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special occasions close relatives of the concubines were sometimes allowed to visit them. DeWar, once again waiting on UrLeyn while the General spent a while with the harem’s most recent young recruits, had for some time been granted the singular dispensation of being allowed to enter the visiting chamber whenever the Protector was in the harem. This meant that DeWar was a little closer to UrLeyn than the General would ideally have preferred his chief bodyguard to be during such interludes, and much further away than DeWar felt comfortable with.
    DeWar knew the sort of jokes that circulated the Court about him. It was said that his dream was to be so close to his master at all times that he could wipe the General’s backside in the toilet and his prick in the harem-alcove. Another was that he secretly desired to be a woman, so that when the General wanted sex he need look no further than his faithful bodyguard, and no other bodily contact need be risked.
    Whether Stike, the harem’s chief eunuch, had heard that particular rumour was moot. Certainly he watched the bodyguard with what appeared to be great and professional suspicion. The chief eunuch sat massively in his pulpit at one end of the long chamber, which was lit from above by three porcelain light-domes. The chamber’s walls were entirely covered with thickly pendulous swathes of ornately woven brocade, while further loops and bowls of fabric hung suspended from the roof spaces between the domes, ruffling in the breeze from the ceiling louvres. The chief eunuch Stike was dressed in great folds of white and his vast waist was girdled with the gold and silver key-chains of his office. He occasionally spared a glance for the few other veiled girls who had chosen the visiting chamber for their giggled conversations and petulant games of card and board, but he concentrated on the only man in the room and his game with the damaged concubine Perrund.
    DeWar studied the board. ‘Ah-ha,’ he said. His Emperor piece was threatened, or certainly would be in another move or two. Perrund gave a dainty snort, and DeWar looked up to see his opponent’s good hand held up flat against her mouth, painted finger-nails golden against her lips and an expression of innocence in her wide eyes.
    ‘What?’ she asked.
    ‘You know what,’ he said, smiling. ‘You’re after my Emperor.’
    ‘DeWar,’ she said, tutting. ‘You mean I’m after your Protector.’
    ‘Hmm,’ he said, putting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his bunched fists. Officially the Emperor was called the Protector piece now, after the dissolution of the old Empire and fall of the last King of Tassasen. New sets of the game of ‘Monarch’s Dispute’ sold in Tassasen these days came in boxes which, to those who could read, proclaimed the game they contained to be ‘Leader’s Dispute’, and held revised pieces: a Protector instead of an Emperor, Generals in place of Kings, Colonels instead of Dukes, and Captains where before there had been Barons. Many people, either fearful of the new regime or simply wishing to show their allegiance to it, had thrown out their old sets of the game along with their portraits of the King. It seemed that only in the Palace of Vorifyr itself were people more relaxed.
    DeWar lost himself studying the position of the pieces for a few moments. Then he heard Perrund make another noise, and looked up again to see her shaking her head at him, eyes glittering.
    Now it was his turn to say, ‘What?’
    ‘Oh, DeWar,’ she said. ‘I have heard people in the Court say you are the most cunning person they know in it, and thank Providence that you are so devoted to the General, because if you were a man of independent ambition they would fear you.’
    DeWar shrugged. ‘Really? I suppose I ought to feel flattered, but ‘
    ‘And yet you are so easy to play at Dispute,’ Perrund said, laughing.
    ‘Am I?’
    ‘Yes, and for the most obvious reason. You do too much to protect