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the ideas of honor, the knowledge of evil that would cover the land unopposed in any meaningful way, even with all this and the high ideals of the Kroveres of Iztar, even then I was not fully committed to a course that would bring further bloodshed. What was Vallia to me? I cherished estates in other parts of the world. Delia’s father the emperor was murdered and his empire sundered. Why should I seek to restore all that blaze of pomp and pageantry, resuscitate the power and the glory? Were those ends moral? Could the suffering be tolerated? How could all this maelstrom of future misery be justified?
    So, as I slipped into sleep with a million torturing thoughts troubling me, you will see I was in a most foul mood. Only that last thought before sleep of Delia held any power to sooth me.

Three
    Delia Looses an Opinion at the Star Lords
    The sleep lasted long enough to refresh. The voller made two more trips and the defenders of the fortress were very thin along the battlements indeed. We had to take thought to arrange the best way of the final evacuation.
    “The folk are being cared for at friendly farms in the Heart Heights,” said Farris. He looked windblown and tired. “But it is wild country up there — wild.”
    “Aye. Valka will never fall to invaders whilst the Heart Heights stand.”
    The remainder of the force was split into two. I moved along the sun-splashed battlements to talk privately with Delia. I knew I’d encounter opposition.
    “I do not think, husband, that that is a very good plan at all. In fact, if you ask me, I’d say it was a plan suitable for Cottmer’s Caverns.”
    Below us the incredibly beautiful vista of Valkanium and the Bay spread out, dappled in sunshine, the light drifting of rain after the Hour of Mid burnishing everything with a glistening patina of gold. The attackers far below were thinking of forming up for another onslaught. They had lost a great many men, and they could see no other way of getting at us in Esser Rarioch than of climbing up those blood-spattered stairs.
    They did not know of the secret entrances and exits far below the rock.
    I persisted stubbornly.
    “You will fly out with the children and Aunt Katri. I want you with them.”
    “But Aunt Katri is perfectly capable — she may be getting old, now, true; but the nurses—”
    “You. You will take the penultimate trip. We may have to cut and run for it on the last one.”
    “I know. And don’t you think I would be at your side?”
    A shadow fleeted between the ruby glory of Zim and the ramparts. I looked up. My fist tightened on my sword hilt.
    Up there, planing in its arrogant wide-winged circles, flew the Gdoinye, the spy and messenger of the Star Lords. That gorgeous golden and scarlet raptor circled up there, his head on one side, one beady eye fixed upon us.
    Delia said in a voice that almost but not quite trembled: “There is that bird again—”
    “Aye... A Bird of Ill Omen. Delia — I have promised to tell you why I am sometimes dragged away from you when all I want is to stay with you. Not like now, when it is sensible for you to go with the children. But, the other times—”
    “I remember them, I remember them all. They were horrible.”
    What was horrible to me in that moment, as well as the enforced absences I made at the orders of the Everoinye, the Star Lords, was that Delia could see the bird. I knew Drak my eldest son had seen it, and I had lied to him and said the bird was not there. But the Star Lords did not reveal their powers to many. I feared and hated the idea of my Delia being caught up in the schemes of superhuman unknown and unknowable beings who demanded so much from me without explanation.
    “The bird is connected with your — disappearances.”
    “Yes. And the Scorpion.”
    “On the field of the Crimson Missals, when you said you did not want to go to Hyrklana — and I went there — and—”
    I tried to make a laugh and failed. “I’d be sorry, now, if I hadn’t