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Fergox is going to strike first, but we both have an interest in seeing the other survive. And there's something else too."
    "Oh?" Ramil was feeling tired after his long morning of riding. He yawned.
    For all the threats to Gerfal, his father appeared to be on top of everything.
    He had little to do but approve the sound preparations for their defense.
    "What else?"
    "A royal alliance."
    "What?"
    "In short, you."
    All tiredness vanished. "No! I'm not marrying one of their matriarchs. I don't want a white-painted she-witch as a wife."
    Lagan frowned. He had expected his son to react like this, which was why he was holding this meeting in private. Prejudice against the strange people of the Blue Crescent ran deep in Gerfal--indeed the King was not too keen on them himself.
    "Not a matriarch. The match is to be with one of the Crown Princesses."
    "But that's no better," thundered Ramil. "She could be anyone--the most recent one was dragged from the gutter if the stories are to be believed."
    Lagan sucked his teeth, waiting for his son to finish his outburst.
    "There's no royal bloodline--just a series of nobodies dressed up in stupid costumes! Heaven's sake, Father, they prize poetry and paper-folding over swordsmanship. I doubt a native of the Blue Crescent Islands has
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    ever sat on a horse. They're all for boats and canals, not roads and carriages like a civilized country!"
    "You're being ridiculous, Ramil. The waterways of Rama are among the wonders of the world."
    Ramil was annoyed with himself, recognizing he'd gone completely off the point with his sweeping attack on Crescent culture.
    "Look, Father, put yourself in my shoes. You know as well as I do that marriage to one of them would be a living death. They are so formal they have sixty things to do before and after belching. God knows what you have to do before kissing a Crown Princess!" Ramil shuddered at the thought.
    "Don't do this."
    "We have no choice. It is the only way our two countries can be brought to trust each other--we need the Blue Crescent if there's to be a throne for you to inherit."
    Ramil tried a different tack. "I thought the Crown Princesses didn't marry."
    "This one does."
    "Which one? They're all near ninety, aren't they?"
    "You exaggerate, Ramil."
    "So I'm to marry one of four but I'm to have no say in the choice, not even to say which I'd prefer?"
    "Correct. This is a marriage of state, not a farm boy picking a milkmaid at a barn dance."
    Ramil bunched his fists. "I'm not going to do it, Father."
    "You will do it for Gerfal. You will do it to show that you take your responsibilities seriously."
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    Ramil stood up abruptly, with half a mind to storm out. "You can talk. You always said you married Mother for love."
    Lagan threw another log on the fire. "I married selfishly. I weakened Gerfal by choosing your mother."
    "She was a princess--"
    "Of a people that counted for very little here in the north. If I hadn't met her at the Great Horse Fair, I would've been married to Fergox's sister, did you know that?"
    Ramil shook his head.
    "I ducked out of the match, I admit. Junis was not the woman of my dreams. I knew my father was planning the wedding so I took the decision out of his hands and married in a ceremony in the desert before he could stop me."
    Ramil suddenly understood. "So is this why you have not told me any of this before? You were afraid I'd bolt and hitch up to the first likely looking woman?"
    "Yes. You are very much like me, Ramil. I was afraid you'd make the same mistake."
    "But your marriage to Mother was not a mistake. You were happy--you had me and Briony--"
    "We were happy, yes, but Gerfal was not. Think what might have been if I had allied us to Fergox by marriage: we wouldn't now be fearing for our future. But if you do your duty, you give Gerfal a good chance of surviving free of the warlord. Indeed, even better: you stand to expand our own power westwards--we could see Burinholts on two thrones."
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    Ramil seethed with