autarch of Xis, whatever the loss of their own power, but it was begi

If the outside looked like a fortress, the inside of the treasury looked more like the great temple of the Three Brothers: half a dozen black-robed, long-bearded Trigonate priests surrounded the transplanted Jade Chair like roosting crows, and like crows they seemed more interested in hopping and squawking than doing anything useful. Count Perivos, who had never liked or trusted Ludis, had lately come to loathe Hierosol's lord protector with a fierce, hot anger unlike any he had ever felt. He hated Ludis even more than he hated the Autarch of Xis, because Sulepis was only a name, but he had

to st;ire into Ludis Drakava's square, heavy-browed face every single day and swallow bile.

The lord protector stood, flapping his arms at the priests as though (hey truly were crows."Get out, you screeching old women! And tell your hier-arch that if he wants to talk to me he can come himself, but 1 will use the temples as I see fit. We are at war!"

The Trigonate minions seemed unwilling to depart even after so clear an order, but none of them was above the rank of deacon. Grumbling and pulling at their whiskers, they migrated toward the door. Scowling, Ludis dropped back onto the throne. He caught sight of Count Perivos. "I sup¬pose I should count my blessings the Trigonarch was kidnapped by the Sya

"I think you know about what brings me, although it was fresh to me only a half-hour gone. What is this I hear about Olin Eddon?"

Ludis put on the i

"Please, Lord Protector, do not treat me as a fool. Are you telling me that nothing unusual has happened to King Olin? That he has not been hustled out of his cell? I am told he is being traded to the autarch for… some¬thing. I do not know what."

"No, you don't know. And I won't tell you." The lord protector crossed his heavy arms on his chest and glowered.

There was something wrong with the way Ludis was behaving. Drakava was a surprisingly complex man, but Akuanis had never seen him show the least remorse for anything he'd done, let alone act like this-childishly petulant, as though expecting to be scolded and punished. This from the man who had declared an i