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of the Narvalak army. If it’s a pardon she’s earning, she needn’t enjoy it so much.
    ‘The baron has promised the priests they’ll be given the prince alive,’ said the high marshal. ‘I can have the boy brought here for you to see, if you want.’
    ‘Why would I want that?’ asked Sibylla. ‘Your cardinal needs Calder for burning. It’ll be quicker if you ship him straight back to your country. Bringing him to the capital will only encourage any dissidents left alive. Let Calder’s future be written across the sea and out of sight of the peasants here.’
    The high marshal scratched his naked scarred ass. ‘I thought you might want to slip him a vial of poison for old time’s sake. In my land his end will not be quick, or that which a warrior deserves.’
    ‘The cardinal will hardly trust me if I can’t even send him a single deposed royal. You told me he values competence above all.’
    The soldier stroked Sibylla’s spine as he shrugged. ‘As you wish.’
    Calder’s fist punched through the scene, the hairs on his arm painted with the light of his now definitely ex-fiancée’s coupling as the conversation died away to be replaced by moans of pleasure. ‘Make it stop.’
    ‘I warned you,’ said the sorcerer. ‘When you lit out of here with your army and your fleet, you weren’t going to war, you were creating a vacancy. And nature does so abhor a vacuum. Especially when it’s the nature of your perfect, pampered princess.’
    ‘Has your Seeing Eye truly shown me the truth?’
    Matobo pushed the spider into a tiny sphere and tossed it to him to catch as if it was a child’s marble. ‘The kind of truth that opens your eyes. Guess this game hasn’t worked out for either of us.’
    ‘You still have your powers and position,’ said Calder, bitterly. ‘What am I left with? Ashes and the taste of shit in my mouth.’
    ‘If it’s any consolation, I am going to have to pack up here too. Leastwise out of your country. It’s getting mighty tiresome scraping your ex-girlfriend’s assassins off my courtyard every morning.’ Matobo wiggled his fingers mysteriously. ‘And who knows, sooner or later one of those suckers might get lucky. And as someone a lot wiser than me once said, old Matobo’s going to have to be lucky all time. Sibylla’s people only got to get lucky once.’
    Calder managed to push himself up and stay sitting on the cot, gathering the sheets around his body. ‘There is nowhere so distant that it will be out of reach of Narvalak’s fleet.’
    ‘You’ll be surprised. I got me a friend with a real special schooner.’ Behind the wizard, the door opened, two people entering the bedchamber along with the wizard’s canine familiar. One of them was a woman, every bit as handsome as Sibylla, although in the newcomer’s case, the pert superiority of the princess had been traded for a more overt round-faced curiosity. The woman was not richly dressed. A single-piece green suit that looked like a washerwoman’s overalls, marked with an oval heraldic emblem on her shoulder, the garment’s material stiff and strong like sail fabric. Her companion, though, was a real oddity. Tall and spindly, he wore an identical set of overalls, but covering metallic gold skin, as if he’d been gilded as a babe in the precious metal. His face appeared noble and slightly pained, with an exotic cast about it that went beyond the sheen of his golden skin. Even queerer was his hair – not hair at all, but a close brush of wire, also gold, like a plate-armoured knight with a moulded helm.
    ‘This is the man?’ asked the woman in a low, smoky voice.
    ‘Prince Calder Durk,’ said the wizard. ‘Meet Lana Fiveworlds, captain of that special schooner I was telling you about. Her friend is Zeno, works as the first mate on said ship.’
    ‘You want me to take passage with a female master?’ spat Calder in disbelief, staring at the odd man standing beside her.
    ‘Stow that shit,’ advised the wizard.