“Cosgrad,” Tau said, deeply concerned, “that would be lying. You can’t trade someone a promise to give them something valuable later. You’d be inventing something from nothing. You’d be paying them with magic.”

And in accord with Tau’s fear for Cosgrad’s trim, not even a week later Cosgrad developed tetanus.

“Your Federal Highness!” a clerk screamed, running into the sleeping-quarters. “Your Highness, come quick!” Tau-indi leapt out of bed to find Cosgrad curled up and snarling in irritation. He insisted it was just a backache but no, the signs were clear, he had tetanus. Tau-indi made a hasty calculation on the calendar. Tetanus hit hardest when it hit fastest. If Cosgrad had contracted tetanus on Tau’s birthday, up in the frettes, then it should now be survivable.

“Get frogsweat and weed,” Tau-indi ordered the groundskeeps.

“Apple ester,” Cosgrad said. He stared balefully at Tau-indi. “If it’s tetanus, I want apple ester.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Of course you don’t!” He snarled, and tried to turn over, and screamed.

Tau ordered a chorus to sing around his room to drown out his agony, lest his pain spread. Cosgrad shouted at them with incredible distemper until his jaw locked up.

The griots came to Abdumasi’s house to sing about the ongoing war, about the principles of justice, the elephant slow to anger but terrible in its fury. The Oriati Mbo would show no more mercy. Kolosan and Cho-oh Long Oar would sail a thousand ships east to smash Falcrest, smash them so decisively that the fish would lose their taste for the flesh of people and turn to eating seabirds.

Tau watched Abdumasi and Kindalana as the griots sang. They sat together between two raspberry bushes, and Abdumasi settled against Kindalana’s side, his head pillowed on her breast. Kindalana stroked his head, but her eyes were far away, and thoughtful.

The men of Prince Hill were all love-struck, and the women of Prince Hill all thoughtful. It was up to Tau, as it had been up to the lamen in ancient and more traditional days, to mediate.

The mbo continued to fray.

Between Prince Hill and the frettes to the south was a great expanse of irrigated rice-field, fed by long canals. The fish that lived in the canals began to die. Birds shed their feathers and flew blindly into rocks. Ants were found presenting themselves on the grass to be eaten by goats, which was an awful omen. Tau-indi imagined principles of death moving under the earth, under the clouds, leaping from man to laman to woman.

Something terrible was happening.

And then Tau-indi was seized by a thought as hard and hateful as tetanus muscle. They remembered their own spite, their desire to possess Cosgrad so as to make their friends jealous. Hadn’t they said, in fact, that they were fighting a war against their friends?