old me I could help him best by placing myself and Steven
where he wouldn't worry about us."

"I wanted to stay," the boy said. "I could have fought with him.
But he said that I must take care of Mother. And if he were killed,
I must be able to avenge him."

"You talk like a Sword-Worlder; I told you that once before." He
hesitated, then turned again to Princess Bentrik. "How is little
Princess Myrna?" he asked, and then, trying to be casual, added,
"and Lady Valerie?"

She seemed so clearly real and present to him, blue eyes and
space-black hair, more real than Elaine had been to him for years.

"They're at Cragdale; they'll be safe there. I hope."

XXIV

Attempting to conceal the presence on Tanith of Prince Bentrik's
wife and son was pushing caution beyond necessity. Admitted that
the news would leak back to Marduk via Gilgamesh, it was over seven
hundred light-years to the latter and almost a thousand from there
to the former. Better that Princess Lucile should enjoy Rivington
society, such as it was, and escape, for a moment now and then, from
anxiety about her husband. At ten--no, almost twelve; it had been a
year and a half since Trask had left Marduk--the boy Count of Ravary
was more easily diverted. At last, he was among real Space Vikings,
on a Space Viking planet, and he was trying to be everywhere and see
everything at once. No doubt he would be imagining himself a Space
Viking, returning to Marduk with a vast armada to rescue his father
and the King from Zaspar Makann.

Trask was satisfied with that; as a host he left much to be desired.
He had his worries, too, and all of them bore the same name: Prince
Viktor of Xochitl. He went over with Manfred Ravallo everything the
captain of the _Black Star_ could tell him. He had talked once with
Viktor; the lord of Xochitl had been coldly polite and noncommittal.
His subordinates had been frankly hostile. There had been five ships
on orbit or landed at Viktor's spaceport beside the usual
Gilgameshers and itinerant traders, two of them Viktor's own, and a
big armed freighter had come in from Haulteclere as the _Black Star_
was leaving. There was considerable activity at the shipyards and
around the spaceport, as though in preparation for something on a
large scale.

Xochitl was a thousand light-years from Tanith. He rejected
immediately the idea of launching a preventative attack; his ships
might reach Xochitl to find it undefended, and then retur