When was the last time it tested me? She pondered, taking a long slow sip from the wine flask. The water slicking the sides of thepewter flask cooled the palm of her hand, and the chill liquid slid down her throat and eased the tickle in the back of it. She closed her eyes and savored it. About five years ago. And I know I got the feeling that it wasn’t going to try again. Gods, I hope not. Not now, anyway. Damned thing is likely to decide for the enemy!

That was because the current campaign was against her old enemies, the Karsites. And that recollection made her smile with bitter pleasure. She had quite a debt to collect from the Karsites, and this was the first time in ten years that she’d had a chance to do so. The Skybolts were fighting beside the Rethwellan regular army on behalf of the male monarch of Rethwellan, against the self-styled female Prophet of Vkandis, and that could bring trouble from Need, if the sword noticed. Kero recalled only too well the time the blade had refused to fight against one of the Karsite priestesses. She didn’t relish the idea of it turning on her again.

“If there’s one thing I can’t stand besides maps,” she muttered to herself, “It’s a holy war. These religious fanatics are so damned—unprofessional.”

Messy, that was what it was. Seems like the moment religion enters into a question, people’s brains turn to mush. Messy wars and messy thinking. Messy thinking causing messy wars.

The Karsites had been causing trouble since long before the disaster in Menmellith, and had continued to do so afterward. But this was the first time that the followers of the Sunlord had ever actually moved openly against Rethwellan. The so-called Prophet, claiming to be the original Prophet, reborn into a female body to prove the Oneness of the deity, had managed to raise a good-sized army on the strength of her charisma and the “miracles” she performed. She had moved that army into the province south of Menmellith during the winter, while travel was hard and news moved slowly. By spring she had taken it over and sealed it off.

The King of Rethwellan made no secret of the fact that he suspected collusion on the part of the provincial governor. Kero was fairly sure, from her sources of information within the Guild, that he was right. The governor was an old man, a man who had suffered through a series of serious illnesses. Kero had seen his kind before, and sniffed cynically as she thought about him. Odds are he’s figured out that he’s as mortal as the rest of us for the first time in his life, and he’s been looking frantically for someone, anyone, who’ll promise him a quick and easy route into some kind of paradise when he kicks over the traces.