“They’re right, of course,” she said wearily.

“Perhaps. Perhaps. And yet we’ll be overrun and butchered or reduced to serfdom. Won’t we? Our forests will be cut down, our mines gutted, our poor Alfavala exterminated…To hell with it.” Ivalo gazed at the poison vial. “I don’t have any scientific data, I’m not a virologist. It can’t do any military harm to tell the Chertkoians. But I’ve seen what they’ve done to us. I would give them the sickness.”

“I wouldn’t.” Elva bit her lip.

He regarded her for a long time. “Won’t you escape? Never mind being a planetary heroine. There’s nothing you can do. The invaders will go home when they’ve wrecked all our industry. They won’t come again for thirty years. You can be free most of your life.”

“You forget,” she said, “that if I leave with them, and come back, the time for me will only have been one or two years.” She sighed. “I can’t help make ready for the next battle. I’m just a woman. Untrained. While maybe …oh, if nothing else, there’ll be more Vaynamoan prisoners brought to Chertkoi. I have a tiny bit of influence. Maybe I can help them.”

Ivalo considered the poison. “I was about to use this anyway,” he muttered. “I didn’t think staying alive was worth the trouble. But now—if you can—No.” He gave the vial back to her. “I thank you, my lady.”

“I have an idea,” she said, with a hint of color in her voice. “Go ahead and tell them what you know. Pretend I talked you into it. Then I might be able to get you exchanged. It’s barely possible.”

“Oh, perhaps,” he said, not believing. “I’ll try.”

She rose to go. “If you are set free,” she stammered, “will you make a visit to Tervola? Will you find Hauki. Karlavi’s son, and tell him you saw me? If he’s alive.”

569 A.C.C.

Dirzh had changed while the ships were away, The evolution continued after their return. The city grew bigger, smokier, uglier. More people each year dropped from client status, went underground and joined the gangs. Occasionally, these days, the noise and vibration of pitched battles down in the tunnels could be detected up on patron level. The desert could no longer be seen, even from the highest towers, only the abandoned mine and the slag mountains, in process of conversion to tenements. The carcinogenic murkiness crept upward until it could be smelled on the most elite balconies. Teleshows got noisier and nakeder, to compete with live performances, which offering more elaborate bloodlettings than old-fashioned combats. The news from space was of a revolt suppressed on Novagal, resulting in such an acute labor shortage that workers were drafted from Imfan and shipped thither.

Only when you looked at the zenith was there no apparent change. The daylight sky was still cold purplish-blue, with an occasional yellow dustcloud. At night there will still the stars, and a skull.

And yet, thought Elva, you wouldn’t need a large telescope to see the Third Expedition fleet in orbit—eleven hundred spacecraft, the unarmed ones loaded with troops and equipment, nearly the whole strength of Chertkoi marshaling to conquer Vaynamo. Campaigning across interstellar distances wasn’t easy. You couldn’t send home for supplies or reinforcements. You broke the enemy or he broke you. Fleet Admiral Bors Golyev did not intend to be broken.