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Baron Hogenson was especially self-absorbed.
    As we traveled, I learned that young Sir Michael was the eldest son and namesake of an army general who’d earned his rank the hard way, protecting the border Arentia shared with San Travis to the west. Mike junior attended military school and then took a commission in the regular army. Since Arentia wasn’t at war with anyone he found the distinct lack of action mind-numbing, until a superior suggested he apply for the special operations branch. The screening process alone took three months. His tests included being tossed naked from a ship off the coast of Romeria with orders to retrieve a certain piece of jewelry from a nobleman’s house and return with it by a given date. He’d done so by convincing the scullery maid’s young daughter that he was a merman, and she hid him long enough for him to learn the layout of the house and acquire the jewelry. He even sculpted a copy from melted sugar to give himself more time, and arrived back in Arentia three days early. He seemed very proud of this, and if it was all true, he had a right to be. I’d been to Romeria a few times, and it was a cold, ragged, lawless place where strangers weren’t welcome and thieves were routinely blinded.
    Anders had two younger brothers, also in military school, and a sister who still lived at home. Because of the nature of his work, his brothers believed he’d actually been drummed out of the service and now worked as a kind of liaison with merchants who sold things to the military. Once they reached a high enough rank they could learn the truth, and he anticipated that day with intense glee. “Cornel, especially, loves giving mehell when we’re home together at the holidays,” he practically giggled. “I can’t wait to tell him that while he was learning to turn left on command, I was out sabotaging Ashatana’s naval construction yards.”
    “Should you be telling
me
that?” I asked.
    He laughed. “I think, given your status in Arentia, it’s safe to tell you anything.”
    “My status isn’t quite what you think it is,” I said.
    “Not to dispute you, but your status is whatever the
king
tells me it is. And after what he told me, I don’t have any worries about you keeping state secrets.”
    There seemed no point in contradicting him further, so I let it go. The conversation (monologue, really) next turned to his romantic life. He was unmarried, although there was a certain young lady in Arentia City on whom he had his eye. Her name was Rachel, she had long dark hair and a bosom of surpassing perkiness. I gathered she was also quite intelligent, and had goals for her life beyond simply marrying some man who’d keep her fed and pregnant. Anders approved of this, and encouraged her education and training as an architect.
    “She’s really good; I wish I could tell her more about my own job, because there are times I know she could help. That little shack where we got the raft? I sort of tricked her into designing it for me. I told her I needed a place to store trade goods where no one could find them, and after I gave her a map of the area, she designed the thing so that it worked with the forest to provide camouflage. Pretty smart, huh? There’s nobody in special ops who could’ve figured that out, that’s for sure.”
    He continued telling me about Rachel, how they’d met at an art exhibition in Arentia City, and carefully implied that their first date ended the way boys alwayshope they will. This didn’t give him a bad opinion of her, though; just the opposite. Her willingness to act on impulse was apparently one of her best qualities.
    But solemnizing the relationship was on indefinite hold. “It wouldn’t really be fair to marry her while I was in such a dangerous job, would it?”
    “I ain’t the guy to ask.”
    “Never been married?”
    “Nope.” He was just trying to be friendly, I reminded myself. “Never was lucky enough to find a girl like your