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have been, but I still had two guards with drawn swords behind the chair I ushered him into, their orders to seize him if anything went awry, or kill him if that couldn’t be done. He looked at the soldiers and trembled slightly. I asked him to be seated and inquired if he would care for a glass of wine.
    “I would, Tribune á Cimabue,” he said, and his voice had the mellow tone of a born orator.
    I poured and handed him a goblet.
    “You are not drinking with me?”
    “I drink but rarely,” I told him honestly. “I never came to favor the taste of alcohol, and its effects on me are embarrassing.”
    He looked skeptical. “I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”
    “I don’t understand,” I said.
    “Two men with swords … you won’t share my wine … it would be easy to think that you’ve unwoven the skein that’s puzzled Prince Reufern and those who came before him.”
    “I was never the finest student, Seer Hami,” I said. “Too often my teachers were able to fuddle me, as often for their own pleasure as to bring home a point. I liked it little then, I like it less now. Please explain.”
    The scholar peered at me. “I assumed, when the guards brought me here, you’d decided to have me killed.”
    “Why would I do a thing like that? You may be a traitor, but you’ve done little except talk dissent.”
    “Which it’s my understanding can get a man shortened by a head in these times.”
    “Not by me,” I said. “Nor by anyone under my command. I need something else. But why do you think I planned to kill you? What is this skein you talked about?”
    Hami drained his glass and smiled. “That is a good vintage, Tribune. Perhaps I may have another?”
    I refilled his glass.
    “The skein is the web of confusion about my fate. Consider it: I have refused to acknowledge the authority of the Seer Laish Tenedos, who’s styled himself emperor. I hold the rightful rulers of Numantia are the Rule of Ten.”
    “
Those
incompetents?” I said. “Those that lived through the Tovieti Rising and the civil war have been put out to pasture. And why would you wish them to rule? They were as incompetent a group of dunderheads as ever sat a throne. None of them could pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were graven on the heel.”
    “But they were the legitimate authority.”
    “You think Numantia should have doddered down the path they were taking until we fell completely apart?”
    “As a Kallian, I care little about what happens to the rest of Numantia. I found Chardin Sher’s rule dynamic, progressive.”
    “How odd of you to say that,” I said. “He was certainly as much a dictator in this province as you claim the emperor is now in Numantia.”
    Arimondi Hami smiled a bit. “That may be the case. But, to use language a soldier might, he may have been a son of a bitch, but he was
our
son of a bitch.”
    “Who happens to be very dead,” I said. “Leaving, as far as I know, no heirs or relatives in the immediate bloodline. Would you have your kingdom ruled by any dolt who decides to seize the throne?”
    The scholar laughed. I realized with a bit of chagrin that what I’d said could be easily misconstrued to apply to someone else who’d carved his way to a throne not long ago.
    “I shall not further embarrass you and follow up on that,” he said. “Let me only say that I think Kallio should be left to its own devices, as I think all mankind should. Perhaps you’re right, and we’d end up ruled by some bloody-handed despot. I’ll freely concede that your emperor is far from the most unjust man I’ve ever read about.
    “I chose to stand against him because I wish to see what could happen if the men of the sword were driven off. Perhaps other sorts — poets, saints, men of peace — would be chosen to rule instead.”
    “I doubt that would happen,” I said. “Men of the sword seem predestined to succeed over men of words. The emperor himself needed the army to reach his