Out of . . . craftsmanship, I think. It’s with good reason they call her the Spider of the Silver Tower. Yet she wept tears of joy when she saw Mathilda again; and she raised Mathilda . . . me too, when I was spending those months there every year after the war . . . as well as could be asked. Certainly we both learned much of kingcraft from her. We can never know the whole inwardness of another, nor all the paths their souls take from the Eastern to the Western gate. Not even our own, until the Dread Lord comes for us, and we stand before the Guardians in the place where Truth is seen whole.

“Our children,” Mathilda said again, leaning against him.

“When we’ve made a world safe for them,” he said. “So, let’s be about it, eh? We’ve troops to muster. Nearly as important, we need to get a better handle on what’s been going on here while we were away questing for the Sword.”

Mathilda nodded vigorously, her eyes going narrow with calculation. When she did that, she could look disquietingly like her mother. Rudi knew he was quick-witted; he suspected that in her way his handfasted wife was more intelligent still. More subtle, certainly, and perhaps a little more systematic.

“And not just the big things, battles won or lost, castles defended or not,” she said. “All the details. It’s going to be crucial to manage the politics properly from the start and we can’t assume things stood still while we were gone.”

“That’s my girl!” he laughed. “Though Chancellor Ignatius will have to take most of the burden perforce . . . and I’ll need him in the field eventually.”

“He’s a very able man. And not from the Protectorate.”

“Sure, and that’s one reason I appointed him. That and being absolutely sure of him.”

She frowned, still lost in thought. “And that’s why I’m glad we sent your Aunt Astrid off on Operation Lúthien.”

“I took your advice on that, acushla, though it’s a thin chance, but what’s the relation?”

“Mom always said you have to remember that individual people exist in themselves, but things like nations and clans and armies and classes and religions only exist because people think they exist. They’re not rocks, they’re a swarm of people all flocking in the same direction. I mean, think of Montival—it didn’t exist two years ago, and now it does, and that’s because we pretty much talked people into thinking it did. By letter, at that.”

“A point, though we were pushing on an open door. The folk wanted to believe in a . . . dream of greatness. When people by the scores of thousands are convinced something is true, that truth can hit you very much like a rock. Hence our problems with the Church Universal and Triumphant and its Prophet Sethaz, the creature.”

She nodded. “That’s so. But Mom also always said that when bunches of people are fighting against each other, whether it’s with arms or words, you have to remember that they’re not rocks colliding. They’re people colliding. Every helmet has a head under it, and the head can think. The whole point of politics is to get people to do what you think they should. Bashing them is just one way of doing that. That’s why Operation Lúthien is so important. I think it might help us . . . talk some people out of thinking that a certain set of rocks exist. And make them believe in our rocks.”