“Oh, Nevare. To be used against your own folk like that. This is bad, boy, much worse than I’d feared. If you’ve got the right of it at all, it has to be stopped. Or you could be the downfall of us all.”

To hear him speak the true magnitude of what I’d done froze me. I sat, staring through him, to a horrible future in which everyone knew I’d betrayed Gernia. Wittingly or unwittingly didn’t matter when one contemplated that sort of treachery.

Duril leaned forward and jabbed me lightly with his finger. “Finish the story, Nevare. Then we’ll think what we can do.”

When I had finished the whole telling, he nodded sagely and leaned back in his chair. “Actually, I’ve heard about those Speck wizards, the big fat ones. They call them Great Men. Or Great Women, I guess, though I never heard of a female one. Fellow that spent most of his soldiering days out at Gettys told me. He claimed he’d seen one, and to hear him tell it, the man was the size of a horse, and proud as could be of it. That soldier told me that a Great Man is supposed to be all filled up with magic, and that’s why he’s so big.” I thought that over. “The Fat Man in the freak show claimed he got so fat because he’d had Speck plague. And the doctor at the academy, Dr. Amicas, said that putting on weight like this is a very rare side effect from the plague, but not completely unknown. So how could that have anything to do with magic?” Sergeant Duril shrugged. “What is magic anyway? Do you understand it? I don’t. I know I’ve seen a few things that I can’t explain in any way that makes sense or can be proved.

And maybe that’s why I say that they were magic. Look at the ‘keep fast’

charm. I don’t know how it works or why it should work. All I know is that for a lot of years, it worked and it worked well. And lately it doesn’t seem to work as well. So, maybe that magic is broken now. Maybe. Or maybe I’m not as strong as I used to be when I tighten a cinch, or maybe my cinch strap is getting old and worn. You could explain it away a thousand ways, Nevare. Or maybe you can just say, ‘it was magic and it doesn’t work anymore.’ Or maybe you could go to someone who believes in magic and thinks he knows how it works and ask him.”

That last seemed a real proposal from him. “Who?” I asked him.

He crossed his arms on the table. “It all started with Dewara, didn’t it?”

“Ah, well.” I leaned back in his chair; it creaked a warning at me. I sat up straight. “It’s useless to try and find him. My father tried for months, right after he sent me home in shreds. Either none of his people knew where he was, or they weren’t telling. My father offered rewards and made threats.