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believe it. Even as I rose to greet her, I did not
believe it.
    Tower Guards hove into view, halted, parted. Goblin came
hup-two-threeing between them, strutting like a drum major, looking
like his namesake freshly scrounged from some especially fiery
Hell. He glowed. He trailed a fiery mist which evaporated a few
yards behind him. He stepped down into the Grotto and gave the
place the fish-eye, and me a wink. He then marched up the far side
steps and posted himself facing outward.
    What the hell were they up to now? Expanding on their already
overburdened practical joke?
    Then Lady appeared, as fell and as radiant as fantasy, as
beautiful as a dream. I clicked my heels and bowed. She descended
to join me. She was a vision. She extended a hand. My manners did
not desert me, despite all the hard years.
    Wouldn’t this give Opal fuel for gossip?
    One-Eye followed Lady down, wreathed in dark mists through which
crawled shadows with eyes. He inspected the Grotto, too.
    As he turned to go back the way he had come, I said,
“I’m going to incinerate that hat.” Tricked out
like a lord, he was, but still wearing his ragpicker’s
hat.
    He grinned, assumed his post.
    “Have you ordered?” Lady asked.
    “Yes. But only for one.”
    A small horde of staff tumbled past One-Eye, terrified. The
master of the Gardens himself drove them. If they had been fawning
with me, they were downright disgusting with Lady. I have never
been that impressed with anyone in any position of power.
    It was a long, slow meal, undertaken mostly in silence, with me
sending unanswered puzzled glances across the table. A memorable
dining experience for me, though Lady hinted that she had known
better.
    The problem was, we were too much on stage to take any real
enjoyment from it. Not only for the crowd, but for one another.
    Along the way I admitted I had not expected her to appear, and
she said my storming out of the Tower made her realize that if she
did not just drop everything and go she would not shake the
tentacles of imperial responsibility till someone freed her by
murdering her.
    “So you just walked? The place will be coming
apart.”
    “No. I left certain safeguards in place. I delegated
powers to people whose judgment I trust, in such fashion that the
empire will acrete to them gradually, and become theirs solidly
before they realize that I’ve deserted.”
    “I hope so.” I am a charter member of that
philosophical school which believes that if anything can go sour,
it will.
    “It won’t matter to us, will it? We’ll be well
out of range.”
    “Morally, it matters, if half a continent is thrown into
civil war.”
    “I think I have made sufficient moral sacrifice.” A
cold wind overswept me. Why can’t I keep my big damned mouth
shut?
    “Sorry,” I said. “You’re right. I
didn’t think.”
    “Apology accepted. I must confess something. I’ve
taken a liberty with your plans.”
    “Eh?” One of my more intellectual moments.
    “I cancelled your passage aboard that
merchantman.”
    “What? Why?”
    “It wouldn’t be seemly for a legate of the empire to
travel aboard a broken-down grain barge. You are too cheap,
Croaker. The quinquireme Soulcatcher built,
The Dark Wings
, is in
port. I ordered her readied for the crossing to Beryl.”
    My gods. The very doomship that brought us north. “We
aren’t well loved in Beryl.”
    “Beryl is an imperial province these days. The frontier
lies three hundred miles beyond the sea now. Have you forgotten
your part in what made that possible?”
    I only wanted to. “No. But my attention has been elsewhere
the past few decades.” If the frontier had drifted that far,
then imperial boots tramped the asphalted avenues of my own home
city. It never occurred to me that the southern proconsuls might
expand the borders beyond the maritime city-states. Only the Jewel
Cities themselves were of any strategic value.
    “Now who’s being bitter?”
    “Who? Me? You’re right. Let’s enjoy