FSF, January-February 2010 Read Free Page A

unfastened His black dress jacket, exposing a rib-rich chest more suited to a plucked bird.
    "Stop retreating?” Zann repeats.
    Rake glances my way, implying that the same sorry problem has also occurred to him.
    "You think this is a retreat, Castor? Is that it?"
    We never use such an explicit term, no. “Except I can't remember the last battle won,” I say. “We lose divisions, entire armies. The enemy rolls deeper into our country, until the Emperor has to abandon His estate and flee."
    "But there is a difference between retreat and a simple redeployment,” Zann warns. “Between losing ground and surrendering the war."
    I say, “Yes, sir."
    He fumes.
    "There are matters that I don't understand,” I admit. “I'm just one person, and certainly not half as smart as a field marshal—"
    "You're a small man,” Zann snaps.
    Not physically, no. But I accept his criticism without complaint.
    Yet I haven't understood him. With a firm tone, he explains, “Everybody is small, Castor. Even the Emperor is just a tiny creature compared to the enormity of our good nation."
    "Of course, sir."
    "Now I'm going to ask you one question.” He leans forward, gray eyes burning. “Do you know how large our nation is?"
    "Of course not, sir."
    "And why not?"
    Embarrassed, I confess, “I'm only His assistant. And our nation's precise dimensions are the deepest, deepest of secrets."
    "Who does know this?"
    I glance at the sickly man on the deck.
    "Not even Him,” Zann warns.
    My surprise is total. And, overhearing the conversation, Rake jerks his head and then the wheel, causing the boat to swerve sideways across the open water.
    The field marshal enjoys our mutual astonishment. “When the Emperor's grandfather was still a young man,” he explains, “brave explorers were assembled, then sent forth to map the full extent of our empire. Armies cost less than that expedition, and for the next twenty years those exceptional souls pushed out in every direction, out to the fringes of what was known, and then past. And do you know what they discovered?"
    "Not at all,” I mutter.
    "No end to the cities and villages, to the lakes and seas and continents beyond. Elaborate, inadequate maps were drawn. Each map was made secret and stored inside the heavy boxes behind us, waiting for the awful moment when we would need such tools. Yet even our best cartographers managed only a partial mapping of one corner of the nation. It is that vast, and we are that tiny."
    "But the people,” I begin, trying to comprehend this logic. “Those distant souls in far-off cities and villages?"
    "Our people.” Zann gestures over his shoulder. “His people."
    My mind refuses to understand.
    "Our nation isn't just endless, Castor. It's also ancient beyond measure. And there has always been an emperor at its heart—this man's ancestors, and before them, other family lines that are barely remembered. It is the Emperor and His court that maintain this culture of ours, a society that can endure the worst abuses imaginable."
    "But our enemies—"
    "What about them?"
    I don't quite know what to ask.
    So he asks for me. “How can our nation be endless, yet find itself invaded by others? Is that what you want to know?"
    I nod, though I'm not sure that is my concern.
    "Now that is a very good story, Castor.” He laughs sourly, shaking his gray face. “One thread of His grandfather's expedition did manage to find an edge to the Emperor's realm. There is an invisible but utterly real line, a kind of boundary or border, where our people do not live and the others begin."
    "Where?” I blurt.
    He gestures over his shoulder with one hand, while the other hand thoughtfully strokes his ragged beard. “The truest particulars of this story have been lost. We don't know who to blame or why. But what we believe happened is that our explorers met a similar team representing their realm, and standing at that border, somebody chose their words poorly, and that's how this war was