She got more stares riding in the carriage, but she didn’t have to notice those; they weren’t so intimate as they would have been in the cramped confines of a caravan coach. The horses clopped along the cobblestones past square modern buildings of brick and glass (at which she sneered because they were modern); past others whose marble colonnades and painted statues imitated forms from the days of the Kaunian Empire (at which she sneered because they were imitations); past some a couple of hundred years old, when the ornate Algarvian architectural influence was strong (at which she sneered because they looked Algarvian); and past a few true Kaunian relics (at which she sneered because they were decrepit).

  The carriage had just passed the famous Kaunian Column of Victory—now at last fully restored after fire damage during the Six Years’ War—when a green-uniformed fellow held up a hand to bar the way. “What is the meaning of this?” Krasta demanded of her driver. “Never mind that oaf—go on through.”

  “Milady, I had better not,” he answered cautiously.

  She started to rage at him, but then the first Valmieran footsoldiers started tramping through the street from which she’d been barred. The river of men in dark green trousers and tunics seemed to take forever to flow past. “If I am late to the palace because of these soldiers, I shall be very unhappy—and so shall you,” she told the driver, tapping her foot on the carpeted floor. She smiled to see him shiver; all her servants knew she meant what she said when she said things like that.

  Great troops of horse cavalry and unicorn cavalry followed the infantrymen. Krasta curled her lip to see unicorns made as ugly as horses. And then she curled her lip again, for a squadron of behemoths followed the unicorns. They were ugly already, and thus did not need to be made so. Except for their horns—as long as those of the unicorns, but far thicker, and wickedly curved—they resembled nothing so much as great, hairy, thick-legged pigs. Their sole virtue was strength: each effortlessly carried not only several riders but also a heavy stick and a thick blanket of mail.

  At last, men and beasts cleared the road. Without Krasta’s having to say a word, the driver whipped the horses up into a gallop as soon as he could. The carriage shot through the narrow, winding streets of Priekule, almost mowing down a couple of women unwise enough to try to cross in front of it. They shrieked at Krasta. She angrily shouted back: had the carriage hit them, she might have been late to the palace.

  As things were, she did arrive in good time. A bowing servant took charge of the carriage. Another helped her alight and said, “If milady the marchioness will be good enough to accompany me to the Grand Hall …”

  “Thank you,” Krasta said, words she seldom wasted on her own servitors. Here in the palace, though, she was not the ruler, nor even of more than slightly above middling rank. The gold and furs and splendid portraits of kings past reminded her of that. So did the princesses and duchesses who looked down their noses at her as she was accustomed to looking down on the rest of the world.

  As soon as she saw a woman who outranked her wearing trousers, she relaxed: even if that proved a mistake, the duchess would get the blame, not she. But, in fact, more women in tunics looked nervous about their outfits than did women in trousers. Safe from censure, she let out a small, invisible sigh of relief.

  Almost all the noblemen coming into the Grand Hall were in trousers and short tunics. Many of them were in uniform, with glittering badges showing both military and social rank. Krasta looked daggers at a man in a tunic and pleated kilt till she heard him speaking Valmieran with a rhythmic, trilling accent and realized he was the minister from Sibiu in his native costume.

  A horn’s clear note pierced the chatter. “Forth comes Gainibu III,” a herald cried, “King of Valmiera and Emperor of the provinces and colonies across the seas. Give him great honor, as he deserves!”

  Krasta rose from her seat and bowed very low, as did all the nobles and diplomats in the Great Hall. She remained standing till Gainibu had taken his place behind the podium at the front of the hall. Like so many of his nobles, he wore a uniform, the chest of which was almost hidden by a great profusion of medallions and ribbons. Some of those showed honorary affiliations. Some were true rewards for courage; while still Crown Prince, he had served with distinction against Algarve during the Six Years’ War.

  “Nobles and people of Valmiera,” he said, while artists sketched his picture and scribes scribbled down his words for news sheets to reach the people whose villages were too poor and too far from a power point to boast even one crystal, “the Kingdom of Algarve, in willful violation of the terms of the Treaty of Tortush, has sent armed invaders into the sovereign Duchy of Bari. The Algarvian minister to Valmiera has stated that King Mezentio has no intention of withdrawing his men from the said Duchy, and has positively rejected my demand that Algarve do so. When this latest outrage is added to the many others Algarve has committed in recent years, it leaves me no choice but to declare that, from this moment forth, the Kingdom of Valmiera considers itself to be at war with the Kingdom of Algarve.”

  Along with the other nobles King Gainibu had summoned to the palace, Krasta applauded. “Victory! Victory! Victory!” The shout filled the Grand Hall, with occasional cries of “On to Trapani!” thrown in for good measure.

  Gainibu held up his hand. Slowly, silence returned. Into it, he said, “Nor does Valmiera go to war alone. Our allies of old are our allies yet.” As if to prove as much, the minister from Jelgava came and stood beside the king. “We too are at war with Algarve,” he said. Krasta understood his words with no trouble, though to her ear they had an odd accent: Jelgavan and Valmieran were so closely related, some reckoned them dialects rather than two separate languages.

  The tunic the swarthy minister from Forthweg wore could not disguise his blocky build. Instead of Valmieran, he spoke in classical Kaunian: “Forthweg, free not least because of the courage of Valmiera and Jelgava, stands by her friends in bad times as well as good. We too war with Algarve.” Formality fell from him like a mask. He abandoned the ancient tongue for the modern to roar, “On to Trapani!” The cheers were deafening.

  “Bari in Algarvian hands is a dagger aimed at Sibiu’s heart,” the minister from the island nation said. “We shall also fight the common foe.”

  But the minister from Lagoas, which had been Valmiera’s ally in the Six Years’ War, stayed silent now. So did the slant-eyed envoy from Kuusamo, which ruled the eastern, and much larger, part of the island it shared with Lagoas. Lagoas was nervous about Kuusamo; Kuusamo was fighting a desultory naval war far to the east against Gyongyos—though not, strangely, in any real alliance with Unkerlant. The Unkerlanter minister also sat on his hands, as did the envoys from the minor powers between Unkerlant and Algarve.

  Krasta hardly noticed the omissions. With her allies, Valmiera would surely punish the wicked Algarvians. They had brought the war on themselves—now let them see how they liked it. “On to Trapani!” she yelled.

  Count Sabrino elbowed his way through the crowd in Trapani’s Royal Square, toward the balcony from which King Mezentio would address the people and nobles of Algarve. He wanted to hear Mezentio’s words with his own ears, not read them later on or, if he was lucky, catch them from a crystal some nearby sorcerer was holding.

  People gave way before him, men with nods that would have to make do in the crush for bows, women, some of them, with inviting smiles. Those had nothing to do with his noble rank. They had everything to do with his tan uniform, with the three silver pips of a colonel on each shoulder strap, and, most of all, with the prominent Dragon Corps badge just above his heart.

  Close by, a man with his mustache going from red to white spoke to a younger woman, perhaps a daughter, perhaps a mistress or new wife: “I was here, darling, right here, when King Dudone declared war on Unkerlant all those years ago.”

  “So was I,” Sabrino said. He’d been a youth then, too young to fight until the Six Years’ War had nearly run its course. “People were afraid then. Look now.” He waved, ending with a typically flamboyant Algarvian twist of the wrist. “This might be a festival!”

  “We’re taking back our own this time, and everybody knows it,” the older man said, and his female companion nodded vigorous agreement. Noticing the silver dragon coiled on Sabrino’s chest, the man added, “And the greatest good luck to you in the air, sir. Powers above keep you safe.”

  “For which you have my thanks, poor though they be.” Crush or no crush, Sabrino bowed to both the man and his lady before pressing on.

  He brought a chunk of melon wrapped in a parchment-thin slice of ham from a vendor with an eye for the main chance, and advanced with only one elbow to clear his path while he ate. He hadn’t come quite so far as he wanted when King Mezentio appeared on the balcony: a tall, lean man, his golden crown gleaming even more brightly in the noonday sun than his bald scalp would have.

  “My friends, my countrymen, we are invaded!” he cried, and Sabrino, to his relief, found he had no trouble hearing. “All the Kaunian countries want to gnaw our bones. The Jelgavans are attacking us in the mountains, the Valmierans have swarmed out of the marquisate on this side of the Soretto they stole from us in the Treaty of Tortusso, and Forthweg’s fierce cavalry sweeps over the plains in the northwest. Even Sibiu, our own blood kin, plunges the dagger into our back, assaulting our ships and burning our harbors. They think—they all think—we shall be meat for their butchering. My friends, my countrymen, what say you about that?”

  “No!” Sabrino shouted it at the top of his lungs, along with everyone else. The roar was terrific, overpowering.

  “No,” Mezentio agreed. “We have done nothing but take back that which is rightfully ours. Even doing that, we were calm, we were reasonable. Did we war with the traitor Duke of Ban, Alardo the lickspittle? We had every reason to war with him, but we let him live out his long and worthless span of days. Only after the flames claimed his carcass did we reclaim the Duchy—and the people of Bari welcomed us with flowers and kisses and songs of joy. And for those songs of joy, we are plunged into a war we do not want.

  “My friends, my countrymen, did we claim the Marquisate of Rivaroli, which Valmiera cut from the body of our kingdom after the Six Years’ War for their foothold on this side of the Soretto? We did not. We do not, though King Gainibu’s men mistreat the good Algarvians who live there. I thought no one could doubt the justice of our claim to Bari. It seems I was wrong.

  “It seems I was wrong,” Mezentio repeated, bringing his right fist down on the waist-high marble balustrade. “The Kaunians and their jackals sought any excuse for war, and now they think they have one. My countrymen, my friends, mark my words: if we lose this struggle, they will ruin us. Jelgava and Forthweg will join hands in the north across the corpse of our kingdom, cutting us off forevermore from the Garelian Ocean. In the south, the Treaty of Tortusso gave barely a taste of what Valmiera and Sibiu, aye, and Lagoas, too, would do to us if only they could.”

  Sabrino frowned a little. Since the Lagoans had not declared war on Algarve, he would not have mentioned them. He did not for a moment think King Mezentio wrong about what Lagoas wanted, merely a trifle impolitic.

  Mezentio went on, “As I speak here, our enemies burn our fields and farms and villages. Their dragons carry eggs of devastation and destruction and death to our towns and cities. My friends, my countrymen, shall we do what is in our poor power to throw them back?”

  “Aye!” Again, Sabrino yelled as loud as he could. Again, he could hardly hear himself for the outcry around him.

  “Valmiera has declared war on us. Jelgava has followed like a dog on a leash. Forthweg has declared war. So has Sibiu.” This time, Mezentio raised his fist in the air. “They seek to chop us off at the knees. My friends, my countrymen, people of Algarve, here is my vow to you: it shall not be!”

  Sabrino yelled yet again. He too pumped his fist in the air. A woman beside him stood up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. He gathered her into his arms and made a proper job of the kiss.

  King Mezentio held both hands high, palms out toward the crowd. After a little while, quiet returned. Into it, he spoke with simple determination: “We shall defend Algarve.”

  “Algarve! Algarve! Algarve!” The chant echoed through the square, through all of Trapani, and, Sabrino hoped, throughout the kingdom. Mezentio bowed stiffly from the waist, acknowledging in his own person the cheers for his kingdom. Then, with a final wave, he withdrew from the balcony. Sabrino saw one of his ministers come forward to clasp his wrist in congratulation.

  “You’ll help save us, Colonel,” said the woman who’d kissed him.

  “Milady, I shall do what I can,” Sabrino answered. “And now, much as I would sooner linger with you”—she dropped him a curtsy for that—“I must go and do it.”

  The dragon farm lay well outside Trapani, so far outside that Sabrino had to take a horse-drawn carriage for the last leg of the journey, as no ley caravan reached such a distance from the power point at the heart of the capital. “Good of you to join us,” said General Borso, the farm commandant, giving Sabrino a jaundiced stare.

  “My lord, I am not tardy, not by my orders, and I had the honor of hearing with my own ears King Mezentio casting defiance in the face of all those who wrong Algarve,” Sabrino said, respectfully defiant of higher authority.

  Higher authority yielded, Borso saying, “Ah, my friend, in that case I envy you. Being confined here on duty, I heard him through the crystal.

  He spoke very well, I thought. The Kaunians and their friends would be wrong to take us lightly.”

  “That they would,” Sabrino agreed. “The crystal is all very well when required, but everything in it is tiny and tinny. In person, the king was magnificent.”

  “Good, good.” Borso bunched his fingertips and kissed them. “Splendid. If he was magnificent, we too must be magnificent, to live up to his example. In aid of which, my dear fellow, is your wing fully prepared for action?”

  “My lord, you need have no doubts on that score,” Sabrino said. “The fliers are in fine fettle, every one of them eager for duty. And we are well supplied with meat and brimstone and quicksilver for the dragons. My report of three days past goes into full detail on all these matters.”

  “Reports are all very well,” Borso said, “but the impressions of the men who write them are better. And I have orders for you, since all is in such excellent readiness. You and your entire wing are ordered northwest to Gozzo, from which point you are to resist the invading Forthwegians with every power you command.”

  “Gozzo? If I remember the place rightly, it is a miserable excuse for a town,” Sabrino said with a sigh. “Will they be able to keep us supplied there?”

  “If they cannot, the count’s head will roll, and so will the duke’s, and so will the quartermaster’s,” Borso answered. “We are as ready for this war as we can be, I assure you of that.”

  “Our foes surround us,” Sabrino said. “They tried to destroy us in the Six Years’ War, and came too close to succeeding. We need to be ready, for we have always known they would try again.”

  He saluted the farm commandant, then went out to his wing. The dragons were tethered in long rows behind Borso’s office. When they saw him, they hissed and raised their scaly crests—not in greeting, he knew, but in a dragonish mix of anger and alarm and hunger.

  Some people romanticized unicorns, which were beautiful and quite bright as animals went. Some people romanticized horses, which were pretty stupid. And, sure as sure, some people romanticized dragons, which were not only stupid but vicious to boot. Sabrino chuckled. Nobody, as far as he knew, romanticized behemoths—and a good thing, too.

  He shouted for an orderly. When the young subaltern came running up, Sabrino said, “Summon the men of my wing. We are ordered to Gozzo, to defend against the cursed Forthwegians, as soon as may be.” The subaltern bowed and hurried away.

  A moment later, a trumpeter blared out half a dozen harsh, imperative notes: the opening notes to the Algarvian national hymn. As he played them over and over again, men spilled from tan tents and ran, kilts flapping, to form an eight-by-eight square in front of Sabrino, four captains standing out ahead of it. The dragons hissed and moaned and spread their enormous wings. Stupid though they were, they’d learned an assembly meant they were likely to fly soon.

  “It’s war,” Sabrino told the fliers in his wing. “We are ordered to Gozzo, to fight the Forthwegians. Is every man, is every beast, ready to depart within the hour?” A chorus of Aye! rang out, but one flier, misery on his face, raised a hand. Sabrino pointed to him. “Speak, Corbeo!”

  “My lord,” Corbeo said, “I regret to report that my dragon’s torn wing membrane has not yet healed enough to let her fly.” He hung his head in shame. “Had the war but waited another week—’

  “It was not your fault, and it can’t be helped,” Sabrino said, adding, “Cheer up, man! A week’s not such a long time. You’ll see our share of action, never fear. They may even throw you aboard a fresh mount before then, if they decide they need trained fliers in a hurry.”

  Corbeo bowed. “May it be so, lord!”

  Sabrino shook his head. “No, for that would show our beloved kingdom was in great danger. I hope you relax and drink wine and pinch the pretty girls till your dragon heals.” Corbeo bowed again, grinning now. Pleased with himself, Sabrino addressed the whole wing: “Men, prepare to fly. My captains, to me.”

  One of the captains, Domiziano, asked the question Sabrino was about to address: “My lord, will we have force enough to turn back the invaders?”

  “We must,” Sabrino said simply. “Algarve depends on us. We yield as little ground as we can. Whatever we do”—he remembered Mezentio’s words from the balcony—“we don’t let Forthweg and Jelgava join hands. To block that, our lives mean nothing. Do you understand?” Domiziano and the other three squadron commanders nodded. Sabrino slapped each of them on the back. “Good. Splendid. And now we needs must ready ourselves as well.”