There was a silence; none of them seemed sure how to respond.

Artorius stood. “We will break. Eat, bathe, sleep—with your kindness, Ceawlin.” The fat negotiatore nodded his head. “We will talk later.”

After the meeting broke up Artorius came to Regina and led her to a quiet corner of Ceawlin’s colonnaded courtyard, away from the others. “Why do you betray me?” he demanded in a sharp whisper. “I found you in your wretched scraping on the hillside and made you what you are. I brought you into this council. Why will you not support me before the others?”

“Because I don’t agree with you,” she said. “The adventure you are planning in Gaul. Your drive for the purple—”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you worried that I will make the mistake of Constantius, and drain the island of its strength?”

She tried to explain how she felt. “Yes, there is that. But there is more. I think you are being—seduced. Your war against the Saxons is justified, because it is clear that given the chance they would kill every one of us, and fill our island with their own bawling, blond-haired brats.

“But now you are talking of fighting for its own sake. I think to you war as an adventure, a great game. But this is no game of ’soldiers,’ Artorius. The tokens you spend are not stones or beads of glass. They are men—humans, each with a soul, an awareness, as bright and vivid as yours or mine.”

He looked at her blankly. “Regina—”

“Your soldiers believe there were better people in the past,” she said, “who built the great ruins at which they gawp. I wonder if people will be better in the future. Perhaps our remote grandchildren will understand the sanctity of life, and to them using the lives of others, as if they were of no more consequence than bits of stone, will be as unthinkable as for me to pluck out my own heart.”

“But until that happy day, we flawed mortals must get along as best we can,” said Artorius dryly. “How do you think the Empire itself was built, save through war? How do you think its peace was kept for so long, save through endless war?” He grinned. “And—Regina, if it is a game it is a marvelous game. The world is an arena for the ambitious, and the prize for victory is no petty favor from a stadium crowd. What else is life for?”

“Once you prized my strength of character,” she said. “My defiance.”

“But now you are starting to irritate me, my Morrigan.” He stepped closer to her, his face even. “Do not oppose me tomorrow.”

When he had gone she stood for a time, in the cool shade of the colonnade, thinking through her problems. Artorius was determined on this course, a course that must lead him to disaster. And then there was Brica with her moon-faced barbarian boy.